LAST YEARS ON THE SURVEY
1878-1882
The spring of 1878 saw James Geikie engaged in active correspondence
with Prof. Ramsay in regard to their joint paper on the Gibraltar work,
and also occupied, in his own words, in fighting with wild beasts at
Ephesus and elsewhere, that is to say, in sundry controversies over
glacial matters.
His happiness at home was clouded by the severe illness of his little
son. In his letters he speaks of being knocked up with night-nursing,
for he walked up and down the greater part of the night with the child
in his arms during the most anxious period. Happily the baby made a
good recovery, and in a letter to Mr Horne towards the end of the year
he says:--“‘The boy’ is hale and flourishing, and a great amusement in
the evenings when I come home. I prefer his company even to that of a
pipe! Excuse the ‘eavy fawther.’” He was very fond of children at all
times, and his own were a source of great joy to him.
In summer he went back to the Cheviot region for a couple of months to
finish off his work there, and revisited Buchtrig. It was during this
visit that he met Sir George Douglas (_cf._ p. 67). In August he went
abroad with his wife and her sister, the baby, now quite recovered,
being left with his grandmother. The tour was _via_ the Rhine to
Switzerland, and then across the St Gothard by carriage into Italy.
Some interesting letters to the home people record the experiences met
with, but as the ground covered is very well known they need not be
quoted here. During the course of the tour some geological observations
were made bearing on points treated in _Prehistoric Europe_, which was
being written during this year.
Signs of overwork and some worry were, however, observable as the year
went on. In an undated letter to Mr Horne he complains of not feeling
good for much:--“I was busy at a new book, but being in the blues now
for some time, the MS. lies aside, and I sometimes wonder whether I
shall ever finish it. I thought my trip abroad would have cleared up my
faculties, but no such luck!”
Among his causes for anxiety were his own future and that of the
Survey. Prof. Ramsay’s health was breaking down, a fact which grieved
James Geikie very much, and the possibility that difficult days for the
Survey and its members were coming loomed ahead. In an unwonted fit of
melancholy he says in the same letter:--“It makes one sad to think that
the ‘brave days of old’ are all passing or past away. One gets sick of
the strife and din and wishes for peace and rest, which, however, will
only come when one shuts his eyes for the last time.” He found also
that his distance from a good library was a great drawback in his work.
The letter, with all its sadness, speaks of the pleasure which he found
in the company of the “small chick,” who seems to have had a potent
charm wherewith to dispel his father’s clouds of gloom.
Among the letters of the spring of 1879 are several to Mr Lamplugh,
now of the Geological Survey. In regard to these Mr Lamplugh says:--“I
do not know that they contain anything that is now of sufficient
consequence to warrant their reproduction. But they illustrate very
well the kindly attention and trouble that the late Prof. Geikie was
always ready to give to a beginner in science. I was under twenty years
of age when the first of these letters came to me, and I have kept them
as treasures from those days.”
The letters in their friendliness and unaffectedness bear out this
description, and some other letters of the same period show that
while the writer was never deaf to the appeal of a common interest
in the progress of knowledge, when to this was added the stronger
appeal of friendship, he gave himself whole-heartedly. His friends
Messrs Peach and Horne had written a paper on “The Glaciation of the
Shetland Islands” for the Geological Society of London, and in this
James Geikie took the keenest interest, giving advice freely both on
the method of presenting the contents, and on the technical points
connected with the effort to obtain for the paper a fair hearing and
speedy publication. A hitch in the matter of publication brings from
him a letter full of genuine and practical sympathy, combined with a
whole-hearted espousal of his friends’ cause.
During this spring also he was still engaged, with varying fortunes,
upon his _Prehistoric Europe_, a task of great magnitude on account of
the enormous number of references and the labour which these involved.
Thus a letter written early in March represents, as it were, the trough
of the wave--he tires of the book at intervals, thinking it will never
do, and throws it aside in a “kind o’ scunner.” Another letter at the
end of May shows him on the crest of a new wave of enthusiasm. He had
just received many new pamphlets from “furrin’ parts,” mostly inspired
by his own glacial work, often accompanied by letters from the authors.
Thus he says:--
Dr A. Penck of Leipzig writes to the effect that it was the reading
of _Great Ice Age_ that first opened his eyes to the meaning of the
Diluvium of Northern Germany. He says he has got evidence of three
glaciations with intervening glacial deposits! He says he has all the
burning enthusiasm of a convert! His letter has greatly gratified me,
of course. I see he is an old hand and has done a lot of geological
work. Then I have a long letter from a Dr R. Lehmann of Halle, who is
also congratulatory at the success with which the German Drifts have
recently been explained on the principles laid down in my book!! Also,
some duffers have sent me their photographs! I wonder what has so
suddenly wakened them up. Helland has a long and interesting paper on
the German Drift which I suppose you will see: also a batch of papers
on same subject from Prof. Berendt of Berlin. I don’t know how I am
to get through all the Swedish and Norwegian papers I have received.
