Letters to His Friends | Page 7

remembered that I had told him, among other
things, that I had walked nearly fifty "stunden" {17} in a day. His
language was awful. I found afterwards that "stunde" was not, as I had
supposed, an English "mile," but an English "hour." But I keep on
talking. I have come to the conclusion that the way to learn a language
is to argue in it. Accordingly I do so. I have tried to convince them that
the order of bishops is semi-apostolic, and that if St. Paul did not

actually wear a surplice himself, his successors shortly afterwards did.
'One other thing, if you ever reply to this letter: would you copy out a
few of the most thickly marked lines in the "Grammarian's Funeral" in
my edition of Browning? They are always in my mind, but I can't quite
recollect how they go. There is no poem I like so much as that. I would
send you some butterflies, but I daren't kill them. Some of us may have
once been butterflies: as M. Arnold says,
'What was before us we know not, And we know not what shall
succeed.'
To H. M. S.
'Habkern: August 1890.
'There is a French pensionnaire staying here, the same as I am. He is
very polite, but his tastes are diametrically opposite to mine. He likes
wine, walking, women, smoking, painting, violin and piano playing,
dogs, and the like.
'He asked me whether I liked the French. I told him "No," and gave him
a good many reasons. He abhors the Germans. I told him I thought the
Germans were a fine race. I'm occupying my time {18} in sleeping,
arguing, observing the natives, and reading a Tauchnitz edition of
"Martin Chuzzlewit," which is good, though already a young girl of
seventeen has been introduced, very beautiful and all the rest, and I'm
afraid she won't be poisoned, but marry a certain young man already
introduced. I'd give a good deal to be able to write a novel in which all
the young ladies tumbled out of windows, six stories high, and were
picked up dead. I think I must try and write one. Shall I dedicate it to
you? The heroine will be a plain old lady with white curls, close on
sixty-five, without any money, but with a certain amount of intellect.
There will be no marriages, but suicides and murders if necessary.
'I'm inventing a German word of 1,000 letters. It is to be divided into
some 150 or 200 compartments. After each compartment there is five
minutes for refreshments. After about the 500th letter there will be half

an hour allowed for dinner. After the 600th letter or so there will be a
notice to the effect that no person with a weak heart may proceed
further without consulting a medical man. After about the 980th there
will be a notice forbidding any one to go further until their family
doctor is in attendance. I have thought of the groundwork of the
word--the finished word I'm going to send to M----, as he has the
strongest constitution of any one I know. Then I shall get Duke
Bismarck to patent it; after which I shall take out a professorship on the
strength of it at Berne. It will, of course, be the "Hauptsache" of my
existence.'
{19}
Forbes was far from being an athlete, but in 1891, shortly before his
ordination, he accomplished the feat of walking with two athletic
friends from London to Cambridge in a day, a distance of more than
fifty miles. The following description is by Mr. A. N. C. Kittermaster,
who was one of his companions.
Walk from London to Cambridge.
Some of us had read that Charles Kingsley had walked from London to
Cambridge; so we determined to follow in his footsteps. We were a
party of three--Forbes Robinson, D. D. Robertson, and myself. We
spent the previous day at the Naval Exhibition, the night at the
Liverpool Street Hotel, and at 4.30 A.M. of Tuesday, August 25, 1891,
we started on our fifty-mile trudge. We walked steadily, at first over
immense stretches of pavement, till we reached Ware, twenty-one miles
out. There we had breakfast or lunch of huge chops at 10.15. After that
we took the road again, and did not call a halt of any length till we had
put another twenty miles behind us. The day was fine but dull, and we
were not troubled by the heat. At the fortieth milestone it began to
appear doubtful whether we should all reach the journey's end. I have
an entry in my diary: 'At 40 Robertson bad, I worse, Deanlet (i.e.
Forbes) quite fit.' So at Foulmire, nine miles from Cambridge, we
stopped for tea. By this time I was in