“And Heaven forbid I should conclude
Without the ‘Board of Longitude,’
Although this narrow paper would,
My Murray!”
Venice, March 25, 1818.
There was no end to Byron’s wit and playfulness. Sometimes Murray would act as a mentor and adviser in more serious matters, but his advice would be pleasantly turned off with a jest. At the time when Byron was most calumniated, when there were cruel stories afloat about the life he led and the opinions he held (though none so cruel as have since been promulgated by a well-known American authoress), Murray’s soul was comforted by the present of a Bible—a gift from the illustrious poet. “Could this man,” he asked, “be a deist, an atheist, or worse, when he sent Bibles about to his publishers?” Turning it over in wonderment, however, some inquisitive member of his four-o’clock clique found a marginal correction—“Now Barabbas was a robber,” altered into “Now Barabbas was a publisher.” A cruel stab, a “palpable hit,” maybe, at some publishers, but, as regards Murray, an uproarious joke to be gleefully repeated to every comer. As a refutation of this playful libel, and as the clearest and most succinct way of showing what amounts of money Byron really did receive, we append the following account:—
| £ | ||
| 1807 | Hours of Idleness | |
| 1809 | English Bards and Scotch Reviewers | |
| 1812 | Childe Harold, I. II.[A] | 600 |
| 1813 | The Gaiour | 525 |
| ” | Bride of Abydos | 525 |
| 1814 | Corsair[15] | 525 |
| ” | Lara | 700 |
| 1815 | Hebrew Melodies[16] | |
| 1816 | Childe Harold, III. | 1,575 |
| ” | Siege of Corinth | 525 |
| ” | Parisina | 525 |
| ” | Prisoner of Chillon | 525 |
| 1817 | Manfred | 315 |
| ” | Lament of Tasso | 315 |
| 1818 | Beppo | 525 |
| ” | Childe Harold, IV. | 2,100 |
| 1819 | Mazeppa | 525 |
| ” | Don Juan, I. II. | 1,525 |
| 1820 | Don Juan, III. IV. V. | 1,525 |
| ” | Marino Faliero | |
| ” | Doge of Venice | 1,050 |
| 1821 | Sardanapalus, Cain, and Foscari | 1,100 |
| ” | Vision of Judgment[17] | |
| 1822 | Werner; Deformed Transformed; Heaven and Earth, to which were added Hours of Idleness, English Bards, Hints from Horace, &c. | 3,885 |
| Sundries | 450 | |
| 1822 | Don Juan, VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. | |
| 1823 | Age of Bronze, The Island, and more cantos of Don Juan | |
| Total | £19,340 | |
| Life, by Thomas Moore | 4,200 | |
| £23,540 | ||
Murray’s kindness to Byron may be said to have displayed itself even after his death. In 1821, Byron had given his friend Moore his autobiography, partly as a means of justifying his character, partly to enrich his friend. Moore, pressed as usual for money, made over the MS. to Murray for the sum of 2000 guineas, undertaking to edit it in case of survivorship. He subsequently intended to modify the transaction by a clause to be inserted in the deed, by which he, Moore, should have the option of redeeming it within three months after Byron’s death. When Byron did die, in 1824, the MS. was given to Gifford to read, and found to be far too gross for publication, and, spite of Moore’s wish to modify it, Sir John Hobhouse and Mrs. Leigh insisted upon its being destroyed. Murray offered to give it up upon repayment of the 2000 guineas; and after an unpleasant scene in Murray’s shop, the MS. was destroyed by Wilmot Horton and Colonel Doyle, with the full consent of Moore, who repaid Murray the sum advanced by a draft on Rogers.
No sooner had it been burnt than it was found that, through the want of the clause above named, Moore’s interest in the MS. had entirely ceased at Byron’s death; and though Moore, nobly and firmly, refused to receive the money back from Byron’s friends, he chose to consider for a time that Murray had wronged him.
He took a proposal to Longman of a “Life of Byron,” and the matter was partially arranged, when Moore, urged on both by his feelings and his friends, seeing Murray in the street, started after him. “Mr. Murray, some friends of yours and mine seem to think that we should no longer continue on these terms. I therefore proffer you my hand, and most heartily forgive and forget all that has passed.” Murray’s face brightened into smiles, and on parting he said, “God bless you, sir, God bless you!” Longman agreed, upon this, that Murray was the publisher to whom a life of Byron most properly belonged, and Murray eventually gave £4200 for one of the most delightful and entertaining biographies in our literature—a companion volume, in every way, to Boswell’s “Johnson” and Lockhart’s “Scott.” Murray, in this transaction, seems to have behaved with generous firmness. Now that Byron was dead, the autobiography would certainly have proved the most remunerative of all his works; and Moore himself, in his Diary, ultimately confessed that “Murray’s conduct” had been admirable throughout.
