Edinburgh April 5th
1870
My Dear Mamma,
I suspect you and I have both caught the same kind of sore throat from Ellen. I however have no swelling connected with mine. I can’t say it’s better yet but I hope it is beginning to give way and that we shall have good news soon from you too.[2]
Meantime Nellie is still keeping better but not very strong. She goes out to a class & takes a short walk and that is about all.
For the rest my news is good. I have finished the last set of Exam papers in Tait’s & have only some slight pieces of routine work during the rest of the week.
Candlish is much delighted with my Paper and snaps his fingers at Salmond. He at first thought (Lindsay was the recipient of all this) that I should publish it separately — in which case he would have been glad to subscribe to help to print it. But on second thoughts he conceived it wd be better not to do this. His only objection is the word Jahveh. That he says is most injudicious. Many will read no further. I don’t believe that however.
I have very little else to say. You have of course seen the great fight yesterday in the Presby. A lot of men were there — not I.
I saw Davidson today — he thinks if Candlish come [sic] over to me at all it does not matter when Meyer is withdrawn. I think he is hopeful but he was rather blue over my description of Innes’ paper.[3] The St Andrews’ people don’t seem to have lost hope of Thomson yet, but I don’t think they’ll get him against so express an affirmation of his own mind.[4]
I am
Your aff. Son
Wm Robertson Smith
P.S. If there is any book Papa wd like out of the University Library I can easily bring it. Or for you.
[1] CUL ADD 7449 C165 MS
[2] In COTM (pp. 111ff.) WRS’s sister Alice gives her account of this illness, which appears to have been mumps. Their mother Jane had swiftly gone to Edinburgh to care for them but clearly had returned home by this time. Smith may have been more ill than he would admit to his mother.
[3] Unidentified. Innes may well refer to Alexander Taylor Innes, a staunch Free Church man, an expert in church law and a supporter of WRS.
[4] Probably a reference to Sir William Thomson, Tait’s Glasgow counterpart, whom St Andrews University hoped might be induced to take up the vacant chair of Natural Philosophy there, following the death of Sir David Brewster.