of incident, and to depend for interest on the development of an
eccentric character, with only a single strong situation, even though
that situation be one of surpassing power, is considered by those
learned in such matters to be almost courting failure. Such a work is
therefore rarely attempted, and is still more rarely successful. Yet
this is what Mr Besant has had to do in writing the Life of Edward Henry
Palmer; and we are glad to be able to say at once that he has discharged
a delicate and difficult task in a most admirable fashion. For in truth
he had a very unpromising subject to deal with. It is always difficult
to interest the general public in the sayings and doings of a man of
letters, even when he has occupied a prominent position, and thrown
himself with ardour into some burning question of the day, political or
social. Palmer, however, was not such a man at all. He did ‘break his
birth’s invidious bar,’ but alas! it was never given to him, until the
end was close at hand, ‘to grasp the skirts of happy chance,’ or to rise
into a position where he could be seen by the world. It is melancholy
now to speculate on what might have been had he returned in safety from
the perilous enterprise in which he met his death, for it is hardly
likely that the Government would have failed to secure, by some
permanent appointment, the services of a man who had proved, in so
signal a manner, his capacity for dealing with Orientals. As it was,
however, with the exception of the journeys to the Sinaitic Peninsula
and the Holy Land, he lived a quiet student-life; not wholly retired,
for he was no book-worm, and enjoyed, after a peculiar fashion of his
own, the society of his fellow-men; but still a life which did not
really bring him beyond the narrow circle of the few intimate friends
who knew him thoroughly, and were proportionately devoted to him. He
took no part in any movement; he was not ‘earnest’ or ‘intense.’ He did
not read new books, or any of the ‘thoughtful’ magazines; nor had he any
particular desire to alter the framework of society. The world was a
good world so far as he was concerned; and men were strange and
interesting creatures whom it was a pleasure to study, as a naturalist
studies a new species; why alter it or them? The interest which attaches
to such a life depends wholly on the way in which the central character
is presented to the public. That Mr Besant should have succeeded where
others would have failed need not surprise us. The qualities which have
made him a delightful novelist are brought to bear upon this prose _In
Memoriam_, with the additional incentives of warm friendship and
passionate regret. It is clear that he realized all the difficulties of
his task from the outset; and he has treated his materials accordingly,
leading the reader forward with consummate art, chapter by chapter, to
the final catastrophe, which is described with the picturesqueness of a
romance, and the solemn earnestness of a tragedy. Such a book is almost
above criticism. A mourner by an open grave, pronouncing the funeral
oration of his murdered friend, has a prescriptive right to apportion
praise and blame in what measure he thinks fit; and we should be the
last to intrude upon his sacred sorrow with harsh and inconsiderate
criticism. But we should be failing in our duty if we did not draw
attention to one point. It has been Mr Besant’s object to show the
difficulties of all kinds against which his hero had to
contend—ill-health, heavy sorrows, debt—and how he came triumphant
through them all, thanks to his indomitable pluck and energy; and
further, as though no element of interest should be wanting, he has
represented him as smarting under a sense of unmerited wrong done to him
by his University, which ‘went out of the way to insult and neglect’
him. This is no mere fancy of Mr Besant’s; we know from other sources
that Palmer himself thought he had not been treated at Cambridge as he
ought to have been, and that he was glad to get away from it. We shall
do our best to show that this was a misconception on his part, and we
regret that his biographer should have given such prominence to it. But,
though Mr Besant may have been zealous overmuch on this particular
point, his book is none the less fascinating, and we venture to predict
that it will live, as a permanent record of a very remarkable man. We
are sensible that much of its charm will disappear in the short sketch
which we are about to give, but if our remarks have the effect of
sending our readers to the original, we shall not have written in vain.
Edward Henry Palmer was born in Green Street, Cambridge, 7 August, 1840.
His father died when he was an infant, and his mother did not long
survive her husband. Her place was supplied to some extent by an aunt,
then unmarried, who took the orphan child to her own home and educated
him. She was evidently a person who combined great kindness with great
good sense. Palmer, we read, ‘owed everything to her,’ and ‘never spoke
of her in after years without the greatest tenderness and emotion.’ Of
his real mother we do not find any record; but the father, who kept a
small private school, was ‘a man of considerable acquirements, with a
strong taste for art.’ We do not know whether any of Palmer’s peculiar
talents had ever been observed in the father, or whether he can be said
to have inherited anything from his family except a tendency to asthma
and bronchial disease. From this, of which the father died before he was
thirty, the son suffered all his life. He grew out of it to a certain
extent, but it was always there, a watchful enemy, ready to start forth
and fasten upon its victim.