They are so hard to read.
A postscript to this letter says:--“Pray excuse the exulting egotism of
this epistle. I would not write so to anyone else.”
But while glacial work was thus occupying most of his attention,
lighter subjects were not altogether forgotten. In another letter to Mr
Horne, written on Good Friday, he says:--
In a few days I am going to ask you to do me a favour, which is to
run your eye over some MS. I shall send you. You need not read it all
through--that would be too much of a good thing--but just dip into
it here and there, and see what it is like. You will laugh when I
tell you that the MS. is poetry, translations from the German. These
have been lying beside me for some ten or twelve years. I was urged
by several friends of good judgment to publish them long ago. But I
would not be induced to do so, so I laid them aside until I had quite
forgotten them and could read them and criticise them as if they had
been the lucubrations of another man. They bore this better than I
expected, and I gathered together all I could find and have had them
copied out and stitched into a volume.
It is perhaps needless to say that this MS. was the translation of
Heine’s poems, of which mention has already been made here repeatedly.
The intention to publish at this time was abandoned, partly because of
the possible effect on the “new book,” i.e., _Prehistoric Europe_.
During this spring James Geikie was also corresponding with Dr Helland
on glacial topics, and had arranged to accompany him to the Färoe
Islands, to study the glacial phenomena there. A start was made at
the end of May, and the two spent a delightful time together, Prof.
Helland’s knowledge of the language being a great help. James Geikie’s
paper on his observations was published a year or two later, and his
note-books contain long descriptions of his experiences, with many
sketches and diagrams. A more informal account is given in a letter to
Mrs Johnston of Crailing Hall:--
I enjoyed my trip very much though I had to rough it more than most
people would care to do. But what I saw was quite enough to make me
forget all discomforts. Perhaps the most striking features of the
Färoe Islands are their sea-cliffs. These range in height from 300
feet to 2000 feet. I sailed in a little boat round a large part of the
coast-line and was very much impressed. The cliffs rise sheer up out
of deep water, seeming in some places almost to overhang. Fancy the
sun shining brightly on a great wall of brown rock 2000 feet high--a
wall which shows an infinite number of little shelves and ledges, and
all these ledges thickly set with sea-birds in myriads, while the air
is filled with them, wheeling and screaming above you, and the water
is alive with them swimming, diving, floating, and capering! The great
Atlantic rollers come smoothly up to the base of the cliffs and sweep
into the caves, only to rush out again with a hoarse roar, and a wild
splash of spray and broken water.
Not very long after his return from the Färoes, at the end of July, his
second son was born.
Several letters from Prof. Ramsay, on the Färoes work and other
subjects, in the course of the summer show the friendly terms upon
which the two were. Thus in announcing that he (Ramsay) had been chosen
President of the British Association for the Swansea meeting in 1880,
he adds:--“And unless you write the Presidential Address for me, I
will take steps to have you dismissed from the Survey!” Unfortunately
for James Geikie, the time during which Ramsay had anything to say upon
Survey matters was fast drawing to a close. A few days later Ramsay
writes in jubilant spirits because their joint work at Gibraltar had
proved correct, although certain borings had seemed at first to cast
doubt upon some of their conclusions. Prof. Ramsay’s feelings in the
matter are expressed as follows:--“Ho ho ho! Ha ha ha! also he he he!”
In the same letter Ramsay speaks of Prof. Penck’s results, saying:--“It
is a grand coup for you.”
Among James Geikie’s other correspondents this summer were Prof.
Stevenson of New York, a very warm friend of later years after the
two had met in the flesh, and Mr T. F. Jamieson, who like Ramsay was
greatly interested in the Färoes work. Towards the end of the year he
writes to Mr Horne:--
I have recently got heaps of new facts from Germany, France, and
Austria, not to mention Italy, which will greatly aid me in working
off my present book. That same book drags its slow length along, but I
hope to finish it in time for publication next year.
After giving a general sketch of the contents of the book he goes on:--
My references to foreign writers will astonish you with their “learned
profundity”--what do you think of Italian, Greek, Spanish, Austrian,
German, Hungarian, French, Danish, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian,
and Icelandic references! The time I have spent over these with
grammar and dictionary, and the trouble in having others translated
for me by learned pundits, are such that I will never, I think,
undertake anything of the kind again. Sometimes two or three long
nights’ work is summed up in a short line; or even has no mention at
all! I only hope the result will justify the time expended. It is all
intensely interesting, however.
