SOPHIA DOBSON COLLET
A Biographical Sketch1
Since its foundation, the Brahmo Samaj, the Theistic Church of modern India, has attracted the warm admiration and enthusiastic devotion of a few large-hearted Europeans—men and women. One of the most remarkable among these was the late Miss Sophia Dobson Collet. Her connection with the Brahmo Samaj was almost of the nature of a romance. Impressed by the magnetic personality of the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, whom she had seen in South Place Chapel, London, when she must have been a girl of ten or eleven, she remained a most loyal and devoted supporter of his church throughout life. Though not in complete agreement with the tenets of the new movement, she was ever vigilant in her solicitude and unwearied in her exertions for its advancement. No member, not even a devoted missionary, could have worked harder for, or watched with warmer interest, the progress of the infant church. A life-long invalid, ailing constantly from many bodily infirmities, she procured and preserved, from a distance of many thousand miles, every bit of information about Brahmos and the Brahmo Samaj which was unknown even to workers on the spot. To be able to read the publications concerning the new church, she, late in life, learnt the Bengali language. Her information about the Brahmo Samaj was wonderful in every way. It is not too much to say that she was the greatest authority on the contemporary history of this movement. She carried on extensive correspondence with many Brahmos. It is a pity that her letters have not been preserved and no record of her life has been published by those who knew her personally. To her the Brahmo Samaj owes, indeed a deep debt of gratitude unspeakable, and by this community her memory should ever be cherished with love and esteem…
Sophia Dobson Collet was born on the 2nd Feb. 1822 in a Unitarian family of London long connected with India. Her great grand-uncle Joseph Collet, was Governor of Fort St. George (Madras) for about two years from 1719. The family has still in its possession a curious model about two feet high, of Governor Collet in court-dress, which was made in India after the original and sent home to his brother, Samuel, from whom Miss Collet was descended. Her mother’s brother, Captain Collet Barber also was in the service of the East India Company.
Miss Collet’s father was a merchant. He died when she was but four years of age. Owing to an accident to her mother sometime earlier Miss Collet was an invalid from her birth, being afflicted with curvature of the spine. On account of her physical defects she seemed not to have been sent to school, but was carefully educated at home, principally by her mother’s sister, Miss Mary Barber, a lady of remarkable sweetness and nobility of character and of eminent culture….
The family connections with India might have had something to do with Miss Collet’s interest in the Brahmo Samaj. But the great impetus came when she saw Raja Rammohun Roy in South Place Chapel, London. Though then only a girl of tender age, she must have been greatly impressed, for throughout her life she retained a warm attachment for the Raja, whom she always used to call “Rammohun”. In her later life she was most anxious to bring out a Life of the Raja. She often used to say to friends that her one desire was to live long enough to complete her book about Rammohun. How strong that desire was is evident from the note of the gentleman2 who, at her earnest dying request, completed the work. Miss Collet wrote to him “I am dying. I cannot finish my ‘Life of Rammohun Roy’. But when I enter the Unseen, I want to be able to tell Rammohun that his Life will be finished. Will you finish it for me?”
The little girl of ten never forgot Rammohun or lost sight of his work. Quietly she kept watching and collecting every detail of information about the Samaj, which the Master had founded before leaving his beloved land to die in England.
Her earliest writing about the Brahmo Samaj that we have been able to trace was a letter in the British Quarterly Review for July 1869 refuting certain allegations against Keshub Chandra Sen. By this time she had put herself in communication with the rising leader of the progressive section of the Brahmo Samaj, for whom she entertained great admiration and regard until the Cooch Behar marriage brought about an unfortunate revulsion of feeling.
The British Quarterly Review for April 1869 published an article on the “Brahmo Samaj (or Theistic Church) of India”, tracing its growth from its origin in 1830 under Rammohun Roy down to its latest phase under the influence of Keshub Chandra Sen. In this article, in spite of a general fairness of tone, the reviewer concluded by making the following grave charge against Keshub: “Like Chaitanya and other great teachers of Hinduism, Keshub Chandra Sen permits the more degraded of his followers to prostrate themselves before him and worship him.” Miss Collet at once wrote a letter to the editor contradicting the charge against Mr. Sen, whom she called her friend. She also wrote to the Daily Telegraph, the Inquirer, the Unitarian Herald and other papers to remove the false impression so created.