The beginning of Palmer’s education was of the most ordinary
description, and little need be said about it. He was sent in the first
instance to a private school, and afterwards to the Perse Grammar
School. There he made rapid progress, arriving at the sixth form before
he was fifteen; but all we hear about his studies is that he
distinguished himself in Greek and Latin, and disliked mathematics. By
the time he was sixteen he had learnt all that he was likely to learn at
school, and was sent to London to earn his living. He became a junior
clerk in a house of business in East-cheap, where he remained for three
years, and might have remained for the term of his natural life, had he
not been obliged to resign his situation on account of ill-health.
Symptoms of pulmonary disease manifested themselves, and he got worse so
rapidly that he was told that he had little hope of recovery. He
returned to Cambridge, with the conviction that he had but a few weeks
to live, and that he had better die comfortably among his relations,
than miserably among strangers. But after a few weeks of severe illness
he recovered, suddenly and strangely. Mr Besant tells a curious story,
which Palmer is reported to have believed, that the cure had been
effected by a dose of _lobelia_, administered by a herbalist. That
Palmer swallowed the drug—of which, by the way, he nearly died—is
certain, and that he recovered is equally certain; but that the dose and
the recovery can be correlated as cause and effect is more than we are
prepared to admit. We are rather disposed to accept a less sensational
theory, expressed by a gentleman who at that period was one of his
intimate friends:
‘Careful watchfulness on the part of his aunt, open air, exercise, and
freedom from restraint, were the principal means of patching him up. He
had frequent attacks of blood-spitting afterwards, and was altogether
one of those wonderful creatures that defy doctors and quacks alike, and
won’t die of the disease which is theirs by inheritance. How little any
of us thought that he would die a hero!’
Palmer’s peculiar gift of acquiring languages had manifested itself even
before he went to London. Throughout his whole career his strength as a
linguist lay in his extraordinary aptitude for learning a spoken
language. The literature came afterwards. We are not aware that he was
ever what is called a good scholar in Latin or in Greek, simply for the
reason, according to our view, that those languages are no longer spoken
anywhere. He did not repudiate the literature of a language; far from
it. Probably few Orientalists have known the literatures of Arabia and
Persia better than he knew them; but he learnt to speak Arabic and
Persian before he learnt to read them. In this he resembled Cardinal
Mezzofanti, who had the same power of picking up a language for speaking
purposes from a few conversations—learning some words, and constructing
for himself first a vocabulary and then a grammar. When Palmer was still
a boy at school he learnt Romany. He learnt it, says Mr Besant, ‘by
paying travelling tinkers sixpence for a lesson, by haunting the tents,
talking to the men, and crossing the women’s palms with his pocket-money
in exchange for a few more words to add to his vocabulary. In this way
he gradually made for himself a Gipsy dictionary.’ In time he became a
proficient in Gipsy lore, and Mr Besant tells several curious stories
about his adventures with that remarkable people. We will quote the
narrative supplied to him by Mr Charles Leland—better known as Hans
Breitmann—Palmer’s intimate friend and brother in Romany lore.
‘In one respect Palmer was truly remarkable. He combined plain common
sense, clear judgment, and great quickness of perception into all the
relations of a question, with a keen love of fun and romance. I could
fill a volume with the eccentric adventures which we had in common,
particularly among the gipsies. To these good folk we were always a
first-class mystery, but none the less popular on that account. What
with our speaking Romany “down to the bottom crust,” and Palmer’s
incredible proficiency at thimble-rig, “ringing the changes,” picking
pockets, card-sharping, three-monté, and every kind of legerdemain,
these honest people never could quite make up their minds whether we
were a kind of Brahmins, to which they were as Sudras, or what. Woe to
the gipsy sharp who tried the cards with the Professor! How often have
we gone into a _tan_ where we were all unknown, and regarded as a couple
of green Gentiles! And with what a wonderful air of innocence would
Palmer play the part of a lamb, and ask them to give him a specimen of
their language; and when they refused, or professed themselves unable to
do so, how amiably he would turn to me and remark in deep Romany that we
were mistaken, and that the people of the tent were only miserable
“mumpers” of mixed blood, who could not _rakker_! Once I remember he
said this to a gipsy, who retaliated in a great rage, “How could I know
that you were a gipsy, if you come here dressed up like a _gorgio_ and
looking like a gentleman?”
