what his predecessor had done. He delivered his inaugural lecture on
Monday, 4 March, 1872, choosing for his subject ‘The National Religion
of Persia; an Outline Sketch of Comparative Theology[99],’ and during
the Easter and Michaelmas terms he lectured on six days in each week,
devoting three days to Persian and three to Arabic. To these subjects
there was subsequently added a course in Hindustani. In consequence of
this large amount of voluntary work the Council of the Senate
recommended (February 24, 1873)[100] ‘that a sum of £250 per annum
should be paid to the present Lord Almoner’s Reader out of the
University Chest,’ and that he should be authorized to receive a fee of
£2. 2_s._ in each term for each course of lectures from every student
attending them, provided he declared in writing his readiness to
acquiesce in certain regulations, of which the first was: ‘That it shall
be his ordinary duty to reside within the precincts of the University
for eighteen weeks during term time in every academical year, and to
give three courses of lectures—viz. one course in Arabic, one in
Persian, and one in Hindustani.’ The Senate accepted this proposal March
6, 1873, and Palmer signed the new regulations five days afterwards. In
recording this transaction Mr Besant remarks: ‘It must be acknowledged
that the University got full value for their money.’ We reply to this
sneer that the University asked no more from Palmer than it asked from
every other professor whose salary was augmented. The clause imposing
residence had been accepted in the same form by all the other
professors; and one course of lectures in each term is surely the very
least that a teaching body can require from one of its staff. It must
also be remembered that the Lord Almoner’s Readership is an office to
which the University does not appoint, which therefore it cannot
control, and which, until Palmer held it, had been practically useless.
He, however, being disposed to reside, and to discharge his self-imposed
duties vigorously, the University came forward with an offer which was
meant to be generous, in recognition of his personal merits; for the
whole arrangement, it will be observed, had reference to the _present_
Reader only—that is, to himself. The precise amount offered, £250, was
evidently selected with the intention of placing the Lord Almoner’s
Reader on the same footing as a professor, for the salaries of nearly
all the professorial body had been already raised to £300; and, if a
comparison between the Reader and the Professor of Arabic be inevitable,
it may be remarked that while the University offered £250 to the former,
they offered only £230 to the latter. The intention, we repeat, was
generous, and we protest with some indignation against Palmer’s bitter
words: ‘The very worst use a man can make of himself is to stay up at
Cambridge and work for the University.’ The truth is that University
life did not suit him, and though he tried hard for ten years to believe
that it did, the attempt ended in failure, and it is much to be
regretted that it was ever made.
We must pass rapidly over the next ten years. They were years of
incessant labour, labour which must have been often most painful and
irksome, for it had to be undertaken in the midst of heavy sorrow,
ill-health, pecuniary difficulties—everything, in short, which damps a
man’s energies and takes the heart out of his work. His married life
began brightly enough: he had an assured income of nearly £600 a year,
which he could increase at pleasure, and we know did increase, by
literary work. In 1871 he entered at the Middle Temple, probably with
the intention of practising at the Indian bar at some future time; but
after he had given up all thoughts of India he joined the Eastern
Circuit, and attended assizes and quarter sessions regularly. He had a
fair amount of business, and is said to have made a good advocate,
though he could have had little knowledge of law, and, in fact, regarded
his legal work as a relaxation from severer studies. These he pursued
without intermission. Besides his lectures, which he gave regularly, he
produced work after work with amazing rapidity. In 1871, in addition to
the _Desert of the Exodus_, he published a _History of Jerusalem_,
written in collaboration with his friend Mr Besant; in 1873 he undertook
to write an Arabic Grammar, which appeared in the following year; in
1874 he wrote _Outlines of Scripture Geography_, and a _History of the
