6 Castle St.
Edinburgh
28th Dec 1866
My dear Alice[3]
I have been a long time in writing to you but I hope you will excuse me.
I suppose that either Ellen or I will write again before New Year’s day but in the meantime I wish you a happy new year.
How are you getting on with your Latin?[4]
Have you snow at Keig just now. We have not had any snow yet, but we had a good deal of rain lately.
I am sure you would like very much to see the toy-shops here just now.
Because it is Christmas time there is quite an immense display of dolls in all possible dresses, not only inside the shops but outside the doors.
I suppose all the boys are away for the Holidays. Was Rennie in a great state of Excitement?
Tell Mama that that her boxes are just arrived.
Give my love to Lucy & Bertie[5] .
I am your aff. brother
Wm R. Smith
[1] Thiele family papers, MS
[2] This is the first extant letter from WRS to a sister or brother and was written from Edinburgh at the end of his first term at New College. The very short vacation and the difficulties of a winter journey to Keig, two decades before the building of the Forth railway bridge, afforded sufficient reason to remain in the capital over Christmas. Robertson Smith is careful to write to his eight year old sister in his neatest handwriting and with a simplicity of style which contrasts with the undated letter from Germany probably written four or five years later.
[3] Smith, Alice (1858–1943): was the ninth of eleven Smith children and greatly devoted to her big brother Will. She did not have the same educational opportunities as her brothers but, thanks to her father and eldest brother, did receive more education than most girls at that time. All the Smith daughters attended town schools for brief periods and later were taken abroad in their brother’s care — except for Isabella, who refused to go — to receive tuition in the arts and in foreign languages, especially German. In 1876, along with her younger sister Lucy, Alice was taken to Frankfurt in Germany where she met her future husband, Hans Thiele. After a lengthy engagement, Alice and Hans finally married in 1883 and from then on, except for occasional visits to Scotland, she remained in Germany, bringing up a family of five children. As long as he lived, WRS gave the couple moral and financial support, since Hans proved unsuccessful in business. At the age of 75 she penned down her childhood reminiscences, which were edited and published in 2004 as the title Children of the Manse. Alice died in 1943 as a widow in Braunschweig. [COTM and FP]
[4] In her memoirs [COTM], written late in life, Alice describes how WPS granted her the rare privilege of admission to his manse classroom and gave her tuition in Latin and Maths at this early age. While that experiment was not a success, she resumed studying under her father more profitably in 1870, following her return from Edinburgh.
[5] Smith, Herbert (Bertie) (1862–1887): loveable pet of the family, Bertie showed none of the thirst for education of his brothers nor indeed any of the practical skills of his siblings. His father’s attempts to teach him the classics ended disastrously. For a time during the early 1880s, Bertie lived with WRS in Edinburgh and later became clerk in an Aberdeen bank, but his health failed soon thereafter and he was forced to give up work. Like his sister Mary Jane and his brother George, he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. [COTM]