Letters to His Friends Part 2

'It was striking to find a mind so evenly balanced and philosophical become fired with enthusiasm as he spoke in simplest language, in chapel or elsewhere, of great Christian truths or the victories of faith. His sermons influenced, I believe, many of the naturally careless. Simple, impartial, earnest and sympathetic, he won, I know, the deepest affection and respect of many.'

Another writes: 'Bright, pure, and strong--this was the impression he gave me . . . . Many men will be very sorry that he is not here any more, but every one who _knew_ him will be very thankful that he was here, and that they had an opportunity of hearing him "think"

sometimes. I recall him most in his own rooms, beginning to talk on some small matter, and gradually lifting us higher and still higher, until we all silently listened, following as best we, with our muddier minds, could; and even when he got beyond us there were still inspiration and strength to be got from his flashing eyes and on-rushing earnestness; but if some smaller mind broke in, in a moment he was down at the level of that mind, half bantering and wholly sympathising. Nevertheless, some of us have never forgotten the things he showed us as he led us up, and the possibility of soaring very high without losing touch with those whose levels are pathetically human. . . . I do know that he helped {28} me much, and that many things he said I shall never forget, and thank G.o.d for still.'

A Cambridge and international athlete, an intimate friend of Forbes, writes: 'Though I have lost your brother Forbes, and life will be for ever poorer to me, I can't thank G.o.d enough that I ever knew him and loved him, and that he called himself my friend. He was so dear to me--my greatest friend in the world. His goodness and his help to me in my Cambridge days were wonderful. He altered my life. G.o.d has called him home and to the blessed rest of the children of G.o.d, and we are rich still with his memory and the influence of his beautiful, patient, Christlike life.'

In another letter he writes: 'The death, or, as I like to think of it, the pa.s.sing of Forbes into the Great Beyond has been such a grief to me. You have no idea what he was to me--a real man "sent from G.o.d"

into my life. I could do nothing when I heard the sad, and to me utterly unexpected, news, but kneel down by my bedside, and weep till I could weep no more for my beloved friend. I feel so rich and proud to have had him for my friend, and to have had his love; and so do many Cambridge men. Oh, but I did so love him! and my prayer now is that the memory of him with me always may strengthen my weak and feeble life, and help me to live somewhat more as he lived, very near the Master.'

He obtained but little help from self-introspection or self-examination. Thus he writes in one of the letters given later on: 'I am not sure that we cannot learn more about others than we can about ourselves. {29} I never think it is profitable to study oneself too closely. I never could meditate with any profit on my sins. But there, I dare say I differ from many others.'

To very intimate friends he would in rare instances admit that the secret of any influence which he possessed over men was the outcome of his efforts to pray for them. One who had known him intimately at Christ's writes in 1904:

'About eighteen months ago I had the privilege of spending a night with him, and then for the first time I realised how much of his spiritual power was the outcome of prayer. He told me that in his younger days he had taken every opportunity of personally appealing to men to come to Christ. "But," he went on, "as I grow older I become more diffident, and now often, when I desire to see the Truth come home to any man, I say to myself, 'If I have him here he will spend half an hour with me. Instead, I will spend that half-hour in prayer for him.'" Later on, when I had retired for the night, he came to me again and said, "W----, what I have said to you is in the strictest confidence: don't mention it to any one." And this revelation of his inner life is my last memory of him.'

On another occasion he said to one with whom he was staying, when speaking of the little that men could do for each other, 'I think that I should go mad were it not for prayer.'

As an instance of his common sense in a matter in which as a bachelor he could have had no personal experience, he strongly urged a married man, before {30} deciding to accept a curacy which had been offered to him, to let his wife see the vicar's wife or women-folk. 'She will know intuitively,' he said, 'whether she can get on with them and they with her, and it will make all the difference to your work and happiness.' The man to whom this advice was offered writes: 'The advice was given seriously, but with that bright twinkle of his; and I owe much to it, for we have been here since . . . and I don't want to go.'

