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THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 ROBERT COLLYER 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 ROBERT COLLYER 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
BOOKS BY 
 JOHN HAYNES HOLMES 
 
 THE REVOLUTIONARY FUNCTION OF 
 THE MODERN CHURCH 
 
 MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE 
 
 IS DEATH THE END? 
 
 NEW WARS FOR OLD 
 
 RELIGION FOR TO-DAY 
 
 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 ROBERT COLLYER (2 volumes) 
 
Robert Collyer 
 1880 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 ROBERT COLLYER 
 
 1823-1912 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN HAYNES HOLMES 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1917 
 

 
 COPYRIGHT, 1917, 
 By DODD mead AND COMPANY. INC. 
 
 
 A 
 
 c • 
 
TO 
 
 Robert Staples Collyer 
 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. Collyer'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 
 
 vii 
 
Tiii PREFACE 
 
 fiiltjlment 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 ^Ir. and ^Irs, 
 Robert S. CoUyer to undertake the writing of 
 a "Xife 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 Collyer'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 
 erf my chapter headings. I have made few quota- 
 tioDs 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, 
 howexer, I have used the unpublished manu- 
 scripts and not the printed volume. 
 
 (2) Or. Collyer's books. A complete list of 
 these is given in the Appendix, Volume II, page 
 38-5. 
 
 (S) Dr. Collyer's autobiographical lectures. 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 above referred to. These were prepared for de- 
 liverv 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. Colly er'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 CoU- 
 yer's change from ^Methodism to Lnitarianism, 
 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, ^Ir. 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 
 bevond all calculation, are those which went 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 through nearly a half-centun- to Dr. WiUiam 
 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 chppings — one kept through all the 
 years of his own life by Flesher Bland ; one kept 
 by Dr. CoUyer, 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 "Pa]3ers Read in the 
 Church of the Messiah," by Robert Collyer and 
 Gihnan H. Tucker. 
 
 (7) Church records, more especially those of 
 the Church of the Messiah, Xew York. 
 
 (8) Newspapers, magazines, etc., covering 
 periods of Dr. Collyer'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. Collyer'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. 
 CoUyer'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 eveiy 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 spii'it, and therefore miiquely and beautifully 
 his o^vn. 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 everj- 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 Collyer 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, 
 docimients, 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 documents; 
 Salem Bland, for free use of the priceless ma- 
 terial collected by his father; Samuel Collyer, for 
 a highly useful collection of newspaper clippings, 
 and an important personal statement ; Mrs. John 
 E. Roberts, for long and arduous labour in classi- 
 fying 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 xui 
 
 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 affection and their trust. 
 Lastly, I would mention one other to whom I am 
 peculiarly indebted — a friend beloved and hon- 
 oured, 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 
 gladlj^ 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 
 
 HAPTE 
 
 & 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 Preface 
 
 
 vii 
 
 
 Introduction .... 
 
 
 xxi 
 
 
 List of Illustrations 
 
 
 xvii 
 
 I 
 
 Well Born (1823) 
 
 
 1 
 
 II 
 
 Well Raised (1823-1831) 
 
 
 14 
 
 III 
 
 Doing His Best (1831-1848) . 
 
 
 45 
 
 IV 
 
 Crisis and Change (1848-1850) 
 
 
 77 
 
 V 
 
 America (1850-1858) 
 
 
 104 
 
 VI 
 
 From the Anvil to the Pulpit 
 
 (1858- 
 
 
 
 1859) 
 
 
 140 
 
 VII 
 
 Chicago (1859-1861) 
 
 
 187 
 
 ail 
 
 The Civil War— National (1861-1865) 
 
 243 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The life of Robert Collyer spanned the period 
 of ninety years (1823-1912), 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 literar\' 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 
 
 xix 
 
XX IXTRODUCTIOX 
 
 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 (1823-1850) 
 Yorkshire in the English midlands, with its 
 moors and dales, ugly manufacturing ^dllages, 
 wholesome peasantry-, its poverty, struggle and 
 romance. Xext (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) Xew 
 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 Collyer'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 ^lanhattan. 
 But it was only in Chicago that he entered upon 
 the work which brought him happiness and 
 
INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 power, and there that he attained the zenith of 
 his fanie. 
 
 The more intimate settings of Collyer's life are 
 as nmnerous as they are varied. The little stone 
 cottage in Washburndale ; the Blubberhouses fac- 
 tory, with its clanging bell and huddled horde of 
 child laboui'ers; the smithy in Ilkley, by the 
 Wharf e; Denton JNIoor, with its mists and sun- 
 shine, and autumn waves of purple heather; the 
 JNIethodist chapel in x^ddingham; 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 pimiacle 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 AMiittington"; the fettered boy, toiling 
 before the spimiing 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 Pittsburg 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 vii'tue and achievement it is! 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! 
 
