Letters to His Friends Part 1

Letters to His Friends.

by Forbes Robinson.

NOTE

This volume has been printed for private circulation at the request of many of Forbes Robinson's personal friends. The first edition having been exhausted, a second has been prepared, in which are included six additional letters (cf. pp. 151, 154, 164, 166, 167, 182). Copies of this volume will be supplied (price 2s. 6d. post free) to all who desire to obtain them, on application to the Rev. Canon Charles H.

Robinson, Hill Brow, Woking. The volume of College and Ordination Addresses which will be published by Longmans in about two months' time can be ordered through any bookseller.

_October_ 1904.

[Transcriber's note: The book contains a number of short Greek phrases, all of which have been transliterated according to Project Gutenberg's "Greek How-To". A more detailed transliteration note follows each paragraph or article where the Greek phrase occurs.]

[Transcriber's note: Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book, in accordance with Project Gutenberg's FAQ-V-99. For its Index, a page number has been placed only at the start of that section. In the HTML version of this book, page numbers are placed in the left margin.]

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH

CHAPTER I

SCHOOLDAYS

Forbes Robinson was born on November 13, 1867, in the vicarage of Keynsham, a village in Somerset lying between Bristol and Bath. He was the eleventh child in a family of thirteen, of whom eight were sons and five daughters. His parents were both from the north of Ireland, and his Christian name had been his mother's surname. The motto attached to his father's family crest was 'Non n.o.bis solum sed toti mundo nati.'

Before he was three years old his father moved to Liverpool and became inc.u.mbent of St. Augustine's, Everton. He died before Forbes was thirteen, but the memory of his holy life remained as an abiding influence. Thus he writes of him in 1903:

'The old memories form a kind of sacred history urging me onwards and upwards. I like to feel that I reap the prayers and thanksgivings of my father, that G.o.d blesses the son of such a father. The same work, the same G.o.d, the same promises, the same hope, the same sure and certain reward. I thank G.o.d and take courage.'

{2} As a boy he was never robust and might even be regarded as delicate. After attending one or two private schools he was entered, at the age of twelve, at Liverpool College, where five of his brothers had been. When his father died in February 1881, the house in Liverpool was given up and Forbes was sent to Rossall. He continued at Rossall till he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1887.

The photograph which is inserted on p. 4 was taken just before he went to Rossall. He was then a shy retiring boy, fonder of reading than of athletic exercise. One who was in the same house with him at Rossall, and who is now vicar of a parish in Lancas.h.i.+re, writes:

'His life at Rossall was not an outwardly eventful one. Not being athletic, he lived rather apart from and above the rest of us in a world of books. The walls of his study used to be almost covered with extracts, largely, I think, from the poets, copied on to sc.r.a.ps of paper and pinned up all round, partly to be learnt by heart and partly, I think, for companions.h.i.+p. He was much older than the rest of us whose years were the same as his. His school life was a time of retirement and preparation for the wider life among men at Cambridge.

Though my memory of him as a quiet studious member of the house, more often alone than not, and quite happy to be alone so long as his books were near him, is very distinct, I can recall almost nothing of the nature of incident or about which one can write.'

The present headmaster of Marlborough, who was {3} also a contemporary at Rossall, writes in a letter to the editor of this memoir:

'Your brother was a great recluse at Rossall, and I much doubt whether you would get any great amount of information about him from Rossallians. I knew him because we were both interested in reading, and I owed a good deal to his influence. . . . You will find, I believe, that his Cambridge days show him in a far clearer light than his school days. I know that when I saw him at Cambridge I realised with pleasure that he was a welcomed visitor in the rooms of very various types of undergraduates, whereas his circle at school had been very limited, and most boys no doubt regarded him as quite "out of it."

This is of course to some extent the fault of the athletic standards of our schools, but I also think that he himself developed a great deal socially at Cambridge.'

A sketch of Forbes, by Dr. James, written for 'The Rossallian,' will be found at the close of this chapter. Dr. Tanc.o.c.k, who succeeded Dr.