The following is an extract from a notice which appeared in the 'Guardian '!

'By his published work he is best known to the outer world as one of the few English scholars who have given attention to Coptic. In 1896 he edited "The Coptic Apocryphal Gospels" in the "Cambridge Texts and Studies." The important article on the Coptic Version in Hastings's "Bible Dictionary" came also from his pen, and he was engaged on an edition of the Sahidic fragments of St. Luke's Gospel. His deepest interest, however, lay not in these subsidiary studies, but in the fundamental problems of theology proper. His Burney Prize essay, printed at the University Press in 1893 under the t.i.tle of "The Self-limitation of the Word of G.o.d as manifested in the Incarnation,"

is no doubt comparatively slight, and in some respects immature; but its reverent and fearless treatment of the difficulties of his great theme gave promise of work of permanent value in this field. His interest in the great problems never flagged, and his sympathetic touch with the life and thought of the younger men in his college kept him constantly {31} engaged on the task of putting into clear and ever clearer expression such solutions as he was able to attain. His sermons in College Chapel were singularly effective, because he never wasted a word, and because every sentence was felt to be the outcome of strenuous thought tested by living experience.

'It is not surprising, therefore, that he exercised an unusual influence upon younger students. His friends were very closely bound to him indeed, in bonds which death can consecrate but cannot sever.

They can never cease to thank G.o.d for the pure, bright, tender, utterly sincere, fearless, and faithful spirit He has given them to love.'

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CHAPTER IV

THE LAST FEW MONTHS

From the time that Forbes took his degree at Cambridge his health was far from strong. He suffered from time to time from a form of eczema which caused him a good deal of discomfort and pain. Many of his letters contain references to the fact that he had been unwell and had been unable to do as much work as he had hoped. In September 1897 he went with his brother Armitage on a visit to St. Petersburg and Moscow.

He stayed in the house of a Russian priest at St. Petersburg, and was much interested in the work of Father John of Kronstadt, with whom an interview was arranged which unfortunately fell through at the last moment. Towards the end of 1897 he developed a bad cough and was threatened with phthisis. He accordingly spent Christmas and the first two or three months of 1898 at St. Moritz in Switzerland. His health then seemed to be much improved. For several years he went back to St.

Moritz to spend the greater part of the Christmas vacation. He took great delight in tobogganing, and on one occasion was awarded a prize for a race in which he took part. In the summer of 1899 he went out to South Africa {33} during the Long Vacation. He visited Pretoria and had an interview with President Kruger and his wife. One of his letters records his impressions of the President. He was for some time disposed to believe that the war, which broke out soon after his return, could and should have been avoided, but he subsequently modified his views on this point.

Towards the end of August 1903 the pain from which he had suffered intermittently for years became so much worse that he came up to consult a London doctor, and by his advice remained in town as a patient at St. Thomas's Home. When he entered the home he fully expected to undergo an operation within a fortnight; but the doctor who had suggested it declared, after further examination, that no operation was necessary. Meanwhile Forbes lingered on in the home week after week. Eventually a partial operation was performed, and after he had spent thirteen weeks in the home the surgeon suggested his removal to a private nursing home, where he could keep him under closer observation.

Here he performed a second operation. This seemed at first to have been a success, and after a fortnight in this private home he was well enough to start for Switzerland again. He went at first to St. Moritz, where he had been so often before; but, finding that the pain returned and that he could not sleep, he went down to Ala.s.sio on the Riviera.

Here he was for several weeks till his return to England. He reached Westminster on January 13 and went up to Cambridge on the following day. For a few days he was well enough to lecture, and it seemed as though he might be able to {34} resume his old work. On Sunday evening, January 17, he was 'at home' in his rooms and received over sixty undergraduates who came to welcome him back. Soon the old trouble returned, and he rapidly grew worse. His pain became almost constant, and he was removed with great difficulty to another London nursing home on January 29. It was then proposed that the original operation which had been suggested, but had never been performed, should take place, and he fully expected that this would result in his restoration to health and to work. A few days later he was threatened with blood-poisoning, and it became obvious that the operation must be delayed. On Sat.u.r.day evening, February 6, he seemed fairly cheerful.