Perhaps it may be well to repeat in connection with this letter that
this laborious work was the occupation of what should have been leisure
hours, and that in addition to it James Geikie was putting in some
eight or nine hours’ work per day in the field or at office work, was
carrying on an extensive correspondence, was lecturing in various parts
of Scotland, and was writing scientific papers. Much of his writing had
thus to be done by curtailing the hours of sleep, and most of those who
came into close contact with him at this time regarded his capacity for
work as something almost superhuman. But despite his heavy labours,
this year seems to have been a happy one, and perhaps helped him to
bear the period of storm and stress which was to come.
The chief incident of the following year, 1880, was the completion
and publication of _Prehistoric Europe_, and the letters are full
of allusions to it. Thus towards the end of January he writes to Mr
Horne:--“Still grinding away at my tome. Got about a third to write
yet. The thing swells out, I am sorry to say; there is so much more to
tell than I had any idea of.” The severity of the strain was, however,
obviously telling upon him, for only a week or two later he says:--“All
at present is at a standstill. My head has given up work, and I must
leave it alone a little: been going at it early and late too much!”
A little later he says again:--“I am going to rest and do nothing but
read. You have no idea what a loathing one takes to paper and pen
sometimes! But doubtless you have the same.”
It was nearly the end of July before the MS. was finally completed, and
the nature of the effort is indicated by the fact that the concluding
sentences of the book were written in his sleep! He was working at it
as usual till far into the night, and could not find a fitting sentence
to round off the whole. After trying for some time ineffectively, he
decided to leave the matter till the morning, and went off to bed, the
time being 2 A.M. In his usual orderly fashion he had placed the last
sheets on his writing-table, putting two books on top to prevent the
papers from being scattered by a chance draught. In the morning he
found them scattered over the table, to his great disgust, for it was
a stern household regulation that papers were _taboo_ for all hands
save their owner’s. The maid when taxed, however, denied indignantly
that she had touched them, and when the injured author gathered up his
treasures he was astonished to find, written in his own handwriting,
though not with his usual neatness, the sentence which now stands as
the final one. Evidently he had dropped to sleep and come down to
complete the unfinished task in a subconscious condition. The story
shows clearly that it was time the book was done with.
But the labour did not cease with the completion of the MS. The
holiday, which began early in August, was spent partly in London,
looking up final references, and partly in South Wales, with a view to
making out some further glacial points. A letter to Mr Horne suggests
the mixed feelings which the completion of the task brought. He
says:--“I am well pleased now to have the thing off my hands. I will
not soon begin another such work. It is too much worry and labour--and
yet pleasant withal.” Later he writes:--“Now that my book is off my
hands, time in the evenings hangs heavy on my hands”--the Nemesis, a
psychologist would say, of overwork, for it was obviously the condition
when nothing but work had become possible!
Various pleasant little incidents, however, occurred this autumn. Thus
the French geologists, MM. Falsan and Chantre, sent him a copy of
their Monograph on the old glaciers of the Rhone basin. In sending the
book M. Falsan spoke with gratifying warmth of _The Great Ice Age_,
and of the many new ideas which he and his confrère had obtained from
its perusal. “I feel as if I shall get cocky,” says James Geikie in a
letter, “and, as pride goes before a fall, am beginning to dread lest
_Prehistoric Europe_ should be damned.” M. Falsan also asked permission
to translate _The Great Ice Age_ into French, and there were German
offers to translate both _The Great Ice Age_ and _Prehistoric Europe_.
The latter appeared towards the end of November. Copies were sent,
among others, to Charles Darwin and to Prof. Ramsay, whose letters in
reply were a source of great gratification to James Geikie. Darwin
wrote both immediately upon receipt, and later after he had read the
book. In the second letter he says:--“Yours is a grand book, and I
thank you heartily for the instruction and pleasure it has given me.”
That this was not mere flattery is apparent from the keen discussion of
certain special points in which he was interested.
The next year, 1881, was one of great stress, though the tale of its
external events is soon told. That Prof. Ramsay’s health was failing
had long been known, and though his actual resignation did not take
place till the end of 1881, the fact that it was impending was obvious
long before. It was also known among the Survey men that his retiral
would mean extensive changes, likely to affect directly and indirectly
most of the members of the staff. As has been already stated, it led
to James Geikie’s resignation and his acceptance of the professorship
at Edinburgh University. Something must therefore be said in regard to
the reasons that induced him to leave highly congenial work for a post
which was not, certainly at first, wholly so, and which further, at
least in early days, did not materially improve his financial position.
