I HAVE in my study some mortal stays of an amazing divine. They could also be all that’s left above ground of one in every of Scotland’s best Evangelical preachers. Robert Murray M’Cheyne died in 1843, in Dundee, still a really young man, after a particularly transient but, nevertheless, stellar profession, in an age when preachers were the communication centres of their communities, commanding enormous respect and large congregations.
What I even have is 2 small locks of his hair, in a tiny envelope, 9.5 × 5.5cm, simply labelled “R. M. M’Cheyne Died Saturday 25 March 1843. aged 29.” The locks were evidently cut off by his medical attendant, Dr Gibson, whose wife is linked to the Scottish side of my family. My father found the envelope and recognised the name with some excitement when tasked with clearing the cluttered London home of two elderly Gibson cousins, sisters who departed this life back within the Nineteen Sixties. They were of the generation that lost its men to the trenches of the First World War.
To keep a lock of hair from someone who had died was a commonplace in times past. There are many Victorian rings, brooches, and lockets to be found today wherein are encapsulated locks of hair from children or other close members of the family lost heartbreakingly early. They would have been commissioned by the bereaved, who wanted a very physical memento of their family members.
Although this was something done inside families — who also sometimes arrange their deceased children, fully dressed, to be photographed (at the very least they wouldn’t fidget) — Dr Gibson’s hasty scissor work was probably out of order, even back in 1843. For a physician to maintain a souvenir of a deceased high-profile patient would probably have been frowned on then. Any GP doing such a thing today would most definitely be immediately struck off, and rightly so.
IF IT all sounds a bit mawkish to our ears, it’s price remembering that something a little bit similar is widely advertised today. The bereaved can have the ashes of their partners — and even their pets — hydraulically compressed into industrial-grade diamonds, to be mounted in rings or other jewellery; so possibly things haven’t modified all that much. (I believe the word “squeezed” is rarely utilized in the adverting blurb, but that’s what happens.)
Denied the advantage of extremely powerful hydraulic presses, the Victorians — as epitomised by their Queen herself — went to town with their mourning, as well they may, surrounded as they were by rampant but as yet unconquered diseases.
Infant-mortality statistics were horrific; and overcrowded, insanitary cities were regularly ravaged by cholera and typhus outbreaks on a level that today’s strident anti-vaxxers couldn’t possibly comprehend. Sadly, it was typhus that took Robert Murray M’Cheyne, after an evangelistic sortie to the north-east of England; and his loss to Dundee was huge. Some 7000 people lined the route of his funeral cortège, and he’s buried within the graveyard of St Peter’s, in town. His health had never been particularly strong, but, had he lived a full span, his record of achievements in his twenties suggest that he may need change into one in every of the really great Christian movers and shakers of his age — together with the likes of his contemporary William Wilberforce.
I even have described the locks of hair within the envelope as “mortal stays”, and in order that they are. But, technically, it may be more accurate to explain them as “relics”.
We understand how the medieval period loved its religious relics. There were, apparently, enough bits of the “real Noah’s ark” distributed across the cathedrals of Britain and Europe to construct something sufficiently big to move London Zoo, cages and all. The same type of thing happened with the stays of ancient saints and apostles. There were enough desiccated fingers, femurs, skulls, and other fine details to maintain a medieval Dr Frankenstein happily occupied indefinitely. Relics of the saints were money-spinners, appealing to the superstitious of their day — and a few still do.
I FIND myself keen to honour the memory of a grand servant of God whose words and pastoral diligence touched so many lives 200 years ago that his books are still in print and appreciated today (Comfort in Sickness and Death is M’Cheyne’s study of Lazarus, still in print 180 years after his own demise). So, the query for me now could be: What must be done with those little physical reminders of Dundee’s famous preacher?
A museum perhaps, or a church archive? He definitely belongs to Dundee; but where he goes after me has yet to be decided. For the time being, I’m custodian of those frail, light brown locks, containing the DNA of a particularly distinguished figure from British Evangelical history who’s currently enshrined in my study.
I say “enshrined”, but his reliquary isn’t any splendidly carved, gilded, and inlaid container: it’s merely a fireproof document strongbox, wherein sits the tiny envelope, tucked inside a paperback edition of the Andrew Bonar biography that my father bought to research M’Cheyne’s life.
A humble resting-place, I do know, and it might be good to seek out a more appropriate home. But, for the time being, I’m quite sure that R. M. M’Cheyne rests in peace, and has most definitely risen in glory.
The Revd Mark Rudall is a retired journalist and former director for communications.
