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Before Rupert

Keith Murdoch and the Birth of a Dynasty

University of Queensland Press

A different path

London, 12 July 2011. A week before he delivered his stumbling testimony to the committee of MPs, Rupert Murdoch was photographed power-walking the paths of Hyde Park. As his empire teetered, the head of News Corporation was determined to appear fighting fit. The committee would soon be told of his father's legacy, but today Rupert communicated a subtle, perhaps unintentional, message: his cap bore the name 'Rosehearty'.

Rosehearty was the simple fishing village on the barren Aberdeenshire coast where Keith's grandfather James had founded a Free Church of Scotland ministry in 1844. Brought up in the manse there, James's son Patrick went on to become Free Church minister of Cruden Bay, before following his own mission call to emigrate to Australia in 1884 away from the convulsions in the Free Church and the scourge of tuberculosis. The Murdochs were a family of solid Presbyterian stock with a Calvinistic dedication, propriety and diligence. But Rupert's crew cap came from another Rosehearty – his multimillion-dollar superyacht. World leaders had been guests on that yacht and had seen the dining room with its wall-wide map of the world, America at the centre, the scene of secret unrecorded meetings. It was the stateless zone of the super-rich where deals could be struck and the media and political world carved up beyond the range of telephoto lenses. In 2008 it was to this Rosehearty that British Prime Minister David Cameron when still Leader of the Opposition had been flown by Gulfstream jet and granted an audience in his successful effort to gain the support of the Murdoch press in the forthcoming election.

A century earlier Keith Murdoch had been in London, a handsome and physically imposing young man with intense brown eyes under a heavy brow. He was feeling homesick, and a casual glance would not have revealed him as the painfully shy man he then was. He also suffered from a cruelly debilitating condition: under stress his breaths became shorter and his throat muscles constricted, strangling his voice and shutting down his ability to communicate.

At just twenty-two, Keith had left Australia and the security of his father's manse in suburban Melbourne for the first time. He had arrived in London hoping to find immediate success in Fleet Street as well as the best expert on speech available. But he found himself in a strange and hostile city, torn between a passion to pursue a career in journalism and the pressure to continue in the line of family preachers. His plan to gain the valuable experience he craved in this centre of the world's press had so far come to nothing.

During one lonely, doubt-racked midsummer evening, Keith stopped to rest on a bench in Hyde Park. He was suddenly gripped by what he described in a letter to his father as a 'religious experience'. But he simply could not reconcile himself to devoting his whole life and career to the Church, as his stern clergyman father had always hoped. Journalism was a calling as much as the ministry, and Keith imbued his choice with a missionary zeal: 'Tonight I fancy that my path lies clearly along journalism, where undoubtedly great work can be accomplished.' He assured his father that however his future developed, he would pray 'for strength throughout the years to work for Christ'.

The break was made, the decision set. After all, as he pointed out, with his speech impediment he would not be a suitable preacher. Henceforth, Keith Murdoch and his descendants would find other platforms and a bigger congregation.

He was determined to make his name in the city and wouldn't leave, whatever the cost, until he was a good journalist. With Fleet Street as his training ground he was sure he would learn an enormous amount, and, all going well, he 'should become a power in Australia'. As he told his father:

I know that you have never been keen on my profession and would have preferred a more stable walk of life nor do you trust press work for any good end. I assure you I would be happy and relieved to give it up but I see the opportunities and necessities and I shall go ahead to become a power for good. If I consulted my own inclination I would be in a much easier path than journalism but I see enormous possibilities ahead ...'

There was a caveat: '[T]hat is of course if I overcome my stammer.' But Keith saw a higher plan even in this. It was surely 'a dispensation of Providence, for to him that overcometh shall be given not a crown – I don't want that – but enlarged opportunities for useful service'.

Keith's letters reveal the bubbling cauldron of his mind – ambition clashing with a sense of inadequacy mixed with a Calvinistic streak of denial and Darwinian principles of self-improvement. He foresaw 'a pretty bad time' over the next eighteen months but faced it 'confidently because I want a struggle':

The 'survival of the fittest' principle is good because the fittest become very fit indeed. I've sacrificed a nice easy position, comforts, friends and hundreds of pounds by coming here but I hope to get very fit.

His life, he felt, had 'been altogether too easy' so far.

