Chapter 2

No longer a schoolboy, he was now a _Bejant_ (_bec jaune_?), to use the old Scotch term for 'freshman.' He liked the picturesque word, and opposed the introduction of 'freshman.' Indeed he liked all things old, and, as a senior man, was a supporter of ancient customs and of _esprit de corps_ in college. He fell in love for life with that old and grey enchantress, the city of St. Margaret, of Cardinal Beaton, of Knox and Andrew Melville, of Archbishop Sharp, and Samuel Rutherford. The nature of life and education in a Scottish university is now, probably, better understood in England than it used to be. Of the Scottish universities, St. Andrews varies least, though it varies much, from Oxford and Cambridge. Unlike the others, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, the United College of St. Leonard and St. Salvator is not lost in a large town. The College and the Divinity Hall of St. Mary's are a survival from the Middle Ages. The University itself arose from a voluntary association of the learned in 1410. Privileges were conferred on this association by Bishop Wardlaw in 1411. It was intended as a bulwark against Lollard ideas. In 1413 the Antipope Benedict XIII., to whom Scotland then adhered, granted six bulls of confirmation to the new University. Not till 1430 did Bishop Wardlaw give a building in South Street, the Paedagogium. St. Salvator's College was founded by Bishop Kennedy (1440-1466): it was confirmed by Pius II. in 1458. Kennedy endowed his foundation richly with plate (a silver mace is still extant) and with gorgeous furniture and cloth of gold. St. Leonard's was founded by Prior Hepburn in 1512. Of St. Salvator's the ancient chapel still remains, and is in use. St. Leonard's was merged with St. Salvator's in the last century: its chapel is now roofless, some of the old buildings remain, much modernised, but on the south side fronting the gardens they are still picturesque. Both Colleges were, originally, places of residence for the students, as at Oxford and Cambridge, and the discipline, especially at St. Leonard's, was rather monastic. The Reformation caused violent changes; all through these troubled ages the new doctrines, and then the violent Presbyterian pretensions to clerical influence in politics, and the Covenant and the Restoration and Revolution, kept busy the dwellers in what should have been 'quiet collegiate cloisters.' St. Leonard's was more extreme, on Knox's side, than St. Salvator's, but was also more devoted to King James in 1715. From St. Andrews Simon Lovat went to lead his abominable old father's clan, on the Prince Regent's side, in 1745. Golf and archery, since the Reformation at least, were the chief recreations of the students, and the archery medals bear all the noblest names of the North, including those of Argyll and the great Marquis of Montrose. Early in the present century the old ruinous college buildings of St. Salvator's ceased to be habitable, except by a ghost! There is another spectre of a noisy sort in St. Leonard's. The new buildings are mere sets of class-rooms, the students live where they please, generally in lodgings, which they modestly call _bunks_. There is a hall for dinners in common; it is part of the buildings of the Union, a new hall added to an ancient house.

It was thus to a university with ancient associations, with a _religio loci_, and with more united and harmonious student-life than is customary in Scotland, that Murray came in 1881. How clearly his biographer remembers coming to the same place, twenty years earlier! how vivid is his memory of quaint streets, grey towers, and the North Sea breaking in heavy rollers on the little pier!

Though, like a descendant of Archbishop Sharp, and a winner of the archery medal, I boast myself _Sancti Leonardi alumnus addictissimus_, I am unable to give a description, at first hand, of student life in St. Andrews. In my time, a small set of 'men' lived together in what was then St. Leonard's Hall. The buildings that remain on the site of Prior Hepburn's foundation, or some of them, were turned into a hall, where we lived together, not scattered in _bunks_. The existence was mainly like that of pupils of a private tutor; seven-eighths of private tutor to one- eighth of a college in the English universities. We attended the lectures in the University, we distinguished ourselves no more than Murray would have approved of, and many of us have remained united by friendship through half a lifetime.

It was a pleasant existence, and the perfume of buds and flowers in the old gardens, hard by those where John Knox sat and talked with James Melville and our other predecessors at St. Leonard's, is fragrant in our memories. It was pleasant, but St. Leonard's Hall has ceased to be, and the life there was not the life of the free and hardy bunk-dwellers. Whoso pined for such dissipated pleasures as the chill and dark streets of St. Andrews offer to the gay and rousing blade, was not encouraged. We were very strictly 'gated,' though the whole society once got out of window, and, by way of protest, made a moonlight march into the country. We attended 'gaudeamuses' and _solatia_--University suppers--but little; indeed, he who writes does not remember any such diversions of boys who beat the floor, and break the glass. To plant the standard of cricket in the remoter gardens of our country, in a region devastated by golf, was our ambition, and here we had no assistance at all from the University. It was chiefly at lecture, at football on the links, and in the debating societies that we met our fellow-students; like the celebrated starling, 'we could not get out,' except to permitted dinners and evening parties. Consequently one could only sketch student life with a hand faltering and untrained. It was very different with Murray and his friends. They were their own masters, could sit up to all hours, smoking, talking, and, I dare say, drinking. As I gather from his letters, Murray drank nothing stronger than water. There was a certain kind of humour in drink, he said, but he thought it was chiefly obvious to the sober spectator. As the sober spectator, he sang of violent delights which have violent ends. He may best be left to illustrate student life for himself. The 'waster' of whom he chants is the slang name borne by the local fast man.

