An English View of American Quakerism: The Journal of Walter Robson, 1877 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS An English View of American Quakerism: TL· Journal of Walter Robson, 1877. Edited by Edwin B. Bronner. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. 1970. xviii, 156 pages, index. $2.50. The publication of the journal of Walter Robson was an international Friends project—the original lent by an English woman to an American editor, a Quaker library staff in each country checking biographical data, and a consultant in each country making suggestions. One might expect this to be a doctrinal treatise; actually it is a highly diverting account by a young minister with human weaknesses of his experiences at seven yearly meetings of Friends who may as often seem ludicrous as sublime to the narrator, though he is prejudiced in their favor. Even without the suggestion of a drama provided by the editor's "dramatis personae"—a list of thirty-two prominent Quakers with brief biographical sketches supplemented in the text by scores of biographical notes on others—the feeling of a dramatic situation and action is inescapable. The stage is half a continent, its heroes the newly arisen evangelical Quakers, its villains the Hicksites and Wilburites. The conflict is between opposing factions of a peace-loving people who do not consider a war of words or occasional combative tactics as coming within the scope of their opposition to war. In one instance, as Robson relates, when a meetinghouse (Mount Pleasant, Ohio) was destroyed by fire, one faction accused another of burning it because they had lost possession to their opponents. Even at an evangelistic service when "many were intears" a Wilburite minister accused the speaker (Robson) of "light lifeless talk which only causes levity." When this same Wilburite criticized David Updegraff, a Gurneyite recorded minister told him to his face that he was "a deceiver and an antichrist." A man who spoke without leave, protesting his wife's disownment, was carried out bodily, still ejaculating loudly. While the seceding Conservative group was walking out of Western Yearly Meeting a man of the evangelical wing sang at the top of his voice, See the mighty host advancing, Satan leading on, remarking to Robson, "I thought they should hear one more hymn before they went out." Those who spoke in recurring periods of testimony might be thought of as a Chorus, as in the ancient Greek dramas, including such comic characters as the ones who claimed "I've got my attraction of gravitation reversed"; "Jesus has taken all the judge out of me" ; "He leadeth beside thegreen pastures, because he has not any that aint green." 116 BOOK REVIEWS117 Robson, of the orthodox evangelical wing of London Yearly Meeting, tried to overcome his "too keen sense of the ludicrous" while entering wholeheartedly into the singing, the shouting, the preaching of salvation through the blood of Christ, the doctrine of sanctification. To him David Updegraff was "the most wonderful Quaker preacher in the United States." Nevertheless he commented, "I love to see life, but I would not for anything see London Yearly Meeting copy from Ohio." On the question of a paid ministry, just then coming to the fore, Robson was on the fence. Despite his identification with the liberals, at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting he was full of praise for its adherents. When three times the usual Philadelphia attendere came to hear Robson speak, and when someone suggested he should return for three months of service with them, his suppressed personal satisfaction over this crown to the adulation he had received throughout his journey broke out in three exclamation points. Friends can afford to take a dispassionate view of these happenings of a century ago, recognizing human error along with human nobility, and thereby gaining perspective on current differences which may make possible greater wisdom in resolving them. Robson's comments on ways of life in America add interest, as his references to the horrible mud of the roads in rainy weather, the wooden paths, the practice of bringing the driving whips into meeting, all drinking from the same ladle, and the manner of train travel. He detested the "constant nasal twang that all Americans seem to have. . . . Even the steam engines have it," The editor has made a helpful evaluation of...