Neither he nor his doctors had any idea that he was in an extremely critical state. About midnight, as the pain had become worse, his doctor was sent for, and he gave him an injection of morphia. Soon after this he asked his nurse to turn the light down and said to her, 'If I am asleep in the morning do not wake me.' She looked in about 3.30 A.M. to see if he was asleep, and, finding him awake, inquired if he would like a drink of champagne. He said yes, and asked her first of all to help him turn over to the other side. As she was in the act of a.s.sisting him, he pa.s.sed away, without a movement of any kind. A happy smile lingered long on his face after the end had come.

His body was removed the same evening to St. Faith's Chapel, in Westminster Abbey. Here on the following Thursday morning, February 11, at 9 A.M., the funeral service was said. The chapel {35} was filled with his friends, who had come from Cambridge and elsewhere.

His body was buried the same afternoon at Eastbourne in the same grave with that of his sister, the Deaconess Cecilia, who had pa.s.sed away five months before.

The inscription on the memorial card issued to his friends was:

c.u.m CHRISTO VICTURUS DE MORTE AD VITAM MIGRAVIT DOMINICA IN s.e.xAGESIMA ANNO SALUTIS MCMIV AETATIS SUAE x.x.xVII.

And, doubtless, unto thee is given A life that bears immortal fruit In those great offices that suit The full-grown energies of heaven.

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CHAPTER V

TWO APPRECIATIONS

The two following sketches of Forbes Robinson's life at Cambridge have been contributed, the first by the Rev. T. C. Fitzpatrick, Fellow and Dean of Christ's College, and the second by the Rev. Digby B.

Kittermaster, of Clare College, now Head of the Shrewsbury School Mission in Liverpool.

Mr. Fitzpatrick writes:

'College life has changed a good deal since the days when a young graduate, on his election to a fellowship, was advised not to see too much of the undergraduate members of the College, that the division between the senior and junior members of the College might be preserved. A custom of that kind, once established, is not easy to break, for traditions of all sorts, good and bad, live long in College.

'Fortunately, the relations between the undergraduates and the fellows of the College are gradually becoming more natural, to the benefit of the whole body. Forbes Robinson will be long remembered for the influence that he exerted in this {37} direction, and what he has effected it will be comparatively easy for others to carry on.

'It is my desire to give some slight impression of his life in College, and I do not wish to say much about his teaching work. I must mention, however, what frequently struck me, the great joy he had in teaching; his success was not surprising. When he found (in January last) that he could not take up all his lecture work he would not allow another to give in his place the course of lectures on Church History. "I want,"

he said to me, "to give them myself in my own way," and he hoped to have given them this Easter term. I was not surprised to hear from a pupil of the interest that he and others found in a similar course of lectures which he had given the previous year. "He put things so," the pupil told me, "that you could not forget what he had said."

'My last recollection of him as a teacher bears witness to his interest and purpose. Word was brought me before morning chapel that he had been obliged to call in the doctor in the middle of the night. I went to his rooms after chapel and found that he was asleep, I put up a notice that he would be unable to lecture. He awoke soon after I had left his rooms; he had another notice put up that he would lecture in his rooms. When I came back to College later in the morning I looked in and found him lying on his sofa with the room full of men, sitting where they could. The cla.s.s will not forget that lecture, nor shall I forget the sight.

