Edinburgh
30th Dec. 1868
My Dear Father,
At length the Shaw Competition is over — ended at two o’clock today.[2] I have done far from well but probably as well as I could expect considering that I have got almost nothing done since I came to Tait.
I have taken the matter very easy & consequently am not much tired by the Exam. I believe Hunter was very sanguine after the first two papers and in fact he seemed very sanguine today after all was over. Lindsay, poor fellow! is much knocked up; and has not stood at all well. I hope he has done good papers however in spite of this. I think it is probable that I shall learn the result on Tuesday possibly or Monday.[3] Of course I will write whenever I know. There is perhaps to be an order of merit — in that case perhaps my name may be mentioned. I hope I have made you understand clearly that this is the utmost you can possibly look for.
My neck is now all right, & I feel quite well. I went and called on the Rogers today after my Exam. They were glad to see [me].[4] Dr Brackenridge called here this forenoon but of course I was out.
I went on Sabbath afternoon to hear Macphail[5] and liked him very well. His sermon was very practical & personal & I believe made a very favourable impression on the hearers. I don’t know if in my last [letter] I found time to tell you that I dined with Tait on Xmas day & had a very pleasant evening in a quiet way. It is a great comfort that one has not to dress for Tait & there is nothing stiff about Mrs Tait or himself.[6]
Mrs T. asked me if I would object to come down always & dine with them on Sunday. This of course I declined but it was kind in them [sic] to ask me. I am very glad that Tait is not a positivist.[7] In fact there is a Speculative Society of which Sir W. Thomson is president to which Tait refuses to go because most of the members are Unitarians. It is a comfort to know that our leading men of Science are not all unbelievers.[8]
How did your sermon on Sabbath evening come off? I am of course short of news having been quite tied up for the last few days.
I hope you have got free of the mess made by the plasterers. I suppose all the new wall papering of the Study is spoiled. I hope I shall hear all about the Xmas tree when it comes off.[9]
With love to all at home wishing you all a Merry Xmas & happy New Year.
I am
Your Aff. Son
Wm Robertson Smith
P.S. I am sorry to hear that Bella is laid up with a sprain — I will probably write to her in the end of the week.
[1] CUL ADD 7449 C107 MS
[2] The exam ended therefore on the last Wednesday of the year.
[3] In fact, WRS learned the outcome from Tom Lindsay on Saturday, January 2, 1869, as the following letter (1869-01-02) indicates.
[4] The text reads “him”; apparently “me” is intended.
[5] This is the same man, newly inducted to Pilrig Free Church, referred to as “McPhail” in 1868-12-18. WRS is noticeably erratic in his spelling of surnames beginning Mac or Mc. Professor Magregor, for example, is frequently referred to as McGregor.
[6] In COTM, Alice Smith describes a similar Christmas party with the Taits in December, 1869. The young eleven year old was then staying with WRS in Edinburgh and plainly felt quite overwhelmed by the unaccustomed festivity.
[7] I.e. a proponent of Auguste Comte’s Positive Philosophy, which had gained fairly widespread intellectual status in Britain by this time, thanks in part to John Stuart Mill’s qualified advocacy of Comte’s principles for social regeneration, based on the evolutionary concept of mankind’s progression in thinking from the religious to the metaphysical to the scientific. Alexander Bain (1818–1903) of the chair of Logic and English at Aberdeen University, and one of WRS’s teachers there, had earlier been closely associated with Mill in the latter’s study of Comte during the 1840s. Bain and WPS knew one another well but the relationship was always strained by the ideological gulf between them. Bain’s unacknowledged influence on WRS was nevertheless considerable and is detectable even in his earliest work.
[8] A staunch Episcopalian, Tait was of course quite free of those constraints imposed on WRS by his Free Church upbringing and cautiously steered his protégé towards a more liberal social attitude, although Smith’s conditioning in the matter of strict Sabbath observance persisted for some years.
[9] “Xmas tree” should not be understood as a Christmas decoration within the Free Kirk manse at Keig but refers to a celebration for the children of the congregation held around Twelfth Night. Even that would have been a relative novelty for a Free Church congregation of the day.