 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 xxiii 
 
 vision appearing for a moment on the scene, and 
 then gone ; Ann Ai-mitage, staunch companion of 
 forty years, faithful ahke 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! 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! 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 hved 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 "doiFer," 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 xxv 
 
 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 
 
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 Collyer speak in an open- 
 ing paragraph of his autobiographical lecture, 
 "From the Anvil to the Pulpit." That he could 
 "fairly claim" to be "well born," and thus to ful- 
 fil "one great condition of success in life," was 
 
 1 
 
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 claim 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 unique 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- 
 
 * Volume I, page 1. 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER d 
 
 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, w^hen 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 until 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 IMessrs. 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 Colly er 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- 
 ficers 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, 
 1823, 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 tiTidged 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 husband, named Wells, 
 had been a close friend of Samuel Collyer. The three had grown 
 up 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 born. 
 
 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, born on the 27th 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 7 
 
 of March, 1797, the same day and the same year 
 as the Emperor Wilham of Prussia, was the son 
 of one Robert, a sailor in Lord Nelson's fleet. 
 "iMy 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 to 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 common enough. "The kindest 
 heart that ever beat was my father's," said Dr. 
 Collyer 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 club 
 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 Collyer' 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 too!" "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 
 
"My Mother" — R. C. 
 
 From a Photograph of Harriett Colly er taken shortly before 
 her death in 187If 
 
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; tall 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, "now I 
 know where you get your outfit. I saw your 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 w^ell 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. Collyer, "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 learnt 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 stern 
 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 w^as 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 arai, she said softly, 
 *My lad, I didn't quite understand thy sermon, 
 and I think I could not believe thy way if I had 
 understood 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 house 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 13 
 
 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," 
 says the Doctor, 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 born/' 
 
14 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 WELL-RAISED 
 1823-1831 
 
 "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 training, I say." — 
 R. C. in "Some Memories/' page 8. 
 
 Samuel and Harriett Collyer 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 15 
 
 The Yorkshire district in which Robert Coll- 
 yer was born 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 human 
 race." On these same rocks are signs which in- 
 dicate that "they were the high places of the 
 Druids whom Csesar 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. 
 
16 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 by 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 where 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. 
 CoUyer, "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 Longfellows. 
 They are there in crabbed Latin when the oldest 
 register was started in 1580, I think; and before 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 17 
 
 this, John Longfellow, a labouring man, in 1523 
 gives two days' wages to the king to prosecute 
 the war with France, and his two days' wages are 
 four pence, or eight cents, which 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, 
 left 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 most 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 w^io shall say that the 
 story of this loyal son of the dale, w^ho 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 Collyer 
 spent his early 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 in 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 w^ould 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 3,000 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 
 heather. 
 
 "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 then, as it seems to me, 
 
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 there 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 
 the 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 welcome 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 23 
 
 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 sunshine ! 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 church 
 
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! 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 25 
 
 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 round 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 will not fight for any creed man ever made. 
 No ghost of a martyr haunts our dale. 
 
 "So he has lived, and so he will 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 Collyer passed his years of boy- 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 27 
 
 hood and youth. The particular neighbourhood 
 in which he hved 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 summer 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 swung 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 summer 
 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 Collyer'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 ! 
 
 It was in the hey-day of the material pros- 
 perity of these hamlets in the Washburndale, 
 that Robert Collyer was born and reared. The 
 cottage which Samuel Collyer 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 w^hite as 
 driven snow. A floor of flags so clean that you 
 
30 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. 
 
32 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, 
 however, believed in "book-learning"; and until 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 33 
 
 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 under) 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 nie 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, stern-look- 
 ing face," says the Doctor, "as he sat perched 
 aloft in the large rooms of the inns at Blubber- 
 houses and Fewston, giving the music as the 
 
84 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 dance went round." In the treatment of his pu- 
 pils he was a discipHnarian 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 Collyer and Robinson Gill, then both living 
 in America, hunted out "old Willie Hardy," in one of their visits 
 to "the old home." They found him, grown very feeble, sitting 
 in a chimney corner. 
 
 "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. 
 Gill, who was a rich man, settled the bill in good gold. 
 

 ^ CO 
 CO 
 
 W Si, 
 
 w i 
 
or ROBERT COLLYER 35 
 
 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 Coll- 
 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, 
 '30-'38, 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 his 
 
36 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 
 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- 
 ern 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 home," 
 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 orthodox Sunday school." 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 37 
 
 More precious, however, than day school, or 
 night school, or Sunday school, was the every- 
 day school in the home itself. Here the hard- 
 w^orking, taciturn father was a steadying in- 
 fluence in the direction of obedience, patience and 
 self-control, w^hile 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 spoke 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 w^ord 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 
 
38 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 
 Collyer 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 39 
 
 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 yule-cakes and the loaf. 
 Then on Christmas morn, 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 *God 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 morn. . . . 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 hini 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 Vv^as 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. Verj^ 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 
 Grit," page 317. 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 43 
 
 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 sound 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, 3^ou 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 memorj^ 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 45 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 DOING HIS BEST 
 1881-1848 
 
 *'. . . Hard at work for all I was worth."— R. C. 
 in "Some Memories," page S7. 
 
 For 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- 
 ing." 
 
