THE BUILDER JUNE 1915

ROBERT FREKE GOULD
SOLDIER, BARRISTER, FREEMASON
IN MEMORIAM


(Editor of The Builder:--With deep regret I have to announce the
death on March 26th, of our veteran Brother Robert Freke Gould. As
a reliable Masonic historian he occupied a high place in the
affection and esteem of all Masonic students. His works remain with
us as Masonic classics for all time. His influence in Masonic
literature was incalculable and will never die. Fraternally yours,
John T. Thorp, Lodge of Research, Leicester, England.)

MAN AND MASON
By John C. Yorston
Philadelphia

THE sad news of the death of this renowned, honorable and worthy
brother, of International fame, will be received by the Craft at
large with more than ordinary regret. He died at his residence,
Kingsfield Green, Woking, England, March 26th, at the age of 78
years. How much we may regret his decease is not a subject for
words, for in him was recognized the closest and most considerate
of friends, one who knew the difficulties of authorship and
journalism, and was ever ready to help and take pleasure in doing
so, and also to make allowances where many would have showered
unjust criticism.

The great loss to Masonry will be acknowledged wherever the Masonic
symbol is known and recognized, for, although an English author,
his Masonic works have been translated into several European
languages, and his shorter writings and studies have been
translated into many more tongues, and read throughout the World.

His first published work on Freemasonry, entitled "The First Four
Old Lodges," was succeeded by "The Athol Lodges," but the work
which has secured for him his position and lasting fame as a
Masonic Author, is his complete and exhaustive work of research,
"The History of Freemasonry," a magnum opus. For years it has held,
and still holds, the field, and is recognized as the only work of
authority and the most reliable one on the history of the Craft,
yielding to him the honor of being the greatest Masonic Historian
the World has yet produced.

He also published a smaller work, "The Concise History of
Freemasonry," summarized without much detail. Many of his
contributions to the Transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge are
works of skill, erudition, and patient research. Many of these are
out of print, but the best of them, together with articles from
various Masonic journals, are reprinted in a volume entitled
"Brother Gould's Collected Essays and Papers," published in 1913.

Bro. Gould's contributions to Masonic literature are not numerous.
Many writers have given us more in quantity of matter and number of
volumes, but none have achieved so much success in face of so many
difficulties. He began his work when all matters of Masonic history
were hopelessly mixed. All kinds of false traditions hovered around
the name of Freemasonry, and countless rites and sects claimed
association with the Order. His work consisted in clearing the way
and breaking down barriers. He truly laid the tracks upon which his
successors found it easy to travel. His standard was high, both as
to literary accomplishment and to statement of fact. Guesswork and
imagination had no part or lot in his researches. The truth was
supreme, and all that possessed not its hall-mark was rejected or
laid aside for further evidence. The work he accomplished will
remain for many generations as a monument to his love of the Craft
and his genius as a painstaking and truthful historian.

It might truly be said that his life was made up of the mystic
number Three--for he was essentially a Soldier, Barrister and
Freemason. These three separate characteristics were the
predominant factors of his most useful life, and though he had for
many years ceased activity as a Barrister, and took only a passing
interest in military matters after his retirement from the Army, he
devoted the rest of his life with a burning zeal and constant
activity with his pen in behalf of Freemasonry until a short time
before his death. His final letter, dated 22nd February, showed a
mental and literary activity of the keenest nature, and introduced
references to friendships in England, Gibraltar, and America.

Bro. Gould was a son of the Rev. Robert Freke Gould, Rector of
Stoke Pearo, Somerset, and was born at Ilfracombe, Devon, England,
in 1836. At the age of nineteen he entered the Army as Ensign in
the 86th Royal County Down Regiment of Foort, and later in the same
year was initiated in the Royal Naval Lodge, No. 429, Ramsgate, and
also received his commission as a Lieutenant, and was transferred
to the 31st Regiment. In the following year his Regiment was
ordered to Malta, where he was exalted in the Melita Chapter, No.
349, and also installed a Knight Templar in the Melita Encampment.
In 1858 he found himself at Gibraltar, where he was installed
Master of the Inhabitants' Lodge, No. 153, E. C. The Lodge roll for
the present year shows him as the senior living Past Master at the
time of its issue, and designates him an honorary member.

