JOHN MURRAY THE THIRD.*
Ma. Jonat MURRAY has done well to enlarge the memoir of his father which he contributed to a recent number of the Quarterly
Review. His little book, admirably written, is a well-deserved tribute to a man of real distinction. John Murray the third was a good deal more than a successful publisher ; he would have made his mark in other professions, if circumstances had com- pelled him to try. He was much more of a scholar than his father, Byron's publisher, and he was probably a far better man of business. The first John Murray, a retired officer of Marines, who founded the firm in 1768 and left it well established at his death in 1793, and the third John Murray, who reorganized the firm when he became its head fifty years later, seem to have had much in common. The John Murray whom we know best, through Byron, Moore, and Scott and their contemporaries, was a talented man with a gift for discerning what the intelligent public wanted to read and for persuading them to do so. But his princely methods of rewarding the authors whom he liked seem, according to his grandson, to have brought the firm into serious difficulties. He did not always count the cost of his spirited ventures, and his son, the subject of this memoir, " had before him many years of strenuous work to remedy this deficiency."
When this is made clear, the success of John Murray the third in maintaining the reputation of the firm and in extending its operations becomes all the more remarkable, for the half-century during which he was its head saw great changes in the book trade and was disastrous to many old publishing housar.
The third John Murray was educated at Charterhouse and at Edinburgh University. He was present at the famous dinner in Edinburgh in February, 1827, at which Scott admitted, for the first time in public, that he was the " Great Unknown," the author of the " Waverley Novels." John Murray in his student days made a special study of geology, and began in Scotland the systematic tours which soon proved very useful to him. A holiday visit to Holland in 1829 inspired him with the idea of making his notes of travel available to others. As he himself wrote in 1887 of those early days-
" At that time such a thing as a Guide-book for Germany, France, or Spain did not exist. The only Guides deserving the name were : Ebel, for Switzerland ; Boyce, for Belgium ; and Mrs. Starke for Italy. Hers was a work of real utility, because, amidst a singular medley of classical lore, borrowed from Lem- priere's Dictionary, interwoven with details regulating the charges in washing-bills at Sorrento and Naples, and an elaborate theory on the origin of Devonshire Cream, in which she proves that it was brought by Phcenician colonists from Asia Minor into the West of England, it contained much practical infer. motion gathered on the spot. But I set forth for the North Of • John 3furrogr III.: 1808-1892. A Brief Memoir. By John Mur.ly Loudon: John Murray. [34. Ga. net.] Europe unprovided with any guide, excepting a few maim- script notes about towns and inns, &c., in Holland, furnished me by my good friend Dr. Somerville, husband of the learned Mrs. Somerville. These were of the greatest use. Sorry was I when, on landing at Hamburg, I found myself destitute of such friendly aid. It was this that impressed on my mind the value of practical information gathered on the spot, and I set to work to collect for myself all the facts, information, statistics, &c., which an English tourist would be likely to require or find useful. I travelled thus, note-book in hand, and whether in the street, the Eilwagen, or the Picture Gallery, I noted down every fact as it occurred. These note-books (of which I possess many dozens) were emptied out on my return home, arranged in routes, along with such other information as I could gather on History, Architecture, Geology, and other subjects suited to a traveller's need ; and, finally, I submitted them to my father. He had known nothing of my scheme, but thought my work worth publishing, and gave it the name of ' Handbook,' a title applied by him for the first time to an English book. But these Routes would have been of comparatively little value, except for the principle and plan upon which they were laid down. I had to consult the wants and convenience of travellers in the order and arrangement of my facts. Arriving at a city like Berlin, I had to find out what was really worth seeing there, to make a selection of such objects, and to tell how best to see them, avoiding the ordinary practice of local Guide-books, which, in inflated language, cram in everything that can possibly be said— not bewildering my readers by describing all that might be seen—and using the most condensed and simplest style in description of special objects. I made it my aim to point out things peculiar to the spot, or which might be better seen there than elsewhere. Having drawn up my Routes, and having had them roughly set in type, I proceeded to test them by lending them to friends about to travel, in order that they might be verified or criticised on the spot. 1 did not begin to publish until after several successive journeys and temporary residences in Continental cities, and after I had not only traversed beaten Routes, but explored various districts into which my countrymen had not yet penetrated."
