Letters to His Friends. Forbes Robinson
arose: How was my luggage to be conveyed the five miles from the nearest town up a steep hill? Latin, French, English, German, failed to make me understand the situation. At last I took in the Pfarrer's meaning. I was to send it by the milkman after leaving it at a certain hotel. "Ja," I cried in an ecstasy of joy, at last grasping his meaning, "Ja, ich mittam der Gepäck von der milkman." I arrived the next day. I found the Pfarrer knew Latin, Greek (but he pronounces both quite differently from me), German, French, Russian, Syriac, Hebrew, and a little English. His usual custom is to address me in German. If I fail to understand, he tries Latin and intersperses his remarks with Greek and Hebrew. So my great difficulty is first of all to find out what language he thinks he is speaking in.
'Yesterday we were sitting, smoking and drinking, in the village "Wirthshaus" among the natives of the place, the Pfarrer addressing me in Latin, the villagers staring at his learning in adoration and astonishment, and laughing at my attempts at German. The landlord came up to me when I arrived and sent in a bottle of wine for me, refusing to be paid for it, for he said that the natives of Interlaken fleeced the English; but when Habkern was for once honoured by the presence of one, the people were not going to treat him in the same way.
'It is curious how the Pfarrer goes and sits and drinks and gossips in the "Wirthshaus," even on Sunday, I think. Last Sunday they had a country dance, and very curious and pretty was the scene—the old-fashioned wooden room—the odd national dress of the women—the curiously cut brown clothes of the men—the thick boots—the fiddlers raised above the rest—the quaint urn with its inscriptions above—the gaping crowd of villagers. Then the church is strange—very rude and simple, all whitewashed. The women sit on one side, the men on the other. They stand to pray and hear the text, and sit to sing and hear the sermon. The organ and font are placed at one end. The elders stand below the organ, the Pfarrer is lost in the far distance, right up in a big pulpit. The "Predigt" or sermon is everything. They have one written prayer before and one after the "Predigt." The people never say "Amen" or anything—only sing. They sing so slowly that, although I had only been with the Pfarrer three days, I could almost sing and look out the words in the dictionary at the same time! I talk German with every one who will talk with me. So well did I spin yarns when I had been in the country three or four days, that with a mixture of Latin and German I managed to make a German use strong language at some of my tales, which he was pleased to think were not exactly true. Reflecting on the situation afterwards, I remembered that I had told him, among other things, that I had walked nearly fifty "stunden" in a day. His language was awful. I found afterwards that "stunde" was not, as I had supposed, an English "mile," but an English "hour." But I keep on talking. I have come to the conclusion that the way to learn a language is to argue in it. Accordingly I do so. I have tried to convince them that the order of bishops is semi-apostolic, and that if St. Paul did not actually wear a surplice himself, his successors shortly afterwards did.
'One other thing, if you ever reply to this letter: would you copy out a few of the most thickly marked lines in the "Grammarian's Funeral" in my edition of Browning? They are always in my mind, but I can't quite recollect how they go. There is no poem I like so much as that. I would send you some butterflies, but I daren't kill them. Some of us may have once been butterflies: as M. Arnold says,
'What was before us we know not,
And we know not what shall succeed.'
To H. M. S.
'Habkern: August 1890.
'There is a French pensionnaire staying here, the same as I am. He is very polite, but his tastes are diametrically opposite to mine. He likes wine, walking, women, smoking, painting, violin and piano playing, dogs, and the like.
'He asked me whether I liked the French. I told him "No," and gave him a good many reasons. He abhors the Germans. I told him I thought the Germans were a fine race. I'm occupying my time in sleeping, arguing, observing the natives, and reading a Tauchnitz edition of "Martin Chuzzlewit," which is good, though already a young girl of seventeen has been introduced, very beautiful and all the rest, and I'm afraid she won't be poisoned, but marry a certain young man already introduced. I'd give a good deal to be able to write a novel in which all the young ladies tumbled out of windows, six stories high, and were picked up dead. I think I must try and write one. Shall I dedicate it to you? The heroine will be a plain old lady with white curls, close on sixty-five, without any money, but with a certain amount of intellect. There will be no marriages, but suicides and murders if necessary.
'I'm inventing a German word of 1,000 letters. It is to be divided into some 150 or 200 compartments. After each compartment there is five minutes for refreshments. After about the 500th letter there will be half an hour allowed for dinner. After the 600th letter or so there will be a notice to the effect that no person with a weak heart may proceed further without consulting a medical man. After about the 980th there will be a notice forbidding any one to go further until their family doctor is in attendance. I have thought of the groundwork of the word—the finished word I'm going to send to M——, as he has the strongest constitution of any one I know. Then I shall get Duke Bismarck to patent it; after which I shall take out a professorship on the strength of it at Berne. It will, of course, be the "Hauptsache" of my existence.'
Forbes was far from being an athlete, but in 1891, shortly before his ordination, he accomplished the feat of walking with two athletic friends from London to Cambridge in a day, a distance of more than fifty miles. The following description is by Mr. A. N. C. Kittermaster, who was one of his companions.
Walk from London to Cambridge.
Some of us had read that Charles Kingsley had walked from London to Cambridge; so we determined to follow in his footsteps. We were a party of three—Forbes Robinson, D. D. Robertson, and myself. We spent the previous day at the Naval Exhibition, the night at the Liverpool Street Hotel, and at 4.30 A.m. of Tuesday, August 25, 1891, we started on our fifty-mile trudge. We walked steadily, at first over immense stretches of pavement, till we reached Ware, twenty-one miles out. There we had breakfast or lunch of huge chops at 10.15. After that we took the road again, and did not call a halt of any length till we had put another twenty miles behind us. The day was fine but dull, and we were not troubled by the heat. At the fortieth milestone it began to appear doubtful whether we should all reach the journey's end. I have an entry in my diary: 'At 40 Robertson bad, I worse, Deanlet (i.e. Forbes) quite fit.' So at Foulmire, nine miles from Cambridge, we stopped for tea. By this time I was in a state of temporary collapse, but I remember the other two during tea carried on an animated discussion upon the creation as described in Genesis. We all felt better after the rest and covered the last stage fairly easily, arriving at Christ's at 9.30 P.m. We had a meal in Forbes's rooms, fought our battles over again, and retired to rest about midnight.
The thing which remains with me best is the amazing ease with which Forbes accomplished the journey. It is a matter of common experience that prolonged physical effort reacts on the mind; conversation becomes difficult, and cheerfulness forced. I must say that in my case the thought which for a considerable period occupied my mind was how I was to get to the end. But it was not so with Forbes. He travelled lightly, talking happily on all subjects the whole day. It seemed to make little difference to him whether he took food or no, and he was as willing to stop at every place of refreshment we suggested as to march the whole day without a meal.
CHAPTER III
WORK AT CAMBRIDGE
In September 1891 Forbes was ordained as curate to his brother Armitage, who was at that time vicar of All Saints', Cambridge. Several of the letters which are given later refer to his thoughts and feelings at the time of his ordination. His connection with All Saints' did not last more than a year, as his brother resigned in the following spring. Forbes had already been