Murray was never dazzled by the fame of his Byrons, his Moores, his Campbells, and his Crabbes, but always recollected that “taste” is flitting, while works that only aid the necessities of mankind are always saleable. The “Army and Navy List” and the “Nautical Almanack” are every whit as profitable to-day as in the first year of their publication. Moore tells a story that shows he could still occupy his mind as well as fill his purse with “Mrs. Rundell’s Cookery Book.” “Called at Murray’s,” he writes in his “Diary,” for 1831: “mentioned to him Lady Morgan’s wish to contribute something to his ‘Family Library,’ and that she has materials ready for the lives of five or six Dutch painters. ‘Pray, isn’t Lady Morgan a very good cook?’ I answered I didn’t know; but why did he ask? ‘Because,’ said he, ‘if she would do something in that line—’ ‘Why, you don’t mean,’ said I, ‘that she should write a cookery book for you?’ ‘No,’ answered John, coolly, ‘not so much as that; but that she should re-edit mine’ (Mrs. Rundell’s, by which he had made heaps of money). Oh, that she could have heard this with her own ears! Here ended my negotiations for her Ladyship.”
It was not merely to Englishmen that Murray extended a helping and a generous hand. When the first volume of the “Sketch Book,” originally published in America, made its appearance in London, it was declined by Murray, and Irving was about to publish it on his own account; but after all arrangements had been made the printer failed. Lockhart had praised the book in Blackwood; and Scott, seeing at once its sterling worth, with his usual kindliness, pressed its merits upon Murray, who gave Irving £200 for it, afterwards more than doubling the amount. Murray’s transactions with Irving exhibit a singular phase of the international copyright law. This is how their account stands—
| £ | |
| “Sketch Book” | 467 |
| “Bracebridge Hall” | 1050 |
| “Tales of a Traveller” | 1575 |
| “Life of Columbus” | 3150 |
| “Companions of Columbus” | 525 |
| “Conquest of Grenada” | 2100 |
| “Tour on the Prairies” | 400 |
| “Abbotsford and Newstead” | 400 |
| “Legends of Spain” | 100 |
| Total | £9767 |
These sums of money having been paid, Mr. Bohn reprinted the volumes in a cheap edition. A law suit was of course the result, in which Murray’s expenses ran up to £850, and Mr. Bohn’s were probably as heavy. The question, however, was settled amicably, without being fought to the bitter end, and Irving received no more money from this side the Atlantic.
Most of the famous men with whom Murray had been connected had by this time disappeared, many of them having shed their rays meteor-like, and having done the duty unto which they were created in a momentary flash. The seething excitement called into being by the throes of the first French Revolution had subsided, and there were neither readers left to appreciate true poetry, nor true poets remaining, with strength of voice left in them to bring back memories in passion-laden melodies of the troublous times they sprung from. All, on the contrary, was quiet and easeful—a happy time for commerce, but a barren hour for art.
Murray, skilled as any pilot in watching the direction of the wind, turned his attention to the publication of travels and expeditions—the very books for a fireside afternoon, when the wind is howling outside, and the snow-storm beating on the windows—and very soon Albemarle Street was as famous for its “Travels” as it had previously been for its “Belles-Lettres.” Among the most valuable and successful of these were the expeditions of Mungo Park, Belzoni, Parry, Franklin, Denham, and Clapperton.
Murray had just launched his “Classical Handbooks,” under the editorship of his son—had just made, in trade parlance, “another great hit” in Lady Sale’s “Journal in Afghanistan”—when an attack of general debility and exhaustion compelled him to leave business and success alone—and for ever. He rallied so often that no serious results were anticipated by his family or physician; but after a very short illness he died suddenly on the 27th June, 1843, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, leaving three daughters and one only son. To his widow, in a will dated only seven days before his death, he bequeathed the whole of his estate.
A gentleman by manners and education; generous and open-handed, not for purposes of display, often not from mere trade motives, but from a true desire to return to genius and industry something of what he derived from them; an excellent man of business, with more powers of work than most men, understanding better than any how to measure the calibre of an author’s genius, and to gauge the duration of his popularity; skilful in timing a publication, so as to ensure a favourable reception, and yet honestly abhorring any recourse to the low art of puffing—such was John Murray as a publisher; the best representative of an honourable calling, and one who by his own influence tended not a little to make the years of his own working life the best representative period of English literature.
Mr. John Murray, who succeeded at once to his father’s business, was born in the year 1808, and was consequently, in 1843, admirably fitted, by years and professional training, to take the management of so important a concern. He was educated at the Charterhouse and at Edinburgh University, and had had, moreover, all the advantages that foreign travel could bestow. As early as 1831, we hear of “Mr. John Murray, Jun.,” at Weimar, presenting Goethe with the dedication of Byron’s “Marino Faliero,” and being received, together with that mocking and yet reverent tribute, in a gracious, kindly manner.