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Alexander Robertson was born
in Edinburgh on 12th January 1882, the son of Robert Robertson, formerly
Headmaster of Edinburgh Ladies’ College. He attended George Watson’s
College, where he won the silver medal in English Literature, and after
graduating with First Class Honours in history from the University of
Edinburgh in 1904, taught as Assistant Anglais in a lycée in Caen, then as
history master at his old school. He went on to Oxford as a Carnegie Scholar
and Fellow, and obtained a B.Litt. for his thesis on the life of Sir Robert
Moray, later published as a biography.
Robertson took up the post of Lecturer in History at Sheffield University
six months before war broke out, then answered the call to duty in September
1914 by volunteering as a private soldier, joining the 12th York and
Lancaster Regiment (the ‘Sheffield Pals’). His battalion served in Egypt in
1915 and was then sent to France in March 1916. Ill with jaundice, Robertson
spent three weeks in a military hospital in Marseilles before rejoining the
battalion, which was on the front line near Albert by June, and was deployed
in the opening attack of the Battle of the Somme at the village of Serre on
the 1st of July. Robertson, along with many of his comrades, disappeared on
that day, and with his comrades, is listed on the Thiepval Memorial to the
Missing.
All of Alexander Robertson’s poetry was written on active service, with
Comrades published in 1916 and Last Poems posthumously. In his letters, his
brother Dr Niven Robertson wrote: ‘It was his greatest joy and a great
solace to him to express his soul in [the poems], as army life was far from
congenial to a man of his character’ and to a friend of one of the comrades
killed, ‘If it had not been for the friendship, sterling quality, and
culture of his chief comrades in the battalion, life in the army would have
been a horror to him’. When in Egypt, as a relief from the work on
constructing railways there Robertson studied Italian in moments of free
time.
Press notices of Robertson’s first book reproduced in Last Poems speak of
‘scholarly verses’, ‘poems [which] reveal marked delicacy and gravity of
thought’ and ‘fine academic restraint of feeling and style’. His poetry was
indeed scholarly, with the many cultural references to be expected from a
man of his learning, and was also bound by the conventions of the time.
David Goldie, in his essay ‘Archipelagic poetry of the First World War’ in
The Cambridge Companion to the Poetry of the First World War (CUP, 2013)
thinks ‘the shackles of convention’ constrained the poetry of Robertson and
some of his peers, and that their ‘attempts to convey the experience of war
are derailed by the decorum and circumlocution of the traditions to which
their education made them heirs.’ Though they lack powerful immediacy,
Robertson’s quiet examinations of the new and awful experiences of war are
genuine; ‘Lines Before Going’ is honest in its trepidation and doubt of the
final outcome; ‘A Conviction’ is a thoughtful meditation on how those who
survive will cope with memories of conflict. He was not above sarcasm, as
shown in ‘Let Us Drink’, addressing the hypocrites who will only
occasionally remember the war dead:
Yes, I can see you at it, in a room
Well-lit and warm, high-roofed and soft to tread,
Satiate and briefly mindful of the tomb
With its poor victim of Teutonic lead.
‘Thou Shalt Love Thine Enemies’, on the other hand, demonstrates Robertson’s
essential decency, as he grants a dead German soldier the dignity of an
identity. On reading the letters, cards, soldier’s book and prayer-book (the
knowledge of German standard in this group of university volunteers), he
writes:
They were not meant for our too curious eyes
Or our imaginations to surmise
From what they tell much that they leave untold.
Strangers and foemen we, yet we behold,
Sad and subdued, thy solace and thy cheer.
Would that such respect for other lives and other cultures had been more
widespread.
Lines Before Going
By Alexander Robertson
Soon is the night of our faring to regions unknown,
There not to flinch at the challenge suddenly thrown
By the great process of Being – daily to see
The utmost that life has of horror and yet to be
Calm and the masters of fear. Aware that the soul
Lives as a part and alone for the weal of the whole,
So shall the mind be free from the pain of regret,
Vain and enfeebling, firm in each venture, and yet
Brave not as those who despair, but keen to maintain,
Though not assured, hope in beneficent pain,
Hope that the truth of the world is not what appears,
Hope in the triumph of man for the price of his tears.
https://books.google.ca/books/about/Last_Poems_of_Alexander_Robertson.html?id=YttLAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y
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