In this year, 1824, not only did Murray lose the services and the friendship of his best client, Lord Byron, who died at Missolonghi on the 19th of April, but Gifford, the able editor of the Quarterly, was incapacitated for further work, and resigned his post. Mr. John Coleridge, then a young barrister, succeeded, but though accomplished, clever, and able, he was “scarcely strong enough for the place;” Southey found out his incapacity for saying “no,” and under his auspicious reign began to make the Review a quarterly issue of his own miscellaneous works. Strangely enough in the mourning coach that followed Gifford to his grave Murray drove with the man who was destined as an editor to rival the powers of the upbuilder of the Quarterly’s reputation—this of course was John Gibson Lockhart, a young Edinburgh advocate, the son-in-law of Scott, and more than that, the author of “Peter’s Letters,” of “Valerius,” of “Reginald Dalton,” the translator of “Frederick Schlegel,” and the “Ancient Spanish Ballads,” and the noted contributor to Blackwood. Moore first heard of the arrangement down at Abbotsford, when Scott, after dinner, hopeful of his daughter’s interests, and proud, may be, of his son-in-law, grew confidential. “Lockhart was about to undertake the Quarterly, has agreed for five years; salary £1200 a year, and if he writes a certain number of articles it will be £1500 a year.” In this year, though the prospects of the Quarterly were ably secured, Murray met with the only really adverse turn of fortune, to which through a long career, and a bold one, he was ever subject. The terrible commercial crisis which had been so long overhanging, burst at last into a deluge of ruin—Constable’s house was swept away, the Ballantynes were for the moment overthrown, and Scott had to give up his lordly estates of Abbotsford, and generously work his life out to redeem a name on which he deemed a commercial slur had been cast. Murray, though he suffered by the panic, as all must suffer in the time of a general epidemic, was not severely hurt. Still, looking back now with the wisdom of wiseacres, who think we could have prophesied easily the actual events that did occur, the time does seem a strange one in which to start a new venture. This was nothing less than the establishment of a new Conservative journal, which was to rival the Times as the Quarterly rivalled the Edinburgh. According to the current rumour, it was young Disraeli (now the wily and veteran leader of the Conservative party) who first proposed the scheme; and, according to current rumour still, it was under his editorship, and with Dr. Maginn as chief foreign correspondent, that the Representative (price sevenpence daily) was started on the 26th of January, 1826. The journal was able, well-informed, and well-written, but the Times had a monopoly, and the Conservative party were not strong enough to support a first-rate organ of their own, and after a brief existence of six months, the Representative gave up the struggle. Murray was wont in future days, when rash young speculators urged the necessity of embracing some opening for a new daily paper, to point to a ledger on his book-shelves and say grimly, “Twenty thousand pounds lie buried there!”
The question as to who was the actual editor of the Representative has never been definitely settled. Mr. Disraeli, until the last year, never disclaimed the supposed connection, and silence was considered as proverbially affirmative. Lockhart, too, has been put forward as a claimant. The nearest approach to any opinion that might have been final was given by the late James Hannay in the pages of the Edinburgh Courant. “We had the best authority for what we said—nay, the only authority—since even to Mr. Murray the question of the Representative’s editorship is not a personal one. We now add that Mr. Disraeli’s long silence in the matter admits of an explanation which will gratify his admirers of all parties. He hesitated to come forward with any eagerness to make a denial, which might have been interpreted as springing from a wish to disclaim newspaper association, but when the story was passing into literature in such a book as the biography of an eminent British writer, it was time to protest against any further propagation of the story, once and for all.” But this “best and only authority” did nothing to render the question less intricate, for when Mr. Grant published the first instalment of his “History of the Newspaper Press,” he thoroughly outdid Hannay, and with that ingenuous facility of arbitrating over moot points, and that mysterious power of catching rumours, as boys catch moths, and pinning them down in his collection under the general label of “facts,” gave full details of Mr. Disraeli’s connection with the Representative, the amount of his salary, together with a luxurious description of the splendours of his editorial offices! Mr. Disraeli roused at last, replied curtly that the whole narrative was entirely imaginary, and utterly devoid of fact or foundation in any one point. He has since then in a letter, upon a similar question, written by his solicitor to the Leisure Hour, declared that:—