But Keith's childhood in Melbourne had not been easy in some ways. Determined and vocal, Reverend Patrick Murdoch held a series of prominent positions in the Presbyterian Church of Australia, including a time at its head as moderator-general. A 'cleric who valued social connexions', his standing in society was high, but his clergyman's stipend remained low. And so, though Keith grew up playing with the sons of the wealthy and influential, he did so, as he would painfully recall, in patched pants. The importance of capital – or at least access to and friendship with those who had it – was a lesson Keith absorbed early in life. He also felt the weight of family expectation, for he had been named Keith Arthur Murdoch after his father's youngest brother, who had left Scotland to make his career in London and died of tuberculosis, aged twenty, two years before young Keith's birth. Keith was also the eldest son, as his older brother, George, had died tragically soon after Keith's own birth on 12 August 1885.

School had been an ordeal for a boy who could not read aloud in class, yet Keith had applied himself diligently. He attended various local schools, including the small coaching college set up by his uncle Walter Murdoch, who became a prominent journalist and essayist. There he was drilled in the belief that clear written English is the bedrock to success, and Walter's stint as a parliamentary reporter for the Argus helped inspire Keith's interest in journalism as a career. Keith had decided against going to university, fearing the cost and the effect it would have on the upbringing and potential opportunities for his younger brothers (Ivon, Frank, Alan and Alec) and sister Helen, just a year his senior. It was a sacrifice he would come to regret in London, where he felt wholly out of his depth: 'a baby in thought and knowledge'.

In other ways Keith's path had been smoothed for his career as a journalist; before he left he had been given a job at the Melbourne Age. The Scots-born proprietor David Syme no doubt accepted him as a favour to the Murdoch family, as he and the Reverend Patrick Murdoch were friends and their wives were on visiting terms. Keith impressed his prospective employer by his initiative in having already learned the crucial skill of shorthand.

The going was tough, however. As a lowly suburban reporter Keith had to battle to work up stories and establish contacts. This was made even more difficult because of his stammer, so bad that he often had to resort to drafting notes in order to communicate, even to buy a train ticket. Keith's livelihood depended entirely on the sub-editor's willingness to publish the stories he submitted. He cannily cultivated the 'bearded old terror', marking the start of a pattern he would repeat with increasing utility throughout the first half of his career. After five years of this hard graft, by 1908 he had managed to earn and save more towards his London trip than if he had been a regular staff reporter.

When he set out from Melbourne, Keith had safely stowed in his trunk a light but precious cargo: a sheaf of letters of introduction, including one from his employer praising his 'zeal and industry'. Other letters had been requested from leading figures connected to the Presbyterian Church. But potentially most useful and certainly most impressive, with its embossed Commonwealth of Australia letterhead, was the letter from his father's friend Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, introducing 'a well known and much respected young journalist'.

The letters of introduction might have been impressive but the list of contacts Keith had to pursue after his arrival in Britain was hardly at the dynamic edge of Fleet Street. Trusting that God's support was already in the bag, his more mundane hopes of gaining the entrée to experience rested on the church journalist and publisher William Robertson Nicoll. However, Nicoll delivered a rebuff and the 'cold stern slaughter of some hopes', saying he was only prepared to help Keith indirectly. Nevertheless, writing up pieces from the Pan-Anglican Congress for the Church Family newspaper gave Keith three days' work. A few freelance pieces in the British Weekly and Daily News on church politics followed. But Keith was soon worn out with worry that his writing was going nowhere. Still, his resolve and ambition reasserted themselves and he told his father, 'I'm going to become a moving force yet.'

On the other side of the world, Patrick Murdoch could only worry at his son's state of mind. Keith admitted to having had a breakdown, which in London had manifested itself as 'repeated headaches, a constant feeling of weakness, clouded depression over the brain, condition of speechlessness with strangers, fear now and then of doing mad things – in fact, pure nervous depression through over work'. He had tried to do too much too quickly. It was time to put the piecemeal, desperate attempts at press work to one side and instead confront the underlying block to his prospects of success.

In the British autumn of 1908 Keith 'decided to run for health and speech' back to Scotland and the safe, comforting haunts of Rosehearty and Cruden. Travelling between relatives and enjoying golf in Dumfries, he regained his spirit and concentrated on eliminating his stammer. While still in London, he had sought out the best elocutionist and voice expert he could. Madame Behnke claimed that, having practised her method for forty years, she had identified the main cause of the problem for those afflicted: blockages in the nasal and respiratory passages. Contributory factors included 'public-school life' and, less convincingly, 'worms'. After assessing Keith, Madame delivered her expert opinion: he was suffering from 'rheumatism of the throat', a condition not helped by the damp, foggy conditions of the approaching London winter. Strict adherence to the Behnke Method's program of rigorous muscle exercise was deemed necessary not just for the sufferer, but 'for the sake of his ... possible descendants'. While he laboriously repeated 'rhythmic speaking' Keith planned to purchase the latest travelling typewriter with which he could bash out words as fast and fluently as the keys could strike.