 The next six years mark the one wholly sad 
 and painful period of Kobert Colly er'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 "doiFers," as they were called, who 
 changed the life of Robert Owen, stirred the re- 
 forming zeal of Lord Shaftsbur^^ prompted the 
 heroic cry of Mrs. Browning, and finally inscribed 
 upon the statute-books of the kingdom the so- 
 called Factory Acts. Dr. Collyer'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 
 thirteen a day, five days in the week, and eleven 
 hours on Saturday; the wages were two shillings 
 per week! 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. Collyer 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 1913, I 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 
 church 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. Collyer 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. JMore 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 
 
50 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 
 blacksmith 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 stern 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 Collyer.' " 
 
52 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 those over again, not for all the blessings that 
 might be given me in compensation." 
 
 For a brief interval during this period, the 
 child's burden was lightened a bit, not by the 
 charity of the mill-owners, but, as is usually the 
 case in such matters unfortunately, by grace and 
 authority of the law of the land. In 1833 was 
 passed one of that long series of Factory Acts 
 which constitute one of the most important chap- 
 ters in the history of modem English legislation, 
 and which laid the foundation in law and custom 
 of that great structure of social reform which 
 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 1831, provided that night work 
 (between 8:30 p.m. and 5:30 a.m.) for per- 
 sons under eighteen in cotton, wool, worsted, 
 hemp, flax, tow and linen 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 modern standards of child-la- 
 bour legislation, this Act seems moderate enough, 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 58 
 
 indeed hardly decent. To the tiny toilers of 
 that period, however, it was a veritable boon, as 
 witness the ease of Robert Collyer. Ten years 
 old at the time of its enactment, his hours 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! 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 1837, however, that any real 
 change in the boy's life was effected. Then came 
 the transfer of labour from the spinning- frame to 
 the anvil, and of residence from the remote vil- 
 lage of Blubberhouses to the thriving provincial 
 town of Ilkley. 
 
 "There was (an) article in our home creed," 
 writes the Doctor, "about which both my father 
 and mother were always of one mind — the boys 
 
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 55 
 
 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, 
 1837, a sturdy lad of fourteen years of age might 
 have been seen taking leave of the Collyer home 
 in Washburndale, 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, and 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 
 
56 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 God'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 w^ould 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 young 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 I 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 Ilkley, and the black streak of the 
 railroad 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- 
 
58 THE LIFE AXD LETTERS 
 
 ness of the boy to the ambition of the man. With 
 light step and shining eves, 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. 
 Tlkl ey was a thriving provincial centre, mainly 
 composed of busy tradesmen in the town proper, 
 and busT farmers and daimnen 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 1831, it had a population of 691 per- 
 sons; in 1834, a population of 940; and in 1861, 
 a population of 1407. Its chief distinctions, and 
 largest soiu"ce of business activity, were a re- 
 markable spring, ''arising from the side of a 
 mountain near to the town," and a location in 
 Wharfedale unrivaUed 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, 
 Hkley was then, as it is now, a weU-known and 
 much-frequented summer 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 Bunyans 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, pubHshed 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 Hst 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 
 Krrkgate, 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 ia 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 Toffin, 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 abounding health, and 
 developed that superb, almost giant-like stature, 
 which remained so supremely the 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 meant, he explained as follows: 
 "Dear Little 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 fifty-five 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," see page 7Jf 
 From a Snapshot taken by the author in 1913 
 
 The Ilkley 'Smithv" 
 From an old Photograph 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 63 
 
 tinned until two o'clock in the morning. A mill- 
 er's young wife, who had been waiting her truant 
 husband something after the manner of Tarn o' 
 Shanter's dame, greeted him as follows : "Why, 
 David, man, thaa be out too late." "Noa, noa, 
 woman," he replied, "Bob Collyer's yet behind 
 me." "What! — Boab," she exclaimed, "then 
 thaa be home full airly!" 
 
 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 1829 or '30, set down as a taastril. 
 
 "Indeed, 
 
 "Robert Collyer." 
 
64 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 trice, and all the long evening through was read- 
 ing. If it were summer, and the lingering sun 
 gave promise of bright hours 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 Observer, 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 anything 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 so 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 t'parson wer roarin' at ta day.' 
 
 "The 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 funeral sermon. Poor old Joe was turned 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 65 
 
 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 work. 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 Hull 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 
 came, 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 sunmier 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, w^ere 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 
 different 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 Collyer. 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 still, 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 AXD 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 mv 
 hand. I did worse than this, for when I went 
 a-eourting 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 
 studv. Thev were wont to sit too^ether and read 
 at nights as long as their taUow 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, 'T can hear now one of us say- 
 ing, *Xow, Bob, thee take a turn,' " was the Doc- 
 tor's memory of these happy days. 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 69 
 
 Of these three cronies, the nearest and dearest 
 was John Dobson, whose name never came from 
 Dr. C Oliver'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 all 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 bv the door-wav of Dove Cottaore. 
 