To vindicate the position of Keshub Chandra Sen more fully and to give the English public a correct idea of the Brahmo Samaj, Miss Collet contributed an article to the Contemporary Review of Feb., 1870 under the title of “Indian Theism and its Relation to Christianity.” With reference to it the Illustrated London News wrote: “The Contemporary Review is better than it has been for a long time. The most interesting paper is Miss Collet’s excellent account of the Hindu religious reformers, the Brahmo Samaj.” The Spectator similarly observed: “This number (of the Contemporary Review) is more than usually varied and interesting. The most noticeable article is Miss Collet’s Essay on Indian Theism and its relation to Christianity, reviewing the present position of a movement which has been well-known for the last forty years as the Brahmo Samaj.” In this article Miss Collet gave a full and clear account of the Brahmo Samaj from its foundation by Raja Rammohun Roy, through its development under Maharshi Debendra Nath Tagore, down to its then recent activities under Keshub Chandra Sen. The name of the Brahmo Samaj was not quite unknown in England. Miss Cobbe had previously sketched the rise and progress of the Brahmo Samaj down to 1866; and Miss Carpenter had also recently added some new details to the stock of popular information on the subject. But the true nature and power of the Brahmo Samaj, were never “traced out so clearly,” (thus Allen’s Indian Mail remarked) “as in Miss Collet’s paper”. It created a great interest in the new religious movement of India among the more enlightened British public. The article was reproduced and commented upon widely in the British Press. As one main object of Miss Collet in writing the paper was to vindicate the position of Keshub Chandra Sen, who had been accused first of being a Christian at heart and subsequently of recanting his Christian confession, a large part of it was devoted to explaining the real position of Mr. Sen. These accusations were based on two lectures which he had recently delivered on “Jesus Christ, Europe and Asia” and on “Great Men” within an interval of about six months. Miss Collet, though avowedly a Christian who nursed, at this period, a faint hope that Keshub might yet accept Christianity, showed from the utterances of the Brahmo leader that there was no inconsistency in his position. An English contemporary, in reviewing the article, wrote: “Her avowed sympathy with the popular Christianity does not blind her to the real worth of its young Indian rival, or tempt her to mistake the fables of prejudiced opponents for truthful pictures of the Church established by Rammohun Roy, and largely renewed by Keshub Chandra Sen. In her paper she has done the latter honesty of justice for which he and his friends will be truly grateful. The honours he seemed at one time to pay to the human excellences of the Christian redeemer roused the bitter resentment of those Brahmoists who saw in it a concession to the believers in a triune Godhead. At one moment he was accused of being an orthodox Christian; and then because another of his lectures referred to Christ as but one of many prophets, his Christian critics charged him with cowardly recantation of his former sentiments. Miss Collet however has the good sense to see how little his various utterances contradict each other, and how entirely they all belie the notion of his seeking to set himself up as a superhuman mouthpiece of the God he worships. She has the honesty to interpret the Brahmoist leader by himself, instead of taking the cue from others, or from isolated passages in Keshub Chandra Sen’s writings. His lecture on Great Men, as she truly observes, supplemented the argument of his previous lecture on Jesus Christ. From the two thus taken together, it is easy to see how naturally such a man might hold up Jesus as the great bond of connection between East and West, the highest model of human holiness and purity, ‘the greatest and truest benefactor of mankind’, without for a moment pledging himself to any one article of the Trinitarian theology, or forgetting his own doctrine that ‘every man is, in some measure, an incarnation of the divine spirit’.” It will thus be seen that Miss Collet was entirely successful in her object of vindicating the position of Keshub Chandra Sen. She concluded her advocacy of the Brahmo Samaj with the following fervent appeal to the British public: “They thirst after the ‘One God without a second’, the uncreated Father of spirits, and long to sweep away all that may seem to obscure His perfect light. Now this is surely a right instinct, and the indispensable foundation of all religion that deserves the name. It should also be remembered that in God’s education of the world, every lesson has