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Notes on David Gray
I thought I would add some more accounts of the ‘story of David Gray’ and other material which may be relevant. Some of this is duplicated from elsewhere on the site, but I thought it would be easier to repeat it here, rather than add links.
Other Accounts of the Story of David Gray:
1. Introductory Notice by Richard Monckton Milnes and Memoir by James Hedderwick
from The Luggie and Other Poems by David Gray (Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1862, pp. vii-xlviii). [Available at the Internet Archive.]
2.’David Gray’ by Robert Buchanan
from The Cornhill Magazine Vol. IX. January to June, 1864, pp. 164-177). [Available at the Internet Archive.]
Buchanan expanded on his original essay in David Gray and other Essays, chiefly on poetry (London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 1868, pp. 61-174).
3. Extract from the chapter, ‘A Poetic Trio: Alexander Smith, Robert Buchanan, and David Gray’
from Literary and Dramatic Sketches by J. Bell Simpson (Glasgow: David Bryce & Son, 1872)
4. Introductory Note and ‘Gray’s Monument’
from The Poetical Works of David Gray: A New and Enlarged Edition. Edited by Henry Glassford Bell (Glasgow: James MacLehose, London: Macmillan & Co., 1874.) [Available at the Internet Archive.]
5. Extract from the chapter, ‘Young Poets’
from Forty Years' Recollections of Life, Literature and Public Affairs from 1830 to 1870, Vol. II by Charles Mackay (London; Chapman & Hall, 1877, pp. 311-316). [Available at the Internet Archive.]
6. Extract from ‘Chapter IV: Summer of 1860’
from The Life and Letters of Sydney Dobell, Vol. II. Edited by E. J. (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1878, pp. 159-165). [Available at the Internet Archive.]
7. Extract from ‘Chapter I: Some Old Acquaintances’
from Sketches: Personal and Pensive by William Hodgson (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1884. pp. 11-13).
8. Extract from ‘Chapter XIII: The Friend of Men of Letters’
from The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton, Vol II by T. Wemyss Reid (Cassell & Co., Ltd., 1890, pp. 46-59). [Available at the Internet Archive.]
9. ‘David Gray’ and ‘William Freeland’
from Kirkintilloch: Town and Parish by Thomas Watson (Glasgow: John Smith and Son, 1894). [Available at the Internet Archive.]
10. ‘Chapter XVIII: Memoirs of Modern Men’
from Literary Landmarks of Glasgow by James A. Kilpatrick (Glasgow: Saint Mungo Press. 1898). [Available at the Internet Archive.]
11. Memoir by Henry Johnston
from Ballads and Other Poems by William Freeland (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1904, pp. xi-xiii). [Available at the Internet Archive.]
12. Chapter Ten: V-VI
from Monckton Milnes - The Flight of Youth: 1851-1885 by James Pope-Hennessy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, Inc., 1951, pp. 220-227).
Letters:
1. Three letters from Robert Buchanan to David Gray Snr.
2. Four letters from Robert Buchanan to Robert Browning
3. Letter from Robert Buchanan to Alfred Tennyson
4. Letter from Robert Buchanan to John Dennis
5. Letter from Robert Buchanan to The Athenæum
6. Extract from Robert Buchanan’s letter to an unknown recipient
7. Two letters (and a sonnet) from David Gray
Images of David Gray
Two Reviews
Additional Information
Robert Buchanan and David Gray - a final note
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Other Accounts of the Story of David Gray
Introductory Notice by Richard Monckton Milnes and Memoir by James Hedderwick
from The Luggie and Other Poems by David Gray
(Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1862, pp. vii-xlviii).
INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
IN the Spring of 1860 I received a letter signed DAVID GRAY, enclosing some manuscript verses. The writer stated that he was a Scotchman, who had had the ordinary education of the artisans of that country; that he had written. these and other Poems, and desired my advice as to his coming up to London and making his way there in the career of Literature. I was struck with the superiority of the verses to almost all the productions of self-taught men that had been brought under my observation, and I therefore answered the letter at some length, recognising the remarkable faculty which Mr. Gray seemed to me to possess; urging him to cultivate it not exclusively nor even especially but to make it part of his general culture and intellectual development; and above all desiring him not to make the perilous venture of a London literary life, but, at any rate for some time, to content himself with such opportunities as he had, and to strive to obtain viii some professional independence, however humble, in which his poetical powers might securely expand and become the solace of his existence instead of the precarious purveyor of his daily bread. A few weeks afterwards I was told a young man wished to see me, and when he came into the room I at once saw it could be no other than the young Scotch Poet. It was a light, well-built, but somewhat stooping figure, with a countenance that at once brought strongly to my recollection a cast of the face of Shelley in his youth, which I had seen at Mr. Leigh Hunt’s. There was the same full brow, out-looking eyes, and sensitive melancholy mouth. He told me at once that he had come to London in consequence of my letter, as from the tone of it he was sure I should befriend him. I was dismayed at this unexpected result of my advice, and could do no more than press him to return home as soon as possible. I painted as darkly as I could the chances and difficulties of a literary struggle in the crowded competition of this great city, and how strong a swimmer it required to be not to sink in such a sea of tumultuous life. “No—he would not return.” I determined in my own mind that he should do so before I myself left town for the country, but at the same time I believed that he might derive advantage from a short personal experience of hard realities. He had a confidence in his own powers, a simple ix certainty of his own worth, which I saw would keep him in good heart and preserve him from base temptations. He refused to take money, saying he had enough to go on with; but I gave him some light literary work, for which he was very grateful. When he came to me again, I went over some of his verse with him, and I shall not forget the passionate gratification he shewed when I told him that, in my judgment, he was an undeniable Poet. After this admission he was ready to submit to my criticism or correction, though he was sadly depressed at the rejection of one of his Poems, over which he had evidently spent much labour and care, by the Editor of a distinguished popular periodical, to whom I had sent it with a hearty recommendation. His indeed was not a spirit to be seriously injured by a temporary disappointment; but when he fell ill so soon afterwards, one had something of the feeling of regret that the notorious review of Keats inspires in connection with the premature loss of the author of “Endymion.”
It was only a few weeks after his arrival in London that the poor boy came to my house apparently under the influence of violent fever. He said he had caught cold in the wet weather, having been insufficiently protected by clothing; but had delayed coming to me for fear of giving me unnecessary trouble. I at once sent him back to his lodgings, x which were sufficiently comfortable, and put him under good medical superintendence. It soon became apparent that pulmonary disease had set in, but there were good hopes of arresting its progress. I visited him often, and every time with increasing interest. He had somehow found out that his lungs were affected, and the image of the destiny of Keats was ever before him. I leave to his excellent friend Mr. Hedderwick to tell the rest of this sad story. I never saw him after he left London. I much regret that imperative circumstances did not permit me to take him under my roof, that I at least might have the satisfaction of thinking that all human means of saving his life had been exhausted: for there was in him the making of a great man. His lyrical faculty, astonishing as it was, might not have outlived the ardour and susceptibilities of youth; but there was that simple persistence of character about him, which is so prominent in the best of his countrymen. I was much struck with seeing how he had hitherto made the best of all his scanty opportunities; how he had got all the good out of the homely virtues of his domestic life with no sign of reproach at the plain practical people about him for not making much of his poetry and sympathising with his visions of fame. These indeed must have seemed, to say the least, intolerably presumptuous to those about him, and indeed to most of those with xi whom he came in contact. I own I heeded them little. It has always appeared to me that if a certain brightness of hope and presumption of genius in young men who have had all the advantages of the best education in their reach, and whose youth has grown up in careful classical culture and with the associations of a refined society, be regarded with a compassionate interest and feelings no severer than a gentle ridicule, a far milder condemnation and deeper sympathy should be given to those who, without the ordinary processes of mental progress, without the free interchange of thought, and above all, without the means of weighing their own with other intelligences, have within themselves the certain conviction of superiority and the perceptions of an interminable vista of Beauty and of Truth. Such minds feel themselves to be, as it were, exceptional creatures in the moral world in which they happen to be placed; and it is as unreasonable to expect from them a just appreciation of their own powers, as it would be to require an accurate notion of distance from a being freshly gifted with sight. How is he to distinguish the near and commonplace from the distant and rare? How is he to know that such have been the thoughts and such the expressions of thousands before him? How is he to possess the distinctions of taste and the discriminations of judgment which a long, even though xii superficial, literary education confers on so many undistinguished natures and uncritical minds? Therefore when the mere boy who can write such poems as these in the shadow of death has talked of being buried in Westminster Abbey, let not the feeling be other than that which would meet the aspirations of Stephenson the apprentice, or Nelson the midshipman.
It is also significant that a good deal of the over-confidence which David Gray manifested gave way as soon as he knew he was really appreciated and cared for. His vanity sang forth, as it were, in the night of his discouragement, to give himself fortitude to bear the solitude and the gloom. With all his admiration of his “Luggie,” he clearly could not help in his mind comparing it with the “Seasons”; and then he writes,—“When I read Thomson, 1 despair.” Soon after an almost bombastic estimate of his own mental progress, he becomes thoroughly ashamed of himself, and says, “that being bare of all recommendations,” he had “lied to his own conscience,” deeming that “if he called himself a great man, others would be bound to believe him.” Surely this was a spirit to which knowledge would have given a just humility, and for which praise and love were especially necessary, for they would have brought with them modesty and truth.
I would recommend the readers of these Poems to keep in mind how deeply they are based on the xiii few phenomena of nature that came within the Poet’s observation. He revels in the frost and snow until the winter of his own sorrow and sickness becomes too hard for him to bear, and then he only asks for
“One clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet air.”
The lost illusion of the cuckoo, when it was transformed into
“A slender bird of modest brown,”
is missed, as something he cannot afford to spare in his scanty store of natural delights. The “Luggie” itself ever remains the simple stream that it really is and is not decked-out in any fantastic or inharmonious colouring. He described in a letter to me the rapturous emotions with which the rich hues and picturesque forms of the coast of South Devonshire filled his breast; and I believe that these very feelings would have prolonged his life, had circumstances permitted him to enjoy them.
I will not here assume the position of a poetical critic, both because I know such criticism to be dreary and unsatisfactory, and because I am conscious that the personal interest I took in David Gray is likely in some degree to influence my judgment. There is in truth no critic of poetry but the man who enjoys it, and the amount of gratification felt is the only just measure of criticism. I believe however that I should have found much pleasure in xiv these Poems if I had met with them accidentally and if I had been unaware of the strange and pathetic incidents of their production. But the public mind will not separate the intrinsic merits of the verses from the story of the writer, any more than the works and fate of Keats or of Chatterton ; we value all connected with the being of every true Poet because it is the highest form of Nature that man is permitted to study and enjoy.
R. M. MILNES.
xv
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.
IT is unusual, I fear, to produce a Memoir of a mere literary aspirant—of one whose place in the world of letters remains to be ascertained—and concerning whom but little interest can be felt. Yet, whatever may be the ultimate verdict on the Poems contained in this volume, there is something in the short, ambitious, and melancholy career of their author, which may perhaps assist the reader to judge accurately of their merits. There are poets of a high, although not perhaps of the highest order of intellect, whose writings are a continual reflex of their own inner selves—who lay bare their hearts in their works—and, without some knowledge of whom, in their personal character and relations, it would be difficult to form any generous, or even fair estimate of their productions.
Of this intensely subjective class of bards was DAVID GRAY, the author of “The Luggie, and other Poems.” His life, which embraced only his passionate youth-time, was tremulously, almost morbidly, fanciful. It is necessary to know this, not in order that his effusions may be judged charitably, but in order that they may be judged truly. What might xvi have been weakness or affectation in a mature man, was with him a natural instinct of tenderness. Had he lived to watch the fate of his book, he would probably have been as sensitive as Keats to the shafts of criticism. Consumption, ending fatally, has saved him from that ordeal. He is gone where no censure can wound, where no detraction can affect him; but a life as strangely bright and beautiful as it was unhappily brief, seems to suggest a memory that should be guarded by loving hands.
David Gray was born on the 29th of January, 1838, on the banks of the Luggie, about eight miles distant from the city of Glasgow. His precise place of birth was Duntiblae, a little row of houses on the south side of the stream; but, while he was a mere child, his parents removed to Merkland, on the north side, where they still continue to dwell. All his associations, therefore, clustered about Merkland, which is situated within a mile of the town of Kirkintilloch, on the Gartshore road. It has neither the dignity of a village, nor the primitive rudeness of a clachan, but is simply a group of road-side cottages, some half-dozen in number, humble, but with slated roofs, having pleasant patches of garden in front and behind, and wholly occupied by handloom weavers and their families, who receive their webs and their inadequate remuneration from the manufacturing warehouses of the great city. His parents are both living—an industrious and exemplary couple, with the constant click of the shuttle in one division of their cottage, and with xvii doubtless the occasional squall of juvenile voices in the other. David was the eldest of eight children, there being four boys and three girls now left. The Luggie flows past Merkland at the foot of a precipitous bank, and shortly afterwards loses itself among the shadows of Oxgang, with its fine old mansion-house and rookery, and debouches at Kirkintilloch into the Kelvin, one of the tributaries of the Clyde, celebrated in Scottish song. It is a mere unpretending rivulet, yet sufficient to turn the wheel of an old meal-mill at the straggling village of Waterside, a little way up the stream, though in a lower level of the valley. Neither, except at one or two points, is it of a character to attract a lover of the picturesque. But although not particularly fitted for a painter’s eye, it sufficed for a poet’s love. The little bright-eyed first-born of the Merkland handloom weaver had the more accessible nooks of it by heart long before his ambitious feet could carry him to more beautiful regions; and although, in later years, he extended the radius of his rambles, and made intimate acquaintance with the magnificent glens and cascades in the recesses of the Campsie fells, his tiny “natal stream,” at the foot of the familiar “brae,” so associated in his heart with the recollections of childhood and the endearments of home, never lost its freshness or its charm.
Other appeals to his imagination were not wanting. At a distance of some miles to the north was the noble outline of the Campsie range; villages of smoking industry dotted the valley and plain; to xviii the south-west Glasgow toiled all the week under its cloud, and consecrated the listening Sabbath with the faint clang of its bells; while nightly to the south the country was ablaze, and the sky reddened, with the numerous blast-furnaces to which the west of Scotland chiefly owes its preponderating wealth. Nor was the locality, in other respects, deficient in interest. Close to Kirkintilloch the Roman invasion had left its tide-mark in the shape of certain easily distinguishable remains of the famous wall of Antoninus; there, too, was the Forth and Clyde Canal, with its leisurely craft looking picturesque in the landscape, as if sitting for artistic effect, or rejoicing in the land-rest between the turmoil of two oceans; while the occasional rush of some railway train along its geological groove—now hidden, anon revealed, and soon wholly out of sight, and out of hearing—marked the advent of a new and more active era. All these things the “marvellous boy” must have daily noted; but still it was mainly the music of his own little Luggie which murmured melodiously in his verse, and which he began at length fondly to dream of linking immortally with his name.