 It is not surprising that this serious and sober 
 
70 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 man was drawn to Robert CoUyer, 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 Collyer'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 living'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 Burns and Shakespeare, his 
 later love for Scott and Lamb, Dickens, Thacke- 
 ray and ISIacaulay, 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 college course, — a very poor college and 
 a very poor course, and in all these years there 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 73 
 
 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. 
 Collyer 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 AXD 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 tlirough all the years." 3Iore 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. Xor did 
 I find them so '"homely" as the Doctor had al- 
 ways pictured them! 
 
 Further evidence of Collyer's solid work as a 
 smith is found in the fact that when John Birch 
 died in 1846, he thought higlily enough of his 
 twenty-three year old assistant to leave him the 
 forge in his will. The Lord of the Manor, to 
 whom the property belonged, however, would not 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 75 
 
 have it so, as he felt that Collyer 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 Collyer 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. Xor was this available time always 
 the most propitious. "I lost my heart in May," 
 he writes, "and spent the summer 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 CoUyer 
 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 
 
 1848-1850 
 
 — "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 childhood 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 1839, 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 CoUyer'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 Islost 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 w4th 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. Collyer 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. 
 
80 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 This was a silence which seems to have begun, 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 
 words, 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 might 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 effect 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 Collyer 
 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 sung, 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 Ilkley 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 ^lethodists 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 young 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 Collyer. In two re- 
 spects at least, however, and both of them vital, 
 this conversion to ]\Iethodism 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. 
 All 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 Bluhberhouses, 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 83 
 
 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 "Clear 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 his 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 Collyer 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 Sunday 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 87 
 
 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 preacher. 
 
 "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 sun- 
 shine to mingle with the pungent 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, while 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. Collyer 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 JNIethodist 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) effort," 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 w^ants 
 to knaw what ah thought of it," continued the im- 
 perturbable shoemaker. "Well, if tha wants to 
 knaw, ah w^ant to tell tha. Tha'U never mak a 
 
92 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 preacher while tha lives!" 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'll 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 comment 
 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 thee 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 93 
 
 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 common 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 abundant 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 Collyer 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 
 ofsudden 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, w^hither 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 born," 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 
 
96 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 your 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 m}^ 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 
 ]»ooks, and a garden. I told my desires to my 
 friends. They all tried to dissuade me from them. 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 97 
 
 They offered 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. Collyer 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 young 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 AXD 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 stumbling 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. Lender the influence of 
 3Iethodist 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 hteral 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" I 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 L^nited 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 
 sjTnbol 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, 18.50, to 
 Ann Armitao^e. daup^hter 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 foiiy 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. Collyer loved to recall the ''memories 
 of a time, when," as he put it in his inimitable 
 speech, 'T 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 word 
 
100 THE LIFE AXD LETTERS 
 
 of the Lord came to me, as I most surely believe, 
 saying, *G^t 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 
 God my God. 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 Collyer in Leeds, until the home 
 across the seas could be established. On Satur- 
 day, April 13, they "set sail in an old ship called 
 
 ' "If we had taken stock in omens, there was one at the wedding, 
 for the verv ancient minister who married us, began with the 
 burial service in solonn accents, and the clerk who must sav the 
 Amens, rushed on him, took the book from his hand, and set him 
 right" — R. C. in "Lecture on Dr. Fumess." 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 101 
 
 the Rosciu^j and in the t^erage, to seek (their) 
 fortunes in this new - : : _: * 
 
 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 Collyer's heart. The mother 
 in Leeds, who carried in her face the beauty of 
 those early years in Washbumdale ; 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 
 close 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 tbat 
 **liazard of new fortunes" which is quite as often 
 disaster as it is victory. We may well believe, 
 therefore, that the moment of leave-takins: 
 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 turned 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 comrades again, and if I do, will 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 born, 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 103 
 
 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! 
 1850-1858 
 
 "The light ... on these States."— R. C. in 
 "Some Memories/' page 42. 
 
 The voyage to America was anything but agree- 
 able. Steamers were crossing the Atlantic, but 
 the Ilkley blacksmith and his bride had no money 
 to spend for time or comfort, and therefore took 
 passage in a sailing vessel. This craft was styled 
 "the good ship Roscius'' 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 105 
 
 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. Colly er 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, Collyer 
 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 young 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 JNIrs. Collyer 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 found the man 
 
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 emploj^ment. 
 "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 human 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 his 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 loved the meaning of that word 'Philadelphia.'" 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 109 
 
 scape seemed to hold out its arms 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 Ogontz, 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 CoUyer'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 journey 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. Well, 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. Collyer into her home, and nursed 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 secured, 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 113 
 
 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 
 
 1853, 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 — 
 Annie 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. Hosmer, of Chicago. 
 
 * Later Mrs. Joseph Eastman, died September 23, 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 Collyer'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 CoU- 
 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 wdnsomeness 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 afl*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 
 became a fast friend of the new blacksmith. 
 
118 THE LIFE AXD LETTERS 
 
 Albert Engle, the store-keeper, and Charles Bos- 
 ler, the niiller, 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 Xew 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 supphed. Amer- 
 ica had become to them as their own dear land 
 across the seas. 
 