to be mastered separately. It took the Hebrews some centuries to learn their pure Theism, and only when that was for ever rooted in the heart of the world was the eternal Son revealed. It is possible that some such lesson may be in store for India, which the Gospel has hitherto taken so little hold of native mind to suggest the idea that some hidden link needs to be supplied between it and them, so, such preparation is certainly beginning, however unconsciously under the Brahmo Samaj. Whatever their imperfections they are doing a work for God which greatly needs doing and which He will surely ‘lead into all truth’ in his own time and in his own way. Let us not then, refuse our Christian sympathies to these Hindu Unitarians, as fellow-worshippers of our common Father, fellow-learners of the teaching of His Son, fellow-seekers of the kingdom of Heaven…”
With her characteristic thoroughness she republished the article of the Contemporary Review in pamphlet form with some additions and alterations. The Spectator of London, in the course of a sympathetic review, characterised it as a “most able and interesting account of the religious tendencies of the movement.” Keshub Chandra Sen’s visit to England, of course, made Miss Collet very glad of the opportunity of closer association with her friend. She prepared the ground for him beforehand and insured the success of his visit by awakening the interest of the British public in the Brahmo Samaj. Throughout the period of his sojourn in England, she worked strenuously and incessantly for making the visit productive of the best results. Indeed, much of the success of Mr. Sen’s English visit and the warm reception accorded to him was due to the efforts of Miss Collet. She followed up her writings in the newspapers by preparing a volume of Mr. Sen’s lectures. Allen’s Indian Mail of March 29, 1870, contained the following announcement: “We are glad to learn that the interest lately shown by the English public in the progress of the sect which now owns him (Keshub Chandra Sen) as its chief leader is about to be gratified by the publication of some of the books lectures, including those on ‘Christ’, ‘Great Men’ and ‘Regenerating Faith,’ all of them delivered in the last three or four years. These have already been printed in Calcutta, where the preacher’s eloquence and breadth of charity have been appreciated even by those who disliked or distrusted his theology. Miss Collet, the editor, who has already thrown much light on the character of the new Theistic movement in India, also proposes, we believe, to accompany the lectures with a historical sketch of the Brahmo Samaj from the materials furnished by Mr. Sen himself.” The volume, which was named The Brahmo Samaj, was published by Allen & Co. In addition to the lectures already mentioned, it contained also the lecture on “The Future Church.” Later on, Miss Collet prepared another edition of it with the addition of some tracts, sermons and prayers of Mr. Sen In fact, she took every possible measure to bring Mr. Sen and his utterances to the general notice of the British public.
Keshub Chandra Sen arrived in London in March and received a very cordial welcome. But there were some people who tried their utmost to belittle him and his work. They communicated to the press every little gossip that they could catch hold of, likely to discredit Mr. Sen in the public eye. With reference to these, the Daily News tactfully remarked: “Our Hindu visitor Chunder Sen was doubtless aware when he came before the British public that, if he received the most cordial of welcomes, he would also be subjected to unsparing criticisms. Accordingly the festival at the Hanover Square Rooms has been succeeded by letters in our own and other Journals, in which the Hindu reformer’s mission and declarations are discussed with all the freedom that can be desired.” Miss Collet took upon herself the task of guarding the reputation of her friend against these free lances of the Press.
In the midst of such unpleasant and vexatious controversies, she however continued her more serious literary work on behalf of the Brahmo Samaj. Her volume of Keshub Chandra Sen’s lectures being well received by the English public she prepared, before the end of the year 1870, another edition of it with the addition of some sermons and prayers. In reviewing this book, the Glasgow Herald (January 12, 1871) announced the preparation of a history of the Brahmo Samaj by Miss Collet. “Miss Collet”, wrote the Glasgow paper, “by whom this volume is edited and who has done much already to acquaint us with Indian Theism, has in preparation a History of the Brahmo Samaj, which we are sure will be looked for with much interest, especially by the readers of Keshub Chandra Sen’s Lectures and Tracts.”