Jewish Nation_, for the Christian Knowledge Society, and began a Persian
Dictionary, of which the first part was published in 1876; in 1876—77 he
edited the works of the Arabian poet Beda ed din Zoheir for the Syndics
of the University Press, the text appearing in 1876 and the translation
in 1877; and during the next few years he was at work upon a _Life of
Haroun Alraschid_, a new translation of the Koran, and a revision of
Henry Martyn’s translation of the New Testament into Persian. Besides
this vast amount of solid work it would be easy to show that he produced
nearly as great a quantity of that other literature which, when we
consider the labour which it entails upon him who writes it, it is
surely a misnomer to call ‘light.’ Professor Nicholls, of Oxford, gives
an account, in a most interesting appendix to Mr Besant’s book, of the
quantity of Persian, Arabic, and Hindustani which Palmer was continually
writing. In the last-mentioned language there were a poem on the
marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh, and a wonderful account of the visit
of the Shah to England, which occupied thirty-six columns of the
_Akhbar_, a space equivalent to about twenty columns of the _Times_;
and, although Palmer admitted that ‘the writing of such things is a
laborious and artificial task to me, as I am not as familiar with the
Urdú of everyday life as I am with the Persian,’ he still went on
writing them. How familiar he was with Arabic and Persian is shown by
the curious fact that whenever he was under strong emotion he would
plunge abruptly into one or other language, sometimes writing a whole
letter in it, sometimes only a sentence or two, or a few verses. Besides
these Oriental ‘trifles’ as he would probably have called them, we find
continual contributions to English periodical literature, and three
volumes of poetry: _English Gipsy Songs in Romany_ (1875); the _Song of
the Reed, and other Pieces_ (1876); and _Lyrical Songs_, &c. by John
Ludwig Runeberg (1878). In the first of these he collaborated with Mr
Leland, whom we mentioned before, and Miss Janet Tuckey; and in the last
with Mr Magnusson; but the second is entirely his own. We regret that we
cannot find room for a specimen of these graceful verses. Those who have
leisure to look into the _Song of the Reed_, or the translation of
Zoheir, will find themselves introduced to a new literature by one who,
if not a poet, was unquestionably, as Mr Besant says, a versifier of a
high order, and in the very front rank of translators.
We have said that most of this work—were it grave or gay, it mattered
not—had to be got through in the midst of serious anxieties. Mrs
Palmer’s health began to fail before they had been married long, and it
soon became evident that her lungs were affected. It was necessary that
she should leave Cambridge. In the spring of 1876, Wales was tried, with
results which were so reassuring that it was decided to complete her
cure (as it was then believed) by a winter in Paris. There, however, she
got worse instead of better, and early in the following year her husband
began to realize that she would die. In the autumn of 1877, they
returned home to try Wales once more, and then, as a last resource,
Bournemouth. There, in the summer of 1878, Mrs Palmer died. The expenses
of so long an illness, added to journeyings to and fro, and the cost of
keeping up two establishments (for he was obliged to continue his
Cambridge lectures all the while), crippled his resources, and produced
embarrassments from which he never became wholly free. His own health,
too, never strong, gave way under his fatigues and worries, and he
became only not quite so ill as his wife. Yet he never complained; never
said a word about his troubles to any of his friends. Those who were
most with him at this dreary time have recorded that he always met them
with a smiling face, and went about his work as calmly as if he had been
well and happy.
It was fortunate for him that he had a singularly joyous nature, which
could never be saddened for long together. He was always surrounded by a
pleasant atmosphere of cheerfulness, which not only did good to those
about him, but had a salutary effect upon himself, enabling him to
maintain his elasticity and vigour, even in the face of sorrow and
ill-health. Most things have their comic side, if only men are not blind
to it; and he could see the humorous aspect of the most melancholy or
the most perilous situation. To the last he was full of life and fun.