 It was in mid-May, 1850, that Robert Colly er 
 went to work at the forge in Hanmiond'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 
 you ever saw, fuU of jagged ends, and the 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 j-our 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 Collyer 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 during the cool months. 
 
 Then, like a bolt out of the blue, came "the 
 fearful panic of 1857, when ever^i;hing came to 
 a deadlock." From October to the following 
 March, the fii-es 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. Collyer. 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 Rosier, "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. CoU- 
 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 summer 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 course, was the day's work. ^lorning 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 123 
 
 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 
 time I" 
 
 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 summer 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 AXD 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 stoiy of those 
 times — 
 
 *0 for a booke and a shadie nook, ejther in doore or 
 
 out, 
 With the green leaves whisp'ring 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 msatiable reader? 
 Xight and morning, by the fireside in winter and 
 in the open fields in summer, at the anvil and in 
 the preaching, it wa5 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 heatmg 
 in the fire, while I ate my meals, from quitting 
 work to bed-tune, and in the early 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 am^where 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 favourites 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 unique, 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 Collyer 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 AXD 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 
 Comity cu'cuit, and regTilarly 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 veiy 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 CoUyer, in 
 token of the goodwill of his new^ friends, was 
 asked to "make a prayer." Xothing loath to try 
 his powers of di^ane 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 bretliren in America exactly as he had 
 done in England. Xor was the case remedied 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 131 
 
 any when he went to be received by Mr. Taft, 
 "the chief of the board of stew^ards 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 opportunit3\' 
 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 w^ould, 
 
182 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 very much.' *Go 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 off bright and early to some one 
 of the four village churches which constituted the 
 particular circuit to which he was assigned, and 
 occasionally he journeyed 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 God 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 money which 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 133 
 
 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. Everj^where 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 sympathy, 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 
 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 above, page 124, 
 
134 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 consummation 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 confessed 
 to not understanding any of Robert CoUyer's ut- 
 terance in the beginning, followed up this confes- 
 sion by the heartsome comment, "But I felt good, 
 so I always came to hear you." The people, I 
 
 'For example, "wuld" for "world," "windah" for "window," 
 "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 
 wdth spirit can meet" even in the silences, and 
 how much more when the full heart, in language 
 known or unknown, pours itself forth! 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 Collyer 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 
 
136 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 137 
 
 they surmounted them and felt a little inward 
 nobility on account of it." 
 
 Thus did Robert Collyer pass these first years 
 of his American life — at the anvil making claw- 
 hammers, in the pulpit bringing souls to God, 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 v,onder 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 139 
 
 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 
 
 1858-1859 
 
 "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 church, 
 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 
 momentous 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 corn 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. Collyer in 
 a long letter, written from Chicago, on July 22, 
 1859, to riesher 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 which lasted without 
 interruption for over forty years. 
 
142 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 ''Dear Brother Bland: 
 
 "Your welcome letter reached me to-day. How glad 
 it made me to hear your voice breaking through the 
 silence of almost ten 3^ears, 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 143 
 
 "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. Furness, 33 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 all 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 Collyer'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 diif erences 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 discoveiy 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 ! They must 
 be true, as the theological expression of an ex- 
 perience found to be so real! The record seems 
 to show that Robert Collyer 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 Collyer 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! From the 
 beginning of his experience of religion, Robert 
 Collyer 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-born 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 became 
 insistent. 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 149 
 
 The "first real puzzle," as Dr. Collyer tells us 
 in his letter to Flesher Bland, was the question of 
 eternal punishment. That his heresies should 
 begin at this point is only natural, as this doctrine 
 of damnation 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 all, 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 us, 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 IMethodists 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 powxr, His 
 love. It involved as well fundamental questions 
 regarding man — his origin, his fall, 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 remnant of the 
 ancient and much-loved faith to clothe his naked- 
 ness, it "all 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 
 Ellery 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 Collyer 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 his 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 
 Collyer'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 
 startle him, like a lightning flash, and shake him 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 153 
 
 with the threat of storm and earthquake. Thus 
 he tells us m "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 
 
154 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 Hobert 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 155 
 
 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 forevermore — 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 w^ay 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 JNIott, Robert Collyer owed the discovery 
 of the meaning of his heresies, and strength and 
 
156 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 comfort in the hour of great loneliness. To the 
 other, Dr. William Henry Furness, 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, 
 1793," on the island of Nantucket, "of the clean- 
 est tribe I know of in our 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. 
 
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. Collyer, 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 mxy 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 Collyer'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 joer se, but upon the question of Biblical au- 
 thority for slavery and freedom. Mr. Davis 
 "quoted the prophets but got them all wrong," 
 says Dr. Collyer, "and then those of us who could 
 handle them saw the crevice in his armour and 
 gave him some swift cuts not on the right 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 Collyer. 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. Nev/ 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 163 
 
 and lo ! immediate and complete release ! For the 
 first time, Robert CoUyer 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 pow^r 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 w ould 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 Collyer's closest friends and without ex- 
 ception his most intimate counsellor. "After 
 some weeks," he writes, "James INIott 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 wxnt with that sensitive pride a 
 self-respecting w^orking-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! 
 
