Robert F. Murray (Author of the Scarlet Gown): His Poems; with a Memoir

He did, at last, endeavour to ply that servile engine of which Pendennis conceived so exalted an opinion. Certainly a false pride did not stand in his way when, on May 5, 1889, he announced that he was about to leave St. Andrews, and attempt to get work at proof-correcting and in the humblest sorts of journalism in Edinburgh. The chapter is honourable to his resolution, but most melancholy. There were competence and ease waiting for him, probably, in London, if he would but let his pen have its way in bright comment and occasional verse. But he chose the other course. With letters of introduction from Mr. Meiklejohn, he consulted the houses of Messrs. Clark and Messrs. Constable in Edinburgh. He did not find that his knowledge of Greek was adequate to the higher and more remunerative branches of proof-reading, that weary meticulous toil, so fatiguing to the eyesight. The hours, too, were very long; he could do more and better work in fewer hours. No time, no strength, were left for reading and writing. He did, while in Edinburgh, send a few things to magazines, but he did not actually ‘bombard’ editors. He is ‘to live in one room, and dine, if not on a red herring, on the next cheapest article of diet.’ These months of privation, at which he laughed, and some weeks of reading proofs, appear to have quite undermined health which was never strong, and which had been sorely tried by ‘the wind of a cursed to-day, the curse of a windy to-morrow,’ at St. Andrews. If a reader observes in Murray a lack of strenuous diligence, he must attribute it less to lack of resolution, than to defect of physical force and energy. The many bad colds of which he speaks were warnings of the end, which came in the form of consumption. This lurking malady it was that made him wait, and dally with his talent. He hit on the idea of translating some of Bossuet’s orations for a Scotch theological publisher. Alas! the publisher did not anticipate a demand, among Scotch ministers, for the Eagle of Meaux. Murray, in his innocence, was startled by the caution of the publisher, who certainly would have been a heavy loser. ‘I honestly believe that, if Charles Dickens were now alive and unknown, and were to offer the MS. of Pickwick to an Edinburgh publisher, that sagacious old individual would shake his prudent old head, and refuse (with the utmost politeness) to publish it!’ There is a good deal of difference between Pickwick and a translation of old French sermons about Madame, and Condé, and people of whom few modern readers ever heard.

Alone, in Edinburgh, Murray was saddened by the ‘unregarding’ irresponsive faces of the people as they passed. In St. Andrews he probably knew every face; even in Edinburgh (a visitor from London thinks) there is a friendly look among the passers. Murray did not find it so. He approached a newspaper office: ‘he [the Editor whom he met] was extremely frank, and told me that the tone of my article on – was underbred, while the verses I had sent him had nothing in them. Very pleasant for the feelings of a young author, was it not?.. Unfavourable criticism is an excellent tonic, but it should be a little diluted.. I must, however, do him the justice to say that he did me a good turn by introducing me to – … who was kind and encouraging in the extreme.’

Murray now called on the Editor of the Scottish Leader, the Gladstonian organ, whom he found very courteous. He was asked to write some ‘leader-notes’ as they are called, paragraphs which appear in the same columns as the leading articles. These were published, to his astonishment, and he was ‘to be taken on at a salary of – a week.’ Let us avoid pecuniary chatter, and merely say that the sum, while he was on trial, was not likely to tempt many young men into the career of journalism. Yet ‘the work will be very exacting, and almost preclude the possibility of my doing anything else.’ Now, as four leader notes, or, say, six, can be written in an hour, it is difficult to see the necessity for this fatigue. Probably there were many duties more exacting, and less agreeable, than the turning out of epigrams. Indeed there was other work of some more or less mechanical kind, and the manufacture of ‘leader notes’ was the least part of Murray’s industry. At the end of two years there was ‘the prospect of a very fair salary.’ But there was ‘night-work and everlasting hurry.’ ‘The interviewing of a half-bred Town-Councillor on the subject of gas and paving’ did not exhilarate Murray. Again, he had to compile a column of Literary News, from the Athenæum, the Academy, and so on, ‘with comments and enlargements where possible.’ This might have been made extremely amusing, it sounds like a delightful task, – the making of comments on ‘Mr. – has finished a sonnet:’ ‘Mr. – ’s poems are in their fiftieth thousand:’ ‘Miss – has gone on a tour of health to the banks of the Yang-tse-kiang:’ ‘Mrs. – is engaged on a novel about the Pilchard Fishery.’ One could make comments (if permitted) on these topics for love, and they might not be unpopular. But perhaps Murray was shackled a little by human respect, or the prejudices of his editor. At all events he calls it ‘not very inspiring employment.’ The bare idea, I confess, inspirits me extremely.