‘One day, with Palmer, in the fens near Cambridge, we came upon a
picturesque sight. It was a large band of gipsies on a halt. As we
subsequently learned, they had made the day before an immense raid in
robbing hen-roosts and poaching, and were loaded with game, fowls, and
eggs. None of them knew me, but several knew the Professor as a lawyer.
One took him aside to confide as a client their late misdoings. “We have
been,” said he——
‘“You have been stealing eggs,” replied Palmer.
‘“How did you know that?”
‘“By the yolk on your waistcoat,” answered the Professor in Romany. “The
next time you had better hide the marks[89].”’
These experiences among the gipsies took place in 1874 or 1875, when
Palmer had perfected himself in their language, and we must go back for
a moment to the period spent in London. There, in his leisure hours, he
managed to learn Italian and French, by a process similar to that by
which he had previously acquired the rudiments of Romany.
‘The method he pursued is instructive. He found out where Italians might
be expected to meet, and went every evening to sit among them and hear
them talk. Thus, there was in those days a _café_ in Titchborne Street
frequented by Italian refugees, political exiles, and republicans. Here
Palmer sat and listened and presently began to talk, and so became an
ardent partisan of Italian unity. There was also at that time—I think
many of them have now migrated to Hammersmith—a great colony of Italian
organ-grinders and sellers of plaster-cast images in and about Saffron
Hill. He went among these worthy people, sat with them in their
restaurants, drank their sour wine, talked with them, and acquired their
_patois_. He found out Italian waiters at restaurants and talked with
them; at the docks he went on board Italian ships, and talked with the
sailors; and in these ways learned the various dialects of Genoa,
Naples, Nice, Livorno, Venice, and Messina. One of his friends at this
time was a well-known Signor Buonocorre, the so-called “Fire King,” who
used to astonish the multitude nightly at Cremorne Gardens and elsewhere
by his feats. For Palmer was always attracted by people who run shows,
“do” things, act, pretend, persuade, deceive, and in fact are
interesting for any kind of cleverness. However, the first result of
this perseverance was that he made himself a perfect master of Italian,
that he knew the country speech as well as the Italian of the schools,
and that he could converse with the Piedmontese, the Venetian, the
Roman, the Sicilian, or the Calabrian, in their own dialects, as well as
with the purest native of Florence.
‘Also while he was in the City he acquired French by a similar process.
I do not know whether he carried on his French studies at the same time
with the Italian, but I believe not. It seems certainly more in
accordance with the practice which he adopted in after life that he
should attempt only one thing at a time. But as with Italian so with
French; he joined to a knowledge of the pure language a curious
acquaintance with _argot_; also—which points to acquaintance made in
_cafés_—he acquired somehow in those early days a curious knowledge and
admiration of the French police and detective system[90].’
The illness which compelled Palmer to give up London had evidently been
very serious, and his convalescence was tedious. Nor, when supposed to
be well, did he feel any inclination to resume work as a clerk. So he
stayed in Cambridge at his aunt’s house, with no definite aim in life,
but taking up now one thing, now another, after the manner of clever
boys when they are at home for the holidays. He did a little literature
in the way of burlesques, one of which, _Ye Hole in ye Walle_, a legend
told after the manner of Ingoldsby, was afterwards published by Messrs
Macmillan; he wrote a farce, which was acted in that temple of Thespis,
once dear to Cambridge undergraduates, the old Barnwell Theatre; he
acted himself with considerable success, and for a week or so thought of
adopting the stage as a profession; he tried conjuring, in which in
after years he became an adept, and ventriloquism, where he failed; he
took up various forms of art, as wood-engraving, modelling, drawing,
painting, photography; in all of which, except the last, he arrived at
creditable results. His aunt is reported to have borne her nephew’s
changeable tastes with exemplary patience, until photography came to the
front; but ‘the waste of expensive materials, the damage to clothes,
stair carpets—he could always be traced—his disreputable piebald
appearance,’ and (last, but not least!) ‘the results on glass,’ were too
much for even her good-nature. The camera was banished, and the artist
was bidden to adopt some pursuit less annoying to his neighbours. The
one really useful study of this period was shorthand-writing; and in
after years, when he practised as a barrister, he found the usefulness
of it.