Perhaps in no other country save Scotland could a lad in Gray’s position—the son of a handloom weaver, burdened with a large family, and living in the outlying suburb of a common country town—have attained the advantage of a classical education. His first teacher was Mr. Adams, who still conducts, with efficiency, the Kirkintilloch parish school. xix While under this excellent preceptor, his literary bias became strikingly apparent. Zealous at his tasks, bright with precocious intellect, an unconscionable devourer of books, and personally ambitious of distinction, it was early intended that he should devote himself to the office of the Christian ministry in connection with the Free Church of Scotland, to which his parents belonged. When about fourteen years of age he was accordingly sent to Glasgow, where, supporting himself to a considerable extent by laborious tuition, first as pupil-teacher in a public school in Bridgeton, and afterwards as Queen’s scholar in the Free Church Normal Seminary, he contrived to attend the Humanity, Greek, and other classes in the University during four successive sessions. Having likewise obtained some employment as a private tutor, he found it necessary to add French to his lingual acquisitions. But whatever progress he may have made in his more severe studies, it soon became evident that the bent of his mind was poetical rather than theological. His imagination became much more possessed with the beauties of Greek mythology than with the dogmas of Calvinistic faith. In place of composing sermons, he betook himself to writing verses. Many of these, bearing the nom de plume of “Will Gurney,” were published, from time to time, in the columns of the “Glasgow Citizen”—a journal in which, some years before, Alexander Smith, the author of the “Life-Drama,” had made his first appearance in print; and abandoning the idea of the pulpit, and detesting the xx drudgery of the ferule, the determination seems gradually to have taken root in his mind of adopting literature as a profession.
His letters at this time betray an extraordinary and altogether unhealthy degree of excitement, as of one setting out on some adventurous path, and uncertain whether he was a genius or a dreamer. In one of these addressed to myself, he says: “This is the third note with which I have attempted to preface the lines I have enclosed. I know not what to say about them. They are the faint but true expressions of my imagination, though deficient—alas! how deficient to symbolise the beauty of the cloudland I have visited, or the ideal love of my soul. Perhaps you may deem this the raving of a restless spirit—the spasmodic mawkishness of a ‘metre-balladmonger:’ but do not, for God’s sake, do not. If you knew how often I have halted in the middle of the lobby of your office with a bundle of MSS.,—if you knew the wild dreams of literary ambition I am ever framing, yet all the time conscious of my own utter insignificance, my dear sir, you would pity me.” These hectic sentences, accidentally preserved, are characteristic of the kind of desperate frenzy with which he was accustomed to compensate for, and avenge, on paper, the shrinking physical bashfulness of his nature. Shortly afterwards, when I had met him in society, I fancied I detected, in the restless yet timid twinkle of his dark eye, a lack of philosophic balance, a keen and vivid intellect united with a certain nervous incapacity of xxi self-reliance, an irrepressible impulse to lofty literary enterprise, shaken with maddening apprehensions of failure.
But neither his circumstances nor his temperament permitted him to rest. My acquaintance with him was too slight and casual, irrespectively of difference of age, to invite or win his confidence. He had, however, several companions to whom he had been attracted by kindred sympathies and tastes, and with whom he often drew glowing and extravagant pictures of the future, and as often obliterated them as vain. Among these was Arthur Sutherland, a colleague of his own in the Free Church Normal Seminary, and now a respectable teacher at Maryburgh, near Dingwall. His letters to Sutherland, written early in 1860, when he had attained the age of twenty-two, are full of fantastic schemes to be undertaken by them jointly, one of which was to gather what money they could, meet on a certain day in Edinburgh, make their way to London on foot, and of course take the literary world by storm! These brave and foolish notions originated probably in a state of mind which he confesses. “Solitude,” he says, “and an utter want of all physical exercise, are working deplorable ravages in my nervous system. The crow’s-feet are blackening about my eyes; and I cannot think to face the sunlight. When I ponder alone over my own inability to move the world—to move one heart in it—no wonder that my ‘face gathers blackness.’ Tennyson beautifully, and (so far) truly says, that the face is ‘the form and xxii colour of the mind and life.’ If you saw me!” Another congenial spirit was William Freeland, a native of Kirkintilloch, somewhat older in years, and now filling, with honour, a responsible position in connection with the Glasgow press. Many a ramble did he enjoy with the latter among the scenes of their common boyhood, and many a dream did they both dream of how greatness was to be attained, and how fame was to be conquered. In Freeland he found a prudent, as well as a sympathetic adviser, who took every opportunity of curbing his too impetuous enthusiasm, and saving him from immolation on the critical slights and antagonisms which literary precocity and assumption are certain to provoke, unless when under the sanctity of a last illness, or the shelter of a premature grave.
The beginning of 1860 was a feverish and critical period in the life of our young author. His term of service in the Free Normal Seminary had expired. He was idle—that is, he was bringing in no money; and prompted by his parents to find work, and impelled by his own ambition to seek fame, his case dilated, in his own eyes, into one of singular and desperate urgency. But was he really idle for a day—for an hour? I venture to suppose that there were few busier brains and fingers in existence than his. Only twenty-two! and yet with sundry languages mastered, with whole libraries read, and with many a goodly quire of paper covered with matter which men high in the world of letters regarded as at least remarkable for his years! xxiii Knowing that unaided he was powerless for instant action, and that he could not afford to wait for the tardy rewards of modest merit, he seems to have taken to letter-writing on a large and bold scale, assuming the claims of genius for the favours which fortune had denied. He had completed a poem of a thousand lines. Would no one help him to get it published? Writing to Sutherland, he says, “I sent to G. H. Lewes, to Professor Masson, to Professor Aytoun, to Disraeli; but no one will read it. They swear they have no time. For my part, I think the poem will live, and so I care not whether I were drowned tomorrow.” Again he says: “I spoke to you of the refusals which had been unfairly given my poem. Better to have a poem refused than a poem unwritten.” But I have evidence before me that he received considerate and kindly replies to some, at least, of his appeals, no doubt blended with wholesome advice, though, on the whole, most creditable to the courtesy and generosity of men having enormous demands on their time, addressing a youth, an utter stranger to them, who wrote as if fancying he had a mission to electrify the world.
His first influential friend was Mr. Sydney Dobell, whose genius as a poet is not greater than his thorough kindliness as a man. To that gentleman he introduced himself by means of a short note, dated November, 1859. It was addressed to him at Cleeve Tower, Cheltenham, and began as follows:
“First: Cleeve Tower I take to be a pleasant place, clothed with ivy, and shaded by ancestral beeches: at all xxiv events, it is mightily different from my mother’s home. Let that be understood distinctly.
“Second: I am a poet. Let that also be understood distinctly.
“Third: Having at the present time only 8s. a-week, I wish to improve my position, for the sake of gratifying and assisting a mother whom I love beyond the conception of the vulgar.
“These, then, are my premises, and the inference takes the form of this request. Will you—a poet—as far as you can, assist another, a younger poet (of twenty) in a way not to wound his feelings, or hurt his independency of spirit.”
The quaint confidence with which he enclosed his certificates of character, and asked his influence, probably excited, in the mind of Mr. Dobell, a curiosity, if not an interest, regarding the writer. At all events, a correspondence ensued, at times very wild and melodramatic on the one side, and full of stern counsel and substantial kindness on the other. This correspondence, extending, at intervals, over the remainder of poor Gray’s life, I have not before me in any complete form. But from a confusion of documents kindly placed in my hands, a few characteristic passages may in the course of this memoir be culled. Dobell’s first answer to Gray does not appear to have been preserved; but it elicited a poetical response, of which the following is the opening passage:
“O for the vowell’d flow of knightly Spenser,
Whose soul rain’d fragrance, like a golden censer
Chain-swung in Grecian temple, that I might
To your fine soul aread my love aright.
With kind forbearance, birth of native feeling,
A heart of mould celestial revealing—
You bore the vagaries of one, consuming
His inner spirit with divine illuming;
You bore the vagaries of one, who dreams —
What time his spirit, ’mid the streaky gleams
Of autumn sunset wanders, finding there
Heaven’s ante-chamber, vermeil-flush’d, and fair
In feathery purples, fringed with orange-dun—
The porch of bliss, the threshold of the sun.
Oh had I known thee when the Auroral birth
Of poesy o’erwhelmed me, and this earth
Became an angel-finger’d lyre dim-sounding,
To souls like thine in echoes sweet abounding!
Then would thy presence, brother, have fulfill’d
A yearning of my spirit, and instill’d
An inspiration in me, like a star
Luminous, tremulous, and oracular!
But far away, with all my hopes and fears,
I wrung a blessing from the flowing years,
And nursed what my good God had given me,
The birthright of great souls—dear poesy.
Now have I found thee, but, dear heart! the golden
Dream to which my soul is so beholden
Is circumscribed and shorn, because I am
A beggar of thy bounty. Is the balm
Of thy dear converse all in this to end,
And shall the beggar never be the FRIEND?”
We have here, with some imperfections, an audible echo of the earlier style of Keats, as well as a sample of the varied means which Gray employed to wrest from men of distinction, not merely their recognition, but their friendship. Writing in plain prose to Mr. Dobell, I find him thus foolishly vaticinating: “I tell you that, if I live, my name and fame shall be second to few of any age, and to none of my own. I speak thus because I feel xxvi power. Nor is this feeling an artificial disease, as it was in Rousseau, but a feeling which has grown with me since ever I could think.” That this extravagance must have been promptly and sharply rebuked, I learn by a subsequent letter from Gray, dated December, 1859. “You were pretty heavy on me,” he says, “and my egotism, as you called it. If you knew me a little better, and my aims, and how I have struggled to gain the little knowledge I have, you would account me modest. Mark: it is not what I have done, or can now do, but what I feel myself able and born to do, that makes me seem so selfishly stupid. Yon sentence, thrown back to me for re-consideration, would certainly seem strange to anybody but myself; but the thought that I had so written to you only made me the more resolute in my actions, and the wilder in my visions. What if I sent the same sentence back to you again, with the quiet, stern answer that it is my intention to be the ‘first poet of my own age, and second only to a very few of any age.’ Would you think me ‘mad,’ ‘drunk,’ or an ‘idiot’; or my ‘self-confidence’ one of the ‘saddest paroxysms’? When my biography falls to be written, will not this same ‘self-confidence’ be one of the most striking features of my intellectual development? Might not a ‘poet of twenty’ feel great things? In all the stories of mental warfare that I have ever read, that mind which became of celestial clearness and godlike power, did nothing for twenty years but feel. And I am so accustomed to compare my own mental xxvii progress with that of such men as Shakspeare, Goethe, and Wordsworth, (examples of this last proposition) that the dream of my youth will not he fulfilled, if my fame equal not, at least that of the latter of these three.” In another letter, written in another mood, he says, “I am ashamed of what I wrote to you before. I was an actor then, not myself: for, being bare of all recommendations, I lied with my own conscience, deeming that if I called myself a great man you were bound to believe me.” This sudden and unwonted modesty was probably the mere expression of a casual fit of despondency—entirely sincere while it continued, yet not more sincere than the arrogance which it recanted, and which, as the master impulse of his being, was certain to reassert its supremacy. However this might be, Mr. Dobell appears to have become favourably impressed by the fearless candour of the young enthusiast, as I find him writing to Gray, who had been talking of going to Edinburgh, penniless, to try his fortune: “The tone of your last letter is, to me, a better evidence that you are born to do something noble than any number of confident oracles, or any flatulent ‘consciousness of power’ that ever distended the figure of dyspeptic youth: nay, even than any genuine ‘consciousness of power’ that is sufficiently objective and shapely to be seen, known, and named by its owner. I think so highly of that letter as a diagnostic, that if you carry out your intention of going to Edinburgh, it will much gratify me if you will accept one or two xxviii notes of introduction to friends of mine there, whose good opinion, if you win it, may be of use to you. . . . . Let me know how things fare with you, and be sure of the increased interest and good will—which I hope that farther knowledge may ripen into friendship—of yours faithfully, Sydney Dobell.”
When relieved from his duties as a teacher in Glasgow, young Gray—now engaged on a play after the model of Shakspeare, anon upon a descriptive poem after a manner of his own, and filling up every interval of time with a correspondence as voluminous as that conducted by a Minister of State—must have been both an enigma and an annoyance to the humble household at Merkland. A genius in the family, dreaming insane dreams, and earning no bread—a Pegasus spurning his harness, and doing no honest drudgery—is apt, among persons whose choice lies between famine and toil, to inspire other feelings than those of admiration and pride. Accordingly, every day that elapsed increased his feverish anxiety to do something practical—to achieve something great—to unlock, with the golden key of his genius, some honourable door to preferment. At one time he talked of starting a school in conjunction with his friend Sutherland; but the project was fiercely against the grain, and came to nothing. Some of his Glasgow friends recommended him to look out for a situation in connection with the newspaper press, but none offered. Meanwhile, the idea of bursting like a meteor upon London never seems to have left his mind, and was probably xxix stimulated at length into action by the fact that Robert W. Buchanan, a young man whose acquaintance he had made in Glasgow, and who was equally fired with the ambition of literary eminence, entertained a similar project. Gray, however, having probably obtained assistance from some of the friends whom he was continually interesting in his behalf, started on his courageous venture alone. In a brief note to his parents, dated Glasgow, 5th May, 1860, he says, “I start off to-night at 5 o’clock by the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway, right on to London, in good health and spirits.”
Year after year, what a grave to ambition and high hope must the great metropolis prove to many a sanguine youth! How the “burning and shining light” of the provincial town is apt to become lost in the blaze of its accumulated intellect! What innumerable hearts—hearts that may have felt as if throbbing with celestial fire—must be continually breaking unnoticed and unknown in the midst of its incomparable and delusive splendours! Our youthful adventurer, however, was not without sundry advantages. True, his stock-in-trade consisted only of a mass of unpublished and possibly unsaleable verse; but he had nevertheless most of the qualities calculated to ingratiate him with strangers—an excellent education, a clerkly style of caligraphy, a fervid willingness to work at any congenial task, a person eminently prepossessing, and the blended diffidence and courage significant of simple manners and honest aims. To Dobell he wrote, “I am in xxx London, and dare not look into the middle of next week. What brought me here? God knows, for I don’t. Alone in such a place is a horrible thing. I have seen Dr. Mackay, but it’s all up. People don’t seem to understand me. . . . . . . Westminster Abbey! I was there all day yesterday. If I live I shall be buried there—so help me God! A completely defined consciousness of great poetical genius is my only antidote against utter despair and despicable failure.” A youth with such an exaggerated notion of his own powers, and so destitute of all prudent reticence on the subject of his conscious capacity for triumph, would probably have fared roughly in the world had he lived into the thick of its battle. Yet was he ever repenting; for, what seems to be his next letter to Dobell begins, “Let me write to you just now without that melodramatic air and tone which seems to haunt me like an evil spirit. Perhaps if you saw me, you would wonder if the quiet, bashful, boyish-looking fellow before you was the writer of all yon blood-and-thunder.” Who knows but that, had he lived to a riper age, he might have “reformed it altogether,” through the bitterness of that disappointment whose sweet fruit is wisdom, and through the “years that bring the philosophic mind!”