Shortly afterwards, Miss Collet brought out another book under the title of Keshub Chandra Sen’s English Visit. It was a volume of more than six hundred pages filled with reports of various public meetings which Mr. Sen had attended during his English visit and the sermons and addresses delivered by him on those occasions. It was a work involving great labour; and it is surprising how Miss Collet with her infirmities could accomplish it. But for her careful compilation much of these materials would have been lost. In reviewing it, the Spectator (March 25, 1871) wrote: “The indefatigable pen by whose instrumentality mainly Keshub Chandra Sen and his great Theistic movemant in India have been introduced to the literary notice of the English public, has here been employed, chiefly we imagine for the benefit of the great Hindoo Missionary’s native followers, in preparing a tolerably complete record of his English visit, and all the more important receptions and addresses by which it was signalised. This volume will, no doubt, be read with great interest and gratification by those adherents of the Brahmo Samaj,—and they are not few,—who can read English and it will indeed be to them a valuable testimony to the genuine sympathy felt with them in England.”
The interest awakened in England by the visit of Keshub Chandra Sen led to the formation of a committee for rendering aid to the Brahmo Samaj. A meeting was held in London for the purpose on the 21st July, 1871. Miss Collet was one of the leading organisers. The meeting resolved that their “first efforts should be to raise sufficient money for the purchase of an organ for Mr. Sen’s church in Calcutta, and do this at once as a beginning, so that at the great gathering in Calcutta in January 1872 this organ might be played, and so join all voices in one harmony.” The result was the organ which is still in use at the Bharatvarshiya Brahma Mandir in Calcutta.
By this time the Brahmo Samaj was in the full swing of the controversy regarding the Brahmo Marriage Bill. The measure met with the successive opposition of the orthodox Hindus and the members of the Adi Brahmo Samaj. Miss Collet, with her characteristic energy, threw herself on the side of the progressive Brahmos. She advised and encouraged the Indians in England to send up a memorial in support of the Bill, and herself wrote in the newspapers to remove misconceptions. Allen’s Indian Mail, which in those days was an influential journal about Indian questions, remarked thus in one of its issues: “It is evident that the provisions of the Bill must be modified, so as to ensure the older Brahmos perfect freedom to marry in their own way; and the title and preamble of the Bill must be so altered as to leave them no fair ground for complaint.” In reply to this, Miss Collet wrote (September 26, 1871): “If you examine the Bill, you find that it does not in any respect interfere with the freedom of the older Brahmos to marry in their own way. The preamble states:—‘Whereas it is expedient to legalise marriages between the members of the sect called the Brahmo Samaj, when solemnised according to the provisions of this Act &c. thus leaving the question entirely open whether marriages between Brahmos solemnised in other ways require legislation or not.’”
With her usual thoroughness, Miss Collet prepared and published a pamphlet on Brahmo Marriages, their past history and present position indicating the difficulties of the progressive Brahmos. The Spectator thus reviewed the pamphlet: “The author explains very clearly the difference between the old idolatrous marriages and those which the Indian Theists have celebrated and the doubts which have arisen as to the legal validity of the latter. She shows how difficult it was to remedy the mischief without bitterly alarming native public opinion—how any remedy which only required persons anxious to enter into a valid marriage without idolatrous rites, to disclaim adhesion to the orthodox religious systems of India, would have the effect of subverting caste, because not compelling those who made such a disclaimer to regard themselves wholly outcasts from Hindu Society. On the other hand, the proposal to legalise only the marriages of persons who should declare themselves adherents of the Brahmo faith, alarmed the old school of conservative Brahmos, who profess to believe their marriages (though not idolatrous) quite legal, and who fear greatly any wider breach between themselves and Hinduism. On the whole subject Miss Collet passes a very clear judgment and shows herself altogether much more mistress of the question than the writer who not long ago discussed it, not too liberally in the Pall Mall Gazette.” The Indian Mirror (Oct. 26,1871) wrote: “Among the pamphlets we have received by the last mail is one entitled Brahmo Marriages: their past history and present position by Miss S. D Collet. It is gratifying to find that the able author, whose name is quite familiar to our readers, has taken up the most important topic of the day in India and treated it in so exhaustive and convincing a manner as is most likely to influence public opinion in England. The pamphlet exhibits an amount of research which is truly remarkable.” This pamphlet, the narrative portion of which was subsequently embodied by Miss Collet in her Brahmo Year-Book for 1879, remains the clearest and fullest history of that exceedingly interesting episode in the reform movement of modern India viz., emancipation from the tyranny of caste and priesthood in matters of matrimony. It records how, step by step, the present law regulating reform marriages came to be enacted.
