Robert F. Murray (Author of the Scarlet Gown): His Poems; with a Memoir. Lang Andrew
was one other cause of his lack of even such slender commercial success in letters as was really necessary to a man who liked ‘plain living and high thinking.’ He fell early in love with a city, with a place – he lost his heart to St. Andrews. Here, at all events, his critic can sympathise with him. His ‘dear St. Andrews Bay,’ beautiful alike in winter mists and in the crystal days of still winter sunshine; the quiet brown streets brightened by the scarlet gowns; the long limitless sands; the dark blue distant hills, and far-off snowy peaks of the Grampians; the majestic melancholy towers, monuments of old religion overthrown; the deep dusky porch of the college chapel, with Kennedy’s arms in wrought iron on the oaken door; the solid houses with their crow steps and gables, all the forlorn memories of civil and religious feud, of inhabitants saintly, royal, heroic, endeared St. Andrews to Murray. He could not say, like our other poet to Oxford, ‘Farewell, dear city of youth and dream!’ His whole nature needed the air, ‘like wine.’ He found, as he remarks, ‘health and happiness in the German Ocean,’ swimming out beyond the ‘lake’ where the witches were dipped; walking to the grey little coast-towns, with their wealth of historic documents, their ancient kirks and graves; dreaming in the vernal woods of Mount Melville or Strathtyrum; rambling (without a fishing-rod) in the charmed ‘dens’ of the Kenley burn, a place like Tempe in miniature: these things were Murray’s usual enjoyments, and they became his indispensable needs. His peculiarly shy and, as it were, silvan nature, made it physically impossible for him to live in crowded streets and push his way through throngs of indifferent men. He could not live even in Edinburgh; he made the effort, and his health, at no time strong, seems never to have recovered from the effects of a few months spent under a roof in a large town. He hurried back to St. Andrews: her fascination was too powerful. Hence it is that, dying with his work scarcely begun, he will always be best remembered as the poet of The Scarlet Gown, the Calverley or J. K. S. of Kilrymont; endowed with their humour, their skill in parody, their love of youth, but (if I am not prejudiced) with more than the tenderness and natural magic of these regretted writers. Not to be able to endure crowds and towns, (a matter of physical health and constitution, as well as of temperament) was, of course, fatal to an ordinary success in journalism. On the other hand, Murray’s name is inseparably connected with the life of youth in the little old college, in the University of the Admirable Crichton and Claverhouse, of the great Montrose and of Ferguson, – the harmless Villon of Scotland, – the University of almost all the famous Covenanters, and of all the valiant poet-Cavaliers. Murray has sung of the life and pleasures of its students, of examinations and Gaudeamuses – supper parties – he has sung of the sands, the links, the sea, the towers, and his name and fame are for ever blended with the air of his city of youth and dream. It is not a wide name or a great fame, but it is what he would have desired, and we trust that it may be long-lived and enduring. We are not to wax elegiac, and adopt a tearful tone over one so gallant and so uncomplaining. He failed, but he was undefeated.
In the following sketch of Murray’s life and work use is made of his letters, chiefly of letters to his mother. They always illustrate his own ideas and attempts; frequently they throw the light of an impartial and critical mind on the distinguished people whom Murray observed from without. It is worth remarking that among many remarks on persons, I have found not one of a censorious, cynical, envious, or unfriendly nature. Youth is often captious and keenly critical; partly because youth generally has an ideal, partly, perhaps chiefly, from mere intellectual high spirits and sense of the incongruous; occasionally the motive is jealousy or spite. Murray’s sense of fun was keen, his ideal was lofty; of envy, of an injured sense of being neglected, he does not show one trace. To make fun of their masters and pastors, tutors, professors, is the general and not necessarily unkind tendency of pupils. Murray rarely mentions any of the professors in St. Andrews except in terms of praise, which is often enthusiastic. Now, as he was by no means a prize student, or pattern young man for a story-book, this generosity is a high proof of an admirable nature. If he chances to speak to his mother about a bore, and he did not suffer bores gladly, he not only does not name the person, but gives no hint by which he might be identified. He had much to embitter him, for he had a keen consciousness of ‘the something within him,’ of the powers which never found full expression; and he saw others advancing and prospering while he seemed to be standing still, or losing ground in all ways. But no word of bitterness ever escapes him in the correspondence which I have seen. In one case he has to speak of a disagreeable and disappointing interview with a man from whom he had been led to expect sympathy and encouragement. He told me about this affair in conversation; ‘There were tears in my eyes as I turned from the house,’ he said, and he was not effusive. In a letter to Mrs. Murray he describes this unlucky interview, – a discouragement caused by a manner which was strange to Murray, rather than by real unkindness, – and he describes it with a delicacy, with a reserve, with a toleration, beyond all praise. These are traits of a character which was greater and more rare than his literary talent: a character quite developed, while his talent was only beginning to unfold itself, and to justify his belief in his powers.