But in the present crisis of his fortunes, Gray needed all his extraordinary gifts of self-sustainment, and there can be no doubt that they served him in good stead. Endowed with a feebler purpose and a fainter hope, how could he have flown at such xxxi high game, engaged so much kindly interest, secured so much instant help? Among those whom he found to befriend him were Mr. Dobell’s cousin, Miss Coates, of Upper Terrace Lodge, Hampstead, and her friend Miss Marian James, to whose elegant pen English literature is indebted for several charming works of fiction. Of the kindness of these ladies he always spoke in terms of grateful appreciation. But by far the most important interview which he contrived to obtain in London was with Mr. R. Monckton Milnes, M.P. Occupying a place among those who add the grace of letters to the dignity of statesmanship, I can readily imagine that gentleman to be a good deal exposed to the importunities of similar aspirants. To this cause at least I am inclined to attribute the fact that Gray had to make his way through sundry discouragements before reaching the true kernel of his liking. He answered his letters coldly and curtly; and even when he had seen the tall and timid youth, and been favourably impressed with the ability which his poetry manifested, he appears to have disguised, to some extent, the interest which he really felt, lest he should stimulate fatally the vanity which he detected and feared. Writing to his parents Gray says: “I think Monckton Milnes will prove my friend. He says that to be a Scotch minister is the very best thing I could do. However, (says he, the last time I saw him,) you can stay a few weeks more in London, and I’ll give you £1. per week till you get a situation; but it would xxxii be better for you to go home.’ He gave me some MS. to copy—in fact, made something for me to do.” On all hands, Gray seems to have been dissuaded from relying on poetry for a subsistence; and the “Luggie” was, I believe, although I find no trace of it in the papers in my hands, rejected in several lofty quarters. But however chagrined by the disparaging remarks of certain critics, he was by no means badly off. Through Dr. Mackay he obtained some work, and he was likewise profitably employed in copying MS. for Lord Elgin’s Japanese secretary, whom, in one of his letters, he calls “the frank, generous Mr. Oliphant.” But the shadow was about to descend. Incidentally I find him writing home, in a letter still dated May, the month of his departure from Glasgow, “By-the-bye, I have had the worst cold ever I had in my life. I cannot get it away properly: but I feel a great deal better to-day.” Writing shortly afterwards he says, “The only thing that bothers me is this cold: it’s so heavy on my chest that I can’t get it up.” From these sentences it is evident that the disease which was ultimately to sap his young life had already begun its ravages. The “beginning of the end” had come.
Gray was at length completely prostrated with illness. In his loneliness, he became, I believe, a fellow-lodger, for a short time, with Buchanan, who had arrived in London about the same time, and who was pushing his way successfully among certain of the metropolitan periodicals. But thanks xxxiii to the kindness of his wealthier friends, there was no fear of destitution to aggravate his physical and mental sufferings. The young poet, suddenly struck down in the enthusiasm of his struggles and the pride of his hopes, was a spectacle eminently calculated to touch the large heart of the biographer of Keats. Mr. Milnes bestowed upon him the delicate attentions and charities of a true gentleman—providing for him the best medical advice together with practical aid of every kind; and, considerate of the home-sickness which usually accompanies ill-health in a strange place, had him carefully sent back to Merkland, which, however humble, was his home, and therefore richer in comfort for him at that moment than any other spot in the world.
Fancy our poetic dreamer once more under his father’s roof, with all his schemes frustrated, and with his mind full of bewildering recollections of the new spheres of life, of which he had caught only a brief, dazzling glimpse! Scarcely a doubt could exist as to the mortal character of his ailment. He was, however, attended by a competent local physician, Dr. Stewart, of Kirkintilloch; and, through varying moods of confirmed invalidism, he wrought hopefully at his poems, and endeavoured to interest all and sundry in their publication. Besides Dr. Stewart, he was at length visited, at the instance of Mr. Dobell, by Dr. Drummond of Glasgow. The latter took a serious, and indeed most emphatic and active view of his case; and adding to his keen professional zeal a friendly personal interest in the xxxiv sufferer, originated a movement to get him conveyed to a southern climate. He himself—young, ambitious, clinging wildly to life—became eager for a sea-voyage, and a residence under warmer skies, as his only hope; and, with this view, kept up a continual and half-frantic correspondence with his various friends. But the idea of a voyage south met, on the whole, with little encouragement. Mr. Milnes wrote: “The remedy derived from climate is of the most uncertain and capricious character, and, in many cases, the absence of affectionate care, and the sense of loneliness which succeeds the yearning for the unknown, so despairing, that I would never take on myself to advise any friend to go away. The treatment, too, of the disease is now made less dependent on warmth of atmosphere than it used to be, and the cases of recovery are much more frequent. I know how easy a thing it is to give counsel, and how poor is consolation; but still I must expect you to be brave and resigned, and to feel that, above being a Poet, is the power of being a Man. There is much in this world far sadder and crueller than the thought of leaving it; and the old Greeks counted every man happy who died young.” In a less decisive, but still similar tone, wrote Mr. Oliphant, with whom he appears to have been desirous of proceeding, in some useful capacity, to Japan. He shewed anxiety to aid him in his views if the doctor considered a long voyage imperative. From the difficulties, however, which he suggested, his tone was undoubtedly dissuasive; xxxv and, taking all things into consideration, he added, “If there is any chance of your health standing the English climate I would recommend your remaining.” Surely we cannot say that sympathy was denied him, after reading the following sentences from Dobell: “I shall say nothing of what I feel (for I am no hand at words in such cases) except that there were some tears on my face after reading your letter. Not for sorrow exactly—sorrow never makes me ‘cry’—but for ‘the pity of it, the pity of it, Iago!’ Well, if matters are as you say—which, however, I will not wholly believe till the good physician whom I have asked to examine your chest reports it hopeless—we must accept them as we best can, you know, and see what is to be done under the inevitable conditions. And before looking in those transmortal directions to which good folks usually seem to think it imperative to turn their dying eyes—forgetting that the long sweet habit of earthly perception is not to be unlearned in a day—let us try what we can do on this side the eternal threshold.” Every one, however, seemed to shrink from the responsibility of setting the young invalid forth upon a long sea-voyage alone. The next alternative, then, suggested and urged by Dr. Drummond, was that he should pass the winter in the south of England. The doctor recommended Brompton Hospital: Mr. Milnes Torquay in Devonshire.
As a specimen of the kind of letters which Gray wrote at this time, I subjoin one to myself, dated November 21, 1860:—
xxxvi “I write you in a certain commotion of mind, and may speak wrongly. But I write to you because I know that it will take much to offend you when no offence is meant: and when the probable offence will proceed from youthful heat and frantic foolishness. It may be impertinent to address you, of whom I know so little, and yet so much; but the severe circumstances seem to justify it.
“The medical verdict pronounced upon me is certain and rapid death if I remain at Merkland, That is awful enough even to a brave man. But there is a chance of escape: as a drowning man grasps at a straw I strive for it. Good, kind, true Dobell writes me this morning the plans for my welfare which he has put in progress, and which most certainly meet my wishes. They are as follows: Go immediately, and as a guest, to the house of Dr. Lane, in the salubrious town of Richmond: thence, when the difficult matter of admission is overcome, to the celebrated Brompton Hospital for chest diseases; and in the spring to Italy. Of course, all this presupposes the conjectural problem that I will slowly recover. ‘Consummation devoutly to be wished!’ Now, you think, or say, what prevents you from taking advantage of all these plans? At once, and without any squeamishness, money for an outfit. I did not like to ask Dobell, nor do I ask you; but hearing a ‘subscription’ had been spoken of, I urge it with all my weak force. I am not in want of an immense sum, but say £12. or £15. This would conduce to my safety as far as human means could do so. If you can aid me in getting this sum, the obligation to a sinking fellow-creature will be as indelible in his heart as the moral law.
“I hope you will not misunderstand me. My barefaced request may be summed thus: If your influence set the affair a-going, quietly and quickly, the thing is done, and I am off. Surely I am worth £15. And for God’s sake overlook the strangeness, and the freedom, and the utter impertinence of this communication. I would be off for Richmond in two days, had I the money: and sitting here thinking of the fearful probabilities makes me half-mad.”
xxxvii Helpless himself, the death-stricken invalid could only thus appeal for help with the strength which is the prerogative of weakness; and he found it in more than one quarter. Mr. Milnes, the kind-hearted ladies at Hampstead, and other English friends, were ready to lend whatever little assistance might be needed; while, among the benevolent persons in Scotland whom Mr. Dobell had moved in his behalf, was the excellent Mrs. Nichol, widow of the late Dr. Nichol, Professor of Astronomy in the University of Glasgow. The latter resided in Edinburgh; but through Mr. William Logan of Glasgow, she communicated to poor Gray all kinds of sympathy and aid. Mr. Logan, formerly, and for many years, connected with the City Mission, is by nature a philanthropist. He became a frequent visitor at Merkland, and the chief medium of communication with most of the dying poet’s influential friends. A little money which had been offered through him with a view to gratify his ardent wish of seeing his poems in print, was now made available for the more urgent purpose of conveying him south; and Mr. Logan, having aided his parents in the necessary preparations, and provided for his kindly reception immediately on the arrival of the train in London, saw him, towards the end of the year, tenderly and safely away—a fragile fugitive from the rigours of the northern winter, with a good deal of hope in his heart, and a moderate sum of money in his pocket.
Alas! the forlorn traveller carried with him one xxxviii fatal, one inevitable, one desperately-clinging and remorseless companion, in the shape of that disease which is evermore paling the cheek of beauty and blighting the aspirations of youth. Dr. Lane, at his celebrated hydropathic establishment, Sudbrook Park, Richmond, treated him with conspicuous kindness; but his health did not improve. His cough “was no better,” and he feared that the sudden removal of the cod-liver oil “was beginning to tell on his appearance.” Writing to his parents, he says: “I believe, after all, that there’s no place like home; but however sweet and pleasant and refreshing the idea of it is now, and will be ever, I will not come north, as long as I am able to remain south. Kindness, and comfort, and change of air, and so forth, are all very well. Yet is something awanting: that inexpressible tenderness in trifles which enriches existence and makes it bearable. Life is thrust upon us: men wish it not. This wide universe is an enigma and a mystery. Death alone can unriddle it. Let it come. You see I am a little home-sick, like the boy when he goes to school. I would not have been home-sick had I remained well; but whenever I get sick, and weary, and weak, as I am now, I can’t help displaying a little of the woman.” In the same letter he says: “There is no notice yet of a removal hence. I am dreadfully afraid of Brompton: living among sallow, dolorous, dying consumptives, is enough to kill me. If I am put into a room with four coughing, weak, nerveless patients, how do you think I’m to bear it? Here xxxix I’m as comfortable as can be: a fire in my room all day, plenty of meat, and good society—nobody so ill as myself: but there, perhaps hundreds far worse (the hospital holds 218 in all stages of the disease—90 of them died last report), dying beside me perhaps—it frightens me.” Miss Coates had subscribed to Brompton Hospital for the express purpose of procuring his admission. But either no vacancy occurred, or he shrunk from it. Mr. Milnes thereupon sent him to Devonshire, under arrangements calculated to ensure for him as large a measure as possible of affectionate attention and care. The sight of the Sanatarium at Torquay, however, appears to have had an extraordinary effect upon his nervous system. His cry became “home, home!” and to the amazement of his northern friends, he presented himself abruptly at Merkland.
It was now the middle of January, 1861, the opening of the year of which he was never to see the end. To Freeland he wrote: “Of course you know that I am home—having wildly (and perhaps unwisely) broken through all the plans and good intentions of my friends. But the sight of the Consumptive Hospital, and the folk in it, put me into a severe nevous fever, and nothing would satisfy me but home. When you come out (and come soon), I will recount to you my miseries and misfortunes. If I don’t either get better or worse quickly, my mind will become diseased.” Sending one of his pieces, written “In the Shadows,” he says: “I wrote the enclosed since I came back, the first verses xl I have written for eight months. Not one line pleases me: when I read Thomson I despair. . . . . . When you come, bring books—of any kind, if I have not read them. Books, books, books—I have none.” Indeed, as he did not seem to suffer from his journey, but, on the contrary, gave evidence of revived literary energy, his friends were hopeful of an increase of physical strength which the opening up of a milder season would confirm. Mr. Milnes wrote to him on January 19: “Of course I am sorry at the failure of the Torquay venture, but you have shewn so much vivacity in getting free from it, that I trust you have more life in you than was supposed, and that I may yet receive many letters from you. I knew the conditions of hospital life would he painful and embarrassing to you; but I hoped that the medical advice, the climate, and the scenery would have proved compensations. Had my friends arrived at Torquay in time to look after you, they might have devised some other plan, but it is not for one in health and comfort to analyse the feelings of one in your position.” Something, however, had been attempted—perhaps the best had been done—and, at all events, the suffering youth had received a lesson in contentment. Nor had that lesson, as far as could he judged, been ineffectual, for he appeared to recognise in the toil-supported abode at Merkland, a comfort sweeter and dearer than the luxury of gilded saloons.
Day after day—week after week—month after month—life was now ebbing—ebbing away from xli him for ever. One day—I have no clue to the date beyond the word “Monday”—a memory must have recurred to him of a boyish companionship, a memory of one to whom, in gladder days, he had talked of being “ready for adventures,” and addressing his “dear, dear, true Sutherland,” he wrote:—
“As my time narrows to a completion, you grow dearer. I think of you daily with quiet tears. I think of the happy, happy days we might have spent together at Maryburgh; but the vision darkens. My crown is laid in the dust for ever. Nameless too! God, how that troubles me! Had I but written one immortal poem, what a glorious consolation! But this shall be my epitaph if I have a gravestone at all,—
“’Twas not a life,
’Twas but a piece of childhood thrown away.”
O dear, dear Sutherland! I wish I could spend two healthy months with you: we would make an effort, and do something great. But slowly, insidiously, and I fear fatally, consumption is doing its work, until I shall be only a fair odorous memory (for I have great faith in your affection for me) to you—a sad tale for your old age.