Though he no longer, as of old, wrote burlesques, he could draw clever
caricatures of his friends and acquaintances; tell stories which
convulsed his hearers with laughter; and sing comic songs—especially a
certain Arab ditty, in which he turned himself into an Arab minstrel
with really wonderful power of impersonation. Again, whatever he came
across—especially in great cities like London or Paris—was full of
interest for him. Without being a philanthropist, or, indeed, having a
spark of humanitarian sentiment in his nature, he took a pleasure in
investigating his fellow-creatures, talking to men and finding out all
about them. He was endowed in the highest degree with the gift of
sympathy; and this, while it made him the most loveable of friends, made
him also a singularly acute investigator, and gave him a power of
influencing others which was truly wonderful. He possessed, too, great
manual dexterity, and took a pleasure in finding out how all those
things were done which depend for their success upon sleight of hand;
and in all such he became a proficient himself. He was a first-rate
conjuror, and besides doing the tricks, ordinary and extraordinary, of
professed conjurors, he took much satisfaction in reproducing the most
startling phenomena of spiritualism, which he regarded as a debased form
of conjuring—‘a swindle of the most palpable and clumsy kind.’ It was in
such pursuits that he found the recreation which other men find in hard
exercise. Of this he took very little. Even in his younger days he did
not care for games, and his one attempt at cricket was nearly fatal to
the wicket-keeper, whom he managed to hit on the head with his bat; but
he was an expert gymnast, and loved boating and fishing in the Fens, to
which he used to retire from time to time with one of his friends. It
may be doubted whether he cared about the sport and the fresh air so
much as the absolute repose; the old-world character of that curious
corner of England; the total absence of convention. There he could dress
as he pleased; and he took full advantage of his liberty. It is recorded
that once, as he was coming home to College, he happened to meet the
Master, Dr Bateson, who, casting his eye over the water-boots and
flannels, stained with mud and weather, in which the learned Professor
had encased himself, remarked, ‘This is Eastern costume, I suppose.’
‘No, Master; Eastern Counties costume,’ was the reply.
It is pleasant to be able to record that the happiness which had been so
long delayed came at last. In about a year after his wife’s death he
married again. His choice was fortunate, and for the last three years of
his life he was able to enjoy that greatest of all luxuries—a thoroughly
happy home. He stood sorely in need of such consolation, for in other
directions he had plenty to distress and worry him. His pecuniary
difficulties pressed upon him as hardly as ever, and his relations with
the University began to be somewhat strained. He had had the
mortification of seeing Professor Wright’s salary raised to £500 a year,
with no hint of any corresponding proposition being made for him[101];
and when the Commissioners promulgated their scheme his office was not
included in it, a suggestion for raising his salary which had been made
by the Board of Oriental Studies being wholly disregarded by them.
Moreover, the undertaking to deliver three courses of lectures in each
year turned out to be infinitely more laborious than he had expected.
Candidates for the Indian Civil Service increased in number; and the
pupils of any given term were pretty sure to want to go on with their
work in the next, when he was teaching a different language, so that he
was compelled in practice to give, not one, but two, or even three,
courses in each term. Moreover, the elementary nature of much of this
instruction—the ‘teaching boys the Persian alphabet,’ as he called
it—became every year more and more irksome. We are not surprised that he
got disgusted with the University; but at the same time we cannot agree
with Mr Besant that the University was wholly to blame. They were in no
wise responsible for the conduct of the Commissioners; in fact, all that
could be done to make them take a different view was done. Had Palmer
resided continuously in the University, and pressed his own claims,
things might have been very different. But this he had been unable to
do, for reasons which, as we have seen, were beyond his own control, and
for which, therefore, he is not to be blamed; but the fact cannot be
denied that for some years he had been practically non-resident. There
was also another cause which has to be taken into consideration—his own
disposition. The life of a University is a peculiar life, which does not
suit everybody, and certainly did not suit him. He felt ‘cabined,
cribbed, confined,’ in it; and he said afterwards that ‘he never really
began to live till he was emancipated from academic trammels.’ Our
wonder is, not that he left Cambridge when he did, but that he remained
so long connected with it. The final break took place in 1881, when he
voluntarily rescinded the engagement which he had made to lecture, and,
retaining the Readership and the Fellowship at S. John’s College—neither
of which he could afford to resign—took up his abode in London, where he
obtained a place on the staff of the _Standard_ newspaper. He readily
adapted himself to this new life, and soon became a successful writer.
One of the assistant-editors at that time, Mr Robert Wilson, has
recorded that
‘Palmer considered his career as a journalist in London, short as it
was, one of the pleasantest episodes of his life. Those who were
associated with him in that career professionally can say that they
reckoned his companionship one of the brightest and happiest of their
experiences. He was
The dearest friend to me, the kindest man,
The best-conditioned and unwearied spirit
In doing courtesies;
and what he was to me he was to all who worked with him.’
