Göttingen
26th June 1869
My Dear Bella,[2]
I was very glad indeed to get a letter from you at length and to find[3] that you had all got safely and so far as I could judge pretty comfortably to Branderburgh.[4] But I am very much vexed at the accident to your shoulder. I hope you have seen a doctor so as to make sure that it is nothing serious. It is always a great mistake not to get a hurt looked after.
The accounts of your present situation given by you and Charlie[5] are I think satisfactory: but how are you to get on without water? What do the cows and horses get to drink? Water at ½d a bucket? It is very melancholy but I hope you may get over this inconvenience and enjoy yourselves very much otherwise. There is one thing I wish to hear: is there any wood about Lossiemouth? If there isn’t you’ll be awfully broiled if all the fine weather come now in a heap! I perceive from Chas’s description that there are links. I suppose there will be golf played there. If so take care that you don’t stop the balls with your head for a golf ball is much worse than a cricket ball even!
I may mention that your letter reached me on Friday (yesterday) afternoon. I fancy that now you will have much more to tell me than I have to tell you. In fact my news is falling off in quantity, tho’ I hope that if the fine weather of the last day or two lasts I may again find something new to see and to describe. Today we went off for a long ramble, first through fields of rye higher than our heads up a long ravine in the hills past Deppoldshausen[6] to the Plesse.[7]
Now this gives me an opportunity of doing what I have never yet done viz. describing the general sort of country one has here. Göttingen you know lies quite in the valley of the Leine and although so far inland is only 460 feet above the sea level. The valley itself is almost quite level and pretty broad; at all events it is never quite narrow like our valleys. Then on each side of the valley is a range of low hills perhaps about the size of the Corduroy Hill[8] at home. Down these hills come the tributary streams generally in a sort of deep ravines. With us you know the burns run down the hills but in Germany one would rather say that they ran out of the hills so deep down do they lie in the ravines. Of course this implies that when one gets to the top of the hill one does not immediately go down on the other side — on the contrary there is on each side of the Leine a sort of tableland cut through in all directions by ravines which slope down to the Leine and of course with some higher points and some glens. In general the great feature is that the average level of the ground as one goes back from the valley of the Leine remains considerably higher than that of the watercourses. Of course the best land is down in the valley. On the hills are tracts of thin soil covered with thickets [Hainholz[9] ] chiefly of Beech and tracts again of good land. The land on the hills is partly cultivated by villagers, for there are a good many villages up on the high land, chiefly[10] in the hollows to be beside the streams.[11] These hollows are really pretty high tho’ they are depressions in the table land. Partly however the arable soil on the hills belongs to landed proprietors who till their whole estates as a rule themselves. Thus Deppoldshausen which we passed today is the Vorwerk[12] as it is called of a large estate at Weende[13]. That is, the main house is at Weende but a secondary steading is needed at Deppoldshausen for the high-lying land. Hay-making was going on at Deppoldshausen as we passed.
The Plesse which lies on a spur of the tableland abutting into the Leine valley I have described before, but today we went further to another ruin called Hardenberg.[14] This was a very pretty walk thro’ woods and down a burn along the foot of the hills. Hardenberg is a very large castle or rather has been very large and stands on quite a precipitous mass of rock overhanging the large farmsteading of the new house of Hardenberg. One tower is still quite in repair but is kept locked and we did not seek to go down and seek the key below where I daresay we might have got admission. We were content with wandering through the ruined towers and dungeons and halls which are open to the public. The dungeons were hideous enough but the most curious feature was two deep wells I suppose some 50 feet deep and partly hewn out of rock. I don’t think there can ever have been spring water in them. They must have been cisterns.[15]
So much for our Saturday’s trip. On Sabbath we went for the first time to the Reformed i.e. Calvinistic Church. I can’t say that I enjoyed the service for it was moderate to a degree. Even the Hymnbook was a compilation of last century that sought according to the preface to exclude all expressions of feeling &c. and merely to give in a plain form the teaching of Reason and the New Testament. Of course there was much more of the Rationalistic than of the Biblical in it, when it took up this line. In the evening I took the service at the Menzies[16] and got on I think comfortably. I took as my subject Jacob’s Ladder.