It must be noted first that by this time he was the author of two bulky
books (produced, as we have seen, at the cost of great and continuous
toil) which had been hailed at home and abroad as “epoch-making.” He
had correspondents in most parts of the civilised world; men of mark
in their own countries had publicly acknowledged him as a leader of
geological thought, a fount of inspiration, an opener up of new paths
of research. At the same time, to those immediately above him he was a
subordinate, with a very moderate salary, a recipient of orders, with
little opportunity for initiating changes or improvements, and was
living in a small provincial town, to some extent remote from the main
current of public life.
Second, and this is a point which is much less familiar to the general
public than in a democratic country it ought to be, his books were
not of the kind which bring direct monetary reward to their author.
His family was increasing, for his third son was born in this year of
1881; he himself was past forty, and the probability that he could
continue to go on working for many years more at the rate at which he
had been toiling during the last twenty was necessarily diminishing.
Now it is universally admitted, as a general proposition, that when a
man without private means has done and is doing important and highly
specialised work for his country and for the world, work which does
not bring direct pecuniary gain, then it is the duty of those in high
places to see that he be established in such a position as to free
him from financial anxiety for the future, to enable him to face his
responsibilities with a calm mind, to obviate the necessity for his
wasting his strength and intellect in hack-work in order to supplement
his income. But, while this is admitted as a general proposition, there
is always the possibility that petty personal interests will intervene
in a particular case. James Geikie left the Survey partly under the
pressure of such interests, which seemed to threaten his prospects of
immediate promotion, and partly under that of friends who thought that
the professorship offered more scope for him. Whether he was right or
wrong it is difficult to say, but there is evidence that at least at
first he regretted his decision. He might have quitted the Survey of
his own free will, and would certainly have done this with a pang, but
the thought that his decision to leave was not wholly voluntary, made
the pang excessively bitter.
Many of the letters of this year of anxiety are too intimate to
be quoted. We shall only insert sentences and phrases to make the
narrative plain.
One of the first indications of coming events was an attack upon
_Prehistoric Europe_ in the early part of 1881, an attack which it
seems quite clear was not motived wholly by an honest desire to promote
the cause of science. It was this element which made the matter so hard
to bear.
The affair has affected me more than I can tell.... You will laugh,
but it is true all the same, that I can hardly eat or sleep. For the
attack itself I don’t mind, I know that my book is a bit of honest
true work, and will outlive the attempts ... to stifle it.... I wish
the snow would go and let me out to have a walk. Sometimes I wish that
I had kept clear of writing books altogether.... I remember wondering
once when Green told me that when he was vexed with anything a romp
with his bairns made him quite hearty. It seemed to me overstrained.
I don’t think so now that I have bairns of my own. Their quaint and
funny ways quite carry you out of yourself.... Dearly as I love life,
I can already foresee that the time will come when I shall be glad
to lie down and sleep the sleep that knows no waking.... Verily I
do believe a good wife and loving mother is the only treasure of
treasures that is worth striving for in this world!... How much you
and I have to be thankful for!
These are a few extracts written to his friend Mr Horne at the moment
when the history of the incident was just becoming plain, and at a time
also when Mr Horne’s first child had just been born; they throw perhaps
more light upon it and upon the character of James Geikie than any
ordered narrative could do.
Later letters of the same spring emphasise the effect which the
incident had upon him. “The whole thing,” he writes in one letter,
“has worried me more than I can tell;” but a journey south, where,
_inter alia_, he lectured at Hull, and led a big geological excursion,
helped to change the current of his thoughts, while his reception at
Hull gratified him greatly. Fresh letters from continental geologists
also, not only praising his book but discussing the bearing of his
results upon their observations in various parts of Europe, must have
helped to assure him that it was worth while to do honest work, despite
detractors. Further, the family moved from Perth to Birnam, where they
took a charming cottage at the foot of Birnam Hill, covered with roses,
and with a large untidy garden. The early summer was brilliantly fine,
and the fresh air and open life of the country must have made it easier
to take a more philosophical view of the affair, unpleasant as it was.
The letters of early summer show at least a perceptible recovery
of balance and cheerfulness. His third son was born in June, and
in answer to congratulations he says:--“A _third_ boy was a great
disappointment--a girl would have ‘completed’ all the family any
reasonable man could desire!”
The arrival of the baby prevented him from accompanying Dr Helland on
a projected trip to Iceland in early summer, but, rather curiously, an
opportunity to visit the island occurred a little later in the same
year, for he went to report on some sulphur mines.