“Whom the gods love, die young.”
Bless the ancient Greeks for that comfort. If I was not ripe, do you think I would be gathered? “Work for fame for my sake, dear Sutherland. Who knows but in spiritual being I may send sweet dreams to you—to advise, comfort, and command! who knows? At all events, when I am mooly, may you be fresh as the dawn.
“Yours till death, and I trust hereafter too,
“DAVID GRAY.”
Even under this strong and touching consciousness of an early doom—with the dart of death, like the sword of Damocles, continually suspended over xlii him and visible—Gray continued to weave, in glory if not in joy, his poetic fancies. Down, indeed, to the very edge of the grave, he contrived to plant those flowers of poesy which he trusted would bloom over him when he was dead. His beautiful dying sonnets were all written when his shattered frame only showed more clearly the burning of the internal fire. In the month of May he wrote to Freeland: “I feel more acutely the approach of that mystic dissolution of existence. The body is unable to perform its functions, and like rusty machinery creaks painfully to the final crash. . . . . . I cannot write; my head aches, and my hand trembles; yet I must make an effort. About my poem—it troubles me like an infernal ever-present demon. Some day I’ll burn all I have ever written—yet no! They are all that remain of me as a living soul. Milnes offers £5 towards its publication. I shall have it ready for you by Saturday first. You must ask Hedderwick if he will read it; and perhaps Sheriff Bell and other Glasgow critics would look at it. Do I dream?” To Freeland likewise, who was one of his most regular and welcome visitors, he had scrawled out a high-flown dedication ending with these words: “Before I enter that nebulous uncertain land of shadowy notions and tremulous wonderings—standing on the threshold of the sun and looking back—“I cry thee, O Beloved! a last farewell, lingeringly, passionately, without tears.”
Although seeing much to admire in the poem of “The Luggie,” I hesitated to guarantee it such xliii a reception as would render its publication profitable. Some other opinions which were obtained in Glasgow were more adverse. Moreover, circumstances prevented me, at the time, from taking any active initiative. Delay after delay occurred; but there was no delay on the part of the insidious foe with which the young poet contended. September came, and he wrote despairingly to Logan: “If my book be not immediately gone on with, I fear I may never see it. Disease presses closely on me. Reasons innumerable I could urge for the lawful sweetness of my desire, but your goodness will suggest them . . . . The merit of my MSS. is very little—mere hints of better things—crude notions harshly languaged: but that must be overlooked. They are left not to the world (wild thought!) but as the simple possible sad only legacy I can leave to those who have loved and love me.”
It was a hard task to resist such appeals. Nor were they wholly resisted. There was much discussion, and even some movement, but the matter hung fire. Glasgow was a bad field for the publication of poetry. The result to the emaciated and feeble author might be failure and disappointment, hastening the inexorable change. November with its gloom arrived, and Gray, obviously feeling his end very near, made a final appeal to Mr. Dobell—the staunch friend whom he had never seen, and was destined never to see. “Surely,” he wrote, “he to whom the poem—the old, incomplete, despised, beloved poem—is dedicated, shall read it. Dear Mr. xliv Dobell, will you read ‘The Luggie,’ and see whether or not it is worthy of your favour or acceptance? I have inscribed it to you, after the ancient manner of Thomson. God knows it is not much; but, as I said to you a year ago, it is all I have.” The tender bribe of the dedication was modestly declined for reasons deemed satisfactory, but with the aid of his lady friends at Hampstead, and the ready co-operation of Mr. Macmillan, publisher, Cambridge, the poem was, without loss of time, put into the hands of the printer. By a fortunate accident, a specimen page beginning, “How beautiful!” reached Merkland on the very day preceding his death. It was accompanied by the following note from the accomplished hand of the authoress of “Ethel:”—
“Upper-terrace Lodge, Nov. 29.
“My dear Mr. Gray,—I have heard from Mr. Macmillan this morning. He says the MS. will form a volume like ‘Edwin of Deira;’ and the enclosed is a specimen page sent, with the printer’s estimate. I cannot resist the impulse to send it on to you, because I think it will give you so much pleasure to see even this small portion of your work already in the form in which I hope before long we may see it published. After Mr. Dobell’s praise of your poetry, you will hardly care for mine; yet I will say briefly that those sonnets which I found time to read before sending off the MS. to Cambridge, impressed me deeply with their truth, and beauty, and rare excellence and simplicity of pathos. It seems to me, too, that in your poetry, even the most mournful, there is a shining forth of that hopeful, loving faith in God’s love, which it is indeed a good thing for poets to teach, and which I earnestly trust is the abiding solace and rest of your own xlv spirit. I can only write these few lines now; but believe that I am always, with much sympathy, sincerely your friend,
“MARIAN JAMES.”
As he gazed upon the neatly-printed page, he seemed to feel that the dream of his life was about to be fulfilled. He read its clear type as if by the reflection of a light caught from the spiritual world. That it was “good news,” he said; that he might now subside tranquilly—“without tears”—into his eternal rest, he probably felt. Next day, the 3rd of
December, 1861, the shadow of utter blackness came down upon the humble household at Merkland, blinding all eyes. David Gray was no more. His spirit had been borne gently away on the wings of the strong and beautiful promises breathed from the Book of Life—almost his last words being, “God has love, and I have faith.” He was in his twenty-fourth year. Among his papers the following memorial was found, written in his own clear hand:—
MY EPITAPH.
Below lies one whose name was traced in sand—
He died not knowing what it was to live:
Died while the first sweet consciousness of manhood
And maiden thought electrified his soul:
Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose.
Bewildered reader, pass without a sigh
In a proud sorrow! There is life with God,
In other kingdom of a sweeter air:
In Eden every flower is blown: Amen.
DAVID GRAY.
Sept. 27, 1861.
xlvi Whether these lines will yet be inscribed on any stone, I know not. At all events, it will not be among the congregated tombs of the great ones of all time. Westminster Abbey was not for him. If, in any possible future, there arose before him a vision of its solemn arches, its silent yet eloquent sculptures, and its groups of pilgrim worshippers, it was only at the end of a term of years which he was fated never to reach. But not the less peacefully will his spirit rest in the near neighbourhood of that home from which his affections were never weaned, and of that stream whose low murmur he laboured, through years of passionate yearning, to exalt into an eternal melody. Not far from Merkland, on an elevation a short distance from the highway, there is situated a lonely place of sepulture, surrounded by a low rude wall of stone, with a little watch-tower over the entrance-gate, useful for shelter and observation during nights, long since bygone, when graveyards were broken into and plundered, but now occupied with the few implements necessary for the performance of the last mortal rites. It has neither church nor house attached, and is known as the “Auld Aisle Burying-ground.” With the poet it had been a favourite place of resort and meditation. He could see from it the Luggie, the Bothlin burn, the Woodilee farm, all the localities which he most loved. There, as appeared from the dates on the grave-stones, had the bones of his ancestors reposed for above two hundred years; and thither, on the Saturday after xlvii his death, were his own remains carried—on handspokes, after the old Scotch fashion—followed by about thirty mourners. The wintry day had been lowering, but the hour of the funeral was brightened with gleams of clear sunshine, and in the midst of many regrets, yet of some soothings, all that was mortal of David Gray was laid deep in the mould, near a solitary ash-tree—the only tree in the place—now bare and disconsolate, but erelong to break into foliage, and be an aviary for the songs of summer.
In person, the deceased poet was tall, with a slight stoop. His head was not large, but his temperament was of the keenest and brightest edge. With black curling hair, eyes dark, large, and lustrous, and a complexion of almost feminine delicacy, his appearance never failed to make a favourable impression on strangers. Yet with some of his fastest friends—such as Dobell and Mrs. Nichol—he never became personally acquainted. That he was gifted with poetic genius there is enough, I think, in his brief life-story, apart altogether from his lyrical achievements, to prove. No mere flash of vanity could so have shaped itself into the nimbus of a genuine inspiration. What further evidence of supreme endowment he might have furnished to the world had he lived, we can only of course guess. Morally, he was, as far as I can discover, singularly pure, and worthy of the kindly interest which he awakened in so many quarters. One overmastering passion—an ever-burning desire for fame—had xlviii apparently swallowed up every other in his bosom. The simple love of poetry he may have been too apt to interpret as the essential and celestial gift. He may have been too apt to mistake the whisperings of ambition and conceit for the authentic oracles of prophecy. But, on the other hand, is not a strong, irrepressible, deeply-inherent impulse but the quickening, in many cases, of veritable power? At all events, looking at the superlative struggle of this son of a Scotch handloom weaver, and at its sad, unsatisfied end, generous readers—and readers who are not generous can never be wholly just—will recognise in him a spirit freeing itself, at the very outset of life, from all grovelling contagion, shaping forth its own magnificent destiny, and pursuing its divine ideal with the stedfastness of an angelic will. How far his posthumous writings may win for him the laurels for which, through every accident of fortune, he incessantly sighed and toiled, I hesitate to predict. Inasmuch, however, as there are many who knew and loved him, and will dwell often and fondly on his pages—the unfinished columns of a temple suddenly arrested in the building—the words of the mighty master may be fairly, not foolishly or falsely applied:
“Death makes no conquest of this conqueror;
For now he lives in Fame, though not in life.”
J. H.
GLASGOW, 10th March, 1862.
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‘David Gray’ by Robert Buchanan
from The Cornhill Magazine Vol. IX. January to June, 1864 (pp. 164-177).
David Gray.
SITUATED in a by-road, about a mile from the small town of Kirkintilloch, and eight miles from the city of Glasgow, stands a cottage one story high, roofed with slate, and surrounded by a little kitchen-garden. A whitewashed lobby, leading from the front to the back-door, divides this cottage into two sections: to the right is a room fitted up as a handloom-weaver’s workshop; to the left is a kitchen paved with stone, and opening into a tiny carpeted bed-room.
In the workshop, a father, daughter, and sons work all day long at the loom. In the kitchen, a handsome, cheery, Scottish matron busies herself like a thrifty housewife, and brings the rest of the family about her at meals. All day long the soft hum of the loom is heard in the workshop; but when night comes, mysterious doors are thrown open, and the family retires to sleep in extraordinary mural recesses.
In this humble home, David Gray, the handloom-weaver, has resided for upwards of twenty years, and managed to rear a family of eight children—five boys and three girls. His eldest son, David, author of The Luggie and other Poems, is the hero of the present true history.
David was born on the 29th of January, 1838. He alone, of all the little household, was destined to receive a decent education. From early childhood, the dark-eyed little fellow was noted for his wit and cleverness; and it became the dream of his father’s life that he should become a scholar. At the parish-school of Kirkintilloch, he learned to read, write, and cast up accounts, and was, moreover, instructed in the Latin rudiments. Partly through the hard struggles of his parents, and partly through his own severe labours as a pupil-teacher and private tutor, he was afterwards enabled to attend the classes at the Glasgow University. In common with other rough country lads, who live up dark alleys, subsist chiefly on oatmeal and butter forwarded from home, and eventually distinguish themselves in the class-room, he had to fight his way onward amid poverty and privation; but in his brave pursuit of knowledge, nothing daunted him. It had been settled at home that he should become a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. Unfortunately, however, he had no love for the pulpit. Early in life he had begun to hanker after the delights of poetical composition. He had devoured the poets from Chaucer to Tennyson. The yearnings thus awakened in him had begun to express themselves in many wild fragments—contributions, for the most part, to the poet’s-corner of a local newspaper —The Glasgow Citizen.
Up to this point, there was nothing extraordinary in the career or 165 character of David Gray. Taken at his best, he was an average specimen of the persevering young Scottish student. But his soul contained wells of emotion which had not yet been stirred to their depths. When at fourteen years of age, he began to study in Glasgow, it was his custom to go home every Saturday night, in order to pass the Sunday with his parents. These Sundays at home were chiefly occupied with rambles in the neighbourhood of Kirkintilloch; wanderings on the sylvan banks of the Luggie, the beloved little river which flowed close to his father’s door. In Luggieside, awakened one day the dream which developed all the hidden beauty of his character, and eventually kindled all the faculties of his intellect. Had he been asked to explain the nature of this dream, David would have answered vaguely enough, but he would have said something to the following effect:—“I’m thinking none of us are quite contented; there’s a climbing impulse to heaven in us all that won’t let us rest for a moment. Just now I’d be happy if I knew a little more. I’d give ten years of life to see Rome, and Florence, and Venice, and the grand places of old; and to feel that I wasn’t a burden on the old folks. I’ll be a great man yet! and the old home—the Luggie and Lartshore Wood—shall be famous for my sake.” He could only have measured his ambition by the love he bore his home. “I was born, bred, and cared for here, and my folk are buried here. I know every nook and dell for miles around, and they’re all dear to me. My own mother and father dwell here, and in my own wee room” (the tiny carpeted bedroom above alluded to) “I first learned to read poetry. I love my home; and it’s for my home’s sake that I love fame.”
At twenty-one years of age, when this dream was strongest in him, David was a tall young man, slightly but firmly built, and with a stoop at the shoulders. His head was small, fringed with black curly hair. Want of candour was not his fault, though he seldom looked one in the face; his eyes, however, were large and dark, full of intelligence and humour, harmonizing well with the long thin nose and nervous lips.* The great black eyes and woman’s mouth betrayed the creature of impulse; one whose reasoning faculties were small, but whose temperament was like red-hot coal. He sympathized with much that was lofty, noble, and true in poetry, and with much that was absurd and suicidal in the poet. He carried sympathy to the highest pitch of enthusiasm; he shed tears over the memories of Keats and Burns, and he was corybantic in his execution of a Scotch “reel.” A fine phrase filled him with the rapture of a lover. He admired extremes from Rabelais to Tom Sayers. Thirsting for human sympathy, which lured him in the semblance of notoriety, he perpetrated all sorts of extravagancies, innocent enough in themselves, but calculated to blind him to the very first principles of art. Yet this enthusiasm, as we have suggested, was his
— * “His countenance,” says Lord Houghton, “brought strongly to my recollection a cast of the face of Shelley in his youth, which I had seen at Mr. Leigh Hunt’s.” —
166 safeguard in at least one respect. Though he believed himself to be a genius, he loved the parental roof of the hand-loom weaver.