James as headmaster of Rossall a year before Forbes left, writes:

'When I was appointed to Rossall in 1886, I found him a member of the upper sixth form. . . . He always gave me the impression of an earnest-minded, hard-working boy, with a deep sense of duty. It was rather suggested to my mind sometimes, possibly erroneously, that as a younger boy he had felt himself misunderstood, and a certain reserve was the consequence, not perhaps unnaturally. He was already much interested in theological work. . . . It {4} has been a great pleasure to me in later years to hear of his excellent work at Christ's and the strong influence he exerted over undergraduates. It was quite the natural result of the qualities I saw in him at school, provided once his reserve could be broken.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: Forbes Robinson (1880)]

Though of Irish descent he only once visited Ireland. This was during his summer holidays in 1884, when he travelled round a good part of the north and west coasts. The only adventure of special interest was his unintended voyage across the Bay of Donegal, which was nearly attended with fatal consequences. He and his brother, the editor of this memoir, started in a small open sailing boat from the harbour of Killybegs, intending to return within a few minutes; but no sooner had they got outside the harbour than they were caught in a squall, which rapidly developed into a gale, and made it impossible to turn the boat or head it for the sh.o.r.e, owing to the immediate risk of swamping. The only means of securing momentary safety was to head the boat out into the Atlantic, but as the nearest land in this direction was the coast of America, the prospect was far from cheerful. Eventually the boat was turned a few points further south, in the direction of land which could not be seen, but which was known to lie about fifteen miles away on the other side of the Bay of Donegal. After having been nearly swamped many times, and running with bare poles, owing to the violence of the gale, the boat arrived at length at Bundoran. As this place was distant some sixty miles from Killybegs, {5} it seemed wearisome to return by land, and a return by sea was out of the question.

Accordingly, Forbes and the writer, drenched to the skin and without a vestige of baggage, started forthwith on a walking tour along the west coast of Ireland, arriving at Connemara in the course of the following week. Forbes's dislike of sea voyages in after years may in part be traced to this experience. During the greater part of the voyage across Donegal Bay he was helpless from sea-sickness; his companion was busily occupied in baling out the water to prevent the boat from sinking.

The letters which Forbes wrote from school to members of his family are a curious mixture of humour and religion. It was his keen sense of humour which preserved him from becoming morbid. It was this same sense of humour which helped to attract to him at the University men on whom he eventually exercised a strong religious influence, but whom religious conversation would have inevitably repelled.

In two letters written to one of his sisters from Rossall in 1886, the following sentences occur. They show that he found time while at school for a considerable amount of reading which was not connected with his school work:

'You ask me to tell you what books I have been reading. Among others, Longfellow's "Hiawatha" and "Evangeline," both exquisite; continually the "In Memoriam," "Idylls of the King"; some of Buchanan, which I scarcely recommend; M. Arnold, which I do most heartily recommend; and Walt Whitman, the {6} great poet of democracy; "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," by De Quincey, good in its way; G. Eliot and Mrs.

Browning, &c., &c. Perhaps you would like some of those. I read Chas.

Kingsley's "Andromeda"--it is really a splendid rhythmical piece of hexameter--and some of his Life. I rather like pieces of his poetry, and the one you sent me I liked.

'My only birthday advice is: Read more Longfellow. If you have any writers, send me word, though I am sorry to say I can appreciate but few. . . .'

Another letter, written the same year, is entirely composed of selections from Tennyson's 'Princess,' which, he says, 'I have just read through.' He ends, 'Mind you send me gleanings of Milton if you have time.' In another, 'I have been reading a fair amount of Carlyle at present, as we had an essay on "The influence of individuals on great movements of religion, politics, and thought," for which I read especially Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Wors.h.i.+p," and Emerson's "Representative Men," and for which, I am glad to say, I not only got full marks, but the highest maximum possible. Have read Tennyson's "Queen Mary." Am reading "Harold." I liked the first very much, but the latter a great deal more. The scene where Harold debates about telling a lie or the truth is very fine. . . .' The rest of the letter is composed of quotations from 'Harold.' In other letters he says, 'Get Emerson's "Essays" for me.' 'I send you "Aurora Leigh." . . .'

He left Rossall in the summer of 1887, when he {7} was nearly twenty, and entered Christ's College, Cambridge, in the following October. His brother Armitage, now Dean of Westminster, was then fellow and dean of Christ's College, and Forbes occupied the attic rooms over his.