Now we pass on to a more elaborate and sustained effort on the part of Miss Collet to present the work and activities of the Brahmo Samaj to the public. This was her compilation of the Brahmo Year-Book which came out year after year for seven years from 1876 to 1882. Considering the fact that the compiler was not herself a member of the community, nor had she any direct personal acquaintance with the churches the minutest details of the work and organisation of which she undertook to chronicle from a distance of many thousand miles, the work must be pronounced a marvellous monument of labour and the power of keeping accurate information. The seven volumes of Miss Collet’s Brahmo Year-Book are together a store-house of information about the Brahmo Samaj during a most important epoch in its history. They include the period of the zenith of Keshub Chandra Sen’s ascendancy in the Brahmo Samaj, immediately preceding the Cooch Behar marriage and the troubled times that followed until the practical conclusion of the disastrous agitation. When Miss Collet commenced the work, she had no idea of the coming catastrophe. Her object in undertaking the compilation has been told in the preface to the first volume: “The Brahmo Samaj or Theistic Church of India is an experiment hitherto unique in religious history. It has been received with warm sympathy by some observers, with suspicion and dislike by others; but very little is generally known of its actual condition or principles beyond what may be gleaned from the speeches and writings of a few of its leaders who have visited England; consequently, the most absurd misapprehensions exist on the subject in many quarters. The object of the present publication is to supply periodically recent and reliable information on the chief representative features of this Church, so interesting alike to the practical Christian and religious philosopher.” It will thus be seen that the main object of Miss Collet was to enlighten the British public about the Brahmo Samaj. But the Brahmo Year-Book must have been not much less illuminating to the Indian reader and even to Brahmos themselves. For, Miss Collet, with a marvellous patience and perseverance, collected and set forth every scrap of information regarding even the smallest Brahmo congregations and institutions scattered throughout the length and breadth of India, the existence of many of which had not been known to Brahmos themselves in other parts of the country, so that Miss Collet’s publications came as a revelation to contemporary Brahmos; and to succeeding generations of Brahmos they will always be a most valuable and interesting record of their church at a very critical epoch. The work must have involved an enormous amount of correspondence and a very careful reading of the periodicals and publications of and about the Brahmo Samaj; and it is a wonder how Miss Collet, with her chronic ill-health, could manage it in the way she did. The arduousness of her labours will be understood from the fact that no one could continue the work after she had been compelled to give it up on account of increasing infirmities, though repeated efforts were made by persons in actual contact with the work of the Brahmo Samaj.
The series begins with the year 1876. The first volume opened with a general introduction giving a brief sketch of the history of the Brahmo Samaj from its foundation and an account of its ideals and existing organisation. Then followed a general survey of the Brahmo Samajes and their work with a complete list of Theistic congregations in India and a detailed account of the more important among them. The next volume was prepared on the same plan, with the addition of an account of Brahmo literature and of new developments in the Samaj. But soon after the publication of the second volume, the Brahmo Samaj was swept over by the whirlwind of the Cooch Behar marriage controversy, and necessarily the greater part of the third volume was occupied with it. The incident proved a great shock to Miss Collet. We have seen with what warm admiration she regarded Keshub Chandra Sen at first and how zealously she defended him against attacks in the press. The change from that feeling must have been most painful. In after life she used to call it her greatest “idol-breaking.” But her interest in the Brahmo Samaj did not diminish with her disappointment in Keshub Chandra Sen. Even in the darkest days of that trouble, she did not lose her faith in the Brahmo Samaj. With the most anxious solicitude she watched the progress of the schism and chronicled it year after year with the utmost scrupulousness and marvellous insight. She did not thrust her own opinion on the readers, but in disputed matters gave the versions of both the parties, leaving the reader to draw his own conclusion. The Brahmo Year-Book for 1878 will remain as the fullest source for the history of the second schism in the Brahmo Samaj.