It will be well, before we relate the heroic achievement with which the
career of our friend closed, to try to estimate his position as an
Oriental scholar, for as such he will be remembered, especially in
Cambridge. For this purpose Mr Besant has, most judiciously, supplied
ample materials to those competent to use them, by printing an essay by
Professor Nicholls, of Oxford, which we have already quoted, and a paper
by Mr Stanley Lane Poole. The former points out Palmer’s extraordinary
facility in the use of Persian and Arabic, and gives a minute, and in
the main highly laudatory, criticism of some of his performances, which
ends with these words: ‘In him England loses her _greatest_ Oriental
linguist, and _readiest_ Oriental scholar.’ From the latter we will
quote a few sentences:
‘Palmer was a scholar of the kind that is born, not made. No amount of
mere teaching could develop that wonderful instinct for language which
he possessed. He stood in strongly-marked contrast to the other scholars
of his time. Most of them were brought up on grammars and dictionaries;
he learned Arabic by the ear and mouth. Others were careful about their
conjugations and syntax; Palmer dashed to the root of all grammatical
rules, and spoke or wrote so and so because it would not be spoken or
written any other way. To him strange idioms that a book-student could
not understand were perfectly clear; he had used them himself in the
Desert again and again[102].’
He then proceeds to examine Palmer’s principal Arabic works, and decides
that while the edition of Zoheir is the most finished of them, and the
translation represents the original with remarkable skill, the version
of the Koran ‘is a very striking performance.’
‘It has the grave fault of immaturity; it was written, or rather
dictated, at great speed, and is consequently defaced by some oversights
which Palmer was incapable of committing if he had taken more time over
the work. But, in spite of all the objections that may be urged against
it, his translation has the true Desert ring in it; we may quarrel with
certain renderings, puzzle over occasional obscurities, regret certain
signs of haste or carelessness; but we shall be forced to admit that the
translator has carried us among the Bedawí tents, and breathed into us
the strong air of the Desert, till we fancy we can hear the rich voice
of the Blessed Prophet himself as he spoke to the pilgrims on
Akabah[103].’
Lastly, Mr Poole points out the peculiar excellence of Palmer’s Arabic
Grammar, which is arranged on the Arab system, in bold defiance of the
usual custom of treating Arabic in the same way that one treats Latin.
To these favourable criticisms of works beyond our powers of
appreciation we should like to add a word of praise of our own for the
historical introduction to the Koran, in which the career of Mahomet is
sketched in a few bold, vigorous lines, and the scope and object of the
work are analysed and explained. We regret that Palmer was not able to
devote more time to history; the above _Introduction_, and the _Life of
Haroun Alraschid_, seem to us to show that he would have excelled in
that style of composition. He could read the native authorities with
facility, and he knew how to put his materials to a good use. But alas!
all these peaceful studies were to be closed for ever by an enterprise
as masterly in its execution as it was terrible in its conclusion.
The suppression of Arabi’s revolt in Egypt created the greatest
enthusiasm in this country. The British Public dearly loves a war, and
every event in which our troops were concerned was eagerly read and
proudly commented on by enthusiastic sympathizers. But there were
probably not many who so much as read the scanty paragraphs which noted,
first, the anxiety respecting the fate of some Englishmen who had gone
into the Desert on a certain day in August 1882; and, subsequently, the
certainty of their murder. Palmer’s wonderful achievement has been told
for the first time by Mr Besant with a fulness of detail, a vividness of
descriptive power, and, we may add, a bitterness of grief, that only
those who read it carefully more than once can appreciate as such a
piece of work deserves to be appreciated. We shall try to set before our
readers the principal circumstances of those eventful days, treading in
his steps, and often using his very words.
Early in the month of June 1882, when it became evident that the
Egyptian revolt must be put down by force, two great causes of anxiety
arose: (1) the safety of the Suez Canal; (2) the amount of support which
Arabi was likely to receive, and the allies on whom he could depend.