 It is here that we mark the entrance into Coll- 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 165 
 
 yer's life of the second personal influence, of 
 which I have spoken. 
 
 Dr. William Henry Furness, pastor of the 
 First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia from 
 1825 to 1875, 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 community 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. Furness 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 129. 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 167 
 
 To Dr. Collyer, "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 number 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. 
 Furness, 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! 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. Collyer, 
 "how he greeted me. His soft clean hand clasped 
 mine, hard and horny by my many years' work at 
 the anvil, with no tremor of surprise or hair'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 Collyer 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 169 
 
 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. CoUyer 
 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. Furness 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 
 common consent the close-knit bonds of love. At 
 first Dr. Furness 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 him 
 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 Collyer 
 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! 
 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 contemporary 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!" 
 
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 measure, 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 Collyer's attitude was funda- 
 mentally a matter of inward conviction. Love 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 173 
 
 of freedom was his heritage as a free-born 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. Furness. 
 
 Collyer had felt immediate sympathy with the 
 anti-slavery cause, of course, as soon as he ar- 
 rived in this country. His zeal was somewhat 
 tempered, however, by the feeling which he found 
 everywhere prevailing in Pennsylvania, that no 
 attempt must be made to secure 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 J and denounced the Abolitionists. 
 So hot was the discussion, that it was continued 
 at a later meeting. And it was here that Lucretia 
 Mott appeared, 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 
 immediate 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- 
 form, 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, w^hich 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 Colly er'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 fellow- 
 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. Furness. 
 
 •Volume I, page 238. 
 
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. Furness 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 divinitjr 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 Colly er 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 I 
 offered him payment, he said he would accept 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 
 Colly er. ... It was always a satisfaction to us that the first hono- 
 rarium ever given Robert CoUyer for a sermon was our marria^q 
 fee."— Volume I, page 287. 
 
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 w^as 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 ! 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 was *'the last 
 in the valley for many a year." 
 
 Then there were Dr. Furness, 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. CoUyer 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 the lane, with the chil- 
 
182 THE LIFE AXD 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- 
 smith, skilled artisan though he was — and he 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 183 
 
 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 (Furness), 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. Furness preach, he had found a stranger in 
 the pulpit — Dr. Livermore, editor of the New 
 York organ of the Unitarians, Th-e Christian In- 
 quirer. After the service. Dr. Furness 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 clerg^^nan, 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 
 
 ""The 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 Collyer, and stated that he could be reached 
 through Dr. Furness. This was the explanation 
 of the letter to Dr. Furness, which announced 
 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. Furness 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 remembered again the 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 185 
 
 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 
 east 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 all" 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 ! 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 iniiuence 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 mind and heart which 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 
 1859-1861 
 
 "(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 1X6. 
 
 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 ! — was now vv ell 
 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 conmiercial 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 Chicago," by Frederick Francis 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 surface, 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 1893. 
 
 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 Collyer 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, Collyer and Chicago comprised one tale 
 upon the lips of men. 
 
 It was the First Unitarian Church, as we have 
 seen, which called Robert Coltyer 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 sendee, 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. Follen'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 1833, and by St. 
 James' Episcopal Church, which was organised 
 in 1834. It was also one of the earliest Unitarian 
 churches to be planted west of the Hudson River. 
 Only Cincinnati (1830), Louisville (1830), Buf- 
 falo (1832), and St. Louis (1834), 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 which 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 v/hich 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, Boxbury, 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-large," 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 heart and in all divine inspiration everywhere 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 135,000 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 3'et. 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, 
 
 "Robert Collyer. 
 
 "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 hfe 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 office 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 office. 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 $1200 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 ISIemories," 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! — 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 immediately 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 preaching 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 Collyer 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 203 
 
 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 Collyer 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- 
 cumstances, 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 horny. 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- 
 ure, the ringing voice, the winsome smile, the 
 earnestness, the sincerity, the simplicity, the 
 sweet human 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 almost 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 difficult to estimate. No pic- 
 ture in Dr. Collyer'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 AXD 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! 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 aiTival included a Sunday. All of 
 which might very well have "come to pass, that 
 it might be fulfilled w^hich was spoken through 
 the prophet" in far-away Ilkley! "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 w^e 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 
 Colly er was invariably asked to preach on these 
 occasions when the next distinguished visitor 
 from the East had not arrived. It was a happy 
 
 "See "Some Memories," pages 101, 102. 
 ' See above, page 92. 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 207 
 
 privilege which fortune thus placed in his way. 
 But it was also a test which few uneducated lay- 
 preachers would have welcomed or could have 
 met. Robert Collyer, however, did not flinch. 
 He entered the pulpit of the First Church in 
 Chicago as detenninedly as he had set foot on 
 the Liver^DOol 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 ! '^ 
 