His year in the chair was interrupted by a removal to the Cape of
Good Hope, and later in the same year to India. Here he became
Founder and first Master of the Meridian Lodge, No. 743, of the 1st
East Surrey Regiment, then stationed at Poona. In 1860 he took
command of a Company at Sinho, in the North China Campaign, and
took part in the action at that place, and in the storming of
Tangku. For the taking of the latter forts he received a medal and
clasp. In 1862 he served on the staff of General Staveley in
subduing the Taeping Rebellion. The operations in the district of
Shanghai resulted in the taking of the stockade of Nanhsiang, the
capture by escalade of the walled cities of Kadin, Tsinpoo, Tsolin,
and the fortified town of Najow, and the success of the operations
at Nanhsiang. Afterwards he was appointed by General Stavele to
drill, discipline, and organize a battalion of Manchu soldiers at
Tien Tsin. Continuing his stay in China, he was elected Master of
the Northern China Lodge, No. 570, Shanghai, in 1864, and in the
following year was installed First Principal of the Zion Chapter,
No. 570, and was a founder of the Tuscan Lodge, No. 1027, in the
same city.

His departure from China would appear to have terminated his
military career, for in 1870 we find him settled at Russell Square,
London, in close proximity to the law centers of the Metropolis.
This center was most favorable for the continuance of his legal
work and for paying frequent visits to the Grand Lodge Library and
to the British Museum. It was these later visits which enabled him
to lay the foundation upon which so much valuable material was
afterwards to be erected in the way of contributions to the
literature of Freemasonry. What Bro. Gould himself described as the
"distractions" of these two Libraries caused him to suspend his
legal studies, and in 1877, he went on Circuit (the Western) for
the last time, and a few years afterwards gave up his chambers in
the Temple, and thus ceased to be even a nominal practitioner at
the Bar.

Having thus closed his activities as Soldier and Barrister, his
whole time was available for his chief "recreation"--Freemasonry.
In 1875 he was installed Master of the Moira Lodge, No. 92, London,
and was re-elected for the following year, being also installed
First Principal of the Moira Chapter. In 1875 he also served as a
Grand Steward, and in that capacity took part in the installation
of the Prince of Wales as Grand Master of England at the Royal
Albert Hall, which is described by himself in 1911 as "the most
remarkable spectacle I have ever witnessed during the half-century
and more that I have been a Freemason."

Having served for several terms on the Board of General Purposes of
Grand Lodge, and on the Colonial Committee, it was generally hoped
by his friends that his services would secure him the coveted honor
of Grand Rank. This, however, was not realized until 1880, when he
was invested as one of the two Senior Grand Deacons. It may be as
well to state here that this honor was not awarded for his literary
services, for the first volume of his "History of Freemasonry was
not published until two years later. This fact also emphasizes the
neglect of the Grand Lodge of England to reward the literary
efforts of its members; for although Bro. Gould's monumental work
was known and appreciated all the world over, Grand Lodge failed to
recognize the merits of the author until December 1913, when, in
honor of the Centenary of the Union of the Grand Lodges of England,
he was made a Past Grand Warden.

The researches into Masonic archaeology and history on the part of
a small circle of Brethren at this time entailed considerable
correspondence by those who were exchanging ideas and discoveries,
and the question of founding a special lodge for Brethren
interested in research was mooted. After a few preliminary
difficulties the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No. 2076, was consecrated
in 1884, and the desire for the literature of the Craft was at once
given a great stimulus, for those who were associated in the work
of this Lodge were keen upon their task, and in a very short time
gave the Craft a literature which has never been surpassed. In this
work Bro. Gould was a leading spirit and became a Founder of the
Lodge. In 1887 he was installed Master, an honor which is the
coveted "blue-ribbon of Masonry" amongst literary members of the
Craft. In 1901 the "Inhabitants" Lodge, at Gibraltar, having become
too large, a sister Lodge was formed, and in honor of Bro. Gould,
who had been the first Master at the resuscitation in 1858, the new
Lodge was named the Robt. Freke Gould Lodge, No. 2874.