But the literary follet, who delights in mild mischief, did not haunt Murray. He found an opportunity to write on the Canongate Churchyard, where Fergusson lies, under the monument erected by Burns to the boy of genius whom he called his master. Of course the part of the article which dealt with Fergusson, himself a poet of the Scarlet Gown, was cut out. The Scotch do not care to hear about Fergusson, in spite of their ‘myriad mutchkined enthusiasm’ for his more illustrious imitator and successor, Burns.

At this time Edinburgh was honouring itself, and Mr. Parnell, by conferring its citizenship on that patriot. Murray was actually told off ‘to stand at a given point of the line on which the hero marched,’ and to write some lines of ‘picturesque description.’ This kind of thing could not go on. It was at Nelson’s Monument that he stood: his enthusiasm was more for Nelson than for Mr. Parnell; and he caught a severe cold on this noble occasion. Murray’s opinions clashed with those of the Scottish Leader, and he withdrew from its service.

Just a week passed between the Parnellian triumph and Murray’s retreat from daily journalism. ‘On a newspaper one must have no opinions except those which are favourable to the sale of the paper and the filling of its advertisement columns.’ That is not precisely an accurate theory. Without knowing anything of the circumstances, one may imagine that Murray was rather impracticable. Of course he could not write against his own opinions, but it is unusual to expect any one to do that, or to find any one who will do it. ‘Incompatibility of temper’ probably caused this secession from the newspaper.

After various attempts to find occupation, he did some proof-reading for Messrs. Constable. Among other things he ‘read’ the journal of Lady Mary Coke, privately printed for Lord Home. Lady Mary, who appears as a lively child in The Heart of Midlothian, ‘had a taste for loo, gossip, and gardening, but the greatest of these is gossip.’ The best part of the book is Lady Louisa Stuart’s inimitable introduction. Early in October he decided to give up proof-reading: the confinement had already told on his health. In the letter which announces this determination he describes a sermon of Principal Caird: ‘Voice, gesture, language, thought – all in the highest degree, – combined to make it the most moving and exalted speech of a man to men that I ever listened to.’ ‘The world is too much with me,’ he adds, as if he and the world were ever friends, or ever likely to be friendly.

October 27th found him dating from St. Andrews again. ‘St. Andrews after Edinburgh is Paradise.’ His Dalilah had called him home to her, and he was never again unfaithful. He worked for his firm friend, Professor Meiklejohn, he undertook some teaching, and he wrote a little. It was at this time that his biographer made Murray’s acquaintance. I had been delighted with his verses in College Echoes, and I asked him to bring me some of his more serious work. But he never brought them: his old enemy, reserve, overcame him. A few of his pieces were published ‘At the Sign of the Ship’ in Longman’s Magazine, to which he contributed occasionally.

From this point there is little in Murray’s life to be chronicled. In 1890 his health broke down entirely, and consumption declared itself. Very early in 1891 he visited Egypt, where it was thought that some educational work might be found for him. But he found Egypt cold, wet, and windy; of Alexandria and the Mediterranean he says little: indeed he was almost too weak and ill to see what is delightful either in nature or art.

‘To aching eyes each landscape lowers,   To feverish pulse each gale blows chill,And Araby’s or Eden’s bowers   Were barren as this moorland hill,’

says the least self-conscious of poets. Even so barren were the rich Nile and so bleak the blue Mediterranean waters. Though received by the kindest and most hospitable friends, Murray was homesick, and pined to be in England, now that spring was there. He made the great mistake of coming home too early. At Ilminster, in his mother’s home, he slowly faded out of life. I have not the heart to quote his descriptions of brief yet laborious saunters in the coppices, from the letters which he wrote to the lady of his heart. He was calm, cheerful, even buoyant. His letters to his college friends are all concerned with literature, or with happy old times, and are full of interest in them and in their happiness.