With the gradual subsidence of the agitation points at issue could be more clearly seen and the resulting situation better understood. Miss Collet did not share the popular European notion that with the break-up of the power of Keshub Chandra Sen the Brahmo Samaj had suffered a total ship-wreck. But she had the insight to see a renewed vitality of the Brahmo Samaj in this momentous struggle for principle. Miss Collet watched with great satisfaction the gradual development of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj. In the preface of the Year-Book for 1880, she writes: “Now it is perfectly clear that the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj have fairly entered upon this constitutional course, and are really acquiring habits of mutual help and combined action which have already accomplished excellent practical results and are in themselves a most wholesome discipline.” She could now look upon the future of her favourite Theistic movement in India with hope and assurance. She quoted with hearty approval the judgment of Count Goblet d’Alveila that the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj “appears to be henceforth unquestionably called to take the direction of the movement which the church of Keshub seems to have lost beyond recall.”
In the volumes for 1880 and 1881 Miss Collet gives detailed accounts of the development of Mr. Sen’s views in his later life leading to the adoption of the name ‘New Dispensation.’ Bhai Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, the Asst. Secretary of the Brahmo Samaj of India, criticised some of the statements in the volume for 1880. To this Miss Collet replied in the volume for 1881; and she substantiated her statements by quotations from the authoritative publications of the Brahmo Samaj. At the same time, where she had been wrong, she frankly admitted and apologised for her misstatements. As a historian, Miss Collet was scrupulously fair and impartial, and her aptitude and passion for collecting facts marvellous. Many Samajes bore testimony to the accuracy of her statements and passed resolutions conveying their gratitude to her for her self-imposed, disinterested labours in compiling the Brahmo Year-Book. It is much to be regretted that she did not write a complete History of the Brahmo Samaj which the Glasgow Herald had announced in 1871 that she had been preparing. The reason for the non-fulfilment of this project was her extreme scrupulousness as a historian. She would not write a single sentence for which she had not unquestionable authority. But though she did not herself write a History of the Brahmo Samaj, it is to her initiative that we owe Pandit Sivanath Sastry’s two volumes on the subject. For, she it was who induced Pandit Sastri during his visit to England to write a complete History of the Brahmo Samaj.
Besides the article in the Contemporary Review already noticed, she published two other pamphlets bearing on the history of the Brahmo Samaj, one in 1871, called An Historical Sketch of the Brahmo Samaj, and the other in 1884 under the heading, Outlines and Episodes of Brahmic History. Not only are they very convenient sketches of the modern Theistic movement in India for the ordinary public unacquainted with the history of the Brahmo Samaj, but even many Brahmos will find in them many incidents and episodes to interest them in the history of their church, not known to them before.
Now we turn to the last but not the least of Miss Collet’s manifold services to the Brahmo Samaj—her Life of the Founder. Rammohun Roy died in 1833. Nearly fifty years passed away but no adequate biography of the great religious reformer of modern India was written. In 1866, just on the eve of her visit to India, Miss Mary Carpenter published a small volume, entitled The Last Days in England of the Rajah Rammohun Roy but it was not a complete biography. The necessity of compiling such a biography was suggested at the second of the memorial meetings organised by the endeavours of the newly constituted Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in January 1880. In 1881, the late Nagendranath Chatterjee brought out a Life of Rammohun Roy in Bengali. It was a comparatively small volume. In the subsequent editions, however, the author greatly enlarged it, in which task he was largely indebted to the researches of Miss Collet. But as yet there was nothing which could be given to the non-Bengali reader. How early Miss Collet conceived the idea of writing a Life of the Raja cannot now be definitely ascertained, but from her ardent admiration for Rammohun it would seem that she had had the work long in view. In the Brahmo Year-Book for 1882, while reviewing the Bengali Life of the Raja by Nagendranath Chatterjee, she wrote: “The author has kindly granted me permission to make use of it in the biography of the Raja which I hope soon to compile.” But the book was not quite ready even at the time of her death, which took place on the 27th March, 1894. The long delay is another proof of her scrupulous desire to be thorough and accurate as a historian. Mr. N. Gupta, perhaps the last Indian gentleman to whom she could speak, writes to me to say that on her death-bed she told him “her only regret was that she could not finish the Life of Rammohun, though she had neglected her own affairs for the purpose.” But she would not allow the work to appear before