Though this whole British adventure would leave him 'poorer in pocket', Keith took comfort in the hope that by its end he would be 'richer in justified and settled ambitions and ideals, and richer in knowledge and friends'. But so far, with his travel between London and Scotland, boarding with family members, and finding conversation difficult, friends had eluded him. Trusting that his contacts would still secure him openings in London, Keith settled on a new path. He announced to his father, 'I'm going to study. I want a room to myself; a freedom from responsible work. I shall find classes, books, teachers and literary work.' Fearing that his father might think that he had not taken on responsible work, Keith explained his aim: he was going 'to study men and politics'. Back in London with 'an abundance of hopeful spirits and a determination to do well', Keith was able to tell his father that he had enrolled at the new London School of Economics (LSE).

The search for student digs had been an eye-opening experience. Following a day spent 'hunting in queer holes about the north and west', he suddenly came across the Caledonian Christian Club. Although it was badly run, adjoined a singing school, the bathroom was next door, there were 'fleas in the bed' and a drunkard lived above, Keith declared it 'OK'. Character-firming self-denial aside, he had a positive reason to overlook its negatives: its address. The lodgings were centrally located in Bloomsbury. But Keith would have neither time nor inclination to become a worshipper at the Regent Square church just around the corner – the church where the Reverend Patrick Murdoch had once served as an assistant minister. The centres of press and political power were now in reach. He could walk to Fleet Street and Westminster.

Keith's Scots-linked press connections in London were still fresh. Aided by his Scots heritage and a passion for golf he scored a lunch with Sir Robert Donald, editor of the Daily Chronicle – 'a very "big" man in London ... I was never so anxious in my life'. Donald told him that his 'colonial experience' was useless and that training him up would be pointless in view of his plans to return to Australia. Nevertheless, Keith managed to secure Donald's informal support and a new sheaf of letters of introduction.

The connections were certainly helping Keith's fortunes. He told his father, 'now the balls are rolling I shall endeavour to get an insight into a London newspaper office'. With this LSE course of study set and with the counsel of his visiting uncle and mentor Walter, Keith's spirits were rising: 'I feel more a part of London now and quite confident that a year of study will be very useful in the future.'

Just before Christmas in 1908, Keith sat down in the room he had tried to make 'cosy' with his growing collection of books and some pictures, to reflect on his routine, fears and hopes:

I'm spending about 1 hour daily reading aloud and exercising. Two hours writing pieces for the Daily Chronicle or Westminster Gazette (which usually refuse them) and eight or nine hours attending lectures and reading. I'm learning a great deal and feel much amazed and grieved at my ignorance.

With this letter to his father Keith enclosed the LSE syllabus, although he felt 'a trifle uneasy' about whether the Reverend would approve of the radical views of L. T. Hobhouse and the other lecturers. Stressing that Hobhouse was 'a fine Christian and I fancy will be the leader of Liberal thought in the next decade', Keith conceded that 'the influence of the school is rather anti-Christian. It tends to Rationalism – which of course is not a religion and thus is really a negative.'

The coming months were a testing time for Keith's faith, spurred on not just by his readings in the new social liberalism but by his experience of the gross inequity of Edwardian London. He was stunned by its contradictions, by the 'squalor, cold and hunger and deformity' of the east 'too near [the] luxurious culture' of the west. But while 'London disgusts', with 'immorality stalking the streets', it still held 'a subtle fascination' for Keith. After all, 'Here is the hub of the world and the centre of 20th century life!' It was underlying ambition that anchored him fast as he fretted over his future:

Journalism certainly is precarious. But I'm young and strong and should not fear. My whole desire I think is to be useful in the world, really useful to the highest causes. And surely if I keep that ambition untarnished I should get my chances.'

During the thick fogs of the London winter, Keith bunkered down in his lodgings, away from the corrupting streets, to absorb the texts from the LSE reading list. Keith recommended his father should read Hobhouse's Mind in Evolution and Democracy and Reaction: 'it will convince you of the need for collectivism'. But he also took the time to devour as many of the city's newspapers and reviews as he could. Keith was 'still very hopeful' that he would get 'the sight I want of a London newspaper office': 'I want 6 months good London experience, and I must have it.'

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Excerpted from Before Rupert by Tom D. C. Roberts. Copyright © 2015 Tom D. C. Roberts. Excerpted by permission of University of Queensland Press.
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