He was not wholly idle. He wrote a number of short pieces of verse in Punch, and two or three in the St. James’s Gazette. Other work, no doubt, he planned, but his strength was gone. In 1891 his book, The Scarlet Gown, was published by his friend, Mr. A. M. Holden. The little volume, despite its local character, was kindly received by the Reviews. Here, it was plain, we had a poet who was to St. Andrews what the regretted J. K. S. was to Eton and Cambridge. This measure of success was not calculated to displease our alumnus addictissimus.

Friendship and love, he said, made the summer of 1892 very happy to him. I last heard from him in the summer of 1893, when he sent me some of his most pleasing verses. He was in Scotland; he had wandered back, a shadow of himself, to his dear St. Andrews. I conceived that he was better; he said nothing about his health. It is not easy to quote from his letters to his friend, Mr. Wallace, still written in his beautiful firm hand. They are too full of affectionate banter: they also contain criticisms on living poets: he shows an admiration, discriminating and not wholesale, of Mr. Kipling’s verse: he censures Mr. Swinburne, whose Jacobite song (as he wrote to myself) did not precisely strike him as the kind of thing that Jacobites used to sing.

They certainly celebrated

‘The faith our fathers fought for,The kings our fathers knew,’

in a different tone in the North.

The perfect health of mind, in these letters of a dying man, is admirable. Reading old letters over, he writes to Miss – , ‘I have known a wonderful number of wonderfully kind-hearted people.’ That is his criticism of a world which had given him but a scanty welcome, and a life of foiled endeavour, of disappointed hope. Even now there was a disappointment. His poems did not find a publisher: what publisher can take the risk of adding another volume of poetry to the enormous stock of verse brought out at the author’s expense? This did not sour or sadden him: he took Montaigne’s advice, ‘not to make too much marvel of our own fortunes.’ His biographer, hearing in the winter of 1893 that Murray’s illness was now considered hopeless, though its rapid close was not expected, began, with Professor Meiklejohn, to make arrangements for the publication of the poems. But the poet did not live to have this poor gratification. He died in the early hours of 1894.

Of the merits of his more serious poetry others must speak. To the Editor it seems that he is always at his best when he is inspired by the Northern Sea, and the long sands and grey sea grasses. Then he is most himself. He was improving in his art with every year: his development, indeed, was somewhat late.

It is less of the writer than the man that we prefer to think. His letters display, in passages which he would not have desired to see quoted, the depth and tenderness and thoughtfulness of his affections. He must have been a delightful friend: illness could not make him peevish, and his correspondence with old college companions could never be taken for that of a consciously dying man. He had perfect courage, and resolution even in his seeming irresoluteness. He was resolved to be, and continued to be, himself. ‘He had kept the bird in his bosom.’ We, who regret him, may wish that he had been granted a longer life, and a secure success. Happier fortunes might have mellowed him, no fortunes could have altered for the worse his admirable nature. He lives in the hearts of his friends, and in the pride and sympathy of those who, after him, have worn and shall wear the scarlet gown.

The following examples of his poetry were selected by Murray’s biographer from a considerable mass, and have been seen through the press by Professor Meiklejohn, who possesses the original manuscript, beautifully written.

MOONLIGHT NORTH AND SOUTH

Love, we have heard together   The North Sea sing his tune,And felt the wind’s wild feather   Brush past our cheeks at noon,And seen the cloudy weather   Made wondrous with the moon.Where loveliness is rarest,   ’Tis also prized the most:The moonlight shone her fairest   Along that level coastWhere sands and dunes the barest,   Of beauty seldom boast,Far from that bleak and rude land   An exile I remainFixed in a fair and good land,   A valley and a plainRich in fat fields and woodland,   And watered well with rain.Last night the full moon’s splendour   Shone down on Taunton Dene,And pasture fresh and tender,   And coppice dusky green,The heavenly light did render   In one enchanted scene,One fair unearthly vision.   Yet soon mine eyes were cloyed,And found those fields Elysian   Too rich to be enjoyed.Or was it our division   Made all my pleasure void?Across the window glasses   The curtain then I drew,And, as a sea-bird passes,   In sleep my spirit flewTo grey and windswept grasses   And moonlit sands – and you.