Bro. Gould's associations with other Lodges may be briefly touched
upon. Founder of the King Solomon's Temple Lodge, No. 3464, of
which he was the first Master. Joining member of the Royal Lodge of
Friendship, No. 278, Gibraltar; St. Andrew's in the East, No. 343,
S.C., Poona; Orion in the West, No. 415, Poona; Royal Sussex Lodge
No. 501, Shanghai; and several Royal Arch Chapters. His literary
services to the Craft have been recognized by several Grand Lodges
in his election to honorary membership with rank of Past Grand
Warden, including Iowa, Ohio, District of Columbia, Kansas, South
Dakota, British Columbia, and New Zealand.
* * *

OUR THUCYDIDES
By Prof. Roscoe Pound
Harvard University.

If James Anderson has a prescriptive right to be styled the father
of Masonic history, Robert Freke Gould has a much better title upon
the merits to be styled its second father. Indeed Anderson owes his
position in Masonic history simply to the accident of time and
place which makes him our only authority for the most interesting
period in the history of the Craft. Brother Gould, on the other
hand, taught us how to write Masonic history and founded a school
of Masonic historians which has put the history of the Craft upon
a modern and scientific basis where it may take its place with the
history of other human institutions.

Prior to the writings of Brother Gould the profane might well smile
when it was said that Masonic history was to some extent a subject
by itself and that it must have its own methods and its own
standards. For unhappily it was formerly but too true that Masonic
history was wholly unique among branches of knowledge that went by
the name of history and that it had methods and standards not
tolerated, much less admitted, anywhere else. Even in the
eighteenth century, when men were willing to believe much of
antiquity which they would not have believed of their own day,
when, for example, the legendary history of the Roman kings remain
unquestioned, solemn narratives that made every great personage
from Adam to Solomon a Mason in the modern sense, that made
Nebuchadnezzer and Caesar Augustus Grand Masters of the Craft, that
brought Masonry into Britain with a Trojan king, and into Ireland
with the prophet Jeremiah, ought to have been impossible. What
shall we say then of enlightened men and learned Masons who
repeated and affected to believe them in the nineteenth century and
of the pomp and circumstance of Masonic oratory which rehearses
them or their like today? Such things as Oliver's "Five grand
periods of Masonry from the creation of the world to the dedication
of King Solomon's temple" have not been merely harmless. Dr. Oliver
was an antiquary of high and deserved reputation. Moreover, he was
one of the few really great Masonic scholars of the nineteenth
century. It is no exaggeration in Mackey to style him "the father
of Anglo-Saxon Masonic literature. His generous enthusiasm,
undoubted archeological learning and wide reading enabled him to
give to English Masonic writings a literary and philosophical turn
that might have done much toward creating a scholarly interest in
Masonry. But when such a man was found setting forth soberly in
print that Masonry (presumably such as we know it) was to be found
from the beginnings of history, that it was taught by Seth to his
descendants and was in their hands pure or primitive Masonry, that
with the dispersion of mankind after Noah it divided into pure
Masonry and spurious Masonry, that the former passed through the
patriarchs to Solomon and thence to the Masonry of today, while the
latter, a corruption in the hands of the pagans, was to be seen in
the mysteries and initiatory rites of antiquity--when this sort of
history could be set forth gravely by one of the lights of Masonic
scholarship two results were to be expected. One, the rank and file
of the Craft accepted it and no speculation of the sort became too
wild for Masonic post-prandial and grand lodge oratory. Two, the
scholar within and without the Craft was led to think that if this
was all that such a man as Oliver could say there was in reality
nothing to say. Hence scholars within the Craft turned to
philosophy and symbolism. But these suffered from lack of proper
historical foundation. Those without the Craft simply laughed to
the injury of all serious Masonic study. If the proposition that
Masonic history is in some sort a subject by itself, that from the
nature of the subject it has its own methods and its own criteria
meant or threatened any recrudescence of this pseudo-history among
Masonic scholars, it should be rejected at once.