THE WASTER SINGING AT MIDNIGHT. AFTER LONGFELLOW.

Loud he sang the song Ta Phershon For his personal diversion, Sang the chorus U-pi-dee, Sang about the Barley Bree.

In that hour when all is quiet Sang he songs of noise and riot, In a voice so loud and queer That I wakened up to hear.

Songs that distantly resembled Those one hears from men assembled In the old Cross Keys Hotel, Only sung not half so well.

For the time of this ecstatic Amateur was most erratic, And he only hit the key Once in every melody.

If "he wot prigs wot isn't his'n Ven he's cotched is sent to prison," He who murders sleep might well Adorn a solitary cell.

But, if no obliging peeler Will arrest this midnight squealer, My own peculiar arm of might Must undertake the job to-night.

The following fragment is but doubtfully autobiographical. 'The swift four-wheeler' seldom devastates the streets where, of old, the Archbishop's jackmen sliced Presbyterian professors with the claymore, as James Melville tells us:--

TO NUMBER 27x.

Beloved Peeler! friend and guide And guard of many a midnight reeler, None worthier, though the world is wide, Beloved Peeler.

Thou from before the swift four-wheeler Didst pluck me, and didst thrust aside A strongly built provision-dealer

Who menaced me with blows, and cried 'Come on! come on!' O Paian, Healer, Then but for thee I must have died, Beloved Peeler!

The following presentiment, though he was no 'waster,' may very well have been his own. He was only half Scotch, and not at all metaphysical:--

THE WASTER'S PRESENTIMENT

I shall be spun. There is a voice within Which tells me plainly I am all undone; For though I toil not, neither do I spin, I shall be spun.

April approaches. I have not begun Schwegler or Mackintosh, nor will begin Those lucid works till April 21.

So my degree I do not hope to win, For not by ways like mine degrees are won; And though, to please my uncle, I go in, I shall be spun.

Here we must quote, from _The Scarlet Gown_, one of his most tender pieces of affectionate praise bestowed on his favourite city:--

A DECEMBER DAY

Blue, blue is the sea to-day, Warmly the light Sleeps on St. Andrews Bay-- Blue, fringed with white.

That's no December sky! Surely 'tis June Holds now her state on high, Queen of the noon.

Only the tree-tops bare Crowning the hill, Clear-cut in perfect air, Warn us that still

Winter, the aged chief, Mighty in power, Exiles the tender leaf, Exiles the flower.

Is there a heart to-day, A heart that grieves For flowers that fade away, For fallen leaves?

Oh, not in leaves or flowers Endures the charm That clothes those naked towers With love-light warm.

O dear St. Andrews Bay, Winter or Spring Gives not nor takes away Memories that cling

All round thy girdling reefs, That walk thy shore, Memories of joys and griefs Ours evermore.

'I have _not_ worked for my classes this session,' he writes (1884), 'and shall not take any places.' The five or six most distinguished pupils used, at least in my time, to receive prize-books decorated with the University's arms. These prize-men, no doubt, held the 'places' alluded to by Murray. If _he_ was idle, 'I speak of him but brotherly,' having never held any 'place' but that of second to Mr. Wallace, now Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, in the Greek Class (Mr. Sellar's). Why was one so idle, in Latin (Mr. Shairp), in Morals (Mr. Ferrier), in Logic (Mr. Veitch)? but Logic was unintelligible.

'I must confess,' remarks Murray, in a similar spirit of pensive regret, 'that I have not had any ambition to distinguish myself either in Knight's (Moral Philosophy) or in Butler's.' {1}

Murray then speaks with some acrimony about earnest students, whose motive, he thinks, is a small ambition. But surely a man may be fond of metaphysics for the sweet sake of Queen Entelechy, and, moreover, these students looked forward to days in which real work would bear fruit.

'You must grind up the opinions of Plato, Aristotle, and a lot of other men, concerning things about which they knew nothing, and we know nothing, taking these opinions at second or third hand, and never looking into the works of these men; for to a man who wants to take a place, there is no time for anything of that sort.'

Why not? The philosophers ought to be read in their own language, as they are now read. The remarks on the most fairy of philosophers--Plato; on the greatest of all minds, that of Aristotle, are boyish. Again 'I speak but brotherly,' remembering an old St. Leonard's essay in which Virgil was called 'the furtive Mantuan,' and another, devoted to ridicule of Euripides. But Plato and Aristotle we never blasphemed.

Murray adds that he thinks, next year, of taking the highest Greek Class, and English Literature. In the latter, under Mr. Baynes, he took the first place, which he mentions casually to Mrs. Murray about a year after date:--

'A sweet life and an idle He lives from year to year, Unknowing bit or bridle, There are no Proctors here.'

In Greek, despite his enthusiastic admiration of the professor, Mr. Campbell, he did not much enjoy himself:--

'Thrice happy are those Who ne'er heard of Greek Prose-- Or Greek Poetry either, as far as that goes; For Liddell and Scott Shall cumber them not, Nor Sargent nor Sidgwick shall break their repose.

