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Sir Robert Stout

The following tribute was paid to the late Sir Robert Stout by Professor J. Rankine Brown, at a memorial service held at Victoria College:—

"There is a traditional practice in the ancient Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in accordance with which the University Preacher, before delivering his sermon upon what is called "Bidding Prayer," in which after commemorating the various benefactors of the University, he goes on to make mention of the benefactors—and in particular the founders of his own College. Sir Robert Stout was not the founder of Victoria University College in the sense in which Bishop Kennedy founded St. Salvator's College in the University of St. Andrews in the early part of the fifteenth century, or Sir Thomas Cook founded Worcester College in the University of Oxford in the early part of the eighteenth (to mention two men whose names I should have to mention if I were offering up a 'Bidding Prayer') by the gift of money or lands or property—but as members of Victoria College it is our duty to revere his memory as being in a very true sense the founder of the College. It was Sir Robert Stout who, in 1894, was instrumental in passing through the Houses of Parliament a Bill establishing "in the City of Wellington a college to be connected with the University of New Zealand.' As this was a private Bill, and the Government of the day was not willing to make the necessary financial provision for the establishment of the college, the proposal carried by Sir Robert was inoperative, until advantage was taken of the Jubilee of Queen Victoria, in 1887, to introduce a second Bill on the same lines as that passed in 1894—but with sufficient financial provision to enable the College to be started in 1899. On the Council of this College, of which he had conceived the idea and to the establishing of which he had persuaded Parliament four years before—Sir Robert was an original member. He was Chairman of the Council in 1900, 1901 and 1905, and was an active member of the Council until he resigned his seat in 1923. He also represented the College Council on the University Senate for many years, and though no longer a member of the Council, was one of its representatives on the Senate until his death. We therefore owe a deep debt of gratitude to Sir Robert, not only as the initiator of the College, but as one who took a deep interest in its management, as long as his strength allowed him to do so.

But his interest in the College did not cease with the termination of his membership of the Council. Always a great reader and lover of books, he was well aware of the necessity of the provision of an adequate library for the use of the students and their teachers. He has made gifts to the library from his own extensive collection of books at various times, and in recent years, in particular, in addition to a large number of works of a general character, he presented to the College library a most valuable collection of pamphlets connected with the early history of New Zealand—on of those possessions that become more valuable and indispensable as time goes on, for such things are not reprinted and soon become unprocurable.

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Sir Robert has never been a rich man, and has always had many demands upon his official income, but in commemoration of his golden wedding he presented to the College a sum sufficient to produce a Scholarship of £20, to be awarded to the best student of the year, whilst at the same time, and for the same reason, Lady Stout established the 'Lady Stout Bursary' for woman students. The fact that Sir Robert and Lady Stout had Victoria College in their minds when devising some suitable means of commemorating one of the most interesting events in their married life shows how near this College always was to the heart of its founder.

This bare recital of Sir Robert Stout's services to Victoria University College is in itself sufficient reason for our honouring his name with grateful reverence, and certainly justifies our meeting here this morning.

But we owe him, for other reasons, an even greater debt of gratitude—a debt which is shared by all those who regard education as one of the noblest aspirations of humanity. Sir Robert Stout was a many-sided man—a man of the most varied activities and interests. He was a most successful pleader at the Bar, a dignified and respected Chief Justice, a keen politician, a humanitarian, with his heart always open to the appeals of the distressed, but the whole tenor of his life appears to show that his first love was his last, and that as in his early years in Otago he began as a teacher, so he continued to the end to devote the best part of his energies to the furtherance of the cause of education, and particularly University education. I had the privilege of sitting on the University Senate with Sir Robert for many years—indeed, if not the oldest in point of years of the present members of the Senate, I am next to the present Chancellor, Professor Macmillan Brown, the oldest in point of standing. As a rule Sir Robert and I were on different sides, but there was never any question of his honesty of purpose, his real desire to further the interests of the University, and his desire to spread the benefits of University education as widely as possible throughout the Dominion. He was always a keen debater, and a hard hitter, but he bore no malice, and difference of opinion never interfered with the amenities of social life.

Sir Robert Stout accomplished a great deal in the course of his long and industrious career, and few men in New Zealand, I believe, have done so much. If not actually in the forefront of the battle, he was always in the support of all movements for the ameliorating of the lives of his fellow citizens. But however much he did succeed in achieving, and however much he may have attempted without success, I believe that, like some other men—not a very great number, perhaps—the man was greater even than his work. His successful life may well serve as an example to the students of this and other colleges, for, starting with no initial advantages, save that of a good education in a town school in one of the most outlying portions of Great Britain, a good brain and a good physique, he rose in this distant part of the Empire, where he landed in the year 1864, before the end of the century to the position of Chief Justice—next to the Governor-General the most honourable position in the Dominion. He is an instance of the truth of a saying attributed to the great Napoleon, that every soldier carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack.

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But what is more commendable in Sir Robert Stout is not his success, but the fact that along with his advancement he retained, or it may be developed, a nature of surpassing sweetness. He was essentially a modest and unpretentious man—absolutely pure-minded, with an abhorrence of the low, the mean, the trivial; he was intellectually honest and really believed in the views he advocated; all his life he was a seeker of the Truth, a true follower of Plato, in that he was always prepared to follow wherever the argument might lead; he was, I believe, a very generous man, with an ear perhaps, if anything, too open to the cry of distress, but none of this generosity was sounded from the house-tops; he was a great family man, devoted to his wife and proud of the achievements of his children; his unremitting industry and devotion to duty ought; to be a lesson to us all; even his refusal to yield at any time to those pardonable indulgences to which less strong-minded people succumb, did not bring with it any harshness and stern rigidity, but was accompanied by an appreciation of humour, a hearty laugh, a love of manly sport, and a genial bonhommie which made him a delightful companion and conversationalist.

"'It is not in mortals to command success,' nor is it possible 'to mould the world to our hearts' desire,' but I take it that the mind is more tractable than matter and external circumsances, and it will be well for us if we take some of those mental and spiritual characteristics which have won for Sir Robert Stout the universal esteem of his fellow citizens and endeavour to make them our own. It is of good augury for the future destiny of Victoria College that its conception, its birth and its early years were associated with the noble and honest man whose death we are commemorating in the present simple but heartfelt manner."

Other speakers at the service were Mr. P. Levi, Chairman of the Victoria College Council, who had been associated with Sir Robert for fifty-five years, and Mr. W. P. Rollings, President of the Victoria College Students' Association. Both these paid tributes to the long-continued interest taken by Sir Robert in our Instituion.