It was a service of the first magnitude when Brother Gould, the
undoubted leader of modern Masonic historians, took for his guide
a standard more strict than the principles by which historians
without the Craft were guided in their search for the truth. Since
his great work in which the most rigorous tests were applied to
every hypothesis, to every tradition, and to every assertion of
fact, no one who makes any pretensions to scholarship would think
of return to what a profane critic justly styled "the sprightly and
vivacious accounts of the . . . Masonic annalists who display in
their histories a haughty independence of facts and make up for the
scarcity of facts by a surprising fecundity of invention." A great
clearing away was necessary in order to put Masonic history upon a
proper foundation. This clearing away Brother Gould achieved almost
at one stroke. If we may think today that the circumstances of
Masonic history call for less rigorous criteria in some
connections, we are enabled to say so confidently because he has
established the subject in a position where one may proclaim
himself a Masonic historian without shame. If James Anderson in
some sense is the Herodotus of Masonic history, Brother Gould is
emphatically our Thucydides. It is not merely that he has written
what is likely to remain the standard history of Masonry. Much more
than that, he has taught us how to write Masonic history. For this
service to the Craft, if there were nothing else, he would always
have to be reckoned among the very first of our scholars.

LOGICIAN AND CRITIC
By R. J. Lemert
Montana

It is with the deepest sorrow and regret that I learn of the death
of Brother Robert F. Gould. Thus passes, after a long and useful
life, one who has in his own chosen field done more toward setting
the history of Freemasonry upon a solid basis than any other man
who has ever lived. So long as our institution shall endure--and
that, I feel assured, will be until mankind shall have reached a
state of perfection inconceivable at the present (May--the name of
Brother Gould will live, and his writings will constitute for him
a monument more lasting than can be built above his grave in stone
or brick.

Brother Gould's writings are essentially those of the practical
man, the logician, the severe critic of mere theory. Some of us may
have been at times a trifle impatient of his ruthless demolition of
our dream palaces; some of us may not, even today, be content to
accept his dicta as to certain mooted questions which he dismisses
as not proven, and therefore not to be taken seriously; but those
matters of history upon which Brother Gould has set the seal of his
approval may be accepted with assurance by all who write upon the
subject of the Craft, as sure foundations upon which to build. His
Concise History, as well as his more pretentious work, published in
this country in four volumes, are the constant companions of those
who write upon Masonic topics, and the more they are studied, the
more they reveal the amazing industry and erudition of him who has
now penned his last line.

He was one of the nine earnest students and lovers of Freemasonry
who founded Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No. 2076--a nucleus about which
has gathered a great student body of more than three thousand
members. Of these nine founders, five have now passed behind the
veil--the Rev. Adolphus F.A. Woodford, G. Speth, Sir Walter Besant,
William J. Hughan, and now him whom all of these acknowledged as
the greatest of them all. The work they set their hands to do, they
did well; and we may be assured that when they stand before the
Great White Throne, it shall be their lot to hear from Him who
sitteth as the Judge Supreme the welcome words, "Well done, good
and faithful servants; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

THE PYTHAGORAS OF OUR TIMES
By R. I. Clegg
Cleveland, Ohio
Bro. Gould's death is a grievous loss to me and doubtless to many
others who were favored by correspondence. He never lost his keen
interest. His industry failed not. Years passed, age crept upon
him, the seasons ran their cycles, but he kept his poise, preserved
his faith, and has now gone on to his reward. To have established
a high standard of Masonic research and to have bestowed a noble
example of such work is to have left at the portals of the Temple
two great pillars to adorn and support the structure. That
distinction was his. No greater monument is in store for any Mason
however eminent he be. In the death of Robert Freke Gould there
passes an accurate author, a painstaking student, a scholar of
excellence, a courtly controversialist, the Pythagoras of our times
among Masons.

