I read the enclosed last night. Like Cromwell, Whymper would say,
“Paint me, warts and wrinkles and all,” and you have done as he
would have wished, producing a faithful and withal sympathetic
portrait.
I have just queried an obscure sentence here and there, but
have not touched the punctuation, which I presume has had your
attention in the original.
I don’t know whether the Tennyson story has appeared in print.
Edmund Gosse told it to me years back. Of course the son wouldn’t
admit anything conveying an idea of his father’s gruffness. When
I referred to the _Life_ as a Biography, Meredith said to me,
“Don’t call it that: ’tis only a Eulogy.” What I now remember
about the Allen rebuff is that Whymper had been lecturing in
various places, and that Allen--who was thinking of making money
that way--asked him about his fees. And this Whymper wouldn’t
tell him. On the same occasion, Hardy being of the company,
Whymper narrated in detail the Matterhorn catastrophe, which gave
Hardy the impetus to a sonnet. Whymper was the only man Hardy
ever expressed the desire to meet again--hence their coming to me
in the Easter of 1910.
You truly assess him as a lonely man, but there was a soft place
under a hard shell, and this comes out in the tenderness towards
children and all helpless things of which you speak. I am glad to
have your witness to his liking for me. His visits to me remain a
cherished memory.
Yours sincerely,
EDWARD CLODD.
I was under the impression, before receiving Mr. Clodd’s very
interesting letter, and from what Grant Allen told me of the rebuff,
that it was the latter’s question about the Matterhorn which caused
the trouble. But the incident happened under Mr. Clodd’s roof, and
his memory is not likely to fail him. Possibly Allen had already
annoyed Whymper by asking to be told the story of the Matterhorn,
and the inquiry about lecture fees following upon that provoked
Whymper’s ready wrath. That he should thereafter voluntarily have
described the ice accident to Mr. Thomas Hardy (at mention of whose
honoured name I stand respectfully at salute) in no way surprises
me, and in fact confirms what I have said in an earlier section of
this paper to the effect that “the advance must always come from
Whymper himself,” that he was not indisposed to talk when left to
himself, but was quick to suspect any appearance of being “exploited”
or “drawn.” That he resented having questions about the Matterhorn
catastrophe suddenly sprung upon him I have reason to know, for I
have more than once heard him snub, almost savagely, a tactless
inquirer. Allen’s question about fees (he was the last man in the
world to be impertinent) may seem to some readers unwarrantable, but
none of us in Mr. Christy’s list made any secret of the matter, as
Allen--himself a lecturer, but not for Mr. Christy--was aware. On the
contrary, Whymper asked me, soon after I first met him, what fees I
received, telling me in return what his own handsome payments were.
There we will leave the comparatively trivial incident of his
rudeness to Allen. I should not have written thus lengthily of it,
but for the receipt of Mr. Clodd’s letter, and because my picture
of Whymper depends, for any faithfulness it has, not upon bold
strokes of the brush, but upon the slow and careful painting in of
comparatively unimportant but none the less cumulative details.
Edward Whymper was a man whom it was easy to misjudge, and was so
misjudged of many if only for the reason that he would go out of his
way to flatter, to please, or to pay court to none, or to be other
than his natural self to all those with whom he was brought into
contact. Rank and title, great social position, the power of the
purse and the power of the Press, nor his own self-interests, could
ever move Edward Whymper to seek the favour of those who for their
own sake, or for the sake of what they have done, he did not already
respect. Secure in the knowledge of his own just and honourable
dealings with all men, and seeking only the approval of his
conscience, he was content to go his own way in the world, a strange,
strong, lonely, but in many respects a remarkable man--I think in
force of character and determination the most remarkable man I have
ever known. To me, as to many others of whom I am aware, he did many
kindnesses and showed constant friendliness, and if in the opinion
of my readers I seem but ill to have requited these kindnesses and
that friendliness, by drawing a faithful rather than a flattering
picture of the man as I knew him, it is because he was too sincere,
too honest, too genuine, too fearless to wish it otherwise. Let me,
however, in concluding this sketch, give one more picture of him as I
often saw him--a picture which I have purposely kept to the last for
the reason that it shows him in a light which is probably all unknown
to those who did not see him in his home and in his daily life, and
because it is a memory of him upon which I like to linger.
Born bachelor as he always seemed to me--I left Westcliff shortly
before his marriage, and did not know him and cannot imagine him
as a married man--he was extremely fond of and invariably kind to
children. With children he was another being, and, grim as he could
be to grown-ups, children invariably liked and trusted him. My
earliest experience of this was on the evening after my first supper
with him. He had been to town, and, as I was walking towards the
station to purchase an evening paper, I saw him stalking in front
of me, arrayed in a black greatcoat and top hat and black leather
leggings. In one hand he carried his bag, and by the other he clasped
the hand of a tiny girl-child, poorly clad and hatless, whom he
stooped to comfort as tenderly as could any woman, and in fact took
out his own handkerchief to wipe away her tears. The little mite, who
hailed from East London, had been sent by some charitable person
for a week by the sea to one of the many Holiday Homes for the Poor
in Southend. How she had become lost I do not remember, but lost she
certainly was, learning which Whymper had comforted, quieted, and
coaxed her into telling him where her temporary home was, and when
I met him he was on his way to take her there. My own stepson, then
a lad of twelve and a cadet on H.M.S. _Worcester_, was devoted to
him, being especially proud that the greatest of mountaineers was at
the trouble of giving him lessons in climbing. Up and down the cliff
slopes of Southend, Whymper marched the lad, impressing upon him the
importance of always going at one steady and uniform rate, never,
except under exceptional circumstances when haste was absolutely
necessary, forcing the pace or indulging in sprinting; teaching him
to walk from the hips mechanically and machine wise, so that no
strain was put upon the heart and lungs, and instructing him in the
control and use of the breath. When after the holiday the boy went
back to the _Worcester_, he sent Whymper his autograph book, asking
him to inscribe his name therein. In it, the man whom some people
thought grim, surly, and morose, wrote: “I have been dying to see you
again. When _are_ you coming along? Edward Whymper. Feb. 24, 1905.”
The boy whom Whymper always spoke of as his “friend” is at this
moment serving his King and country in France as a soldier, throwing
up his post in Canada directly war was declared. He is too young to
feel--as some of us who are young no longer now, alas, feel, as has
been said, that old friends are the best, and it is to the grave we
must go to find them; but he is only one of many to whom, when they
were children, the dead man showed constant kindness, and who will to
their life’s end hold the name of the great mountaineer, who was also
a true child-lover, in honour, gratitude, and affection.