 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 omnis divisa in partes tres," writes 
 Julius Cgesar, in the first sentence of his "De 
 Bello Gallico Comment arii." 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 office 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. Good 
 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! Adjourned meetings of a slowly- 
 enlarging group were held from time to time; 
 but no definite action was taken until December 
 23, 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 Church 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 
 baffling 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 done! A meeting was 
 called, in which it was resolved to hold services 
 of worship without delay. A committee 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 INIethodism 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 church — 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, Collyer 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, 
 1859. 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 Collyer 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." 
 
fa 
 pq 
 o 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 213 
 
 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-summer they had decided to erect 
 a church home of their own. On August 20, a 
 lot was purchased at the corner 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 Buffalo, 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 Collyer 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 450 sittings." 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 215 
 
 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 suffered. 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 oiFered 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. Collyer 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 oiFer 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 
 their hopes of future happiness. Unity Church 
 
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, Colly er 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 waj^s of life! 
 
 All this — honest man that he was! — Robert 
 Collyer made known to his friends in Unity 
 Church. He kept nothing from them, either of 
 fact or fancy; and when they scoffed 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 Collyer 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. Coll- 
 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 
 Collyer'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 verbally — 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 aU 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 resisting 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 scaffold." 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 223 
 
 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. CoUyer. 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! This was the centre of the church'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 Collyer 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 sufferers. 
 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 28/60. 
 *^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 
 f orevermore .? I remember you quoted the words 'Sir, 
 we know we are free and that settles it,' when I once 
 asked 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 
 your church, what would you have called it then, my 
 
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 
 God, to do a good spell 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 simimer, 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 
 is largely made up of men and women 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 Limng 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 
 Cornhill Magazine comes here and is a capital ven- 
 ture, 128 pages, equal in every way to Blachwoody 
 with two good engravings, for a shilling. It will make 
 
230 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 'Leader.' 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 live. I hope to go home in '6S if 
 all be well. 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 will 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 231 
 
 to think God's greatness flows around our incomplete- 
 ness ; round our restlessness, his rest.' 
 "Dear friend, good-bye, 
 
 "Ever truly yours, 
 
 "ROBEUT CoLLYER. 
 
 "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 3 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. 
 Larned, who made the great defence of the Ottawa res- 
 
232 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 w^th 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 Hobs on 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 233 
 
 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 
 ruleth, 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 
 
234. 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. 
 
 Living 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, 
 
 "Robert 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 235 
 
 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," "freinds" and "praire" are the spellings in these 
 early letters. 
 
236 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 Coll- 
 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 237 
 
 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. 
 
238 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 form; 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. Collyer ever owned. From 
 this the transition to writing 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 stern 
 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 wdth 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 CoUyer's work, the strain and excite- 
 ment of his labours, 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" Furness 
 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 summons 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! 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 
 CoUyer 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! 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 born 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 243 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE CIVIL WAR— NATIONAL 
 1861-1865 
 
 "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 Carohna, 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 Russell Lowell, in Atlantic Monthly, 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, w^hat 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, w^hite 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 also," 
 
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 Sunday 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,' 'Christ 
 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 umivalled 
 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 offices to enlist for service at the front. They 
 were the flower 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 Collyer 
 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 eiforts to get him to consent to 
 my enlistment, and his pleadings for me to wait, finally culminated 
 one day in my walking into a recruiting office 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. 
 
250 THE LIFE AXD LETTERS 
 
 of public service might come to hand! 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 ever^'where were thinking only of 
 "Father Abraham" and his call for help to save 
 the Union; and Robert Collyer, 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. Xor 
 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 summons 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 
 sen'ice with the United States Sanitary Com- 
 mission. 
 
 The stor^' 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 
 oflicially 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- 
 
252 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 244-259. 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 253 
 
 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 
 Conmiission, 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 wounded 
 
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. 
 JMoney 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, 
 "Go!" So he went, and for a period of weeks 
 extending to the early part of October, gave him- 
 self um^emittingty 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 eveiy 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 country, 
 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'll 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 
 
256 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 on the return to Washington were not slow to 
 teil 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! 
 
 Equally amusing is Dr. CoUyer'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.' " 
 
 CoUyer returned to Chicago, after this some- 
 what extended period of service, in early October, 
 not to resume his church w^ork, 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-summer. 
 
 A vivid light on this chapter in Collyer'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 a 
 
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 all circum- 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 259 
 
 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 djdng. 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 think the 
 
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 araiy 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. 
 What 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 
 country, 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 Trie over 
 the Blue Mountains. Conference is mistaken.' 
 
 "Ever in love, 
 
 "Robert Collyer." 
 
 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 delight. It had had many a bitter dis- 
 appointment to carry since the first BuU 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 nevvs 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 w^re 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 Collyer'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- 
 
Robert Collyer 
 
 From a Photograph taken on his visit to Boston in 1862 
 
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. Collyer describes it, noisy, crowded, cluttered 
 with supplies moving one waj^ 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. 
 
 Collyer'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 13G-151. 
 
