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

Murray had naturally, it seems, certainly not by dint of wrestling with Greek prose, the mastery of language. His light verse is wonderfully handled, quaint, fluent, right. Modest as he was, he was ambitious, as we said, but not ambitious of any gain; merely eager, in his own way, to excel. His ideal is plainly stated in the following verses: —

ΑΙΕΝ ΑΡΙΣΤΕΥΕΙΝ

Ever to be the best.  To lead
In whatsoever things are true;
Not stand among the halting crew,
The faint of heart, the feeble-kneed,
Who tarry for a certain sign
To make them follow with the rest —
Oh, let not their reproach be thine!
But ever be the best.

For want of this aspiring soul,
Great deeds on earth remain undone,
But, sharpened by the sight of one,
Many shall press toward the goal.
Thou running foremost of the throng,
The fire of striving in thy breast,
Shalt win, although the race be long,
And ever be the best.

And wilt thou question of the prize?
’Tis not of silver or of gold,
Nor in applauses manifold,
But hidden in the heart it lies:
To know that but for thee not one
Had run the race or sought the quest,
To know that thou hast ever done
And ever been the best.

Murray was never a great athlete: his ambition did not lead him to desire a place in the Scottish Fifteen at Football. Probably he was more likely to be found matched against ‘The Man from Inversnaid.’

IMITATED FROM WORDSWORTH

He brought a team from Inversnaid
To play our Third Fifteen,
A man whom none of us had played
And very few had seen.

He weighed not less than eighteen stone,
And to a practised eye
He seemed as little fit to run
As he was fit to fly.

He looked so clumsy and so slow,
And made so little fuss;
But he got in behind – and oh,
The difference to us!

He was never a golfer; one of his best light pieces, published later in the Saturday Review, dealt in kindly ridicule of The City of Golf.

‘Would you like to see a city given over,
Soul and body, to a tyrannising game?
If you would, there’s little need to be a rover,
For St. Andrews is the abject city’s name.’

He was fond, too fond, of long midnight walks, for in these he overtasked his strength, and he had all a young man’s contempt for maxims about not sitting in wet clothes and wet boots. Early in his letters he speaks of bad colds, and it is matter of tradition that he despised flannel. Most of us have been like him, and have found pleasure in wading Tweed, for example, when chill with snaw-bree. In brief, while reading about Murray’s youth most men must feel that they are reading, with slight differences, about their own. He writes thus of his long darkling tramps, in a rhymed epistle to his friend C. C. C.

‘And I fear we never again shall go,
The cold and weariness scorning,
For a ten mile walk through the frozen snow
At one o’clock in the morning:

Out by Cameron, in by the Grange,
And to bed as the moon descended.
To you and to me there has come a change,
And the days of our youth are ended.’

One fancies him roaming solitary, after midnight, in the dark deserted streets. He passes the deep porch of the College Church, and the spot where Patrick Hamilton was burned. He goes down to the Castle by the sea, where, some say, the murdered Cardinal may now and again be seen, in his red hat. In South Street he hears the roll and rattle of the viewless carriage which sounds in that thoroughfare. He loiters under the haunted tower on Hepburn’s precinct wall, the tower where the lady of the bright locks lies, with white gloves on her hands. Might he not share, in the desolate Cathedral, La Messe des Morts, when all the lost souls of true lovers are allowed to meet once a year. Here be they who were too fond when Culdees ruled, or who loved young monks of the Priory; here be ladies of Queen Mary’s Court, and the fair inscrutable Queen herself, with Chastelard, that died at St. Andrews for desire of her; and poor lassies and lads who were over gay for Andrew Melville and Mr. Blair; and Miss Pett, who tended young Montrose, and may have had a tenderness for his love-locks. They are a triste good company, tender and true, as the lovers of whom M. Anatole France has written (La Messe des Morts). Above the witches’ lake come shadows of the women who suffered under Knox and the Bastard of Scotland, poor creatures burned to ashes with none to help or pity. The shades of Dominicans flit by the Black Friars wall – verily the place is haunted, and among Murray’s pleasures was this of pacing alone, by night, in that airy press and throng of those who lived and loved and suffered so long ago —

‘The mist hangs round the College tower,
The ghostly street
Is silent at this midnight hour,
Save for my feet.

With none to see, with none to hear,
Downward I go
To where, beside the rugged pier,
The sea sings low.

It sings a tune well loved and known
In days gone by,
When often here, and not alone,
I watched the sky.’

But he was not always, nor often, lonely. He was fond of making his speech at the Debating Societies, and his speeches are remembered as good. If he declined the whisky and water, he did not flee the weed. I borrow from College Echoes —

A TENNYSONIAN FRAGMENT

So in the village inn the poet dwelt.
His honey-dew was gone; only the pouch,
His cousin’s work, her empty labour, left.
But still he sniffed it, still a fragrance clung
And lingered all about the broidered flowers.
Then came his landlord, saying in broad Scotch,
‘Smoke plug, mon,’ whom he looked at doubtfully.
Then came the grocer saying, ‘Hae some twist
At tippence,’ whom he answered with a qualm.