the public until she should have satisfied herself that all available sources had been consulted. For twelve long years she worked incessantly, and devoted to this work every moment that she could snatch in the midst of her failing health. To verify one date she would work six months. With what conscientious scrupulousness she used to write, will be abundantly clear from the published fruit of her labours. She consulted every available authority in England and in India. She never rested satisfied with second hand information, but always tried to get at the original sources. Her Life of Rammohun Roy is an ideal of conscientious biography. Thoroughness, passion for perfection, was the most prominent feature of Miss Collet’s character. We may, in this connection, transcribe the following interesting confessions of Miss Collet, kindly supplied by one of her nieces as having been written by Miss Collet when it was the fashion to get one’s friends to write their confessions in one’s album:
“Your favourite virtue—Thoroughness. Your favourite qualities in man—Faithfulness to a noble ideal, blended with sense and spiced with humour. Your favourite qualities in woman—Sweetness and sense, bracketed equal, with conscience to take care of them. Your favourite occupation—Writing theology. Your chief characteristic—Enthusiasm streaked with cowardice. Your idea of happiness—Listening to perfect music perfectly executed. Your idea of misery—Tooth-ache in the middle of the night. Your favourite colour and flower—Blue. White garden lily. If not yourself, who would you be?—An accomplished M. A. Oxon, just beginning active life. Where would you like to live?—In the suburbs of London. Your favourite prose authors—R. H. Hutton, F. W. Newman, Emerson, Colonel Higginson. Your favourite poets—Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Whittier, Lowell. Your favourite painters and composers—Raphael, Guido, Handel, Mendelssohn, Miss Flower. Your favourite heroes in real life—St. Augustine, Mendelssohn, Mr. Gladstone, Keshub C. Sen. Your favourite heroines in real life—Vivia Perpetua and Mrs. Adams. Your pet aversions—Hypocrisy and overbearingness. What character in history do you most dislike?—John Calvin. What is your present state of mind?—Tranquil satisfaction. Your favourite motto—“Open to the light.” November 27, 1876—(Signed) Sophy Dobson Collet.
A word or two about Miss Collet’s religious views will perhaps be looked for here. From her enthusiasm for the Brahmo Samaj one is likely to conclude that she was a pure theist; but that impression would not be correct. Miss Collet was, as we have seen, born in a Unitarian family. But her religious views underwent many changes. She had passed through many interesting phases of religious experience. When she had passed out of her inherited Unitarian convictions, she was for some time a sceptic. Subsequently she came under the influence of the late Mr. R. H. Hutton, the editor of the Spectator, who had been in his earlier life trained for the Unitarian ministry. With Mr. Hutton she approached, if not actually joined, the Church of England, though of course she was always very broad and liberal. She has left an autobiographical sketch describing the successive phases of her religious experience. Unfortunately, however, it has not been published.
The object of this brief sketch would not be fulfilled without a grateful acknowledgment of Miss Collet’s warm reception of, and valuable help to, successive batches of Indians who went to England from the time of the visit of Keshub Chandra Sen and Ananda Mohan Bose down to the date of her death. Brahmo gentlemen in London found in her a most kind friend and will-wisher, ever ready to assist them with sound advice and guidance. How cordial was that relation and how valuable her help will be understood from the following letter written to Miss Collet by the late Mr. Ananda Mohan Bose, when leaving England at the end of his four years’ stay. He wrote from the S. S. Hindustan: “I sit down to send a few lines bearing my love and kindest remembrances to you. How sorry I felt at the shortness of our parting interview, when I had had to tear myself away for another engagement, and at my inability to see you again, as I had some faint hopes of doing! * * * But however short the time I could see you at the last, amongst the pleasantest of all the memories I carry with me of the years I have spent in England will be the thought of the happiness and pleasure I have derived from your acquaintance and friendship. A recollection of this will ever be engraved in my heart, and often and often I shall look back with regretful joy on those days when I have been with you, and derived a strengthening and cheering influence from your example and words.” Miss Collet kept up regular correspondence with many Brahmo friends. Though not in complete agreement with the Brahmo Samaj in theology, she had completely identified herself with it in interest. The Brahmo Samaj was uppermost in her heart and mind. The Brahmos felt her to be one of themselves. She used to write in Bengali very affectionately to many Brahmo ladies whom she had never seen. The Brahmo Samaj never had a warmer friend and more sincere well-wisher. Miss Collet’s memory should be cherished with the kindest regard by successive generations of Brahmos for the many and valuable services she rendered to their cause.