'When two men have lived a number of years within the same College, it is difficult for them to {38} realise the change in their relationship that has come with time. There is a comradeship that comes through the influence of circ.u.mstances rather than from that personal attraction which two men feel for one another, and which arose they don't remember when or how. It was this comradeship of work and the sharing of responsibilities that led me to know Forbes Robinson. We had lived some years in College before I knew much of him; I was some years his senior, and our lines of work were very different. As far as I know, he never talked to older men in that frank way which was his custom with those of his own age, and still more with men younger than himself. Some weeks ago I was staying at the hotel on the Riviera where he had been at Christmas time. The English lady, whose husband keeps the house, told me that with them Forbes Robinson hardly talked at all, but that he took their boy out for long walks and talked to him; and the boy's face lit up as I spoke to him of Forbes.

'There is still the recollection in College, handed on from year to year, of the walk which he took at the end of a Long Vacation from London to Cambridge with two other men, and how he talked all the way.

It was these conversations, often prolonged for two or three hours, that impressed those to whom he opened out his thoughts, and who in turn let him see something of their inner life.

'Forbes always had one or two special friends among the younger men, whom he seemed to me to look upon as heroes; he always yearned for sympathy, and he was prepared to give to others all that {39} he had got. This closer relationship with a few men did not in the least narrow his interest in the life of the College. He gained, I cannot believe that it can have been without an effort long and hard, the power of taking an interest in all sorts of things that form no small part of the life of the average man. There was nothing strained or exaggerated in his relations with other men; he was at all times just himself.

'When he was elected a Fellow, being also Theological Lecturer, he was anxious to do something to interest and help those who were not theological students, and he had, first on Sunday mornings after Chapel, and afterwards in the latter part of the afternoons, Greek Testament readings for non-theological men, and some terms he took up some of the problems that present themselves as difficulties to the thoughtful man. These papers were prepared with great care, and, as I know, at no small cost of time and energy.

'On Sunday evenings he was "at home" from 9 to 11 to any members of the College who cared to come. On those occasions it was a curious sight that met the eyes of any late comer as he opened the door and saw men in groups sitting on the floor, as chairs were insufficient; as a rule there was no general subject of conversation--numbers made that impossible. Most Sunday evenings there was music, but not always, and it was difficult at the end of the evening to say what could have brought so many men together. It was a common ground of meeting for different kinds of men. Forbes Robinson was often at his best on these occasions; he would join {40} first one group and then another, and take part in the subject which was being discussed. Generally one or two would remain when the others left, and deeper problems would then be talked over. Only on one Sunday of last term was Forbes Robinson well enough to be "at home." The room was more crowded than I had ever seen it. It was a sort of welcome back after his absence the previous term. It was evident that it gave him pleasure, and evident, too, that he was all the time in pain. Yet with a brightness, which must have cost him much, he talked with one and another of simple daily interests in the way that showed his sympathy with life, and gained for him the power of saying on other occasions deeper things.

'Nothing could have been simpler than the character of these gatherings. Simplicity was the secret of his power.

'I find it impossible to write of my own conversations with him; they dealt chiefly with the difficulties of Cambridge, of College life, and of the lives of those in our College for whom we felt we had a responsibility. Talking of the difficulties of belief, I was struck by his quiet answer: "I do not believe some things which I did when I was younger; but those which I believe, I believe more firmly." Forbes Robinson had a great belief in the power of intercession. Quite recently a man in his year told me that when Forbes Robinson was an undergraduate he had known him spend two hours during the afternoon in intercession for his friends. One is not surprised that prayer was a subject on which he {41} thought much. He was to have written an important article on it.

'As we talked together of different men, I remember being struck with the desire he expressed that men should be good and strong, and not of any one type. He had a great confidence in the essential goodness that there is in men, and he always formed a high estimate of another.

'His letters will indicate how deeply he entered into the lives of others, and how wide were his sympathies. A member of another College told me that the news of the death of Forbes Robinson reached him just after the close of their evening chapel, and he had not long returned to his rooms when an Indian gentleman called, an undergraduate of this College, who almost in tears told him of all that Forbes had done for him, and how he had learnt in Hall at Christ's from the strange silence that something must have happened, and was told of the loss that came so unexpectedly upon us on Sunday, February 7.