264 THE LIFE AXD LETTERS 
 
 tar," says the Doctor, "and we as if it were 
 senna." Then came the news from home — tales 
 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 Collyer 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 w^as eveiywhere 
 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. JNIany 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 265 
 
 the things sent up by the Sanitary Commission 
 in the way of Hnen," says CoUyer, "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 w4th 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 wxre crying for water, home- 
 sick hearts w^re 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 sum- 
 moned to his side. "I am going," he gasps; 'T 
 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 well!" 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 the 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 smile 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 w^as 
 healing in his touch and presence, even as in the 
 garment of the Master. One incident w^hich 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 Collyer. "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! 
 "The bullet did not go in, then," said Collyer 
 cheerily. "Xo, 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. Collyer'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 A\ill 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 exi^lored 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 Collyer's return 
 from this expedition to his duties in Chicago, he 
 was summoned to depart on an exactly similar 
 mission to Pittsburg Landing. This was early 
 in April. A larger company than before went 
 out for the work of relief and rescue, and this 
 time Robert Collyer, 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 IMound City, and from there returned again 
 to Chicago. 
 
 It w^as 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 affirmed 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." 
 
 Collyer 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 273 
 
 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 ISIacedonia" 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 Collyer 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 ail wrong that day in the saloon.' And 
 I answered, 'Old friend, if I was ever all right in my life, it was 
 on that afternoon oo 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 it !' 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. Collyer, 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 purified. "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 
 born child of this nation, wounded 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 Collyer 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 time to time for public 
 service. His labours, for example, on a commit- 
 tee appointed to supervise the care of prisoners 
 at Camp Douglas were constant and untiring 
 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 sound 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 following the shameful rout 
 at Bull Run. The outcome of this battle was a 
 teri'ific blow to every man in the North from 
 Abraham Lincoln down. Expectation had 
 mounted high when JMcDowelFs 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 JNIc- 
 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 uj^on 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 rumour 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 until 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 w^as 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 Colly er preached his sermon on "Sift- 
 ing," from the text, "And the Lord said, Simon, 
 
 " See 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 summer and harvest of God." 
 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 Roundheads 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 found 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, skill 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 simier 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 
 Run 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 283 
 
 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 corn, 
 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 give place to the following sermon at the 
 request of a large number of citizens, not the parishioners of Mr. 
 Collyer. 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 discourse 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 God 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 God 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 285 
 
 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!" 
 
 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! "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 clown 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 Cumber- 
 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 v/ould 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 Collyer'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 document. 
 
 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!" "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 sand in the 
 
290 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 bricks ; if you ask me why Abraham Lincoln 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 
 Mhether 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 eiForts 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 confidence 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 affairs. The Presi- 
 dent, cabinet and commanders 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 293 
 
 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! Collyer 
 never spoke with greater power, nobler eloquence, 
 more profound emotion than on this occasion. 
 And never more fairly, too! 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!" "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 Burnside, 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 j 
 he hated militaiy 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 Burnside 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 Collyer 
 had gone to deliver an address. His reply is in- 
 teresting : 
 
 ^'My dear friend: 
 
 "I snatch a moment before mj 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 297 
 
 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 Collyer 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 down- 
 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 preachers, 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 "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," and published in 
 the New York Tribune of August 20, 1862. 
 
300 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 w^hat 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 Collyer 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 country was full of rumours. 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 301 
 
 seen the hand of Abraham Lincoln; 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 Collyer's attitude 
 toward the question of w^ar. 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 
 
302 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 have shot him, if I had a gun, but still it 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 that 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 303 
 
 we rather put Christ aside. We admit the abso- 
 lute beauty of the Sermon on the IVIount, 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, 
 w^hether 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 ISIaster 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 overw^helming 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 
 
304 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 of human life, to consecrate and protect that 
 form, not to destroy it. One with the Father 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 the 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!" 
 Such was Christ! 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 305 
 
 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, CoUyer 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 great 
 deeps, like the shadow that was on the face of Cromwell, or Wash- 
 ington. It heard of him ready to tell a story a propos of anything 
 in the earth, or under, or above it," — R. C, on October 23, 1862. 
 
306 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 the 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 307 
 
 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 
 mount 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 rum — 
 whose voice rang out clear wherever he went, 
 *As a man, in my relation to slavery as a man — 
 I hate slavery!' " How he acclaimed him as a 
 true scion of the West! 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 
 
308 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, Collyer 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 
 w^hen at last on the fatal day of April, 1865, there 
 fell the aw^ful 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 offended a few (in 
 Unity) by insisting upon the severest punish- 
 ment to whoever is found implicated in the mur- 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 309 
 
 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 CoUyer 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 community, 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 
 
 »• 1917. 
 
310 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 innumerable committee meetings 
 in public offices or private parlours, 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 there- 
 upon a fire of pure devotion which burned with 
 undiminished flame throughout the entire period 
 
OF ROBERT COLLYER 311 
 
 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 day! 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 Collyer 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 different man we envisage, and set in a very 
 
C12 ROBERT COLLYER 
 
 different environment. After long preparation, 
 he has "arrived.'* Hence a transformation of our 
 tale! But before we enter upon this 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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