And what thought the weaver and his wife of this wonderful son of theirs? They were proud of him—proud in a silent, undemonstrative fashion; for among the Scottish poor concealment of the emotions is held a virtue. During his weekly visits home, David was not overwhelmed with caresses; but he was the subject of conversation night after night, when the old couple talked in bed. Between him and his father there had arisen a strange barrier of reserve. They seldom exchanged with each other more than a passing word; but to one friend’s bosom David would often confide the love and tenderness he bore for his overworked, upright parent. When the boy first began to write verses, the old man affected perfect contempt and indifference, but his eyes gloated in secret over the poet’s-corners of the Glasgow newspapers. The poor weaver, though an uneducated man, had a profound respect for education and cultivation in others. He felt his heart bound with hope and joy when strangers praised the boy, but he hid the tenderness of his pride under a cold indifference. He was proud of David’s talent for writing verses, but he was afraid to encourage a pursuit which practical common sense assured him was mere trifling. At a later date he might have spoken out, had not his tongue been frozen by the belief that advice from him would be held in no esteem by his better educated and more gifted son. Thus, the more David’s indications of cleverness and scholarship increased, the more afraid was the old man to express his gratification and give his advice. Equally touching was the point of view taken by David’s mother, whose cry was: “The kirk, the free kirk, and nothing but the kirk!” She neither appreciated nor underrated the abilities of her boy, but her proudest wish was that he should become a real live minister, with home and “haudin’” of his own. To see David —“our David”—in a pulpit, preaching the Gospel out of a big book, and dwelling in a good house to the end of his days!
Meantime, David was plotting and planning. Dissatisfied with his earlier efforts—which had consisted chiefly of crude imitations of Wordsworth and Keats—he began a play on the Shakspearian model. This ambitious effort, however, was soon relinquished for a dearer, sweeter task—the composition of a pastoral poem descriptive of the scenery surrounding his home, and to be entitled The Luggie.
David naturally belonged to that third class of poets, the members of which are so intensely subjective, that they can never attain the very highest intellectual rank, and whose work can never be criticized apart from themselves. It was lucky, therefore, that the morbid self-assertion of the school to which he belonged was counteracted, in his case, by a noble, an unselfish feeling. Had David lived to mature himself, the devotional fondness for his home would have been sobered down a little; but it would always have served to distinguish him from the egotistic Phaëthons, who essay wild flights to the sun, and those intellectual 167 Tantaluses, who are perpetually marring success by the morbid contemplation of their own misfortunes. In point of fact, David was too sensitive ever to be happy.
Early in his teens, David had made the acquaintance of a young man of Glasgow, with whom his fortunes were destined to be intimately woven, and whom we shall call Robert Blank. The two friends spent year after year in intimate communion, varying the monotony of their existence by reading books together, plotting great works, and writing extravagant letters to men of eminence. Whole nights and days were passed in seclusion in reading the great thinkers, and pondering on their lives. Full of thoughts too deep for utterance, dreaming, David would walk at a swift pace through the crowded streets, with face bent down, and eyes fixed on the ground, taking no heed of the human beings passing to and fro. Then he would go to Blank, crying, “I have had a dream,” and would forthwith tell of visionary pictures which had haunted him in his solitary walk. This “dreaming,” as he called it, consumed the greater portion of his hours of leisure.
Towards the end of the year 1859, David became convinced that he could no longer idle away the hours of his youth. His work as student and as pupil-teacher was ended, and he must seek some means of subsistence. He imagined, too, that his poor parents threw dull looks on the beggar of their bounty. Having abandoned all thoughts of entering into the Church, for which neither his taste nor his opinions fitted him, what should he do in order to earn his daily bread? His first thought was to turn schoolmaster; but no! the notion was an odious one. He next endeavoured, without success, to procure himself a situation on one of the Glasgow newspapers. Meantime, while drifting from project to project, he maintained a voluminous correspondence, in the hope of persuading some eminent man to read his poem of The Luggie. Unfortunately, the persons to whom he wrote were too busy to pay much attention to the solicitations of an entire stranger. Repeated disappointments only increased his self-assertion; the less chance there seemed of an improvement in his position, and the less strangers seemed to recognize his genius, the more dogged was his conviction that he was destined to be a great poet. His letters were full of this conviction. To one entire stranger he wrote: “I am a poet, let that be understood distinctly.” Again, “I tell you that, if I live, my name and fame shall be second to few of any age, and to none of my own. I speak thus because I feel power.” Again: “I am so accustomed to compare my own mental progress with that of such men as Shakspeare, Goethe, and Wordsworth, that the dream of my life will not be fulfilled, if my fame equal not, at least, that of the latter of these three!” This was extraordinary language, and we are not surprised that little heed was paid to it. Let some explanation be given here. No man could be more humble, reverent-minded, self-doubting, than David was in reality. Indeed, he was constitutionally timid of his own abilities, and he was personally diffident. In his letters only, he absolutely endeavoured to 168 wrest from his correspondents some recognition of his claim to help and sympathy. The moment sympathy came, no matter how coldly it might be expressed, he was all humility and gratitude. In this spirit, after one of his wildest flights of self-assertion, he wrote: “When I read Thomson, I despair.” Again: “Being bare of all recommendations, I lied with my own conscience, deeming that if I called myself a great man you were bound to believe me.” Again: “If you saw me, you would wonder if the quiet, bashful, boyish-looking fellow before you was the author of all yon blood and thunder.”
All at once there flashed upon David and Blank the notion of going to London, and taking the literary fortress by storm. Again and again they talked the project over, and again and again they hesitated. In the spring of 1860, both found themselves without an anchorage; each found it necessary to do something for daily bread. For some little time the London scheme had been in abeyance; but, on the 3rd May, 1860, David came to Blank, his lips firmly compressed, his eyes full of fire, saying, “Bob, I’m off to London.” “Have you funds?” asked Blank. “Enough for one, not enough for two,” was the reply. “If you can get the money anyhow, we’ll go together.” When the friends parted, they arranged to meet on the evening of the 5th May, in time to catch the five o’clock train. Unfortunately, however, they neglected to specify which of the two Glasgow stations was intended. At the hour appointed, David left Glasgow by one line of railway, in the belief that Blank had been unable to join him, but determined to try the venture alone. With the same belief and determination, Blank left at the same hour by the other line of railway. The friends arrived in different parts of London at about the same time. Had they left Glasgow in company, or had they met immediately after their arrival in London, the story of David’s life might not have been so brief and sorrowful.
Though the month was May, the weather was dark, damp, cloudy. On arriving in the metropolis, David wandered about for hours, carpet-bag in hand. The magnitude of the place overwhelmed him; he was lost in that great ocean of life. He thought about Johnson and Savage, and how they wandered through London with pockets more empty than his own; but already he longed to be back in the little carpeted bedroom in the weaver’s cottage. How lonely it seemed! Among all that mist of human faces there was not one to smile in welcome; and how was he to make his trembling voice heard above the roar and tumult of those streets? The very policemen seemed to look suspiciously at the stranger. To his sensitively Scottish ear the language spoken seemed quite strange and foreign; it had a painful, homeless sound about it that sank nervously on the heart-strings. As he wandered about the streets he glanced into coffee-shop after coffee-shop, seeing “beds” ticketed in each fly-blown window. His pocket contained a sovereign and a few shillings, but he would need every penny. Would not a bed be useless extravagance? he asked himself. Certainly. Where, then, should he pass 169 the night? In Hyde Park! He had heard so much about this part of London that the name was quite familiar to him. Yes, he would pass the night in the Park. Such a proceeding would save money, and be exceedingly romantic; it would be just the right sort of beginning for a poet’s struggle in London! So he strolled into the great park, and wandered about its purlieus till morning. In remarking upon this foolish conduct, one must reflect that David was strong, heartsome, full of healthy youth. It was a frequent boast of his that he scarcely ever had a day’s illness. Whether or not his fatal complaint was caught during this his first night in London, is uncertain, but some few days afterwards David wrote thus to his father:—“By-the-by, I have had the worst cold I ever had in my life. I cannot get it away properly, but I feel a great deal better to-day.” Alas, violent cold had settled down upon his lungs, and insidious death was already slowly approaching him. So little conscious was he of his danger, however, that we find him writing to a friend: “What brought me here? God knows, for I don’t. Alone in such a place is a horrible thing. . . . People don’t seem to understand me. . . . Westminster Abbey; I was there all day yesterday. If I live I shall be buried there—so help me God! A completely defined consciousness of great poetical genius is my only antidote against utter despair and despicable failure.”
What were David’s qualifications for a struggle in which, year after year, hundreds miserably perish? Considerable knowledge of Greek, Latin, and French, great miscellaneous reading, a clerkly handwriting, and a bold purpose; these were slender qualifications, but, while health lasted, there was hope.
David and Blank did not meet until upwards of a week after their arrival in London, but each had soon been apprised of the other’s presence in the city. Finally, they came together. David’s first impulse was to describe his lodgings, situated in a by-street in the Borough. “A cold, cheerless bedroom, Bob; nothing but a blanket to cover me. For God’s sake, get me out of it!” The friends were walking side by side in the neighbourhood of the New Cut, looking about them with curious, puzzled eyes, and now and then drawing each other’s attention to sundry objects of interest. “Have you been well?” inquired Blank. “First-rate,” answered David, looking as merry as possible. Nor did he show any indications whatever of illness. He seemed hopeful, energetic, full of health and spirits; his sole desire was to change his lodging. It was not without qualms that he surveyed the dingy, smoky neighbourhood where Blank resided. The sun was shedding dismal crimson light on the chimney-pots, and the twilight was slowly thickening. The two climbed up three nights of stairs to Blank’s bedroom. Dingy as it was, this apartment seemed, in David’s eyes, quite a palatial sanctum; and it was arranged that the friends should take up their residence together. As speedily as possible, Blank procured David’s little stock of luggage; then, settled face to face as in old times, both made very merry.
170 Blank’s first idea, on questioning David about his prospects, was that his friend had had the best of luck. You see, the picture drawn on either side was a golden one; but the brightness soon melted away. It turned out that David, on arriving in London, had sought out certain gentlemen whom he had formerly favoured with his correspondence—among others, Mr. Richard Monckton Milnes, now Lord Houghton. Though not a little astonished at the appearance of the boy-poet, Mr. Milnes had received him kindly, assisted him to the best of his power, and made some work for him in the shape of manuscript-copying. The same gentleman had also used his influence with literary people to very little purpose, however. The real truth turned out to be that David was disappointed and low-spirited. “It’s weary work, Bob; they don’t understand me; I wish I was back in Glasgow.” It was now that David told his friend all about that first day and night in London, and how he had already begun a poem about “Hyde Park,” how Mr. Milnes had been good to him, had said that he was “a poet,” but had insisted on his going back to Scotland, and becoming a minister. David did not at all like the notion of returning home. He thought he had every chance of making his way in London. About this time he was bitterly disappointed by the rejection of “The Luggie” by Mr. Thackeray, to whom Mr. Milnes had sent it, with a recommendation that it should be inserted in the Cornhill Magazine. The poem, however, for half-a-dozen reasons, was utterly unsuited to the pages of a popular periodical.
Mr. Milnes was the first to perceive that the young adventurer was seriously ill. After a hurried call on his patron one day in May, David rejoined Blank in the near neighbourhood. “Milnes says I’m to go home and keep warm, and he’ll send his own doctor to me.” This was done. The doctor came, examined David’s chest, said very little, and went away, leaving strict orders that the invalid should keep within doors, and take great care of himself. Neither David nor Blank liked the expression of the doctor’s face at all.
It soon became evident that David’s illness was of a most serious character. Pulmonary disease had set in; medicine, blistering, all the remedies employed in the early stages of his complaint, seemed of little avail. Just then, David read the Life of John Keats, a book which impressed him with a nervous fear of impending dissolution. He began to be filled with conceits droller than any he had imagined in health. “If I were to meet Keats in heaven,” he said one day, “I wonder if I should know his face from his pictures?” Most frequently his talk was of labour uncompleted, hope deferred; and he began to pant for free country air. “If I die,” he said, on a certain occasion, “I shall have one consolation—Milnes will write an introduction to the poems.” At another time, with tears in his eyes, he repeated Burns’ epitaph. Now and then, too, he had his fits of frolic and humour, and would laugh and joke over his unfortunate position. It cannot be said that Mr. Milnes and his friends were at all lukewarm about the case of their young friend; on the 171 contrary, they gave him every practical assistance. Mr. Milnes himself, full of the most delicate sympathy, trudged to and fro between his own house and the invalid’s lodging; his pockets laden with jelly and beef-tea, and his tongue tipped with kindly comfort. Had circumstances permitted, he would have taken the invalid into his own house. Unfortunately, however, David was compelled to remain, in company with Blank, in a chamber which seemed to have been constructed peculiarly for the purpose of making the occupants as uncomfortable as possible. There were draughts everywhere: through the chinks of the door, through the windows, down the chimney, and up through the flooring. When the wind blew, the whole tenement seemed on the point of crumbling to atoms; when the rain fell, the walls exuded moisture; when the sun shone, the sunshine only served to increase the characteristic dinginess of the furniture. Occasional visitors, however, could not be fully aware of these inconveniences. It was in the night-time, and in bad weather, that they were chiefly felt; and it required a few days’ experience to test the superlative discomfort of what David (in a letter written afterwards,) styled “the dear old ghastly bankrupt garret.” His stay in these quarters was destined to be brief. Gradually, the invalid grew homesick. Nothing would content him but a speedy return to Scotland. He was carefully sent off by train, and arrived safely in his little cottage home far north.
Great, meanwhile, had been the commotion in the handloom weaver’s cottage, after the receipt of this bulletin: “I start off to-night at five o’clock by the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, right on to London, in good health and spirits.” A great cry arose in the household. He was fairly “daft;” he was throwing away all his chances in the world; the verse- writing had turned his head. Father and mother mourned together. The former, though incompetent to judge literary merit of any kind, perceived that David was hot-headed, only half-educated, and was going to a place where thousands of people were starving daily. But the suspense was not to last long. The darling son, the secret hope and pride, came back to the old people sick to death. All rebuke died away before the pale sad face and the feeble tottering body; and David was welcomed to the cottage hearth with silent prayers. They set him in the old place beside the fire, and hushed the house. The mother went about her work with a heavy heart; the father, when the day’s toil was over, sat down before the kitchen fire, smoking his pipe, speaking very little, and looking sternly at the castles that crumbled away in the blazing coal.
It was now placed beyond a doubt that the disease was one of mortal danger; yet David, surrounded again by his old lares, busied himself with many bright and delusive dreams of ultimate recovery. Pictures of a pleasant dreamy convalescence in a foreign clime floated before him morn and night, and the fairest and dearest of the dreams was Italy. Previous to his departure for London, he had concocted a wild scheme for visiting Florence, and throwing himself on the poetical sympathy of 172 Robert Browning. He had even thought of enlisting in the English Garibaldian Corps, and by that means gaining his cherished wish. “How about Italy?” he wrote to Blank, after returning home. “Do you still entertain its delusive motions? Pour out your soul before me—I am as a child.” All at once a new dream burst upon him. A local doctor insisted that the invalid should be removed to a milder climate, and recommended Natal. In a letter full of coaxing tenderness, David besought Blank, for the sake of old days, to accompany him thither. Blank answered indecisively, but immediately made all endeavours to grant his friend’s wish. Meantime, he received the following, which we give as a fair specimen of David’s epistolary style:—
Merkland, Kirkintilloch, 10th November, 1860.
EVER DEAR BOB,—Your letter causes me some uneasiness; not but that your numerous objections are numerous and vital enough, but they convey the sad and firm intelligence that you cannot come with me. I.—It is absolutely impossible for you to raise a sum sufficient! Now you know it is not necessary that I should go to Natal; nay, I have, in very fear, given up the thought of it; but we—or I—could go to Italy or Jamaica—this latter, as I learn, being the more preferable. Nor has there been any “crisis” come, as you say. I wouldn’t cause you much trouble (forgive me for hinting this), but I believe we could be happy as in the dear old times. Dr. —— (whose address I don’t know), supposes that I shall be able to work (?) when I reach a more genial climate; and if that should prove the result, why, it is a consummation devoutly to be wished. But the matter of money bothers me. What I wrote to you was all hypothetical—i. e., things have been carried so far, but I have not heard whether or not the subscription had been gone on with. And, supposing for one instant the utterly preposterous supposition that I had money to carry us both, then comes the II. objection—your dear mother! I am not so far gone, though I fear far enough, to ignore that blessed feeling. But if it were for your good? Before God, if I thought it would in any way harm your health (that cannot be) or your hopes, I would never have mooted the proposal. On the contrary, I feel from my heart that it would benefit you; and how much would it not benefit me. But I am baking without flour. The cash is not in my hand, and I fear never will be; the amount I would require is not so easily gathered.
Dobell* is again laid up. He is at the Isle of Wight, at some establishment called the Victoria Baths. I am told that his friends deem his life in constant danger. He asks for your address. I shall send it only to-day; wait until you hear what he has got to say. He would prefer me to go to Brompton Hospital. I would go anywhere for a change. If I don’t get money somehow or somewhere, I shall die of ennui. A weary desire for change, life, excitement, of every, any kind, possesses me, and without you what am I? There is no other person in the world whom I could spend a week with, and thoroughly enjoy it. Oh, how I desire to smoke a cigar, and have a pint and a chat with you.
— * Sydney Dobell, author of Balder, The Roman, &c. This gentleman’s kindness to David, whom he never saw, is beyond all praise. Nor was the invalid ungrateful. “Poor, kind, half-immortal spirit here below,” wrote David, alluding to Dobell, “shall I know thee when we meet new-born into eternal existence? . . . Dear friend Bob, did you ever know a nobler? I cannot get him out of my mind. I would write to him daily would it not pest him. Yet, as you and I know, nothing can pest him. What he has done for me is enormous; almost as much as what you have done; almost as much as I long to do for both of you.” Again and again, in much the same words, did he repeat this affectionate plaint. —
173 By the way, how arc you getting on? Have you lots to do? and well paid for it? Or is life a lottery with you? and the tea-caddy a vacuum? and —— a snare? and —— a nightmare? Do you dream yet, on your old rickety sofa in the dear old ghastly bankrupt garret at No. 66? Write to yours eternally,
DAVID GRAY.
The proposal to go abroad was soon abandoned, partly because the invalid began to evince a nervous home-sickness, but chiefly because it was impossible to raise a sum of money sufficient. But a residence in Kirkintilloch throughout the winter was, on all accounts, to be avoided. A friend, therefore, subscribed to the Brompton Hospital for chest complaints for the express purpose of procuring David admission. One bleak wintry day, not long after the receipt of the above letter, Blank was gazing out of his lofty lodging-window, when a startling vision presented itself, in the shape of David himself, seated with quite a gay look in an open Hansom cab. In a minute, the friends were side by side, and one of Blank’s first impulses was to rebuke David for the folly of exposing himself, during such weather, in such a vehicle. This folly, however, was on a parallel with David’s general habits of thought. Sometimes, indeed, the poor boy became unusually thoughtful, as when, during his illness, he wrote thus to Blank: “Are you remembering that you will need clothes? These are things you take no concern about, and so you may be seedy without knowing it. By all means hoard a few pounds if you can (I require none) for any emergency like this. Brush your excellent topcoat—it is the best and warmest I ever had on my back. Mind, you have to pay ready money for any new coat. A seedy man will not ‘get on’ if he requires, like you, to call personally on his employers.” The mother of a family might have written the foregoing.
David had come to London in order to go either to Brompton, or to Torquay,—the hospital at which last-named place was thrown open to him by Mr. Milnes. Perceiving his dislike for the Temperance Hotel, to which he had been conducted, Blank consented that he should stay in the “ghastly bankrupt garret,” until he should depart to one or other of the hospitals. It was finally arranged that he should accept a temporary invitation to a hydropathic establishment at Sudbrook Park, Richmond. Thither Blank at once conveyed him. Meanwhile, his prospects were diligently canvassed by his numerous friends. His own feelings at this time were well expressed in a letter home. “I am dreadfully afraid of Brompton: living among sallow, dolorous, dying consumptives, is enough to kill me. Here I am as comfortable as can be: a fire in my room all day, plenty of meat, and good society—nobody so ill as myself; but there, perhaps hundreds far worse (the hospital holds 218 in all stages of the disease—90 of them died last report) dying beside me, perhaps—it frightens me.” All at once, David began, with a delicacy peculiar to him, to consider himself an unwarrantable intruder at Sudbrook Park. In the face of all persuasion, therefore, he joined Blank in London—whence he shortly afterwards departed for Torquay.
174 He left Blank in good spirits—full of pleasant anticipations of Devonshire scenery. But the second day after his departure, he addressed to Blank a wild epistle, dated from one of the Torquay hotels. He had arrived safe and sound, he said, and had been kindly received by a friend of Mr. Milnes. He had at first been delighted with the town, and everything in it. He had gone to the hospital, had been received by “a nurse of death” (as he phrased it), and had been inducted into the privileges of the place; but on seeing his fellow-patients, some in the last stages of disease, he had fainted away. On coming to himself, he obtained an interview with the matron. To his request for a private apartment, she had answered, that to favour him in that way would be to break written rules, and that he must content himself with the common privileges of the establishment. On leaving the matron, he had furtively stolen from the place, and made his way through the night to the hotel. Before Blank had time to comprehend the state of affairs, there came a second letter, stating that David was on the point of starting for London. “Every ring at the hotel bell makes me tremble, fancying they are coming to take me away by force. Had you seen the nurse! Oh! that I were back again at home—mother! mother! mother!” A few hours after Blank had read these lines in miserable fear, arrived Gray himself, pale, anxious, and trembling. He flung himself into Blank’s arms, with a smile of sad relief. “Thank God!” he cried; “that’s over, and I am here!” Then his cry was for home; he would die if he remained longer adrift; he must depart at once. Blank persuaded him to wait for a few days, and in the meantime saw some of his influential friends. The skill and regimen of a medical establishment being necessary to him at this stage, it was naturally concluded that he should go to Brompton; but David, in a high state of nervous excitement, scouted the idea. Disease had sapped the foundations of the once strong spirit. “Home—home—home!” was his hourly cry. To resist these frantic appeals would have been to hasten the end of all. In the midst of winter, Blank saw him into the train at Euston Square. A day afterwards, David was in the bosom of his father’s household—never more to pass thence alive. Not long after his arrival at home, he repented his rash flight. “I am not at all contented with my position. I acted like a fool; but if the hospital were the sine quâ non, again my conduct would be the same.” Further, “I lament my own foolish conduct, but what was that quotation about impellunt in Acheron? It was all nervous impulsion. However, I despair not, and, least of all, my dear fellow, to those whom I have deserted wrongfully.”
Ere long, poor David made up his mind that he must die; and this feeling urged him to write something which would keep his memory green for ever. “I am working away at my old poem, Bob: leavening it throughout with the pure beautiful theology of Kingsley.” A little later: “By-the-by, I have about 600 lines of my poem written, but the manual labour is so weakening that I do not go on.” Nor was this all. In the very shadow of the grave, he began and finished a series of sonnets on the 175 subject of his own disease and impending death. These sonnets will not be appreciated at their true value yet a while, but they contain poetry as pathetically beautiful as the following:—
The daisy-flower is to the summer sweet,
Though utterly unknown it live and die;
The spheral harmony were incomplete
Did the dew’d laverock mount no more the sky,
Because her music’s hushëd sorcery
Bewitched no mortal heart to heavenly mood.
This is the law of nature, that the deed
Should dedicate its excellence to God,
And in so doing find sufficient meed.
Then why should I make these heart-burning cries
In sickly rhyme with morbid feeling rife,
For Fame and temporal felicities?
Forgetting that in holy labour lies
The scholarship severe of human life.
This increased literary energy was not, as many people imagined, a sign of increased physical strength; it was merely the last flash upon the blackening brand. Gradually, but surely, life was ebbing away from the young poet. In April, 1861, Blank saw him for the last time, and heard him speak words which showed the abandonment of hope. “I am dying,” said David, leaning back in his arm-chair in the little carpeted bedroom; “I am dying, and I’ve only two things to regret: that my poem is not published, and that I have not seen Italy.” In the endeavour to inspire hope, Blank spoke of the happy past, and of happy days yet to be. David only shook his head with a sad smile. “It is the old dream—only a dream, Bob—but I am content.” He spoke of all his friends with tenderness, and of his parents with intense and touching love. Then it was “farewell!” “After all our dreams of the future,” he said, “I must leave you to fight alone; but shall there be no more ‘cakes and ale’ because I die?” Blank returned to London; and ere long heard that David was eagerly attempting to get The Luggie published. Delay after delay occurred. “If my book be not immediately gone on with, I fear I may never see it. Disease presses closely on me. . . . The merit of my MSS. is very little—mere hints of better things—crude notions harshly languaged; but that must be overlooked. They are left not to the world (wild thought!), but as the simple, possible, sad, only legacy I can leave to those who have loved and love me.” At last, through the agency of Mr. Dobell, the poem was placed in the hands of the printer. On the 2nd Dec., 1861, a specimen page was sent to the author. David gazed long and lingeringly on the printed page. It was “good news,” he said. The next day the shadow fell on the weaver’s household, for David was no more. Thus, on the 3rd December, he passed tranquilly away, almost his last words being, “God has love, and I have faith.” On the Saturday after his death, his body was carried on handspokes (the old Scottish fashion) to the Auld Aisle burying-ground, a lovely graveyard, surrounded by a stone wall, and standing on an elevation at a short distance from the weaver’s 176 door. A solitary ash-tree waves over the grave, which is, as yet, unmarked by any memorial stone.
Shortly after his death, The Luggie and other Poems was published by Messrs. Macmillan, of Cambridge, in a little volume, with an introduction by Mr. Milnes, and a short memoir.
And David’s poetry? We have said that it is yet too early to estimate that at its true value; but it can never be read apart from the brief story of the writer. More than most men did David interweave his own personal joys and sufferings with the text of his ambitious verse. He was far too self-absorbed to possess dramatic power. His writings, however, have a pathos and an earnestness which we frequently look for in vain in the books of greater men. We will give one extract, which could only have been written by one in whom the faculty divine was strong, intense, and artistic. We may call it
AN OCTOBER MUSING.
Ere the last stack is housed, and woods are bare,
And the vermilion fruitage of the brier
Is soaked in mist or shrivelled up with frost;
Ere warm spring-nests are coldly to be seen
Tenantless but for rain and the cold snow,
While yet there is a loveliness abroad—
The frail and indescribable loveliness
Of a fair form life with reluctance leaves,
Being there only powerful—while the earth
Wears sackcloth in her great prophetic grief:—
Then the reflective melancholy soul,
Aimlessly wandering with slow-falling feet
The heathery solitude, in hope to assuage
The cunning humour of his malady,
Loses his painful bitterness, and feels
His own specific sorrows one by one
Taken up in the huge dolour of all things.
Oh, the sweet melancholy of the time,
When gently, ere the heart appeals, the year
Shines in the fatal beauty of decay;
When the sun sinks enlarg’d on Carronben,
Nakedly visible without a cloud,
And faintly from the faint eternal blue
(That dim sweet harebell colour) comes the star
Which evening wears—when Luggie flows in mist,
And in the cottage windows one by one
With sudden twinkle household lamps are lit—
What noiseless falling of the faded leaf!
David’s poetry abounds in passages full of this melancholy sweetness; and the vein grew profounder as the hand that clutched at Fame grew weaker.
“Whom the gods love die young,” was David’s favourite saying. In one of his last letters, the dying poet bade a friend “bless the ancient 177 Greeks for that comfort!” Perhaps it is a comfort that David sleeps in peace; for which is better—sleep such as his, or the dark weary struggle for bread which must have been his lot had he lived? Let the mind picture to itself a longer life for him, and see what that life might have been. He had not the power to sell his wits for money. The strong hard scholar, the energetic man of business, has a shield against the demons of disappointed hope; but David had no such shield. In life as well as in death there is a Plutonian house of exiles, and they abandon all hope who enter therein. Thither the fresh sun never penetrates, thither hope and joy never venture; but poetry, ghastly with the brightness that has passed away, puts on the thin shadowy raiments of the ghost, and glides about with a strange and haunting face—a face full of the eternity of a faith that is lost, the apparition of the deep aspiring heart whose religion is hope. Whom the gods love die young,—the weak ones like David, who has taken his unstained belief in things beautiful to the very fountain head of all beauty, and who will never know the weary strife, the poignant heart-ache of the unsuccessful endeavourers.
On turning away from the contemplation of this lowly grave, the mind naturally reverts to the little weaver’s household. There subsist tender sorrow and affectionate remembrance. The shadow still lies in the cottage; a light has departed which will never again be seen on sea or land; and the old weaver, seated by the fire at night, thinks mournfully of what David might have been. “We feel very weary now David is gone,” is all the plaint we ever heard him utter. With the eager sensitiveness of the poet himself, he read the various criticisms on David’s posthumous book. The great comfort of the humble home is that inexpressibly pathetic “might have been,”—a feeling which was beautifully indicated by David himself, in alluding to the premature fate of a young friend of his own:—
Had he lived and fallen (as who of us
Doth perfectly? and let him that is proud
Take heed that he do fall), he would have been
A sadness to them in their aged hours.
But now he is an honour and delight,
A treasure of the memory; a joy
Unutterable; by the lone fireside
They never tire to speak his praise, and say
How, if he had been spared, he would have been
So great, and good, and noble, as (they say)
The country knows; although I know full well
That not a man in all the parish round
Speaks of him ever; he is now forgot,
And this his natal valley knows him not.