But I, late at night, By the very bad light Of very bad gas, must painfully write Some stuff that a Greek With his delicate cheek Would smile at as 'barbarous'--faith, he well might.

* * * * *

So away with Greek Prose, The source of my woes! (This metre's too tough, I must draw to a close.) May Sargent be drowned In the ocean profound, And Sidgwick be food for the carrion crows!'

Greek prose is a stubborn thing, and the biographer remembers being told that his was 'the best, with the worst mistakes'; also frequently by Mr. Sellar, that it was 'bald.' But Greek prose is splendid practice, and no less good practice is Greek and Latin verse. These exercises, so much sneered at, are the Dwellers on the Threshold of the life of letters. They are haunting forms of fear, but they have to be wrestled with, like the Angel (to change the figure), till they bless you, and make words become, in your hands, like the clay of the modeller. Could we write Greek like Mr. Jebb, we would never write anything else.

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:--

[GREEK TITLE]

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. But when they left him to himself again, Twist, like a fiend's breath from a distant room Diffusing through the passage, crept; the smell Deepening had power upon him, and he mixt His fancies with the billow-lifted bay Of Biscay, and the rollings of a ship.

And on that night he made a little song, And called his song 'The Song of Twist and Plug,' And sang it; scarcely could he make or sing.

'Rank is black plug, though smoked in wind and rain; And rank is twist, which gives no end of pain; I know not which is ranker, no, not I.

'Plug, art thou rank? then milder twist must be; Plug, thou art milder: rank is twist to me. O twist, if plug be milder, let me buy.

'Rank twist, that seems to make me fade away, Rank plug, that navvies smoke in loveless clay, I know not which is ranker, no, not I.

'I fain would purchase flake, if that could be; I needs must purchase plug, ah, woe is me! Plug and a cutty, a cutty, let me buy.

His was the best good thing of the night's talk, and the thing that was remembered. He excited himself a good deal over Rectorial Elections. The duties of the Lord Rector and the mode of his election have varied frequently in near five hundred years. In Murray's day, as in my own, the students elected their own Rector, and before Lord Bute's energetic reign, the Rector had little to do, but to make a speech, and give a prize. I vaguely remember proposing the author of _Tom Brown_ long ago: he was not, however, in the running.

Politics often inspire the electors; occasionally (I have heard) grave seniors use their influence, mainly for reasons of academic policy.

In December 1887 Murray writes about an election in which Mr. Lowell was a candidate. 'A pitiful protest was entered by an' (epithets followed by a proper name) 'against Lowell, on the score of his being an alien. Mallock, as you learn, was withdrawn, for which I am truly thankful.' Unlucky Mr. Mallock! 'Lowell polled 100 and Gibson 92 . . . The intrigues and corruption appear to be almost worthy of an American Presidential election.' Mr. Lowell could not accept a compliment which pleased him, because of his official position, and the misfortune of his birth!

Murray was already doing a very little 'miniature journalism,' in the form of University Notes for a local paper. He complains of the ultra Caledonian frankness with which men told him that they were very bad. A needless, if friendly, outspokenness was a feature in Scottish character which he did not easily endure. He wrote a good deal of verse in the little University paper, now called _College Echoes_.

If Murray ever had any definite idea of being ordained for the ministry in any 'denomination,' he abandoned it. His 'bursaries' (scholarships or exhibitions), on which he had been passing rich, expired, and he had to earn a livelihood. It seems plain to myself that he might easily have done so with his pen. A young friend of my own (who will excuse me for thinking that his bright verses are not _better_ than Murray's) promptly made, by these alone, an income which to Murray would have been affluence. But this could not be done at St. Andrews. Again, Murray was not in contact with people in the centre of newspapers and magazines. He went very little into general society, even at St. Andrews, and thus failed, perhaps, to make acquaintances who might have been 'useful.' He would have scorned the idea of making useful acquaintances. But without seeking them, why should we reject any friendliness when it offers itself? We are all members one of another. Murray speaks of his experience of human beings, as rich in examples of kindness and good-will. His shyness, his reserve, his extreme unselfishness,--carried to the point of diffidence,--made him rather shun than seek older people who were dangerously likely to be serviceable. His manner, when once he could be induced to meet strangers, was extremely frank and pleasant, but from meeting strangers he shrunk, in his inveterate modesty.

In 1886 Murray had the misfortune to lose is father, and it became, perhaps, more prominently needful that he should find a profession. He now assisted Professor Meiklejohn of St. Andrews in various kinds of literary and academic work, and in him found a friend, with whom he remained in close intercourse to the last. He began the weary path, which all literary beginners must tread, of sending contributions to magazines. He seldom read magazine articles. 'I do not greatly care for "Problems" and "vexed questions." I am so much of a problem and a vexed question that I have quite enough to do in searching for a solution of my own personality.' He tried a story, based on 'a midnight experience' of his own; unluckily he does not tell us what that experience was. Had he encountered one of the local ghosts?