These two questions were of course closely connected with each other;
and it is now known that as regards the second of them, Arabi hoped to
obtain the support of the Arabs of the Desert on both sides of the
Canal, and by their aid to seize, and, if possible, to destroy, the
Canal itself. These Arabs, it is important to recollect, rise or remain
quiet at the command of their sheikhs. The sheikhs, therefore, had to be
won over. This he hoped to accomplish by the assistance of the governors
of the frontier castles of El Arish on the Mediterranean, Kulat Nakhl,
Suez, Akabah, and Tor on the west coast of the Sinaitic Peninsula, all
of whom, at the beginning of the rebellion, were his frantic partisans.
He had therefore an easy means of access to the Bedouin sheikhs. The
number of men whom they could put into the field was estimated by Palmer
himself at about 50,000; but this was not all. It was feared that if a
single tribe joined Arabi, it would be followed by all the others, and
that the Bedouin of the Syrian and Sinaitic deserts might presently be
joined by their kinsfolk of Arabia and the Great Desert, a countless
multitude.
It was on the evening of Saturday, June 24, that Captain Gill, whose
unhappy fate it was to perish with Palmer on the expedition which they
planned together, was sent to him from the Admiralty, to ask him for
information respecting ‘the character, the power, the possible movement,
of the Sinai Arabs.’ The interview was short, but long enough for Palmer
to sketch the position of affairs, and to convince Gill that a man whom
the Government could thoroughly trust must be sent out to arrange
matters personally with the sheikhs. When Gill had left, Palmer said to
his wife, ‘They must have a man to go to the Desert for them; and they
will ask me, because there is nobody else who can go.’ On Monday Captain
Gill came again, and the whole question was carefully talked over.
‘It was agreed that no time ought to be lost in detaching the tribes
from Arabi, in preventing any injury to the Canal, and in quieting
fanaticism, which might assume such proportions as to set the whole East
aflame. It now became perfectly evident to Gill that Palmer was the only
man who knew the sheikhs, and could be asked to go, and could do the
work; it was also perfectly evident to Palmer that he would be urged to
undertake this difficult and delicate mission; he had, in fact, already
laid himself open by speaking of the ease with which these people may be
managed by one who can talk with them. When Gill left him on that Monday
morning he was already more than half-persuaded to accept the mission.’
It is evident that after this interview Captain Gill returned to the
Admiralty, and gave a glowing account to his superiors of the man whom
he had discovered, and the information he had obtained; for in the
course of the same afternoon Palmer received an invitation to breakfast
with Lord Northbrook on the following morning, Tuesday, June 27, which
he accepted. The interest which he had already excited is proved by the
fact
‘that all the notes and reports which Gill had made during the
interviews on the subject were already set up in type and laid on the
table. The whole conversation at breakfast was concerning the tribes,
and how they might be prevented from giving trouble. Palmer stated again
his belief that the sheikhs might, if some one could be got to go, be
persuaded to sit down and do nothing, if not to take an active part
against the rebels.’
At this point it is material to notice that the Government did not send
for Palmer and ask him to undertake a certain mission to the East;
neither did Palmer communicate with the Government and volunteer, in the
ordinary sense of that word; but that in the course of three successive
interviews it became evident to the Government that the mission must be
undertaken by somebody; and to Palmer, that if he did not go himself the
chance would be lost. No one equally fit for such a mission was
available at that moment; no one knew the sheikhs personally as he did,
and could travel among them as an old friend, for it must always be
remembered that the country he was about to visit was the same which he
had traversed with Drake in 1869-70. He did not exactly wish to go; he
was too fondly devoted to his wife and children to find any pleasure in
courting dangers of which he was fully sensible; but he seems to have
felt that his duty to his country demanded the sacrifice; and perhaps
the thought may have crossed his mind that, if he ran the risk and came
out of it safe and successful, his fortune would be made; and therefore,
when Lord Northbrook inquired, ‘Do you know anyone who would go?’ he
replied, ‘I will go myself.’
This decision was not arrived at until Thursday, June 29. On the
following evening he left London, and on Tuesday, July 4, he was on
board the _Tanjore_, between Brindisi and Alexandria, writing to his
wife: