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Sacbatt Sibinitg Sctjool

AHDOVEB-HAKTiBD THEOLOQIOAL LIBSABT

CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS

MRS. LOUISA J. HALI.

,.^^' t

' #

V'A.

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF
ROBERT COLLYER

VOLUME I

BOOKS BY
JOHN HAYNES HOLMES

THB REYOLUnONABT FUNCTION OF
THE MODERN CHURCH

MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE

IS DEATH THE END?

NEW WARS FOR OLD

RELIGION FOR TO-DAT

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF
ROBERT COLLYER (2 volumet)

Robert Collver

THE LIFE AND LETTERS

ROBERT COLLYER

1823-1912

JOHN HAYNES HOLMES

ILLITaTBATBD

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOLUME I

NEW YOEK

DODD MEAD AND COMPANY

1917

••

«#

iSlMM*

ANrcvEp- Harvard

iBEOuXiiCAL LIBRARY

!\'!An 1 - 1918

HARVARD

DIVINITY School

;•• '\

COFTBIGHTt 1»17,

bt dodd mead and company, inc.

Robert Staples Collteb
A Beloved Son

Robin has been my staff and stay**

R. C, in letter (June 14, 1901)

PREFACE

In 1914, I compiled and published a collection
of Robert Collyer's lectures, addresses and
poems, under the title of "Clear Grit." In the
Introduction to this volume, I spoke of "certain
lectures of a largely autobiographical character
which have been reserved for publication in a
later volume."

This statement was the "little acorn" from
which grew the "great oak" of this two-volume
biography. Dr. CoUyer's children had cherished
the hope, even before their father's death, that
the story of his life might some day be adequately
told. The romance of his long career, the great-
ness of his fame in the days of active service, the
benignancy of his presence in old age, the loveli-
ness of his character and influence, all conspired
to the creation of such a hope in the hearts of
those who knew and loved him most nearly. I
shared this hope in the months following his
death. It was not until I had read his autobi-
ographical lectures, however, and arranged them
for possible publication, that I began to under-
stand how desirable, indeed necessary, was the

viii PREFACE

fulfilment of this hope. I saw that the proper
use for these documents was that of sources for
biography; and I laid them one side, with the
recommendation that they be reserved for such
a purpose. Very shortly after the appearance of
"Clear Grit,'* I was invited by Mr. and Mrs.
Robert S. CoUyer to undertake the writing of
a "Life and Letters," and immediately there-
after entered upon my task.

The materials which I have used in the prepa-
ration of this work, may be classified as follows :

(1) Robert CoUyer's published autobiogra-
phy, "Some Memories." This I have used not
so much as a source, as a guide through the wil-
derness of other sources. It has also been in-
valuable as providing a kind of atmosphere in
which to study and write. With the exception
of my chapter headings, I have made few quota-
tions from this book. The fact that Dr. Collyer
used whole pages of certain of his lectures in the
writing of his memories, gives in some places the
appearance of quotation. In all such cases,
however, I have used the unpublished manu-
scripts and not the printed volume.

(2) Dr. CoUyer's books. A complete list of
these is given in the Appendix, Volimie II, page
885.

(8) Dr. CoUyer's autobiographical lectures,

PREFACE ix

above referred to. These were prepared for de-
livery at Sunday evening services in his church,
and on the Lyceum platform. The most im-
portant for my purposes were "From the Anvil
to the Pulpit," "My Mother," "Our Dale,"
"Charlotte Bronte," "In Autobiography,"
"Among the Mountains," and "The Fathers of
the Church of the Messiah."

(4) Dr. Collyer's letters. Of these by all
odds the most valuable were those written
through a period of over forty years to the Rev.
Flesher Bland, the clergyman under whose im-
mediate influence he was converted to Methodism
and began his lay-preaching. Lovely was the
friendship between these two men. After Coll-
yer's change from Methodism to Unitarianism,
their doctrinal beliefs were far apart, but this
mattered not at all. They had found something
more precious than theology. From the begin-
ning of the correspondence, as though moved by
some intuition of the future, Mr. Bland kept his
friend's letters, and they were passed over to me
numbered, labelled and beautifully arranged by
his own hand. — Another interesting and care-
fully preserved correspondence is that with Jas-
per Douthit, of Shelbyville, Illinois. One series
of letters, which would have enriched this work
beyond all calculation, are those which went

X PREFACE

through nearly a half-century to Dr. William
Henry Furness, of Philadelphia. Diligent but
fruitless search on the part of the Furness fam-
ily demonstrated that this correspondence had
been either destroyed or lost.

( 5 ) Three large scrap-books of newspaper and
magazine clippings — one kept through all the
years of his own life by Flesher Bland ; one kept
by Dr. Collyer, or his family, after his arrival in
New York; one prepared by a clipping-bureau
after his death, composed of the articles and edi-
torials occasioned by this event.

(6) Pamphlets, programmes, leaflets, etc. Of
these I would make particular mention of an
"Historical Sketch of Unity Church, Chicago,"
by Samuel S. Greeley; and "Papers Read in the
Church of the Messiah," by Robert Collyer and
Oilman H. Tucker.

(7) Church records, more especially those of
the Church of the Messiah, New York.

(8) Newspapers, magazines, etc., covering
periods of Dr. CoUyer's life career, and contain-
ing articles from his pen.

In using these materials, I have sought to tell
a full and well-rounded story. I have made no
attempt, however, and spent no time in the en-
deavour, to hunt down and scrupulously record
every smallest detail of Dr. CoUyer's life. I feel

PREFACE xi

reasonably sure that nothing of real importance
or interest is omitted from these pages. But my
purpose from the beginning has been not to pro-
duce a chronicle of events, but to reproduce the
personality of a man. I have set in order the
narrative as it has revealed itself in the docu-
ments placed abundantly and easily at my dis-
posal, but never for its own sake. This I have
done rather for the sake of providing a proper
framework or background for a personal por-
trait. The character and not the plot has been
the great thing. It is this which has dictated
the very liberal use which I have made of Dr.
Collyer's autobiographical lectures in the first
part of the work, and his letters in the last part.
Such use is eminently wise in any biography, but
pre-eminently so in a biography of a man like Dr.
Collyer, whose every word was pregnant with
personality. He could not thank a person for a
gift, or state the condition of the weather, with-
out producing a document which was redolent of
his spirit, and therefore uniquely and beautifully
his own. If any thanks are due to me for the
writing of this book, I know that it will be be-
cause I have availed myself of every opportunity
for letting Robert Collyer speak for himself and
thus reveal the fibre of his soul.

For assistance in this work, my thanks are due

xii PREFACE

to many persons. First of all, of course, are
those who have placed their precious CoUyer let-
ters in my hands, and patiently allowed them to
remain there for a somewhat prolonged period
of time; and others who have sent me clippings,
documents, reminiscences, statements of personal
fact, etc. I should like nothing better than to
name here these good friends who have thus co-
operated with me in my task, but an entire page
of this text would not suffice to name them all,
nor the most conscientious care, I fear, to make
the list complete. .These must find such reward
as they can in the book itself. Certain persons,
however, must be named — ^Dr. Jenkin Lloyd
Jones and Rev. Frederick V. Hawley, of Chi-
cago, and Charles W. Wendte, of Boston, for
assistance in finding indispensable docimients;
Salem Bland, for free use of the priceless ma-
terial collected by his father ; Samuel CoUyer, for
a highly useful collection of newspaper clippings,
and an important personal statement ; Mrs. John
E. Roberts, for long and arduous labour in classi-
{ying and annotating letters for my use; Miss
Mary C. Baker, my secretary, for unceasing
watchfulness in the care, disposal and arrange-
ment of all material; and Mr. and Mrs. Robert
S. Collyer, for inviting me to undertake this
work, for reading and criticising every page as

PREFACE xiii

it has been written, for giving me invaluable sug-
gestion, advice and information, and for sustain-
ing me throughout what has inevitably been a
trying task with their aflFection and their trust.
Lastly, I would mention one other to whom I am
peculiarly indebted — a friend beloved and hon-
oiu-ed, who for a period of weeks placed at my
disposal the resources of her home, in the quiet
seclusion of which a large portion of my work
was done.

The writing of this book has been a labour of
love. For five years and a half, it was my privi-
lege to know Robert CoUyer as his associate in
the ministry of the Church of the Messiah. In
the intimate personal relationship of this office, he
was my colleague, my friend, my brother, my
father in the spirit. In my perplexities he coun-
selled me, in my sorrows comforted me, in my
weaknesses strengthened me, in moments of peril
saved me, and beyond all my poor deserts blessed
me with his confidence and love, I know full well
how impossible it is for me to repay the debt I
owe to him. But the preparation of this book
has made it possible for me to make some return,
and such as it is, I have given it with joy. It is
my one regret that I have been able to bring so
little to so noble a task. If devotion and high
resolve were enough, they have not been lacking.

xiv PREFACE

But along with these should go other qualities,
needless to mention, which I have no right to
claim. Especially have I been poor in the im-
portant matter of time. For three full years this
book has been upon my desk, and to it I would
gladly have given every moment of these years.
But the crowded conditions of my profession
have allowed but stray and fragmentary hours.
Nothing that I have had, however, of ability and
time, as well as of love, has been kept back ; and
no worshipper ever laid offerings upon an altar
with greater joy, than I have here bestowed
these petty gifts of mine.

If I have brought little to this book, however,
it has brought much to me. It has disciplined me
to the doing of arduous work. It has lifted me
to the dignity of noble purpose. It has restored
to me the sweet companionship of a rare and ra-
diant spirit. It has given me friends whom I
would not otherwise have known. And amid the
agony and terror of an age of war, it has offered
a quiet shrine where I have held converse
with things good and beautiful, and thus restored
my soul. No one knows so well as I, how this
book has enriched my life. But I feel poor as I
write this final word and lay down my pen.

J. H. H.
August 1, 1917.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOLUME I

CHAPTXB

PAGE

Preface ......

Introduction ......

, xxi

List of Illustrations

. xvii

Well Born (1828)

Well Raised (1823-1881)

. 14

III

Doing His Best (1831-1848) .

Crisis and Change (1848-1860)

. 77

America (1860-1858) . . . .

, 104

From the Anvil to the Pulpit (1858-

■

1869)

, 140

VII

Chicago (1859-1861)

. 187

VIII

The Civil War— National (1861-1865)

243

ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume I

Robert Colly er in 1880 Frontispiece

WAOOKQ

"My Mother"— R. C.
From a Photograph of Harriett Collyer taken
shortly before her death in 1874 .... 8

The Fewston Parish Church

From Snapshots taken by the author in 1913 34

The Iron Gates," see page 74
From a Snapshot taken by the author in 1913 62

The Bkley "Smithy"
From an old Photograph 62

Robert Collyer in 1859 . 212

Robert Collyer in 1869 212

Robert Collyer

From a Photograph taken on his visit to
Boston in 1862 262

••

xvu

INTRODUCTION

The life of Robert CoUyer spanned the period
of ninety years (1828-1912), from the third dec-
ade of the nineteenth century to the second dec-
ade of the twentieth. It witnessed the industrial
transformation of our civilisation, the tidal flow
of foreign immigration into the United States,
the battle against southern slavery, the scientific
and philosophical upheaval consequent upon the
work of Darwin, Spencer and their evolutionary
confreres, the literary awakening of the Victo-
rian epoch in England and the Transcendental
epoch in America, the building of transconti-
nental railroads and the winning of the West,
the appearance of socialism and the world-
wide movement for social change, and the mar-
shalling of political and military forces for the
great war now raging in all quarters of the globe.
Neither in thought nor in action did Collyer in-
fluence in more than slight degree the determin-
ing forces of his time ; only in the Civil War was
he a part of great events, and only on the occa-
sion of the Chicago fire did he win universal
fame. His career, however, caught with peculiar

INTRODUCTION

clearness and beauty the reflection of many of
these stupendous phenomena, and thus was a
supremely characteristic product, of his age. To
know Robert CoUyer is to know much that is
most inspiring and lovely in the English-speak-
ing world of the last century.

Collyer*s life was set in two countries, Eng-
land and America. Four scenes constitute the
background of his activities. First (1828-1850)
Yorkshire in the English midlands, with its
moors and dales, ugly manufacturing villages,
wholesome peasantry, its poverty, struggle and
romance. Next (1850-1859) Pennsylvania, with
its pleasant farm lands, fragrant orchards, early
industrial ambitions, and Philadelphia on the near
horizon. Then (1859-1879) Chicago, in the years
of its marvellous growth from a sprawling fron-
tier settlement to the second city and first railroad
centre of the land. And lastly (1879-1912) New
York, where a serene old age contrasted strangely
with the strenuous and heartless vigour of a vast
metropolis. From the beginning to the end of
his days, Robert CoUyer's magic charm of per-
sonality was a potent factor in his career; the
popular apprentice in Ilkley was true father to
the loved and venerated preacher in Manhattan.
But it was only in Chicago that he entered upon
the work which brought him happiness find

INTRODUCTION xxi

power, and there that he attained the zenith of
his fame.

The more intimate settings of CoUyer's life are
as numerous as they are varied. The little stone
cottage in Washbumdale ; the Blubberhouses fac-
tory, with its clanging bell and huddled horde of
child labourers; the smithy in Ilkley, by the
Wharf e; Denton Moor, with its mists and sun-
shine, and autumn waves of purple heather; the
Methodist chapel in Addingham; the emigrant
ship on the broad and stormy expanse of the At-
lantic ; the forge at Shoemakertown, the churches
on the district circuit, and the library at Hatboro ;
Chicago, with its teeming industry and swelling
tides of population; the camps and battle-fields
and prison-pens of the Civil War ; Unity Church,
the glory of Christian liberalism in the Middle
West; and as at first a pinnacle of achievement
and then a haven of rest, the Church of the Mes-
siah in New York — ^these are the places to which
the romance of his career conducts us one by
one. To those who know this romance, successive
pictures arise in inward vision — the eager young-
ster romping over the moors in search of birds'
nests and flowers, or listening to the chimes of
Haworth church, or reading the tattered pages
of "Dick Whittington" ; the fettered boy, toiling
before the spinning frames till the back bent and

xxii INTRODUCTION

the heart was well-nigh broken; the lusty black-
smith, smiting the hot iron on the ringing anvil;
the lay preacher, pouring out to Yorkshire yeo-
men or Pennsylvania artisans the gospel of his
spirit *s life ; the emigrant, coming alone and fear-
ful to an unknown land; the tender nurse at
Donelson and Pittsbiu*g Landing; the famous
preacher and lyceum lecturer, sought and loved
of thousands throughout the land ; the hero of the
great fire, proclaiming the word of hope from the
smoking ruins of his church; the beautiful old
man, with locks of snow and smile of sunshine,
reaping the rich harvest of his sowing. What a
panorama of virtue and achievement it is I A
life of such colour, warmth, fragrance, struggle,
joy, disaster, victory, rich accomplishment and
rich reward, as few men in this or any time have
ever lived 1

The characters that play with Robert Collyer
the drama of his days are of almost uniform at-
tractiveness and worth. The silent, honest,
tough-sinewed father; the mother, rare specimen
of strong and tender womanhood; Will Hardy,
stern teacher of rebellious youth and merry fid-
dler withal for a night's dancing at the inn; John
Dobson, wool-comber, lover of books and men,
and feeder of one poor famished soul; Harriett
Watson, the first love, a dim but infinitely lovely

INTRODUCTION xxiu

vision appearing for a moment on the scene, and
then gone ; Ann Armitage, staunch companion of
forty years, faithful alike in vicissitude and tri-
umph; children five, and then in due season
troops of grandchildren; Flesher Bland, circuit
preacher, winner of souls, and friend to Collyer,
as Jonathan to David, through more than a half-
century of time; the associates of fame — Emer-
son, Longfellow, Thoreau, Mrs. Gaskell, Peter
Cooper; the thronging parishioners of Unity and
the Messiah ; and that group of homely Yorkshire
folk, to whom Collyer returned again and again
through the mounting years, and who gathered
him each time to their bosoms with fresh affec-
tion and ever waxing pride. A noble company —
worthy of a romance even more heroic, if not
more lovely, than this of one great son of York-
shire. They rise as figures of a novel, become as
friends to our own hearts, and pass as those who
are mourned and not forgotten.

And in all, through all, over all — Robert Coll-
yer I His stalwart and handsome person — ^his
courage, simplicity, and tender grace — ^his words
of cheer and faith — his enthusiasm and frank
good humour — ^his love of flowers and birds and
little children — ^his devotion to men and noble
causes — ^his atmosphere of open spaces, running
waters and sunny skies — ^his poetry and song—

xxiv INTRODUCTION

his fondness for books, and sympathy with all
sorts and conditions of men — his crushing sor-
rows and benign old age — the whole romance of
his pilgrimage from boyhood's poverty to man-
hood's fame — ^above all, his own natural and sim-
ple human self 1 This is the man, whom all loved
when he was present; and now that he is gone,
would hear his tale, that they may take from it
both profit and example. Many are the men
who were more richly endowed in native faculty
than Robert Collyer; numberless are those who
were blessed with favours of worldly training and
advantage which he never knew. But there are
few who have lived as beautifully as he, taught
truth and right as winsomely, and lived and
served the race with as cheerful a courage and as
sublime a faith. The story of this long life is a
narrative of events, for Collyer's days were full
of drama and romance ; but more and better than
this, it is a revelation of personality. Robert
Collyer was at various times a "doff er," a black-
smith, a preacher, a lecturer, an author, a public
leader, but always was he a radiant spirit, full
of grace and truth, touched with the potency of
love. Therefore does his tale escape the narrow
confines of time and place. It takes on a uni-
versal quality and suggests eternal things. It
becomes as a legend which lives in men's hearts

INTRODUCTION

forever, not as a story but as a symbol. God
was in him, and his life therefore of God.

"Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line,
Severing rightly his from thine.
Which IS human, which divine."

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF
ROBERT COLLYER

CHAPTER I

WELL-BORN

1823

"We have no family tree to speak of, only this
low bush." R. C. in "Some Memories," page 2.

"There are three things we must count on
as of the finest worth in our life — I, That we
shall be well bom, II, That we shall be well
raised, and III, That we shall do our best
in the work we have to do in this world. And
shall I not add this fourth to crown the three;
that we shall seek help from God, but for which
help our life and work may be after all a crop of
sand/*

Thus does Robert CoUyer speak in an open-
ing paragraph of his autobiographical lecture,
From the Anvil to the Pulpit." That he could
fairly claim" to be "well bom," and thus to ful-
fil "one great condition of success in life," was

2 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

his reiterated and proud assertion. This claim
was based first of all on the fact that he was an
Englishman. "There has never been a moment
in the twenty-one years that I have been absent
from this land/' was his declaration in London,
in 1871, at the forty-sixth anniversary of the
British and Foreign Unitarian Association,
"when it has not been one of the fondest recol-
lections and convictions that I came of this grand
old English stock/' More particularly, however,
did this claim refer to the quality of the stock
from which he sprang. He could not clahn this
pride of birth "in the way some fine old families
claim it in the old world and the new," for he
counted no ancestors of princely blood, and cher-
ished no monuments of by-gone dignity and
prowess. He could not even claim the kind of
noble heritage which Rene Vallery-Radot had in
mind when he declared, in his "The Life of Pas-
teur," that "the origin of the humblest families
can be traced back by persevering search through
the ancient parochial registers." * This fact of
lineage may be true in France, where peasant life
has preserved a imique type of indigenous in-
dividuality, but it is certainly not true in Eng-
land in our own, or in an elder, day. "We can
only go back," said Dr. Collyer, "to our grand-

1 Volume I, pa^ 1,

OF ROBERT COLLYER 8

fathers on both sides of the house." And what
was true of this family must have been true of
many another, as for example that of Sydney
Smith, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries.

If the history of the Collyer clan can be said
to have any definite beginning, it is in the in-
dustrial revolution which marks with a glory,
only surpassed by its indescribable shame, the
era immediately following the downfall of the
first Napoleon. It was at this time, when Eng-
land's hands were free from foreign wars for
activity in domestic undertakings, that the uses
of power machinery were developed on a vast
scale, and factories built on every available site
throughout the length and breadth of the British
Isles. This resulted in an imperative demand
for men, women, and even children, to operate
the wonderful new machines in the mills; and
nowhere, in the Ridings of Yorkshire or else-
where, did the local supply of labour begin to sat-
isfy the needs of the situation. Therefore the
owners of the factories, with the permission if
not the actual encouragement of the govern-
ment, went scouring through the country-sides,
the slums of the cities, and especially the work-
houses of the kingdom, for boys and girls; and
these they were allowed to take and hold as ap-

4 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

prentices — ^the boys untQ they were twenty-one,
and the girls until they were eighteen, years of
age, on condition that they provided their wards
with food and shelter, instructed them in the
three R's, and taught the boys a trade by which
they could support themselves after their release
from servitude.

It was under the impulse of this industrial re-
vival that Messrs. Colbeck and Wilks built a
factory at Blubberhouses, a small village, or se-
ries of villages, on a stream called the Washburn,
in the parish of Fewston, some ten miles across
the moors from the Yorkshire town of Ilkley.
Searching the workhouses of the great cities for
children to yoke to the spinning frames, these
manufacturers found Samuel Collyer in Lon-
don, and Harriett Norman in "the ancient city
of Norwich," and brought them north. Both
were young, the boy ten, and the girl nine years
of age. The former, however, had already made
himself so useful in the workhouse, that the of-
jBcers were loath to let him depart; and so surely
did he display his cleverness and adaptability in
the cotton mill at Blubberhouses, that he soon
became known as "the chap" to handle whatever
chance job needed to be done. In accordance
with the regulations of the time, he was set to
learn the trade of blacksmith. John Birch, who

OF ROBERT COLLYER 5

had his forge inside the factory, and was tenderly
remembered in after years as a kind-hearted fel-
low who always had a scrap of food in his can
at noon-tide for "Little Sam," was his master;
and under his skilful direction, the lad's progress
was rapid.

In such a place and under such influences, the
boy, Samuel, and the girl, Harriett, grew up
side by side. And "it came to pass," says the
Doctor, "that in due time they fell in love with
each other"; "in due time" also, in January,
1828, they were married.^ Two miles they
trudged together to Fewston church, when the
snow was so heavy upon the ground that in places
they had to walk on the top of the stone walls;
and two miles they trudged back after the par-
ish priest had made them one. Under these cir-
cumstances, and in view of the fact that young
Samuel dearly loved a drop of beer and his pipe,
. it is not to be wondered at that the "lad and las-
sie" stopped at the Hopper Lane Hotel on their
return to Blubberhouses, and took a "drop o'
summat warm." A few days later, in conse-
quence of a dispute as to wages, the newly-wed-
ded pair removed to Keighley, where Collyer had

* Harriett's second marriage. Her first liusband, named Wells,
had been a dose friend of Samuel Collyer. The three had grown
op from childhood together.

(

6 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

found work in Hattersley's machine shop at an
advance in salary. And it was in this town, on
December 8th, 1823, that Robert, the first child
of Samuel and Harriett, was bom.

It was as the offspring of these two orphaned
factory-hands that Robert Collyer proclaimed
himself *'well born." "What I mean by being
well born is this," he said, "that my father was
one of the most healthful men I have ever known,
and my mother was one of the most healthful
women," "This they had in common, they were
as free from contagion and infections as the stars.
The most woful fevers would break out in the
cottages all about us, and our neighbours and
their children would die of them, but my folks
were always on hand to help them, going and
coming as the sunshine goes and comes, and tak-
ing no special precautions to guard themselves
against the peril, yet they never caught a fever,
nor did any of their children, or felt, so far as I
remember, the slightest fear. So this is how I
come at the guess that we were well born, my
father and my mother were both so healthy." . . .
"In taking good care of themselves before I was
born," said the Doctor once, "they are taking
good care of me still, and have been through all
these years."

Samuel Collyer, the father, bom on the 27th

OF ROBERT COLLYER 7

of March, 1797, the same day and the same year
as the Emperor William of Prussia, was the son
of one Robert, a sailor in Lord Nelson's fleet.
"My father would tell me," writes the grandson,
"how he sat on his shoulder to see the procession
when the dust of the great Admiral was brought
up the Thames for burial in St. Paul's. But not
long after this my grandsire, going to sea again,
went overboard one wild night in a great storm."
"My grandmother died soon after, leaving a
family of, I think, five children, who were taken
to an asylum in the City of London for shelter
and nurture."

"My father's eyes were brown," continues the
Doctor, in one of his autobiographical fragments,
"and were full of a steadfast strength." He was
an active, able, strangely silent man — a black-
smith by trade, as we have seen, and "as good a
blacksmith," says the son, "as I ever knew, a
man who would forge no lie in iron or steel. But
he had no other especial faculty I can remember
now, except that of striking the tune in the old
meeting house on the hill, and even then you
were not quite sure what the tune would prove
to be until he got tp the end of the first line."
He had very little education, but he could write,
as is attested by his signature in the parish reg-
ister in the Fewston church, and he could read

8 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

well enough to read the Bible not too haltingly
to a Sunday-school class of which he was teacher.
He was a strong, tough-sinewed man, and yet
gentle withal in a day when roughness and even
brutality were conunon enough. "The kindest
heart that ever beat was my father's," said Dr.
CoUyer in after years. "He never thrashed me
but once, and that was for striking my sister, and
then he cried, begged my pardon, gave me a six-
pence and took me to a grand 'tuck out' at a dub
dinner, which was so good that I would have
taken another thrashing for the like." Another
memory was of his father's fondness for taking
long walks with the children over the moorlands
on Sunday afternoons. A hard-working man all
his days, he died suddenly while he was toiling
at his anvil on a blazing July day in 1844.

Robert CoUyer's mother, like his father, was
also the child of a sailor. This grandsire^s name
was Thomas Norman, "so we may, perhaps, date
from the Conquest tool" "His ship went down
in a storm with all on board"; and his children,
like those of the elder Collyer, found their way in
due season to the workhouse.

The daughter, Harriett, according to all ac-
counts, was a remarkable woman.' Certainly

■Dr. Henry W. Bellows, for many years minister of All Souls
Church in New York, met Dr. Collyer on the street just after his

Froin a Photograph

'.Y Mother" — R. C.

/ Harriett CoUyer taken shortly befoi

her death in 1874

OF ROBERT COLLYER 9

her eldest son sang her praises early and late in
words which did no less honour to his filial piety
than to her maternal glory. "My mother," he
wrote, "was a woman of such a splendid make
and quality, that I still wonder whether she had
ever failed in anything she set out to do. I
believe if she had been ordered to take charge of
a 70-gun ship and carry it through a battle, she
would have done it. While in her good heart
were wells of humour blended of laughter and
tears, so that when the spirit moved (her) the
tears would stream down her face — and a deep
abiding tenderness, like that of the saints."

While the father "was of a dark complexion,"
the mother "was a blonde." "My mother's eyes
were blue, blended of grey, and could snap fire
when they must do so and make things boom,
while the family nose jutted out well and strong."
In a charming lecture entitled "My Mother," Dr.
Collyer draws a picture of his mother as he re-
called her from his early childhood days in the
Yorkshire home. "A woman with flaxen hair
and blue eyes; tail to the child's sight and full-
chested, with a damask rose bloom mantling her
face; a step like a deer for lightness and strength,
so that .in middle age she could walk her twenty

return from a visit to England. "Ah, Robert," he said, '^ow I
know ^diere jon get jmu outfit I saw jour mother in Leeds."

10 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

miles in a day over the hills to the great town
of Leeds ; a laugh which is still like music to me,
with a contagion of laughter in it which would
start the whole household — the glance of a poet
into the heart of the house beautiful all about
her, and within all a deep abiding tenderness
ready to spring forth as her crown and glory, • . .
And she had also such a genius for doing well
what she must take in hand that I think still
if it had fallen to her lot and her training to gov-
ern a kingdom she would have made a noble
queen and governed it well, while what she did
govern well was the house full of eager and out-
breaking children with a good deal of the Ber-
seker blood in them as I have reason to suspect —
keeping us all well in hand and clearing the way
for us into the world's great life when the time
came to go forth; seeing to it that we were well
housed, well fed and well clad for weekday and
Sunday, while the school wage was paid for us,
so long as we could be spared to go there, out
of the 18 shillings a week my father earned in
those days at the anvil."

A masterful woman in all things practical!
"But she had in her, also, wells of poesy," and
the deeper and truer sensibilities of religion. "I
can remember," says Dr. CoUyer, "a dispute I
held once with a small maiden who lived next

OF ROBERT COLLYER 11

door, over the rank and station of our families,
when she said, *But we are religious,' and I took
a back seat, for her father was a deacon, and we
were not religious in that way. But no profane
word was ever spoken in the house or leamt out
of doors. Mother's training in this, as in much
beside, was so perfect that I think it was not until
I became a minister that I could freely use the
most sacred name, while I still balk at such words
as hell, the devil, the infernal. And two things
especially Mother held sacred among many. The
day comes back to me when her face grew stem
and her voice deep with rebuke. It was when one
of us had thrown a stray leaf from some old Bible
into the fire ; and another day when in some petu-
lant moment I threw a hard crust of bread into
the fire. The Bible and bread were among her
most sacred things, and I think salt was one
also ; we must never waste salt.

"And the day came in my mother's long wid-
owhood," continues the Doctor, "when the dear
old heart found rest in the Baptist fold in which
she died. But when I went over the first time
(on a visit from America) I was a minister in a
denomination far from her own. I must also
preach at our great church at Leeds where her
home was. So she must needs go and hear what
I had to say. And after the service, as she

12 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

walked home leaning on my arm, she said softly,
*My lad, I didn't quite imderstand thy sermon,
and I think I could not believe thy way if I had
imderstood it. But then,' giving my arm a warm,
close pressure, she concluded, *I want thee to
feel sure, my lad, that I believe in thee/

"Well, this was the secret of Mother's influ-
ence toward these higher things. She believed
in her children, and gave her life for them all
radiant with her love, held the small hquse sacred
for us, and filled it with such good cheer as she
could compass, for the heart as for all the rest."

A final picture of this adored parent is given
by the Doctor in an account of his first visit to
England from America, referred to above. "I
went over after an absence of fifteen years," he
says, "to see my mother. She was sitting in the
old rocking chair where she had nursed all her
children, but could not rise at once, because the
sudden shock of her joy held her there some mo-
ments, and the years had wrought such a change
in me that she looked up with a touch of wonder ;
but when I said 'Mother,' she held out her arms
and cried, 'My lad, I didn't know thy face, but
I know thy voice.' " This was in 1865. They
met once again on a later visit to the old country
—in 1871. She died in July, 1874.

Such was Robert CoUyer's mother — ^a woman

OF ROBERT COLLYER 18

at once strong and tender, like the son whom she
brought forth. She was unquestionably the domi-
nant element in the union of husband and wife,
and therefore the determining influence in the
life of her offspring — "the better half/* certainly,
"in those finer powers on which the children have
to draw for their chance in life." Lack of educa-
tion — ^her "mark*' in the parish register at Few-
ston would seem to indicate that she could not
write, at least in her early days — ^seems never to
have hampered her; character in her walk of life
and field of action was an all-sufficient substitute
for learning. "When my father wanted a wife,"
saystheDoctor,summing up the relationship with
rare humour and understanding, "he didn't want
a wax doll. He wanted a woman who would take
care of him and make him toe the mark, which he
did like a good fellow to the end of his life, and
never suspected he was not at the head of that
concern; and so I feel very much obliged to him
for giving me my mother, though I suspect he
would have had no great choice if she had first
made up her mind to marry him, and I am not
sure that this was not the way the thing was done.
"When these two were made one all those years
ago, their life was clear from what we call now
the curse of heredity. So here I was in the world,
well bom/*

14 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

CHAPTER II

WELL-RAISED
1828-1881

"When I ask how it has come to pass that I have
'wagged my jaw in a poopit' in some sort these

fifty-five years — my good home trainings I say." —
R. C. in "Some Memories," page 8.

Samuel and Harriett CoUyer did not long re-
main in Keighley. Within a month after the
birth of Robert, the dispute as to wages had
been settled, the love of "the old place" had re-
asserted itself, and the young father and mother,
with their first-born warmly clad against the
wintry blasts, were trudging back over the moors
to Blubberhouses. Here in the Fewston parish
church, on January 29, 1824, the new baby was
christened by the vicar, Mr. Ramshaw, at a bap-
tismal font which is still standing and doing ser-
vice; and here in Westhouse, in "a cottage of
two rooms and an attic, looking right into the
eye of the sun, and away to the westward over
the great purple moors," he lived and was "well
raised" during the next fourteen years.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 16

The Yorkshire district in which Robert Coll-
yer was bom and reared, and "every mile" of
which became in time "familiar" to him, was a
land of unusual natural features, and "sown
thick with interest" of an historical and literary
character. On the piles of crags which dot the
landscape here and there, may be seen "the curi-
ous figures of the cup and ring you find in the
rocks in Central America, in the heart of Africa,
in India, and in old Scandinavia, the symbols of
a religion • • . the most primitive of the himian
race." On these same rocks are signs which in-
dicate that "they were the high places of the
Druids whom Caesar found when he came to con-
quer Britain," Records of this invasion are not
lacking. "They dig up Roman grave stones and
altars," writes the Doctor, "with inscriptions to
the local deities and the half -deified emperors";
and he adds that "the foundations of (Roman)
dwellings in my own town were visible within a
century." "The Saxons followed the Romans";
and in 626 came a Christian missionary, Pau-
linus, of whom the three curiously carved crosses,
now standing in the Ilkley church-yard, are a
permanent memorial.

From these early times, the currents of English
history ebbed and flowed through this ancient dis-
trict, leaving ineffaceable traces of their passage.

1« THE LIFE AND LETTERS

Here are venerable homesteads, ''the same sort
of place, with the exception perhaps of a chim-
ney, that they had in the days of King Alfred,"
and inhabited by people "who live on the lands
where their fathers lived probably before the
Conquest and who can be traced bv the records
through 700 years." Here are the tracks of the
Percys and Cliffords, who came and went on
forays or in the chase. Here is Townton field,
where was fought on Palm Sunday, 1461, "the
last great struggle between the white rose of
York and the red rose of Lancaster," and "no
noise of battle was heard in the little church of
Saxton, three or four miles on one side of the
fatal field." And here, in a later and no less
tragic age, battled the Cavaliers and Puritans,
with one old mansion at least still showing the
secret chambers \viiere were hidden away the
priests who fled the Roundheads of Cromwell.

Two episodes of local history bind this district
to America. "The Town (of Ilkley) ," writes Dr.
Collyer, "lies very sweetly in the lap of the dale,
close to the river, with a wild confusion of rocks
to the south, and to the north the grand old
woods. And who think you should nestle in
there time out of mind but our own Longf ellows.
They are there in crabbed Latin when the oldest
register was started in 1580, 1 think; and before

OF ROBERT COLLYER 17

this, John Longfellow, a labouring man, in 1628
gives two days' wages to the king to prosecute
the war with France, and his two days' wages are
four pence, or eight cents, whidi reckoned in the
money of our time would not be quite a dollar.
Some paid the subsidy and some did not — it was
rather a matter of option. But not with John
Longfellow, who no doubt had the old Saxon
peasant's ever smouldering wrath in him against
the French. . • • They linger long in the town,
but there is none there now; the branch, or root
rather, that was transplated to the new world,
kft early and stayed in a little town hard by
perhaps 100 years, and then came over here to
give us our great poet.

'"Then our dale throws out another strand
which winds about a life of the deepest interest
to us, the life of Washington. This strand is
spun by the Fairfax family, who for many hun-
dred years lived only a mile away from the hum-
ble nest of the Longfellows, in a grand old place
across the river. ... I know no other house to
set beside it anywhere ; all the ways are thronged
with men on errands of life and death. . . .
Black Tom Fairfax (was) the great rose dia-
mond in the crown of their glory, the best fighter
and niost potent general after Cromwell in the
strife between the people and the crown. • • .

18 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

He starved the Cavaliers out of their holdings,
and cleared the north and held it with the yeo-
men and clothiers at his back, until Cromwell
began to lead and govern." Nor should Edward
Fairfax, "who translated Tasso (the best ever
made)," be forgotten.

And so who shall say," exclaims the Doctor,
that our quiet dale, hidden among the moors
for so many ages, does not catch a fine lustre at
last, and take its place in the history of the grand
old mother land!" And who shall say that the
story of this loyal son of the dale, who tells these
tales of other days with such delight, does not
add to their "fine lustre," and bind with still an-
other strand the Yorkshire country to America!
More important, however, for our purposes,
than historical associations, are the natural fea-
tures of this district in which Robert CoUyer
spent his eariy years. These have been made
more or less familiar to readers of English liter-
ature by the life and writings of Charlotte
Bronte. "The land which was so familiar to
her," says the Doctor, "was familiar to me. The
bells in our churches rang over the wild moors
together, through the same summer sunshine and
winter storm. We saw the same bracken
brighten in the glens that were so glorious in her
eyes, and the same starry flowers spangle the

OF ROBERT COLLYER 19

pastures. But her father never came to our
church to preach m my time, nor was the family
known among us, and the little town of Haworth
lay so far away, near as it was, and was withal
so desolate in those days and hard to live in, that
I remember it only through seeing it there on the
cold shoulder of the hill, and hearing the sweet
jangle of the bells smiting through the still sun-
shine, as I sat reading or musing among the
heather. All you had to do was to climb the hill
above my home and then the music so sweet when
you hear it through the far distances would melt
and blend where you stood, while you could easily
see the square black tower of the church of which
her father was vicar standing up against the
moors and the sky.

"A dale is a low place between hills. Dr. John-
son says; but you would say, if you saw one, it
is a sort of civilised and humanised canyon, civi-
lised by nature, for the dales are not so savage as
canyons, and humanised because those who have
lived in them time out of mind, have managed to
sow them thick with the lights and shadows of our
human life.

"And they are to be found under this name
only in the north of England, where a great deal
of the land is taken up by wild moors that lift
themselves from 1,000 to 8,000 feet above the sea.

20 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

sweeping away into the blue distance like rough
rolling prairies. These moors are covered with
heather, a sort of low brush touched with green
in the spring, and in the summer all purple with
blossom, so that the moors seem to reflect the
blueness of the sky; while here and there you
come to masses of grey crag that look in the far
distance like the ruins of old fortresses piled
against the heavens in the days when there were

giants on the earth The grouse live on

(these moors), ... a small breed of sheep very
good to eat when they are young, and bees which
gather honey of an exquisite flavour from the
heatiier.

''Running through the moors from the high
lands in the west eastward, you find these dales,
deep grooves cut by the action of the water
through a time of which we can form no concep-
tion. They are quite narrow where the rivers rise,
and entirely true to Wordsworth's lines about
them —

Yorkshire dales
Among the rocks and winding scaurs
Where deep and low the hamlets lie
Each with their little patch of sky
And little lot of stars.'

But they open out wide and fair to the sun as
they sweep eastward, and theui as it seeom to met

OF ROBERT COLLYER 21

nothing can be more lovely. The snow-drops ap-
pear in the warm nooks sooner than they do here
in the sunny comers on the Hudson. On the
slopes stand great woods, with oaks in them that
may have seen the Crusaders, and these woods all
summer long are as full of singing birds as they
can hold. The black bird will whistle to you from
the thorn, and the throstle from the crab tree, and
the sky lark will rain down melody on you from
the white clouds as if it was a bird singing in
paradise, so wonderfully do his showers of music
fall from the tiny speck between your eyes and
the infinite deep blue, while the swallow will chirp
from the thatch of the cottage, and the jackdaw
squawk from the old castle wall, and about this
time the cuckoo will hide in the coverts and sound
his curious note.

"To me, you may be sure, it is a lovely land.
And yet about as wild as you would wish to see,
and as desolate. . • • Tourists go tiiere only in
the summer and see the landscape touched with
the lively greys and decked in purple and gold;
but there is another sight they never see and that
is the long dreary fall and winter. About the
end of September the skies grow heavy with fogs
and mists that linger until January, and through
fhe most of these weeks this fog and mist lies on
the land like a vast sombre blanket which pre-

22 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

vents the smoke from rising above the forges and
factories, until it lies so thick sometimes that my
mother used to say you could cut it with a knife.
You can always make sure of about three months
of this weather, and then three months of winter,
with but very little of the clear and deep splen-
dour which makes the winters so w^elcome to the
strong and warm-blooded over here. . . • And
then after the winter comes the spring when
through March and April the east wind sweeps
in from Russia in a way which would make those
who live in Boston think their east wind was
hardly more than a summer zephyr. The poor
folks who have to face this wind have a rhyme
about it —

*When the wind is in the east,
It's neither good for man nor beast.'

It is such a wind as the prophet must have had
in his mind, one thinks, when he said, 'the Lord
stayeth his strong wind in the day of his east
wind,' as if he thought that even the divinest
grace a man can attain to would be lost out of
him if he had to stand such a wind when it blew
up a hurricane. . . .

"Then there is the rain! For, catching the
vapours alike from the German Ocean and the
Irish Sea, these hills and moors distil the rains

OF ROBERT COLLYER 28

so as to make you feel it will never stop raining,
and so far you are seldom at fault in your judg-
ment. The long days of clear sunshine we have
over here, when the atmosphere quivers with the
sun's splendour, are very seldom seen in my dale.
The most bitter trials of my boyhood were the
wet days. The good mother would say. You can
make such a visit if it is a fine day, but it seems
to me now it never was a fine day by any accident.
Talk about the laws of rain and simshine ! There
are no such laws in the dales, only of rain, rain
driving over the hills, rain sweeping down the
valleys, a bit of sunshine now and then, and then
more rain. But then when you do get a day or
a week of clear sunshine, you know how to value
it. You feel as though you were looking right
into heaven, the air dances and quivers on the
moors like a vast translucent sea, the green moss-
es at your feet are softer than all tapestry, the
meadows and pastures are a wonder of the love-
liest greenery, the hedge rows foam with wild
blossoms, and in the barest reaches the gorse
blooms into a golden glory. . . .

"And that is my dale! River and meadows,
grand old woods and pastures, old stone bridges
which in my day it would almost break the heart
of a horse to cross with a load, so steep they were
up to the centre, old halls and castles and churc))

24 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

towers and cottages that reach back to the times
of the Saxons, all threaded through and through
with stretches of road the Romans made."

Not less interesting than the land were the
people on the land. The peasant's cottage was
"a place usually of four rooms, but often also of
two, built of grey stone that defies all weathers,
and covered with thatch instead of shingles. • . .
The floors are not boarded, but covered with
great flags, and these with fine sand for a car-
pet. The walls are white-washed once a year by
the women, never by the men. A rude picture
or two is on the walls, a great rack for the pewter
dishes and willow ware ... a settee of black
oak and a chair to match of a fearful discomfort
with rude carvings and a date which may be of
the time of Elizabeth or James, an open fire al-
ways, for stoves are not known, a great rack
above you for oaten bread, and the meats for
steady use are hung from the beams.

"Let us go in," continues Dr. Collyer, "and
see an old friend of mine, who is now in his 90th
year I His dress you will notice is the Saxon
peasant's dress with but little alteration. Hear
the old gentleman talk and they would probably
understand him better in Denmark than you will.
. . . When (he) dies, he will give commandment
concerning his bones, and have everything done

OF ROBERT COLLYER 26

after the old fashion. • . . He will leave orders
for plenty of spiced bread to be made, and cut in
great wedges from the loaf, and plenty of spiced
ale to be served roimd in the old silver tankards,
and everybody will be expected to enjoy himself,
and this they will do who are not very near of kin
to him, for this is the last long lingering echo and
refrain from the funeral feasts of the pagans a
thousand years ago. If it is winter, there will be
no flowers, only sprigs of evergreen, but if it is
summer, they will deck his shroud as they did in
Shakespeare's day with rosemary and pansies,
violets and sweet thyme, and rue and columbines
and daisies. And as they bear him away to the
burial, the old neighbours and friends will sing
old funeral chants as they go through the lanes
that Job might have written and Jeremiah set to
music, they are so doleful.

"This is the daleman of the old sturdy breed
who still lingers in the more secluded nooks, and
clings to the ancient ways. He mows his grain
with the scythe, and reaps his grain with the
sickle, and all modern inventions are an abomina-
tion. • • . He never saw a steamboat, and he
hates the French though he could not tell you
why. . . . He is as honest as the day, but he
has steadily killed the game when he got his
chance, because that was what the Norman took

26 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

from him, and he will have it back. He brews his
own beer and makes his own mead. He covers
the little mirror when one of his family dies, and
whispers the tidings to the bees in the garden.
He saves a bit of the old yule log to kindle the
new at Christmas, and will let no fire go out of
his dwelling between old Christmas day and
twelfth night, eats boiled wheat and honey on
Christmas eve, and has the singers round on
Christmas morning to sing the old carols. . . .
He believes in witches and ghosts, thinks if he
pays the parson his tithes promptly, then the
parson will see that he comes to no harm here-
after, goes when it suits him to what he calls
*t' church,' and says his prayers, and that is his
religion. Only this is to be understood, that
he wUl not fight for any creed man ever made.
No ghost of a martyr haunts our dale.

"So he has lived, and so he wUl die, and so his
fathers lived before him." Changes have come
— came even in Dr. Collyer's day. But "these
things," he says, "are all on the surface. The
main bulk (of the people) keep to the old ways,
and raise generations of blue-eyed, sunny-haired
and deep-chested men and women, sending the
overplus to people new lands."

It was in such a country, and amid such peo-
ple, that Robert CoUyer passed his years of boy-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 27

hood and youth. The particular neighbourhood
in which he lived until his fourteenth year, inele-
gantly dubbed Blubberhouses, consisted of a
series of factory towns, or hamlets, running along
the banks of the Washburn, in the Washburn-
dale, one of the deepest and fairest of the val-
leys of the famous Yorkshire moors. The people
in these towns, nearly all of them workers in
the wool, cotton and linen mills established here
in the early days of the industrial epoch because
of the abundant water-power, numbered several
thousand souls, all told. West End, a village
on the road from Pateley to Bolton Bridge, alone
had a population of two thousand. The towns,
located close to one another along the flowing
stream, were practically identical in appearance
— a group of ugly factory buildings on the riv-
er's edge, and back of them and around them,
on a succession of terraces, long rows of cot-
tages in which lived the workers. These cot-
tages were invariably of the stone-wall, thatched-
roof type described above. Here and there
among them, however, usually at the end of a
row of dwellings, appeared structures of a more
commodious and impressive type. Dr. Collyer,
in later years, described one of these, the home
of a foreman, Thomas Scotson, as "a house of
some dignity, thick clad with ivy, where the spar-

28 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

rows nested in great numbers and made a cheer-
ful racket on siunmer mornings"; and another,
the home of Michael Robinson, a manager of one
of the factories, located "at the western end of
the terrace," as a house which "had a low win-
dow framed in roses," and which "seemed to our
young eyes a very grand place indeed." Other
more conspicuous structures were the workhouse,
"a very commodious building considering the
size of the hamlets," the chapel by the bridge at
West End, a large gasmetre at no great dis-
tance from Blubberhouses bridge, "which sup-
plied the mill and a large number of cottages
with light," and a hostel; called the Gate Inn,
centre of village celebrations and festivals, in
front of which on the big arm of a giant syca-
more swimg a sign bearing the symbol of a minia^
ture five-barred gate, with the legend,

'^This gate hangs well and hinders none.
Refresh and pay, and travel on."

Back of all, on either side of the river, were the
long slopes to the uplands, where on simuner
days the birds sang and the heather bloomed, and
by night, when the noise of the factory wheels
was stilled, came the wondrous silence of the
stars. This was a busy dale, in Robert CoUyer's
boyhood days. Before he had left England for

OF ROBERT COLLYER 29

America, however, the blight of competition had
ruined the thriving industries and scattered the
people; and by the time he had reached the full
tide of manhood, the hamlets had become as ''the
deserted village" of Goldsmith. The mills were
silent and unoccupied, the chapel a mouldy and
rotting wreck, and the sturdy stone cottages un-
tenanted save by the birds which perched on
roofs and chimney-tops and alone recalled the
animation of former days. In the '70s the Leeds
Corporation bought the property for the safe-
guarding of the water supply of the great city
— and the history of Blubberhouses was definitely
closed 1

It was in the hey-day of the material pros-
perity of these hamlets in the Washburndale,
that Robert CoUyer was born and reared. The
cottage which Samuel CoUyer took for his home,
after his return from the temporary flight to
Keighley, was a two-room stone structure, as
we have seen, with a low attic, or loft, overhead.
There was a bit of greensward" in front, with
a clump of roses set about with wall-flowers,
pinks and sweet Williams. There was a plum-
tree, also, branching about the windows.

"Within doors there was a bright open fire,
and the walls of the living room were white as
driven snow. A floor of flags so clean that you

80 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

could eat your dinner on it most times and only
hurt the floor, and a bureau and chairs so bright
that they shone like dim mirrors. A tall clock
which was always too fast at bed time and in the
mornings, and always too slow at meal time. A
lot of the old willow pattern pottery ware on a rack
against the wall for the holidays; and pictures
which must have cost half a dollar each, pictures
Rubens could not have painted to save him.
These was Moses looking like old King George
III, and drawn with a pair of legs no man could
walk on without crutches, and Peter with a green
beard."

The tasks of housekeeping in this little home
were performed with a Puritan conscience and a
cheery heart. "I still mind," says the Doctor,
"how twice in the year (my mother) would make
the walls in the living rooms white, as I still see
them, with quick lime, the dire enemy of the
fever which would invade other homes but never
ours, while in all things else her feast of puri-
fication belted the whole year, but never at the
cost of comfort or cosiness in the small place,
tight and trim as a ship's cabin. . . . There was
fair white linen and calico, first to wear and then
to sleep in. And until we could see to it ourselves,
once a week there was the tub where -we had a
good sound scrubbing with yellow soap that got

OF ROBERT COLLYER 81

into your eyes, and a stout 'harden' towel to dry
off withal, so that now when I think of our *cot-
ter's Saturday night,' the words of the wise man
are apt to come back to me, *.Who hath red eyes,
who hath contention, who hath strife?' Well, I
answer, we had once a week, when we turned in-
to that tub with my mother to work it, while there
was but scant comfort in the words she would
say as a sort of benediction, * There now, children,
cleanliness is next to godliness.' But in that tub,
in the fair sweet linen, in the snow-white purity
of fresh lime, and in the everlasting scrubbing
of the things we had about us, lies one fair rea-
son to my own mind, . . . why in all these years
I have not been one day sick in my bed."

Life within this home was as plain and simple
as it was clean. The income was small, a scant
18 shillings ($4.50) per week, and a family of six ^
"in the earlier years, to make good the old rhyme
Mother would croon over us now and then —

^Four is good company, five is a charge.
Six is a family, seven's too large.'

But I think she would have refitted the rhyme
to the reason if there had been more. . . . We

* Four boys, William (a half-brother by Mrs. Collyer's first mar-
riage), Robert, Thomas and John; and two girls, Martha and
Maria. There was a seventh and last child still-born at about the
time when Maria was four years old.

82 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

came along with the most lovely regularity, about
two years apart. . . . But my mother made that
income stand good for plenty to eat and drink,
two suits of clothes, one for week-days and one
for Sundays, house rent and fire." And "how
did we fare, the six hearty children? There was
oatmeal, and what we call mush who know no
better, and skim-milk in plenty, with oatcake, as
Mother would say, to fill in with; also wheaten
bread for more careful use, and sometimes a trace
of butter. Not much meat, for meat was dear,
but soup with dumplings, and what the old York-
shire folk used to call *sike-like,* a word with a
wide meaning. And the tradition still remains
of an early time of innocency when Mother would
say, 'Those who eat the most dumpling shall
have the most meat.' So we would peg away un-
til we did not want any meat, and then Mother
would save it for the next day's dinner. There
was fruit also when this was cheap, in the lovely
guise of pie, and then more oatmeal and skim-
milk for supper. And that was how we fared."
But there was another item the week's wage
must cover — that of schooling, for the education
of the little ones was not free in those days as
it is to-day. "You must pay so much a week or
go ignorant." These hard-working parents,
ho\ve\er, believed in "book-learning"; and until

OF ROBERT COLLYER 88

young Robert was eight years of age, the charge
for schooling was carefully laid aside and paid
each week. First, the boy went to school to
"Dame Horsman, at the Scaife House, in Blub-
berhouses, an old lady in spectacles, who had a
reel in a bottle, and I do not know yet how it
got in." Later he went to a master's school half
a mile away. This was soon closed, the master
going to other parts; and then Robert was old
enough to tramp two miles down the dale to
Fewston, where he studied the three R's under
(and very much imder) Will Hardy, "who found
me,'' says the Doctor, "a sad dunce at figures,
which he believed in, but good at things in books
which struck my fancy. They didn't strike his
fancy, however, so he would give me his knife
to go and cut nice hazels along with another
scapegrace named Robinson Gill, who taught me
how to shave them at the line of their finest im-
pact with one's shoulders, and things of that
sort"

Will Hardy was evidently very much of a
"character." He was equally noted for his hide-
ously crippled legs, and his imcomparable fid-
dling. "I well remember his grave, stem-look-
ing face," says the Doctor, "as he sat perched
aloft in the large rooms of the inns at Blubber-
bouses and Fewston, giving the music as \he

84 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

dance went round." In the treatment of his pu-
pils he was a disciplinarian of the old school.
He had a strange gleam in his grey eyes, and
was a "great marksman with the ferule. There
was no use dodging. If you did, the ferule would
find you out, and thump you all the harder." *

It is the testimony of his most distinguished
student, however, that Mr. Hardy was "a good
teacher." Later on, when he opened a night
school at Blubberhouses, young Robert, no longer
free for day instruction, entered his classes. A
final winter at night school, after he had left
home, completed his education.

Other influences, however, brought to him their

* Years later, Robert CoUyer and Robinson Gill, then both living
in America, hunted out ^old Willie Hardy," in one of their visits
to '^e old home.*' They found him, grown very feeble, sitting
in a chimney comer.

-Is this Willie Hardy?" they said.

••Yes," he answered.

"And how are you getting on, sir?"

-Middling well for an auld man. But who are ye? I don't
knaw your faces."

"It's Robinson Gill and Robert Collyer. We were your scholars
lang syne"; and then, with a laugh, they said: "We have come
to settle the old account of the lickings you gave us."

The tears sprang to the old eyes, with the gleam in them still,
as he said, "Nae lads, ye will not do that. I's an old man now,
and time has settled that bill a long while ago."

"But you will play us a tune on the old fiddle?"

"Ay, gladly," he answered. So they had many tunes, and Mr.
Qill, who was a rich man, settled the bill in good gold.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 85

training and inspiration. There was the Sunday
school, for example, which was "the only divinity
school (he) ever had the opportunity to attend."
Although his parents were married, and their
children baptised, in the Anglican communion,
the family went to the parish church only twice
in the year, on Easter and Whitsuntide. The dis-
tance undoubtedly had much to do with this fact,
but it may be true also that old Parson Ram-
shaw was not much to the liking of Samuel CoU-
yer and his good wife. "He was one of the old
rough *church-among-the-mountains' parsons,"
says the Doctor. "There were traditions of wild
scrapes in his early days, such as a baby born
within a few weeks of his marriage to his house-
keeper, a very handsome woman, daughter of a
neighbouring farmer ; and of his shooting a don-
key's ears off once when he was in his cups, mis-
taking them for a pair of moor birds as they were
cropping up over a level wall. But in my time,
'80-'88, he was an old man, with a lot of wild sons,
very handsome, and a daughter in the church-
yard, to whose grave-stone a boy took me one day
between school hours, and told me in a whisper,
*she deed heart-broken for young Jen Hardisty'
(a peasant lad who was then about there) . That
was my earliest romance," continues the Doctor.
"Ramshaw was no preacher. He gave out hig

86 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

text and just yelled through a lot of words of
which I could make neither head nor tail. He
never came to our house, or did much of anything
but shoot."

/ It was pleasanter on the whole to attend Sun-
/ day services at "the little dissenting chapel on the
I hill," and here the Collyer family went regularly.
"My mother," writes the Doctor, "always made a
pretty curtsey before she went into our pew, and
my father a bow towards the east window, but
didn't know why, except that it was 'manners';
while I fear that I spent most of my time wonder-
ing over a white dove with a very pink beak that
was perched on the high-point of the sounding
board over the pulpit, trying also to verify the
unicorn in the king's arms, and waiting to hear
the old clerk say. Amen." Sunday school twice
every Sunday "with no rewards and no picnics"
was the programme for the little ones. With mod-
em folk in our own country, for reasons never
quite clear, such routine is usually fatal to reli-
gious development. But with the Collyer clan in
rural Yorkshire, it seems to have been different.
"I really know of nothing outside my good hojne,"
is the testimony of the Robert of later years,
"which can compare in pure worth to my steady
training through about ten years in that good
old orUiodox Sunday school"

OF ROBERT COLLYER 87

More precious, however, than day school, or
night school, or Sunday school, was the every-
day school in the home itself. Here the hard-
working, taciturn father was a steadying in-
fluence in the direction of obedience, patience and
self-control, while the mother served as the un-
failing source of stimulus and inspiration. She
it was who taught the children their simple pray-
ers, and listened as they spdke them night and
morning. She it was who placed ''the old Bible
on the bureau," and "let the youngsters browse
in it to (their) hearts' content." She it was also
who "loved to go over the sweet stories, with
some word out of her own heart." "My dear
mother," says the Doctor, "was one of the best
story tellers I have ever known, and I still sow
daisies and violets on her grave and kiss the sod
for this among the many gifts she had, that when
we sat about her knees, by the winter fire, she
would only tell us stories that were bright and
wholesome and the mother-milk of laughter. And
if a neighbour came in with some tale of a ghost
or goblin, that would be likely to haunt our imag-
inations, she would let them go right on ; but when
they were through, she would tell another story
that would make your hair stand on end until she
came to the end of it, and that would fill the whole
place with laughter, when it turned out to be a

88 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

donkey or something equally absurd. And when
they had gone away, she would bid us say our
prayers, and say there was nothing to fear if we
were good bairns; but she would not send us to
bed alone, she would go along with us and tell us
some more bright stories to hush our fears, and
then she would leave the candle until we fell
asleep."

Was it this wise mother, or was it Master Har-
dy, or was it the "old-fashioned Sunday school'*
which stirred in the growing lad, even in these
early years, that love of reading which remained
to his dying day one of the passions of his life?
Probably something of one and something of an-
other, together with a generous measure of na-
tive instinct which determines likes and dislikes,
we know not how nor why. At any rate, Robert
CoUyer was a lover of books, if there ever was
one. The delightful story of the "big George
the Third penny" is as familiar in biographical
annals as the story of Theodore Parker and the
turtle, but it must be told again if only that this
narrative may be complete. One happy day,
Robert held in his hand a big English penny, and
"was looking through the window of our one
small store at a jar full of candy (he) dearly
loved." Right close to the jar, however, was a
tiny book, with the fascinating inscription, "The

OF ROBERT COLLYER 89

History of Whittington and His Cat, William
Walker, Printer, Price, One Penny." "I would
fain have bought the candy," says the Doctor,
"but I did buy the book, . . . and read (it) I
guess until it was a mere rag. . . . This was the
tiny seed of a library which, when the new cen-
tury had dawned, had grown to more than three
thousand volumes, while the time would fail me
to tell how the hunger for books grew by what
it fed on."

In the beginning, books were few. The home
shelf carried only Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress,"
Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe," Goldsmith's "Eng-
land," "the old family Bible with lots of pictures,
and a few books beside I didn't care for." This was
no "five-foot shelf," unfortunately, but it served.
"I would read my Bunyan and 'Crusoe' and
Goldsmith, and the stories in the old Bible," so
writes the Doctor, and they "were as wells of pure
water. It must have been by such reading that
I got a lifelong love for simple Saxon words, and
have been able to get along with but little Latin
and less Greek." Occasionally also, a borrowed
book came into the home through the father, who
observed and rightly valued his son's love of read-
ing, and memorable were the days when in this
way the poems of Burns and the plays of Shakes-
peare first came into his hands.

40 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

Such was the raising of this Yorkshire "lad-
die." Life varied little from day to day. Now
and then, to be sure, there came unusual days.
One such was the festival in observance of the
dedication-day of the parish church, "when all
the homes in the parish were burnished bright in
honour of the day, and, so far as our means would
allow, we feasted to our heart's content, very
much as you do at Thanksgiving, while the kins-
folk and friends, who had not moved too far
away, would come to our feast, and when their
festival came 'round we would go to theirs.

"Another joyous season was that of Christmas-
tide. More than once the approach of this festal
day was accompanied by anxious forebodings,
for the household was poor, and the wherewithal
for the celebration was scarcer than usual. But
the pennies were somewhere, somehow found.
Then would come a bit of malt from the malster,
a piece of beef for the roast, and a cheese, al-
ways a whole one, however small. The good
mother would bake the jmle-cakes and the loaf.
Then on Christmas mom, before the light of
day, would come the singers and players on di-
vers instruments from Thurscross, with their
carols, 'While shepherds watched their flocks by
night' and 'Gk>d bless the master of this house/
For they were musical up there close to the moors,

OF ROBERT COLLYER 41

and had once 'performed' in an oratorio. This
was the signal for the turning of the yule-log,
the lighting of the candles, the tapping of the
barrel, and the setting out of yule-loaf and cheese.
Always 'largess' was given to the singers, often-
times wet and cold from the drifting snow, with
good wishes and proffered blessings all around.
Then we went forth in our turn, . . . lads all,
and no lassies, for no one of that sex must enter
any door first on that or on any New Year's
morning. And we would pipe up some little
note, through our red noses for the frost was
keen. And a little welcome would be given the
children, theirs at our house, ours at theirs —
some penny for the gold they gave in the old
time, and a bit of cake no frankincense could
match, or myrrh, the good man of the house wait-
ing for us with his bounty and with a bit of clear
fire to warm us. And no king of the East, or
West, so happy as we were, surely, on the Christ-
mas mom. . . . We were all neighbours' children,
and must miss no house, for that would bring
pain. — Then they would come in, the old neigh-
bours, at eventide, to sit by the open fire and tell
stories of Christmastides far away, when the
great snows fell, or when the maid heard her
lover call her from the moor, where he was lost,
and how she raised the little hamlet, and they

42 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

went forth and found him not dead ; ^ how the
man was lost and could not be found, and when
spring came and the snow melted, he was stand-
ing stark in a drift close to the farm gate in the
ghyll ; stories of great storms and of other things
that shook little hearts, but nothing could harm
you, or be seen even, while the holy tide lasted;
and how the oxen always bowed their knees on
the stroke of twelve Christmas eve, and who
had verily seen them; and what peril there was
taking fire from one house to another during the
holy time, as was proven by many instances of
disaster or death within the year. — Then the poor
creatures came along we all knew — God's poor.
I have heard brave music and singing in all these
years, but I think I never heard anything so won-
derful. It was a gift of God to his poor, and
was saved for Christmas. It was seldom they
would sing at other times; but then it seemed as
if they had heard the angels. They knew noth-
ing of music ; but the charm was on them and in
them, and they sang. Very old carols they only
seemed to know ; and never, as I hear them so far
away, rising above some lovely minor key; none
of the rollicking and radiant things they brought
from Thurscross, but just — ^melody. And so

■See Dr. Collyer's famous ballad, "Under the Snow,*' in "Clear
GriV page 317.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 48

once in the year, if never again, they did eat and
were satisfied. I am not sure the folk did not
like old Sally and old Willy the best of all, for
I can still see tears stream down furrowed cheeks
as they are singing, and then hear low strains
of laughter that soimd as if they had got tangled
up with sobs."

These were notable events — but notable only
because they marked variation from the monot-
ony of constant and rather bare routine. Life
in Blubberhouses was simple, in some ways hard
and poor. Indeed it was probably harder and
poorer than is at all indicated by Robert Collyer.
The poet in the man inevitably came to the fore,
as years passed by, and glorified the simplicity
of these early days. But they had much of dignity
and even beauty, and not a little joy, in the home
of Samuel and Harriett Collyer at least. At any
rate, the son Robert, in after years, in a country
thousands of miles away, looked back upon it
with gratitude and deep thanksgiving. In imagi-
nation he would return to the old familiar scenes
— "drink at a well he loved where the beryl brown
water came from a spring hidden in the moors,
wander over the pastures and through the lanes
where he found the birds' nests the home canon
would not allow him to molest, or make the
mother bird afraid." And then he would con-

44 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

jure up through the mists of the years the figure
of his own boyhood, and softly say, "Dear little
fellow, you had a hard time then, but it was a
good time also, wasn't it? Have any flowers in
the world beside ever seemed so sweet to you as
the snow-drop, the primrose and the cowslip you
knew so well where to find and bring home to
Mother, or have any singing birds ever matched
your memory of the skylark and the throstle, or
were there ever such Christmastides as those she
made for us when her children and the world were
all young together?"

OF ROBERT COLLYER 46

CHAPTER III

DOING HIS BEST
1881-1848

". . . Hard at work for all I was worth." — R. C.
in "Some Memories/' page 87.

Foe eight years the even flow of this austere but
happy period of childhood was uninterrupted.
Day after day, young Robert raced and romped
over the wide-stretching moors; listened to the
birds, to the ripple of the Washburn, or the far
music of the Haworth church-bells; ate his sim-
ple fare of skim-milk, oatcake, potatoes and
salt, with a sip of cambric tea and perhaps a
touch of marmalade on the Sunday; read and re-
read the few precious books within the home;
went to day school and Sunday school; lent a
hand in the work of the busy mother; had his
sound sleep in the loft overhead through the si-
lences of the long, long winter nights. Gladly
would his parents have left the boy to the full
enjoyment and profit of this healthy way of life.
The memory of their own early years of bondage

46 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

to the spinning frames was too fresh and too
vivid, we may well believe, to permit them to
surrender lightly their little ones to the fell clutch
of the factory. It was the desire to escape the
possibility of this fate, undoubtedly, which had
persuaded Samuel and Harriett, at the time of
their marriage, to emigrate to the United States.
But the panic of 1823-24 blasted their hopes for
the time being. Then the babies began to arrive
one after another in the home. And now, says
the eldest, "I was eight years old . . . and must
go to the factory and help to earn my own liv-
mg.

The next six years mark the one wholly sad
and painful period of Robert CoUyer's life. Dur-
ing all of this time he worked in the linen mills
at Blubberhouses, under those dreadful condi-
tions of child-labour in industry which constitute
one of the darkest pages in the history of modern
England. He was one of those millions of help-
less little "doffers," as they were called, who
changed the life of Robert Owen, stirred the re-
forming zeal of Lord Shaftsbury, prompted the
heroic cry of Mrs. Brow^ning, and finally inscribed
upon the statute-books of the kingdom the so-
called Factory Acts. Dr. CoUyer's description
of what he endured in these years is pitiful in
the extreme, especially when it is remembered

OF ROBERT COLLYER 47

that this is a picture of the fate not of a single
child, but of the multitudes of children who
swarmed in the factory towns and cities of the
British Isles.

The working hours at Blubberhouses were
tlurteen a day, five days in the week, and eleven
hours on Saturday; the wages were two shillings
per week 1 At half-past five in the morning, the
factory-bell sent its hideous call clanging through
the valley, and at six o'clock the children were
busily tending the whirring spindles. Here they
stood till noon-time, with never a moment for
rest or recreation. They were not even allowed
to sit down at their work, and if they were caught
by the overseer easing their weary limbs for a
moment on some stray box or barrel, they were
brought instantly to their feet by the stinging
lash of a heavy leathern strap across their shoul-
ders. Like prisoners in a pen, these poor toilers
at the machines invented a code of signals, by
which they warned one another of the approach
of the foreman. But such devices, easily discov-
ered or circumvented, availed them little, as did
the scant hour at noon for luncheon. Each day
brought its burden of exhaustion to even the
strongest among the children, so that when the
work stopped at eight o'clock in the evening, or
on Saturday at six, they were tired "beyond all

48 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

telling." The crippling of the children in their
arms and backs, and especially in their legs, from
much standing, was inevitable. The memory of
the crooked limbs of his work-mates remained
with Dr. CoUyer to the end of his days, and cast
a sinister light, as he used to put it, on the Scrip-
ture phrase, "The Lord regardeth not the legs
of a man." Death also reaped a rich harvest.
When examining the parish register, on the occa-
sion of my visit to the Fewston church in the
summer of 1918, 1 was struck by the large num-
ber of "deaths" recorded at ages from nine or
ten to eighteen or twenty years. It seemed as
though, in these early days in the dale, a wholly
disproportionate number of persons died in their
youth. The vicar, who was showing me his
chiu*ch and neighbourhood, suggested tuberculo-
sis ; I suggested child-labour ; and we finally com-
promised on a combination of the two, with the
latter ill an aggravating if not determining cause
of the former.

As to how Dr. CoUyer stood the trial of these
days, he has left us in no doubt. His legs be-
came bowed and twisted, like those of his com-
rades; and it was his belief that only his later
work as a blacksmith, which required a firm grip
of a horse's hoof between his knees, ever straight-
ened them out again. Sometimes, by the miracle

OF ROBERT COLLYER 49

of childhood, he would leave the factory not tired
at all — and then there was a gay romp home to
some treasured book if it was winter, or to some
favourite nook on the moor or by the river if it
was summer. More often, however, he was so
tired as scarcely to be able to drag one aching
limb after the other — and he was not a frail boy
either, but big and strong for his years! On
these days it would seem as though the hour of
release would never come; and when at last the
spindles ceased their turning and the doors flew
open to the clear night air, nothing was wanted
but "home and to bed." The darkness of this
period of his life was never lifted from Dr. CoU-
yer's heart, buoyant and cheery as it was. The
harsh clangour of the factory bell, for instance,
rang in his ears for years as the most dreadful
sound in all the world, and was not wholly si-
lenced until the iron-tongued monster had been
torn from its place^ transported to America, and
relieved of its curse by re-baptism into the
grateful service of Cornell University.^ When,

^ The later story of this bell is one of the romances of Dr. Coll-
yer's life, and is told in the following statement by President
Adams, of Cornell, published on January 31, 1889.

''When the Rev. Robert Collyer was here last Spring he said to
me incidentally, as we were walking about the university grounds,
'I wish to make you a present.' I replied that we were always
ready to receive presents worth having, and I was sure that he

60 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

on a certain day in his old age, I chanced to ask
him if he would like to live his life all over again,

would not offer us any other. He then proceeded to relate to me
the following story:

***Some years ago the village in which I used to work as a
bleu^ksmith was swept away in order that the site might be used
as a reservoir for the city of Leeds. In this general destruction
the shop in which I worked as a boy perished. Against the old
bell that used to wake me up very early in the morning I had a
special grudge. At the same time I had so much interest in it that
I asked a friend in the Town Council at Leeds to see that when
the bell was broken up for old metal a piece of it should be sent
to me as a paper weight. The result was that the Town Council
voted to send me the whole bell. I have ever since been waiting
for some appropriate place where it could be put, and if you can
make any use of it I shall be glad to give it to you.'

**I replied that of course we should cheerfully accept it, and
would find an appropriate place for it. I asked him about its
size and tone, but he would only say that he knew nothing about
that, except that when he was a boy it made altogether too much
noise. I promised to see that the bell was put in some appropriate
place. When I wrote to Dr. Collyer about coming to the Sage
Chapel pulpit this spring, in reply he said: *I have not forgotten
that bell, though as yet it has not been quite convenient to send
it.' Recently, however, I received from him the following very
interesting and characteristic letter:

" 'New York, Jan. 21, 1889.
"'Dear President Adams:

***That old bell will be sent up the road on Saturday, by my
brother, in whose shop it lies.

" *It was the factory bell which rang me out of bed between 1831
and 1838 and set me to work at 6 o'clock in the morning and then
rang me out again at 8 p.m., allowing us an hour at noon to
breathe and get our dinner and that was all. ... I hated that
bell then a great deal worse than — well, you know the comparison.

" 'This was in Fewston, in the Forest of Knaresborough in York-
shire. Fewston catches the eye in history as the home of Edward

OF ROBERT COLLYER 51

and he gave me his prompt and joyous answer
that he would, his face suddenly grew stem and
hard for a passing moment, and he burst out,
"but not the years in the mill. I wouldn't live

Fairfax, who made the best translation of Tasso we have, and
dedicated it in 1600 to Queen Bess. He also wrote a curious
account of the cantrips of certain witches touching his daughter
Helen and some others in Fewston, which was edited by Lord
Houghton for the Philobiblion series, and has since been printed
in a cheaper edition and better, by an old friend of mine, of which
I must have sent a copy to the library at Cornell.

"'Well, the old factory broke down long after I left, and served
it right! Was purchased by the town of Leeds, 18 miles away,
for the sake of the river, which is a fine soft stream tumbling
down from the moors to supply the town withal. Then the factory
was pulled down; vast reservoirs made to store the water of
Washburn they drink in Leeds with great content, though the
majority, I think, prefer beer. And when I heard of all this I
wrote to a friend in the Town Council, saying, "When they break
up that wicked old bell (you know there is a total depravity
sometimes in inanimate things) secure me a piece and send it
over," being moved as Quilp was when he would batter that old
figurehead.

"•Well, the first I knew after that about the thing was its ap-
pearing at my door here as you see it, all charges paid, the gift I
presume of the corporation and council. Then I began to relent,
and said: "I will put you to some finer use, old fellow (it's a he),
than to ring up children at unearthly hours to go to work in a fac-
tory," and I finally struck the right idea. I do not know its tone
now; I only know it used to be the most infernal clang in all the
world to me, and I have no choice as to its special use. It will
be pleasant to think of it as born again, converted and regenerate,
now while the ages of Cornell endure, calling people to nobler
occupations, and so much more welcome — a sweet bell, I hope,
not jangled out of tune and harsh. Indeed yours,

"Robert Collyeh.'"

52 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

those over again, not for all the blessmgs that
might be given me in compensation.**

For a brief interval during this period, Ae
diild's burden was lightened a bit, not by tiie
diarity of the mill-owners, but, as is usually tiie
case in such matters unfortunately, by grace and
authority of the law of the land. In 188S was
passed one of that long series of Factory Acts
which constitute one of the most important diap-
ters in the history of modem English legislation,
and which laid the foundation in law and custom
of that great structure of social reform whidi
is so conspicuous and beneficent a feature of our
time. This particular Act, which had been pre-
ceded by other acts in 1802, 1819, 1825, and an
amending act in 1881, provided that night work
(between 8:80 p.m. and 5:80 a.m.) for per-
sons under eighteen in cotton, wool, worsted,
hemp, flax, tow and Unen spinneries and weav-
ing mills, should be prohibited ; that children from
nine to thirteen should work not more than 48
hours a week; and that young persons from thir-
teen to eighteen should be restricted to 68 hours
a week. Provision was also made for school at^
tendance, and for the appointment of factory in-
spectors to watch over the working of the law.

Judged by our modem standards of child-la-
bour legislation, this Act seems moderate enough,

OP ROBERT COLLYER «»

indeed hardly decent. To the tiny toilers of
that period, however, it was a veritable boon, as
witness the case of Robert CoUyer. Ten years
old at the time of its enactment, his horn's in the
factory were immediately reduced from 76 to
48 a week; and when three years later he passed
his thirteenth year, were raised to not more than
68. This was a priceless gain of freedom. The
little back was not now so bent, or the twisted
limbs so tired, at the end of the day. There were
welcome hours of sleep in the early morning, and
equally welcome hours for play or reading out
on the moors before the darkness fell. And how
must it have cheered the mother's heart to see the
yoke lifted ever so little from her dear one's
shoulders I In the cottage at Westhouse, as in
thousands of similar dwellings throughout the
land, this Factory Act was as a very gift of
heaven.

It was not until 1887, however, that any real
change in the boy's life was effected. Then came
the transfer of laboiu* from the spinning-frame to
the anvil, and of residence from the remote vil-
lage of Blubberhouses to the thriving provincial
town of Hkley.

"There was (an) article in our home creed,"
writes the Doctor, "about which both my father
fmd mother were always of one mind — ^the bovs

54 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

must learn a trade. It would cost money, and if
we stayed in the factory we could earn instead of
spending, but this made no matter, we should lose
our rank in life. My brave and steadfast father
was a mechanic, it was a step above the factory,
so we boys must be mechanics too, and then
though we might never rise in the world, when
they were through, we should not fall. Well,
there was an old blacksmith six (sic) miles away
over the moors, who had taught my father, and he
was willing to teach me; I was rising fourteen
then, and it was time to begin. • . . And (this)
was how I came to the anvil, the utmost limit in
those days of my ambition."

The master smith to whom he was apprenticed
was indeed none other than John Birch, "ow*d
Jacky Birch" as he was called, who had taught
Robert Collyer's father his trade years before at
the old factory forge. He was now the owner
of a prosperous smithy in Ilkley, had always
some two or three lads taking instruction at his
anvil, and was glad enough, we may be sure, to
receive into his keeping and guidance the son of
his former pupil at Blubberhouses. Young Coll-
yer was bound to him for a period of seven years,
or until he was twenty-one, giving his labour, and
receiving in return house room and food, week-
day shirts and leathern aprons, and the teaching

OF ROBERT COLLYER 56

of an ancient master at his trade. It was a fair
bargain, and to his parents, as to the boy himself,
it must have seemed a settling of the problem of
life-work as happy as it was final.

On a certain morning, therefore, of August,
1887, a sturdy lad of fourteen years of age might
have been seen taking leave of the Collyer home
in Washbumdale, and starting on his walk across
Denton Moor to Ilkley town. Down the village
street, with many a smile and benediction from
the housewives in the cottage row — over the river
which had sung songs to his listening ears ever
since he was a babe in arms — up the long slope
of the hill to the great moors heaving to the sky —
this would be the way he would go ; and when he
reached the summit, we may well believe that he
would pause for a moment to say good-bye to his
little world. He tells us in his "Some Memories"
that he was "homesick for a time" after leaving
Westhouse, aqd it is pretty certain that the ail-
ment would begin right here on the edge of the
moors. It was not the factory that he regretted,
as he looked down that brilliant summer day
upon the black cloud of smoke hanging low over
the scattered hamlet; he could only feel abound-
ing joy that his days of slavery to the spinning-
frames were over. No, it was the thought of the
home-nest that choked the little lad. The

66 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

familiar white-washed walls, the friendly nook in
the loft overhead, the rose-bush in the yard, the
thrush that perched and sang in the old plum-tree
by the door, the long hours of reading in the sum-
mer fields, the stories by the winter fireside, the
Christmas cheer, the quiet father whose compan-
ionship he was just beginning to know, above
all the full-breasted, big-hearted mother whose
love was to him as the shelter of (Jod's hand —
these were the visions that held his gaze as he
looked down through the clouds of smoke upon
the stone cottage with its rough thatched roof.
They were happy pictures, every one, and fading
now forever from his sight.

But he must not linger. As brave in heart as
he was stalwart in body, the lad would turn away
and set his face steadfastly toward his new home.
In this same month of August, just seventy-six
years later, it was my happy lot to travel on this
same ancient road which had felt the trudging
of yoimg Robert's feet. I also climbed the slopes,
took my last look at the lovely vale of Washburn-
dale, and then turned westwards to the moors.
Overhead a cloudless expanse of sky, blazing
with the glory of midsummer! On every side, as
far as the eye could see, the waves of purple
heather rolling like ocean billows to the horizon I
Not a house, not a tree, not a living thing, save

OF ROBERT COLLYER 57

here and there a rustling grouse fleeing the ap-
proach of man! It was beautiful beyond all ex-
pression — and yet lonely as the loneliness of the
sea. We went on mile after mile, as though we
were the only persons living on the planet. And
then there came the crest of another long slope —
this time downward into Wharfedale. Here at
our feet were rich meadows, pleasant pastures, a
cheerful sparkling river, luxuriant foliage in
wooded dells, a range of hills with huge masses
of craggy rocks, the long highway winding
through the fields dotted with old stone cottages,
and breaking into charming little lanes and by-
paths, and, in the midst, the crowded buildings
and streets of Ukley, and the black streak of the
raibroad running off to Leeds. On such a day,
through such a scene, and to such a goal, jour-
neyed the Yorkshire apprentice lad. To him, as
to me, the rolling moors must have seemed at
once beautiful and lonely. In spite of the heather
and the grouse, homesickness must still have lin-
gered with him. But when he came at last to the
slopes of Wharfedale, and looked down upon
Ilkley parish, his heart must have leaped at the
sheer loveliness of this new world. Here was his
home — ^here was his life-work — ^here was the
world that he was to make his own! Regrets
would now yield to anticipations, the homesick-

68 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

ness of the boy to the ambition of the man. With
light step and shining eyes, he would stride down
the winding road, and welcome with eager breast
the advent of his new day.

The change from the old to the new was great.
Ilkley was a thriving provincial centre, mainly
composed of busy tradesmen in the town proper,
and busy farmers and dairymen in the surround-
ing dale-country. As contrasted with Blubber-
houses, it had no factories, with their tall chim-
neys, whirring wheels and clouds of smoke, and
no factory workers, with their poverty and dis-
ease. In 1881, it had a population of 691 per-
sons; in 1884, a population of 940; and in 1861,
a population of 1407. Its chief distinctions, and
largest source of business activity, were a re-
markable spring, "arising from the side of a
mountain near to the town," and a location m
Wharfedale unrivalled for scenic beauty. In
early days, the spring was reputed to have cura-
tive properties, especially in cases of scrofula and
kindred diseases. Later and perhaps more hon-
est chroniclers express doubts as to "whether
there (were) any virtues in the water, more than
its purity, and the tenuity of its component parts
for internal use." However this may have been,
Ilkley was then, as it is now, a well-known and
much-frequented simimer resort. "The worth of

OF ROBERT COLLYER 59

the waters," writes the Doctor in his "Ilkley:
Ancient and Modern," "the lovely landscape, the
free-blowing winds on the moors, the sunshine
rippling like a vast translucent sea, as you stand
knee-deep in the sweet blossoming heather, the
breath of kine, the homely fare, and the quietness
which lay on all things like Bunyan's dream of
Beulah, touched the heart and imagination of the
forlorn, far and wide, and drew them to the
pretty rural hollow, that had been waiting to help
and bless them time out of mind." In a small
guide-book to Ilkley, published in 1829, there
are named no less than six boarding-houses,
twenty-nine lodging-houses, and three inns, the
Rose and Crown, the Wheat Sheaf, and Lister's
Arms. On the list of boarding-houses, it is inter-
esting to note that of ''John Birch, blacksmith,
Eastgate." The shop-keepers included six gro-
cers, five shoe-makers, three confectioners, two
butchers, two drapers, two blacksmiths, two car-
riers, two wheelwrights and carpenters, one tailor,
one miller, and one "Richard Brown, top of
Kirkgate, joiner, portrait, animal and landscape
painter." It was not a city to which young Rob-
ert had come ; but it was a thriving village, with a
variety of people and interests unknown in Blub-
berhouses.
If the change in Robert's physical environ-

60 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

ment was great, so also were the changes in
the more intimate associations of his personal
life. Some of these were unfortunate, as, for
example, the sudden withdrawal of home safe-
guards and sanctities. ''In my father's time,"
writes the Doctor, " (Birch) was a fine sober fel-
low and a superb workman, but the years had
made havoc of him, and boy as I was, I found
very soon I had gone to live in the home of a
drunkard. Still this was not so bad to me, as it
would be to you. The proverb says a fox smells
nothing amiss in his own den, and while our home
was what I have told you of, we thought of beer
very much as we thought of bread, while I was
about as familiar with beer as I was with bread
and beef, and thought no more of its hurting me,
than you think of hot soda biscuits and solid
chunks of mince pie, and pickles and doughnuts
hurting you. Then I found again that the men
were drinking a great deal more in my new place
than we had ever thought of drinking in the old.
Each had about a quart a day, and then the
farmers who came to the forge were forever send-
ing for beer, and so the thing went on from bad
to worse, until one day . • • the old man went on
a fearful drunk, and said 'ise verra badly, lad,'
next day, and 'ise boon to dee,' and sure enough,
that was the last of the drinking bouts."

OF ROBERT COLLYER 61

Here were depressing conditions — ^and dan-
gerous, too, had it not been for the ''good home
training which had long since led him into clean
and honourable ways," the power and purity of
the boy's native manhood, as well as the pres-
ence of certain other more favourable circum-
stances. Thus the change from the spinning-
frame to the anvil was all to the good. The hours,
for one thing, were not so long, being limited to
ten, except in very busy times. Then the work
itself, for another thing, was conducive to health
and vigour. Much of it was in the open air — ^all
of it involved quick motion, vigorous exercise, and
constant interest. No wonder that the twisted
legs and the bent back became straight, the chest
full, and the arms ''like iron bands"! Further-
more, Master Birch kept a good table, in spite
of the beer. The food was simple and rough, but
it was wholesome, plentiful and had some va-
riety. "We got plenty of porridge and haver-
cake," writes the Doctor in after days, "and he
kept a good fat pig. Jack ToiBn, one of the
journeymen, used to say, however, that Mrs.
Birch could make two giblet pies out of a 'goois
neck.' " It was at this time, undoubtedly, that
Robert Collyer put on that aboimding health, and
developed that superb, almost giant-like stature,
which remained so supremely tihe characteristics

62 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

of his later physical manhood. In his autobiog-
raphy, he relates how in these days a certain old
man, coming into the forge to warm his hands,
would turn to him and say, "How thou dost grow
to be sewer: if thaa doesn't stop soin, we sail
hev to put a stithy on thee heead." And along
with growth, came the unbridled, exultant buoy-
ancy of youth. "I was not a model boy," writes
the Doctor. Indeed, it is remembered by a con-
temporary in Ilkley that, standing with his aunt
one day as young Collyer went striding by, he
heard the good lady exclaim, "There goes that
Collyer lad; he's a taastril." ^ Another tale has
.to tell of a certain night, when the "doings" con-

'This may have been said of him at a somewhat earlier period.
In a letter written in 1889 to a little girl who had seen this word
**taastril*' in an informal account of Dr. Collyer's life, and wanted
to know what it rnecuit, he explained as follows:

"Dear Utile Sister:

**Taastril, when you mean a boy, as old Lady Holmes did, is a
little chap as full of mischief as he can hold, and the word which
belongs to Yorkshire, as you say, takes on worse meanings when
you grow up and grow worse. I was a little chap then when she
said it, and didn*t know she said it at all. But three years ago,
when I was in England and had to speak in the Unitarian church
in Halifax, an old gentleman came to see me, just about my own
age. He was a little fellow, too, and was staying with the old
lady, who was his aunt. He heard her say what I told, because
I had run after her ducks and scared them dreadfully Just before;
and then, I should think it was flfty-Ave years after, this old
gentleman turned up and told me what she said.

"So, if you were a boy, I should tell you not to get into mischief

"The Iron Gates," «cc f'-aije 7i
FromaSnapahot taken by the author in 1913

The Ilklev "Smithv"
From a-n old Photograph

OF ROBERT COLLYER 68

tinued until two o'clock in the morning. A mill-
er's yomig wife, who had been waiting her truant
husband something after the manner of Tam o'
Shanter's dame, greeted him as follows : "Why,
David, man, thaa be out too late." "Noa, noa,
woman," he replied, "Bob CoUyer's yet behind
me." "What I — Boab," she exclaimed, "then
thaa be home full airly I"

If there are no sins or follies to record in these
years, it is not because of any lack of vitality, but
rather because of healthy activities which ab-
sorbed this vitality and assimilated it to good uses.
The ordinary routine of the young man's life in
this period is not hard to trace. Six days in the
week, he was up early in the morning, and hard
at work until eventide "by the anvil, considering
the unwrought iron." Horse-shoes, nails, bolts
and bars, iron gates, the usual products of the
smithy, made up the work of his hands. In the
afternoon, not too late, the hammer was laid on
the anvil, the forge fire banked for the night, and
the young apprentice left to his own devices. If
it were the winter-time, he was at his books in a

if you could help it, because you never know when you are safe.
It may be fifty-five years, and then the old gentleman may come
along and open the book, and there you are on the old yellow
page, with the date in it of 18S9 or 'SO, set down as a taastrlL

"Indeed,

''Robert Collyeb."

64 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

trice, and all the long evening throu^ was read-
ing. If it were summer, and the lingering sun
gave promise of bright hoiurs on the moor, he
was off to the uplands, to read in some fragrant
nook or mayhap to gaze on the beauties of the
dale, and dream. On the Sundays he was accus-
tomed to spend the morning at the parish
church ; ' and in the afternoon, when the weather

'His recollections of the preachers were delightfully told in
after years, in a letter to the Oh$erv€r, under date of December
18, 1884:

'The first of these that I remember was a right racy divine,
handsome as May, and a very useful man indeed in many ways,
but the people who loved him had to apologise for him, and say
'it's parson's way,' and that is not a fortunate position for the
parson. Still they would do an3rthing for him except lend him
'brass,' and seemed just as well pleased as if he had gone through
the whole service on a piping hot Sunday afternoon, when he said
with great simplicity, after saying the prayers, 'I have no sermon
to-day, and 90 will dismiss you with the benediction. Now to,
etc,' and the madcaps under age rather looked for some such
rare fortune again but did not get it. He had also a curious
trick of crying when he preached, for no reason that we could
make out from the discourse, and no doubt a remark made by old
Jacky Birch, as he wended home one Sunday, was often made,
'Aa wonder what f parson wer roarin' at ta day.'

"Hie next that I remember was a mere drill-sergeant and was
bound to make us all learn the step and march to church but — ^we
didn't

"The next had nothing to say and said it in the highest key he
could reach, without the slightest modulation or emphasis. I think
we should not have minded if he made the thing musical, but it
was good news when we heard he was to leave us and when old
Joe Smith, the parish clerk, gave notice that on the next Sunday
Mr. B. would preach his ftmeral sermon. Poor old Joe was turned

OF ROBERT COLLYER 6«

was fair, sometimes with companions, more often
alone, always with a book, he climbed the long
slopes to the moors. These great stretches of
heather-strewn prairie were his unfailing delight,
a veritable refuge of the spirit. Whenever op-
portunity offered, wrote the Doctor in after days,
"I would walk over the moors, with my book, or

eighty and would now and then give out the evening hymn in the
morning.

**The next who stays in my memory was very 'high' and very dry,
sincere as the day, and full of devotion to his worlc But he was
fresh from Oxford, full of the new wine which was fermenting
there then, and did not know the people he had to deal with from
a cord of wood. So instead of being all things to us as Paul
directs by inference, he wanted us to be all things to him, and
especially to attend no end of services on week days and to fast
in Lent Now Ilkley never did believe in fasting when she could
get anything to eat, while very much of her living lay in providing
in those times for 'company,' so while the good man wore himself
to skin and bone in the weeks before Easter, we quietly voted
the whole thing a nuisance, and he left.

"Then a man came of a very lovely spirit and with beautiful gifts
as a preacher. Mr. Carrick won us all to hear and love him who
went to the church, but his health gave out and he had to move
away. Then the old vicar died presently, and a deputation went
to HuU to see if the well-loved curate would not accept the living,
for if he would we would petition the patron to give it to him
as the one man we wanted, and even 'ware brass' some said, to
make things smooth. He could not come; his health was too del-
icate, and we were feeling bad enough about it when we heard
the living had gone to a Mr. Snowdon. So when this rare man
eame, as the tide was rising, it was also making against him you
see. We noticed at once also that Mr. Snowdon had not Mr.
Carrick's rare gifts as a preacher — ^very few men have. But be
was simple, sincere, and in real earnest,"

66 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

sit down on a great grey crag, and watch the
sunshine ripple over the heather, while the music
of the bells in the old tower at Haworth . . .
came floating on the simimer winds and mingled
with that of our own old church, where the Long-
fellows worshipped many hundred years."

Companions were not many at this time. Some,
like two drunken apprentices, whom he mentions
in the shop, were distasteful to the finer instincts
of self-respect and decent rectitude which had
been so diligently cultivated in his home, and
were naturally and easily avoided. Others, of a
diflFerent character, were gladly welcomed to his
heart. Thus there was Edward Dobson, a fellow
apprentice at Birch's anvil, and a close friend
so long as Collyer remained in Ilkley. Another
well remembered associate was Edward Stephen-
son, with whom he roomed for a time in the home
of his brother, Thomas Stephenson. Christopher
Hudson made friends with Robert through his
kindred literary interests, as did Thomas Smith,
a farmer's lad, and together the young men
joined a library club which was being organised
in the village. Down the dale, at Low Anstly,
dwelt Robert Metcalfe, another farm boy, who
would bring his master's horses to the smithy to
be shod. And across the way from the open
forge lived Mary Ann Smith, whose mother was

OF ROBERT COLLYER 67

an old friend of Harriett CoUyer. More casual
acquaintances were John Hardisty and his
brother William.

Young Collyer's real companions at this time,
however, as indeed throughout his life, were
books. The fire kindled in his soul on the day
when he bought "Whittington and His Cat," in-
stead of the candy, with his penny, had never
gone out. On the contrary, it had burned ever
brighter and warmer with succeeding years.
Even as an eight or ten year old mill-hand, with
no library but the few volumes on the home-
shelf, the boy dreamed dreams at his work in the
factory about what he would like to do when he
was a man, ''and this was not to be a sailor or to
drive a stage-coach, but to go into a book-shop."
By the time he came to Ilkley, the fire had grown
into a conflagration and was the one consuming
interest of his life. His work at the anvil, to
which he was faithful and in which he soon ex-
celled, was stiU, in the perspective of his inner-
most soul, but an interruption or a postponement
of what he regarded as his real vocation. "From
the time when I used to read Bunyan and 'Cru-
soe,* " writes the Doctor, "there had grown up in
me a steady hunger to read all the books I could
lay my hands on." He read at all times and
under all conditions* ''I could read and walk

68 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

four miles an hour/' he tells us. ''I read when I
was blowing the bellows in the forge, and in the
evening when there was no candle I poked my
head down toward the open fire, and never ate a
meal if I could help it without a book close to my
hand. I did worse than this, for when I went
a-coiui;ing my wife, I read all the books in her
father's house instead of — ^well what's the use
telling what I ought to have done, only this I may
say, that if she had not been the best lassie in all
the world to me, as well as the bonniest, she
would have given me the mitten, and served me
right."

This passion for literature gathered about him
young friends of a like turn of mind, as we have
seen. Three of these, John Hobson, the school-
master, Ben Whitley, and John Dobson, formed
with Robert a private circle for reading and
study. They were wont to sit together and read
at nights as long as their tallow candle would hold
out. They read good books, too; and generally
the best English reviews. They read aloud, and
in turns. Any holiday they had was passed in
the fields reading, and the parson got only the
dismal Sundays, the bright ones being passed in
a larger temple. ^'I can hear now one of us say-
ing, *Now, Bob, thee take a turn,* " was the Doc-
tor's memory of these happy davs.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 69

Of these three cronies, the nearest and dearest
was John Dobson, whose name never came from
Dr. Collyer*s lips in later years without being
caressed with lingering affection. The influence
and service of this man were the most beneficent
that came into his life at this time, or perhaps at
any other. Dobson was a wool-comber by trade,
but a man who, like the young blacksmith whom
he befriended, had a passionate interest in and
love for books. He was incomparably the best
read man among the native townsmen of Ilkley.
His chief interest was in metaphysics, and he de-
voured eagerly aU volumes which "held argu-
ments with you deep and vital'* about the prob-
lems of God, the destiny of man, and the spiritual
nature of the universe. The essays of John Fos-
ter and of Isaac Taylor were favourites of his, as
well as stories of the old Scotch Covenanters, and
of all heroes who had fought and died valiantly to
vindicate the inward witness of their souls. But
he had a poetic side as well; for Dr. Collyer re-
lates of him that, on a journey on foot to Scot-
land, to see the battlefield of Drumclog, he took
pains to pass through Westmoreland, to catch a
glimpse of the great poet, Wordsworth, and was
rewarded by seeing him sitting on a chair in the
sun by the door-way of Dove Cottage.

It is not surprising that this serious and sober

70 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

man was drawn to Robert Collyer, whose heart
burned even as his own with the love of books.
But it is at least unusual that he should have so
dedicated himself to the service of this young
man, who was no less than ten years his junior,
and almost wholly uneducated. He must have
seen in him not merely the kindred passion for
the printed word, but some suggestion of those
great qualities of mind and heart which were des-
tined later to make the rough apprentice a leader
of his generation. However this may be, John
Dobson set himself devotedly to the task of sup-
plying young Collyer with the books he wanted.
He had a scant wage, but he was a bachelor and
thus had no family cares; and what money was
his was CoUyer's also, for the reading. Volume
after volume, he brought to him with shining
eyes; together they read and discussed the pre-
cious pages; together they lived and moved and
had their being in this other and greater world
of thought. What wonder that the book-hungry
apprentice loved this man, and in later years,
when fame and influence were his, acknowledged
a debt to him which could never be discharged!
The books which Robert Collyer read in these
years are not known to us to any very great ex-
tent. We have the record that on a certain
Christmas day, when for some forgotten reason

OF ROBERT COLLYER 71

he could not go home, he found solace in a bor-
rowed copy of Washington Irving's "Sketch
Book." A reference to "The Vicar of Wakefield"
reveals the fact that this was the first novel he
had ever read. A chance reminiscence brings us
the word that "on a day I can still recall, a still
November day, when the mist lay on the halmes
and the yellow sunshine touched the crags on the
moor. Cooper came to me with *The Last of the
Mohicans,' and almost persuaded me to be an
Indian." Still again he recalls the early day
when he was led to read Scott's Waverly novels
by a religious book which denounced them as
immoral, "and gave quotations to prove it."
Macaulay's "Essay on Bacon" was encountered
at this time and deeply admired. Very cu-
rious is his statement in a letter read at the fiftieth
anniversary celebration of Dr. William Henry
Furness, of Philadelphia, "Some years before I
emigrated to America, my soul clove to him as I
sat one day in a little thatched cottage in the
heart of Yorkshire, and read *The Journal of a
Poor Vicar.' "

These memories are probably a not inaccurate
indication of the kind of literary material that he
most eagerly devoured. It is doubtful if he trav-
elled very far with John Dobson on his journeys
of intellectual exploration into the wilderness of

72 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

Scotch metaphysics. Philosophical and theo-
logical treatises were read, of course, just as
everything that was a book was read. But his
early passion for Bums and Shakespeare, his
later love for Scott and Lamb, Dickens, Thacke-
ray and Macaulay, and his unfailing delight in
biography, history and folk-lore, show clearly in
which direction he inclined. In these early years,
as in later years, he read not in any deliberate or
systematic way, but almost wholly for the mere
joy of reading. And it is certain that it was not
until many years later, when the process of evalu-
ation was not wholly an unnatural one, that he
came to appreciate the significance of what he
was doing in this early time. "There was really
no idea," he wrote, "of the good which might
come out of it; the good lay in the books into
which I must plunge my soul headlong, impas-
sioned by the beauty and salt of truth. I had no
more idea of being a minister, than that I should
be here to tell this story. But now give a young
man passion like this for anything, for books,
business, painting, teaching, farming, mechanics,
or music, I care not what, and you give him a
lever to lift his world, and a patent of nobility,
if the thing he does is noble. So shall I not call
this my coUege course, — a very poor coUege and
a very poor course, and in all these years there

OF ROBERT COLLYER 78

has been no time when I have not felt a little sad
that there should have been no chance for me at
a good education and training ; but such a chance
as there was, lay in that everlasting hunger to
read books." And a chance, may we not add,
not merely for mental but for moral training as
well. These years, as we have seen, had their
perils, which the wholesome tradition of the old
home might not have overcome, had it not been
for other and co-operating influences. And of
these, by all odds the most potent was the com-
panionship of books. "They were of worth to me
then," said the Doctor in a moment of confession,
"to help me along a bit in the right direction; for
they were good books which fell into my hands,
and all the seed did not fall in thorny ground."
And so the years passed — ^with hard work,
long rambles on the moors, occasional visits home,
congenial friends, beloved books! It was largely
a wholesome life, with little to challenge in any
serious way the young blacksmith's native worth.
In 1844, on his twenty-first birthday, he was re-
leased from his apprenticeship, but continued,
without interruption, his labour at Birch's anvil.
It is interesting to note that, in later years, Dr.
CoUyer was inclined to assert that he was never
much of a workman — certainly no such master
artisan as his father — for his heart, as he said.

74 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

was far more in his books than in his hammer.
But there is nevertheless good evidence that he
must have been something more than an ordi-
nary artisan. The chief item on this count must
ever be the famous iron gates which he made for
the parish church-yard at Ilkley. These were
"as homely as a barn door," according to his
testimony — so homely that the thought of them
haunted the Doctor in after-time, and made him
resolve that, if he could ever find the money, he
would some day replace them by a new pair
made by an artist. A full half-century after the
gates had left his forge, however, the Doctor, on
a return visit to Ilkley, took occasion to examine
them, and to his immense satisfaction discovered
that not a rivet had sprung "in the clanging back
and forth through all the years." More than a
dozen years later still, it was my privilege to see
these gates, and my equal joy to discover that
they were still in first class condition. Nor did
I find them so "homely" as the Doctor had al-
ways pictured theml

Further evidence of CoUyer's solid work as a
smith is found in the fact that when John Birch
died in 1846, he thought highly enough of his
twenty-three year old assistant to leave him the
forge in his wiU. The Lord of the Manor, to
whom the property belonged, however, would not

OF ROBERT COLLYER 75

have it so, as he felt that CoUyer was too young
to manage the business. So the shop was let to a
master smith, Sampson Speight by name, of Mid-
dleton; and Robert was hired at 18 shillings a
week to take charge of the work. This was a
fortunate chance, as it happened, for it left him
free to venture elsewhere, when Ilkley was no
longer home to him. Had the forge become his
own at this critical moment, it is at least possible
that the whole course of his after life might have
been changed.

Although not technically a master, Robert
was now to all intents and purposes his own man.
Business prospered, and within a short time he
was earning the highest wage for a smith of a
pound a week. This looks small to us to-day, but
it was enough in the England of the '40s to main-
tain a home and keep a fire burning on the hearth,
and thus to make inevitable a wife, as Ben Frank-
lin pointed out long years ago. It was in June,
1846, that CoUyer married Harriett Watson,
an Ilkley girl, twenty-one years of age. Of the
courtship we know little, save that it was con-
ducted under some difficulties, as she was a work-
ing girl as he was a working lad, and their time
was scant. Nor was this available time always
the most propitious. "I lost my heart in May,"
he writes, "and spent the sunmier trying to se-

76 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

cure another to fill the vacancy. We were both
busy week-days, and so we took Sunday evenings.
I counted thirteen Sundays in succession on
which it rained, and we had to court under an
umbrella.''

All this was forgotten when the banns were
said, the union joined, and the lad and his wife
safely ensconced in a house on the north side of
Church street. Here they passed the first radiant
days of married life ; here in due season, on July
5, 1847, was born a son, Samuel; and here for
many a happy day still were cherished the con-
fident and eager hopes of youth. Robert Collyer
had travelled a toilsome if not unwholesome road
since the hour when, as a youngster of eight, he
had begun his labours in the mill at Blubber-
houses. Now seventeen years later, a sturdy
artisan of twenty-five, he had found his work,
established his home, and was rearing his family.
It is probable that, had anybody asked him at
this time, he would have said that his life was
plotted out for him to the very end. And yet,
as a matter of fact, it had not even begun!

OF ROBERT COLLYER 77

CHAPTER IV

CRISIS AND CHANGE
1848-1860

— "Then the memory comes of a change through a
great sorrow which befell me^ when my life was dark
in the shadow of death." — R. C. in "Some Mem-
ories^" page 28.

In 1842 there befell the first of a series of like-
events which shook the heart of our young man,
at first as a slight tremor moves the ground, and
then rent it as an earthquake, till all things were
as ''chaos and black night/'

On May 29 of this year, his half-brother, Wil-
liam Wells, the son of Mrs. Collyer by her first
marriage, died at the age of twenty-three. The
oldest of the family of children in the home, Wil-
liam had been a close companion of Robert
through all the years of <^hildhood and early
youth. The two had played together on the
moors, worked together in the factory, and slept
together in the loft of the old stone cottage. In
his early manhood, William was stricken with

78 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

tuberculosis, contracted as a boy in the cotton-
mill, and had for some time been peculiarly de-
pendent for strength and comfort upon his
younger brother. His passing, while in many
ways a relief, was yet the snapping of a link
which had been close-bound from the very first
days of life.

Two years later, in July, 1844, there came the
word that Robert's father had dropped dead at
his anvil. In 1889, something over a year after
the boy's departure for Ilkley, the family had re-
moved from Blubberhouses to Leeds, where
Samuel had obtained favourable employment at
the machine works of Mr. Peter Fairbairn. It
was here that he died. He had never been sick
a day in his life, but for some time before this
had now and again felt a peculiar dizziness, which
had served as a slight warning to his family of
what was coming. Young Robert, however, had
heard nothing of this in Ilkley, and received the
news of his father's death, therefore, as a light-
ning stroke from a clear sky.

Another interval of two years brought the
death of his master, "Jacky" Birch, to which
reference has already been made. The circum-
stances attending this event, rather than the
event itself, seem to have made an altogether re-
markable impression upon Robert Collyer's mind.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 79

For three months after Birch's collapse from
drink, writes the Doctor, "I attended to him;
and then one morning as I was lifting him, great
gouts of blood came jetting out of his chest, and
in a few moments he was dead, while I made a
pledge to the Most High that, by his help I would
not be buried^ also in such a grave ; and the result,
as I think of it, had something to do with the way
I must go from the anvil to the pulpit."

Then finally, as a last stroke beside which these
other losses were as nothing, came the death of
his wife. On February 1, 1849, only a little over
two years and a half from the wedding-day, the
beloved ^lassie" perished in child-birth, and was
buried in the village grave-yard with her babe,
Jane, who had died three days later, on February
4, laid tenderly in her arms. The home on Church
street was straightway closed, and the forlorn
father, with his first child Samuel a year and a
half old, took refuge in the home of Thomas
Stephenson and his wife, which was located next
door to the blacksmith shop.

Of this event, Dr. CoUyer was strangely ret-
icent throughout his life. It constituted a crisis
of such moment in his career that he could never
pass it by without some mention. But he would
refer to it, in writing and in speech, only as "a
vast and an awful sorrow," and say no more.

60 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

This waa a silence which seems to have b^^iin, as
by a kind of necessity, at the first moment of his
loss. For he tells us that he consulted not ""with
flesh and blood," not even with his dearest friend
and ''good helper/' John Dobson. It was as
though there were feelings here too deep for
WiMrds, as well as for tears. From the first black
hour of his grief to the last sunny moment of his
active years, he kept this experience as a place of
holiness which only he mi^t enter. A man* ''the
windows of (whose) heart" were always wide
"open to the day," he yet had deep and at times
unexpected reserves; and this memory, as pre-
cious as it was pitiful, was the deepest of them
aU.

The eflfect of the tragedy upon the young hus-
band and father was immediate and overwhelm-
ing. It marked, indeed, the supreme crisis of his
career. For the first time in his experience, the
beauty seemed to go out of the world and the joy
of living to vanish from his heart. For the first
time the hammer rang dull and lifeless on the an-
viL For the first time his beloved books failed
to hold his mind and stir the deep places of his
souL Friends, even the dearest, were shut out
completely from his life. "The secret lay be-
tween God and my own soul" is the final word
in his autobiography.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 81

Such a grief, however, though sacred beyond
all expression, must have an end, and this ended
in ''the only refuge there is for us when life grows
dark in the shadows of death." Robert CoUyer
found himself thinking, in his loneliness and sor-
row, of the Sunday school on the hill where he
had gone as a lad, of the hymns that his father
had simg, of the prayers that his mother had
heard, of the Bible on the book-shelf in the old
stone cottage. In accordance with early habit, he
had always attended the Ukley parish church,
but had never been as a young man what is com-
monly called "religious." Now, however, his ten-
der and deeply wounded heart was ready for a
real experience, and it was the blaze of Wesley-
anism which was still burning hotly over the
northern moors, which "caught" him. Little by
little, just how he never explained, he found him-
self going to the meetings of the Methodists, his
"neighbours and friends" all of them, in a little
chapel on the outskirts of the town. Gradually
he was moved to tell them "in not many words
how it was with (him)," and "they gave (him)
a warm welcome." Then, on a famous Sabbath
night, he heard a local preacher, Flesher Bland,
preach a sermon, "which took a wondrous hold"
on him, and "at last the light came." "By heaven's
grace," he underwent "a good old-fashioned con-

82 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

version." The Methodists took him "on proba-
tion," put him in "owd Jim Delves's" class for
proper instruction; and in a few weeks received
the ardent and regenerated yoimg man into the
full communion of the church.

Later events have tended somewhat to obscure,
if not to hide, the central importance of this oc-
casion in the life of Robert CoUyer. In two re-
spects at least, however, and both of them vital,
this conversion to Methodism constituted without
doubt a critical moment in his career.
/ On the one hand, it introduced him for the first
/ time to the world of genuine spiritual experience.
\^ through his early days, as we have seen, he
lived in an atmosphere of religion, which acted
as a determining influence upon his character.
The chapel at Blubberhouses, and the parish
churches at Fewston and Ilkley, were familiar
places, and the home on the moors as a veritable
altar. But the great deeps of the inward spirit had
not been uncovered, until the death of the young
wife and mother had left him "desolate and
afraid"; and even then the living waters there
confined were left untouched until there came this
great crisis of the soul. Impressive evidence of
what Dr. Collyer himself thought of the signifi-
cance of this moment in his life, is given in a pas-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 88

sage in his essay on William Ellery Channing.^
Speaking of a similar experience in the early ca-
reer of the great Unitarian leader, he says, ''It is
the habit of our liberal faith to make light of
what our orthodox brethren call a change of
heart, conversion, and the new birth; but I say
that, once truly apprehended, this change of
heart, or conversion, is the most essential human
experience of which I have any knowledge, and
of all men in the world it is most essential to the
man who is called to be an apostle separated unto
the gospel of God. It is that point in the his-
tory of human souls at which we pass from the
first man of the earth earthy, to the second man
which is the Lord from heaven. ... It lifted
Wesley out of his posturing and pondering into
the front rank among apostles, made a new man
of Thomas Chalmers, and taught Thomas Guth-
rie to teach ragged schools. And so, sweet as he
was, and pure, and true, Channing had to go
through the travail of the new birth before he
could begin to live his life and do his work; he
had to give himself utterly to God — to count
moral attainment secondary, and supreme love
to the Supreme Love, the end of all striving.
. . . This is Methodism, you say! Well, it will
be a long time before I deride this element in

. * See "Gear Grit," pages 17T-178.

84 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

Methodism, fairly and truly understood. I believe
in it with all my heart."

A second result of this conversion was the great
and epoch-making discovery that he was dowered
with the divine gift of speech. Long since, dur-
ing earlier years, in lus frequent wanderings over
the moors, he had found himself orating to the
landscape as though prompted by some eager
spirit within his soul. ''Something would set me
thinking and talking back, as we say, with no
audience but the moor sheep that were all about
me, and would look up in wonder as to what it all
meant, and then say. Baa." But in the Meth-
odist chapel he had a more appreciative audience,
and the spirit within him had a better chance.
Going night after night to the prayer-meetings,
he became accustomed to standing on his feet and
bearing witness to his experience of religion. Lit-
tle by little he discovered that his good neigh-
bours heard him gladly, and were deeply moved
by the fervent words that came pouring forth out
of his heart. Nor was he the only one that made
this discovery. For the people themselves were
soon aware that they were listening to a prophet
and were resolved to use him. One day old Mas-
ter Delves was absent from his class, and Tom
Smith, a member, speaking up from across the
room, urged young CoUyer to lead that night«

OF ROBERT COLLYER 85

He was frightened, and protested. But Smith
was persistent. "Nah, lad," was his word, "tha
mun lead t'class to-neet; tha can do't if tha tries."
The decision to try was a momentous one, for it
was in reality the casting of the die for a life-time.
But taking hold, he led with complete success,
as had been anticipated, and shortly thereafter
he was himself made leader of a class.

"Then, some weeks later, the preacher in
charge of the churches in our dale came to see me
and tell me this story — ^how the brethren in the
local conference had risen up one by one and said
it had been borne in on them that I had a call to
preach. They were rustical men who made their
own living as artisans or small farmers, and
preached on Simday and *find yourself* for the
love of God and of human souls. Now what do
you think of it, the preacher said? And I an-
swered, I thought they were right — I was ready
when he was ready to give me a chance. Are
you sure? he said. Yes, I answered, and went to
work when I got home to think out a sermon."

From this time on, he was a lay-preacher.
Every Sunday, when the fires were banked in
the forge and the leathern apron laid aside, the
stalwart young blacksmith went trudging across
the moors or over the hills, to meet some little
group of Methodists and speak to them of the

86 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

deep things of the spirit. Sometimes he talked
in little chapels; more often in kitchens or tap-
rooms or workshops; once in a while, like the
great John Wesley himself, out under the open
skies, by some cross-roads or in some harvest
field. Then on the Monday the fires were blazing
again in the smithy, and the hammer ringing
with a right good-will upon the anvil. Gradu-
ally, under the influences of these new experi-
ences, the young man found beauty creeping back
into the world, and peace and joy taking their
wonted places in his heart. His work began to
hold him as before. His books were again the
solace and inspiration of every moment that he
could call his own. His friends were gathered
again into his embrace, and beloved John Dobson
was received once more into the sacred and secret
places of his soul. Sorrow had endured for a
night, but joy had come with the morning!

The experiences of the young preacher in his
apostolic ventures were varied, and furnished
vast amusement as well as tender thought in the
recollections of after years. The first appoint-
ment was three miles up the river, at "a gaunt
place" called Addingham, "and, as I found, to
a handful of hearers. The sermon was all ready.
It was divided into three parts. The firstly and
lastly were my own; the secondly I stole" from

OF ROBERT COLLYER 8T

the sermon of a good Scotch divine, McCheyne
by name, published in the "Christian Treasury."
Now "this was what came of my first sermon.
You must use no notes, this was the order, so I
had none, but stumbled along somehow to the end.
. . . After all was over, as I wended home, sud-
denly as if a voice had cried Halt, I halted, for it
came to me in a flash that I had forgotten that
brave and wonderful secondly, far away the best
word I had to say; while a dear friend and
brother preacher met me not long after and told
me how he had stood behind a screen to listen and
thought fairly well of the sermon as a first effort,
but there was one curious thing about it I must
bear in mind. There seemed to be a wide gap
between the firstly part and the lastly! And
twenty-five years after, when we met in Canada,
I told him what was the matter with that first
effort, and how by good rights my text should
have been, *Thou shalt not steal.' While in all
honesty I may say that from then until now I
have stood true to Paul's exhortation, Let him
that stole, steal no more.

"I make a clean breast of this," continues the
Doctor, "for two reasons. First, my sin found
me out. Now if there are degrees in sin, it might
be thought that a man who steals one-third of a
sermon, is only one-third as bad, shall we say, as

88 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

the man who steals a whole sermon; still I was
in for it all the same, because St. James says
truly, or did to me, 'Whosoever shall offend in
one point, he is guilty of all.' So I was cast back
on myself, while there was cold comfort in the
thought that I had meant to do a mean thing, and
had failed to do it. This is the first reason why
I have felt free to tell the story, and the second
is that this offence opened the way to my ordina-
tion as a Methodist local preadier.

"I had no special eagerness to try again," con-
tinues the Doctor, "and thought they would not
want me, but they did not know my secret and
said I must try again. So the good old man in
charge sent me to a farmhouse one Sunday on the
lift of the moor, where they only had preaching
now and then, and where I suppose he thought
poor provender might pass where the feasts were
few and far between.

"It was in June. I can see the place still, and
am aware of the fragrance of the wild uplands
stealing through the open lattice in bars of sim-
shine to mingle with the pimgent snap of the peat
fire on the hearthstone, which gives forth the
essence of the moorlands for a thousand years.
And I mind still how heavy my heart was that
afternoon. . . . Still I must try, and mind my
good mother's words, who would say to us, No

OF ROBERT COLLYER 89

matter how poor you are, children, don't look
poor and don't tell. They were simple-hearted
folk up there of the old Methodist brand, eager
and hungry for the bread of life, and very ready
to come in with the grand Amen. The big farm
kitchen was full of them, and they were just the
hearers to help a poor fellow over the sand bar
on the lift of their full hearts. So they sang with
a will — and in all the world where will you hear
such singing with a will as in old Yorkshire and
Lancashire! Then I must pray with them. . . .
Then the time for the sermon came after another
hymn, when some stammering words came to my
lips and then some more, while gleams of light
began to play about my parable. And their eyes
began to shine who listened, whUe now and then
the Amens came in for a chorus from the chests
of men who had talked to each other in the teeth
of the winds up there from the times of the Sax-
ons and the Danes. And now after all these years
I still feel sure it was given me that afternoon
what I should say and given them to answer,
while I might say by grace I was saved through
faith, but then you see this would still leave me
tilting with a borrowed plume, because the faith
would be mine, and I had none worth the name
of my own.

"So the service ended and then the good man

90 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

of the house came and laid his hands on me and
said very tenderly, *My lad, the Lord has called
thee to preach His gospel. The Lord bless thee
and make thee faithful in His work,' and all the
people said Amen. . . . When I think of that
afternoon on the moor side, I feel I would not
like to exchange this simple ordination of mine
from the heart and hands of the old farmer for
that of any holiness or eminence on earth. And
again this is a story with a purpose, or else I
would not tell it. That invasion from on high
helped greatly to put me in heart, and deepen the
intuition, shall I call it, that I had a call to preach,
and need not filch from Scot or lot for what I
must say, as one to whom a full and clear spring
has been revealed need not care for the cistern."
Another wonderful memory of these early days
of prophesying was that of the Sunday when he
first preached in the home chapel at Ilkley. Ru-
mours of the ordination sermon far away on the
moors must have been carried back promptly to
the town, for it was on the very next Sunday
evening that he was invited to preach to his own
folks. Dr. CoUyer records that he was proud of
this appointment, as well he might be; and the
text was chosen and the sermon prepared for the
occasion with especial care. It was plainly what
is known as an "effort," but later years retained

OF ROBERT COLLYER 91

only the recollection of the thorn planted in the
flesh by a certain shoemaker, "a thoughtful man,"
who failed lamentably in his task of being prop-
erly impressed!

The question as to what kind of preaching was
done by the ardent young blacksmith in these
first days of apostolic pioneering is not difficult
to answer in the light of the evidence available.
Dr. Collyer himself never cherished any fond
illusions. Recalling the fact that he was invited
by the Methodist elder to preach *'for nothing a
Sunday and find myself," he comments sagely
that this was "mighty poor pay, but then it was
mighty poor preaching." The criticisms passed
by certain of his friends and neighbours would
seem to bear out the accuracy of this judgment.
The shoemaker's thorn above referred to on the
occasion of the Ilkley discourse, was none other
than the following harsh verdict on the evening's
work. "Ah want to speak to tha, lad," said the
honest listener on the next morning, as Robert
Collyer "proud of (his) efi^ort," passed the door
of the cobbling shop on his way to the forge.
"Ah went to hear tha preach last night." "Did
tha?" was the eager inquiry. "Does tha wants
to knaw what ah thought of it," continued the im-
perturbable shoemaker. "Well, if tha wants to
knaw, ah want to tell tha. Tha'U never mak a

92 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

preacher while tha lives I" Then, seeing how his
harsh criticism had pained and depressed the
budding preacher, and being a kind-hearted fel-
low, he quickly added, ''Don't mistake what ah
mean. Tha won't make a preacher for us in t'
Methodist church. Tha may do somewhere else,
but tha won't do for us. When tha preaches a
sermon tha must say, 'Thus saith the Lord,' and
not lose thi way reasoning about it. Ah fear
tha'U want to reason ower much, an' if tha does
tha'U have to git away."

Somewhat more comforting, and certainly
much fuller of understanding, was the conmient
of another neighbour on the same sermon in the
Ilkley chapel. "I met the miller," said Dr.
CoUyer, telling the tale in after years, "and he
said, 'Ah heard tha preach last night.' I said,
'Did you, sir?' He said, 'Ah'll tell tha what
they're going to do wi' thee. They're going to
make a spare rail of thee — ^they'll put tiiee into
every gap there is. Now thee look out.' "

That the preaching of Robert CoUyer in these
days of apostleship to the Yorkshire Methodists
was crude, rough, unformed in the extreme, may
be not unsafely conjectured. It is impossible to
conceive, even in the light of later extraordinary
achievements, that this young and untrained ar-
tisan developed at this time anything other than

OF ROBERT COLLYER 08

the most elemental qualities of utterance. And
yet, from the beginning, there must have been a
full supply of that pithy wisdom and homely wit
which never failed him to the end, much of that
vigour, originality and native charm which were
so supremely his characteristics in his best days
as a preacher, and something even of that poetic
beauty, sweet human tenderness and profound
understanding of the conunon heart of man,
which remained forever the real secret of his
power. Certainly there was spontaneity if noth-
ing more — ^that spontaneity of thought and speech
which is as refreshing as the full tide of a sum-
mer stream, and to the shrewd, sharp-witted, but
all too often tongue-tied denizens of the country-
side, as glad a miracle as "the over-plus of blos-
som" in the spring. The canny elder of the
home district knew what he was doing when he
asked this whole-souled young blacksmith to
preach at Addingham. The full-voiced dales-
men in the farm kitchen were not deceived when
they chanted their chorus of Amens in answer to
the lad's appeals. The devout old farmer was
moved by a real prompting of the Holy Ghost
when he laid his hands upon the preacher's head
and pledged him solemnly to God's service. Even
the observations of the shoemaker and the miller
show the impression of rude but genuine power

94 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

which their townsman's word had made upon
them. There were times, of course, when strength
seemed to fail him ; but more frequent I must be-
lieve was such an experience as that "on the lift
of the moor" when "it was given (him) ," he knew
not how nor why, "what (he) should say." The
true spring of living water was in him, and it
needed only the deep-cut channel to give it easy
and abimdant flow.

"There was many a Sunday," he says, "when it
was like dropping buckets into empty wells. There
was no preparation possible for me like that so
priceless through the books and masters. I must
come at my purpose in some other way. But
now and then as I would be hard at work» some
thought would grow luminous for earth and
heaven, and be as the seed that groweth secretly,
and then there would be no trouble when the
right time came for the reaping. Or one would
elude me, do what I would. Yet there would be
a day of redemption when the truth I could not
capture would lift me on its wings and turn the
croak I had felt I must make into a new song.
One of these Sundays I well remember. I had
walked twelve miles to preach, with my heart
like a lump of lead, for there seemed to be no ac-
cent of the Holy Ghost in the word I must say.
But it was rare listening and good answer in a

OF ROBERT COLLYER 95

small chapel I found in an old farm kitchen, and
I spoke two hours and wist not of the time, nor
as it seemed did they."

There was something over a year of this preach-
ing up and down the dale. Six days in the week,
it was hard work at the anvil; and then, on the
seventh day, it was the glad release to preach the
gospel near or far. Into this new and glorious ac-
tivity, Robert CoUyer seemed to be thrusting firm
and strong the new roots of a new life. But as
time went on, it became more and more evident
that the roots were not holding. The earthquake
of sudden sorrow had broken up the soil too widely
and deeply for him really to catch hold again and
flourish. The new planting must have new soil.
Therefore did he ponder emigration — ^at first to
Australia, whither he had offers of help for the
journey, but finally and at last definitely to
America.

The idea of this venture to strange lands across
the seas was in the beginning an echo of the hopes
which his parents had early cherished, as we have
seen. "Before I was bom," he says, "my father
and mother wanted to emigrate to this new world,
but they could not raise the money to bring them
over, and all through my childhood I can still
hear them speaking of their regret that they
would never be able to cross the sea to these

06 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

states. And so I grew up with the longing to
come here, I think, in the very marrow of my
bones/'

As time went on» the economic motive began
to play a prominent part in his speculations.
Life in England in those days was a hard and
often wearying struggle for bare subsistence.
The big loaf had not yet come into the English
labourer's home as it did after the repeal of the
Corn Laws. "Fifty cents," writes the Doctor,
"was all you got for shoeing a horse all round,
and as yoiu* Yorkshire horse has big feet, this
left me a very small margin." Better living than
this was wanted, "because I always believed that
good living, if you take care of yourself, has
something to do with a good life." He had no
extravagant financial ambitions. "My ideal fu-
ture," he writes, "was not a great one. My whole
ambition was to make my way as a blacksmith.
But I wanted a place where I could have a little
home of my own, with books to read, and the
chance to educate my children. I mind that I
pictured to myself a quiet little cottage in a
Pennsylvania village, where I should live with
my wife and my children yet to come. In my
picture I painted a pretty library, and plenty of
books, and a garden. I told my desires to my
friends. They all tried to dissuade me from them.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 97

They oflFered me letters to get work anywhere
save in America. But at last I started, and, as
I expected, when I got here, I found every one
ready to help me along. At our first Christmas
dinner we had a turkey smoking on the table —
a bird which in England I had no more thought
we should ever eat of than I did of eating the
American eagle."

Other motives also had their determining influ-
ence on this adventure. Thus Dr. CoUyer writes
in one place that he wanted "not to be a cipher in^^
a monarchy, but a citizen in a republic. I had
no vote; I wanted one, and also to learn how to.
use it honestly and well. I had to bow and
cringe before men who had rank and title. I
hated to do it, as they say one I must not name
hates holy water."

But no one of these motives, nor all of them to-
gether, perhaps, might have availed, had it not
been for the crisis and change recorded in this
chapter. The death of his yoimg wife, with the
conversion to Methodism which followed, con-
stituted the profoundest experience he had ever
known. The old familiar world was suddenly
lost, and a new world found. Life, which had
hitherto been a simple round of working, playing,
reading, living, now took on something of the
stem aspects of duty and sacrifice. Religion,

98 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

which had always been a sober reality, now be-
came transfigured into an enthusiasm, a convic-
tion, a consuming passion. In his sorrow, he had
wandered blind and stimibling into waste places,
and been lost. As a result of his conversion, he
had recovered his sight and found his way into
quiet paths of peace. Under the influence of
Methodist teaching and habit, he had laid hold
at last on those well-springs of spiritual insight,
those living fountains of human sympathy, those
great deeps of faith in the power and the love of
God, upon which he drew so abundantly and un-
failingly in his later years as pastor and preacher.
In the most literal sense of the word, he had
undergone a "new birth," entered upon a new
life, become a new man. What, therefore, more
natural, nay inevitable, than that he should be-
gin to dream of other lands, and at last, in due
season, like another Abraham, go out, "not
knowing whither he went"! He had started all
over again in the things of the spirit — why
should he not similarly start all over again in
the things of the flesh? A new world without, as
a reflection or rather expression of the new world
within — this had become a necessity!

As early, therefore, as the closing months of
1849, Robert CoUyer had made his decision to
emigrate to the United States. It was not easy

OF ROBERT COLLYER 99

to make the change all at once, so that many
weeks passed away before he laid down his ham-
mer on "Jacky" Birch's old anvil and closed the
smithy door for the last time. By the spring-tide,
however, everything was ready, and, as a fitting
symbol of the close of the old life in England and
the beginning of the new life in America, he
pledged hand and heart, on April 9, 1850, to
Ann Armitage, daughter of a cloth-maker in the
town, twenty-eight years of age, "the woman
who was to be by far my better half through more
than forty years." He had not thought to marry
again. The vials of his love would seem to have
been empty. But his besetting loneliness, the^
sight of his motherless child, the need of a wife •
and home-maker in the new land, above all the
tenderness and fidelity of one sweet Ilkley lass,
did their perfect work, and in this relation as in
others, he resolved to enter upon a new life. Long
after this companion of his years had passed
away. Dr. CoUyer loved to recall the "memories
of a time, when," as he put it in his inimitable
speech, "I saw her sitting in the sunshine on a
hill-side, and wondered whether this might not be
the woman in all the world that God had placed
here for me, who would make good my broken
life, which had been stricken with great sorrow.
And of a day, not very long after, when the worcj

100 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

of the Lord came to me, as I most surely believe,
saying, *Gret thee out from thy kindred and from
thy father's house unto a land that I will show
thee'; and how it seemed so hard, when we had
plighted our troth, to ask this maiden, whose life
had lain in fairer lines than mine, to go with me
into this unknown world, that I begged that I
might come first and find work and start a home.
. . . But I can still see the clear shining in her
eyes and hear the very tones of her voice as she
answered me from the holy book, *Whither thou
goest, I will go, and whither thou lodgest, I will
lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy
Grod my Grod. The Lord do so to me and more
also, if aught but death part thee and me.' And
then I knew something of the gift that had come
to me in the great and loyal heart."

And so, on a Tuesday, April 9, 1850, these two
were wed.* On Wednesday they started for
Liverpool, leaving the baby, Samuel, in the safe
care of Mother CoUyer in Leeds, until the home
across the seas could be established. On Satur-
day, April 18, they ''set sail in an old ship called

' ''If we had taken stock in omens, there was one at the wedding,
for the very ancient minister who married us, began with the
bnrial service in solemn accents, and the clerk who must saj the
Amens, rushed on him, took the book from his hand, and set him
Tight,"— Jl. C. in "Jiectur^ on Dr. Fum^ss,"

OF ROBERT COLLYER 101

the Rosdus, and in the steerage, to seek (their)
fortunes in this new world."

That this departure was easy is not for a mo-
ment to be believed. Behind, to be sure, were
struggle, weariness, sorrow, and a blind alley;
before were opportunity, promise, and an open
road. But behind also were all the precious
treasures of Robert CoUyer's heart. The mother
in Leeds, who carried in her face the beauty of
those early years in Washburndale ; the friends in
Ilkley town, who had grown to know and love
this stalwart smith with the tongue of flame ; the
pleasant moors aglow with heather and ringing
with the songs of birds; the long winter nights
dose by the fire with open book to enlighten and
beguile ; the quiet grave by the church where had
ended his first love and his first life — ^these were
some of the things that he was leaving. And be-
fore him also was not merely promise, but that
"hazard of new fortunes" which is quite as often
disaster as it is victory. We may well believe,
therefore, that the moment of leave-taking
wrenched the heart. There was comfort in the
Bible and its accompanying commentary which
first among his few books he had stowed away in
his pack; there was joy in the brave young wom-
an who had put her hand in his, and resolved to
lodge where he lodged, and die where he died;

102 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

there were challenge and inspiration in the ad-
venturous path in which together these two had
set their feet. But when he tinned away for the
last time, it must have been his farewell to his
mother, his last moment in the quiet after-glow
of evening by the unmarked grave, and the blank
uncertainty of the future which were uppermost
in his thoughts. What did it all mean? Where
was he going? When should he return? What
was to befall? "I remember," he says, "how I
stood at a sharp turn of the road to take a last
look at the old place, it might be forever, and how
I said to myself — I wonder if I shall ever meet
my old conu-ades again, and if I do, wiU they be
glad to see me, or will they pity me and say, Poor
fellow, he made a great mistake. It really was
an adventure, which might have touched a stead-
ier nerve than mine. I had never been forty miles
from the spot in which I was bom, never seen a
ship or the sea, and didn't know a living soul on
this continent I could go to for advice, or for a
grasp of the hand."

It was a moment as sad as it was brave. But
could he have looked forward as later he was able
to look back, he would have been relieved of fu-
ture fears if not of past regrets. In after days he
saw with clearness that his very decision to go
and begin anew was itself the warrant of his sue-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 108

cess. For this was no idle whim or despairing
venture. It was a resolve made of that fibre of
creative manhood, which the world can never
wholly overcome. "I think I may say," the Doc-
tor wrote years afterwards, of this turning-point
in his career, "I had my father's and mother's gift
in a certain power to hold my own, and to see a
thing through when I had once made up my
mind." He might, therefore, have been of good
cheer, for the future, though hidden, was secure,
even as the past.

104 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

CHAPTER V

AMERICA!
1860-1858

"The light ... on these Stotes."— R. C. in
"Some Memories/' page 42.

The voyage to America was anything but agree-
able. Steamers were crossing the Atlantic, but
the Ukley blacksmith and his bride had no money
V to spend for time or comfort, and therefore took
passage in a sailing vessel. This craft was styled
"the good ship RoscitLS** in the posters; but our
emigrant pair were not many days "out of"
Liverpool, before they "concluded that she should
have been named the Atrocious, so full she was of
evil smells — ^and the bilge-water in our poor
cabin, while the food for which we had paid good
money of the realm was so bad that I can imagine
no workhouse now in England, or prison, where
it would not create a riot." It was an unhappy
bridal trip, but it had its ending in just "one
month to a day," when on May 11, 1850, the
travellers reached New York.

OF ROBERT COLLYER lOfl

As they looked upon the city, they realised
with a fresh poignancy, their utter loneliness in
this new land which was to be their home. Not a
soul was here who knew them, or could give them
greeting. "I remember," writes the Doctor,
"how we said when we saw the land. How good it
would be if there was one man or woman in all
that strange new world who would meet us with
a welcome, and say, *Come and tarry with us for
a day.' " What wonder that Dr. Collyer con-
fesses that they were "lonesome," and that his
"own heart was very heavy"!

Furthermore, there was not only lonesome-
ness, but anxiety, to trouble them. For, strange
as it may now seem, the question as to what kind
of treatment they would receive at the hands of
the people in America had been a matter for
speculation, and even for some little fear,
throughout the voyage. Dr. Collyer tells us that
he "had read all the books that he could lay (his)
hands on" about America, but wanting to know
more than books could give, he "had gone before
his leave-taking to see a sort of kinsman who had
been three times to the States, to seek his for-
tune, and said to him. Is there a good chance for
a man over there in America? Are the people kind
to a stranger? No, he said, there ain't a good
chance, and you can do a great deal better here.

106 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

*Whaa them Yankees/ he said in his broad
Yorkshire, 'is saa keen and cunning, they'll tak
the verra teeth ott o' yer heead, if ye dooant keep
yer moath shut.' As he had lost some half-dozen,"
continues the Doctor, "I didn't like to ask him
if 'them Yankees' had got those, but the pros-
pect was a little blue."

All fears, however, proved groundless. Before
he had set foot on American soil, while he was
yet waiting on the ship's deck to land, CoUyer
heard from the pier a hearty voice in the broad
Yorkshire dialect. It was like a breath of
heather from the moors, or the song of an upland
thrush. He found the speaker to be a tavern-
keeper, who had come to the dock in search of
guests. Without more ado, the yoimg emigrant
placed himself and his wife in the charge of this
man. "I felt we should be safe," says the Doc-
tor, "as I knew all the Yorkshire ways, and I
could form some sort of judgment perhaps of
these men who were bound to have my teeth."

His host proved all that could be desired —
and so did the second inhabitant of this new
land whom he chanced to encounter. On the
night of their arrival Mrs. CoUyer was taken ill
and needed medicine. "I went to a drug store on
Broadway," says the Doctor, "to learn my first
lesson and see how it was done. I f oimd the man

I OF ROBERT COLLYER 107

was civil and indeed friendly. He asked me if I
had just landed, and what I meant to do. It
would have been very pleasant to hear so kind
a man in England, but here I was on my guard,
and so I said to myself, I shall know what you
mean when I see what you charge. How much, I
said, when the package was pushed over. O, you
are very welcome, the good fellow answered, keep
your money. You will need it. And then he\
held out his hand and said. Come in again, I shall ^
be glad to see you. And so I went back to the
tavern with my first lesson, and something like a
mist in my eyes, thinking of the way in which the
very first American man I had met had pulled
my teeth."

Here was a heartening start of his life in the
new country. It goes far toward explaining his
confession of later years, "I fell in love with
America the day I landed and have never
changed my mind." Further experience only
tended to confirm the favourable first impression,
as we shall see.

The thought uppermost in Robert Collyer's
mind, of course, from the moment of his landing,
was that of finding immediate employment.
"About twenty dollars was all we had to start us
in this new world," says the Doctor, so that time
was short for the idle enjoyment of sight-seeing

108 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

or native hospitality. Two days after their ar-
rival in New York, therefore, Robert and his wife
started for Philadelphia, which had been the
original destination in their minds on leaving
England. There was no particular reason for
this choice, so far as we know. "When I had
made up my mind to come to this new world,"
says the Doctor, "... and the question came,
* Where shall I alight in that land?' the answer
could not be mistaken, *In Philadelphia.' Why
there of all places I could not have told you, but
may say in passing that I was a staunch Metho-
dist then and believed, as I do still, in answers to
prayer when these touch some momentous turn-
ing point in our hmnan life. *To Philadelphia,'
the answer came." ^ — ^And therefore, when he
touched these shores, it was to Philadelphia he
went.

The joy of the journey, by way of South
Amboy and the Delaware, "the cheapest route,"
lingered in the hearts of the two travellers for
many a long year. It was a perfect May day,
with orchards in full bloom, new sown farm-
lands smiling in the sun, and all the air alive
with prophecies of summer. The lovely land-

*In hlB old age, he wrote to Mrs. James T. Fields, "I decided
that Philadelphia should be the place, for I knew no one any-
where, and I loTed the meaning of that word 'Philadelphia."*

OF ROBERT COLLYER 109

scape seemed to hold out its axms in welcome,
and to repeat the friendly greeting of the York-
shire tavern-keeper and the Broadway druggist.
It was therefore with hearts overflowing with
life and cheer that they entered the City of
Brotherly Love, and made their way to an inn,
kept also by a Yorkshireman, which had been
recommended to them by their New York host.

A search of the pages of the Philadelphia
Ledger the next morning revealed the following
advertisement: "Wanted, a blacksmith. Ap-
ply to No. 5 Commerce Street." Here was
manna in the wilderness! Without a moment's
delay, Robert hastened to the address given, ap-
plied for the job, and got it. The forge was
located in Hammond's hammer factory, at a
little place called Shoemakertown,^ seven miles
north of Philadelphia, on the Tacony Creek.
The work of making claw hammers was new, but
the young Yorkshire blacksmith had years of
practical experience behind him, and was un-
afraid.

The journey to his new home and place of em-
ployment brought fresh evidence of the friendli-
ness of America. He was to report at the forge
the next morning. Bright and early, therefore,
he was plodding along the Old York highroad

* Now Ogonti, Pa.

110 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

to Shoemakertown, in what was already a torrid
sun. "I was tired," says the Doctor, "and a lit-
tle sad, when a gentleman passed in a carriage,
looked at me a moment, halted and said, Get in
and have a ride. Now I had plodded along the
roads in the mother-land when the humour took
me, ever since I could remember, and a great
many gentlemen had passed me in carriages,
but in all my life not one of them had ever said.
Get in and have a ride ; and so this was some-
thing of a wonder. I got into the carriage and
we fell into a kindly talk, and my friend got to
know almost as much about my life, as I knew
myself, in an hour, held out his hand when our
ways parted, after saying all sorts of cheerful
things about America — and I went on my way
thinking of what I had heard about Americans."
This was Robert Collyer's "second lesson," as
he called it. "The third lesson was no great
matter, but it still lies in my heart with the sweet-
ness of a June rose. I had turned down a lane
near the end of my joiu*ney that day, when all at
once I came to a little garden foaming over with
lilacs, the blossom I loved best. I could not re-
sist gathering a whole lot of them into my arms
and burying my face in them as I stood by the
fence and just sobbing perhaps over another gar-
den, thousands of miles away, when I heard a

OF ROBERT COLLYER 111

step, and saw a woman coming out of the cot-
tage. There, I said to myself, I shall hear the
rough side of that woman's tongue ; she will want
to know what I am 'a-doin' at them air lilacs/
What she did was to say, in the cheeriest way im-
aginable. Would you like some lilacs? And
when I answered, If you will give me one,
please, I shall be ever so glad, she made up a
bunch as big as a broom, and handed it over the
fence, with a pleasant word and a smile, while
I said as I went down the lane. Nether mill-
stones are nothing to the hardness of this Ameri-
can heart, and how they do draw one's teeth, to
be sure!"

One other experience Dr. Collyer always liked
to link with these three, and this "the noblest and
the best."

"When I got work, (my wife) said she would
get work too, and then we should the sooner get
a home together. So she took to sewing by the
day for a lady near by, but was taken almost at
once with a fever she had caught, no doubt, on
the ship, — and it was a question of life and
death. WeU, now, the proper thing, you will
say, was to take my wife to the hospital." The
woman for whom she was working, however — a
Mrs. Thomason, wife of a Presbyterian clergy-
man, and a mother with four children — ^would

112 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

not hear of such a thing. On the contrary, she
took Mrs. CoUyer into her home, and niu-sed her
as if she had been her very own, until she was
well. "Then we said," continued the Doctor,
"we can never pay you for this loving kindness.
But you have been at expense also ; please let us
know how much, and we will make it good just
as soon as we can earn the money. But they
would not hear of it. They sent us forth with
blessing and benediction."

"We were very poor," says Dr. Collyer, "when
they poured on our young lives that lovely bene-
diction." — Work was seciu*ed, however, and the
young blacksmith "went at it with a will. I
worked until my wife had to wring out my
clothes at noon, for another stint at the ham-
mers." Hammer-making was a new craft, as
we have seen; but he was on "piece work," which
put him on his mettle, and soon he was mak-
ing twice as much money from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
each day as he had made in England from 6
A.M. to 7 P.M. Before he left the anvil for
good and all, he was making twelve dozen claw-
hammers a day, which was a record for the coun-
try-side.

As soon as the wife had recovered from the
fever, a modest home was found in Shoemaker-
town. This was exchanged a year later for ''one

OF ROBERT COLLYER 118

much better, in a lovely green lane, away from
the forge." Here they remained until the great
change nine years later, in 1859. Here "'the
children came, as I thought they would," says the
Doctor; "as welcome as the flowers of May, for
I felt that in all human probability I should
always be able to feed them and clothe them and
keep them warm, and give them the education
befitting the children of a poor man." Emma*
was the first to arrive, on February 11, 1851.
The second child, Agnes Sheldmerdine, born in

1858, died in infancy. Then came twins. Amy
and Alice, who "were only a day old when they
were taken." For the second time Mrs. Collyer
was seriously ill, and sorrow was heavy upon the
home. New courage and hope, however, came
with the birth of Harriet Norman* on June 14,
1857. It was after the removal to Chicago in

1859, that the last two children were born —
Ajinie Kennicutt ^ on May 12, 1860, and Robert
Staples on January 10, 1862. Meanwhile in
1854, Samuel, the son by the first marriage, was
brought over from his grandmother in England
to his father in America, by a shopmate in the
Shoemakertown factory, a Mr. Gallagher by

■Now Mrs. Hosmcr, of Chicago.

* Later Mrs. Joseph Eastman, died September S3, 1903.

*Died February 10, 1886.

114 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

name, who crossed the seas in this year to get his
family. It is interesting to note that Samuel's
voyage was on the S. S. City of Glasgow, which
disappeared, without leaving a trace behind, on
the return trip.

The country in which the new home was estab-
lished, was one to win the heart. It is true that
Philadelphia, the second city in the land, was
only seven miles distant ; and Shoemakertown it-
self a not too lovely industrial settlement. It is
true also that the moors, the dales, the craggy
hills of Yorkshire were all unknown. But the
flat Pennsylvania countryside had wonders all
its own, and soon appeared to the new settlers
as "the most beautiful land (they) had ever laid
eyes on." Walking out from the ugly factories
and squatty homes of the village, they were lost
in no time in the green lanes, bordered by lilac
hedges and orchard blooms, which threaded
the pleasant farm-lands in every direction.
Stretches of meadow and pasture, watered by
pleasant streams, and broken by occasional
clumps of trees, interspersed the wide spaces of
cultivated ground. In the spring, the air was
heavy with the smell of wild flowers, or of the
sodden, upturned soil, and later with the sweet-
ness of the new-mown hay; while autumn
brought the fragrance of gathered harvests and

OF ROBERT COLLYER 115

dropping fruit. Herds of cows fed quietly in
the summer heat ; heavy teams of horses or yokes
of oxen raised clouds of dust along the highways ;
and workers toiled in the fields, or rested in the
shade of spacious and prosperous-looking farm-
buildings. Winter, with its frozen ground, shiv-
ering stacks of withered corn-stalks, and drifting
snows, was less cheerful. But the cutting east
winds of the Yorkshire moors were unknown,
and long periods of rain and mist a rarity. It is
doubtful if Robert CoUyer's eyes ever rested on
anything in this new country which seemed as
lovely to him as the purple heather, or his ear
heard music to compare with the song of the
Washburn throstle, or his feet trod earth as wel-
come as the long slopes to the Wharfedale up-
lands. His references through many years to
these familiar features of the homeland, show
with what fondness his heart clung to what it had
first known and loved. But there was a warmth,
an abundance, a serenity about this smiling coun-
tryside which, in spite of ugly villages here and
there like Shoemakertown, had a peculiarly in-
gratiating charm, while a certain virgin fresh-
ness, suggestive of unspoiled resources, brought
constant reminder to the settler from over-seas
that he had indeed passed from an old to a new
world.

116 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

Such a land brought compensation to the Coll-
yers for what they had left behind; and glad re-
lief as well from the rather sordid and ugly sur-
roundings of Shoemakertown. What was miss-
ing was not so much the beauty of the old coun-
try, as the companionship of the old friends. It
is this which explains, in all probability, the early
homesickness of which Dr. Collyer made confes-
sion in after years. But this lack was soon sup-
plied, not so much perhaps through the essential
friendliness of the people, though this was most
certainly present, as through that innate quality
of personal attraction with which Robert Coll-
yer was endowed from the very beginning of his
days. There was a winsomeness about him
which was irresistible. One had but to look
upon his open, good-natured countenance, hear
the vibrant ring of his voice as it reverberated
from his massive chest, feel the warm clasp of
his tremendous hand, to love him. Honesty
clothed him as a garment; goodwill radiated
from his face as a glowing light. Wherever he
walked the ways of men, they leaped to meet
him, and meeting, took him to their hearts.
"The only way to have a friend," says Emerson
in his essay on Friendship, "is to be one." This
it is which explains the seeming miracle of the
drug clerk in New York, the driver on the Old

OF ROBERT COLLYER 117

York road, and the woman of the lilacs in Shoe-
makertown. And this it is which explains also
the warm hearts which promptly opened all
about them in their new home. "We sought no
friends/* says the Doctor naively, in his "Some
Memories;" "they came to us of their own free
will." Of course they did — as naturally as the
flower turns to the sun or the bee to the blossom.
The warmth and sweetness of his soul, reflected
in a face of noble beauty, drew all men unto him,
even in these days when he was a mere immi-
grant, unknown to acquaintanceship, much less
to fame. Nor should we forget the wife who
was a woman of infinite charm and large capacity
of afi^ection. To her no less than to him must
be rendered accounting for the doors and hearts
which opened to them so promptly. They were
a fascinating couple, to know whom was to love
and serve.

On the very first day in the new home, the
good woman next door came in with a dish of
stewed tomatoes. On the same day, an old
Quaker lady, "well up among the nineties," came
hobbling across the road on her crutch, to give
them greeting. Another neighbour, Old Michael,
a representative of the German stock which was
thickly planted in this particular district, early
beetle a fast friend of the new blacksmith.

118 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

Albert Engle, the store-keeper, and Charles Bos-
ler, the miller, trusted and loved him. And so,
little by little, the niches left vacant by absent
friends were filled, and the lonely hearts made
happy. When the two young voyagers landed
in New York, there was no friend to give them
welcome; no familiar spot to which they could
turn for refuge ; no opening, so far as they knew,
for employment and the establishment of a home.
Within a month, all these were supplied. Amer-
ica had become to them as their own dear land
across the seas.

It was in mid-May, 1850, that Robert Collyer
went to work at the forge in Hammond's fac-
tory. All went well until July, when "we had
to stop, to put in a new boiler. I could not af-
ford to lay off," says the Doctor, "I must have a
job of some sort." So for two weeks he tossed
hay in a neighbour's meadow. Then, when the
crop was ingathered, he sought out his employer,
Mr. Hammond, and asked for a job on the new
boiler. There was no opening, save that of car-
rying a hod for the brick-layers; but this was
eagerly accepted. "So I carried a hod," boasted
the Doctor, "for a dollar a day, to make ends
meet; and in doing this I had to go through the
nastiest hole in the wall with my load of bricks
jrou ever saw, full of jagged ends, and ^e result

OF ROBERT COLLYER 119

was that on Saturday night I had more perfectly
new and original bumps on that poor head of
mine than your phrenologists ever dreamed of."
There was balm, however, for the sensitive soul,
as well as the bruised head, when at the end the
"dear helpmeet" took the tired hod-carrier to her
heart, and blessed him with her "Well done."

The lay-off, fortunately, was of short dura-
tion, and CoUyer was soon back at the anvil.
Then followed a period of seven years, when
work was steady and wages good. At one time,
the young blacksmith was earning as much as
fifty dollars a month, but such an income was
possible only dinging the cool months.

Then, like a bolt out of the blue, came "the
fearful panic of 1857, when everything came to
a deadlock." From October to the following
March, the fires were out and the anvil silent.
The situation in the little home, as in hundreds of
thousands of similar homes throughout the land,
was desperate. Here was the mother, not any
too well ; three children clinging to her knee ; and
savings sadly depleted by two lay-offs, one "with
a broken arm, and again with a splint of steel
in my eye," and by the recurring illness "for
weeks together" of Mrs. CoUyer. In such a
plight any odd job, however humble, was wel-
come. "I took to whatever I could get to do,"

120 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

is the Doctor's word. "I did not care, you see,
what the job was, so it was honest work, because
a dollar a day meant independence, while to fold
your hands meant beggary/*

For awhile he worked at digging a well for a
neighbour. Then he laboured "for a spell" on the
turnpike. A gentleman long years after told
him that he had seen him at this time breaking
stones ; but it is the Doctor's testimony that this,
if true, passed from his memory. Such ventures
helped to keep the home together, and the chil-
dren fed and clothed ; but they would have failed
in the end, had not good friends who knew the
worth of the sturdy Yorkshireman, as we have
seen, come gallantly to the rescue. "Don't
worry, Collyer," was the word of Albert Engle,
"come to my store for anything that is needed
in the family; it will be all right by-and-by."®
"Come to my mill for all the flour and meal you

''^Two weeks ago this very morning, Albert Engle died. His
son wrote me at once that 'Father died this morning very sud-
denly, and Mother wants to know if you won't come down and
take the funeral service/

"I went to the old town, my home so many years ago, and then
and there I told the large gathering present the story of my
acquaintance and intimacy for forty-six years with the departed
one, and spoke of him as the good husband, the good father, the
good citizen, the good friend, and the good merchant, and said to
them that I would pledge my confidence that Albert Engle did not
possess one unclean dollar when he died." — R. C, in an interview,
October 12, 1896.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 121

need," said Charles Bosler, "I can trust you."
And George Heller, landlord, asked no rent
during the distressful period. "I must record
their names in my book of life," wrote Dr. Coll-
yer in his autobiography; so I know that he
would have me also record them here as those
who made good the ancient promise, "Before
you ask, I will answer."

Thus, by hard labour of his own, and by the
helping hands of friends, Collyer "pulled
through, none the worse for the panic." By
early simuner the fires were lighted again; for
two more years, his hammer rang blithely on the
anvil ; and the home prospered in its humble way
as never before.

Life during these nine years at the forge in
Shoemakertown was very similar, in all outward
aspects at least, to what it had been in Ilkley.
The hours of labour were shorter, the wages
larger, and the general standard of living, there-
fore, higher in normal times than had ever been
dreamed of in the old country. But the drama
of experience was much the same. At the cen-
tre, of coiu^se, was the day's work. Morning and
evening brought the companionship of wife and
children, friendly intercourse with neighbours,
occasional political or religious discussion in the
stores or at the cross-roads. "My neighbours,"

122 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

he says, "wanted me to take out papers of citi-
zenship, but I told them I would wait awhile.
They had been used to the country all their lives
— I wanted to study it for a time." Often on
Sundays and holidays, especially in summer,
there were strolls down the green lanes, and
over the meadows. Everything outside of the
routine of the anvil, however, was tempered on
this side of the Atlantic, as it had been on the
other, by Robert Collyer's twin passions of read-
ing and preaching.

The love of books was burning as hotly in his
heart as ever — perhaps more hotly, to the extent
at least that the increased income made it possi-
ble for a time to add fuel to the flames. "From
the first," writes the Doctor, "I bought books,
and denied myself beer, because I could not af-
ford both. I liked beer, but I liked books bet-
ter." Before many months had passed, how-
ever, the purchase of even an occasional volume
became an extravagance which the good wife,
with a cautious eye to the future, refused to tol-
erate. The expense of the new home, the arrival
of little children with mouths to feed and bodies
to clothe, the support of the mother'^ in Leeds
which Robert shared now and for many years to

* "Father had no business to succeed to, and no property. Left
Mother and five of us. . . . Dear old lady living yet. We all

OF ROBERT COLLYER 128

come with his brother, the need of saving against
an evil day, all these conditions made necessary
the use of every penny earned by the hard labour
at the anvil. When illness of the mother, or ac-
cident to the father, came along, the fiscal situa-
tion became serious. And when there came un-
employment, as in 1850 and 1857, there was
positive disaster. The purchase of books, even
second-hand ones, under such circumstances, be-
came impossible. Now and again the young
blacksmith, tempted by books as a toper by beer,
yielded to the weaknesses of the flesh; and then
desperate were the endeavours to conceal his of-
fence from the watchful mother at home. He
tells of one delightful occasion when he was
guilty of expending almost a whole dollar for
a thick volume of Littel, which had proved abso-
lutely irresistible. He "durst not" bring it
home ; so he hid it carefully away under a currant
bush in the yard, with the idea of rising early the
next morning and smuggling the damning object
into the house. His wiles were successful; and
it was some days before the wife discovered the
volume in his hand. "My dear," was the in-
stant query, "where did you get that book?"

take care of her and hope she will live to be a hundred." — R. C
in letter (undated) written early in his Chicago days to Miss
Alice Baker.

124 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

"Oh," replied the husband softly, and with a
fine nonchalance, "I have had this book some
timel"

By such desperate ventures as this was a
home library slowly but surely built up. In ad-
dition to the Bible and commentary referred to
above, Robert Collyer had brought some sixteen
or eighteen other books with him across the sea.
In the nine years at Shoemakertown, from 1850
to 1859, he reckons that he spent in all for books
not more than ten dollars. Still, books were
cheap — this was the age of pirated editions; and
what with judicious purchases of second-hand
copies, and occasional gifts, the volumes on the
shelves slowly but surely grew in number. By
1859, he can write in a personal letter, "I have
gathered a good library in this land of cheap
coarse books — essayists, poets, history, and the
Encyclopaedia Britannica (new edition), with
plenty others."

Not to such limited resources, however, could
he be confined. Such a thirst for reading as
beset this man, must find other springs of water ;
and, fortunately for him, they were at hand. "I
presently heard," he writes, "of a library in the
small town of Hatboro, six or seven miles away,
six one way and seven the other. A fine old
farmer had found, a long while ago, that this was

OF ROBERT COLLYER 125

the noblest use he could make of a good deal of
his money — ^to build up a library away among
the rich green lands ; and so there it was waiting
for me, with its treasure of good books. I see
them again, as they stand on the shelves, and
think I could walk right in and lay my hands on
those that won me most potently, and cast their
spell again over my heart — I may mention Haw-
thorne among them all as the author I found
there for the first time who won my heart for
good and all, as we may say, and holds it still.
Then I found a great treasure in no long time
in Philadelphia, that I could no more exhaust
than you can exhaust the spring we have been
glancing at by drinking, which dips down
toward the deepness of the world. I was still
bound fast by the anvil, for this was our living,
but there was my life, so far as good books could
make it, rich for me and noble, in the great li-
brary again seven miles away. So what matters
about the hard day's work at the anvil, while
there was some new volume to read when the
day's work was done, or old one to read with an
ever new delight? My new book or old one,
with the sweet, green lane in the simMner time
where I could walk while the birds sang their
native song, and the fragrance of the green
things growing floated on the soft summer air,

126 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

and the friends in winter, with the good wife
busy about the room and the little ones sleeping
in their cribs — I look back to those times still,
and wonder whether they were not the best I
ever knew. I was reading some lines the other
day, in an old English ballad written three hun-
dred years ago, and they told the story of those
times —

*0 for a booke and a shadie nook, eyther in doore or

out,
With the green leaves whispering overhede, or the

street cries all about.
Where I maie reade, all to my ease, both of the New

and Olde,
For a right good Booke, whereon to looke, was better

to me than Golde.' "

Was there ever a more insatiable reader?
Night and morning, by the fireside in winter and
in the open fields in smnmer, at the anvil and in
the preaching, it was always a book which was
the intimate companion and comforter. "In my
life," says the Doctor in another place, "from
fourteen to the day (a certain friend) met me
in Germantown, there was no spare moment I
did not read. I read while the iron was heating
in the fire, while I ate my meals, from quitting
work to bed-time, and in the eariy morning. My

OF ROBERT COLLYER 127

poor wife often said, *I cannot get you to talk as
other husbands do. Look up and let me hear
your voice.' I fear I was a dumb dog; but it is
a comfort to remember I was never a mean dog.
But this was the substance of my life from 30
to about 56." His oldest son, Samuel, in an
autobiographical statement, says, "One of my
duties in those days (in Shoemakertown) was to
carry his luncheon to him at the shop, and I have
a distinct recollection of seeing him many times
reading a book while blowing the bellows." A
Quaker woman of the neighbourhood, who saw
much of him these days, in reminiscing in later
years, testified that he was a tireless reader. "I
can see him now," she said, "with his somewhat
shabby coat, carrying a book in his pocket. He
was always reading. He kept a book by him
constantly while about his work; and when he
went anywhere after his work, he always carried
a book. That was how he obtained his knowl-
edge."

As to what this knowledge was, or what books
he read at this time, we have information as
scant, strangely enough, as that pertaining to the
former days in Yorkshire. Mention of the ear-
lier favom^ites of his youthful years — Bunyan,
Goldsmith, Burns and Shakespeare — recurs
more than once. He now adds Hawthorne to

128 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

the list, as we have seen. Charlotte Bronte was
first discovered at this time. Harriet Beecher
Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was read with en-
thusiasm as soon as it appeared. The amusing
story about Littel indicates that literature of a
more serious character had as strong an appeal
as pure literature. The fact of the matter is, in
all probability, that anything that was a book
was grist to his mill, with his inclination running
strongly in the direction of the great masters of
England and America who knew the human
heart, and revealed its valour, pity and endless
mystery. Lacking a competent guide, and him-
self untrained and therefore devoid of standards,
he undoubtedly wandered often in strange by-
paths, and more than once lost his way. But his
instinct was sound, he knew and clung to his
own, and in the course of years built up a
knowledge of biography, fiction, history and
folk-lore which, while all his own and thus to a
remarkable degree imique, would yet have put to
shame the knowledge of many a proud student
of universities. One wonders, with a feeling
akin to pity, what Robert CoUyer would have
been, had the life-long hunger of his heart for
trained study been satisfied. One cannot believe
that this experience would have altered those na-
tive qualities of understanding, charm and hu-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 129

man sympathy, which were the sources of his
power all his days, while giving back nothing
commensurate, intellectually and spiritually, in
return. And yet just enough men have been
spoiled — shall we say despoiled? — in this way, to
make it possible for us to rest well content with
what actually took place. In the case of Robert
Collyer, at any rate, we may have confidence that
all things worked together for good.

The second passion which found dominating '^
expression in these years was preaching. "I /
came here," says Dr. Collyer, in an autobio-
graphical fragment, "resolved to do two things —
to work at the anvil week-days, and to preach on
Sundays."

In preparation for this latter function, he
brought with him across the seas a letter of com-
mendation from the Methodist brethren in Eng-
land. Soon after his arrival in Philadelphia, he
discovered in a certain book-seller, Thomas
Stokes by name, a Methodist lay-preacher, and
to him he immediately presented his letter. He
was warmly received, and taken to a neighbour-
ing church on the next Sunday, when he was for-
mally presented to, and received by, the minister.
Later on, when he had established his home in
Shoemakertown, Collyer and his wife joined the
Methodist church near at hand in Milestown, and

130 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

here again were given cordial welcome. It was
only a matter of time when he was introduced to
the clergyman in charge of the Montgomery
County circuit, and regularly admitted to the
band of local preachers.

All endeavours, however, to get started in the
actual work of preaching, met with failure, for a
reason which was as appalling as it was unex-
pected. At the very first service which he had
attended in Philadelphia under the escort of the
good book-seller, there had been a prayer meet-
ing after the sermon; and Robert Collyer, in
token of the goodwill of his new friends, was
asked to "make a prayer." Nothing loath to try
his powers of divine petition in this new land, he
rose to his feet and poured forth his soul in famil-
iar Yorkshire fashion. Then followed what he
described in after years as "the scare of a life-
time"; for he was informed on his way home, by
honest Thomas Stokes, that the meeting had not
understood "the half of what (he) said. — I sup-
pose you spoke in the Yorkshire dialect," contin-
ued Stokes. "You will have to speak as we do
here in America, if you are a local preacher."

Here was a "panic" indeed, for Collyer had
set his heart, as we have seen, upon preaching
among the brethren in America exactly as he had
done in England. Nor was the case remedied

OF ROBERT COLLYER 131

any when he went to be received by Mr. Taft,
"the chief of the board of stewards or church
guardians" in the local district. "He could not
understand me, apparently," writes Dr. Collyer
in an account of the incident, "for I then spoke
the broadest Yorkshire dialect, which is about as
distant from the English language, in its sound
at least, as the Highland dialect. 'You want to
preach, do you?' said he after awhile. 'Well, I
guess we may some day give you an opportunity.*
But I saw that Taft did not like me. He thought
it was suspicious that any man should speak such
a foreign language, and yet claim that it was
English. I saw by his eye that I should not get
to preach, unless I took him unaware. So after
waiting for a long time for an opening and not
getting any, and having my mind full of some-
thing to say all the while, I finally thought one
Sunday afternoon, when the weather was pretty
hot, that I would go over to a little school-house
kind of church called Harmer Hill, where Taft
was to hold forth himself. It occurred to me
that he might want to be relieved on that hot day.
There was a little congregation gathered, looking
resigned, as they had to, because they were going
to hear Taft. I stepped up toward the altar and
he looked at me an instant, and said : * Would you
like to preach here now?' *Yes/ said I, *I would,

182 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

very much/ *(Jo right on/ said Taft. So I
started in, and the desire being long pent up
within me, it came forth voluminously. When I
sat down covered with perspiration, Taft said,
*Well, you can preach whenever you like now/ "
The way was open; and from this time on he
was as busy a preacher in Pennsylvania as he had
been in Yorkshire. "I preached in those green
lands where we lived, nine years almost, unlearn-
ing the old tongue and learning the new." Every
Sunday he was oflF bright and early to some one
of the four village churches which constituted the
particular circuit to which he was assigned, and
occasionally he joiu^eyed to some more distant
appointment in a neighbouring circuit. Over the
dusty, or frozen, roads he trudged, with his Bible
under his arm and the word of Grod in his heart —
preached his sermon to the little group of farm-
ers, tradesmen and artisans which greeted him—
and then trudged home again in the late after-
noon or evening to his well-earned rest. He was
not paid even so much as to enable him to make
good the wear and tear on his shoe leather. In
later years he estimated that he received in all,
for his nine years' preaching service, one almanac,
several pecks of apples, a heterogeneous assort-
ment of household necessaries, "no end of teas
and suppers/' and ten dollars in monev which

OF ROBERT COLLYER 188

was paid to him for three sermons to the Baptists
of the neighbourhood. But there were rewards
which came to him far more precious than silver
and gold. Everjrwhere he went he found good
friends; now and then, as on the occasion of his
visit to Hatboro,® six miles away on another cir-
cuit, he discovered a library which was to him as
"a spring of living water" ; best of all, he won the
inestimable privilege of pouring out his heart on
all the deep things of the spirit. These were
sunny days; and it is not to be wondered at
that he looked back upon them through his later
years with exceeding joy.

Of the growing effectiveness of his preaching
in this period, there can be no question. His nat-
ural gift of speech, the training of continued and
earnest practice, his increasing fund of experi-
ence, above all his ripening qualities of human
understanding and S3anpathy, were conspiring to-
gether mightily at this time to make him a highly
successful preacher of the word. ''He was a
wonderful speaker," testifies a contemporary, "so
earnest, and demonstrative in his manner. He
said things which made you feel like going out J^-^'
and doing them the next day." There was a charm
of personality, a contagion of good spirits, an
earnestness of conviction, an unerring instinct of

■See abore, page 194,

184 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

common sense, a homely interest in the tasks of
daily living, a pure and high vision of the reality
of things spiritual, which tended rapidly and
surely to overcome the disadvantages inevitably
inherent in his utter lack of education for his task.
For many months, if not years, his Yorkshire dia-
lect was the most serious obstacle in his way. One
old man confessed to him in his later years in
Shoemakertown, that he (the hearer) did not un-
derstand him for a long time. Persistent en-
deavour, however, helped out by "a pliant and sen-
sitive ear," enabled him in course of time to catch
the new tongue, although there remained in his
speech certain curious pronunciations and inflec-
tions^ and a kind of all-pervading although very
slight "burr," which marked him to the end of his
days as a Yorkshireman. But he did not have
to await the consmnmation of this achievement to
gain his hearing. Even when his speech was least
understandable, he was a welcome visitor to the
village churches. The very man who confesseh
to not understanding any of Robert Collyer's ut-
terance in the beginning, followed up this confes-
sion by the heartsome conmient, "But I felt good,
so I always came to hear you." The people, I

•For example, 'Snild" for 'Vorld," 'Snndah" for *Vindow/»
"Sunda* " for "Sunday," and a frequent clipping of the final "g"
in words ending in 'ing."

OF ROBERT COLLYER 135

have no doubt, liked to look upon his handsome
face, hear his full, rich voice, share his passion of
inward conviction, meet his spirit reaching forth
to meet and conquer theirs. After all, there is
"a gift of tongues" which defies all barriers of
dialect. There is a spiritual language which
transcends all need of exact translation. "Spirit
with spirit can meet" even in the silences, and
how much more when the full heart, in language
known or unknown, pours itself forth 1 The
farmers of the Pennsylvania country-side, like
the yeomen of the Yorkshire moorlands, loved
this man of the full speech and ardent heart. The
old man was right — it "felt good" just to hear
him, whether they understood his every word or
not — and therefore they "heard him gladly."

A delightful picture of the blacksmith preacher
of these days has been left us by a contemporary
observer. "I was about thirteen years old at
this time," his account begins, "and my father,
who was a Methodist minister, frequently
mounted me on an old white horse to ride over to
the factory and get Brother Colly er to preach
on the following Sunday. I would probably
have supposed Collyer to be of the usual run of
what are called local or secular preachers but for
the fact that a manufacturer's son of the neigh-
bourhood, who had just come out of Dickinson

186 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

College, told me confidentially that Collyer was
a remarkable man, and the only man he cared to
hear preach in the Methodist pulpit, I recollect
that the last day I went over to get Mr, Collyer I
arrived on the ancient white horse at the dinner
hour, when he was lying down on the grass with
thirty or forty other workmen, all with their din-
ner-kettles underneath them, and he had a big
stake down in the grass from which he read while
he took his meal. His strong English face, with
a smile upon it, welcomed me, and he always ac-
cepted the preaching invitations, perhaps as an
opportunity to keep his hand in. In his preach-
ing he did not shout, nor roar, nor hold the people
over red-hot stoves, and tell them that in seven
minutes by the watch, unless they experienced a
change of heart, they would be no better than
so much roast pork. . . . He preached with feel-
ing, but traced human nature along through its
pains and daily troubles, and the stopping places
of relief and inward exultation as doubt after
doubt disappeared and man became reconciled to
life and grief. The boys liked this preaching,
without exactly understanding it. It appeared
to be nearly as good as reading some of the Sun-
day school books, which referred to the ordinary
lives of boys and their errors and faults, and how

OF ROBERT COLLYER 187

they surmounted them and felt a little inward
nobility on account of it"

Thus did Robert CoUyer pass these first years
of his American life — at the anvil making claw-
hammers, in the pulpit bringing souls to Gk>d, in
the home reading books, caring for his children,
and helping the good wife. It was a happy
period for him, as we have seen. On occasion
times were hard, and his pride and patience were
tested to the breaking-point. Now and then
there was sorrow in the loss of children, and anxi-
ety in the illness of the mother. Sometimes
there came the call from the old home across the
seas, and his heart in an instant was desolation*
The merest chance would shake him to the very
depths of his being, so sensitive he was, and fond.
Thus he tells us in one place how he saw a copy
of Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" "on a book-
stall and bought it for twenty-five cents." This
was comparatively soon after his arrival in this
country. "I began at once to read it," he says,
"and when I got fairly into it, I felt as if I was
borne away on invisible wings right into the old
nest. I saw the hills and moors again, standing
out against the northern skies, heard the old
tongue again, and was folded back into the old
life, could hear the bells ringing in the steeples
and the voices singing in the churches, and

138 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

watch the light play on the faces at the old fire-
side. I knew every spot when I came to them
one by one, as I knew the cottage where my
mother was sitting thinking about her boy who
had wandered away and was lost to her loving
old heart and eyes in this strange new world
over the sea." What wonder that, "a stranger
in a strange land," he became "lonely and a lit-
tle homesick" — that he "wanted to see the hills
again and the moors, and to be folded back in
the old life as a mother folds her child."

It was a complete uprooting which had taken
place. Not all at once could the plant take hold
of the strange new soil, or all periods of drooping
be avoided. But the plant was hardy, and the
soil good; so that the roots soon held even
against the blasts of storm and the leaves flour-
ished even in the hours of drought. In present
reality and future prospect, in material prosper-
ity and spiritual contentment, in what he was
finding for himself and preparing for his chil-
dren, the migration over seas had justified itself.
Not once did he have reason for regret. "My wife
and I," he says, "never saw the day when we
rued our setting out on our great adventure. No
matter what hard times we had to face and fight
for a good nine years before we could feel sure
we had the ball at our foot, it all came true, the

OF ROBERT COLLYER 189

good dream about the children, the plenty, and all
the rest of it." The realisation of the dream was
not easy. They had to "win not bread alone, but
character and standing." But they put "a stout
heart to the stey brae," and did it!

140 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

CHAPTER VI

FROM THE ANVIL TO THE PULPIT

1868-1869

"One memory is still clear^ of the time when I
quite made up my mind to leave the old fellowship
and find a home^ if I could^ in some other chureh^
if there was one where I could be free to speak the
truth as it should be given me to speak^ without
fear." — R. C. in "Some Memories/' page 75.

Robert Collyer's life was marked by two
great spiritual crises, each one of which induced
moinentous change in the character and direction
of his activities. The first, as we have seen, was
his conversion to Methodism; this was sudden,
almost cataclysmic, in its nature, was the result
of profound emotional shock, and led in due sea-
son to the initial discovery and use of his genius
as a preacher. The second, his conversion to
Unitarianism, which we are now about to con-
sider, was a result of slow development, fostered
step by step* by study, thought and moral quick-
ening, and was the immediate occasion of his re-
moval for good and all from the anvil to the pul-
pit. As witnessed at the time, each crisis was an

OF ROBERT COLLYER 141

isolated phenomenon, independent of everything
save the outward happenings and inward experi-
ences which accompanied it. As surveyed from
the far perspective of later years, each crisis is
seen to be the accurate expression of a single soul
in process of self -discovery ; and both together,
successive and related stages in the fulfilment of
a destiny forecasted in possibility, if not deter-
mined in actual certainty, from the beginning.
What was "the blade" in the Ilkley smithy lad,
became "the ear" in the ardent Wesleyan
preacher who tramped the Yorkshire moors and
the Pennsylvania farm-lands, and then at last
"the full com in the ear" in the liberal missionary
who in 1859 laid down his hammer and rolled up
his leathern apron for the last time, and, depart-
ing in true apostolic fashion for the West, en-
tered at last upon the full tide of his career.

A contemporary account of this all-important
experience in his life is left us by Dr. CoUyer in
a long letter, written from Chicago, on July 22,
1859, to Flesher Bland, the Methodist preacher
whose sermon on a certain night worked the mira-
cle of conversion in his soul.^ This letter,^ in its
opening portions, is as follows :

^See above, page 81.

' The second, in an intimate correspondence wliich lasted without
interruption for over forty years.

142 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

**Dear Brother BUmd:

**Your welcome letter reached me to-day. How glad
it made me to hear your voice breaking through the
silence of almost ten years, and to hear that it still
retained its old cheerful tones. God has surely guided
you by his counsel. I thought many a time as I lis-
tened to the poor things miscalled sermons our preach-
ers used to inflict upon us in Pennsylvania, what a pity
you were not here, what a power you might be. It is
a simple question of time when you shall take any pulpit
in the Canada Conference. You are surely in the way
of the divine providence, if you have followed and
preached the best and ultimate result of your thought
and of the Holy Spirit in you.

"Now I shall make you sorrow over me even while
I rejoice over you, because you are not prepared to
hear that I am not a Methodist any longer, but as near
as may be ^Unitarian.' The change was very long
coming. I never sought it, never feared it. Rather it
was the necessary result of my thought of God and
man than any book or man that helped me to it.

^'I settled about seven miles from Philadelphia within
six weeks of the time I last saw you and went to work at
my anvil — Mr. Murray I remember gave me a good
certificate, so I began to preach at once. Men said,
and say yet (what has never spoiled me) that I was
a remarkable preacher. I took about the same place
on the circuit you took at Addingham. It pleased me
to see how the men of highest culture were my fastest
friends.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 148

"I soon began to see that I was in a new world where
a totally new religion was being evolved — a religion
which must uphold a system of caste as marked as that
of Hindustan. No coloured man was ever allowed at
the sacrament until all else were served. No child, col-
oured ever so little, ever sat on the same seat in Sun-
day school, nor grown person in church. Silence in the
pulpit for six years. No prayer ever uttered on behalf
of the slave. A general plea that they were better
enslaved, and a very marked coldness to all on the side
of human freedom. I took the other side at once, but
made little progress. At last, I resigned Nov., 1856.
No, said the brethren, you must preach, we give you full
freedom. After that I preached anti-slavery, lectured,
discussed, took all times to help the great cause. I
looked for some who were on the Lord's side and the
slaves. There was Dr. Fumess, SS years Pastor of
the Unitarian church in Philadelphia, an author,
scholar, and noble man. He had the only real anti-
slavery pulpit in the city. I was proud when he in-
vited me yet a Methodist to preach for him. There was
Lucretia Mott, a grand-hearted Quaker preacher. I
held meetings with her. E. M. Davis, a Philadelphia
merchant, outlawed for his devotion to the slave — I was
proud to be his dearest friend, to be worthy of him. All
these I met, heard their thought, above all saw their
beautiful lives, so full of Christlikeness to me. They
never tried to make me other than I was — constantly
said that to be a good Methodist was so long as it was
possible the best thing I could be.

144 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

^^How I got out I cannot tell you. I think my first
real puzzle was Eternal Punishment. Then Total De^
pravity, Original Sin and the rest all went. I believe
I rather tried to hang on to some of them, but they
went at last. But before I was sure of that, I was sum-
moned before Conference to answer the charge of be-
ing in the company of infidels, preaching for them and
lecturing with them. I said boldly that I thought now
at last the church was rather infidel and they Christian
— that as to the heart of practical religion, it seemed in
their keeping. I also told them I could no longer
preach Eternal Hell, or Total Depravity, or anything
that did not meet and satisfy my sense of God and his
truth. So at last in much sorrow we parted, for I had
many warm friends, and there was much weeping. But
I had heard the voice saying, ^Arise, depart, for this is
not your rest,' and I must go." . . •

This letter embodies in outline a complete
statement of aU that took place in this second
great period of crisis and change. In order that
it may be understood, however, in its many out-
ward and inward phases, it must be supplemented
by a somewhat detailed narrative of events, and
an attempt at some kind of interpretation.

Robert CoUyer's conversion to Methodism in
1848 marked the beginning, as we have seen, of
his personal religious experience. What this
came to mean to him in memory at least, is clearly

OF ROBERT COLLYER 145

indicated in a passage in the brief and otherwise
unimportant letter, written from Chicago under
date of July 8» 1859, which opens the Flesher
Band correspondence. "I have never forgotten
you," he writes, "and never shall. You were the
means under our Father of helping me to the
spiritual life."

The impulse which moved him at this critical
moment in his career was predominantly emo-
tional. It had its springs in those deep wells of
sentiment which flowed so fully and so purely
through all his days ; it found its occasion in the
harrowing grief which followed upon the sudden
death of his young wife ; and it sought its expres-
sion in the fervent preaching which touched so
magically the hearts of the Yorkshire yeomen.
So far as we can see, this momentous transforma-
tion of his inward life was accompanied by no
intellectual changes of any kind, save as theologi-
cal issues assumed a reflected importance from
the fresh reality of his spiritual experience. It is
doubtful, indeed, if he had ever given attention,
or attached importance, to the dogmas ex-
pounded in the Independent chapel at Blubber-
houses or in the parish churches at Fewston and
Ilkley. His interest lay as little in this direction
in his youth as in his later years of full religious
activity; and he probably accepted the creeds.

146 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

as he did the habit of church-going, without
thought. That he cared enough, or knew enough,
about theological distinctions to be swayed in his
conversion by the differences between the charac-
teristic tenets of Anglicanism and Methodism, or
even to compare and note these differences after
his conversion was consummated, is altogether
out of the question. His experience in the little
Methodist chapel had its beginning not in the
dubitations of an inquiring mind, but in the de-
spair of a broken heart. It found its end not in
the solution of intellectual problems, but in the
satisfaction of spiritual needs. This experience
was a discovery of God and of his own soul. It
was first and last a great emotional upheaval,
ending in the creation of a new world and the
opening of a new life. If this rebirth were neces-
sarily accompanied by the acceptance of certain
dogmas of the faith, well and good 1 They must
be true, as the theological expression of an ex-
perience found to be so real! The record seems
to show that Robert CoUyer was a dutiful pupil
in Master Delves's class — ^which undoubtedly
means that he accepted without questions the doc-
trinal lessons which were taught him.

At this very moment, however, when emotion
was playing so predominant a part in the mould-
ing of his life, there was present another force,

OF ROBERT COLLYER 147

undeveloped as yet because of lack of oppor-
tunity and training, but potent none the less.
Robert Collyer's nature was not all sentiment by
any means. Almost as strong within him were the
faculties of reason. The springs whence flowed
the abundant streams of poesy and love, were
planted amid the granite-rocks of intellect and
will. His was a brain, in other words, which
matched in eagerness and strength, the grace, ten-
derness and compassion of his heart. And just
as the latter moved him to instinctive response to
the beauty of nature and the goodness of human-
kind, so the former prompted his thirst for knowl-
edge, and later, an independent and courageous
quest for truth. His entrance into Methodism
was the beginning for this man not only of the
spiritual but of the rational life. One observer
was "canny" enough to note this fact, even when
it was hidden from the eyes of the convert him-
self. This was the shoemaker who heard the
"grand effort" at the Ilkley church, and com-
mented the next morning that CoUyer would
never make a preacher, for the Methodists at
least, since he wanted to reason things out over-
much.* "I might recite all the reasons why the
old mother turned me adrift," wrote the Doctor
in a late autobiographical fragment, "but it is a

* See above, page 91.

148 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

long story for a man to tell who has grown garru-
lous with the years — ^and one little incident (that
of the shoemaker) touches the marrow of the mat-
ter."

This touches the marrow, indeed I From the
beginning of his experience of religion, Robert
CoUyer had his reason, as well as his heart, at
work. "Bishop Butler," he writes in an auto-
biographical lecture, ''says that reason is the only
/ faculty we have to judge concerning anything
even of revelation itself, and John Locke, *He
that takes away reason to make way for revela-
tion puts out the light of both.' (In this spirit)
I must give a reason for the hope that was in me."
Such was the nature of this new-bom Methodist.
The work of preaching, taken up so soon after his
conversion, must have been a mighty stimulus to
speculation. And his reading, which took him
without warning or regard into every field of
literature, theological and philosophical among
the rest, must have offered many a challenge and
raised up many a question. During the short
period of his preaching in England, there was
not a suspicion of trouble, so far as we know, out-
side the foreboding word of the shrewd old shoe-
maker. But he could not have been long in
America before the problem of his faith bocais^Q
insistent.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 149

The "first real puzzle," as Dr. CoUyer tells us
in his letter to Flesher Bland, was the question of
eternal punishment. That his heresies should
begin at this point is only^natiu*al, as this doctrine
of danmation touches our moral sensibilities quite
as nearly as it does our intellect. His heart was
again anticipating his brain. Furthermore, it
was just here that his early religious training, so
far as it made any impression at aU, had touched
him. "I began early," he says, "to feel the over-
soul of the other life. I do not remember when
I did not realise dimly the sorrow and pain of
the great mystery, but nothing early of its joy.
I would brood over death when a young compan-
ion was taken, so that I think I must now and
then have been nearly insane. And there was no
help for me in the meetings. All the help I had
was in the sweet unconscious heaven of the home,
where my father took no stock in hell. The
Methodists then were among U3, and they gave
us hell hot and lurid. We attended an Independ-
ent meeting-house, but they gave it us cold and
literal. And so between them I saw a great deal
of the nether and very little of the upper mys-
tery."

With this scar upon his soul, it was inevitable
that his faith should first become sensitive at this
point, especially in view of the extreme emphasis

150 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

laid by the Methodists of the time upon this par-
ticular doctrine. The trouble once begun, how-
ever, could not stop here. The question of eter-
nal punishment carried him straight back to the
question of God — His wisdom, His power, His
love. It involved as weU fundamental questions
regarding man — ^his origin, his f aU, his title to for-
giveness. The Scriptures next came up for scru-
tiny, for did not the Bible clearly teach the dam-
nation of the wicked, and if so, must not this doc-
trine, however ugly, be accepted? Thus were a
hundred questions raised up by the one. Once
started, there was no stopping the contagion of
his doubts. In spite of the most conscientious
endeavour to retain at least some renmant of the
ancient and much-loved faith to clothe his naked-
ness, it "aU went at last," as he has said.

So far as we can make out, this great change
was almost exclusively an inward process. "It
was my thought of God and man," says Dr.
Collyer, "(rather) than any book or man that
helped me to it." This is rather a remarkable
fact, in view of the theological radicalism which
was acting at the very time of his arrival in Amer-
ica as the leaven of the new intellectual life of
the country, and his own exceptional openness
to literary influences of this kind. William
EUery Channing had done his great work for

OF ROBERT COLLYER 151

liberalism, and died, a full eight years before Rob-
ert CoUyer set foot on the Battery in New York.
Ralph Waldo Emerson had delivered his Divin-
ity School Address twelve years before this date,
and was just now mounting to his serene position
as the teacher and exemplar through many years
of those who would live in the spirit. Theodore
Parker, doughty champion of free religion, had
delivered his epoch-making South Boston Sermon
as early as 1841, fought his good fight with the
Boston Association in 1844, and now, in the '50s,
was in the floodtide of his great ministry in the
Boston Music Hall. Transcendentalism was be-
come a full-fledged movement for intellectual
emancipation, moral quickening, and social re-
form. Universalism was proving a mighty force
under the inspired leadership of Hosea Ballou.
Unitarianism had weathered the first rough
storms of outward attack and inward dissension,
and was now sailing full and free upon a far-
flung course of spiritual adventure. And as if
all this were not enough, a seed of English Uni-
tarianism had been cast into the soil of this very
region where Robert CoUyer was now living, in
the person of Joseph Priestley, who founded his
Northumberland church in 1794 and his Philadel-
phia church in 1796; as evidences of Jiis own free

152 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

faith and as anticipations of the native American
revolt against Christian Orthodoxy.

Such were some of the potent influences of the
time. But so far as we can see, they met the
Yorkshire Methodist not at all, or, if so, left
little or no impression. One searches vainly in
contemporary records or later reminiscences for
mention of Channing, Parker, Emerson, or their
confreres. The soil was perhaps unpropitious
for the growing of their seed. In the neighbour-
hood of Shoemakertown was a mingling of scep-
tical Quakerism with the various old orthodoxies,
of which the Baptist and the Methodist were the
chief, which gave little opportunity for the root-
ing and spreading of the Transcendental gospel.
And yet this very gospel had long since been
firmly planted in Philadelphia, only a few miles
away; and its books and pamphlets were every-
where. No — the secret here was the sanctity of
CoUyer's own inner life. He was thinking his
own thoughts, working away at his own problems,
testing his standards for himself. The harvest
at the end was of his own sowing and his own
reaping.

And yet it was impossible to shut out external
influences altogether. Now and again he would
hear some word or read some book which would
starve him^ like a lightning flash, and shak^ hiiQ

OF ROBERT COLLYER 158

with the threat of storm and earthquake. Thus
he tells us in "Some Memories" of the shock
which came to him when he heard for the first
time of the evolution heresies about the origin of
species and the descent of man. It was at a meet-
ing of the local lyceum, which had been organised
by the mechanics and the farmers of the neigh-
bourhood for the discussion of political, social and
literary subjects, that this experience took place.
One evening "a gentleman from the city" sub-
mitted and himself debated the evolution hy-
pothesis ; and, as he was a thoroughgoing radical,
this man denounced and rejected in his speech
the doctrines of "the creation of this world in six
days, the story of the making of man, and the
woman from his rib, and the fall and what fol-
lowed." He declared that these things were
myths, poems, legends — that, as a matter of scien-
tific fact, man had not fallen, but had steadily
risen from lower and much less perfect forms of
life. This episode took place of course some years
before the publication of Darwin^s epoch-making
book; and yet must have occurred some years
after Collyer's arrival in this country, and thus
comparatively late in the period of the growing
disintegration of his faith. It may have followed
some little time after the appearance of Herbert
Spencer's famous essay on "The Development

idaU

164 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

Hypothesis," published in 1852; or more likely
of Spencer's "Principles of Psychology," pub-
lished in 1855. It is still more probable that it
was a reflection of the popular discussion of the
general question which had been started by the
publication of "The Vestiges of the Natural His-
tory of Creation," in 1844. In any case it pre-
sented a gospel which was new to Robert Collyer
as to his associates in the lyceum; and he con-
fesses that he "was amazed," and "tried to frame
an answer." The doctrine was altogether the
most frightful heresy that he had ever heard. To
this extent at least was he still firm in the faith
once delivered to the saints ! But in spite of his
instinctive rejection of the new idea, we may be
sure that it was not forgotten, and had its part,
however small, in the final result.

Another episode, which must have occurred
considerably later, is similarly impressive. An
extended revival was going on at a certain time
in the home church. Although not in sympathy
with the movement, Collyer attended some of the
meetings, as a matter of old habit, perhaps, as
much as anything else. On one of the nights
when he was present, the preacher launched out
on the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell.
"If you could hold your hand," he said, "in the
flame of this lamp but a few moments, can you

OF ROBERT COLLYER 156

imagine the agony of such a burning? But this is
no more than a faint and poor intimation of the
eternal burning in the fires of hell which awaits
you if you do not repent — the burning not for a
few moments, but f orevermore — and some sinner
now in this church may be there before to-morrow
morning." All the doubts that Robert Collyer
had ever felt about this atrocious doctrine now
came rushing over his heart in one great tide of
revulsion. His whole soul cried out against it.
And yet, "the old minister uttered a loud Amen,
and the brethren seemed to be pleased with the
discourse. I left the church almost instantly,"
says the Doctor. "It was the sharp turning-point
in my way as it seems to me now."

Such were some of the happenings which
stirred and shook him. These were really unim-
portant, however, as compared with two fresh
and pure streams of personal influence which now
came from the outer world to water the inward
garden of his planting, and to bring to him the
tides of contemporary religious liberalism in its
best estate. Neither of these two influences, as
we have seen, either started or determined the
change within him; but both of them served to
quicken and at last direct it. To the one, Lu- '
cretia Mott, Robert Collyer owed the discovery
of the meaning of his heresies, and strength and

166 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

comfort in the hour of great loneliness. To the
other, Dr. William Henry Fumess, he owed
guidance when he was lost, a new home when the
old was gone, and the fatherly counsel of a half-
century of friendship. To both, he paid the un-
stinted love of a loyal and grateful heart, and to
the end of his days found the debt still undis-
charged.

Lucretia Mott, Hicksite Quaker, Garrisonian
Abolitionist, Transcendentalist, prophetess, seer,
saint, was bom "on the third day of the new year,
1798," on the island of Nantucket, "of the clean-
est tribe I know of in oiu* human family," says
Dr. Collyer, "the Society of Friends." When
she was twelve years of age, her family removed
to Boston, where she began in the public schools
an education which was finished in a private
boarding school in New York. She "grew out of
her childhood a wise and helpful little maid";
and, while still very young, found an ideal mate
for her life journey in James Mott.

When I first knew them," writes Dr. Collyer,
they had lived together more than forty years,
and I thought then, as I think now, that it was
about the most perfect wedded life to be found on
the earth. They were both of a most beautiful
presence, both of the sunniest spirit, both free to
take their own way as such fine souls always are.

it
It

OF ROBERT COLLYER 157

and yet their life was so perfectly one that neither
of them led or followed the other, so far as you
could observe, by the breadth of a line. He could
speak well in a slow wise way when the spirit
moved him, and his words were all the choicer
because they were so few. But his greatness, for
he was great, lay still in the fine silent manhood
which would only break into fluent speech as you
sat with him by the bright wood-fire in winter,
while the good wife went on with her eternal knit-
ting, ... or as we sat by the pear tree in sum-
mer in the gloaming between light and dark.
Then James Mott would open his heart to those
he loved, and touch you with wonder at the depth
and beauty of his thought."

For the first dozen years or so of her married
life, "while her children needed her perpetual
care," Lucretia Mott "gave her life almost wholly
to her home and family." But the gift of proph-
ecy was as strong within as the instinct of
motherhood, and as years went on she became
known as one of the great social and spiritual
forces of the age. "It was not possible," writes
Dr. Collyer again, "that Lucretia Mott should
keep silence in the churches, no matter what Paul
might say to the contrary, because that grand
brain was created to think and the noble heart
to beat through moving and moulding speech, and

158 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

those fine grey eyes to see what the prophets
see. And so, had she not been raised among
those who have always held the woman to be a
minister of God as truly as the man, I cannot
imagine her among the silent sisters who so often
have a word to say, but dare not say it to save
not their souls but the souls of those about them.
"An old friend in Lancaster County," con-
tinues the Doctor, "told me once of his first hear-
ing her in the early days when as yet she was al-
most unknown. It had been a dreary time among
Triends' up there, and being a man who did not
care overmuch for the traditions of first day and
fourth day, he was getting tired of it all, when one
first day he went to his meeting expecting noth-
ing as usual and pretty sure he should not be
disappointed. Nor was he, for a time. . . . Then
a woman stood up he had not seen before, whose
presence touched him with a strange new expec-
tation. She looked, he said, as one who had no
great hold on life, and began to speak in low level
tones, with just a touch of hesitation, as of one
who is feeling after her thought, and there was a
tremor as if she felt the burden of the spirit on
her heart. But she found her way out of
all this; and then, he said, 'I began to hold my
breath, I had heard no such speaking in all my
life. It was so born of all conviction, so surely

OF ROBERT COLLYER 159

out of the inner heart of the truth, and so radiant
with the inward light for which I had been wait-
ing, that I went home feeling as I suppose they
must have felt in the old time who thought they
had seen an angel.

"I heard one such grand outpouring too," says
Dr. CoUyer, in his reminiscences. "It was at a
woods meeting up among the hills where quite a
number of us had our say, and then my friend's
turn came. She was well on in years then, but
the old fire still burnt clear, and God's breath
touched her out of heaven, and she prophesied. I
suppose she spoke for two hours, but after the
first moments, she never faltered or failed to hold
the multitude spell-bound and waiting on her
word. Yet there was no least hint of pre-medi-
tation, while there was boundless wealth of medi-
tation in her deep and pregnant thoughts. I said
she prophesied — no other term would answer to
her speech. It was as when Isaiah cried. Every
valley shall be exalted and every mountain and
hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be
made straight and the rough places plain. Her
*eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the
Lord,' and she 'testified of that she had seen.'
And this was all the more wonderful to me be-
cause it was the habit of her mind in her later life
to reason — from premise to conclusion, and let

160 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

this suffice. But she had seen a vision, sitting
there in the August splendour, with the voice whis-
pering to her of God's presence in the trees, and
the vision had set the heart high above the brain.
They were care-worn and work-worn folk she
saw before her with knotted hands resting on the
staff or folded quietly on the lap. They had
nearly done the good day's work, and now the
preacher and prophet was needed to tell them
what the day's work meant where they keep the
books for us. . • . There were youths and maid-
ens also about her who had yet to bear the world's
burdens and fight its battles. They were glanc-
ing over toward each other as they have done
time out of mind. She made the good time com-
ing glorious for them. It was not to be a dreary
world and life, but a world and life affluent with
what was best from all aspiration and all striving,
since what she loved to call the moral sense came
forth to fight for the good against the evil. She
sang of the sacredness of what was in their hearts
of the home and the children, and that the good
is immortal and eternal, as God's life and heaven
may be right here on the earth. I think I should
not quite have known my friend, but for that
woods meeting, as we should not quite have
known the Christ but for the Sermon on the
Mount."

OF ROBERT COLLYER 161

It was this woman, in her quiet home and in
company with her benign husband, who became,
in this critical period, the most potent influence in
Robert CoUyer's life. He met her for the first
time in 1855, under circumstances and with re-
sults that were ever memorable.

"I was living," he writes, "about a mile from a
place (the Motts) had bought in the suburbs of
Philadelphia. We had started a lyceum the pre-
vious winter in the school-house, and were ham-
mering away at a great rate as to which is most
beautiful, the works of art or the works of nature,
and whether the Negro or the Indian had received
the worst usage at the hands of the white man, a
matter we could not settle for the life of us, when
Mr. Edward Davis, a son-in-law of James and
Lucretia, came in and before we knew what was
coming, plunged us headlong into the surging
and angry tides of Abolitionism." Now it
chanced that, owing to Mr. Davis's fondness for
Scripture and his genius for misquotation, the de-
bate turned not upon the question of emancipa-
tion per 86, but upon the question of Biblical au-
thority for slavery and freedom. Mr. Davis
"quoted the prophets but got them all wrong,"
says Dr. CoUyer, "and then those of us who could
handle them saw the crevice in his armour and
gave him some swift cuts not on the riffht and

162 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

wrong of the question at issue, mark you, but on
his ignorance of the right prophets." Then one
night, when the debate was being continued, Lu-
cretia Mott came in and spoke. "There is no
time to tell this story," says the Doctor, in the
fullest account which he has left us of the episode,
"but the essence of her argument lay here — You
must not try to prove your truth by the Bible, but
your Bible by the truth!"

The statement of this great principle, formu-
lated in the familiar quotation from Mrs. Mott
as "Truth for authority, not authority for truth,"
was in all probability the greatest single influence
from the outer world that ever came to bear on
the intellectual life of Robert CoUyer. For years,
his mind had been jambed with a tangle of con-
flicting dogmas, like a Maine forest-stream
a- jamb with logs. The momentum of his thought,
like the current of the river, only seemed to
tighten the jamb. New ideas, like fresh logs, only
piled up the confusion and made the situation
more hopeless. The future life, the nature of
man, the love of God, the atonement, the resur-
rection — here they were ; and at the heart of them
all the baffling question of the validity of the
Scriptures. And now came a single divine word,
like the single push of the skilled timberman of
the forests against the crucial log in the tangle —

OF ROBERT COLLYER 168

and lo ! immediate and complete release ! For the
first time, Robert Collyer comprehended the na-
ture of his difficulty — that he had no standard of
judgment, no "seat of authority." Now was re-
vealed to him, by a prophet, the sanctity of the
reason — that he must judge for himself what is
true and right — that his own soul must be the
arbiter of his faith. It was the truth proclaimed
by Emerson in his "Self-Reliance," by Parker
in his conception of the intuitions of the reason, by
Channing in his epoch-making declaration "that
our ultimate reliance is, and must be, on the rea-
son. Faith in this power lies at the foundation
of all other faith. ... I am surer that my ra-
tional nature is from God than that any book is
an expression of his will." This is not new to us,
and it was not new to the leading spirits of the
'50s. But it was new to Robert Collyer. He had
discovered afresh for himself, what the age had
already discovered, that he could think for him-
self, pass rational and moral judgments upon
theological dogmas without fear of the Bible, nay,
judge the Bible itself, and accept or reject it, in
whole or in part, on the basis of reason. At once,
he was free. His own creed, his own Bible, his
own God, he would forthwith find, or make ; and
woe betide Methodism, or any other kind of 'ism,
which attempted to block his pathway.

164 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

From this fateful moment on to the time of his
departure for Chicago, Lucretia Mott was one of
Robert CoUyer's closest friends and without ex-
ception his most intimate counsellor. "After
some weeks," he writes, "James Mott said, *We
want thee to come to our house/ And I went,
as I had gone to the house of Mr. Davis in Phila-
delphia. But I went with that sensitive pride a
self-respecting working-man always feels in such
a case. I would stand no patronage, no conde-
scension. ... If I felt this ever in the atmos-
phere, they should go their way, and I would go
mine. But I found it was simply like falling into
another and ampler home of my own. And this
was not something they were doing carefully and
by concert. It was natural to them as their life.
They had no room in their fine natures for any
other thought. — This was how I came to know
these friends, and to be at last almost as one of
their own kinsmen."

Robert Collyer was now free inwardly; but he
was still a Methodist! Did he want to remain
one? If so, could he do so with honesty to him-
self and his associates? If not, where was he to
find the religious home so necessary to his domes-
tic spirit? He had lost the old; but, as these que-
ries show, he had not yet found the new I

It is here that we mark the entrance into CoU-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 166

yer'fl life of the second personal influence, of
whidi I have spoken.

Dr. William Henry Fumess, pastor of the
First Unitarian Chxuxjh of Philadelphia from
1825 to 1876, graduated from Harvard College
in 1821, in the same class with Ralph Waldo
Emerson. He was at this time in the full tide
of a public ministry which was destined to be .as
influential as it was prolonged. A man of hand-
some countenance, noble bearing, fine culture,
and singularly persuasive speech, he was already
one of the leading figures in the life of the Quaker
city. Outside his own immediate circle, and that
of his parish, however, he was regarded at this
particular moment with no little suspicion and
even fear. The reasons for this attitude were,
in the first place, that he was an unflinching ex-
ponent of Unitarianism in a conununity which,
with the exception of a small group of liberal
Friends, was orthodox in doctrine and in temper.
Secondly, and far more serious, he was an out-
spoken and uncompromising Abolitionist in a
period and in a neighborhood which were bitterly
hostile to the whole anti-slavery propaganda. He
ranked with Theodore Parker, Thomas Went-
worth Higginson and Samuel J. May, as one of
the few clergymen in the North, even of the lib-
eral wing of Protestant Christianity, who "hewed

166 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

to the line, let the chips fall where they may,"
on this burning issue of human rights.

Later years which settled the slavery problem,
and rounded off the sharp edges of theological
controversy, brought to him a full measure of
public confidence and affection, to match the re-
spect which his character and abilities had com-
manded from the beginning. Gentle and yet
fearless — aristocratic in breeding, highly cultured
in training, and yet intensely democratic in spirit
— a true prophet of the inner light, a tireless
seeker after truth, a valiant champion of freedom
— Dr. Fumess was one of the most attractive and
impressive men of his time. His church work was
singularly happy and beneficent — ^his public ac-
tivities of wide and potent influence — ^his home
life a perfect idyl of wholesome virtue, fruit-
ful culture, and generous hospitality. "It was a
household consecrated to truth, humanity, litera-
ture and art," writes Moncure D. Conway in his
"Autobiography." "No one who enjoyed inti-
macy in it can wonder that the daughter (Mrs.
Wister) attained eminence in literature; that of
the sons, William became an accomplished
painter, Frank an eminent architect, while Hor-
ace is the foremost Shakespeare scholar.'

* Volume I, page 1^.

9* 4

OF ROBERT COLLYER 167

To Dr. CoUyer, "Father" Fumess, as he called
him, was always "the faithful and true witness
for God and the right" ; the man who "of all men
in the world opened the way for me to the faith
and fellowship which have been one long benedic-
tion and will be to the end ; the infidel Abolitionist
who told me he was presented once to the grand
jury in this city for the things he said in his
pulpit pleading for the slave, and Judge Kane
of all men threw out the bill — who told us also
how some members of the church wrote or signed
a letter begging him to let the question alone and
preach religion; and then other members, when
they heard of this, also wrote a letter asking him
to stand by the banner of freedom, and then he
would tell me with a tiny gust of laughter that
quite a nimiber who had signed the first letter
signed the second. This was the stand he made
in the evil days, but as he would tell me the story,
he would always speak of others in the noble band
rather than himself. — But there is no time to tell
of the many years and many things," continues
the Doctor in his lecture in reminiscence of Dr.
Fumess, spoken shortly after the latter's death.
"I wanted only to tell you how utterly and for-
ever I am debtor to my dear good Father, who
clasped my hand that day so many years ago and
never left me. Have I done something whereof

168 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

I may boast? By the law of works, nay I But by
the law of grace from on high, and then from
him of whom I speak."

It was at the very moment when Robert Coll-
yer had found his spiritual freedom, but was wan-
dering, bewildered and not a little dismayed, in
unfamiliar places, not knowing whither he went,
that he found this "guide, philosopher and
friend." * It was through Mr. Davis, and thus
indirectly through the Motts, that he was first
brought in touch with Dr. Furness. "I remem-
ber as if it were yesterday," writes Dr. CoUyer,
''how he greeted me. His soft clean hand clasped
mine, hard and homy by my many years* work at
the anvil, with no tremor of surprise or hau-'s-
breadth of distance in his eyes or his voice. This
I can never forget, for I think if he had given
back, so should I ; but from that moment, I gave
him my heart."

The influence of Dr. Furness, imparted in per-
sonal conversations and in public preaching, was
very great. More than any one thing, it enabled
Robert CoUyer to find himself in this period of
confusion and lost direction. It was undoubtedly
the decisive factor in turning him toward Uni-
tarianism, and bringing him at last into the Uni-

' Already found indirectly through his book, 'The Journal of a
Poor Vicar," see above, page 71.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 16»

tarian church. Through a long succession of
months, the rough mechanic hunted out the pol-
ished scholar in his study for counsel and in-
struction, borrowed books of all kinds from his
overflowing library, and whenever opportunity
offered sat in his church, Sunday morning or
evening, and listened to his sermons. Dr. Collyer
relates one memorable occasion when he went
into the city to preach for the coloured people in
one of their churches, and to stay overnight with
one of their members. ''In the evening I said, 'I
will go and hear Dr. Furness.' It was a wild,
dark night, and there was such a congregation as
I have learned long ago to look for in our
churches on a wild, dark night — something over
a dozen, certainly, not a score. — The sermon
touched the story in the Gospel of John, the
washing of the feet, and, as he went on, I felt he
was just talking to me; so that I saw what he
saw as in a vision ; heard the voices he most surely
heard, and was spell-bound as I sat at his feet.
It marked an era in my faith and my life; and
when the service was over, and I went up to offer
him that same hard hand, he said, 'I saw you, and
then I seemed to have only one hearer this even-
ing,* and told me not long after that this was the
first time he had spoken in the pulpit without the
manuscript."

170 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

Such an influence from such an apostle of the
spirit was bound to have decisive affect upon the
storm-tossed Methodist now seeking for a haven.
From this time on, Robert Collyer knew himself
and discerned whither he was bound. It was a
prospect not easy to contemplate all at once;
there must have been not a few moments of fear
and even despair. But Dr. Fumess was ever be-
side him in these critical times, and his guidance
led him by secure paths to pleasant resting-places.
Lovely was the relationship between these two
men. No barrier of birth or training, no dif-
ference of occupation, culture or manners, could
hold them even temporarily asunder. Each saw
the worth of the other, and joined by instant and
coDMnon consent the close-knit bonds of love. At
first Dr. Fumess was to the younger man as a
teacher or "father-confessor" ; in later years, the
two were colleagues, fellow-labourers in the vine-
yard ; at last, when the day's work was over, they
were friends, laden with years, but in spirit as
Jonathan, the prince, and David, the shepherd's
son. "I spent four days," says Dr. Collyer in
his final reminiscence of Dr. Furness, "in the
delightful home we remember so well, only one
week before he was translated. We talked of the
old times, and went to the Park. This was in the
winter, and he said, 'You must be sure to come

OF ROBERT COLLYER 171

in the spring/ But in the spring the tree of life
had blossomed for him fast by the throne of God,
and now it cannot be long before I shall find hun
again, if I am so worthy, whose life down here
was hid with Christ in God,"

Through such processes of inward thought and
outward influence as these, was Robert CoUyer
transformed into an out-and-out theological
heretic. Inevitably, indications of his unsound-
ness in the faith began to appear in his preaching,
and give rise to whispered suspicions and com-
plaints. Once and again these were taken up by
louder voices, as when a certain employer of
labour in Shoemakertown rose up to say that the
blacksmith, Collyer, was teaching heresy to his
employees.® Not that he deliberately sought to
tear down the accepted doctrines of Methodism 1
This heartsome preacher did not now care enough
about the doctrinal side of religion to introduce
theological controversy into his pulpits. "I never
cared for what we call dogma," he tells us in his
"Some Memories." "I preached much more
about the life that now is, because this was what
always lay near my heart." But this very fact
was itself a cause for alarm, inasmuch as preach-

*A shrewd contemporaiy suggests that '^possibly the said man,
an employer of blacksmiths and labourers, rather disliked to hear
a preacher of the social grade of his workmen^ with so much
knowledge of books and such command of good English T

172 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

ing on moral and spiritual truths, as distinct from
articles of belief, was as unusual and therefore
heretical in the orthodox circles of those days as
preaching on political and industrial truths is to-
day. What the good Methodist brethren wanted
was dogma, ''good measiure, pressed down,
shaken together, running over" ; and this was just
the very thing for which this great-hearted and
broad-minded apostle cared not at alL Hence the
people grew restless and discontented, and by and
by it began to be rumoured abroad that the York-
shireman "didn't believe any more in the doctrines
so precious and essential." This of course was
true, "but not," as he makes haste to remind us,
"by flat denial in the pulpit."

That this conversion to liberalism, if I may call
it such, would sooner or later have led of itself to
a definite break with his Methodist associates, is
certain. Collyer would have left the church for
the sake of his own intellectual integrity, if for
no other reason. The trouble was complicated
and the inevitable break hastened, however, by
his acceptance of the Abolition programme, and
his resulting activity in the more radical form of
anti-slavery propaganda.

With this question, as with the question of
theology, Robert CoUyer's attitude was funda*
mentally a matter of inward conviction. Love

OF ROBERT COLLYER 178

of freedom was his heritage as a free-bom Eng-
lishman. Furthermore, on this very problem of
emancipation for the Negro, his father blazed a
trail in which his feet could not but follow. For
this stalwart workingman, although dearly lik-
ing a bit of sugar, we are told, had gone without
any for years in order that he might give the
money thereby saved towards the liberation of
the slaves in the West Indies. In this case, how-
ever, as in the other, outward influences had their
due share in the fashioning of his ideals; and in
this case, as in the other also, these influences
were the same — ^namely, James and Lucretia
Mott, and Dr. Fumess.

Collyer had felt immediate sympathy with the
anti-slavery cause, of course, as soon as he ar-
rived in this coimtry. His zeal was somewhat
tempered, however, by the feeling which he found
everywhere prevailing in Pennsylvania, that no
attempt must be made to seciu*e emancipation by
drastic measures of abolition; rather must the
question be left alone to settle itself, as it surely
would in the near or distant future. "The good
Methodists," he writes, ''had taken the ground in
a great majority that you must let slavery alone
and it would die out, and the Abolitionists were
a curse in the land, and infidels. I took that
ground, and held it the best I knew.*'

174 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

The first time that he ever met a genuine Aboli-
tionist, or heard the Abolitionist cause properly
presented, was at the lyceum meeting above re-
ferred to,^ when Edward Davis launched debate
upon the question, "Are the Garrisonian Aboli-
tionists worthy the confidence and support of the
American people?" "I warrant you," writes Dr.
Colly er, in report of this meeting, "that in one
hour the fat was in the fire." Mr. Davis sup-
ported the affirmative with zeal and power, even
if with lamentable misquotation of Scripture.
Collyer and others advocated the policy of
laissez-faire, and denounced the Abolitionists.
So hot was the discussion, that it was continued
at a later meeting. And it was here that Lucretia
Mott appearedi, and not only imparted to Robert
Collyer a new theological revelation, as we have
seen, but gave so eloquent a plea for the cause of
inunediate emancipation, that he was converted
on the spot. "She poured out her soul on us," is
his word, "and I for one threw up my hands
and said, You are right. I fight henceforth under
this banner."

And fight he did! Close association with the
Motts, and with Dr. Furness, soon confirmed and
grounded him in the faith, and everywhere that
he had a chance, in season and out of season, he

' See page 161.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 175

proclaimed the gospel- of emancipation. He
preached it in the pulpit, taught it on the plat-
fonn, talked it at the forge and in the lyceum.
He joined the local Abolition society, and spoke
at its public meetings whenever he had oppor-
tunity. He attached himself in 1856 to the newly-
organised Republican Party and took the stump
on behalf of its candidate, John C. Fremont.
Now and then, he sought out, or was solicited by,
the coloured people themselves, and gladly ad-
dressed their churches and accepted entertain-
ment in their homes. By this time, he had de-
veloped oratorical gifts of unquestioned charm
and power ; and it may be noted that, in the thrill
and challenge of this anti-slavery campaigning,
his genius as a public speaker received a training
in ease, scope and authority, which would never
have been possible had his work been rigidly con-
fined to the pulpit. During the last four years
of his life in Shoemakertown, Collyer was known
through all the country-side as the most eloquent
orator in the community; and constant were the
demands upon his time and strength. Especially
was he appreciated and loved by his fellow- work-
ers. Moncure D. Conway records in his "Auto-
biography" an attractive scene in Robert Collyer 's
life during this period. "Filled with enthusiasm/'
he writes, "I attended a Fremont meeting at

176 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

Morristown, near Philadelphia. The chief
speaker was Senator Hale, and there I first heard
the voice of Robert Collyer. The great-hearted
Yorkshireman was clamoured for by his f ellow-
workingmen in the meeting, but being unknown
to the chairman, it was after some delay that he
was brought to the platform. He came up shyly,
being still in the iron-works' dress, but no garb
could disguise his noble presence, and the enthu-
siasm excited by his speech was the great event of
the evening. I set him down in my memorabilia
as a risen and immigrant Ebenezer Elliott."*
Needless to say, activity such as this was heresy
in Methodist circles ! At one time, in November,
1856, — ^the fall of the great political campaign
of that year, be it noted — Collyer was so con-
scious of opposition to what he was doing, that
he resigned his office as a circuit-preacher. But
the brethren loved him, and believed in him, and
therefore, in spite of their distrust of his doctrine,
refused to let him go. It was impossible, how-
ever, that such a situation, doubly complicated as
it was, could long continue. At last, by a peculiar
chance, the twin heresies of which he was guilty
united in one single event, and precipitated a
crisis. Dr. Collyer tells the story in his lecture
on Dr. Fumess.
*yoiQiiit i» page tsa.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 177

''My old friend of the many years, Moncure
Conway, then our minister in Cincinnati, was to
be married, and wanted Dr. Fumess to come out
and marry him. It was always difficult to leave,
but he made up his mind to go if I would take the
pulpit in his absence, wrote to ask me, and I had
the temerity to say I would. But will you try to
realise what this meant, what courage in him, and
sheer daring. He had never heard me speak, ex-
cept I think in Sanson Street Hall, at a meet-
ing of the Garrisonian Abolitionists, and then,
whatever the speech might be, it would not be
preaching. I was still a local preacher in my
mother Methodist church; but, by this time, in
not very good standing for speaking on that in-
fidel platform against the great curse. It made
no matter to your brave minister. I must come!
I remember also I made seventy-two dozen claw-
hammers that week by hand, walked in on the
Sunday morning with my heart in my mouth and
all a-tremble to say my word from the text, *The
Lord God is a sun to them that walk uprightly.'
I have not the faintest memory of the sermon, and
had no paper ; but if you will let me say so, my
heart was greatly moved, while long afterward
I heard Mr. Conway say that your minister had
said if the effort was fairly satisfactory, he would
like to stay west over another Sunday. Well,

178 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

a letter was sent to say he might stay, and wel-
come.®

"I think these services . . . were the last feather
the brethren could bear. One of the elders asked
me if I had given up the divinity of Christ, and
I said *No, I had taken up his humanity.' I was
never any good on eternal damnation — and was
reported to our Presiding Elder — a good-hearted
man, fond of fishing — as a man not sound in the
faith." The culmination of years of growth on
his part, and of long-continued unrest on the part
of the brethren, was now come. The break could
not longer be postponed. So CoUyer went to the
quarterly conference in January, 1859, with his
mind made up to resign as a local preacher. Be-
fore he could take this step, however, he found
himself called up by the Presiding Elder on
charges, and asked to answer certain questions.
"One question put to me was. Why had I spoken
on infidel platforms and preached in an infidel

• "A notable event was connected with the visit of Dr. Furness,*'
writes Moncure D. Conway in his "Autobiography." "When 1
offered him payment, he said he would eurcept nothing for himself,
but would give what I offered to a workingman of ability near
Philadelphia, who for some time had preached for the Methodists.
He had become unorthodox, and would preach in the Unitarian
pulpit on the Sunday of Furness's absence. The man was Robert
CoUyer. ... It was always a satisfaction to us that the first hono-
rarium ever given Robert Collyer for a sermon was out paarriagQ
fee." — Volume I, page 987.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 179

pulpit?" Other questions were about doctrine
and dogma — the Trinity, eternal punishment, the
fall of man, and the like. The indictment was
finally reduced to three articles — first, that he
did not believe in eternal hell; secondly, that he
rejected the doctrine of total human depravity;
thirdly, that he could not agree that a Unitarian
was damned because he disbelieved in the Trinity.
Having come "to make a clean breast of it," the
heretic answered all inquiries freely and frankly,
and ended by saying that he had come to the con-
ference prepared to make a statement and pre-
sent his resignation in any case. The Elder said,
"not unkindly, There was no help for it"; and the
proffered resignation was accepted.

The next Sunday, at a full meeting in the
church, announcement was made of what had
come to pass. Robert Collyer was not present,
but his wife was ; and it was a pathetic report she
brought back of how "there were moans and weep-
ing." The good brethren had no relish for their
task; Collyer was loved too deeply and esteemed
too highly, for his departure to be viewed with
anything short of lamentation. His heresy was
plain, however, and he had to go 1 And yet even
so, he "was estopped only from the pulpit, but
not from the church." By some strange chance,
or generous intention, he was never dismissed

180 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

from the Methodist body itself. *'I was still a
member/' he writes, ''and may be still; and may
say sincerely I have never thought of the good
old mother as any mere step-mother/'

This experience at bottom was a glad relief.
It was well to have behind in the past what had
so long been threatening in the future. ''I seemed
to draw a long breath when all was over/' is Dr.
Collyer's testimony in his "Some Memories."
And yet, he immediately follows this with the
confession that he "was not glad.'' How could
he be, with so much that had been the best sub-
stance of his life deliberately cut away as by a
kind of surgery? Then, too, the brethren, grieved
and generous as they were, felt bound by their
fidelity to the church not to have any dealings
with the heretic, and abandoned him forthwith.
Of all the men and women with whom he had
been so long associated, and every one of whom
he had loved so dearly, not one held out his hand
or said a word of farewell. "Intimate as we had
been in the church and in our homes through all
these years," he says, "I went out alone and lone-

some."

But he was not left alone! Dear friends who
were not in the church, and therefore cared for
none of these things called heresy, came to him
with cheer and sympathy, and besought him to

OF ROBERT COLLYER 181

hold services in a small hall which they would hire,
for they were not content that his voice should be
stilL He was not ready, however, to begin again
in such a way; and therefore, after holding one
service on the Sunday following his suspension,
he preached no more. This service wm "the last
in the valley for many a year."

Then there were Dr. Fumess, Mr. Davis and
the Motts, the presence of each one of whom at
this moment was as "the shadow of a great rock
in a weary land." "I love to remember," he
writes, ''with what a tender pathos (Lucretia
Mott) opened her heart to me, when it seemed
almost like death to leave my old mother church,
of the trouble it was to her when she had to do this
in the days of Elias Hicks — to find she must part
with old friends for the truth, and have the meet-
ing-houses closed to her in which she had loved to
meet them, and to suffer reproach that she might
be true to her own soul." Such words were as
balm in Gilead. What she had done, he could
do, and, God helping him, would do!

And then, best of all, was the helpmeet at home.
Mrs. Collyer still clung to Methodism and her
heart was well-nigh broken at what had befallen
her husband. But as they sat together that eve-
ning ''when the key had been turned on the pul-
pits," in the little house in liie lane, with the clU}-

182 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

dren all asleep, and the great silence of the winter
night outside, and talked together of what had
happened, there came from her "no word or look
of blame, . . . but only of good cheer." What won-
der that Robert CoUyer thought of the day, ten
years before, when he had made up his mind to
emigrate, and had offered to cross the seas alone
and make a home for her before he took her to be
his wife, and she had answered him full and
strong, "Whither thou goest, I will go, whither
thou lodgest, I will lodge ; thy people shall be my
people, and thy God my God ; whither thou diest,
I will die, and there will I be buried: the Lord
do so to me, and more also, if aught but death
part thee and me." "The words were not said
again that evening," records the Doctor, "because
there was no need : it would be a vain repetition."
There were comforts, therefore, for the pres-
ent; but what about the future? It needed but
the passing of a few days, to make this the all-
important question. Where was he now to go?
What was he now to do ? It seemed from the first
impossible to remain in Shoemakertown. Fur-
thermore, as he now, for the first time perhaps, be-
gan to confess to himself, his heart was not in
his work at the anvil, but in his preaching in the
pulpit. He was more a preacher than a black-
smitb, skUle4 arti§an though \ke wfL^ — foi^ \ke

OF ROBERT COLLYER 188

knew it! Yet what pulpits were now open to him?
Where were the people who would listen to his
words and accept his teaching?

The prospect was certainly dark; when sud-
denly, as though by a very interposition of Divine
Providence,^ ^ the way was opened. "Within a
month of my suspension," says the Doctor, "a
letter came from Chicago by way of New York,
to the dear Father (Fumess), asking him about
a man of my name, a blacksmith and Methodist
local preacher of a liberal mind." It seems that,
on a certain Sunday some time before this, when
Collyer had trudged in to Philadelphia to hear
Dr. Fumess preach, he had found a stranger in
the pulpit — ^Dr. Livermore, editor of the New
York organ of the Unitarians, The Christian In-
quirer. After the service. Dr. Fumess intro-
duced Robert Collyer to the preacher of the day,
and insisted upon taking him home to dinner,
where he and Dr. Livermore had ample oppor-
tunity for friendly acquaintanceship. The black-
smith very evidently made a profound impression
upon the New York clergyman, for when the
Chicago church wrote Dr. Livermore asking him
if he knew "a man who could be got for the min-
istry-at-large" in that city, he replied at once that

""TTie Providence that shapes our ends had sent me here."
Robert Collyer to Flesher Bland, in letter from Chicago.

184 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

"there was but one man big enough for the job,
that was a blacksmith, a Methodist/' named Rob-
ert CoUyer, and stated that he could be reached
through Dr. Fumess. This was the explanation
of the letter to Dr. Furness, which annoimced
that "they wanted a man to take charge of their
ministry-at-large, and would he kindly tell them
if he thought he (Collyer) would be able to fill
the bill." "I saw the letter he wrote in answer/'
says the Doctor; "I think I shall never be quite
the man he said I was in that letter ; but the up-
shot was I laid down the hammer, and went out
to take charge of the mission to the poor."

On being asked by Dr. Fumess if he would
consider the invitation and give his answer "next
Sunday," Robert Collyer replied that he needed
no time to think the matter over. "We will go,"
he said. It was as though the voice had spoken
to him again ; and he must obey. Of Chicago he
knew nothing, save what was told him by one man
at the forge who had been there, and by his em-
ployer, who had lived in Illinois in his younger
years. Both disliked the place, and advised him
not to go. But Collyer did not waver for an in-
stant. A way had opened in the direction at least
of the work he most dearly loved to do, and he
must take it without faltering. The only ques-
tion was the wife ; but he remanbered again the

OF ROBERT COLLYER 186

night under the stars in Ilkley when she had
pledged her faith to him forevermore, and the
question was straightway answered and dis-
missed. Nor was he disappointed. ''She did not
cast a pebble in the way, but said 'Amen' right
heartily."

Immediate plans were made for removal to the
western city, forty-four hours' journey away.
The Chicago people wanted him to come out at
once, but this the family could not do. There was
a house to be disposed of, furniture to be sold at
auction, books and clothing to be packed, and
children to be prepared. There was no need,
however, for the father to delay. So on Febru-
ary 22, 1859, Robert Collyer started on a
journey only less formidable than the voyage
across the Atlantic a decade earlier, and arrived
in due season in the city which was destined to be
his home, and field of glory, for the next twenty
years. In April he was joined by Mrs. Collyer
and the children.

It is not difficult to assess the feelings which
surged in Robert Collyer's heart, as he entered
upon this new and momentous epoch of his life.
Fear, or rather timidity, always a genuine emo-
tion with him to the end of his days, must often
have been predominant. For who was he, a York-
shire immigrant, an artisan, a whilom Methodist,

186 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

to undertake this great task of Unitarian minis-
ter-at-large in this thriving American city ? Con-
fidence, however, must have had its place as well.
For his marked success and influence as a
preacher, his capacity for friendship with his
fellows, and above all the affection and respect
long since paid to him by such persons as James
and Lucretia Mott, and Dr. Furness, must have
given him some rightful knowledge of his abili-
ties. And "in all and through and over aU" must
have been a quiet and yet very intense joy at this
opportunity of service which now was his. At
last the transition from the anvil to the pulpit, so
long foreshadowed, was accomplished I At last his
hand was set to the plough for which he had long
felt himself so well fitted, and therefore yearned,
to drive! At last his real life was begun! That
he anticipated, or even hoped for, any such meas-
ure of fame and inffuence as later came to him,
is not for a moment to be supposed. But there
is good reason to believe that he saw even at the
beginning that joy of minJ and heart whidi was
destined from now on to be the guerdon of his
days. Sorrows, disappointments, one vast calam-
ity, were before him. But he had found, after
patient waiting and long striving, his place ap-
pointed, and in it that peace of God which the
world can neither give nor take away.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 187

CHAPTER VII

CHICAGO
1869-1861

"(Chicago) was alive to the tips of her fingers and
the core of her heart and brain. I had lived in the
country all my life, and when I came there was
thirty-six years of age. The life in a city was a
new life, and I caught something of the strong in-
spiration." — R. C. in "Some Memories/' page 116.

In 1859, the year of Robert Collyer's arrival,
Chicago was a city of a little over 125,000 popu-
lation. Situated on the western shore of Lake
Michigan, along the branches of the Chicago
River and on the edge of the vast prairie-lands,
it was at this time a rather unkempt, sprawling
and yet not unlovely town, more of an outgrown,
or over-grown, frontier settlement than anything
else. Already, however, its location as the gate-
way to the far northwest, had given promise of
its future greatness as a business and shipping
centre; and its unparalleled growth from 1850
on — 570 per cent in twenty years I — was now well
under way. The men who constituted the first

188 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

generation of settlers in Chicago were still active
in the closing years of the decade of the '50s;
most of them were still in the prime of life. "'Not
above a dozen names in any manner conspicu-
ously identified with the city's origin, or develop-
ment to something over 100,000 inhabitants, were
missing from its directory."^ Rude houses,
roughly constructed streets, as well as lovely gar-
dens and patches of farm-land here and there,
betrayed the earlier days of undeveloped village
life. But indications of the city's future power
in the commercial and political life of the nation
were already present.

Gaunt factories and wholesale warehouses,
railway terminals and shipping centres, grain ele-
vators, lumber-yards and stock-yards, were every-
where competing with banks, theatres, hotels, re-
tail stores, schools, churches and public buildings.
The population was rapidly dividing into those
diverse social classes, marked by high-grade resi-
dential neighbourhoods at the one extreme and
wretched slum districts at the other, which have
been the consistent accompaniment of city life
from the days of ancient Rome, if not much ear-
lier. Most significant of what was coming, and
of the far-sighted determination of the citizens

'See **Bygone Days in ChicagOk** by Frederick Frands Cook,
page XIII.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 189

of Chicago to prepare for a certain future, was
the gigantic feat undertaken in 1855 of raising
the city's level to a safe elevation above the sur-
face of Lake Michigan. Originally only seven
feet above this siuf ace, the level was raised by sys-
tematic endeavour to a mean height of fourteen
feet. At the very time of Robert Collyer's ar-
rival, in February, 1859, streets were being filled
in, houses raised, and even the largest buildings
elevated by means of jack-screws and placed on
new foundations, without being vacated for pur-
poses of residence or business. This achievement
was characteristic of a community which later
performed the miracle of making the Chicago
River run "up-hill," deepened the channel of this
petty stream so that the largest vessels might be
towed into any of its branches, rebuilt its dev-
astated acres after the great fire of 1871, and
dreamed the dream, and made real the dream, of
the famed White City of 1898.

Robert Collyer launched forth upon the tide
of life in this western municipality at the very
time when it was clearing early obstructions, and
sweeping full and strong into open courses. And
be it noted that this same thing was true of the
man as of the city. Each had met and passed the
period of self-discovery. Each had grown out
of a raw, crude, self-made past, was now living in

190 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

an ardent and ambitious present, and was pre-
paring to enter grandly upon a mature and fruit-
ful future. In equipment, experience and pros-
pect, the man met the city, and the city the man,
on equal footing. They were matched as twins ;
and grew together, as though destined by a sin-
gle fate, to common service and common fame.
Had CoUyer been free to choose the place and
time of his advent, he could have fixed upon no
more fitting place than Chicago, and upon no
more auspicious period of time in the history of
Chicago. The great days of the Civil War, the
stupendous civic developments in the half-dozen
years following Appomattox, the fiery cataclysm
which opened the decade of the '70s, the heroic
and Herculean labours which marked recovery
from this disaster — ^these were all ahead, and were
to become the substance of his life as well as of
the city's. Not more nearly was Savonarola re-
lated to Florence, or Parker to Boston, or
Beecher to Brooklyn, than the blacksmith preach-
er to the mid-western metropolis. For a score
of years, CoUyer and Chicago comprised one tale
upon the lips of men.

It was the First Unitarian Church, as we have
seen, which called Robert Collyer to its service
in Chicago as minister-at-large. This church, lo-
cated at this time on Washington Street, between

OF ROBERT COLLYER 191

Dearborn and Clark Streets, had been organised
under conditions of exceptional interest as early
as 1836. In June of that year, there came to the
frontier town, on a touring party with Miss Har-
riet Martineau, a Unitarian, Dr. Charles Follen,
later conspicuous in the anti-slavery movement in
Massachusetts. "We were unexpectedly detained
over the Sunday in Chicago," says Miss Mar-
tineau, in her account of the visit, "and Dr. Fol-
len was requested to preach. Though only two
hours' notice was given, a respectable congrega-
tion was assembled at the large room of the
Lake House, a new hotel then building. Our
seats were a few chairs and benches and planks
laid on trestles. The preacher stood behind a
rough pine table, on which a large Bible was
placed. I was never present at a more interest-
ing service, and I know that there were others
that felt with me."

On the 29th day of this same month, as an
immediate result of Dr. FoUen's meeting, the few
Unitarians who had found their way from Boston
and other Massachusetts towns to this far west-
ern outpost, gathered themselves together and
organised the "First Unitarian Church of Chi-
cago." It was the sixth church to be established
in the city, being antedated by Catholic, Meth-
odist, Baptist and Presbyterian churches, all of

192 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

which had been founded in 1888, and by St.
James' Episcopal Church, which was organised
in 1884. It was also one of the earliest Unitarian
churches to be planted west of the Hudson River.
Only Cincinnati (1880), Louisville (1880), Buf-
falo (1882), and St. Louis (1884), preceded it.
For a short time, in the beginning, meetings were
irregular and preachers uncertain. The first set-
tled minister was Rev. Joseph Harrington, who
began his work in a saloon building. He re-
mained until 1844, and ''was chiefly instrumental
in securing the erection of the modest church edi-
fice on Washington Street." After him came
various ministers, most of whom did only occa-
sional or supply preaching. But the church,
while never large or popular during this period,
grew steadily in members and in financial
strength. By 1859, it was ready to extend its
work, and to this end sent out into the east the
call which summoned Robert Collyer from his
anvil.

The "ministry-at-large," to whidi Collyer was
appointed in Chicago, was the local expression
of a significant philanthropic undertaking which
had had its origin in Boston as early as 1822. It
was on October 2 of that year that Frederick
T. Gray, Benjamin H. Greene, Moses Grant,
William P. Rice, and several other young men

OF ROBERT COLLYER 198

met together to consider the problem of provid-
ing religious instruction for the children of the
poor in Boston. On November 27 following,
these men organised "The Association of Young
Men for their own Mutual Improvement and for
the Religious Instruction of the Poor" — a Gar-
gantuan name which was fortunately changed
two years later to "The Association for Religious
Improvement." One of the first definite enter-
prises undertaken by this society was the secur-
ing of preaching for the poor and those connected
with no regular church organisations. In this
work, the society had the co-operation of several
of the best-known and most influential Unitarian
clergymen of the city; but it was not until Dr.
Joseph Tuckerman signified his willingness to
devote himself utterly to this ministry, that it
assumed a dignity commensurate with its im-
portance. Put into the field with the support
not merely of "The Association for Religious
Improvement," but of the "American Unitarian
Association" as well, Dr. Tuckerman entered at
once upon a work of preaching, visitation of the
poor, organised relief, study of social conditions,
that constitutes one of the landmarks in the his-
tory of Christian service in America. Alone, and
without adequate financial backing, he visited the
sick, provided necessaries for the helpless and de-

194 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

serving, secured work for the unemployed, and
gave special care to the feeding, clothing and
schooling of the children ; he worked out and tried
out methods of social relief which blazed the way
for all later organised charitable activity; and, on
the basis of personal investigation and experi-
mentation, he established theories of social causes
and doctrines of social change which anticipated
not a few of the accepted principles of our own
time. It is not too much to say that charity
organisation work, as we know it to-day, began
right here; and here received that impetus and
direction which it has maintained to the present
moment. By the year 1840, which marked the
end of Dr. Tuckerman's epoch-making service,
the charity work of Boston was well organised,
the "Benevolent Fraternity of Churches" was
started upon its way, numerous ministers-at-
large were busy in the field in which the pioneer
had laboured so long alone, and the movement
had spread far and wide to other cities. In De-
cember, 1836, for example, a ministry-at-large
was established in New York, and filled for a
time by William Henry Channing. Others were
established in Charlestown, Roxbury, Salem,
Portsmouth, Portland, Lowell, New Bedford,
Providence, Worcester, and elsewhere in New
England. With the aid of the "American Uni-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 195

tarian Association," the work was in due season
undertaken in Baltimore, Cincinnati, Louisville
and St. Louis. Chicago, of course, must follow
suit ! Here, therefore, as elsewhere, the ministry-
at-large was established ; and to its duties Robert
Collyer was called in 1859.^

What the new-found minister thought of his
new home and his new work, is told in the letter
to Flesher Bland, dated July 22, 1859, a part
of which has already been quoted.^

". . . The Ministry-at-largc," he writes, "is devoted
to the poor — to their help in every possible way. I
have a school for poor children on Sundays where I
teach them all they can learn and reward them with
clothes, shoes, flower seeds, etc. I have a night school
in winter, free, and eight teachers; a day school in
winter, also. Then I get homes in the country for poor
destitute children, where they are taught some useful
craft and are well schooled and started in life. I get
places for hopeless men and women, and start them in
life again after they have fallen down in despair. All
the publicans and harlots are members of my parish —
when all the churches turn them out and they are lost
to society I am here to help them to themselves and to
God. I visit prisons and get the deserving, or those
that desire to do well, into good places when they come

•For the ministry-at-large, see "Unitarianism in America," by
George Willis Cooke, pages 247-261.
*See above, page 141,

196 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

out, or if it is better, get them out. No doubt I am
busy — ^just as I sit down to write this I have been out
(9 at night!) to get a poor woman an extension on
two pawn tickets — to read and pray with a young man
in consumption (preached his funeral sermon since)
and to buy meat, bread and sugar for a woman quite
sick and destitute, with a drunken husband. I am kept
going by the Unitarian Church, a Very rich society
for which I have been preaching in the lack of a pastor
for eight weeks. I need not be other than a Methodist
to be their minister-at-large, but I am from conviction
on the liberal side. We have started a new church to
which I am preaching — I will tell you more about it as
it grows. At present they are about to build a new
church and expect me to be the pastor. If to be that
I have to give up my present grand field among the
poor, I shall think twice about it, and not accept after-
wards.

"Now I have told you the worst — if I were near you
we should spend many hours in grave and earnest dis-
cussion on these things; we should both be better for
such discussion. I remember how much you were to
me in old time; I shall not soon forget that. Do you
remember your sermon on the first resurrection, and
your other on the Holy Spirit? How much I enjoyed
them, surely ! As it is, if I were near you I know your
preaching would yet be most welcome. I hear very lit-
tle of that which satisfies me. Last night I went to
Methodist meeting but it was no use ; I must find in my
pwn )ieart and in all divine inspiration evervwhere that

OF ROBERT COLLYER 197

which I need. You will of course write me, if it be only
to tell me a piece of your mind about my great Heresy.
I had not thought about your being blessed also with
children. When I knew you, you had been married
some years without any; it was quite a surprise for
you to say they were very well, as a matter of course.
If you are as fond of children as I am, I am sure it will
bring endless sunshine to you to have them prattling
at your knee. In your quiet parsonage how different
I think it must be to the hurly-burly of this great west-
em city. I took tea one evening with a lady yet young
who remembered when there was but a small settlement
near a block-house. Now we have 136,000 inhabitants
and no end of building. You are a Wesleyan from con-
viction, else I would try to tempt you here.

"The pulpit tone is not high; we need good, strong
men — a city growing like ours needs the strongest.
Chicago stands on a vast prairie, with Lake Michigan
on the east side. The Lake is its redeeming feature;
there is little wood near, and the ground is quite low —
indeed the city is being raised about 9 feet in some
places, buildings and all. I have seen very large hotels
raised with all their inmates just going on as usual, and
all the furniture. There is a good deal of public spirit, a
strong Republican bias. Last week three fugitive slaves
were enticed away from us. There is much indigna-
tion, and if the men who got them away are caught
they will be handled severely. A sad place for drink-
ing ; about 1200 saloons are in full blast. I see a great
deal of the sin from my position — it is at times very

198 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

disheartening, but I know I am doing good, so shall
*learn to labour and to wait.' I was never quite satis-
fied with merely preaching to those who are only theo-
logically bad, but always longed to get at some genuine
sinners, some lost sheep. I am in the midst of them
now.

"If I could come to your house how much I should
ask you about the country you left so long after me.
How my friends in Pennsylvania used to be interested
in what I could tell them of Charlotte Bronte's coun-
try. I think she stands far above all other writers of
fiction (female) except Mrs. Stowe in the estimation
of all I have met here. I do not like all her pictures,
far less Mrs. Gaskell's, in the 'Life.' That I constantly
rebuked. Of course I said I knew Addingham better
than Mrs. G. The Surgeon, if it was Mr. Duck-
worth, was as unfair as possible, and the whole tone of
the book is unfair to life in Yorkshire. Dear old York-
shire, grim and smoky, green and lovely, wild moors
and rocks and mountains, sweet valleys and dales and
uplands, how I see it yet. I read as ever pretty much
all that comes in my way.

*'My wife has been all I could wish, a faithful, true
wife and mother. She also finds Methodism not possi-
ble to her. I rather tried to have her stay in the
church, but she follows me as I follow Christ.

"Try to sketch a picture of Ilkley Chapel the last
time you were there, who sat where, who is living, who
gone home to heaven. And of Bradley, too — I heard no
good news of Thomas Lister — I think it was in the

OF ROBERT COLLYER 199

Mercury I saw the account. Can you remember a Rich-
ard Hannam, and tell me whether he is yet living?
What did you call that queer preacher; was it Myers?
I think there were two brothers. He had horses and
carts, perhaps a farm, certainly a tremendous bump
of self-esteem. Is he alive ? You see I speak to you as
if you had just left. And John Dobson, my old dear
friend; I have had letters from him pretty constantly.
Does he look much older? *Becca' Batty, is she still
there, and has rum killed George? Mrs. Parrat and
Margaret just the same, I suppose, Margaret hardly
married yet.

"But I must close. Do not put yourself about, but
whenever you write, your letter will be as welcome as
sunshine. Speak your whole mind freely, remember; I
date my conversion from one of your sermons — and
believe me, dear friend,

"Ever yours most sincerely,

"ROBEET COLLYEE.

"P. S. — Mother and myself unite heartily in love to
Mrs. Bland and the children. Mrs. Bland remembers
me, I am sure. I remember her quiet kindness — ^have
many a time thought of her. Is the old man, her father,
yet alive, with his never-ceasing flow of fun and wis-
dom? I think I saw how he was retired at Skipton. —
How do you think he will manage to get along in heaven
without cracking jokes! — R. C." *

* In an earlier letter dated July 8, 1859— the first of the Flesher
Bland correspondence — he gives us the interesting item of infer-

200 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

It is evident, from this very personal account
of his life at this early time, that Robert Collyer
was "in his element," so to speak, in this service
of the poor. "I can remember," writes his eldest
son, Samuel, in a personal statement, "how much
interest he took in his work as minister-at-large."
It appealed irresistibly to those native instincts
of sentiment and affection which were always so
predominant a part of his being. Whether seated
in his oflSce at the First Church on Washington
Street, or walking the streets of the poor districts
in visitation of his people, or teaching by day or
by night in his mission schools, he was always the
same radiant and heartsome man. "It was wel-
come work," not only for him but for the
"mother" also. And this was fortunate, for work
of this kind was a twenty-four-hours-a-day task-
ing, and must centre quite as much in the home
as in the street or oflSce. In fact, on more than
one occasion, Mrs. Collyer was carrying the
heavy end of the burden. The men and women
brought in for relief were invariably dirty, and
frequently diseased; and children, picked up as
waifs in the street, were always swarming about.
But Mrs. Collyer had abundant sympathy and

mation that he has ^*a salary of $1900 a year, and perhaps $600
more from other sources, so I am well to do, as also, I believe,
useful*'

OF ROBERT COLLYER 201

"spunk," and rebelled only when demands be-
came utterly impossible. One story, told almost
apologetically in "Some Memories," sheds a flood
of light upon what must have been the service
of this devoted couple. One day, he says, he was
besought to lend a hand to a poor girl who had
been left to die in a black corner of the slum. He
found her promptly, and discovered, as he had
anticipated, that she was "as we say, 'a lost
woman.' " Where to put her was a problem, for
refuge for a member of this outcast tribe there
was none in the city. In his home that evening,
the minister-at-large unburdened himself of his
worry. "Can you do anything?" he said. And
then, after a silence, there came the brave answer,
"There is only one thing we can do: we have a
spare room, we must take her in." It was not
easy — ^but it was done. For a full month, the
unhappy prostitute was nursed by tender and
loving hands, and at last was restored to health.
And then — ^unhappy woman, indeed 1 — she left
the friendly home "with no thanks," and returned
to her familiar haunts. "She had no tears," says
the Doctor, "to shed at the feet of the holy one
of God, or box of ointment to break."

Service in such a field as this was welcome, but
it was not destined to continue in any such direct
and exclusive way as Robert Collyer, and those

202 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

who called him to Chicago, had anticipated when
he came. For this man, while an ardent lover of
his kind, and therefore a happy and successful
pastor, was also a preacher; and the preacher in
him was not to be denied at the new work in the
mission any more than it had been denied at the
old work by the forge. Almost inmiediately on
his arrival, he found himself in a pulpit; within
a few months, as the July 22nd letter to Flesher
Bland has told us, he was preax^hing with some
frequency at the First Church and had in pros-
pect a regular preaching task at a new church
just then being organised; and from this time on
to the end of his many days, held undisputed his
throne of spiritual sovereignty. Nothing, indeed,
in all our tale is more impressive than the phe-
nomenal rise of this rude, unlettered, untrained,
freshly-converted blacksmith to a position of
potent leadership in the liberal pulpit of his
adopted country, just as nothing is more inter-
esting than the chain of circumstances which led
him step by step, and at last bound him for good
and all, to this high office.

The first opportunity to preach came on the
second Sunday after Robert CoUyer reached Chi-
cago, through a courteous invitation from Rev.
George A. Noyes, the pastor of the First Church,
and therefore his superior officer. The new min-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 208

ister-at-large had reported to "Brother Noyes —
for this he was" at once upon his arrival and was
given a hearty welcome to home and parish. The
invitation to preach was a part of this greeting —
and a noble part, for CoUyer was fresh from the
anvil, and a minister appointed not for the par-
ishioners but for the poor. The sermon, spoken
in fear and trembling of heart, from the text,
"They joy before thee according to the joy in
harvest," was one which had done service on the
Methodist circuit in Pennsylvania. The preach-
ing of it in this strange city, and before this cul-
tured and presumably critical audience of Uni-
tarians, was a trying ordeal, of which the Doctor
remembered only in later years that "there was
no such help from on high as that which came . . .
on the moorside and in the small schoolhouse."
Always anxious and even timid under such cir-
cimistances, Robert Collyer was undoubtedly the
victim, on this first appearance in a Chicago
pulpit, of extreme embarrassment and self-
consciousness, which pretty effectually precluded
that joyous freedom of utterance which comes
to the true preacher as a veritable impartation
of the Holy Ghost. Nothing however could hide
the gifts with which this remarkable man was
dowered. "He did not know (the Unitarian)
ways. He was right from the anvil. His hands

204 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

were homy. That burr and brogue was still
cleaving to his tongue. The smoke and grime of
the forge was on him." But there also were the
glorious head, the handsome face, the huge stat-
lu-e, the ringing voice, the winsome smile, the
earnestness, the sincerity, the simplicity, the
sweet hiunan charm, which were as native to his
person as heather to the Yorkshire moors. The
members of the congregation were gracious in
their reception of the new minister-at-large.
Many in after years would tell how they still re-
membered this first sermon, and thus give best
evidence of the sound impression which it had
made upon them. And an event, or series of
events, which transpired ahnost immediately
thereafter, of large consequence first to Robert
Collyer himself and secondly to the whole cause
of liberal religion in America, showed how far
he had come from anything even remotely re-
sembling failure on this occasion.

Very shortly after Collyer's arrival in Chicago,
Dr. Noyes announced his decision to resign the
pulpit of the First Church and return to the
East. Earnest efforts were made to retain so
admirable a preacher and pastor, but they were
quite in vain. Dr. Noyes persisted, and the pul-
pit, therefore, was soon left without an occupant.
Arrangements were at once made to secure "sup-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 205

plies" from that base of all Unitarian supplies,
Boston; and a succession of ministers, some of
them the leaders in the Unitarian ranks of that
day, were received and heard. Edmund Hamil-
ton Sears, author of famous Christmas hymns,
Horatio Stebbins, successor of Starr King and
prophet for many years in his own right in San
Francisco, Dr. Charles H. Brigham, James W.
Thompson, George W. Briggs, and others only
less distinguished, were among those who came,
some of them for a month at a time. To listen
week after week to the preaching of these able
and scholarly men was to the heretic from the
Methodist circuit about Shoemakertown, an ex-
perience as valuable as it was delightful. It was
like the watching of the flight of the mother-
bird by the frightened and awkward fledgling in
the nest. He had known nothing like it since the
days when he had first sat at the feet of Dr. Fur-
ness in Philadelphia. These men, as the Doctor
himself well described it, "were (his) theological
school," so far at least as his training for Unitar-
ianism was concerned ; and what he learned from
their example in ways of thought and forms of
utterance, would be diflScult to estimate. No pic-
ture in Dr. CoUyer's life is more attractive than
that of the shy and yet ardent new minister-at-
large sitting in the pews of the First Church Sun-

206 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

day after Sunday, and drinking in the words of
these visiting clergymen as though he had never
tasted of living water before — unless it be the
companion picture of the old man in later years
recording reverently and gratefully the impor-
tance of this experience in the making of his life.*
But it was not all a matter of listening 1 The
distance from Boston to Chicago, measured in
terms of hours and not of miles, was much
greater in those days than it is to-day. Not in-
frequently as a result, the visit of one minister
failed to follow directly upon that of his prede-
cessor, and more than once the interval between
departure and arrival included a Sunday. All of
which might very well have "come to pass, that
it might be fulfilled which was spoken through
the prophet" in far-away Ilkleyl "They're going
to make a spare rail of thee. They'll put thee
into every gap there is."® For, commended to
the people by his first sermon of which we have
spoken, and named by Dr. Noyes himself in his
parting words as the man who could take the
services when the pulpit was vacant, Robert
Collyer was invariably asked to preach on these
occasions when the next distinguished visitor
from the East had not arrived. It was a happy

*See *'5ome Memories/' pages 101, 103.
' See above, page 99.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 207

privilege which fortune thus plax^d in his way.
But it was also a test which few uneducated lay-
preachers would have welcomed or could have
met. Robert CoUyer, however, did not flinch.
He entered the pulpit of the First Church in
Chicago as determinedly as he had set foot on
the Liverpool packet for the voyage to America;
and in the former case as in the latter, both ven-
tures into new worlds, he held his own and saw
the thing through 1 ''

How truly this was the case, is indicated by the
invitation which now came to him to preach reg-
ularly in the pulpit of a second Unitarian church,
recently established in another part of the city.

"Gallia est onmis divisa in partes tres," writes
Julius Caesar, in the first sentence of his "De
Bello Gallico Commentarii." What was true of
ancient Gaul is similarly true of modem Chicago.
This is a three-sided city — the South Side, the
West Side, and the North Side. It was on the
South Side which was then, as it is now, the
centre of the municipality, that the First Uni-
tarian Church had been planted in 1836, and
was now in 1859 happily thriving. The land on
which its edifice was reared had been received as
a free gift from the city in the '40s; and with it
had gone the proviso that if Unitarian societies

^See above, page 103.

208 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

were organised on the West and North Sides
within a certain definite period of time, they
should each have a quarter share of the original
grant.®

In order to take advantage of this condition, as
well as to anticipate the already apparent shift-
ing of the residential population from South to
North, a second Unitarian society was projected
as early as 1857. It was on May 11 of this
year, that the first formal meeting for purposes
of organisation was held in the oflSce of William
M. Larrabee, treasurer of the Galena and Chi-
cago Railroad. Ten persons, in addition to Mr.
Larrabee, were present, as follows — ^Benjamin
F. Adams, Eli Bates, Nathan Mears, Gilbert
Hubbard, Samuel S. Greeley, William H.
Clark, Henry Tucker, George Watson, Augus-
tus H. Burley, and Edward K. Rogers. (Jood
Yankee names these, indicative of the origin and

•So Dr. Collyer states in his "Some Memories," page 104.
Samuel Greeley, in his "Historical Sketch of Unity Church,*' gives
a somewhat different version, as follows: "Largely through the
representations of the late Artemus Carter, the principle was
adopted by (the First Church) that the property owned by it was
a trust held for the spread of Unitarian Christianity— to be
equitably divided between itself and new churches in the North
and West divisions, if such should be founded within a reasonable
period." In any case, when the project of a church on the North
Side was broached, the First Church voted on April 27, 1857, to
assign one-quarter of its land to the credit of the new movement.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 209

character of the stock from which the constitu-
ency of mid- western Unitarianism in these days
was drawn 1 Adjourned meetings of a slowly-
enlarging group were held from time to time;
but no definite action was taken until December
28, 1857, when a constitution was adopted, the
name Unity Church selected, and the following
persons chosen to be trustees — William M. Lar-
rabee, Benjamin F. Adams, Josiah L. James, .
and Samuel S. Greeley, secretary.

Thus was the history of Unity Chiwch begun.
A year and a half were yet to pass, however,
before this history was to be anything more than
a bare record of organisation. Reluctance to
withdraw from the First Church a considerable
portion of its people, difficulty in arranging for
a suitable meeting-place on the North Side, the
practical impossibility of raising funds for any
new movement of this kind in the days following
the panic of 1857, were some of the reasons for
delay. But no one of these was perhaps so
bafiling as the problem of settling a minister.
The little group had made a brave try to secure
the services of Thomas Starr King, then in Bos-
ton, but had failed ; and similar failures had fol-
lowed upon succeeding endeavours which they
ventured to make in other directions. Under
such circumstances it is not surprising that at last

210 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

they contented themselves with merely effecting
an organisation, and waiting, not unlike Mr.
Micawber, for "something to turn up."

The "something" materialised, after a not too
long interval, in the person of Robert Collyer.
Pending the real beginning of their own move-
ment, the residents of the North Side were keep-
ing their membership in, and attending the ser-
vices of, the First Church. In the period follow-
ing the retirement of Dr. Noyes, they listened on
occasion, as we have seen, to the preaching of the
newly-arrived minister-at-large. Little by little,
as they came to know him and to enjoy his ser-
mons, the "North-Siders" began to wonder with-
in themselves why this man would not serve
them, for a "starter" at least, in the pulpit of
Unity Church. No sooner wondered than said
— no sooner said than donel A meeting was
called, in which it was resolved to hold services
of worship without delay. A conmiittee con-
sisting of Edward K. Rogers, Artemus Carter,
Jerome Beecher, and Josiah L. James, was ap-
pointed to arrange the details of separation
from the First Church. A little wooden Baptist
church, located at the corner of Dearborn Ave-
nue and Ohio Street, was rented for a meeting
place. And Robert Collyer was asked to take
charge of the pulpit. It was understood upon

OF ROBERT COLLYER 211

both sides that he was to come merely as a *'sup-
ply," to see what could be done. If the meetings
proved successful, a church edifice would be
built and a man, properly endowed and edu-
cated, called to the pastorate. Collyer was to^
be recognised as primarily the minister-at-large
of the First Church, and thus simply borrowed
for the purposes of this experiment.

There can be no question that every fibre of
Robert Collyer's being strained to the acceptance
of this invitation, and his assent, therefore, was
promptly given. One serious worry, however,
tinctured the joy of his experience — ^that con-
cerning the attitude of Mrs. Collyer. She had
accepted his withdrawal from Methodism with-
out complaint, as we have seen. She had fol-
lowed him to Chicago, and was now happily at
work in the activities of the ministry-at-large.
At this new turn of affairs, she had consented
readily enough to his preaching regularly for the
people on the North Side. But she had never
abandoned her dear old mother chiu'ch — certainly
had never intimated her conversion to the gospel
of Unitarianism. Could she now go with her
husband Sunday after Sunday to hear him
preach the truth as it came to him full and free,
or must he, for the first time in their married
life, go his way alone? Tender as always for his

212 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

wife's entire happiness and freedom, CoUyer ab-
solved her from all necessity of allegiance.
"Please do not go with me one step farther," he
said, "if you do not feel free to do so, but stay
in the old church." She made no answer to this
word, for her answer had been given years ago
under the stars that shone down upon the York-
shire bracken. Before the preacher was ready
for the first service on the warm spring Sunday
afternoon, she was standing in the living-room of
the home, "hat on, gloves on," resolved as before,
and always, to go whither he should go. It was
the last great act of consent in the life of hus-
band and wife. "We went together hand in
hand," is the Doctor's joyful record, "through
the thirty years which remained"!

This first service was held, and the first ser-
mon® preached, on the last Sunday in May,
1869. Like all those which followed it for a
period of seven months, it was conducted in the
afternoon. "I can see it in my eyes as it was
then," recalled Robert CoUyer in after years, "the
little, pleasant room, a congregation smaller than
the room, by far ; the faces of the men and women
I only knew by sight as yet, and hardly that A

•'*Mr. Collyer writes that his text was Revelation XXII: 17,
and that the sermon was a stupid one." — Samuel Greeley in "His.^
torical Sketch of Unity Church."

OF ROBERT COLLYER 218

comical little organ, too small again for the small
congregation. The singing of as good intention
I am sure as ever was heard; and the preaching
only to be mentioned for these reasons, that it
was the first fair chance at a free pulpit the
preacher had found, that he had sought for it
with many tears, that he occupied it with a sore
misgiving that there never would be another ser-
mon after this in hand, and that everything was
borne by that little flock with the sweetest pa-
tience, and adorned out of their hearts with a
grace that never was in the thing itself." Rob-
ert Collyer did the bulk of the preaching, al-
though not infrequently the visiting minister at
the First Church was invited to take an after-
noon, or some special preacher from out of town
was secured for a Sunday or two. From the be-
ginning, the new movement prospered. The lit-
tle Baptist church had a seating capacity of only
250, and this was soon well filled. The neigh-
bourhood was growing with great rapidity, and
new families therefore constantly being added to
the parish list. Within a month, the sponsors of
Unity Church had cast aside their doubts and
fears. By mid-sunmier they had decided to erect
a church home of their own. On August 20, a
lot was purchased at the comer of Chicago Ave-
nue and Dearborn Street. Building operations

214 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

were begun immediately, and carried through
with promptitude. A modest structure/^ erected
at a cost of only $4000, stood completed by the
end of December, and "amidst the furious cold
and snow of Christmas eve" was formally dedi-
cated at a special service, at which Dr. George
W. Hosmer, of BuflFalo, preached the sermon.
Great was the rejoicing of the people, and many
the felicitations which poured in upon them not
only from Unitarians but from other denomina-
tions as well.

With this happy and speedy accomplishment
well behind him, Robert CoUyer prepared to lay
down his work with the people of Unity Church.
Signs were not now lacking that they were want-
ing and expecting him to remain as their pastor,
but he felt sincerely that his work with them was
done. Their society was organised, their build-
ing erected, their congregation gathered — every-
thing was now ready for the new and properly
trained minister, of whom so much had been said
in the beginning. Furthermore, it must not be
forgotten that Collyer was still at this time pri-
marily the minister-at-large of the First Church,
and anxious therefore to get back to his work
among the city's poor. During all of the sum-
mer and early winter months, he had tried his

»It provided "about 460 sittings."

OF ROBERT COLLYER 216

best to serve the two masters, and although he
had done this without any bad results to himself
— "so far as I remember," he says, "I was never
tired" — he felt that his work in the field, if not
in the pulpit, had inevitably suflFered. The dual
arrangement could not continue indefinitely —
and here apparently was the very time "nomi-
nated in the bond," so to speak, for him to return
to the work which he had come to the city to dis-
charge. Therefore on a certain week-day eve-
ning, directly after the dedication of the new
building, he asked the trustees of Unity Church
to come together, told them that the task which
he had undertaken to achieve for them was done,
pointed out the pressing nature of his duties as
minister-at-large on the South Side, and asked
to be relieved of all further responsibility to
them. He oflFered to lend a hand at Unity, as
at the First Church, whenever there was need
of assistance, but his whole time must hence-
forth be devoted to his ministry-at-large.

To the end of his days Dr. CoUyer recalled,
with vast amusement, the unfeigned dismay of
the people when they heard his proposal. It is
true that they had asked him to preach in the
beginning only that the "North- Siders" might
make experiment of holding regular services in
their neighbourhood ; and then, when this experi-

216 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

ment seemed to justify itself, had engaged him
to occupy the pulpit only until "some well-ac-
credited man" could be found for permanent
settlement. But all this had been decisively
driven out of mind by the great success which
the minister-at-large had achieved as a preacher.
"Some of us whose heads now bear the frosts of
early winter," says Samuel Greeley in his "His-
torical Sketch of Unity Church," "but who were
then overflowing with youthful enthusiasm for
the new enterprise, still remember how our feel-
ing of anxious responsibility for the initial effort
of an unknown man gave way, first to relief,
then to surprise, and finally to joyful certainty
that the 'hour and the man' had come, and that
a new moral force had suddenly risen among us;
that an unheralded champion had stepped into
the lists with level lance, to offer wager of battle
for mental and spiritual freedom." To allow
this man now to retire, at the very moment when
his work was finding permanent foundations, was
regarded as preposterous. It was he who had
gathered and now held the congregation on the
North Side. It was for him and this congrega-
tion of his making that the new church building
had been reared. It was in him and his promise
of fame and influence that the people placed
th^ir hopes of future happiness. Unit^ Churcb

OF ROBERT COLLYER 217

was his, and he must take the office of its minister.
"I was therefore called," he says, "in the regular
way."

By this unexpected action on the part of the
North Side Unitarians, CoUyer was brought face
to face with a serious problem. He was of course
delighted by such recognition of his worth as a
man and minister; and there can be little doubt
that he was eager to accept. Combined with the
native shyness of his being, which always came
to the fore at just such times as this, however,
were certain sound reasons for hesitation. First
of all was the matter of his obligation to the
people of the First Church, who had brought him
to Chicago less than a year before to serve as
their minister-at-large. Then there were the un-
escapable questions as to his own fitness for the
task. He had only just left behind him the forge
and hammer of the smithy. He had had no train-
ing for the professional ministry, not even so
much as a good common school education. Such
preaching as he had done, had been to poor, un-
lettered folk like himself, and correspondingly
very unlike the cultured men and women who
occupied the pews of Unity. His very words,
as they fell from his uncouth Yorkshire tongue,
betrayed him for what he was — a peasant immi-

218 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

grant, strangely strayed from proper and accus-
tomed ways of lifel

All this — ^honest man that he wasl — ^Robert
CoUyer made known to his friends in Unity
Church. He kept nothing from them, either of
fact or fancy; and when they scoflFed at his mis-
givings, and insisted that they wanted him and
not another man, he hesitated still. The question
as to his duty to the First Church was quickly
and easily settled, for it was arranged that he
should continue as minister-at-large, retaining
the responsible supervision of the work, and
passing over the routine labour to assistants. The
question as to his personal qualifications for the
work was more bothersome. Finally, after much
discussion, it was proposed by the confident and
eager congregation that the matter be submitted
to any group of clergymen whom CoUyer might
name for counsel. The hesitant minister con-
sented to this, named Dr. Eliot, of St. Louis,
Dr. Hosmer, of Buffalo, Dr. Bellows, of New
York, and Dr. James Freeman Clarke, of Bos-
ton, and submitted to them his problem. With
one consent they answered that he must take the
church, and, without further ado, he entered as
an obedient servant upon his duties.

It was thus, in January, 1860, that Dr. CoU-
yer began his more than half -century's service

OF ROBERT COLLYER 219

as a Unitarian clergyman. Quite in accord
with the traditional indifference of Unitarians
to the forms and ceremonies of organised reli-
gious life was the failure of the people of Unity
Church to ordain and install their new minister.
In after years Dr. Collyer amused himself more
than once by chiding them for their neglect of
the rightful prerogatives of his high office. "I
never was installed," he wrote at one time. "No-
body (at Unity) thought of it, and I didn't care
to push it." Samuel Greeley, the historian of
Unity Church, makes frank confession of sin in
this regard, pleading only that the church "must
be forgiven if, in its youthful haste to begin its
work for humanity, it entirely forgot to perform
the ceremony which the Christian world has,
time out of mind, held to be the decent and fit-
ting prelude to the union of a pastor with his
people." But little damage was done, least of
all to Robert Collyer. If formal recognition he
must have, it had come to him in abundance and
beauty at a meeting of the Western Unitarian
Conference at Milwaukee in the spring of 1859.
There he had been welcomed by "the brethren"
with open arms, and made to submit to ordina-
tion. Asked no impertinent questions as to
what he believed, given no embarrassing instruc-
tions as to what he should preach or practice, he

220 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

was simply received into the goodly fellowship
of free souls in the sweet old way, familiar
through many generations to those reared in the
Congregational order. Rev. A. D. Mayo
preached the sermon, and Dr. Hosmer, of Buf-
falo, laid on the hands of blessing. Clear in
CoUyer's mind at the moment, although he said
nothing about it, was the memory of that fateful
hour long ago, when he received ordination at
the hands of the good old farmer on the York-
shire moor. This second ordination could not
supersede that first great dedication to the Most
High. But it was welcome as a kind of fulfil-
ment of what was then so well begun.

Now came weeks and months of toil, excite-
ment and abounding joy. I doubt if Robert
Collyer was ever more radiantly happy than in
the year 1860. Unity Church was the whole of
his life. Nothing else held any attraction for
him. Thus, he was hardly well set to his new
task, when there came to him from the Western
Unitarian Conference an invitation to take
charge of an attractive and important mission-
ary field in the West. This was one of a series
of such invitations in these early years, which
show what native genius he brought to his work
as a minister, and how quickly this genius was
recognised by his fellows. His reply in this case

OF ROBERT COLLYER 221

was immediate and decisive, as witness a letter
under date of August 15, 1860, to M. D. Con-
way:

**Dear brother:

"Your circular letter asking me to take the promis-
ing missionary field now open to us, came to hand duly.
I had already received one signed by H. W. Bellows,
J. F. Clarke, N. A. Staples, and J. W. Mumford, urg-
ing me to hold on where I was. Such good letters from
friends on both sides are very encouraging. I feel
that I am over-rated, but that is not of my seeking, so
I do not feel bad at it. But I must repeat what I said
to you verbedly — at present I must not leave Chicago !
It would never do to tear out all the delicate tendrils
that have come about me from hearts opening out from
the winter of a formal Unitarianism into the spring of
a simple godly life. (This is between you and me!)
If I saw none of this, I should see nothing to stay for
but hard duty, but I see it all around. Hard lawyers
and editors let me know in a round-about way how I
have touched their hearts. *I thank you most deeply
for what you are doing for my husband,' a lady said
to me more than a thousand miles from Chicago. This
is all round, and I dare not tear it away. I know the
argument some would use, but you won't — ^'it is trust-
ing in an arm of flesh then' — and I deny it. The words
that help them are not mine, but the words of the Father
which sent me. If I should ever feel as I did when I
left my old Yorkshire home, and again when I left Penn-

222 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

sylvania, I will not hesitate, but go out. It would be
at my peril that I stayed then. I think Abraham would
have mighty soon regretted it, if he had not moved
west every time he felt he must. I shall wait for that
weight of reason, instinct and inspiration which no wise
man ever thinks of resistmg any more than the fledg-
ling of this summer thinks of resisting the mysterious
impulse that carries him out of the coming winter be-
fore the first frost has touched a flower. I trace much
of our loss in life to resisting this spirit of
truth

Robert Collyer was plainly as much in love
with his people as they were with him. It was
of course a day of small things at Unity, cer-
tainly as compared with those that came after.
It is reported, for example, that "the annual
deficit (of the church) of two hundred dollars
or so seemed as frightful as the deficit which
dragged down France to a bloody revolution and
her king to the scaflTold." But to the ardent
minister, now a settled preacher in his own right
for the first time, with pulpit, church and people
that he could call his own, all things were great,
at least as challenges to his ambition and sources
of his joy. There was the exhilaration of the
morning services, with their congregations
quickly swelling to the capacity of the little
$4000 structure. There were the wrestlings

OF ROBERT COLLYER 228

with the problem of the Sunday school, the anx-
ious hunt for children, and the sweet word of
assurance dropped casually one day into the ear
of her over-hasty pastor by a wise if youthful
matron, "Be patient, Mr. Collyer. We are
young folks here in Unity. Give us time, and
you'll have children enough." Then there was
the new organ, presided over by William Wat-
son and George Fergus, the former at the key-
board and the latter at the bellows. The installa-
tion of this instrument was a great event, for, in
the little rented church on Dearborn Street, and
for a time in the new building, the music con-
sisted of congregational singing accompanied
only by a flute "tastefully played," we are told,
by a young bookseller, Augustus H. Burley by
name. Memorable was the struggle over the
creed, proposed by those who felt that no church,
not even a Unitarian church, was complete with-
out one. The endeavour to write out a simple
statement of faith which should be satisfactory
to all members, was sincere and prolonged; but
it failed, as all such attempts are doomed to fail
in the case of those who have heard the call of
the free spirit. "Our belief was too inclusive
to be imprisoned in words," writes one member,
"and we gave it up. The one point on which we
all agreed was that all might differ." And

224 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

lastly, as no single isolated event, but as a con-
stant experience of the days and weeks, was the
preaching I This was the centre of the chiirch's,
as it was of the minister's, life. Congregations
were crowded because people loved to give ear
to Robert Collyer's simple eloquence, and feel
the impact of his fresh and unspoiled personality.
And Robert CoUyer was thus eloquent and mag-
netic, because the presence of listening throngs
kindled his heart and touched his lips as though
with fire. He was too much a lover of his kind
and of the world's work to begrudge any task
of these early days, or to miss gladness in any
kind of experience; but the sermon in the pulpit
on Sunday morning was before all things else
the crowning joy of every week.

Activities such as these in Unity were absorb-
ing, but beyond his parish other duties awaited
him these days. Thus as we have seen, he was
still minister-at-large for the First Church, and
remained so until the spring of 1862. He had
a well-trained woman as his assistant in this
work, but it was of course inevitable that some
of the routine labour, much of the worry, and
practically all of the responsible administration,
should still be his. As time went on, he found
it impossible to continue in this twofold rela-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 225

tionship ; but for the present at least he laboured
with joy in both vineyards.

Then on occasion there were calls to wider
fields of service which his compassionate spirit
refused to leave unanswered. In June of 1860,
for example, a great cyclone swept the state of
Iowa. The Chicago Board of Trade promptly
organised a relief committee ; money in generous
amount was raised; and Colly er was appointed
field agent to carry succour to the stricken area,
and administer it for the benefit of the suflTerers.
That Dr. Collyer is right in suggesting that it
was his position as minister-at-large in the com-
munity which commended him to the committee
for this responsible post, is undoubtedly true.
But it may not be amiss at this distance to sug-
gest that there were other and higher factors in-
volved in his selection, and that these furnish very
tangible evidence indeed of the place which he
had won for himself in the public life of Chicago
in a period of something less than one year and
a half. Straight to the wind-swept sections of
Iowa he went, struck the cyclone*s path at Ca-
manche, and there, taking wagon, followed the
dreadful trail westward to Cedar Rapids. The
memories of this adventure — of shattered homes,
devastated fields, broken bodies, scattered fam-
ilies, sudden poverty — ^stayed with him for many

226 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

a long year. He told the tale to his congrega-
tion on the Sunday following his return; and a
half-century later he set down vivid stories of
these days and nights in his autobiography.

Two letters to Flesher Bland, dated respec-
tively March 28, 1860, and February 1, 1861,
furnish interesting first-hand commentary on
these early months in the Unity Church pastor-
ate. It is to be noted that "dear Brother Bland,'*
as he is addressed in these letters, is still disturbed
at Collyer's defection from Methodism, and
warm with the desire to recover him to the true
fold as a kind of "lost sheep." As usual in such
cases, the protestations and appeals only call
forth reaffirmations of the new faith, gentle in
this case always, but none the less stalwart.

"Chicago, March «8/60.
"Dear Brother Bland:

"Pray do not think I have forgotten your kind letter
any more than you forget mine — I have at least one
letter in my desk for you which was half done weeks
ago, put by in a hurry and never resumed. Perhaps
I shall finish this.

"I wish sometimes I had your fine country quiet and
leisure when I should get time to think and write more.
I heard from a young man who called on us from you
(and we were very glad to see him) that you lived in

OF ROBERT COLLYER 227

a beautiful place, and I remember Mrs. Bland had the
way to make the inside of home look welL No one could
have done much for the outside of the one you lived in
at Addingham. So I suppose you really do get a good
deal of beauty and goodness with your daily bread to
cheer you. Well, so do I — but it is city life after all,
and Ilkley was the biggest town I ever lived in before
this Chicago ; and I do sometimes long to hear perfect
stillness but never do for five minutes together. Yet
I am here and you there surely by the Grace of God.
I remember poor old Jim Delves prayed over me,
*Lord, if thy presence go not with him carry him not
up hence,' and I think the prayer has not failed. When
Lot turned toward the plain there must have been some
remote touch to his soul beside the freedom of the will.
May not these unconscious touches that determine us
sometimes, we hardly know how, be over all God, blessed
forevermore? I remember you quoted the words *Sir,
we know we are free and that settles it,' when I once
aslced about that puzzle of the free will (you did not
tell me it was Johnson, you rogue) and I let it rest
there a good while, but I have thought at times that
God has other ways than our own choice to keep us
in some remote way in the traces of his grand ultimate
purpose. I should really be very wicked if I believed
he was not King of Kings. Well, so it is and you must
think of that whenever you remember what you call

my perversion. If I had come out of the Unitarian into

- - I I - - I ■ I I "

your church, what would you have called it then, m^

228 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

dear fellow? It is a long way through the whole reason
for all these things ; they rest with him who is our life.

"Since I wrote you I have been jogging along with
my work. I sent you our printed report the other day
which will tell you one part of my work; the other
part is my new church. I was called in regular form
over the parish at the New Year and after some hesi-
tation accepted. There was an express condition that
I should devote all needful time to the ministry-at-large
and give the church one service each Sunday. I wish
you could have seen the call and resolutions — ^there
never was anything more handsome. They are a fine
people. The church is paid for, I have now a salary
of two thousand dollars a year. Of course I am very
busy but I am hearty and strong. My old Yorkshire
oatmeal constitution is a capital thing. I hope, please
Grod, to do a good speU of work before I die. That will
not prevent me from insuring my life, though, and so I
shall do so for $5000 this spring. Have you insured
yours?

"We are having a fine open spring — ^to-day it is as
warm as early summer, and I have had a long solitary
walk by the shore of the Lake up to the cemetery. It
did me good as it always does to get near the breast of
our great Mother and feel her strong, warm pulses in
my own blood. During the present winter I have had
some little leisure; I study one sermon a week, steady,
and so need some time to read and think up. My church
13 largely made up of men and wcnnen of education ; edi-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 229

tors, lawyers, etc., and I should not do them any good
if I did not keep ahead. But it is not so hard as I ex-
pected. They pay me far more compliments than I have
any idea I deserve.

"I get all your papers and I hope you get all mine — I
sent you a number of LittelPs LixAng Age that con-
tained an article on the West Riding; I hope you got
that, because I shall often want to send you a number
of that journal when it prints something I know you
will like to see. The Christmas papers were for the
children, to whom, with Mrs. Bland, give my best love.
I hope when you move it will be into a larger sphere ; I
have no idea of your burying your talent in a La Cheete
napkin, if you have made good time these ten years.
You are too good a preacher for them. I got your ser-
mon ; it had the old ring with it, and did me good be-
cause it was yours, more, I am afraid, than because it
had the truth as it is in Jesus. All you print I will
read, though, and never fail to be better for it. When
you get a no. of the New Covenant there will be some
poor thing in it over R. C. from me. I sent Mary Hud-
son a copy of the report: poor, dear Mary. Bye the
bye, did you ever know Alice Bolton, a niece of the
Beanlands, and what came of her? I had a most intense
May-day attachment for her once, but am afraid she
did not do well. (I write this in my study.) The
CornhiU Magazine comes here and is a capital ven-
ture, 128 pages, equal in every way to Blackwood^
with two good engravings, for a shilling. It will make

280 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

a revolution in those things in time. The New York
Independent that I send sometimes is about to publish
some articles on Methodism that will be interesting. I
shall send some to you.

"The Methodists have two most magnificent churches
here and several plainer ones. There is one right across
the street. I went in one night but did not make any
real sense of the man, so went no more. John Baker
was on the circuit when I left ; I perceive he has taken
great hold upon you — what an earnest young fellow he
was. I have picked him out in papers pretty much ever
since and find he is getting up. George Steward went
out from you. The plan was interesting; some of the
names I remember very well as preachers ; some I sup-
pose are dead, among whom that poor consumptive fel-
low who was such a good T^eader.' I had a capital
class a long time in Penna. and always enjoyed it. Had
a most loving letter from an old class mate to-day.

"Will you travel this summer? Have you seen Niag-
ara? I think I shall go there. I would like to come
to you but it is so far. Certainly some day I will come
to your place if I Uve. I hope to go home in '62 if
all be weU. I want to see my poor old mother once
more in the flesh, as we call it. How poor is our faith :
how is it we cannot feel certain that the transcendent
beauty which will clothe us in the spirit wiU be far
more exceeding the beauty of this time in form and
spirit. We never feel sure of the future, yet forever
it opens out better even than our hopes : *And we smile

OF ROBERT COLLYER 281

to think God's greatness flows around our incomplete-
ness; round our restlessness, his rest.'

"Dear friend, good-bye,

"Ever truly yours,

"ROBEET COLLTEE.

"I have begun Greek ! !"

"Chicago, Feb. 1st, 1861.
**Dear Brother Bland:

"Reading just now how De Quincey sometimes left his
letters unanswered for months reminded me in some way
of you, and how I ought at once to answer your good
letter of long ago, so no time will be so good as this
dull, plashy night when *I can't get out,' to pay my
devoirs to you. We are all well, thank God for that;
the baby (Annie) grows hugely, is now near 9 months
old, and has got 4 teeth. The other three are well, so
am I, so is Mother; our life jogs on quietly. I have
plenty to do and plenty of robust health to do it. The
winter is my busy time and keeps me full handed. This
winter we have S schools open and I have done a good
deal for the poor — and a good deal for Kansas — and
my people tell me I have preached the best sermons
they ever heard, so you may well believe I will hardly
fail to be spoiled. Sure enough, my church is filling.
The income now pays more than the outgo, and what
is better, I have round me some of the very best and
truest men and women I ever saw in my life. E. C.
Lamed, who made the great defence of the Ottawa res-

282 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

cuers — the men who took a fugitive from the officers
and got him away to Canada — ^he has come in lately.
I am so glad to see such men round my pulpit. I feel
that I must try to be true to the great cause of free-
dom with a more perfect truth before such critics.

"Now let us have a chat. Poor Dave Lister has come
to that, poor fellow. Well, it is terrible, and must be
terrible for his poor wife, for she was a noble woman
and well deserved a far better husband than ever Dave
was. He was the type of what I understand by the
word Atheist; casting back in my memory, I can never
remember to have heard him utter one word or do one
deed in all the time I knew him that would give the pulse
one beat faster in a minute ; never knew him care a pin
for divine things or give any hint that he ever felt any
sense of the ever present God. I hope, poor fellow,
he is not clean gone. I owe him nothing but one warm
shake of the hand just as I came away and what I
am sure was a real wish for my welfare, but that is
a good thing to remember and made me feel more sorry
for his fall. His son Harry must be a young man by
this time ; his sister Harriet was my first devotion. And
poor old Hobson is dead — dead as his verses. Unmar-
ried and alone, no Becca Batty ever made him the happy
man he fain would have been. I have not known many
men whose inner history was more pathetic than that of
poor old Hob.

"Do you know I was at Montreal last summer for
about an hour but totally unable to branch off to La
Cheete.^ It was about the middle of July and I was

OF ROBERT COLLYER 288

on my way to Portland on urgent business requiring
haste. I enquired which way La Cheete lay and would
fain have made a pilgrimage to that place but had no
chance. I was so much pleased with the country about
there that I have thought I would spend my vacation
about Canada East if I am spared until the next sum-
mer. I mean to ask Gardner of Montreal to exchange
for the whole vacation. I have some of his old members
in my parish here and they will be right glad to have
him come to see them and to entertain him. Perhaps
I may fix it that way ; if so it will be real pleasant and
give him a good time at Hemingford.

*^I got those ponderous paragraphs about Martineau
and about Universalism. My dear fellow, these things
are an old song. No man can believe more deeply than
I do that repentance is the indoor to salvation, that
if we are not saved we must perish. But I rejoice also
in the belief that he whose mercy endureth forever, who
rtdeth, whatever that may mean, is not going to be cir-
cumvented, and lose into perdition the souls he has
created. If he made them to lose them that is another
thing. No letter of the Bible can weigh for a moment
with the ponderous fact that God is our Father. I
regret as much as Martineau that we have as yet not
much noble fruit of literature but he ought to remember
that we are but in the March days of our year yet. Still
we have some noble things to show already. And when
our church has gone into its ripe autumn as yours has,
we also shall have good fruit to show in abundance.
Besides, your best hymns are just what we want. My

284 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

service book has lots of good Methodist hymns in it
and we never tire of singing them. But here is an
Evening Hymn by a dear personal friend of my own,
one of our ministers that ^needeth not to be ashamed.'

'Slowly by God*s hand unfurled
Down around the weary world
Falls the darkness — O how still
Is the working of his will.

Mighty spirit ever nigh.
Work in me as silently;
Veil the day*s distracting sights.
Show me heaven's eternal lights.

IJving stars to view be brought
In the boundless realms of thought.
High and infinite desires
Flaming like those upper fires.

Holy truth, eternal right.
Let them break upon my sight;
Let them shine, serene and still.
And with light my being fill.' "

"Best love to all,
"Good-bye,

"Ever your true friend,

"ROBEET COLLYEE."

So the days jogged on — happy days, and
troublous days too, for the minister of Unity
Church, glad and proud as he was in his work,

"This is printed here exactly as it appears in Dr. Collyer*s
letter. Several variations from the approved version will be noted.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 286

and marvellously successful withal, was not with-
out besetting anxieties.

Conspicuous among these, as the above epistles
clearly indicate, was the constant worry as to his
ability, as a good shepherd, to lead and feed his
flock. Many, if not most, of his parishioners,
were men and women of breeding, culture, and
noble character. They were born of the deep-
rooted stock of colonial New England, educated
in academies and colleges, and were leaders of
light and learning in the community. In more
ways than one the people of Unity, like the peo-
ple of the First Church, were "the pick" of Chi-
cago's business, social and cultural life. And
here at their head was a rude blacksmith from
the English midlands, who could not count a
sum total of two years' education, whose tongue
still carried the thick "burr" of peasant dialect,
whose pen still halted at the spelling of such
words as "Illinois," "friends," and "prairie," ^^
and whose ways must have been in many details
not the ways of those he served. This discrep-
ancy was obvious enough — and it acted not only
as a challenge but as a source of recurring worry
and embarrassment. Both moods are reflected
in a letter under date of March 5, 1861, addressed

" •'Illisnois," "frcinds" and "pralre" are the spellings in these
early letters.

286 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

to "my dear friend," Wirt Dexter. It is evident
that his correspondent had communicated to him
some suggestions, and perhaps admonitions,
anent his preaching. In answer, Robert CoU-
yer writes :

"I have received and read your letter with the deep-
est gratitude. When God wants to make a man feel
how much he loves him, it seems to me that he always
gives him just such a friend as you are, with a large
heart and brain, and frank, free, fearless tongue, whose
friendship is ever as true for correction as for encour-
agement. If anything more is needed to help me strive
to be my best self beside the present promptings of the
divine spirit, it is just such kind, strong words as you
speak to me. I think exactly those things are needful,
because I have the most woful sense of being stupid
very often, and very seldom any idea that I am other-
wise. You have heard me say from the pulpit perhaps
that I feel unequal to the work of speaking to the men
and women of Unity Church, who I believe to be by all
odds the very foremost among religious thinkers in this
city. I feel this at times so acutely that I should feel
more gladness than grief at my dismissal. . . ."

Then follows in this letter a long paragraph
in which he tells the story of his life, as a kind
of explanation of his feelings, and of wistful
pleading that he may not have "done so badly."

OF ROBERT COLLYER 287

At the close, most appropriately, comes the call
for help.

"I shall be grateful," he writes, "if you will, as the
thing occurs to you, note some fruitful books of the
sort you mention that I may read to some profit. I
am aware of a rather narrow range. I have not read
so much in American history as I ought to and will do.
I shall be glad if you can save me prospecting, I have
so little time, and help me strike a lead at once when
I do dig. And now, dear friend, let me thank you
again, and do not count these confidences egotistic —
never let them interfere with your most flat-footed re-
buke, where you see occasion. God knows I'm not the
man I should be, but when I get hold of such a man
as you I feel like trying to be so that I may be worthy
of your friendship. I value that friendship all the more
and ever shall do for its clear, strong insight, and I try
to keep before me the words of a good old Quaker to
me when I came here. *Robert, do not try to be great,
but to do thy duty. If thee does that, thee will be as
great as thee can be.' "

Sermons were an especial trial at this time.
In all of his preaching as a Methodist circuit-
rider, in this country as well as in England, he
had followed the leadings of the free spirit.
Never once had he committed a sermon to man-
uscript, and then read it to his congregation.

288 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

When called upon to face the Unitarian audi-
ences of Chicago, however, a different method,
for mere safety's sake if nothing more, seemed
advisable. He still did not write, for his labours
as minister-at-large left him no time for this
kind of preparation. But he fell very soon into
the habit of making notes on a half-sheet of
writing-paper in outline or skeleton fonn; and
sometimes on the basis of these notes, writing out
the sermon in full a few days after its delivery.
The famous discourse, "How Enoch Walked
with God," was thus developed into the first
manuscript which Dr. CoUyer ever owned. From
this the transition to wTiting and reading ser-
mons as a regular homiletical method was easy,
and in this case, perhaps, inevitable. In a let-
ter to Flesher Bland, dated June, 1861, he says:

"I read my sermons almost entirely. I have to. I
seldom get done writing before bed-time Saturday even-
ing, and do not like to commit them to memory. I can-
not help the writing and reading. There is not any
chance for the man who stands in such a pulpit as this
of mine where the hearers are full of intelligence,
wide-awake, entirely intolerant of tautology and repe-
tition, demanding that you stand abreast of them at
least, if not ahead. To extemporise would be to fail.
You would find it out even in your churches in a great
city. . . ."

OF ROBERT COLLYER 239

Timidity of a very natural kind undoubtedly had
its part in this decisive change of pulpit method.
But a sense of duty — a consciousness of what he
owed himself, his people and the high cause to
the service of which he had been called — was the
really decisive factor. That Dr. Collyer was
wise in thus abandoning extempore delivery is
unquestionable. Nothing less than the stem
discipline exacted by setting words carefully to
paper, could have developed him into the potent
orator which he later became. Throughout the
remainder of his days, on lecture-platform as
well as in pulpit, his manuscript was always be-
fore him; and those which have been preserved
to us reveal with what ease, in course of time, he
came to write, and with what skill he learned to
mould the grace and power of the spoken word.
The sudden change at this period in the char-
acter of Collyer's work, the strain and excite-
ment of his laboiu's, and the high conscientious-
ness of all his endeavours, combined at times to
throw him into fits of indescribable depression.
There was "more fear than faith" a good part
of the time, and a real struggle therefore to hold
the pace. At such moments "Father" Fumess
in Philadelphia was "a refuge and strength";
Flesher Bland in distant Canada a never-failing
help; and nearer friends, like Wirt Dexter for

240 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

example, genuine sources of good-cheer. Noth-
ing availed so much, however, as the trust and
love of Mrs. Collyer. She was instantly to the
rescue with a word of rebuke, a sunmions to
courage, or a gentle caress, as each particular
crisis in her husband's experience seemed at the
moment to demand. One very beautiful story,
set down in "Some Memories," must here be re-
peated. "One day," he writes, "when fear held
me fast, ( I ) said, 'Mother, I think it was a mis-
take all round. In a year from now, I shall not
have a word to say. It will be dropping buckets
into empty wells.' She must have been busy and
did not want to be bothered with my moods, for
I see her turn to me with something in her
hand she was still doing, and she says, 'Don't
bother me with such nonsense 1 Yours is not a
cistern: it is a living spring. Keep it running
clear and deepen your well when you must, and
you will have more to say in a year from now
than you have ever had before in your life.' "

A true word, bravely spoken! Here indeed,
in the great heart of this Englishman, was a liv-
ing fountain of pure spiritual life. There was
some choking and roiling at the start, no doubt.
But in a surprisingly short time the spring was
flowing sweet and clear and full. The tides

OF ROBERT COLLYER 241

were free — ^the swelling stream had found its
course.

Such was the beginning of things for Robert
Collyer in Chicago and in the Unitarian minis-
try. No one event of all the story is particularly
impressive, but the sum total of achievement in
these months is little less than miraculous. We
have only to compare the Methodist heretic just
fresh from the Shoemakertown forge, in Febru-
ary, 1859, with the full-fledged minister of Unity
Church in January, 1860, to marvel at the dis-
tance travelled and the height attained in so short
a period of time. Chance, of course, had its
place in this, as in every such, event. But in the
last analysis it was the native quality of the man
which really counted. The discovery of Robert
Collyer was as sure and swift in Chicago as in
Ilkley, and by the cultured townsmen of Illinois
as by the uncouth dalesman of Yorkshire.
Greatness of soul was as conspicuous with him
as bigness of body. He could be as little hidden
spiritually as physically. Wherever he was — at
the anvil, on the moorside, in the pulpit — ^he
bulked large, loomed high, shone with beauty,
and thus, like some rough-hewn but verdant
mountain, filled the landscape. All that he now
had and was, belonged to him by right and not
by favour. What wonder that anxieties began

242 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

to fade, and burdens, even as they multiplied,
to grow lighter 1 He could not for long be the
victim of even occasional misgiving and despair.
The past was a sure prophecy of the future. It
needed but gradual adjustment to strange rou-
tine, slow formation of new habit, and the confi-
dence bom of real success, to make him the hap-
piest of men. Just when there first stole into
his heart that serenity of inward mood and out-
ward demeanour which sanctified his later years,
it is impossible to say. But we shall not be far
wrong, I believe, if we name these days of '59
and '60.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 248

CHAPTER VIII

THE CIVIL WAR— NATIONAL

1861-1866

"War is hell, the great commander said. Yes, I
would answer ; war is hell. But these memories steal
out, and then I say. Is this all? And I turn to the
seer's vision in the Holy Book and read, 'There was
war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought the
dragon and his angels, and the dragon was cast out.'
And then I ask. What do these things mean?" — R.
C. in "Some Memories," page 151.

On April 12, 1861, was fired "that first gun
at Fort Sumter which brought all the free states
to their feet as one man." ^ From the moment
of Abraham Lincoln's inauguration — ^nay, from
the moment of his election in November, 1860 —
everything in the North had been in a hopeless
state of confusion and dismay. The secession
of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Ala-
bama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, and the organ-
isation of the Confederacy — ^the honest doubts as
to the character and ability of the newly-elected

^ James Rosaell Lowell, in AtUnUie MontMif, June, 1861.

244 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

President — the conflicting counsels of the admin-
istration, the Congress, and the people at large —
the genuine desire on the part of the North that
hostilities might be averted, and a divided nation
reunited in the ancient bonds of confidence and
love — all these circumstances combined to bring
about a condition of almost unprecedented chaos.
No man knew what a day nor an hour would
bring forth, nor, indeed, what he really desired it
to bring forth. The battle in Charleston harbour,
however, transformed the situation as in the
twinkling of an eye. "Judged by loss of life,"
says James Ford Rhodes,^ "no battle could be
more insignificant; not a man on either side was
killed. Judged by the train of events which en-
sued, few contests in our history have been more
momentous." On Sunday afternoon, the 14th,
Major Anderson surrendered Sumter to General
Beauregard. On the next day, April 15th, ap-
peared Lincoln's proclamation calling for 75,000
volunteers. On Wednesday, the Sixth Massa-
chusetts Regiment started for Washington, and
on Friday, the 19th, met and overcame the Bal-
timore mob. It was a terrific week, character-
ised on the one hand by indescribable excitement,
and on the other by an almost instantaneous fixa-

• In his "History of the United States from the Compromise of
1850,'' Vol. Ill, page 355.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 245

tion of northern sentiment in support of Presi-
dent Lincoln's determination to defend the
Union. "The North crystallised into a unit/*
wrote Emerson, "and the life of mankind was
saved." ^

The news of Sumter reached Chicago on Sun-
day morning, the 14th. Hard on the heels of
the first despatch announcing the bombardment
of the fort came a second announcing its sur-
render. Excitement, for a time at fever-heat,
was momentarily succeeded by dismay ; and then
was every other sensation swallowed up in one
great passion of response to the President's call
for troops. Meetings were everywhere held in
halls and on street corners, recruiting stations
were opened and straightway thronged, banners
were flung to the breeze and wildly cheered.
Men of influence and power in every walk of life
pledged their allegiance to the Union, and sought
at once for some form of public service. Robert
Collyer was among the first to lift his voice and
pledge devotion to the nation. Samuel Collyer,
the oldest son, "distinctly remember (s) being one
of a vast audience addressed by him in front of
the Court House, when he said that, being a min-
ister, he could not go to the front as a soldier, nor

* See James Elliott Cabot's *'A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emer-
son," Vol. II, page 605.

246 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

could he let his boy go, who was only fourteen,
but he had a hundred dollars in gold to give to a
good man who would go in his place."*

On the following Sunday, April 21st, the
churches of the city spoke. Unity was decked
with flags; they hung from the organ, from the
iron rods supporting the frame- work of the roof,
and from the wall behind the platform. The
pulpit was enveloped in "red, white and blue,"
so that it could not be seen at all. The pews of
course were thronged with eager listeners; the
minister, profoundly stirred by the events of
the past week, prepared to speak as he had never
spoken before. The first hymn was Isaac
Watts's "Before Jehovah's Awful Throne," the
second, "America," sung as though to "lift the
roof in despite of the iron rods." Then came the
sermon, preached from the text, "He that hath
no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one."
The service was closed with the Doxology; and
then, after the benediction, all stood and sang

*"A young man came to our house the next morning," writes
Samuel, **and said he would like to accept the offer, and would
send the money to his mother in Canada. He enlisted in a Chicago
regiment, and was killed at the battle of Lookout Mountain. His
sword was sent to me from the battlefield and was hung in my
room over the foot of my bed, but could not be found after the
Chicago fire, having been taken away by relic hunters. My father
then sought out another substitute for me, who was afterwards
killed in battle alBO.**

OF ROBERT COLLYER 247

with mingled shouts and tears, "The Star Span-
gled Banner." Straight from this service went
more than one young man to enlist for the march
to Cairo. The sermon, borne far and wide as
though on wings of air, lifted Collyer in an in-
stant to a position of primacy among his Chicago
colleagues. From this moment to the close of
the war. Unity Church forgot completely its
parochial problems and ambitions, and lived but
for the one purpose of saving the Union.

The life and thought of the next two months
or so are vividly suggested in a passage from a
letter to Flesher Bland, dated June, 1861. Coll-
yer begins jocularly —

"I have been saving a ten cent stamp for you ever
so long, and so shall write at once to get rid of it, and
to tell you how glad I was to have such a budget of
good things all in one day. . . ."

Then passing to more serious matters, he says —

"We are full of the war. The whole country is a great
camp and drill ground. The spirit that has been called
out in defence of the Union is the grandest thing ever
seen in the country, perhaps in the world. It was the
most stirring time for a few days after the President's
proclamation I ever felt. Of course I have hardly
preached on any other topic. Last Simday was the

248 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

first time I have got out of it. I have preached on *Our
Relation to the War,' 'Woman and the War,' *Chri8t
and the War,' *God and the War.' What or when the
end will be is not yet seen. We have a great trial to go
through before we have done with it. But the North
is sure to conquer, and we shall put slavery to death
in the conflict. At least I devoutly long for and hope
so. . . ."

Recruiting was everywhere the first order of
business. Excitement was of course intense, but
it was more than ordinarily high and sustained in
Chicago, owing to the fact that the uru'ivalled
railroad facilities of this city made it the natural
centre for the assembling of the armies of the
Middle West and their distribution to strategic
points. At first all interest was focused on the
Chicago boys, who left their schools, workshops
and oflBces to enlist for service at the front. They
were the fiower of the city's youth, men of splen-
did vigour and pure idealism — "a number of fine
young fellows from our own church," says Coll-
yer proudly, "were among them." No sooner,
however, had the public mind become somewhat
adjusted to the local situation, than it was
stirred anew by the arrival of the regiments and
batteries which had been recruited in Wisconsin,
Iowa, Nebraska and the distant West. Week
after week, they poured in in a steady stream^

OF ROBERT COLLYER 249

tall^ handsome, consecrated young men, the
picked and chosen of village and farm-land,
clothed, booted and spurred by the loyal hands
at home. Scarcely a day went by, which did not
bring its thrill of crashing music, waving ban-
ners, and excited cheers, as one more regiment
detrained, marched through the crowded streets,
and either took up its appointed place of encamp-
ment on the city's outskirts or started east for
immediate service. Little wonder is it that the
boy, Samuel, fretted and fumed in the Colly er
home and could not understand his father's per-
sistent refusal to let him take up arms.*^ Little
wonder, also, that the father and minister, for-
bidden by what he regarded as the sacred obliga-
tions of his clerical office to go to the front,
sought consolation in keeping alive the fires of
patriotic sentiment by the untiring labours of
tongue and pen, and in doing whatever odd jobs

•"He was loath to let me go until of enlisting age in spite of
my pleadings. . . . My repeated efforts to get him to consent to
my enlistment, and his pleadings for me to wait, Anally culminated
one day in my walking into a recruiting oflSce and saying that I
wished to enlist. When I was given a pen with which to sign my
name, my conscience came to my rescue, I laid the pen down,
quietly walked out, sought my father in his study, and we had It
out together, resulting as usual in his persuading me to wait, and
the waiting continued to the end, because the war ended by the
time I became of enlisting age." — Samuel Collyer, in a personal
statement

260 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

of public service might come to hand 1 To speak
at a great public rally at Bryan Hall, to preside
at a meeting at the Briggs House for the organ-
isation of a women's nursing corps, to meet with
a committee of citizens to consider problems of
relief — these were the routine labours of nearly
every day. For these were the times when the
best and truest everywhere were thinking only of
"Father Abraham" and his call for help to save
the Union ; and Robert CoUyer, citizen, preacher,
and minister-at-large, toiled unceasingly in every
field open to him for the single cause.

During the early months of the war, Collyer
remained at his post in Chicago, finding plenty
to engage him in his own parish and city. Nor
is there indication in contemporary documents
that he had either desire or expectation at this
time of entering upon any different kind of work
from that offered by his regular parochial and
civic duties. In mid-summer, however, there
came a simimons which was as welcome as it was
sudden. I refer to the message from Dr. Henry
W. Bellows, minister of All Souls Church in
New York, to come to Washington to take up
service with the United States Sanitary Com-
mission.

The story of this great organisation com-
prises one of the most familiar as it does one

OF ROBERT COLLYER 251

of the most beautiful chapters of Civil War his-
tory. Conceived very largely in the mind of Dr.
Bellows, who served as its president from the
beginning to the end of its beneficent existence,
sponsored by influential groups of men and
women in New York and elsewhere, privately
established by ministers, physicians and public-
spirited citizens who were determined that the
health and comfort of the enlisted men should not
be neglected by a government absorbed in the
technicalities of political, military and diplomatic
procedure, the Sanitary Commission was first
officially recognised on June 9, 1861, by an order
of the Secretary of War, issued with the ap-
proval of the President, as "A Commission of
Inquiry and Advice in Respect to the Sanitary
Interests of the United States Forces." On
April 16, 1862, Congress passed a bill "to reor-
ganise and increase the efficiency of the Medical
Department of the Army," which gave the Sani-
tary Commission definite standing as a depart-
ment of government ; and from this time on, un-
der the administrative direction of Frederick
Law Olmsted, Secretary, and the inspired lead-
ership of Dr. Bellows, President, it laboured au-
thoritatively and successfully for the good of the
soldiers. During its existence it secured nearly
five million dollars in cash, and distributed sup-

262 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

plies of various kinds to the estimated value of fif-
teen million dollars. Its work from first to last
was without scandal, and "the names of men per-
manently engaged in the work," as James Ford
Rhodes well states in his monumental history,*
"make a roll of honour."

The work of the Commission was of two kinds,
preventive and relief. On the one side, warned
by the frightful experience of the English army
in Crimea, it undertook to safeguard the Union
troops against the diseases that haunt the wake
of armies. Therefore, throughout the war,
agents of the Commission laboured untiringly
in camp and on the march for the maintenance
of such conditions and habits of life as would
keep the soldiers at the maximum of physical
health. They gave lectures on sanitation, dis-
tributed tracts and articles, and gave personal in-
struction on the care of the body and its func-
tions. They watched the food supply, tested the
drinking water, provided for the proper disposal
of refuse, and insisted always upon sanitary,
well-policed, and thoroughly drained and salu-
brious encampments. They gave assiduous at-
tention to the personal cleanliness of the men,
insisting upon the proper care of clothing, the

•See "History of the United States from the Compromise of
1850," Vol. V, pages 944-259.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 268

use of tooth-brushes and other important toilet
articles, and frequent bathing. Athletic recrea-
tions were fostered, vice discouraged and fought,
home ties steadfastly maintained. No detail of
army life was either neglected or forgotten, with
the result that the Union soldiers were wholly
spared such devastation as made the Crimean
War a horror.

Along with this preventive work, went the
work of relief. This was largely centred, of
course, in the hospital and transport service.
Wherever were gathered the wounded, there
were gathered also the representatives of the
Commission, not only guarding sanitary con-
ditions, but serving also the needs of the thou-
sands picked up wounded and broken on the
fields of battle. The dressing of wounds, the giv-
ing of medicines, the making of beds and serving
of meals, the writing of letters to the dear ones
at home, comfort of the dying, decent disposal
of the dead — all these and other trying tasks fell
to the attention of the countless nurses working
under the direction of the Commission, and were
discharged with lovely fidelity and devotion.
When the news of some great battle reached the
Washington headquarters, instantly the nearest
agents were despatched to the scene of carnage,
there to labour and watch until the last woimded

254 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

soldier had been found and sent on his way to
the base hospital. Supplies for the sick and
wounded — bedding, clothing, food delicacies,
bandages, etc. — were gathered and sent forward
by the Commission in a never-failing stream.
Money was raised by the thousands and hundreds
of thousands of dollars in all parts of the coun-
try. Wonderful was the energy displayed, and
wonderful the results achieved.

Now it was to this great work of prevention
and relief that Robert Collyer was summoned in
the mid-summer of 1861 by a letter from Dr.
Bellows; and it was in this work, at intervals,
that he gladly engaged throughout the continu-
ance of the war. As a matter of form, the min-
ister of Unity laid the invitation of the President
of the Sanitary Commission before his congre-
gation for action, but he had little doubt that
they would release him. Nor was his doubt con-
firmed. With one voice the people bade him,
"Gol" So he went, and for a period of weeks
extending to the early part of October, gave him-
self unremittingly to the good cause.

On his arrival in Washington, Collyer was as-
signed to the camps about the city, where the
scattered army from Bull Run had only recently
taken shelter, and where General McClellan was
just starting on the prodigious task of creating

OF ROBERT COLLYER 255

the "Army of the Potomac" which was later to
be led to victory not by himself but by his suc-
cessors. It was Collyer's business to visit the
camps, examine their sanitary condition and the
general health of the men, and report to head-
quarters. He was given a team, with the escort
of a soldier, to take him from place to place ; and
he writes that before he left he had visited and
inspected every camp of the great Union army.
As "all was quiet along the Potomac" that
summer, ^ Collyer's adventures were few and un-
exciting. His story was mostly that of hard
work, and plenty of it. Amusing, however, was
his experience with "a rebel battery" across the
river. Accompanied by his ever-faithful squire,
the soldier, he was making his way through a
patch of woods toward the camp which he was
planning to visit, when he took a wrong turn
and was straightway "lost." The two plunged
along for a time, hoping to get out of the woods
and take their bearings in the open coimtry,
when suddenly they came to a clearing and found
themselves face to face with a row of frowning
cannon. "A rebel battery," whispered the sol-
dier. " What'U we do ?" "Turn about and make
for the river," said Collyer, no non-resistant but
wise enough not to attempt to capture a battery
single-handed. The two made their escape, and

266 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

on the return to Washington were not slow to
tell of their experience. But there were sceptic^
among the hearers, and soon it came out that the
Confederate cannon were none other than Mun-
son's Hill Battery of "Quaker," or wooden,
guns I

Equally amusing is Dr. Collyer's account of
the one glimpse which he caught of President
Lincoln. "It was on a sunny Saturday after-
noon," he writes, "and I remember, as we went
past the White House toward the bridge, my
soldier said, 'See them feet, sir?' There were
perhaps half a dozen pairs set sole toward us at
two open windows, and my man said, 'That's the
Cabinet a-settin'. See the big feet in the middle
o' that window? Them's Old Abe's.' "

Collyer returned to Chicago, after this some-
what extended period of service, in early October,
not to resume his church work, however, but to
pass right on to Missouri and inspect the army
of General Fremont.*^ Starting in at Jefferson
City, he first examined the military hospitals and
found them "in the most fearful condition you
can imagine. I cannot stop to tell you of the

*In his "Some Memories," he says that he "opened his church
for one Sunday perhaps" on this return to Chicago. The letter of
October 29, quoted on page 258, however, indicates plainly that
the Doctor's memory here failed him. He did not resume his
preaching until after his return from Missouri.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 257

scenes I saw," he states; "it is enough to say that
one poor fellow had lain there sick on the hard
boards and seen five men carried away dead, one
after another, from his side. He was worn to a
skeleton; worn through so that great sores were
all over his back, and filthy beyond telling." He
then went out into the country, which had been
the scene of such hot campaigning by General
Lyon only a short time before, to hunt out and
care for the sick and wounded. The land was
as though devastated by a scourge of grasshop-
pers. There was nothing to eat apparently any-
where: "I was never so hungry, so far as I re-
member, before or since," says the Doctor. For-
tunately his trip was short, and he was soon in St.
Louis reporting to his old friend Dr. Eliot, min-
ister of the Unitarian church, who was in charge
of this particular department of the Sanitary
Commission's work. From St. Louis, he went
straight back to Chicago; and on the following
Sunday faced his people, to tell them something
of all that he had seen and done since he left them
in mid-sxmMner.

A vivid light on this chapter in CoUyer's life,
as well as on the army conditions of this early
period of the Civil War, is shed by a letter writ-
ten to Flesher Bland on October 29, within 9

258 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

week of his return to his parish. Beginning "My
dear brother," he says —

"Your kind letter reached me in Washington and was
very welcome. If it had been possible for me to come
by way of Canada I should not have failed. But I was
needed at once and had to go right through, also I
came back, not home, but to join Fremont's army in
Missouri. I have now got done, got through with a
whole skin ! !, and come home. Had my first service on
Sunday to a splendid congregation and feel real hearty
and like work. I was really disappointed at not getting
round but this war upsets all calculations. I cannot
get home next summer now, for I cannot ask my church
for leave of absence so soon again. They behaved like
Trojans, better in fact. Were all on hand when I got
home and paid my salary all the same while I was away.
I am to turn my last Sunday's sermon into a lecture for
the citizens, as it was a narrative of what I had seen
during my absence. I shall give it in about a week.

"Of course soldiering even as a civilian is not an easy
life. I should have preferred shoeing donkeys for *old
Jacky' so far as ease went, but it was such an oppor-
tunity as can only come once in a life time for seeing
men under strange, new circumstances. I came into con-
tact with about 50,000 all told and found camps like
homes, a few nearly perfect, a good many that needed
to be amended, and the rest dirty, disorderly and disor-
ganised. I found men whose pure steadfast goodness
went with them and shone from them under ajl circum-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 269

stances, officers who had taken to arms because they had
failed shamefully in everything else, and officers who
were true as steel, unbending as granite, tender as a
woman. I saw hundreds of men sitting in the golden
Sunday sunset listening to the prayer or sermon as it
poured from the heart of the preacher, or helping to
raise the hymn with a heartiness that destroyed all dis-
cord as the sound swept up through the great arches
of heaven. And many of the same men in the week
day uttering blasphemies that smote you with a sudden
pain as when you tread on a thorn. I saw chaplains
in immaculate white cravats, men who would hardly soil
their fingers to save a soul, preaching to perhaps forty
instead of a whole regiment and even they suspecting
the sermon was meant for somebody else ; and chaplains
whose every sermon was a week long and was made up
of genuine, hearty loving helpfulness, writing letters for
the men to wives and maidens far away, watching by
and comforting the sick, receiving the photograph and
Bible and the last message home for the dying. I have
seen the sick left of their own officers to rot in squalor
and destitution, and an old black man or woman come
in and bear them off to their poor homes and nurse
them back to life.

**Our cause so far does not prosper. We have met
with little besides reverses and mostly very sore reverses.
It is a dark day for America and all the darker for our
fears. Our rulers are more tender for slavery than they
are for freedom. I think they are shamefully backward
in dealing with the root of the matter, but I thin]c tl^e

260 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

word emancipation will have to be said and stood to
before we get through and we shall have a real republic
in the end. I see by the paper this morning that Cam-
eron has authorised the employment of slaves as soldiers
by our army in the South. If that be true it is full of
significance and will do more for abolition than any
other thing that has been done except the rebellion
itself.

"I wrote some letters to the Tribune here. My
wife does not remember whether she sent you a copy.
I have a copy of the last and will send it to you. I
wish I had the rest, I would send them also. I hope
you got a copy of a sermon on the Bull Run disaster
which was printed in the Inquirer, I wrote a good
deal more than I printed and the velvet footed New
Yorkers left out one long paragraph of what I sent
which advocated a younger man than Scot for the chief
command. I see by the papers he is about to retire, so
I was right after all.

"Thank you for being so steady with the Mercury
while I was away. Now I have got back I can begin
to return your favours. I see by the one that came
to hand yesterday that the Myers wing of Methodism
in Addingham has got itself a church, *an ornament
to the town' which your church certainly was not. I
hope they will prosper and even if Christ be preached of
contention if he be preached there will be good done.
WTiat a queer new world must be mingling with the old
in Wharfedale by this time. . . .

"I hope you are very well and will have a good winter.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 261

I perceive you are growing out there as I was sure you
must; perhaps before I get to Montreal you will be
there. You must not refuse if you have the offer. A
minister in a city has vastly better leverage than in the
coimtry, can lift more and do more in every way. I
have no desire to go into the country to live any more
and should reply as the old preacher did down in Penn-
sylvania when Conference sent him over the Blue Moun-
tains to a sparse settlement. He went to the Bishop
to remonstrate ; the Bishop at last said to him, 'Broth-
er, you must go where the Lord sends you,' and the old
man said *I know the Lord never would send me over
the Blue Mountains. Conference is mistaken.'

"Ever in love,

"Robert Collyee."

After his return from Missouri, Collyer did
not leave the city for four months. Indeed, he
was never again away from his pulpit for more
than two Sundays at a time. Short absences,
however, were not infrequent, for the people of
Unity were as eager to send their minister on
errands of mercy as he was to go.

The next call of this kind came in February,
1862, from the triumphant field of Fort Donel-
son. When the news of the great feat of Gen-
eral Grant reached Chicago, the city went fairly
mad with delights It had had many a bitter dis-
appointment to carry since the first Bull Run,

262 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

and it had more than once been deceived by
word of victories which had never been won, with
resulting humiliation and disgust. But here at
last was real news of a real achievement! A
public meeting was instantly called for jubila-
tion, congratulation, and also for action. For
not even the delirium of rejoicing which seized
upon the citizens at this moment could make
them forget the price which had been paid for
the capture of the Confederate stronghold.
There on the Cumberland were great numbers
of friends and foes together, wounded, dying, in
urgent need of assistance! Supplies must be
had without delay, men must be found to rush
these supplies to the battlefield, men and women
both must be enlisted for service in the crowded
hospitals. The wonderful meeting held on this
great day rose nobly to the occasion. Without
a moment's unnecessary delay, a relief expedition
was organised, equipped, and started on its way,
with Robert Collyer a not inconspicuous member
of the committee in charge.

This trip to Donelson seems to have made a
deeper and more lasting impression on CoUyer's
mind than any other of his war experiences. This
was probably because it was his first close-range
look at a battlefield and the wreckage of a battle-

From a Photog-i

OF ROBERT COLLYER 263

field. In a sermon preached to his people® on
the Sunday following his return, March 2, he
gave a vivid description of what he had seen and
felt on this occasion. His first impression was
of Cairo, the distributing centre of all this fiercely-
embattled area of the Middle West, and there-
fore the place where were encountered the first
traces of the great conflict. "A mud-hole," as
Dr. CoUyer describes it, noisy, crowded, cluttered
with supplies moving one way and the pathetic
debris of the battle, including "those long boxes
that hold only and always the same treasure,"
moving the other, it was a city hideous to enter
and good to leave behind. Therefore the Chi-
cago party remained only long enough to change
from steam train to boat. A journey of one
hundred and sixty miles up the Ohio and Cum-
berland Rivers brought them at last to Donelson
and the work which they had come to do.

CoUyer's first task, upon landing, was to hunt
out the Chicago men, and more especially the
"dear friends who used to sit in (the) pews" of
Unity. These were found without difficulty;
and, delighted with the sight of familiar and
much loved faces, they entertained the visitors
with coffee, "which they drank as if it were nec-

•And printed in his first book, "Nature and Life," page 274.
See also "Some Memories," pages 136-151.

264 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

tar," says the Doctor, "and we as if it were
senna." Then came the news from home — stales
of the joy of Chicago over the great victory,
pride in the boys who had fought and won so gal-
lantly, love from mother to son, wife to husband,
sister to brother. Finally, as clusters of soldiers
gathered around to see and hear, there came the
inevitable demand for "a few remarks" from the
minister. So CoUyer rose and, choking through
his tears, told "how proud and thankful they had
made us, and what great tides of gladness had
risen for them in our city, and wherever the tid-
ings of victory had run ; and how our hands gave
but a feeble pressure, our hearts but a feeble
echo, of the mighty spirit that was everywhere
reaching out to greet those that were safe, to
comfort the suffering, and to sorrow for the
dead."

This duty done, grimmer work must now be
attended to. Close by the battlefield was the
little town of Dover, and here were gathered a
liberal share of the sick and wounded. The con-
dition of the suffering men was indescribably
agonising. There were no comforts or conven-
iences of any kind. Many of the soldiers were
lying on the floor, most were unprovided with
changes of linen or bandages, and all were with-
out proper nourishment. "Had it not been for

OF ROBERT COLLYER 266

the things sent up by the Sanitary Commission
in the way of linen," says Collyer, "and things
sent by our citizens in the way of nourishment,
I see no possibility by which these wounded men
could have been lifted out of their blood-stained
woollen garments saturated with wet and mud,
or could have had any food and drink except
corn-mush, hard bread, and the turbid water of
the river." For the first few days there was con-
stant labour for every member of the Chicago
party. Gaping wounds were awaiting ban-
dages, parched lips were crying for water, home-
sick hearts were eager to dictate letters, dying
souls were seeking consolation and confession.
It was a trying time, and no hand was allowed
to rest, or eye to sleep. As fast as possible, the
wounded who were able to be moved, were sent
on steamboats to Paducah, Mound City, and
other places on the river for permanent care ; and
one such trip Collyer took with a group of one
hundred and fifty-eight sorely-stricken soldiers.
The long cabin of the steamboat was packed
with men, laid side by side so close that one could
hardly put one foot between to give them a drink
or to cool their fearful hurts. "Here is one who
has lost an arm, and there one who has lost a leg.
This old man of sixty has been struck by grape-
shot, and that boy of eighteen has been shot

266 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

through the lung." The boy in the corner is suf-
fering untold agony ; all day long his cries of pain
are heard through half the length of the boat.
This other boy, on the contrary, is quiet; his
white drawn face is falling into lines of gentle
repose as the tide of life runs slowly out. A third
is giving his last message to one hastily siun-
moned to his side. **I am going," he gasps; "I
want you please to write a letter to my father;
tell him I owe such a man two dollars and a half,
and such a man owes me four dollars; and he
must draw my pay and keep it all for himself."
Then he lies silently a little while, and, as the
nurse wets his lips, says, "Oh, I should so like a
drink out of my father's welll" and, in a moment,
has gone. A case of especial interest is that
of a yellow-haired German with big blue eyes,
who can take no nourishment because of facial
injury, and is perishing for lack of food. In a
trice, the Yorkshireman's ingenious mind has
found a way. Through "a pretty silvered fun-
nel" which he has spied on a shelf, he pours into
a slit, in one corner of the invalid's mouth, some
milk mixed with sugar and brandy. Slowly but
surely the refreshing liquid gurgles its way down
into the hungry stomach and does its work.
Once, twice, thrice, at safe intervals, the stream
is poured through the funnel into the shattered

OF ROBERT COLLYER 267

mouth, and, before Mound City is reached, the
surgeon declares the fellow will get well. "Do
you believe it," writes tte Doctor in raptures, "I
think that by heaven's blessing on the milk and
things, I saved the blue-eyed boy's life."

Aside from this one trip, Robert Collyer spent
all of his time in the local camps and hospitals,
giving aid to the suffering, consolation to the dy-
ing, and last rites to the dead. In this business,
he was in many ways at his best. His hand was
as gentle as a woman's, his heart as quick in its
sympathy and tenderness as a child's. A little
service done, a few simple words spoken, per-
haps only an understanding smUe upon his hand-
some face as he passed by, seemed as if by some
miracle to create a kind of personal contact which
not only quickened the sufferer at the moment
but endured in his heart forever. There was
healing in his touch and presence, even as in the
garment of the Master. One incident which be-
gan in Cairo, on the way up to Donelson, and
ended years later in Chicago, tells the whole
story. While strolling on the outskirts of the
town, he came upon a young soldier badly
wounded in the head, sitting on the bank of the
river, with his feet in the mud and slime. A few
inquiries elicited the information that he was
from Donelson, and was now on his way to his

268 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

home in Indiana. "Is there anything that I can
do for you?" asked CoUyer. "Yes," said the
man, "you can give me a bit of tobacco." Coll-
yer did not smoke at this time, and therefore had
no tobacco with him. He gave the lad some
money, however, "and some over to help him
home"; and by way of reward, the young soldier
removed the bandage from his head and showed
him his wound — a bad bulge on the forehead I
"The bullet did not go in, then," said Collyer
cheerily. "No, sir," came the answer, "my head
was too thick for the bullets of them rebs. It
flatted and fell off. I got it here in my pocket."
Whereupon he pulled the thing out, and ex-
claimed with a fine disdain, "That ain't no use
ag'in a head like mine." Years later, on a Sun-
day in Unity Church, a young man greeted the
minister at the foot of the pulpit stairs. "You
don't remember me, sir," he said. Then he did
two things — lifted a tuft of hair from a scar on
his forehead, and laid in Dr. CoUyer's hand a
flattened bullet. "I am all right now," he con-
tinued. "I went back to my regiment, and kept
my thick head safe and sound through the war,
and took a notion to come up to Chicago to see
you. I had to, for I will never forget how you
acted about that tobacco." ^

*See '*Some Memories," pages 141-143.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 269

In the intervals of the nursing at Donelson,
CoUyer took pains to visit the Chicago boys ; and
now and again, he explored the battleground.
Once he went over the entire field of conflict un-
der the escort of General Webster, who had had
command of the artillery during the late action.
Here he saw the shattered breastworks, the rav-
aged fields, strewn with garments, harness, weap-
ons, shot and shell, dead horses, the clustered and
hurriedly marked graves of those who had "paid
their last full measure of devotion," while in one
trench he "counted three men who had not been
buried, and in another, on the edge of the woods,
there were eleven." One day, he says, "as I stood
in a bit of secluded woodland, in the still morn-
ing, the spring birds sang as sweetly, and flitted
about as merrily, as if no tempest of fire and
smoke and terror had ever driven them in mortal
haste away. In one place where the battle had
raged, I found a little bunch of sweet bergamot
that had just put out its brown-blue leaves, re-
joicing in its first resurrection; and a bed of daf-
fodils, ready to unfold their golden robes to the
sun ; and the green grass in many places was fair
to see. But where great woods had cast their
shadows, the necessities of attack and defence
had made one haggard and almost universal ruin
— trees cut down into all sorts of wild confusion,

270 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

torn and splintered by cannon-ball, trampled by
horses and men, and crushed under the heavy-
wheels of artillery. . . . One sad wreck covered
all."

In a little over a month after CoUyer's return
from this expedition to his duties in Chicago, he
was summoned to depart on an exactly similar
mission to Pittsburg Laiiding. This was early
in April. A larger company than before went
out for the work of relief and rescue, and this
time Robert CoUyer, thanks to his experience at
Donelson, was appointed captain. It was much
the same kind of trip — first, railroad down to
Cairo, then steamboat up the river, and then the
awful plunge into the waste of blood and terror!
The task, however, was more trying, in spite of
the initiation into this business in February, for
the two days' battle was one of the fiercest of
the Civil War, the number of men engaged very
large, and the carnage on both sides well-nigh
beyond description. Night and day, for over a
week, the men from Chicago laboured to better
conditions which were "confusion worse con-
founded," and to alleviate sufferings which in a
thousand cases seemed greater than could be
borne. At one moment they were nurses, at the
next surgeons' assistants, and at the last perhaps
consolers and confessors. Finally, after a week

OF ROBERT COLLYER . 271

of exhausting labour, Collyer took charge of a
steamer, loaded to the gunwales with wounded
for Mound City, and from there returned again
to Chicago.

It was on this expedition that Robert Collyer
had his famous encounter with Dwight L.
Moody. They met on the steamboat which was
bound up the river from Cairo to Pittsburg
Landing, Moody being one of a group of min-
isters who constituted a so-called "Christian
Commission." In the course of the trip, these
men arranged a prayer-meeting in the saloon of
the boat, to which Moody personally invited
"Brother Collyer." The addresses took the
usual course of talks on such occasions — the sin-
fulness of men, their need of salvation, the atone-
ment of Christ, etc., all in due order. Moody,
called upon to speak early in the meeting, re-
ferred to the soldiers of Shiloh, who were dying
in their sins, and rejoiced that they were now
bound for the battlefield to save their souls.

This was more than Collyer could stand. Ris-
ing quickly to his feet, he said, "Brother Moody
is mistaken: we are not going there to save the
souls of our soldiers, but to save their lives, and
leave their souls in the hands of God." He then
told of the work that he had done at Fort Donel-
son — the staunching of wounds, the bathing and

272 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

nursing of broken bodies, the soothing of dis-
tracted minds — and af&rmed with ringing elo-
quence that this, in the beginning, at least, was
what he was now coming to this latest battlefield
to perform.

This startling outburst of unregeneracy was
followed by an awed silence. Then rose a
brother clergyman from Chicago, who testified
that this undoubtedly was good Unitarianism but
hardly good Christianity. "The Unitarians,"
he said, "always work from the surface inward;
but we go directly to the heart first, and then
work out to the surface, ending where they be-
gin. We must do the one thing and not leave
the other undone — warn the sinner, pray with
him, and point him to the thief on the cross."

Colly er was instant with his reply. "My
friends," he said, "we know what those men have
done, no matter who or what they are. They
left their homes for the camp and the battle,
while we stayed behind in our city. They en-
dured hardness like good soldiers, while we were
lodged safely. They have fought and fallen for
the flag of the Union and all the flag stands for,
while here we are safe and sound. I will not
doubt for a moment the sincerity of my friend
and yours who has just spoken; but I will say for
myself that I should be ashamed all my life long

OF ROBERT COLLYER 278

if I should point to the thief on the cross in speak-
ing to these men, or to any other thief the world
has ever heard of."

These were brave words, and they did not fail
of their response. "When I sat down," says the
Doctor, "there was a roar of applause." ^^

Another "call from Macedonia" came when
Lawrence, Kansas, was swept with burning,
plundering and murder by Quantrell and his
guerillas. The great heart of Chicago was again
touched, and Robert CoUyer was again selected
as the proper man to bear the city's relief to
the stricken population. Jeremiah Brown, a
brother of the immortal John, who knew Kansas
as he knew the Bible, went out with him, and to-
gether they did the blessed work of succour. On
the Sunday following his return, sixteen men
who had gone out from Chicago and perished in

*°See "Some Memories," pages 126-127. "About a year before
Brother Moody was taken to his well- won rest and reward, I was
standing one morning on a platform of the elevated, waiting for
a train, when a hand was laid on my shoulder from behind, and,
turning, there was Brother Moody ! I had not met him since that
day on the way to Pittsburg . Landing. There was a smile now
on his honest face, I was glad to notice; and with no word of
preface, he said, *You were all wrong that day in the saloon.' And
I answered, *01d friend, if I was ever all right in my life, it was
on that afternoon on the steamer; and, if we must all answer for
the deeds done in the body, my answer will be ready, and don't
you forget itf We parted then, and I saw him to speak to him
no more." — R, C. in "Some Memories," page 126,

274 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

the massacre, were buried from the city*s largest
hall. CoUyer, appointed to preach the sermon
on this impressive occasion, spoke as only he
could speak for his mourning fellow-citizens.
In the magic simplicity of his Saxon English,
and with the deep fervour of his unspoiled heart,
he told what he had seen, and what these sixteen
men had done, in Kansas. No word of bitter-
ness passed his lips — he had seen too much of the
passion, suffering and heroism on both sides of
the bitter conflict, to cherish hate or speak denun-
ciation. Only the sweet compassion for dis-
tress and the swift delight in gallantry, which he
felt as keenly as any man who ever lived, found
utterance this day, and all who heard were
touched as though by some miracle of the spirit,
and straightway piu'ified. "I can never forget
that Sunday," says Dr. Collyer; nor could those,
we may be sure, to whom he spoke.

Before the war was over, Robert Collyer
looked back in retrospect upon these experiences
at the front, and summed them up as follows:
"It has been my lot . . . to see some of the most
frightful scenes the war has had to show. I
have been on our great battlefields in the West,
while the dead were strewn thick where they fell,
sunk in the mud, with the rain beating down upon
them all day long. I have gone through the

OF ROBERT COLLYER 275

camps and hospitals from the banks of the Poto-
mac to the far western wilds of Missouri. I
have seen our men cared for by our own noble
Sanitary Commission, and utterly neglected in
the far away places where, in the earlier days of
the war, its blessed influences had not yet pene-
trated. And let me stop for a moment here to
say that but for this Commission, so far as I am
able to judge, the results of the war would have
been frightful beyond all power of description
in neglected soldiers. I have seen men in dis-
tant hospitals housed and fed as you would not
house and feed a dog. I have found twenty-
seven men, most of them sick to death, sent two
hundred miles on the car floor of two box cars,
with raw pork and hard bread and water for their
sustenance, and a coffin containing a dead man
for their table, and seven of the twenty-seven
dead on the way. I have found our men dying
in a corner utterly alone. I have attended them
in crowded steamers where we could not step for
the heavy ranks of maimed men. And I declare
to you, on my honour, I have never yet found a
bom child of this nation, woimded or sick or
dying, who did not show some grand mark of pa-
tience and heroic quality such as make men weep
for pride and joy that they belong to such stock.
I have heard last messages, written last letters.

276 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

carried little gifts, seen last looks that were full
of the purest and most noble love. I have seen
not one man, but many and many a time men
who, all shattered and dying themselves, could
take the one hand that was not gone, to do some
kind office for the man who was lain down beside
him. I have seen the American woman deli-
cately shrinking from all coarse sights and
sounds, go quietly through scenes which made
the strongest of us shrink — all day long an angel
of mercy from heaven. Ay, I have seen an old
black woman, a child of Africa, surpass them
all." And then, telling a touching story of
Negro devotion, he declared, "We have grown
noble in our suffering."

This war service of Robert CoUyer was valiant
and unselfish. The actual time spent at the
front, however, during the war, was not great.
During the larger part of this momentous period,
he was at home in Chicago, engaged in tireless
activities. The parish work was always with
him, and this meant much more than in ordinary
times, for the people, young and old, were organ-
ised for the service of the Sanitary Commission,
and the church therefore was a hive of activity
from one week's end to another. Then there
were the insistent calls of the city upon his time
and strength. No man was more popular or

OF ROBERT COLLYER 277

influential as a speaker at public meetings. No
man was more successful in raising large sums
of money for the ever-pressing work of relief.
No man was more active on the various com-
mittees organised from tune to time for public
service. His labours, for example, on a conunit-
tee appointed to supervise the care of prisoners
at Camp Douglas were constant and imtiring
through a long period of time. His heart drew
him as instinctively to this personal service on
behalf of the captured Confederates, as to the
similar service on behalf of the stricken Union-
ists at Donelson and Pittsburg Landing. Here
were men in distress — lonely, sick, wounded —
that was all he wanted to know ! The fact that
they were enemies — ^men who had been battling
for the hated cause of disunion and in defence
of the iniquitous institution of slavery — never
touched him in the remotest degree. These
prisoners had their point of view, they had
fought for what they regarded as their rights —
they were not to be blamed. And even if they
were, it still remained true that they "were sick
and in prison," and therefore he must "come unto
them." And so he came — to bind up their
wounds, to bathe their fevered brows, to write
their letters to their loved ones, to talk homesick-
ness out of their hearts with tales of merriment

278 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

and words of sympathy, to teach them now and
again "of faith in God our Father and of his
Christ who came to tell us of his Father's love
for all his children, not here and now alone, but
forever here and hereafter." It was a ministry
which was wearing in body, mind and soul, but
infinitely lovely and rewarding.

And then, during all these months and years
of the war, there was the preaching! In the
beginning, as we have seen, he talked constantly
on subjects suggested by the great conflict.
Later on, when the initial excitement was over,
he relapsed into that normal consideration of
normal themes which becomes the lot of every
minister even in days of direst cataclysm. He
was too near the centre of things, however, too
deeply stirred by what was going on, and too
keenly aware of the real nature of the struggle,
to remain in any sense aloof or apart from events
in his pulpit utterances. Always on the first
Sunday after his return from an expedition to
the front, for example, he would dispense with
any formal sermon, and tell in simple narrative
of what he had seen and done. These addresses
were invariably regarded as of great public mo-
ment, and, generously reported in the newspa-
pers, exerted a potent influence in maintaining
interest in the war and spurring on the home

OF ROBERT COLLYER 279

folks to ever greater efforts for the relief of the
soldiers. Then too, when some great battle was
monopolising public attention, or some patriotic
holiday was stirring the pulses of the people, or
especially some dire disaster shaking the confi-
dence of the nation, he was sure to mount his
pulpit like a herald, and soimd therefrom a clar-
ion call which echoed to the remotest bounds of
the city, and sometimes far beyond.

One such sermon he preached on July 28,
1861, the Sunday foUowmg the shameful rout
at Bull Run. The outcome of this battle was a
terrific blow to every man in the North from
Abraham Lincoln down. Expectation had
mounted high when McDowell's army moved
against the Confederate forces. Arlington
Heights and Alexandria had been seized and
held two months before. The expedition against
Big Bethel had been badly mismanaged and
therefore unsuccessful; but this was more than
counterbalanced by the brilliant victories of Mc-
Clellan and Rosecrans in West Virginia. Mean-
while, during all of these weeks of abounding en-
thusiasm, regiments had been pouring into
Washington in a steady stream from all sections
of the North. What more natural, nay, inevitable,
than the public demand that the newly gath-
ered army should prove its worth and therefore

280 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

the justice of its cause by marching on Richmond
and ending the rebellion upon the instant? That
there might be difficulties in the way of immedi-
ate victory was never imagined by any one. So
certain seemed the capture of the Confederate
capital and the early close of the war, that it
needed but a mere nmioiu* that Richmond had
fallen, to turn all the citizens of Chicago into the
streets to join in celebration of the return of
peace. They shouted, cheered, marched, flung
out their flags, rang the great bell in the cupola
of the courthouse imtil it broke. And then came
the incredible news that the Union army had
been not only defeated, but driven back in shame-
ful rout and senseless panic upon the defences
of Washington! It was a dreadful awakening,
not merely to the direful uncertainties of war,
but also to the grim and tragic character of this
conflict which now was joined between North
and South. "Only a few proposed to give up
the contest," says Rhodes, ^^ "but it was perceived
that instead of one short campaign, the war
would be long and severe, and that training as
well as enthusiasm was needed to win."

It was in this crisis of disillusionment that
Robert CoUyer preached his sermon on "Sift-
ing," from the text, "And the Lord said, Simon,

" gcc his "History of the United States," Vol. Ill, page 455.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 281

Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you,
that he may sift you as wheat/' Laying down
the principle that evil may very well be conceived
of as performing the invaluable function in the
lives of men and nations of "purification, sifting,
showing what is good in proving what is evil," the
preacher ventured the affirmation that America
was at that moment being "shaken, separated,
sifted" by the shock of defeat and humiliation,
"that the real grain may come out for a new
spring-time and smnmer and harvest of Gk)d."
He then went on to make what he called "two or
three important applications bearing upon the
sad reverse which we all lament to-day."

"The goodness of our cause," he said, "with
the divine blessing at the back of it, and the most
perfect devotion in our men, will not be a match
against the thoroughness of our enemies, if our
leaders are only remarkable for half-heartedness
or executive blunders. The Roimdheads fought
for constitution and law, as clearly as we do;
but they were beaten from post to pillar, until
they formed a real power and f oimd a true leader.
And it is said that when Cromwell formed his
great regiment of Ironsides, and numbers flocked
to the standard, all likely men, he did not feel
sure until he had them betrayed into an ambush
that he had set for them; then, as he rode down

282 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

the ranks, in the seeming imminent danger, he
saw in their faces which good men would not do
for an Ironside, and told such frankly that the
Lord wanted their arms and horses for other
men. And it came to pass that these select men
were never beaten — first, I devoutly believe, be-
cause they were good men, but greatly because
by personal vigour, skiU in the use of the best
weapons known to that time, with a commander
that they could trust as they trusted their right
hand, every separate man, without reckoning his
saintship, was a match for any sinner that could
be matched against him. So, in this great cause
to-day, there must be this correlative force of

man to man, brain to brain, prime to prime ''

He next raised the question as to whether Bull
Rim was not "a sifting" of the unwisdom of send-
ing "beardless boys" to the front, "while so many
strong men stayed at home." He asked if it was
not a revelation of the fact that "fifty thousand
men in a good cause, however brave and true,
breakfasting on crackers and water, cannot carry
miles of entrenchments on a sweltering day,
against seventy thousand well-fed and deter-
mined defenders." And then he concluded with
the soul-stirring challenge, "We shall be sifted
until we resolve to grow to the measure of our
good cause altogether. . . . We shall be sifted

OF ROBERT COLLYER 288

until we are pure, strong, and all for freedom
under the Constitution. . . . We shall be sifted
of all traitors and all treachery. So will this evil
spirit sift us, and set us with the wheat or the
chaff, as we belong. Then, in this soil of the New
World, God will plant a pure seed, and water it
from heaven. There shall be a handful of com,
and the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon;
for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

Another sermon entitled "Our National Peril:
A Sermon for the Times," was preached from
the text, "Who knoweth whether thou art come
to the kingdom for such a time as this," on July
6, 1862." This was a dark period in the history
of the Rebellion. The war in the West, to be
sure, had been signalised by the storming of Forts
Henry and Donelson in February, the hard-won
victory at Shiloh in April, and the capture of
Island No. 10 in the same month. From the sea
had come the thrilling stories of New Orleans,
Roanoke Island, and the Monitor and Merrimac.
But all these were forgotten in the shame of
Jackson's triumphant raid of the Shenandoah,
the overwhelming disappointment of the Penin-

"In the newspaper report, this sermon is headed by the follow-
ing editorial note — **We pve place to the following sermon at the
request of a large number of citizens, not the parishioners of Mr.
CoUyer. His views are historic, striking and sound, and should
command the attention of the reader."

284 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

sular campaign, and the darkening menace of
European, or at least English, intervention.
July 4th, which saw the nation breathing a sigh
of relief that McClellan's host was safe, instead
of lifting a shout of joy that Richmond was
taken, was a holiday of mingled gloom, indigna'-
tion and rededication. All the moods of the hour
are clearly reflected in Collyer's discoiurse on the
Sunday following.

"Our nationality is in peril of being blotted
out," he began. "That is the first thing to say
to you this morning. The reasons why we shall
not be a great distinctive people from this time,
are stronger than they have ever been before —
stronger than they were a year ago, I think, and
the question of nation or no nation is now more
than ever a grave question; the solution of the
problem depends eventually under (Jod upon
ourselves. The questions I shall put to you, and
by consequence to myself, are plain questions,
and they admit of a plain answer. They are not
my questions. I only come here as the word,
God himself has put the questions . . . and they
must be answered; and as Gk)d shall put them
one by one, if we say, Ay, we say salvation
and no ruin."

Then came the questions — each a heart-search-
ing challenge to faltering courage, and an appeal

OF ROBERT COLLYER 286

for nobler zeal and a braver consecration. First
of all was the question of national unity. "Have
we made up our minds," he asked, "that we will
preserve to our children what has come down to
us from the fathers — a compact, solid, American
nationality, one and indivisible? Are we so bound
to this that, like Fisher Ames, we mean to teach
it to our children, if need be, in their catechism,
as one of the deep essential first things of life —
to possess them with the conviction that the sun
will not shine, nor the corn grow for body or
soul as it ought to, when this glory departs from
us — ^that this loss, if it come from any sin in us,
or them, is the unpardonable sin, that is, it takes
a solid quantity clean out of our being that can
never be restored in earth or heaven? . . . The
more I study this question, the more clearly I see
the fatal result of the broken trust. National
ideas are more than armies. Let those ideas be
broken in our nation by the dividing lines of new
nationality, and the main strength has gone out
of her heart. . . . And my fear when I consider
this problem is, that the men on the right side may
not be set in the determination to keep the whole
nation at every cost within the Union. On that
first of all rests our future; and the man who
would divide while ever we can keep together is
at the best ignorant of one of the deepest princi-

286 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

pies of a commanding national life, and at the
worst, if he will examine his heart faithfully,
though he may think it says Union, he will find
the undertones whispering cowardice, or treason.
We cannot afford to be indifferent or uncertain.
If we are not for America, we are against her.
There are but two sides for us. We are with the
great mother to defend her, or we are with the
assassins who seek her life. If we stand and look
on and the deed is done, we are guilty, inasmuch
as we did not try to prevent it. If we stand and
look on and she prove victor, woe to us when she
shall look at us with her great clear eyes, and say.
Coward 1'*

Secondly, came the lowering question of for-
eign intervention. To have France and Eng-
land step in, either to stop the war, or as allies to
help the North put down the rebellion, was to
him equally intolerable. As an Englishman, he
yearned for English sympathy. "To me," he
said, "it is one of the saddest of all the issues of
this struggle, that England, my noble old mother,
has sent us no word of cheer." But as an Ameri-
can, he cried. Hands off I "We are on trial as a
democracy," was his word. "We stand alone —
stand or fall according to our own internal
strength or weakness. We shall be utterly dis-
graced by any buttressing whatever. If the

OF ROBERT COLLYER 287

tower will not stand by its internal strength, bet-
ter pull it down course by course to the first
foundation and begin afresh. As I look out to
our future in case of interference, I see but one
of two issues — we must confess to the world that
democracy ... is a failure, and is to live only by
the tolerance of monarchies from this time out,
or we must turn our country into one swarming
fortress of aroused men until we have vindicated
our name and won our place on the battlefields
of the world."

Then there was the final question of individual
duty and responsibility in the great crisis. How
full and strong rang out the preacher's voice, as
he summoned his people to perfect loyalty. "If
I am ready to give myself, I am a true son of
the fathers ; if I am not ready, I am a craven. I
do not say that every man is called to be a soldier,
though I cannot say who is not ; but I do say that
every man is bound to give himself. If John
Smith gives life, and I am not ready in some
way to give mine, then he is exalted up to heaven,
and I am cast down to the hell of this kingdom
and power of God. As we went up the Cimiber-
land to Fort Donelson, we met the first boat-
load of prisoners coming down — ^poor bare-
headed men, with pieces of carpet for cloaks —
and I felt not one impulse to laughter, but rather

288 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

to tears at the sight, for I said, how much
stronger are these men than they ought to be.
How like an angel of light is this devil of re-
bellion when it can muster its adherents and sub-
mit them to such discipline as this. So then I
have not a penny, not a book, not a coat, if the
balance of coin turns against us, before the war
is done, that I must not be ready to give, or sell,
or pawn ... to conquer this national integrity
and preserve it unbroken."

Brave were such words as these, and many
were the hearts to whom they brought both com-
fort and new resolution. As the weary weeks
dragged on, however, and the summer passed
into history with little to record but divided coun-
sels in the closet and inactive ''quiet along the
Potomac," it became increasingly difficult to sus-
tain the burden of the war. Again and again,
the gallant CoUyer found the tides of life run-
ning low within his soul. "The war is upon us
like a dead weight," he writes, under date of
September 9, 1862. "What a woe and darkness
(it) has become. Surely we cannot go much
longer as we are — God help us." Then hard
upon these periods of unutterable depression,
would come great moments of courage and new
faith, and sometimes of boundless wrath, when
he would rouse himself like a hungry lion, and.

OF ROBERT COLLYER 289

in the majesty of conscious strength, speak till
all the jungle of despair and terror heard and
echoed to his call. Such a moment came in Bos-
ton, on October 23, when he addressed the Parker
Fraternity in Tremont Temple. This lecture,
called "Night and Morning," is full of witty and
pathetic stories, thrilling narratives of personal
experience, inimitable human touches, and heroic
challenges of destiny, and thus is a supremely
characteristic utterance. In its analysis of events
and criticism of national policy, it shows traces
of that fallibility of judgment to which every
contemporary mind is liable. But as a revelation
of CoUyer's attitude, and of that of millions of
his fellow-countrymen at this turning-point of
the battle for the Union, it is an invaluable his-
toric dociunent.

He began his statement by pointing to the
"ruin that is all about us to-day." Seeking its
causes, he told a characteristic story of a Scotch
corporation which constructed a bridge from a
good plan and with good workmen, only to see it
collapse when the props were removed, because
the bricks used were "bad — there was too much
sand in the clay I" "If you ask me to tell you,"
he continued, "why the stately structure built
by the fathers has gone down with a great crash,
I should answer, there was too much 3and in the

290 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

bricks ; if you ask me why Abraham Lincohi does
not succeed better in rebuilding, I shall still an-
swer, because there is too much sand in the
bricks; and if you ask me whether he will ulti-
mately succeed, I shall say it depends upon
whether he has resolved to use nothing but good
bricks. . . . The sand of slavery in our Com-
monwealth has brought this ruin; the sand of
slavery has beaten out all our efforts at restora-
tion up to this time, and if the great worker
and those that help him do not shovel it out
of the way, the structure can never be re-
stored. . . ."

Then followed a scathing indictment of the ad-
ministration for its "conduct of the struggle" —
an indictment of almost startling character in
view of Collyer's unwavering support of the
Union and his sturdy trust from beginning to
end in Abraham Lincoln. The iron of disap-
pointment, however, had entered deep into the
vitals of his being, and he must speak, more in
sorrow than in anger, lest he be unfaithful to his
soul and the cause to which he had dedicated that
soul.

"Such a sight as this democracy has presented,*'
he cried, "of mistaken coniSdence and broken
hope, this world never saw. (Our people) have
said to their executive, tell us what you want

OF ROBERT COLLYER 291

done and we will do it. Striplings and strong
men and grey-headed men have marched out joy-
fully to death for their great inheritance. Money
has been poured out in such floods as were never
seen in the world before. The woman has stood
up grandly by the man as her great mother in
the forests of Gaul and Britain did in the old
time. And yet our record, from first to last,
has been one long black night, with but here and
there a star. Vultures have been all about us
ready to gorge themselves on the distracted na-
tion when it should die. . . . Our great com-
manders have been made out of epaulettes and
apathy. They have been recklessly winning bat-
tles on paper, and losing them in the field. . . .
I know very little about state aflFairs. The Presi-
dent, cabinet and conmianders may have done the
best they knew. I believe the President has done
his best. I trust in Abraham Lincoln as I trusted
in my own old father who rests in heaven. But
I cannot shut my eyes to three cardinal princi-
ples of action, which our President has followed,
so far as I can understand him, which to me seem
to be radically wrong."

These three articles of indictment Collyer
elaborated in great detail and with excoriating
vigour. "In the first place, (Mr. Lincoln had)
selected his cabinet mainly from among the men

292 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

who stood as candidates for the presidency in the
Chicago convention, and were rejected by the
people. • • • A cabinet like this," said the
preacher, "may do very well when the great work
is to divide party spoils . . . but when it needs
the most commanding intellect, integrity and
united purpose that the whole land can furnish
... I cannot believe that these men are the best
that could be found in all the nation to stand at
the head of money and ships, and munitions of
war. simply as men. Their training has been en-
tirely of another sort; they are only political
preachers, and for such men to unite in a firm,
strong way to carry on the war is difficult or per-
haps impossible." Then "Mr. Lincoln (had
gone) not only to the rejected candidates for his
cabinet, but to the Bell-Everett, milk-poultice
party, for his policy ... a party that wanted to
pat and tickle, while events that followed each
other like the long tattoo summoned the nation
to strike quick and hard and 'to the brisket* for
her honour and her life, or she was lost. . . •
There was but one way out of this trouble; the
country was prepared for that way from the
start. The Milky- Way was not it, and Mr,
Lincoln went that way for his policy." And
"the third mistake to a plain man, the mistake
most fatal of all, was that Mr. Lincoln went to

OF ROBERT COLLYER 298

the pro-slavery democrats for his generals — or,
in other words, the men who are placed in every
one of the most important commands are men
who have wanted or do now want to see the South
victorious in the particular thing for which she
has plunged us into this dreadful agony of a
civil war. . . . There have been hopeful con-
versions, . . . but that was the sort that Abra-
ham Lincoln began with. Every man who hated
the cause of all that trouble, and declared he
would make a cut at that, was kept well out of
the way."

This was savage criticism, nor was it wholly
unfounded. There were difficulties inherent in
the vast problem of conducting the war, which
the historical studies of a later day have brought
clearly to the light for the first time; there
were depths of understanding and of vision in
the soul of the patient man in the White House
which a half -century of worshipful observation
has not yet sounded to the bottom. But the ad-
ministration had made serious mistakes, the dark-
ness which enshrouded the Union cause in the
autumn of 1862 was appalling, and it was as
natural as it was proper that the public sentiment
of the North should speak in no uncertain terms.
Whatever fallibility of judgment may be found
in this Boston address, is more than compensated

294 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

for by the throbbing devotion, passionate loyalty,
and insistent "will to triumph" that are revealed
in every phrase. This man was in earnest. He
had enlisted for the duration of the war. The
America which had drawn him across the seas by
her fair promises of freedom, and had fulfilled
these promises beyond all that he had ever dared
to dream, was in the toils of death, and nothing
was worth while in these dreadful days but the
work of saving her. This work must be done
courageously, whole-heartedly, efficiently; if not,
the glad sacrifice of millions must be in vain, and
the great cause lost. Hence the unhesitating
valour with which he spoke his censure of what
seemed to him to be the sins of mind and will
which were responsible for disaster 1 Collyer
never spoke with greater power, nobler eloquence,
more profound emotion than on this occasion.
And never more fairly, too I For amid the dark-
ness he saw that there were streaks of light, of
which the President's Emancipation Proclama-
tion was the most conspicuous, and these he rec-
ognised and acclaimed with a resounding "God
bless Abraham Lincoln I" "The Night now and
forever," he said, "is not the Master but the sub-
ject of the Day . . . and the Day has begun to
break upon us."

The courage, love of truth, steadfast devotion

OF ROBERT COLLYER 295

to the right as God gave him to see the right,
which were in this man, was never better illus-
trated than by his famous sermon on the at-
tempted suppression of the Chicago Times,
preached in Unity Church on June 15, 1863.
This newspaper was a scurrilous "copperhead'*
sheet, which had long tried the patience of the
loyal citizens of Chicago almost to the breaking-
point. Collyer had denounced it Sunday after
Sunday in the pulpit with matchless daring, for
the enmity of a newspaper was as cruel a "thorn
in the flesh" in those days as it is to-day. At last
General Bumside, the military commander of
the district, took the paper in hand, and a great
shout of applause and relief went up from one
end of the city to the other. To Robert Collyer,
however, bred in the hard-won traditions of old
England, this was a flagrant attempt to suppress
freedom of speech. Much as he hated the Times,
he hated military autocracy even more. All the
oppressions of the old world rose up like ghosts
before him, and stirred him to revolt. Therefore
on the Sunday following the seizure of the paper,
braving misunderstanding and abuse of the crud-
est type, he preached a sermon upholding the
freedom of the press and censuring Bumside for
his attempt to suppress the Times. "He got up
in his pulpit," writes one of his parishioners, "and

296 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

with the tears streaming down his cheeks, said
he was about to preach a sermon which his con-
science had made him preach, but which he felt
sure would cost him some dear friends, the loss
of whose love would be a sore trial. So he
preached it. When he began," says this narra-
tor, "I came nearer feeling angry with him than
I ever did before. But before he ended, I felt
that he was right and we wrong."

That same evening, this friend wrote a letter
of congratulation to Kalamazoo, whither CoUyer
had gone to deliver an address. His reply is in-
teresting :

*'My dear friend:

^^I snatch a moment before my address comes off at
the college here, to thank you for the sweet pure words
of cheer conveyed in your note and which I received by
the same mail with one from an old member of my
church, accusing me of prostituting myself to the Chi-
cago Times, of being a convicted liar (in going in the
teeth of all I said before), and of selling myself for
gold. . . . Thank you seems a poor word, but what can
I say you do not believe me to mean in thank you?
I have sent the letter I mentioned back with a note
saying it admits of no answer. That I send it so that
if my life and deeds should justify his judgment, he
may have the letter to prove how accurately he read
me. But if time and the judgment of the future justify

OF ROBERT COLLYER 207

my step, I send it back because I dare not retain it
for my children to read. So I recommit what seems
to me a sad disgrace to his own keeping. Oh, it is
very, very sad that no faithfulness and honour can ever
win a man (some men) to believe even in man, let alone
God.*'

Examination of the sermons and addresses of
Robert CoUyer during this period, reveals certain
salient facts with great clearness. First of all,
perhaps, is the hatred of slavery which had been
bred into his bones by his liberty-loving father,
and the zeal for immediate abolition which he
had acquired as though with his citizenship papers
in his early years in Pennsylvania. Slavery was
the sand in the bricks which had caused the dowrn-
fall of the republic in the great Civil War. Slav-
ery was the crime which for two whole genera-
tions had palsied the lips and spoiled the beauty
of American freedom. "Slavery," he said, "has
been a strange tongue to the American democrat;
he could never quite get it. We have carried it
about with us as poor Byron carried his club foot.
'Beautiful as Apollo, that one thing was the de-
formity of our whole life.' We mingled with the
world abroad forever conscious that not the noble
face and form, not the genius, power and promise,
but the club foot was the point of observation.

298 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

For that the preax^hers, with such noble excep-
tions as Parker and Cheever, had faltered and
stammered in our pulpits. We have blotted our
sermons when the old fires of freedom burned too
fiercely into the paper. We have read our lesson
beforehand for fear some echo from those turbu-
lent old prophets should tear things when we got
to church. We have studied our subjects with
the full knowledge that we could not go beyond
a certain line; that we must make justice and
truth not utter and ultimate, but proximate and
politic." Then, too, in addition to the cancer
eating at the heart of American political idealism,
must be noted the hideous cruelty and injustice
to the black man which are involved in this in-
stitution! "Ever since the Negro dwelt by old
Nile, he was despised and rejected of men; a man
of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid
as it were our faces from him; he was despised
and we esteemed him not. But here we find him
bound up in our very existence, woven into our
life as the woof is woven into the web — ^we stand
or fall, live or die, together — ^he will wait for our
decision to do him justice. If we do it now, we
live. If we refuse to do it, we die as a republic,
and deserve to die."

Here was speaking the thoroughgoing Aboli-
tionist — the man of the Garrison, Phillips, Gree-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 299

ley type, who would make no compromise with
sin, and who saw with perfect distinctness that
the war must strike the shackles from the limbs of
the slave, or else be a failure, no matter how
firmly the Union of the states was re-established.
To Collyer, as to other Abolitionists, the wise de-
liberation, or, as they put it, the cowardly evasion,
of Abraham Lincoln in dealing with this evil,
was a source of constant irritation. He was of
those who rebuked the President for not emanci-
pating the slaves upon the instant ; and his voice
was one of the millions which was lifted in Horace
Greeley's Open Letter,** to which Mr. Lincoln
made so memorable a reply. "It is to me a ter-
rible symptom of disease in some vital part," he
said, in his July 6th sermon, "that nothing seems
to be held sacred but this most infernal cause of
all our agony and danger. We call our Sabbaths
sacred, and yet we fight nearly every great battle
on a Sunday. We consecrate our churches, and
then we turn them into hospitals for the wounded,
friend and enemy alike, and let the congregations
worship wherever they can find a place, or not at
all. We shatter tens of thousands of the noblest
of all the temples of God, our bodies, with shot
and shell on battlefields. In a word, we seem

» Entitled **nie Prayer of Twenty Millions," and published in
the New York Tribune of August 30, 1869,

800 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

to do whatever we will to desecrate what belongs
to God. Sabbaths and churches and men are
all destroyed without measure for the common-
wealth, and the whole voice of the loyal nation
testifies that the cause is worth the cost. We de-
stroy what belongs to God, and never fear; but
we are in terror of touching with the tip of our
finger what belongs to the devil. The most sacred
things are destroyed; the most infernal thing is
guarded as if it were the holiest of holies. . . .
Friends, this is the gravest danger of all to-day.
The foe is in deadly earnest to shatter the Union
and preserve slavery. We are in constant terror
lest, in trying to save the Union, we should de-
stroy slavery."

That CoUyer looked upon the Emancipation
Proclamation as "the first flash of the morning,"
has already been indicated. "We strip off our
shame at this moment," was his exultant shout.
Abraham Lincoln has vindicated himself. "The
whole coimtry was full of nmiours. The Presi-
dent is in the hands of his cabinet. The Presi-
dent is in the hands of the army. The President
has no power. The President is a weak man.
The President dare not touch slavery. Men's
hearts failed them for fear, and well they might.
It was a fearful time." Then came the word of
liberation and all was changed. "We have now

OF ROBERT COLLYER 801

seen the hand of Abraham Lincohi ; he has shown
his hand — ^it unlocks the door of life. He has
shown his head — ^it is held up for freedom and
right; protect him." The future was from
henceforth secure. "When man shall rise up/*
he cried, "and condemn this republic for the sin
of slavery, and say. In the old time your fathers
bought and sold men, our children shall point to
the noble deeds, to the long line of men and wo-
men that gave themselves for the nation when the
sin had brought the death, and they shall see how
the sin was lost in the agony and penitence and
resolute justice that has come with this struggle."
A second revelation contained in these Civil
War sermons and addresses, is CoUyer's attitude
toward the question of war. Never at any time
was he a non-resistant. His biting comment on
pacifism of the extreme type was set forth in the
form of a parable. "When the Quaker held the
peace principle too strictly," he said, "his oppo-
nent at last told him a story: how away out in
our western wilds, a settler went to plough, carry-
ing his rifle, and, as he came home to dinner, saw
his cabin all aflame, and his wife fleeing from the
tomahawk of the savage — and the husband had
but just time to raise his rifle and shoot the sav-
age down. And the man said to the Quaker,
'What would you have done?' *Well, I would

802 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

have shot him, if I had a gun, but still if would
have been against my principles; I ought not to
shoot him.' 'Madam/ said the man turning to
the wife, *what do you think he ought to have
done?' The quiet reply was, 'If he hadn't shot
him, he might be a very good Quaker, but he
would be a very bad husband.' "

But if not a non-resistant, Collyer had been be-
fore the war a peace man. "I suppose," he said,
"I could find you five hundred texts that were
all on that side. I devoutly believed that the
Prince of Peace had taught men tliat war was
wrong under all circumstances whatever."

"When the first cannon shot shattered the ark
of the covenant at Fort Sumter," however, Coll-
yer 's "blood with the blood of every loyal man
began to boil." The Union was in danger. The
chance to destroy slavery was come. These two
considerations were permanent, and all conflict-
ing theories of war and peace must yield to the
supreme necessities of the hour. And with a
forth-right resoluteness which had a touch of the
magnificent about it, he appealed to Christ in
justification of his change of front.

"We have all been teaching," he said, "that
certain things were unchristian, that it would be
contrary to the spirit of Christ to do them. Now
we find we have to do them, and in our perplexity

OF ROBERT COLLYER 808

we rather put Christ aside. We admit the abso-
lute beauty of the Sermon on the Mount, but
think it had better be put by until we get done
with this war, . . . But I fear this is a great
mistake. Surely here, as everywhere, Christ
claims to be in vanguard and rear and centre, and,
whether we fight in this or any other great right
cause, to be the captain of our salvation. Do we
not perplex ourselves by trying to make certain
words of the Master a finality, instead of receiv-
ing his whole life as our inspiration, and letting
our life, in its turn, be an expression of that
union? It seems to me we not only need Christ,
but that Christ needs us — not to hold on to cer-
tain logical sequences, but to live such a life as
he lived, fearlessly and fully, so that whatever
new relations the evident duties of the new day
may bring with them, to do those duties, whether
they harmonise with what we were understood to
say on some previous occasion, or no, should be
the one overwhelming determination of the hour.
For you cannot reduce the life of Christ to logical
sequence such as it is claimed we should ob-
serve. . . . For life is more than logic. The gos-
pels were not meant for a book of set rules, but a
fountain of inspiration. ... As the sap of the
tree goes out to every uttermost living twig, so
the life of Christ enters into every different form

804 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

of human life, to consecrate and protect that
form, not to destroy it. One witli the Fatlier in
heaven, and one with the little child shouting
under my window; able to wrestle with loneli-
ness, hunger and evil spirits in the wilderness,
yet to enter with hearty interest with tlie embar-
rassments of the poor bridegroom who could af-
ford no more wine; now, when it was best, sub-
mitting to insult and indignity, as a lamb before
her shearers is dumb, now when a great truth or
the cause of God or man was to be vindicated,
sweeping through the Temple like a whirlwind 1"
Such was Christ 1 Wherefore "the Christian sol-
dier does not need to lay aside his sword, but
more sacredly to keep it bright, and to be one
with this mighty Captain — tender and gentle be-
yond all, wherever there is penitence and sub-
mission to the right, irresistible as the great tides,
to sweep through banded opposition and wrong."
Impressive also in these addresses and sermons
in war time is Collyer's unwavering belief in, and
fidelity to, Abraham Lincoln. He was at times
a remorseless critic, as we have seen. The col-
lapse of the Virginia campaign in the summer
of 1862, and the refusal of the President to take
any decisive step toward the liberation of the
slave, tested his loyalty to the utmost. More
than once he was tempted into hasty and incon-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 806

siderate judgment, as, for example, when he re-
ferred to his experience of seeing the row of boots
on the window-ledges of the White House,^* and
said, ''For months and months after that time,
whenever I tried to see the cabinet through my
newspaper telescope, I seldom saw anything but
five or six pairs of feet turned flat out, that never
seemed to move, I saw no heads, but only feet,
and they were not put down, they were turned
out." On one occasion, at least, it must be con-
fessed that he was guilty of an utterance which
now seems little short of cruel/* But such lapses
were momentary. Even when he was most out-
spoken in censure of the policies of the adminis-
tration, Collyer took pains to affirm his faith in
Mr. Lincoln. When every other brick in the
national structure was crumbling because of "too
much sand," Collyer declared that Lincoln was
"a good brick. When he was created anew, after
he left Kentucky, the sand was left out." At
bottom there was a kinship between these two
men which made understanding as inevitable as

"See above, page 256.

""The country looked in those sad, dark hours, to see its Pres-
ident rise up, massive and muscular; to see him stand silently at
the wheel, grasping the spokes until his knuckles grew white; to
see the shadow on his face that comes from looking into g^at
deeps, like the shadow that was on the face of Cromwell, or Wash-
ington. It heard of him ready to tell a story k propos of anything
in the earth, or under, or above it.*' — R. C, on October 33, 1863.

806 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

the mingling of mountain streams in their courses
to the sea. The Yorkshire apprentice, who had
toiled in the cotton mills at Blubberhouses, could
not be seriously or long alienated from tlie Ken-
tucky lad, who had split rails in the frontier wil-
derness. The blacksmith, who had read his books
by the light of the forge fire in Ilkley, and
climbed by "painful steps and slow" into the min-
istry, could not fail to discern the final purposes
of this village clerk who had hewn, by the sheer
strength of intellect and will, a pathway to the
law. These men were one in the circumstances
of birth and rearing. They had sprung from
lowest peasant stock, known direst poverty and
deprivation, laboured in earliest years for bread,
sought in chance books and personal contacts the
open way to knowledge, won against terrific odds
the levels of influence and fame. They had
known as well the woods and fields, the running
stream and singing bird. They had penetrated
the human heart, and learned the secrets of its
moods and passions. They had joyed and sor-
rowed greatly, and thus known the revelry of
laughter and the bitter dregs of tears. Above all
were they at one in the possession of those mystic
qualities of tenderness, compassion, pity, which
can at once fashion a tale of human frailty with
boundless humour, and rise with inexpressibly

OF ROBERT COLLYER 807

noble and pathetic dignity to the heights of trag-
edy. That Lincoln should pass before the gaze
of Robert CoUyer and not be recognised and ac-
claimed was as impossible as that the sun should
moimt the skies and not be seen of men. How
Collyer revelled in the fact that America had
elected to the Presidency a man "who sprang
from probably the poorest family of poor whites
in Kentucky — who was famous for splitting rails,
and had run a flat-boat, the hardest work one
can do — ^who had kept a grocery and sold nmi —
whose voice rang out clear wherever he went,
*As a man, in my relation to slavery as a man —
I hate slavery 1' " How he acclaimed him as a
true scion of the Westl Lincoln, he said, "is a
man — an upright, downright, honest man. He
is homely and angular, to be sure — our Prairie-
bred men are not handsome. They are not what
you might call Grecian in their outlines, and Mr.
Lincoln in homeliness stood number one, even
on the Prairie. But if Diogenes had gone into
Springfield blinking with his lantern, and had
met Abraham Lincoln on the sidewalk, he would
have blown out the light and shouted. You are
the very man I am after."

Collyer knew and believed in Lincoln from the
first. The censures and criticisms of the early
months of the war were but the waves ruffled by

808 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

the gusts of impatience and hot desire which did
not touch, much less disturb, the quiet deeps of
loyalty. As the struggle wore on through the
weary years, and the burdened President in the
White House loomed ever more majestic and
beautiful, love for him came to possess every
fibre of Collyer's heart When criticism was
spoken in these latter months, CoUyer resented
it as though directed against himself. ''Con-
way's article on Lincoln," he wrote to Edward
Everett Hale on February 12, 1865, "is bitter
and bad. I am sorry for it and for him." And
when at last on the fatal day of April, 1865, there
fell the awful blow of assassination, no man in all
the land was more nearly or more deeply touched
than he. "Here we are," he wrote to a friend,
"in the quiet after the great storm of sorrow that
swept over us for the murder of our good Presi-
dent. We had little else in our hearts and minds
while he was above the ground, and the scene last
Monday and Tuesday was very impressive — one
of those sights that are never forgotten." His
grief at first registered its depth of anguish by
a demand for the most unrelenting prosecution of
the conspirators. "I perceive," he wrote in this
same letter, "that I have ofi'ended a few (in
Unity) by insisting upon the severest punish-
ment to whoever is found implicated in the mur-

OF ROBERT COLLYER 809

der, and they punish me by staying away from
church." But this mood passed from his heart
long before it passed from the country. He un-
derstood the martyred President too well, and
was himself too compassionate in nature, to nurse
revenge even for such a deed as this, and there-
fore in due season came to show the inevitable
"quality of mercy."

In this Civil War period, the most stupendous
in American history up to our own dreadful
day,*' Robert Collyer played a highly useful and
honourable, if not nationally conspicuous, part.
In the country at large, he was one of many thou-
sands of loyal citizens who did their "bit" at
such place and time as opportunity offered, and
in such ways as talent and profession made pos-
sible. In his own commimity, however, he stood,
like Agamemnon, a leader among leaders. By
the mid-period of the struggle, he was one of
the great men of the city. As an interpreter and
moulder of public opinion, he was from the be-
ginning without a rival. It was to him that
Chicago learned to look more and more singly, as
the war wore on, for the right word of admoni-
tion, comfort and good cheer. As a servant of
public safety and need, he was among the first
to be summoned for counsel or to be despatched

810 THE LIFE AND LETTERS

afield for action. Whether on the Donelson bat-
tlefield, or in the Douglas prison-camp, or at
some one of the innmnerable conmiittee meetings
in public offices or private pariours, he was the
representative incarnation of Chicago's loyalty,
zeal and unwearied benevolence in the nation's
cause. The mouthpiece of its hopes and fears,
the administrator of its charities, a leader of its
counsels, Robert Collyer was through all these
years a dominant figure of the city's life. Nor is
it difficult to assay the quality of his success. At
bottom was a certain combination of personal
charm and rugged native strength which made
him not only to be admired but also trusted of
men. Never a leader in the great sense of the
word, he was throughout his life, as at this time,
a kind of rallying-centre for those who needed
the shelter of an undaunted spirit and the serv-
ice of a loving heart. But more than this, as a
determining factor of his influence at this criti-
cal period of national destiny, was the indwelling
passion of supreme conviction. Robert Collyer
believed in the nation, and at this, the hour of re-
bellion, in the nation's cause. The firing on Sum-
ter, like a lightning flash from darkened skies,
smote the altar of his heart, and kindled tihere-
upon a fire of pure devotion which burned with
undiminished flame throughout the entire period

OF ROBERT COLLYER 811

of the war. The preservation of the Union, the
emancipation of the slave, the perpetuation of the
great American experiment of democracy — ^these
were ideals for the service of which the sacrifice
of life itself seemed to him to be an almost trivial
price. Hence his passion, which stirred him to
prophetic utterance, dedicated him to dangerous
and heart-breaking tasks of service, persuaded
him to harsh indictment of officials struggling
with problems too vast for understanding, and
lifted him to prayer and praise for the victories
of patience, courage and unfaltering fortitude
which saved at last the dayl He saw the issues
of the mighty struggle with a clearness shared by
many others, but felt the urgency of their right
settlement with almost unique emotion. Hence
the sweep of conviction which lifted him at the
very opening of the war to the forefront of Chi-
cago's life, and held him there until its close!

Finally is it to be noted that this great period
marks a definite transition in the CoUyer ro-
mance. It takes us at once from the story of a
private life to that of a public career. Unknown
before 1861 beyond a very narrow circle of per-
sonal friends and associates, Robert Collyer is
now in 1865 full launched upon his later course
of honour, fame and power. From this time on,
it is a difi'erent man we envisage, and set in a very

fl3

ROBERT COLLYER

different environment. After long preparation,
he has '"arrived." Hence a transformation of our
tale I But before we enter upon tliis new and
vaster chapter of events, we must first record the
more personal happenings of this stormy era of
civil conflict ; and then narrate, as a kind of idyl-
lic interlude between two great though contrasted
periods of achievement, the episodes of the sum-
mer spent in Europe.

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