You would not expect Queen Victoria's own chaplain to write
a sensation novel about an unwed mother giving birth in a workhouse.
Reverend Arthur Robins (1834-1899) was known as
'The Soldiers' Bishop' for his association with the Queen's troops. He was a
chaplain in Windsor and had a career in royal service. The South Australian Register (Adelaide, SA. Source: trove.nla.gov.au) reported on Monday 4 Nov,1878 that
"The Queen has appointed the Rev.
Arthur Robins, Rector of Holy Trinity Church, Windsor, and Chaplain to Her
Majesty's household troops at Windsor, to be one of the Honorary Chaplains to
her Majesty."
Later, Robins had a further promotion from an Honorary
Chaplain (who had no specified duties whatsoever), to a chaplain-in-ordinary,
which meant that he had an actual job in the royal household. On 29 August 1896
The Spectator published a short
article (Source: http://archive.spectator.co.uk):
"The Rev. Arthur Robins, chaplain - in - ordinary to
the Queen, and chaplain to the Prince of Wales and to the household troops,
preached on Sunday last his five-thousandth sermon in Windsor ; and his
parishioners, in celebration of the occasion, presented him with a complete set
of clerical robes. (This first paragraph appeared on 5 November 1896 in The Advertiser in Adelaide, SA, which
may give you an idea how long it took for news to travel to Australia. Source: trove.nla.gov.au).
 |
Rev. Arthur Robins 23 Dec 1897. Entitled The Soliders' Bishop. For Vanity Fair by Spy. |
The Rev,. Arthur Robins was a well-known churchman, as the
honour of being caricatured in Vanity Fair
demonstrates. He was also interviewed in magazines. You can find him in Windsor
surrounded by the military in "Tommy Atkins and his 'Bishop': a Chat with
the Rev. Arthur Robins" in The
Sketch, April 12, 1893. There is another interview by James Milne in
The Windsor Magazine (Vol 4, 1896,
p.423).
The Spectator
article commemorating the Reverend's 5000th sermon, continued with a slightly
ominous tone:
"... Think of the saying, that for every idle word you
utter, you shall be accountable at the day- of judgment, and consider how many
idle and ill-considered words there must generally be in five thousand sermons.
It must be a pathetic if not a terrible retrospect. But we may hope that for
the great majority of preachers, the penance will at least be very lenient. We hope
so, or we journalists should probably be left in an even worse predicament than
the preachers."
In the light of this warning that you will be accountable
for every word you utter until judgment day, what should we think about the two
novels published anonymously, but assigned to the Rev. Arthur Robins: Miriam May (1860) and Crispin Ken (1861). They are both
included in H. L. Mansel's well-known review of sensation fiction in Quarterly Review, in April 1863.
In this blog we have encountered women who supported their
children, their husbands and occasionally their lovers by writing sensational
fiction. Wilkie Collins was a man in an even more demanding situation, with two
households to support. We have also come across professional hacks who churned
out dramatic stories of detection to suit the tastes of the periodical-devouring
masses. Sensation fiction was produced primarily for financial gain. So why would a man of the church with a secure career in the royal household resort to penning pot-boilers?
Sensation fiction also made a good vehicle for preaching. A
racy story got your message to a wide audience, reaching exactly those parts of
society (lower and lower-middle classes, clerks and maids and, of course, wives
and daughters) who undoubtedly needed their morals bolstered from time to time. We've seen how Collins in The New
Magdalen (1873) spelled out a message about redeeming fallen women. So maybe it is
not so strange after all that the Rev. Arthur Robins should resort to the
format of a popular genre to voice his views, not just about unwed mothers and
sanctity of marriage, but also about charity, parliamentary elections, the
appointment of bishops and church politics in general. And all this in just one
single-volume novel packed with romance, melodrama and (at least attempts at) comedy.
Miriam May: a Romance
of Real Life was published in 1860. It went through several editions (3rd
edition in 1860, 'new edition' in 1861, according to the National Library of
Scotland catalogue). We can assume it was reasonably popular when first published.
H. L. Mansel's verdict on Robins's fiction was somewhat
scathing:
"A very brief notice will be sufficient to dispose of
some of the smaller fry on our multifarious list.
"'Miriam May,' 'Crispin Ken,' and 'Philip Paternoster'
are specimens of the theological novel, which employs the nerves as a vehicle
of preaching in the literal sense of the term. The object of these tales is to
inculcate certain doctrines, or rather a hatred of certain opposite doctrines,
by painting offensive portraits of persons professing the obnoxious opinions.
The two former preach on the High Church side, by exhibiting villainous
specimens of Low-Churchmen and Dissenters; ..." (Mansel, p.504)