Up to this time—the year 1860—he had never turned his attention to
Oriental literature, and very likely had never seen an Oriental
character. The friend whose reminiscences we have quoted more than once
already says that he remembers ‘going one morning into his bedroom (he
was a very late riser) and finding him looking at some Arabic
characters. They interested him; he liked the look of them; it was an
improvement on shorthand; he would find it all out; and so he did!’ He
set to work without delay to find somebody he could talk to about his
new fancy, and, as the supply of Oriental scholars is necessarily
limited even at one of the Universities, he was led at once to the only
two persons competent to instruct him—the Rev. George Skinner, and a
Mohammedan named Syed Abdullah. The former was a Master of Arts of the
University, who had published a translation of the Psalms; the latter
was a native of Oudh, who had resided in England since 1851, and who
about this time came to Cambridge to prepare students for the Civil
Service of India. Under the guidance of these gentlemen, Palmer plunged
into Oriental languages with the same enthusiasm with which he had
followed the various pursuits we have mentioned above. There was this
difference, however, between the new love and the old; there was no
turning back; the day of transient fancies was over; that of serious
work had begun. His ardour now knew no abatement; he is said to have
worked at this time eighteen hours a day. This may well be doubted; but
without pressing such a statement too closely, we may admit that he gave
himself up to his new studies with unwonted perseverance, and that his
progress was rapid. Mr Skinner used to take him out for walks in the
country, and discourse to him on Hebrew grammar. Hebrew, however, was a
language which did not attract him greatly, and in after years he used
to say that he did not know it. Syed Abdullah gave him more regular and
systematic instruction in Urdú, Persian, and Arabic. Palmer was
‘constantly writing prose and verse exercises for him.’ They became
intimate friends; and it was probably through his representations that
Palmer was allowed to give up all thoughts of resuming work as a clerk,
and to take up Oriental languages and literature as a profession.
Through him, too, he was introduced to the Nawab Ikbal ud Dawlah, son of
the late Rajah of Oudh, who took a very warm interest in Palmer’s
studies, allowed him to live in his house when he pleased, and gave him
the assistance of two able native instructors. Next he struck up a
friendship with a Bengalee gentleman named Bazlurrahim, with whom he
spent some time, composing incessantly under his supervision in Persian
and Urdú. Besides these he was on terms of intimacy with other Orientals
resident at that time in England, and also with Professor Mir Aulad Ali,
of Trinity College, Dublin, ‘who was constantly his adviser, critic,
teacher, friend, and sympathizer.’ Hence, as Mr Besant points out, we
may see that he had no lack of instructors; and may at once dismiss from
our minds two common misconceptions about him—first that Oriental
languages ‘came natural’ to him; and, secondly, that he was a poor,
friendless, solitary student, burning the midnight lamp in a garret, and
learning Arabic all alone. On the contrary, he never felt any pressure
of poverty, and was helped, sympathized with, encouraged, by all those
with whom he came in contact. His progress was rapid, and in 1862 he was
able to send a copy of original Arabic verses to the Lord Almoner’s
Reader in that language, who described them as ‘elegant and idiomatic.’
Up to this time Palmer does not appear to have known much of University
men, or to have thought of becoming a member of the University himself.
He would probably have never joined S. John’s College had he not been
accidentally ‘discovered,’ as Mr Besant happily puts it, by two of the
Fellows. The result of this discovery was that he was invited to become
a candidate for a sizarship in October 1863, and in the interval
prepared himself for the examination by reviving his former studies in
classics, and in working at mathematics. He was assisted in this
preparation by one of the Fellows, who tells us that, though he declared
that he knew no mathematics at all, he ‘always did what I set him,
passed the examinations very easily, and presumably obtained his
sizarship on it.’ His known proficiency in Oriental languages was
evidently not taken into account at the outset of his University career,
but some two years afterwards, in 1865 or 1866, a scholarship was given
to him on that account only. He took his degree in 1867, and, as there
was no Oriental Languages Tripos in those days, he presented himself for
the Classical Tripos, in which he obtained only a third class. Such a
place cannot, as a general rule, be considered brilliant; but in his
case it should be regarded as a distinction rather than a failure, for
it shows that he must have possessed a more than respectable knowledge
of Latin and Greek, and, moreover, have been able to write composition
in those languages. At the time of his matriculation (November 1863) he
could have known but little of either; and during the succeeding three
years he had been much occupied with vigorous prosecution of his
Oriental studies, with taking pupils in Arabic, and with making
catalogues of the Oriental manuscripts in the libraries of the
University, of King’s College, and of Trinity College. But he always had
a surprising power of getting through an enormous quantity of work
without ever seeming to be in a hurry. A friend tells us that Palmer
‘Did not strike one as a man of method, as an economist of time, as
moving about wrapped in thought. You met him apparently lounging along,
ready for a talk, perhaps in company with a rather idle man; yet when
you came to measure up his work you were puzzled to know how any one man
could do it.’