But David Gray will not so soon be forgotten by those who can pardon ambition, make allowances for youth, and sympathize with sorrow.
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Extract from the chapter, ‘A Poetic Trio: Alexander Smith, Robert Buchanan, and David Gray’
from Literary and Dramatic Sketches by J. Bell Simpson
(Glasgow: David Bryce & Son, 1872, pp. 72-76)
. . .
Poor David Gray! We must ever remember him as a lost pleiad in the poetic galaxy. How touching, how replete with pathetic warning is his brief, bright career, as detailed in Mr. Hedderwick’s admirable memoir! It is the old, old story; the story of noble, imprisoned fancy, beating its wings wildly against the hard bars of adverse fate, the misguided confidence of unripe genius in its power to move the world and illuminate future time, alternating with a bashful student’s submissive gentleness. 73 Did ambition ever soar so high?—did diffidence ever shrink more fearfully? His reputation is to overtop that of Wordsworth; posterity are reverently to wend their way to the Merkland cottage as to a shrine; his birth-place is to be the Stratford of the North, but soon even the recollection of this splendid fame-dream dies in his heart, he halts doubtingly on the road to greatness, and turns back a dozen times in the lobby of the newspaper office, lacking boldness to face the editor. Then he is in London, like how many another young Chatterton, battering at Fame’s portal with a bulky manuscript. It is the “Luggie, and other Poems,” and his wise and influential friend, Lord Houghton, spares neither counsel nor monetary aid, but the magic gates remain obstinately closed. The great city is restlessly traversed, divine harmonies mingling with the roar of her streets; his eye kindles as he surveys the monuments in Poets’ Corner, where he feels sure a place awaits him after death; but no. Disease has him in its cruel embrace; even as life’s sun rises he is entering the “shadows.” Not a breath of that public applause for which he yearns ever greets his ear it is only on his death-bed that a sample 74 proof-sheet of the beloved poem is placed in his trembling hand.
The reader will here pardon the introduction of one of Gray’s most beautiful, though unnamed sonnets:—
“With what a calm serenity she smooths
Her way thro’ cloudless jasper sown with stars!
Chaster than virtue, sweeter than the truths
Of maidenhood, in Spenser’s knightly wars.
For what is all Belphœbe’s golden hair,
The chastity of Britomart, the love
Of Florimel, so faithful and so fair,
To thee, thou wonder! And yet far above
Thy inoffensive beauty must I hold
Dear Una, sighing for the Red Cross Knight
Thro’ all her losses, crosses manifold;
And when the lordly lion fell in fight
Who, who can paragon her tearful woe?
Not thou, not thou, O moon! did’st ever passion so.”
David Gray was in some respects more a poet of Nature than either Smith or Buchanan. His song was like that full-throated, rich, and thrilling melody which the lark of morning pours forth at heaven’s gate: wildly sweet—unutterably pure. But through its seeming happiness what a pathetic sense of premature decay and death mingles with his music! The Luggie flows on, glancing and limpid, now through the cowslip-and-clover-dyed fields of summer, by-and-by snow-flecked 75 and brawling between icy banks; but with David, who sings its many windings by glen and meadow, there is ever present a sad forecast of his own impending passage across that other mysterious, grave-bounded river. There is no petulance or craven fear in this half-smothered refrain; only the pleading of a pulsating young heart, to be allowed to revel yet a little longer in a world of poesy-tinted loveliness. Death and its associations he cannot shake off; and ever as that “arterial blood” wells to his lips, marking the consumption’s growth, “apple trees may wear pink and white in April,” or “John Frost, old Nature’s jeweller, beautify the leas,” the poet gazes around, fondly but tearfully, knowing that for him it is but a little while, and the mourners shall be gathered round the wind-kissed headstone of his grave. Nature and her thousand beauties sustained him, even on the sick-bed, and the reflex of a sunset glory tranquilized his fevered pillow, while a posie of freshly-gathered daisies flushed his wan cheek with rapture. All too soon was the bright spirit which looked so lovingly upon our fair earth borne upward, and, on the threshold of manhood and in the promise-hued dawn of a 76 poetic genius which might have rivalled that of Keats, died David Gray, the peasant bard, his gentle heart sustained by a humble yet fervent faith, and with immortal peace on his pallid brow.
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Introductory Note and ‘Gray’s Monument’
from The Poetical Works of David Gray: A New and Enlarged Edition. Edited by Henry Glassford Bell (Glasgow: James MacLehose, London: Macmillan & Co., 1874).
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
THIS new Edition of the Works of David Gray, containing, it is believed, all the maturely finished poems of the author, is a double memorial. It commemorates “the thin-spun life” of a man of true genius and rare promise, and the highly cultured judgment and tender sympathies of a critic who has passed away in the vigorous fulness of his years.
A specimen page of “The Luggie,” forwarded with an appreciative letter from a friend, reached the author on the day before his death. He received it as “good news”—the fragmentary realization of his ambitious dreams—and, in the hope that his name might not be viii wholly forgotten, said he could now enter “without tears” into his rest.
Within a week before his removal from amongst us, Mr. Glassford Bell was engaged in correcting the proofs of the present edition. He had selected from a mass of MSS. and other material what new pieces he thought worthy of insertion in this enlarged edition—he had rearranged the whole and finally revised the greater part of the volume, which it was his intention to preface with a Memoir and Criticism. He looked forward to accomplishing this labour of love in a period of retirement from more active work which he had proposed to pass in Italy.
It has been thought inadvisable to commit to other hands the unexpectedly interrupted task. For a statement of the few and simple vicissitudes of the Poet’s career, as well as a brief but discriminating estimate of his rank in our literature, the reader is referred to the speech—at the close of the volume—delivered by Mr. Bell, nine years ago, on the inauguration of the Monument ix in the “Auld Aisle” Burying-ground. Of the movement which resulted in this tribute to departed genius, the late Sheriff was one of the most active promoters. Himself a poet, and a generous patron of all genuine art, the West of Scotland has known no “larger heart” or “kindlier hand.” There is something suggestive in the fact that his last effort was to throw another wreath on the early tomb of David Gray.
March, 1874.
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Gray’s Monument.
AT the inauguration of the Monument erected to the Poet’s Memory in the “Auld Aisle” Burying Ground, Kirkintilloch, July 29, 1865, Mr. Bell said:—
David Gray, was born on the 29th January, 1838, and reared in his father’s house here at Merkland till he reached his fourteenth year. His parents, seeing as they did his disposition and his genius, thought they might find means to bring up their son for the Church. With that view he was sent into Glasgow, and as he required funds to aid him in the prosecution of his studies, at that very early age he became a pupil-teacher in the city. He contrived also to attend the famous University there for four successive sessions. But during all that time his mind was brimming over with poetry, which rose like a rising tide above his Latin, above his Greek, above his 204 theological studies. He had a very ardent and ambitious fancy; he had high aspirations; he had an earnest belief that he was born to be a poet, and to attain fame. In one so young it might have been thought that this was an overweening conception of his own powers. But in reality it was not A poet is also a vates or prophet, and there is no reason why he should not be permitted sometimes to prophesy of himself David Gray prophesied of himself that his name would yet be known to his fellow-countrymen as a poet and a teacher, for every true poet is a true teacher. In May, 1860, when he had so far completed his studies in Glasgow, and had arrived at the age of nearly 22, he started alone for London. He had read of the great literary world of the metropolis, and he was fired with an ambition to mingle in it and to make himself, if possible, known to some of the men there. He was fortunate in forming the acquaintance, very soon after going to London, of Mr. Monckton Milnes, now Lord Houghton, who at once formed a correct appreciation of the poet’s character and genius. Lord Houghton has himself put it upon record that he found in David Gray what appeared to him to be the making of a great man. He has also recorded of him that upon first seeing him he was strongly reminded of the poet Shelley. Gray had a light, well-built form; he had a full brow and an out-looking eye; and he had a sensitive, melancholy 205 mouth. So Lord Houghton speaks of him. He formed also in London other acquaintances of value, including Mr. Oliphant, then Private Secretary to Lord Elgin, now member for the Stirling Burghs. As to Sydney Dobell, the poet, I do not know that he actually formed the personal acquaintance of that gentleman; but he had frequent correspondence with Mr. Dobell, and received from him valuable letters, and suggestions, and assistance. He formed the acquaintance of a very estimable woman—Miss Marian James—herself an authoress of great reputation. Nearer at home he had already attained the friendly companionship of some whom he valued much. I am delighted to see two of those gentlemen present to-night—Mr. W. Freeland, David Gray’s early and attached friend, now of the Herald Office, Glasgow, and Mr. James Hedderwick, himself a poet and an editor of great reputation. He had not, however, been long in London till he was seized with a cold which rapidly assumed the character of consumption. Lord Houghton and others, feeling deeply interested in him, got him sent to the South of England for a time; but the disease making rapid progress, David Gray was seized with an irresistible home-sickness, and notwithstanding all the kindness, and all the attention of his friends in the South, in January, 1861, he made his re-appearance at his father’s house down there in Merkland. He lived there from January, 1861, 206 to the 3d December of the same year, when he died. That is the brief record of this young poet’s life—almost all the incidents in it, all the events connected with it. But who can record, or who shall attempt to record the thousand thoughts and emotions that passed through his mind, that illuminated his fancy, and that kindled his genius? Who shall say how these familiar woods, and fields, and glens, and streams were to him dearer, a thousand times dearer and more romantic, than any woods, or fields, or glens, or streams in any other part of the world. No man but a true poet has that warm affection for home scenes, for his country, for his native land, for the friends of his youth; no man but a true poet has those sentiments in their height and in their depth; and if ever a man entertained them, the poetical remains of David Gray prove that he had them in a deep, pathetic, and most earnest manner. Upon his death-bed, within three days of his death, he received what appears to me to be a particularly beautiful letter from Marian James, breathing that alma gentile which none but a refined and pure woman possesses. I never saw David Gray, but I have seen to-night the humble room in which he was born; I have seen the home in which he was afterwards reared—a simple, rural house, belonging to a simple, honest, and upright family, such a family as Scotland is always proud of—and of such families I am proud to know that 207 Scotland possesses her thousands and tens of thousands. I saw his mother to-night, and was deeply impressed with the apparent simplicity and earnestness of her character. I owe her my gratitude and my thanks for her presenting me with a book which belonged to her son, and which contains many of his private markings. I shall always retain it as a valuable and most esteemed possession. David Gray’s poetical susceptibility was of the most conspicuous description. He had a most refined perception of the beautiful; he had a perception of an interminable vista of beauty and truth. He had noble and pure thoughts, and he has been enabled to express those noble and pure thoughts in very noble and pure language. “The Luggie” is a most remarkable poem, containing many very fine passages, inspired partially, no doubt, by a careful perusal of Thomson’s “Seasons” and Wordsworth’s “Excursion,” and not, therefore, so entirely original as some of the author’s subsequent poems; but with passages breaking out in it every now and then which neither Thomson nor Wordsworth suggested, and which are entirely the conceptions of David Gray’s own genius. “The Luggie,” as has been well said, “may not possess in itself much to attract the painter’s eye, but it has sufficed for a poet’s love.” The series of sonnets entitled “In the Shadows”—written by the poet during his last illness—many of them bearing relation to his own condition, his 208 own life, and his own prospects—appear to me to possess a solemn beauty not surpassed by many of the finest passages in Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” totally distinct and unlike the “In Memoriam,” but as genuine, as sincere, as heart-stirring, and often as poetical. In the author’s own words, they admit you “to the chancel of a dying poet’s mind;” you feel when you are reading these sonnets that they are written in the sure and immediate prospect of death; but they contain thoughts about life, about the past, and about the future, most powerful and most beautiful. I am not going to ask you to take all this for granted. I think, upon an occasion like this, we ought to show some little reason for the faith that is in us; and, if it will not fatigue you too much, I propose in a few minutes to read two or three of those passages and those sonnets which strike me as worthy of all admiration. I feel confident that these works are destined to take their place amongst standard poetical works in the library of every man of literary taste. We are here, as you have said, upon the occasion of the erection of a monument to David Gray—a monument erected on the spot where he is buried, in a beautiful old churchyard, standing upon the brow of a hill, from which a fine and extensive view of the surrounding valley and hills is commanded. It is a granite monument, and will last, I hope, for centuries. I am sure that in this neighbourhood it will often be 209 visited by persons who feel something like kindred emotions with David Gray, and they will be proud of this neighbourhood that it gave birth in that humble cottage to a man who has added so much charm to its natural scenery. It was felt at the same time, I believe, by the gentlemen in Glasgow who took the principal charge of it, that a great or imposing monument was not the thing that was wanted. A plain, simple, enduring record of respect and esteem was what was wished. Therefore, although the fund I know could have been trebled, quadrupled, with ease, it was thought that when a certain moderate sum was obtained that was enough, and by the aid of the genius of our townsman, Mr. Mossman, I venture to say that an appropriate and suitable monument has now been erected on that spot. I may mention that I find the names in the list of subscribers very varied. Among the Glasgow subscribers I find the name of Mrs. Nichol, widow of the late Professor of Astronomy in our University, who I know took a great interest in David Gray from first to last, and who, I know also, with her usual benevolence, aided in smoothing his dying pillow. I find the name of William Logan, one of the most earnest and attached friends that David Gray ever had; I find Lord Houghton; I find Mr. Bailie Cochrane; I find Mr. Stirling of Keir, the Hon. Julia Fane, the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland, Mr. 210 Macmillan, Mr. MacLehose, Mr. J. A. Campbell, Mr. Hutton, editor of the London Spectator, and many other names. Now Lord Houghton was requested to write an appropriate inscription for this monument. I know it was a labour of love with him, and I know he was anxious to write such an epitaph as would be thought suitable both here and elsewhere; and I venture to say, and I hope you will agree with me, that he has admirably succeeded in the simplicity and truth of that epitaph which has now been engraved on the monument. Such is the young man whose fame we shall not willingly let die, because they who read his works aright derive moral improvement and intellectual benefit from them—because, young as he was when he died, he cherished pure and noble thoughts, and because he has left those pure and noble thoughts as a record to us of his life, and as an incentive to us to endeavour to cherish similar thoughts. Therefore, we owe him a debt of gratitude; and, therefore, without attempting to raise him upon a pinnacle too high—for his life was cut short before the highest aims of his ambition were attained—let it go forth that no true poet in this land, be his position in life what it may, be his birth humble or great—no true poet, no great teacher of the hearts of men, will ever find an ungrateful country in Scotland, as long as it remembers its great poets—as long as it knows that it is the land of Burns. In “The Luggie,” 211 which you are aware is a descriptive and pastoral poem, there are varied moods of thought. There is a good deal of mere description of beautiful scenery, but that, whilst exquisitely done, is also intermingled with many thoughts and feelings which add a richness to the charm of the poet’s description. No mere description of external and lifeless nature, unless brought home to the heart by allusions to human emotion, can ever produce a very strong effect But David Gray seems to have understood admirably how to combine those two qualities in his descriptive picture, and whilst he describes beautiful external nature, he always takes care at the same time to attract and touch the feelings. I am happy to know that David Gray died in true Christian faith, and amity with all men. I know from the esteemed clergyman who attended him weekly for many a day, that he had those true Christian sentiments which become a man, and most of all become a great man, upon his death-bed. I have had the very greatest satisfaction in being present to-night. I felt it to be an honour to be requested to come here and express my sentiments on such a subject. It is an honour which I feel, and it is a pleasure which I feel still more, for when a man has passed through this world now for a good many years, as I have done, there can be nothing dearer to his heart than expressing sympathy with the great and good, and feeling those expressions of sympathy 212 reflected from the hearts and the eyes of a sympathising audience.