The following notice by Dr. James, now headmaster of Rugby and formerly headmaster of Rossall, appeared in 'The Rossallian' and is reprinted here at his suggestion:

'Forbes Robinson came to Rossall in 1881. He was a member of a very able family; an elder brother is Dean of Westminster; another is Charles H. Robinson, Editorial Secretary of the S.P.G. and translator of part of the Gospels into Hausa. He was a delicate boy, and lived for a year or two in the headmaster's private house, from which he pa.s.sed on into Mr. Batson's. Rather shy and retiring in disposition, and unable to take much part in games, he was not conspicuous in the School until he reached the Sixth, and did not make friends as easily as some boys do. But the few who knew him well recognised in him a deeply affectionate if very sensitive nature, and saw how the religious side of it, afterwards so conspicuous, was even then developing. His powers as a cla.s.sical scholar, though considerable, were not exceptional; they enabled him to reach the Upper Sixth, but not to win a scholars.h.i.+p at his entrance to the university, and I well remember advising him to make theology, to which his inclinations were already drawing him, his special subject at Cambridge. To this I knew he would bring not only interest but power of reasoning and literary culture.

He had won the Divinity Prize of the School in 1885 and again in 1886, and the English Essay Prize (for an essay on "The relative value of art, science, and literature in education") in the latter year.

{8}

'He went up to Christ's, Cambridge, in 1887, and at once addressed himself to his favourite study. What strides he was making in it were apparent at once from the extraordinary series of distinctions which he won--a scholars.h.i.+p at the college, the Carus Greek Testament Prize for undergraduates, the Jeremie Septuagint Prize, a first cla.s.s in the Theological Tripos, the Burney Theological Essay Prize, the Carus Prize for Bachelors, the Crosse Divinity Scholars.h.i.+p, and the Hulsean Prize all fell to him between 1888 and 1893, and finally in 1896 he was elected to a Fellows.h.i.+p at Christ's, where he had already been Theological Lecturer for a year.

'His essay which gained the Burney Prize in 1891 was on "The Authority of our Lord in its bearing upon the Interpretation of the Old Testament." He printed it in 1893 under the t.i.tle of "The Self-limitation of the Word of G.o.d as manifested in the Incarnation."

With characteristic modesty he says in his preface: "I can claim but little of the work as strictly original." This is far too deprecatory; the essay is a singularly lucid statement and attempted solution of a most difficult theological problem, in which all who believe in the Deity of Christ must be deeply interested, and I can bear personal testimony to its helpfulness. It was only the other day that I was reading it afresh, for I had just recovered it, when I feared that the copy he gave me was hopelessly lost and irreplaceable, from South Africa, where a friend to whom I had lent it had taken it among his books. Among Forbes Robinson's later activities were a work on the Coptic Apocryphal Gospels ("the subject," he wrote to me, "was so technical and uninteresting that I did not send you a copy"), and the editing of a Sahidic fragment of the Gospels.

'But his value to Cambridge and to his college lay mainly in the influence for good which he was able to exert over undergraduates.

Again and again I have been told {9} there how great this was; and it was no little achievement for one whose very modesty and humble-mindedness must have made it difficult. But his heart was in the work, and in the maintaining of Christian influences in university life. It is hard to over-estimate the loss which his death at so early an age implies alike to students of theology and to those among whom he was more immediately working. But he has left us the example of a simple and devoted life and the consecration of great and growing powers to his Master's service. "G.o.d buries His workmen, but carries on His work."'

{10}

CHAPTER II

LIFE AS AN UNDERGRADUATE AT CAMBRIDGE

From this point forward the sketch of Forbes's life can be given almost entirely in the words of those who knew him at Cambridge.

A writer in the Christ's College Magazine for the Lent term 1904 says: 'Many older friends will always think of him in his attic rooms, where he began to make his mark in our College society upon his first coming up. Only two other Freshmen had rooms in College, and Robinson's rooms became at once a centre for his year, and later a meeting-place where the gulfs between higher and lower years were bridged over. A little older than most men of his year, he was considerably their senior in character and in intellect. He showed at once the qualities which he retained to such a unique degree in later years--an inexhaustible power of making friends with all sorts and conditions of men, and an insatiable interest in all sides of College life; the most serious things were from the first not beyond his comprehension, and the most trivial did not appear to bore him, even when their freshness had worn off. His love of books was catholic; he possessed a great many and read them {11} to his friends. At the College Debate, of which he became secretary and president in his second year, he was a frequent and fluent speaker, with a remarkable command of language, though sometimes his eloquence was more than half burlesque. His powers of thought and real strength in argument were more often displayed in private discussions, where irony and humour hardly veiled the depth of earnestness below.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: Forbes Robinson (1887)]