Palmer’s proficiency in Oriental languages at this time, 1867—only seven
years, it should be remembered, after he had begun to study them—is
abundantly attested by a very remarkable body of testimonials[91] which
he obtained when a candidate for the post of interpreter to the English
embassy in Persia. His old friend the Nawab said:
‘Notwithstanding the fact that he has never visited any Eastern kingdom,
or mixed with Oriental nations, he has yet, by his own perseverance,
application, and study, acquired such great proficiency, fluency, and
eloquence, in speaking and writing three Oriental tongues—to wit, Urdú
(Hindoostani), Persian, and Arabic—that one would say he must have
associated with Oriental nations, and studied for a lengthened period in
the Universities of the East.’
We have no room for quotations from the curious and flowery compositions
in which numerous learned Orientals held up his excellencies of every
sort to admiration; but we will cite a short passage from what was said
by Mr Bradshaw, Librarian to the University of Cambridge, who had
naturally seen a great deal of him while working at the manuscripts:
‘What was at once apparent was the radical difference of his knowledge
of these languages [Arabic and Persian] from that of any other
Orientalist I had met. It was the difference between native knowledge
and dictionary knowledge; between one who uses a language as his own and
one who is able to make out the meaning of what is before him with more
or less accuracy by help of a dictionary.’
In the autumn of 1867, a fellowship at S. John’s College being vacant,
the then Master, Dr Bateson, knowing Palmer’s reputation as an
Orientalist, asked Professor Cowell, then recently made Professor of
Sanskrit, to examine him. Professor Cowell writes:
‘I undertook to examine him in Persian and Hindustani, as I felt that my
knowledge of Arabic was too slight to justify my venturing to examine
him in that language. I well remember my delight and surprise in this
examination. I had never had any intercourse with Palmer before, as I
had been previously living in India; and I had no idea that he was such
an Oriental scholar. I remember well that I set him for translation into
Persian prose a florid description from Gibbon’s chapter on Mohammed.
Palmer translated it in a masterly way, in the true style of Persian
rhetoric, every important substantive having its rhyming doublet, just
as in the best models of Persian literature. In fact, his vocabulary
seemed exhaustless. I also set him difficult pieces for translation from
the Masnaví, Khondemir, and I think Saudá; but he could explain them all
without hesitation. I sent a full report to the Master, and the college
elected him at once to the vacant fellowship[92].’
It has now become an understood thing at Cambridge that a man who is
really distinguished in any branch of study has a good chance of a
fellowship; but twenty years ago this was not the case, and we believe
that Palmer was the first, at least in the present century, to obtain
that blue ribbon of Cambridge life for proficiency in other languages
than those of Greece and Rome. Such a distinction meant more to him than
it would have meant to most men. No further anxieties on the score of
money need trouble him for the future; he need no longer be dependent on
the generosity of relations who were not themselves overburdened with
the goods of this world. He might study Oriental languages to his
heart’s content without let or hindrance from anybody; and it was more
than probable that one piece of good fortune would be the parent of
another—a distinction so signal would bring him into notice, and obtain
for him the offer of something which would be worth accepting. He had
not long to wait. In less than a year a post was offered to him which
presented, in delightful combination, study, travel, some emolument, and
a reasonable prospect of fame and fortune if he worked hard and was
successful. At the suggestion of the Rev. George Williams, then a
resident Fellow of King’s College, he was asked to take part in the
exploration of the Holy Land, and to accompany an expedition then about
to start for the survey of Sinai and the neighbourhood. He was to
investigate the names and traditions of the country, and to copy and
decipher the inscriptions with which the rocks in the so-called ‘Written
Valley’ and in other places are covered. He accepted without hesitation,
and left England in November 1868.