On 17th September he writes to Mr Horne:--“I have just returned from
Iceland, where I have had some very hard but very interesting work.
What a country! Fancy me riding eleven hours over lava-beds, mountains,
etc., devil a road or even path! However, all was fresh and new.”
By this time the question of changes in the Survey was becoming acute,
and James Geikie was beginning to debate with himself as to whether he
ought to try for the Chair in Geology at Edinburgh for his children’s
sake. The indecision he found very unsettling. “I can settle to
nothing--reading and writing are alike out of the question.” More than
a month later he writes:--“I am pulled two ways--my own desire and wish
is to remain in the Survey.” “My repugnance to that Chair,” he says a
few days later, “increases as the days go past.”
Perhaps nothing, however, shows better his fundamental repugnance to
all the weighing of questions of worldly advantage, to the scheming
and plotting and wire-pulling which go to the making of appointments,
than a letter written to Mr Horne in the thick of the conflict. This
begins with an account of information which had reached him in regard
to the position of affairs as to the Edinburgh Chair, and glides off
insensibly into an account of letters just received from Prof. Penck
and Prof. Gandry, the one a German and the other a French geologist.
Both letters contained much of great interest to him, and the letter
becomes a full discussion of the points raised, the question of his own
future meantime sinking entirely out of mind.
Obviously he wanted to be let alone and allowed to do his work in
peace, to have reasonable security for his children. In one letter he
laments his own lack of worldly wisdom, and his willingness to take
advice from his various friends; and the rather pathetic balancing of
the advantages of one apparently possible position against another,
merely meant that his mind was set on other things altogether, and
that in consequence he allowed himself to be swayed by the different
influences brought to bear upon him. His own candour and frankness made
him singularly willing to accept advice offered under the guise of
friendship, without stopping to investigate the question whether his
advisers were or were not wholly disinterested. But his unwillingness
to be separated from his old colleagues remains the dominant note, even
when he yielded to what seemed sound arguments brought to bear upon
him. His instant response to kindliness is shown by the following
quotation:--“Isn’t old Ramsay a trump. He wrote me a short, but such
an affectionate letter that I declare I could not read it without wet
eyes.”
His final decision to apply for the Chair was due to the receipt of a
private letter which informed him that the Home Office was prepared to
appoint him immediately on his sending in an application, on the ground
that he was the man obviously best fitted for the post. It was also
indicated to him informally that the reputation which he had obtained
owing to his books was such that any other testimonial was unnecessary.
Inquiries had been made which had satisfied the Home Office that no
other possible candidate had such high qualifications for the post. In
announcing to his friend Mr Horne the receipt of this flattering though
unofficial letter, James Geikie cannot forbear adding:--“I shall quit
the Survey dead against my desires. But yet I feel I am doing best for
myself and for my children.”
Both his natural modesty, and perhaps the painful memory of his
controversy in the spring, made him uneasy about the fact that the
appointment was made without, as he says, any chance being given
to other possible candidates. Thus he forwarded the unasked-for
testimonials, the writers including all the leading men of the day in
his own branch of science. But amidst all the bustle of arranging about
the testimonials, and about the leaving of his work and the finding
of a house in Edinburgh, the note of regret recurs constantly. “I
can’t realise that I am leaving the Survey. How vexed I am--no one can
tell.”
Not all his own regrets, however, could quench his enthusiasm for the
service he was giving up. Thus he took up cudgels with the utmost
vigour for his friends on the Survey, whose interests he thought likely
to be affected by certain proposed changes. These changes he thought
regrettable not only on this account, but also because they seemed to
him contrary to the interests of the whole Survey.
His new work at Edinburgh was not to begin till the autumn of 1882, and
though the house in Edinburgh was taken in spring, the family stayed on
in the country all summer, partly to let the new-made professor finish
off his Survey work, and partly that all might enjoy the country air.
But the respite did not ease the pain of the prospective parting:--“It
makes me sad at heart when I think that the old Survey days are for
me so soon to end. So life wags--some day soon I shall be ending work
for good and all, and then for a long rest, and no heartaches and no
headaches. My heart gets heavy whiles at the thought of leaving the
green fields over which I have wandered so long and happily. After
forty years of life it is almost too late to change. But what I have
done I hope will turn out for the best. Anyhow, I hope you fellows will
not forget the old comradeship, but come often and see me. I can’t yet
realise that I am leaving work in the field, and going into town to
become fat, greasy, and respectable.” And so the summer months slipped
away, and autumn brought Edinburgh and the new sphere.