Thus did the famous " Murray's Handbooks " come into exist- ence, through the industry and enthusiasm of John Murray the third. On his first tour in Germany he called upon Goethe at Weimar, and noted that " the hale old man " wore a clean shirt- " a refinement not usual among German philosophers." He presented Goethe with the manuscript of Byron's unpublished
dedication of W erther to him. He saw Metternich in Vienna, went through Hungary to Orsova, and then explored the Dolo- mites, the first popular description of which in English appeared in his South Germany. His ,first Continental Handbook, covering
Holland, Belgium, and North Germany, appeared in 1836, and was followed by volumes on South Germany, Switzerland, and France. He then enlisted experts to deal with other countries. Thus Richard Ford wrote the excellent Spain, the first edition of which is now much prized, Sir George Bowen wrote on Greece, Sir Francis Palgrave on North Italy. Three years after John Murray had begun the series, Baedeker issued his first guide- book, to Holland, admitting in the Preface that Murray's " most distinguished " book had " given him the idea of his own, though, as his work progressed, he found he could retain only the frame of his original." Like a true German, who never originates but is always good at imitating, Baedeker proceeded to copy each of Murray's Handbooks in turn. John Murray observed with amusement that a note of his own on the red garnets in the slate rocks in a Swiss valley was mistranslated, and that in all editions of Baedeker's Switzerland before 1873 these rocks
were said to be " overgrown with red pomegranates." We are glad to learn that the Handbooks were a " gratifying financial
success," and that John Murray built himself a pleasant house at Wimbledon out of the profits. He was indeed a benefactor to all travellers, not only because he told them where to go and what to see, but also because he refused to recommend hotels that were insanitary, and thus caused a much-needed improve- ment in the conditions of Continental tourist resorts. He became a power on the Continent. Delane once heard a man claiming special privileges in a foreign hotel on the pretext that he was the famous John Murray. Dalane promptly exposed the impostor. Murray himself would have been the last man to barter his independence in that way.
The author tells us a good deal about his father's other enter- prises. One of the most ambitious and valuable was the fine series of Dictionaries of the Bible, Greek and Roman Antiquities, Christian Antiquities, and Hymnology, with the Speaker's Commentary and similar works, edited by Sir William Smith. On these admirable compendiums of learning John Murray the third spent nearly £150,000, and he had to wait long years before he got his money back, though " with him good and creditable work was an incentive as strong as the prospect of financial profit." It is interesting to find that he had a high opinion of that much-abused politician, John Wilson Croker, whom Thackeray and Disraeli, as well as Macaulay, delighted to attack. The author thinks that the publication of Croker's memoirs convinced people that he had been ill-used. For our part., we are not wholly convinced. Shelburne's fragmentary memoirs, printed by Lord Fitzmaurice, are very persuasive also, but his contemporaries must have had sound reason for disliking his personality and calling him " Malagrida," after a Jesuit con- spirator in Brazil. Probably Croker angered people in some similar way. However, it is fair to notice Mr. John Murray's statement that Thackeray, after hearing an anecdote about Croker's kindness to some Anglo-Indian children, went to his widow to apologize for having caricatured her husband as " Wenham." Disraeli, on being asked why he had treated " Rigby " so savagely, replied characteristically, " I will tell you some day "—but never did. Lord Dufferin, too, expunged from his Letters from High Latitudes a slighting allusion to Croker after he had read the memoirs. In regard to Layard's famous book on Nineveh, Mr. Murray says that Layard offered to sell the copyright to John Murray the third for £250. The publisher refused to let him make such a bad bargain, but offered him a share of the profits, amounting in the first year alone to £1,500 and to considerable annual sums for many years after. John Murray the third delighted to entertain his clients, including Darwin, Livingstone, and George Borrow. Of Borrow we are told that at a dinner party he and the masterful Dr. Whewell of Trinity " fell into such violent controversy that it seemed likely they would come to blows, and Mrs. Whewell was carried fainting out of the room." Appended to the memoir are some of the scholarly letters of travel written by John Murray from the Continent, which he visited yearly until he was a very old man. The memoir has the unusual fault of being too brief, but it does justice to its subject and adds a new and interesting chapter to the history of English publishing.
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