the philosopher behind the name

As Murdoch University celebrates 30 years of history, it is also cause for celebration that Sir Walter Murdoch lived long enough to know that the second university to be built in Western Australia was to be named after him.

Sir Walter was an essayist, anthologist, biographer and occasional poet, and when Western Australia’s first university opened its doors, Sir Walter was the first to fill its chair of English literature.

People knew him as forthright, simple, modest, intensely serious, a good friend, a wise counsellor, an entertaining companion, and an often irritating but always stimulating critic – a man who was never cynical.

Recognised throughout Australia as one of the country’s finest literary brains Sir Walter died on Thursday 30 July 1970 at the age of 95. But his legend lives on through his prolific and profound literature and through the university that bears his name.

Walter Logie Forbes Murdoch was born on September 17, 1874 at Aberdeenshire in Scotland, the fourteenth child of Free Church minister the Reverend James Murdoch. At the age of 10 he travelled to Melbourne with his parents.

He was educated at Melbourne’s Scotch College before going on to Melbourne University where he laid the foundation for his future greatness. He took his Master of Arts degree with first-class honours in logic and philosophy.

His first job was as a tutor to a squatter’s children at the princely sum of $80 a year plus keep. A year later prospects brightened when he accepted the post as Principal of private school Hamilton Academy, doubling his annual income. Sir Walter recalled the job was not without its shortcomings as in addition to his teaching duties he had to slaughter sheep, the carcasses of which were hung beside the outhouse where the junior masters slept. He stuck at this post for only a year.

Sir Walter started a private boys’ school at Camberwell selling it out three years later to take over a school in Warrnambool. In 1904 he accepted the post of lecturer in English literature at Melbourne University, a post he held for seven years.

In 1911 Sir Walter began his long and close association with newspapers when he joined the Melbourne Argus as a writer.

A year later saw the beginning of Western Australia’s first university, The University of WA, and wisely the founders recruited the talented Scot at age 38. Sir Walter and his first wife, whom he married in 1897, moved west – he to take and build a legend out of the professorship of English at the University and she to raise the three children of the marriage.

He brought to his lectures tolerance and human understanding and little respect for examinations. He encouraged students to grow into their subject and not simply dwell on their marks.

His writing became prolific – ‘Loose Leaves’ in 1910, ‘The Australian Citizen’ in 1912 and ‘The Making of Australia’ in 1915 – and in 1922 he published perhaps his best work ‘The Life of Alfred Deakin’, an excellent biographical sketch. He was a friend of Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, who is believed to have been instrumental in securing his post at The University of WA. When Deakin died in 1919, Professor Murdoch wrote, “The news of Mr Deakin’s death darkens the minds of all who knew him.”

In the wake of his many books, essays and other writings came national and international recognition.

Certainly Australian literature would have been poorer without his vigorous philosophy, which can perhaps be summed up in one of his sayings: “Man is a queer blend. There’s a lot of ape in him – but a certain amount of angel.”

Sir Walter admitted to many vices but considered the worst to be preaching. His preaching was best known to Australians in weekly essays published for many years in newspapers throughout Australia.

There were many who disagreed with some aspects of his philosophy but he was never a cynic. Near the end of his life he concluded that the two major evils of the world were war and inequality. Closer to home was his thesis on suburban spirit. He held a dislike for the suburban mind. “This is, for me, the enemy everlasting,” he said.

His fame and talent as an educator received due acknowledgment and successively he rose to Vice Chancellor, Pro Chancellor and finally Chancellor in 1943 at age 69.

At age 73 and after nearly 50 years as an educator he retired from university life. Throughout his career at the university and beyond he had a strong influence on the development of student life and thought.

Retirement was his adored little brick home amid the trees and shrubs on a Mill Point Road area clifftop property overlooking the river and city, a home he had bought in 1919.

Royal recognition came in 1964 when he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George for services to education and literature.

His first wife died in 1952 and 10 years later at age 87 he married his secretary, carer and companion Barbara Cameron.

When told in July 1970 by his wife that there was to be a second university built in WA and the State Government wanted to name it after him, Sir Walter was touched. Before the month was over Sir Walter had died.

But his name and philosophies have lived on through Murdoch University for the past 30 years.

Sir Walter Murdoch wrote: “Success and unsuccess are best ignored. To have watched life with undiminished curiosity; to have faced the end of life with courage unimpaired; to have won prizes without loss of humility; to have met defeat without loss of hope; to have loved and been loved; to have taken delight in simple things and common people; to have kept alive our faith in our fellows and to have done our best, according to the measure of our poor abilities, to serve them; to have kept our hearts from cruelty and our minds from cynicism; I don’t say that this is to make a success of life, but it is at least not to have failed ignobly.”

What others thought of Sir Walter Murdoch: One of Sir Walter’s closest colleagues Professor Fred Alexander, former head of The University of WA’s History Department, said Sir Walter would be remembered with affection and respect by the thousands of students who passed through his hands. He said Sir Walter’s peculiar quality rested on his broad humanity, his ready accessibility and his sympathy for the underdog. He also had this wonderful capacity for pricking bubbles of self-esteem whether among senior colleagues at the university or others in authority in the community.

Sir Walter was an honorary life member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers. President Olive Pell said “Sir Walter had been a good friend to many young writers who continued to see him at his home to get advice. Some owe him a great debt of gratitude.”

West Australian author Mary Durack Wilson said there was nothing of cold arrogance about Sir Walter. When she was younger he told her that if she wanted to write then she should know what she wanted to say and express it clearly and precisely.

He was described by Australian literary historian H.M Green as “the best English-language essayist of the day”. Murdoch was of the company of Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb, Leacock and Lynd. His comments often sardonic, sometimes bitter but never corrosive, were sheathed in fancy and wit. They had a “halo of laughter” around them.

The former Governor General Sir Paul Hasluck was an ex-student. In an obituary address to Sir Walter he said, “Murdoch was a preacher, a reformer and a serious man – a man who cared seriously about the outcome and wanted to do his part in shaping the outcome. Yet he did not like the narrowness, the pretensions that he observed in other people who preached, who reformed and who were serious.”

“Walter Murdoch is the man who made the Australian essay popular. He brought warmth to it. Murdoch and J. Le Gay Brereton made personal contact with their readers by an easy gentle style of writing that frightened none away. They wooed readers by simplicity that was neither dull nor time serving to any prejudice.” Kylie Tennant in the Australian Essay.

“Sir Walter would have approved of the open-minded university that bears his name,” wrote journalist Brian Pash in 1974. “The author of ‘Reflections in The Soup and Tripe and Onions’ would also have approved of the back-to-living problems that are the main subjects of its curriculum. He would have also liked the casual wear and air of the students, for he himself had that shaggy, free-roaming look of Highland cattle.”