The Monument bears the following inscription:—
THIS MONUMENT OF
AFFECTION, ADMIRATION, AND REGRET,
IS ERECTED TO
DAVID GRAY,
THE POET OF MERKLAND,
BY FRIENDS FROM FAR AND NEAR,
DESIROUS THAT HIS GRAVE SHOULD BE REMEMBERED
AMID THE SCENES OF HIS RARE GENIUS
AND EARLY DEATH,
AND BY THE LUGGIE, NOW NUMBERED WITH THE STREAMS
ILLUSTRIOUS IN SCOTTISH SONG.
Born 29th January, 1838; Died 3rd December, 1861.
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Extract from the chapter, ‘Young Poets’
from Forty Years' Recollections of Life, Literature and Public Affairs from 1830 to 1870,
Vol. II by Charles Mackay (London; Chapman & Hall, 1877, pp. 311-316).
. . .
The story of a third young poet who applied to me for help and advice was romantic and melancholy. David Gray, who, like Kirke White and Keats, perished in his early prime, was no mere versifier, but one who possessed no small share of “the vision and the faculty divine.” In the summer of 1860 he presented himself before me with 312 a roll of manuscript, and solicited employment on the London Review, which had recently been established, if on perusal of his poems I should deem him worthy of encouragement. He had come from Merkland, a village near Glasgow, where his father was a weaver, resolved to win fame and fortune in London, and to win them solely by writing poetry. In the proud consciousness of his own powers, he fondly imagined that it needed but a recommendation to a publisher from some author of repute to have his poems launched upon the world, and eagerly purchased by a generous appreciative and poetry-loving public. He wished to publish under the name of William Gurney, as he thought his real name of Gray might cause him to be disadvantageously compared with that other Gray, the immortal author of the “Elegy in a Country Churchyard.” He told me that his father and mother, with the usual determination of the Scottish poor when their boys show any unusual talent, had destined him for the church, and that his mother fondly hoped, in Scottish phrase “to see him wag his pow” in the pulpit before she died; but that he had an invincible repugnance to this mode of life, and was resolved to be—aut Cæsar aut nihil—either a great author or nothing. He also said that he had spent the first night of his arrival in London in Hyde Park, walking about until he was wearied, and laid down under a tree to sleep—partly for economical reasons, partly because he had read that Dr. Johnson and Richard Savage had done as much before him, only that St. James’s Square, and not Hyde Park, was the scene of their adventure.
On a second interview, after I had read his poem 313 of “The Luggie,” and heard the reiteration of his unconquerable determination to devote himself to a literary life, I represented to him that it took time to establish a poetical reputation; that publishers did not care to publish the poems of unknown genius, unless the possessors of the unknown genius possessed money to pay for the paper, the print, and the binding of their first ventures; and that if the ventures by rare good fortune happened to be successful, it was usually a long time before a portion of the profits reached the purse of the expectant author. He looked greatly distressed, and I endeavoured to console him as well as I could, by telling him that he was endowed not only with talent, but with genius; but that genius itself, if it would bide its time, and compel the reluctant world to acknowledge it, must go through the drudgery of its apprenticeship, “learning in sorrow what it taught in song,” and that if he hoped to live by literature, he must try to live by such branches of it as would yield a certain and immediate return. The greatest of artists at the outset of their career did not disdain to employ themselves on the daily and inferior work that they called “pot-boilers,” and literary men were in the same or even in a worse position, and though fame, no doubt, was a very excellent thing, bread and unindebtedness were better. I suggested that if he would try to master the easy art of writing shorthand, he might possibly procure employment as a parliamentary reporter, and that I would exert myself to the utmost to serve him in this capacity, by introductions to such editors of the daily press as I was acquainted with. I also suggested that he should turn his attention to prose, and promised that if he 314 would write an article of superior or average merit on any political, social, or literary subject of the day, it would give me pleasure to insert it in the London Review, and pay the full price for it . He did not seem to be greatly encouraged by this prospect, or to take kindly to the idea of writing anything but poetry . He was evidently in delicate health, and gave silent but clear indications of being on the verge, if not within the circle, of destitution. I gave him a note of introduction to Mr. Thackeray, who was then editing, or supposed to be editing, the Cornhill Magazine, with the faint hope that Mr. Thackeray might in some way lend him a helping hand. Provided with that and an order on the cashier of the London Review for payment in advance of the article he promised to write, he went on his way, if not exactly rejoicing, at least to some extent comforted. I happened to mention his story to Mr. Laurence Oliphant, then associated with the London Review, and that gentleman took a warm and immediate interest in his welfare. No news of him was received for some weeks, when an intimation came that he was ill and confined to his bed. A wealthy friend from Glasgow, whom I had interested in his favour, accompanied me in a visit to a squalid back room in the second floor of a house in Stamford-street, on the Surrey side of Waterloo-bridge, where we found him in bed in a room fetid with the fumes of bad tobacco—which he had not smoked himself—attended by another young man, who was smoking furiously. He was evidently very ill, and my Glasgow friend, remonstrating somewhat sharply against the cruelty of smoking in that forlorn sick chamber, in the presence of a man with a distressing 315 cough, administered some relief to the sufferer in the shape of gold to procure him the comforts he needed. Mr. Monckton Milnes, now Lord Houghton, had become interested in the fate of the weakly boy, and deputed his own physician to attend him in his illness, and otherwise acted the part of the kind Samaritan. I afterwards heard of him as an inmate of Dr. Lane’s hydropathic establishment at Sudbrook Park, near Richmond, and learned subsequently that means had been found to send him home to his father and mother at Merkland, where he died on the 3rd of December, 1861, within a few weeks of completing his twenty-third year. In a touching memoir of his friend and youthful companion by Robert Buchanan, it is stated that before that fatal night in Hyde Park, David Gray was in the enjoyment of robust health, and that the cold he caught in that raw May weather, when poetry and romance combined with economy, laid the foundation of the illness that ultimately developed into consumption, of which he died—all his fond hopes blasted and blighted, all his aspirations brought to the nothingness of the tomb. Had he lived, he might have toiled up the weary steps of literature, unknown, unrecognized, and unesteemed—eating scanty bread, gained in sorrow, in weariness, in drudgery, and vexation of spirit—a Pegasus drawing a plough or a cab. But he died; all his bright promise unfulfilled; and people who would not have given him a silver sixpence to help him to a dinner, subscribed golden sovereigns to erect an obelisk over his grave. The monument stands in the kirkyard of Merkland, with a kind and terse inscription upon it, written by Lord Houghton. The poor 316 lad wanted bread, and his survivors gave him a stone. Thus has it often been with young genius; thus it is likely it will continue to be.
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Extract from ‘Chapter IV: Summer of 1860’
from The Life and Letters of Sydney Dobell, Vol. II. Edited by E. J.
(London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1878, pp. 159-165).
. . .
Writing, from Cleeve Tower, to his father and mother, October 8, he said:
. . . Poor Gray’s book (I had such a letter of delight from him, which you shall see) is already a certainty.
And then went on to explain how the funds for the publication of this book had been raised.
Of very many of Sydney Dobell’s beneficent deeds, no record, of course, remains; but the kindness shown by him to David Gray, the author of ‘The Luggie,’ was not only recognised, but, as he thought, exaggerated.
What I was able, at any time, to do for David Gray, consisted chiefly of unpalatable advice, and of introductions to friends who had more cash and leisure than I: [was his own version of the matter. 1]
It is to be regretted that of his letters—to the number and the nature of which we have David
— 1 David Gray’s own letters, and other evidences, show how much Mr. Dobell, as was his wont, under-estimated the amount of assistance, of various kinds, rendered in this, as in similar cases. —
160 Gray’s answers to testify—the Editors of these Memorials have been able to obtain only the part of one, which is given on the following pages. The ‘unpalateable advice’ addressed to poor young Gray, and to his friend and companion in the fight for literary distinction, might have been of service to others similarly situated, and would have been interestingly illustrative of their writer’s own views.
In the letter in which the young poet speaks of the ‘sudden happiness’ of hearing that his book would be printed; would be ‘a book’ which ‘my dear mother would read on Sunday—the only day she ever reads—and my father would show to every person who came into the house,’ he also says:
‘Not that I troubled myself about it while I was well; but when death looked on me the desire to behold it grew horribly keen. . . . But now I shall see it. I think of it by night and day, and cannot look over the MSS. for anticipating my pleasure.’
The MSS. were, accordingly, sent to Mr. Dobell, with a note from the dying lad’s father, saying:
‘You will have to look over them, as he was not able to finish them as they should be.’
The same letter of young Gray’s from which we have quoted, concludes thus:
161 Your Christianity gave me comfort indeed; it was that long indefinite ‘purposeless torment’ from which my soul shrunk in horror and despair. I am too far through, from want of breath, just now, to write more, or I should have asked one or two questions concerning the Resurrection and Ascension. You may unriddle them for me yet, however. Good bye. ‘I wish [sic] it were night, and all well, Hal!’
Some weeks later, as was written to Sydney Dobell by one who had been a true friend to David Gray:
He took the specimen page in his hand as soon as the post arrived (the day before his death), and a smile passed over his pale countenance. In the evening, when alone with his mother, he requested her a second time to bring out the page of his ‘Luggie,’ and to hold it up before him, for he was now too feeble to hold it himself; by the means of the lamp he was able to read it, with the aid of his mother, and said, ‘This is a real pleasure—all is right now—good news.’
The letter alluded to by David Gray in the words, ‘Your Christianity gave me comfort indeed,’ was evidently the one of which the following part has been preserved:
. . . And now having attended a little to things on the hither bank, let us look a moment across the dark river. I have seen by your letters that you are in a state of doubt 162 and unhappiness as to received creeds and formulæ, which happens at your age to almost every man who has mind enough to think, and soul enough for spirituality. For such men, to believe the ‘orthodoxy’ of the day, or to remain contented in a general disbelief, is equally impossible; and the dark interval between the conventions we leave behind and such truths as are possible to us in this imperfect condition of all human eyesight, is not often passed through till a later time of life than yours.
Seeing, then, that you are likely to proceed to those regions which are the subject of Religious Knowledge at a time when, in the usual process of growth, you have not attained to the functions of seeing clearly what can here be known of them, you will forgive me for suggesting (in a matter so intimately affecting your peace while you remain with us) one or two things, that the various friends and advisers who surround you are in all probability too ‘orthodox’ to agree with, but which, I think, your own instincts and receptivities will, when proposed, dispose you to accept.
Let me recommend you, then, that putting aside resolutely the various theological subtleties that may be pressed upon you, you take up the New Testament and yourself seek for Christ. Not the Christ of Trinitarian or Unitarian, but that historical Personage whose appearance in this world no sane sceptic can deny, and who left, I believe, no such explanation of His precise nature as may justify us in dogmatising thereon.
Sufficient for you that One has appeared in our shape, and spoken our language, Who was unquestionably beyond 163 us in every virtue and in every wisdom, and Who showed by what He lived, taught and performed, an intimacy with God which has appertained to none of us before or since. From such a Teacher, whatever His nature, every wise man will be only too glad to receive whatever a knowledge thus demonstrated may please to deliver upon subjects on which he knows himself to be, alas! so helplessly in the dark. Whatever Christ’s essence per se, there can be no doubt that He was nearer the Centre of all Truth than ourselves, and than any human being of whom history makes record.
Having thus received your Teacher, and those whom He specially made the depositaries of His wisdom, let me advise you, when questioning them of that God before Whom you expect so soon to appear, to leave all minor, and, as it were, accidental details and possess yourself, with all the grasp of your soul, of such central and essential declarations respecting Him as are simple in form, unmistakeable in phrase, and of analogies so far human as to admit, with safety, the test of human reason.
Foremost among all such declarations, and fulfilling all the foregoing conditions, is that cardinal truth of Christianity—God is Love.
Nothing can be simpler, or more absolute, in expression, nothing can be more safely within the province of human experience and the legitimate exercise of a reverent logic.
If God had not pleased to reveal Himself in the likeness of any human faculty, we should have no right to 164 wonder or complain; but we should, also, have no right to employ our finite reason upon His attributes. But when He has vouchsafed an analogy, and has put the analogy, in the strictest shape possible,—has made it, in fact, rather homological than analogical—we are justified in using, with a brave and thankful alacrity, the premises which His condescension has given to our use.
Take, therefore, confidently this great premise of Love, and believe nothing—however speciously supported by the appearance of isolated texts (I say ‘appearance,’ for they all dissolve before the touch of strong sense and scholarship)—which is inconsistent with the conclusions it justifies.
I need not point out to you how every ‘orthodox’ theory of damnation—every theory of punishment which does not include the amendment of the punished—disappears before these conclusions, and how infinitely consoling are those nobler, purer and wider beliefs that they substitute. A brave man can look humbly forward to a period of discipline, however long and terrible, which has perfection for its object and eternal peace beyond it. It is only from the prospect of hopeless, endless, purposeless torment that the soul recoils in horror, rebellion, and despair.
I will not attempt here to go into the various departments of those great kingdoms of thought which I have ventured to enter in this letter, for your own strong powers will, doubtless, in your enforced leisure, explore them again and again; but I could not resist taking you to the two metropolitan ideas which, as it seems to 165 me, you will find to be the centre of their geography and the foci of their organisation. How much I wish you were near enough for that word-of-mouth communication by which alone, in these difficult subjects, we can really interchange ideas.
I dare feel confident that there are no objections, to such a Christianity as I would fain see you accept, which a few words of such communication would not suffice to clear away. I have forced time for this long letter. If in future I write briefly and seldom, be certain no less of the continuing interest and deep sympathy of yours heartily,
SYDNEY DOBELL.
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Notes on David Gray - continued
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