<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  Alers Hankey > Miss Maria Alers > William Alers > John Alers > Robert Alers

Navigation: Alers Hankey > Miss Alers > William Alers > John Alers >

Fifth son of John Alers Hankey and his wife Sarah Andrews nee Jameson, Robert was born on 11 Aug 1838. He was educated at Rottingdean and Rugby and, after two years spent abroad learning French and German, had gone up to Trinity College, Cambridge, with the firm idea of taking Holy Orders.

Robert was a decidedly attractive fellow at this time, though taking himself very seriously, as behoved the family traditions and his future profession. Slight, if only of medium height, fresh-coloured with dark curly hair, he had very beautiful blue eyes, rather quizzical in expression, deep-set under straight black eye-brows. He had excellent brains and was by no means lacking in self-confidence, and a certain whimsical humour made him good company, and very popular among his many friends at college.

Mrs Robert Alers Hankey

 

Robert Alers Hankey

 

His young sisters, to whom he had administered dolls and consolation in their school days as well as much good advice both then and later, did not take him as seriously as he would have liked. They called him ‘Bob’ and sometimes even ‘Parson Bob’, though since he had been at Cambridge he preferred ‘Robert’. They were however devoted to him and enjoyed the company of his many friends. Unfortunately Robert had inherited, besides something of her magnetic attraction, his mother’s delicate constitution. He had a not very sound heart and other weaknesses. Later he was, like her, to become a victim of nervous fears and apprehensions. The climate of Cambridge never suited him and his time there was much broken by ill-health. He always said afterwards that he would never have got through it all if it had not been for riding. Even during his examination for his degree he describes how after long days in the Senate House he jumped on Peggy, his horse, and rode out into the country. He passed his exam with plenty to spare, though he evidently had to go up for it without the preparation he would have liked. Robert retained a great interest in theology all his life, but the result of Cambridge seems to have been to decide him against orders.

In 1863 Robert sailed to Australia, partly on account of his health and partly with the idea that he should take up land there. His father bought him a sheep run at Warcowie, 300 miles from Adelaide in South Australia, and here Robert set himself up as a sheep farmer (1863-73).

Soon after arriving in Australia, Robert fell in love with Helen Bakewell (1845-1900). Helen came of a Scottish family which had emigrated to Australia in the very early days of colonisation. William Bakewell, her father, was a member, and later head of Bakewell, Stone and Piper of Adelaide, one of the largest firms of lawyers in South Australia, which still exists.

The couple returned to England and were married on 16 Mar 1865 at St Mary Abbot’s, Kensington. They had four surviving sons and two daughters, the first three children being born at Warcowie:

 

 

Returning to Australia to resume his arduous and risky enterprise as a sheep farmer, Robert seems to have shown originality and enterprise. For example Maurice Hankey recorded, presumably from his father’s reminiscences, that he was one of the first Australian farmers to fence his land into paddocks for grazing purposes. None the less the disastrous experience of several droughts brought him near to ruin, and after ten years’ strenuous work he was somewhat disabled by a bad carriage accident, and his health broke down.

 

Robert and his family returned to England in 1874. He retained ownership of some land near Adelaide to which he intended to go back; but he never did so. According to Maurice he came out of his Australian venture “rather more than all square”.

 

 

Rupert AH at grave of Hugh AH, 2002

 

Robert and Helen settled in Brighton, where Robert’s elder brother John also lived for a time. They lived firstly at 27 Eaton Place and then at 1 Chesham Place; the family home at East Cliff was ‘stucco-fronted, with four stories and a basement ... high, respectable, ugly, and rather inconvenient, with many stairs, two or three big rooms, a lot of small ones, and no bathroom’. As he got older Robert’s habits became increasingly idiosyncratic and his hypochondria more pronounced, and because of his delicate health the Hankeys usually wintered abroad. Fortunately for the children Helen was a remarkable woman, and coped most capably with her trying husband. Maurice later described her as ‘saintly but humorous; charming but serious. She had a great deal of Scotch blood which came out prominently in her tough fibre.’

Robert always failed to understand his children or to be understood by them, and ‘lived the life of a recluse, seldom meeting any friends, and having all his meals alone. By nature he was a courteous and sociable person, gentle in manner, interested in people, well read, especially in theology, and broad-mindedly but profoundly religious. He was cursed, however, with excessive diffidence and caution ... He always feared the worst’. Maurice Hankey remembered his father ‘as a very serious, studious and deeply religious man. His intellectual gifts were by no means negligible. His favourite reading was sermons, philosophy and history, and at his death he left a large library of theological works.’

On 17 Feb 1900 Hugh was killed at the Battle of Paardeberg, and the shock to his mother, already feeble in health, undoubtedly accelerated her death, which occurred with tragic suddenness on 9 Sep 1900 at the end of a stay in Wales. Robert died at Brighton on 28 Dec 1905, aged 67, leaving an estate of £76,000.