Mrs Heintze’s son has gone back to Hamburg to join his ship which is a decided loss to us. His place has been filled by a certain Dr Lanneau from Charleston, who is Fräulein Heintze’s betrothed and therefore according to German notions a member of the family. I fancy the marriage will come off next month. Certainly I hope it may be before we leave. Dr L. is very much superior to the other Americans here. He is clearly a thorough gentleman and is quiet and pleasant in every way.
I fancy the next letter must be to Charlie, but I daresay he is enjoying himself so well just now that he hardly cares whether I write or not. I had a letter from Lindsay lately and I am glad to say that last assembly has nearly if not quite made him a supporter of union. Everyone is shocked at Dr Bonar,[17] not least Dr Begg, who is even reported to mean to come out as a Unionist next year![18]
I had to go and get a tooth stuffed yesterday which I had slightly broken. I think it has been satisfactorily accomplished. Cherries are now very abundant here at 1½d a pound. Of course the cold spring makes them dearer than usual. I had a long letter from Reid[19] last week with many scraps of news esp: that Gray is preaching for Candlish[20] now and then expects to settle down with Beith at Stirling.
I think this is all the news I can scrape together so merely adding that I am quite well and that I hope you are all enjoying yourselves and picking up strength.
I am
Your affectionate brother
W. Robertson Smith
[1] CUL ADD 7449 C177a TS
[2] WRS’ letter to his sister Isabella is noticeably less carefully written than usual.
[3] Either one or two words have been thoroughly deleted here from the typescript. The pen markings are characteristic of Black’s own editing.
[4] A small coastal village just north of Lossiemouth where the Smith family were on holiday that year. Their activities there are well described in Alice Smith’s memoirs (COTM, pp.73ff.).
[5] Smith, Charles Michie (Charlie) (1854–1922): the seventh child of the Smith family (one daughter, Eliza, died in infancy). Having shown marked practical abilities, Charles studied at Edinburgh University and obtained a B.Sc. degree in engineering. After a spell of work cable-laying in the West Indies, he was appointed professor of Mathematics at Madras Christian College and subsequently Director of Kodaikanal Observatory, being honoured for his work there by being created Companion of the Indian Empire [CIE]. His main interests were in the field of solar physics and he published numerous papers on the topic — not least his views on the effects of the great Krakatoa eruption — as well as contributing articles to EB9. [COTM]
[6] Now part of Göttingen, Deppoldshausen was then a small village. There is still a monastery estate.
[7] An old castle situated above the Leine.
[8] Unless this was a family nickname, “Corduroy” seems to be a misreading by the typist. The reference may be to the Correen Hills, which lie to the north-west of Alford and south of Rhynie.
[9] Lit. “grove wood”.
[10] Editorial deletion of two words.
[11] A further deletion at the start of the next sentence, readable in this instance as “Of course”.
[12] An outpost, that is, of the main farm
[13] Once an independent village, Weende is now also part of Göttingen.
[14] North of Göttingen and now called Nörten-Hardenberg.
[15] WRS was wrong in believing they could only be cisterns. Such deeply-dug castle wells on elevated, rocky ground were a source of ground water for the inhabitants and could be several hundred metres deep.
[16] A Scottish family living in Göttingen for whom Black and WRS conducted Sunday worship (cf. B&C, p.113).
[17] Horatius Bonar. Cf. WRS’s letter of 03.03.1868 to his father describing the vigorous church union debate at presbytery level. The 1869 Free Church Assembly saw the high point of interest in the negotiations for union which took place between 1863 and 1873 before falling into abeyance until 1895. The lengthy and often acrimonious debate covers 71 pages of PFCA for 1869. Cf. also Carnegie Simpson’s Life of Principal Rainy (1909) ch. vii, “The Thwarted Union” for an excellent account. Cf. also Sjölinder (1962) for a succinct historical analysis.
[18] WRS is writing tongue in cheek here. The reactionary Dr James Begg did indeed claim during the Assembly debate that he supported union — but made it very clear that union with the United Presbyterians and Reformed Presbyterians could only come about with an acceptance of the most stringent doctrinal conditions.
[19] Perhaps J. Bentley Reid, listed in 1869 (PFCA) as being a year below WRS at New College and an acquaintance of WRS since his Aberdeen days. There is no record of him, however, in AFC.
[20] Candlish, James S. (b.1835): son of Dr Robert S. Candlish and a staunch supporter of WRS. The younger Candlish’s first charge was at Logiealmond but he was called to Aberdeen East in 1869 before being appointed professor at Glasgow Free Church College.