Robert Murray was the eldest child of John and Emmeline Murray: the father a Scot, the mother of American birth. He was born at Roxbury, in Massachusetts, on December 26th, 1863. It may be fancy, but, in his shy reserve, his almost farouche independence, one seems to recognise the Scot; while in his cast of literary talent, in his natural ‘culture,’ we observe the son of a refined American lady. To his mother he could always write about the books which were interesting him, with full reliance on her sympathy, though indeed, he does not often say very much about literature.
Till 1869 he lived in various parts of New England, his father being a Unitarian minister. ‘He was a remarkably cheerful and affectionate child, and seldom seemed to find anything to trouble him.’ In 1869 his father carried him to England, Mrs. Murray and a child remaining in America. For more than a year the boy lived with kinsfolk near Kelso, the beautiful old town on the Tweed where Scott passed some of his childish days. In 1871 the family were reunited at York, where he was fond of attending the services in the Cathedral. Mr. Murray then took charge of the small Unitarian chapel of Blackfriars, at Canterbury. Thus Murray’s early youth was passed in the mingled influences of Unitarianism at home, and of Cathedral services at York, and in the church where Becket suffered martyrdom. A not unnatural result was a somewhat eclectic and unconstrained religion. He thought but little of the differences of creed, believing that all good men held, in essentials, much the same faith. His view of essentials was generous, as he admitted. He occasionally spoke of himself as ‘sceptical,’ that is, in contrast with those whose faith was more definite, more dogmatic, more securely based on ‘articles.’ To illustrate Murray’s religious attitude, at least as it was in 1887, one may quote from a letter of that year (April 17).
‘There was a University sermon, and I thought I would go and hear it. So I donned my old cap and gown and felt quite proud of them. The preacher was Bishop Wordsworth. He goes in for the union of the Presbyterian and Episcopalian Churches, and is glad to preach in a Presbyterian Church, as he did this morning. How the aforesaid Union is to be brought about, I’m sure I don’t know, for I am pretty certain that the Episcopalians won’t give up their bishops, and the Presbyterians won’t have them on any account. However, that’s neither here nor there – at least it does not affect the fact that Wordsworth is a first-rate man, and a fine preacher. I dare say you know he is a nephew or grand-nephew of the Poet. He is a most venerable old man, and worth looking at, merely for his exterior. He is so feeble with age that he can with difficulty climb the three short steps that lead into the pulpit; but, once in the pulpit, it is another thing. There is no feebleness when he begins to preach. He is one of the last voices of the old orthodox school, and I wish there were hundreds like him. If ever a man believed in his message, Wordsworth does. And though I cannot follow him in his veneration for the Thirty-nine Articles, the way in which he does makes me half wish I could… It was full of wisdom and the beauty of holiness, which even I, poor sceptic and outcast, could recognise and appreciate. After all, he didn’t get it from the Articles, but from his own human heart, which, he told us, was deceitful and desperately wicked.
‘Confound it, how stupid we all are! Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Agnostics; the whole lot of us. We all believe the same things, to a great extent; but we must keep wrangling about the data from which we infer these beliefs.. I believe a great deal that he does, but I certainly don’t