WINTER AT ST. ANDREWS

The city once again doth wear   Her wonted dress of winter’s bride,Her mantle woven of misty air,   With saffron sunlight faintly dyed.She sits above the seething tide,   Of all her summer robes forlorn —And dead is all her summer pride —   The leaves are off Queen Mary’s Thorn.All round, the landscape stretches bare,   The bleak fields lying far and wide,Monotonous, with here and there   A lone tree on a lone hillside.No more the land is glorified   With golden gleams of ripening corn,Scarce is a cheerful hue descried —   The leaves are off Queen Mary’s Thorn.For me, I do not greatly care   Though leaves be dead, and mists abide.To me the place is thrice as fair   In winter as in summer-tide:With kindlier memories allied   Of pleasure past and pain o’erworn.What care I, though the earth may hide   The leaves from off Queen Mary’s Thorn?Thus I unto my friend replied,   When, on a chill late autumn morn,He pointed to the tree, and cried,   ‘The leaves are off Queen Mary’s Thorn!’

PATRIOTISM

There was a time when it was counted high   To be a patriot – whether by the zeal   Of peaceful labour for the country’s weal,Or by the courage in her cause to die:For King and Country was a rallying cry   That turned men’s hearts to fire, their nerves to steel;   Not to unheeding ears did it appeal,A pulpit formula, a platform lie.Only a fool will wantonly desireThat war should come, outpouring blood and fire,   And bringing grief and hunger in her train.And yet, if there be found no other way,God send us war, and with it send the day   When love of country shall be real again!

SLEEP FLIES ME

Sleep flies me like a lover   Too eagerly pursued,Or like a bird to cover   Within some distant wood,Where thickest boughs roof over   Her secret solitude.The nets I spread to snare her,   Although with cunning wrought,Have only served to scare her,   And now she’ll not be caught.To those who best could spare her,   She ever comes unsought.She lights upon their pillows;   She gives them pleasant dreams,Grey-green with leaves of willows,   And cool with sound of streams,Or big with tranquil billows,   On which the starlight gleams.No vision fair entrances   My weary open eye,No marvellous romances   Make night go swiftly by;But only feverish fancies   Beset me where I lie.The black midnight is steeping   The hillside and the lawn,But still I lie unsleeping,   With curtains backward drawn,To catch the earliest peeping   Of the desirèd dawn.Perhaps, when day is breaking;   When birds their song begin,And, worn with all night waking,   I call their music din,Sweet sleep, some pity taking,   At last may enter in.

LOVE’S PHANTOM

Whene’er I try to read a book,Across the page your face will look,And then I neither know nor careWhat sense the printed words may bear.At night when I would go to sleep,Thinking of you, awake I keep,And still repeat the words you said,Like sick men murmuring prayers in bed.And when, with weariness oppressed,I sink in spite of you to rest,Your image, like a lovely sprite,Haunts me in dreams through half the night.I wake upon the autumn mornTo find the sunrise hardly born,And in the sky a soft pale blue,And in my heart your image true.When out I walk to take the air,Your image is for ever there,Among the woods that lose their leaves,Or where the North Sea sadly heaves.By what enchantment shall be laidThis ghost, which does not make afraid,But vexes with dim lovelinessAnd many a shadowy caress?There is no other way I knowBut unto you forthwith to go,That I may look upon the maidWhereof that other is the shade.As the strong sun puts out the moon,Whose borrowed rays are all his own,So, in your living presence, diesThe phantom kindled at your eyes.By this most blessed spell, each dayThe vexing ghost awhile I lay.Yet am I glad to know that whenI leave you it will rise again.

COME BACK TO ST. ANDREWS

Come back to St. Andrews!  Before you went awayYou said you would be wretched where you could not see the Bay,The East sands and the West sands and the castle in the seaCome back to St. Andrews – St. Andrews and me.Oh, it’s dreary along South Street when the rain is coming down,And the east wind makes the student draw more close his warm red gown,As I often saw you do, when I watched you going byOn the stormy days to College, from my window up on high.I wander on the Lade Braes, where I used to walk with you,And purple are the woods of Mount Melville, budding new,But I cannot bear to look, for the tears keep coming so,And the Spring has lost the freshness which it had a year ago.Yet often I could fancy, where the pathway takes a turn,I shall see you in a moment, coming round beside the burn,Coming round beside the burn, with your swinging step and free,And your face lit up with pleasure at the sudden sight of me.Beyond the Rock and Spindle, where we watched the water clearIn the happy April sunshine, with a happy sound to hear,There I sat this afternoon, but no hand was holding mine,And the water sounded eerie, though the April sun did shine.Oh, why should I complain of what I know was bound to be?For you had your way to make, and you must not think of me.But a woman’s heart is weak, and a woman’s joys are few —There are times when I could die for a moment’s sight of you.It may be you will come again, before my hair is greyAs the sea is in the twilight of a weary winter’s day.When success is grown a burden, and your heart would fain be free,Come back to St. Andrews – St. Andrews and me.

