Letters from Gilbert Murray

Archive research tends to be non-chronological. For example, I spent my early months in the archive reading Mary Stella Edwards’ letters from the 1970s and 80s. One name (apart from Judith’s) kept appearing in these letters… Gilbert Murray. Mary Stella mentioned more than once that they corresponded for 37 years. She quoted his name and opinions so often I felt I should already know who he was! I knew he’d written the preface to her first book of poetry, Time and Chance, but that was it. So, who was Gilbert Murray and why was he so important to Mary Stella?

“Immaculate in taste”

A quick search revealed that Gilbert Murray was Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University between 1908 and 1936. He was also heavily involved with the League of Nations, translated many Greek plays, and appeared regularly on the Radio. But it still wasn’t obvious why he and Mary Stella corresponded for so long… Before reading their letters, I read Daisy Dunn’s excellent book Not Far from Brideshead, about Oxford between the wars. From this, I learned that Murray was a strong advocate for women’s education and rights, and a prolific letter writer. He comes across as a very humane person, and frequently funny. His enthusiastic efforts (eventually successful) to marry Lady Mary Howard, rather contradict Virginia Woolf’s opinion that Murray was “so discreet, so sensitive, so low in tone & immaculate in taste that you hardly understand how he has the boldness to beget children”!

The archive holds all Murray’s letters to Mary Stella Edwards from 1920 until 1956. By chance the archive also contains Mary Stella Edwards’ letters to Murray, between 1938 and 1957. These letters were returned to Edwards after Murray’s death. This is fortunate, because although Edwards kept carbon copies of many of her ‘important’ letters in her later years – she does not appear to have done this for her letters to Murray.

A memorable train journey

Mary Stella Edwards and Gilbert Murray met in Staines Town Hall in autumn 1920, following a talk Murray gave about the League of Nations. It seems that they began talking about poetry after the talk, and then walked to the station together… And then Mary Stella followed him on to the train. And then they spent the rest of the journey to Waterloo still deep in discussion! This made such an impression on Murray that he gave Edwards his address and asked her to send him some of her poems. Years later, in 1942, he still remembers their “talk on the train after the Staines meeting” with affection. Presumably, Mary Stella then hopped on a train back home to Staines…

“My dear Stella”

Gilbert Murray addresses his letters, very properly, to “Miss Edwards” for nearly a year. And then suddenly “Dear Stella (is that the right name to call you?)”. This was not long after seeing her in-person, during which I suspect Mary Stella told him she disliked being called Miss Edwards. By contrast, Mary Stella always writes to him as “Dear Professor”. Edwards sends him her poems, short stories and a novel, and Murray responds with complete honesty and respect. He offered to send manuscripts to publishers, or proffers advice on how to approach them. If he disagrees with something, he says so but always allows that she’s chosen a word for a reason.

They met a few times a year in London to discuss her work: either at one of his clubs (The Athenaeum Club and the National Liberal Club), at his London residence, or occasionally at train stations. At least twice she and Judith were invited to the Murrays’ Oxford house in Boar’s Hill. He never once stopped believing in her work, which given that only one book of her poetry was published within his lifetime, must have been enormously important for Mary Stella Edwards.

Gilbert Murray’s first letter

Gilbert Murray’s first letter of 3 October 1920 sets the tone for what is to follow over the next decades:

I think Low Tide is a real beauty. The texture of it is lovely, and I like the way in which you become the sand two verses before you tell us so. It is an extraordinary feeling, that of losing yourself and melting into some bit of nature near you. Two things I do not quite understand: why you end line 2 as you do, on “brown”. Is it a deliberate effect or a weakness of the flesh? And secondly, I suppose in the last line but one, “my body upright”, you have turned back into yourself? Anyhow it is a lovely thing.

Then later he adds:

“Altogether it is not too much to say that the two poems have astonished me, as well as delighted me. You must let me see some more some time, and if you want any advice or introductions (never any use!) please come to me.”

In the last blogpost, I quoted Edwards’ 1974 letter to John Hall Wheelock that Murray predicted she should be famous by the time she was 60. Murray’s first mention of this longed-for recognition first came in 1926, shortly before Mary Stella Edwards sent her first collection to the Hogarth Press. “Don’t speak of annoying me or giving me trouble” he wrote. “I am sure we shall get the things published at last, even if, like Bernard Shaw and other worthy people, you have to wait twenty years. Or to be safer, concentrate your hopes on your sixtieth birthday.” 

Mary Stella Edwards is still not (yet) a famous poet. But at least she didn’t have to wait too much longer after this letter for Leonard Woolf at the Hogarth Press to accept her first book. And Gilbert Murray wrote the promised preface.

Gilbert Murray’s Preface to Time and Chance

“Most of the verses in this little book have already appeared in various weekly magazines, and notably in some whose editors are known as penetrating critics, not easily to be deceived by inferior work. That fact is a guarantee more practically important than any expression of personal opinion would be, and I need not add my commendations to those of the professionals.

I would only say that for a good many years I have read with lively pleasure each poem of Miss Edwards as it came out, and have always looks forward to the next. They belong to no particular school. They bear no striking label. They are not markedly in the fashion nor out of the fashion, nor indeed affected by such outward and irrelevant things as the passing currents of taste. The writer observes delicately and feels keenly; and remains, if I may so express it, undistractedly faithful to the pole-star of poetical beauty. The poems are, as good poems ought to be, acts of worship, not of self-assertion; and they are written with sincerity and loving care.

It is a real pleasure to me to see this collection published, and to be allowed, in obedience to an old promise, to write this word of introduction.”

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