THE SOLITARY

I have been lonely all my days on earth,   Living a life within my secret soul,With mine own springs of sorrow and of mirth,      Beyond the world’s control.Though sometimes with vain longing I have sought   To walk the paths where other mortals tread,To wear the clothes for other mortals wrought,      And eat the selfsame bread —Yet have I ever found, when thus I strove   To mould my life upon the common plan,That I was furthest from all truth and love,      And least a living man.Truth frowned upon my poor hypocrisy,   Life left my soul, and dwelt but in my sense;No man could love me, for all men could see      The hollow vain pretence.Their clothes sat on me with outlandish air,   Upon their easy road I tripped and fell,And still I sickened of the wholesome fare      On which they nourished well.I was a stranger in that company,   A Galilean whom his speech bewrayed,And when they lifted up their songs of glee,      My voice sad discord made.Peace for mine own self I could never find,   And still my presence marred the general peace,And when I parted, leaving them behind,      They felt, and I, release.So will I follow now my spirit’s bent,   Not scorning those who walk the beaten track,Yet not despising mine own banishment,      Nor often looking back.Their way is best for them, but mine for me.   And there is comfort for my lonely heart,To think perhaps our journeys’ ends may be      Not very far apart.

TO ALFRED TENNYSON – 1883

Familiar with thy melody,   We go debating of its power,   As churls, who hear it hour by hour,Contemn the skylark’s minstrelsy —As shepherds on a Highland lea   Think lightly of the heather flower   Which makes the moorland’s purple dower,As far away as eye can see.Let churl or shepherd change his sky,   And labour in the city dark,      Where there is neither air nor room —How often will the exile sigh   To hear again the unwearied lark,      And see the heather’s lavish bloom!

ICHABOD

Gone is the glory from the hills,   The autumn sunshine from the mere,   Which mourns for the declining yearIn all her tributary rills.A sense of change obscurely chills   The misty twilight atmosphere,   In which familiar things appearLike alien ghosts, foreboding ills.The twilight hour a month ago   Was full of pleasant warmth and ease,      The pearl of all the twenty-four.Erelong the winter gales shall blow,   Erelong the winter frosts shall freeze —      And oh, that it were June once more!

AT A HIGH CEREMONY

Not the proudest damsel hereLooks so well as doth my dear.All the borrowed light of dressOutshining not her loveliness,A loveliness not born of art,But growing outwards from her heart,Illuminating all her face,And filling all her form with grace.Said I, of dress the borrowed lightCould rival not her beauty bright?Yet, looking round, ’tis truth to tell,No damsel here is dressed so well.Only in them the dress one sees,Because more greatly it doth pleaseThan any other charm that’s theirs,Than all their manners, all their airs.But dress in her, although indeedIt perfect be, we do not heed,Because the face, the form, the airAre all so gentle and so rare.

THE WASTED DAY

Another day let slip!  Its hours have run,   Its golden hours, with prodigal excess,   All run to waste.  A day of life the less;Of many wasted days, alas, but one!Through my west window streams the setting sun.   I kneel within my chamber, and confess   My sin and sorrow, filled with vain distress,In place of honest joy for work well done.At noon I passed some labourers in a field.   The sweat ran down upon each sunburnt face,      Which shone like copper in the ardent glow.And one looked up, with envy unconcealed,   Beholding my cool cheeks and listless pace,      Yet he was happier, though he did not know.

INDOLENCE

Fain would I shake thee off, but weak am I   Thy strong solicitations to withstand.   Plenty of work lies ready to my hand,Which rests irresolute, and lets it lie.How can I work, when that seductive sky   Smiles through the window, beautiful and bland,   And seems to half entreat and half commandMy presence out of doors beneath its eye?Will not the air be fresh, the water blue,   The smell of beanfields, blowing to the shore,      Better than these poor drooping purchased flowers?Good-bye, dull books!  Hot room, good-bye to you!   And think it strange if I return before      The sea grows purple in the evening hours.