The Travels of Marco Polo
Chapter 5 : [43] Baker went home in November, 1857, but did not retire until the following year.[44]

[43] Baker went home in November, 1857, but did not retire until the following year.

[44] Nothing was more worthy of respect in Yule's fine character than the energy and success with which he mastered his natural temperament in the last ten years of his life, when few would have guessed his original fiery disposition.

[45] Not without cause did Sir J. P. Grant officially record that "to his imperturbable temper the Government of India owed much."

[46] Yule's colour-blindness was one of the cases in which Dalton, the original investigator of this optical defect, took special interest.

At a later date (1859) he sent Yule, through Professor Wilson, skeins of coloured silks to name. Yule's elder brother Robert had the same peculiarity of sight, and it was also present in two earlier and two later generations of their mother's family--making five generations in all. But in no case did it pa.s.s from parent to child, always pa.s.sing in these examples, by a sort of Knight's move, from uncle to nephew.

Another peculiarity of Yule's more difficult to describe was the instinctive a.s.sociation of certain architectural forms or images with the days of the week. He once, and once only (in 1843), met another person, a lady who was a perfect stranger, with the same peculiarity.

About 1878-79 he contributed some notes on this obscure subject to one of the newspapers, in connection with the researches of Mr. Francis Galton, on Visualisation, but the particulars are not now accessible.

[47] From Yule's verses on her grave.

[48] Lord Canning to Lady Clanricarde: Letter dated Barrackpoor, 19th Nov.

1861, 7 A.M., printed in _Two n.o.ble Lives_, by A. J. C. Hare, and here reproduced by Mr. Hare's permission.

[49] Lord Canning's letter to Lady Clanricarde. He gave to Yule Lady Canning's own silver drinking-cup, which she had constantly used. It is carefully treasured, with other Canning and Dalhousie relics, by the present writer.

[50] Many years later Yule wrote of Lord Canning as follows: "He had his defects, no doubt. He had not at first that entire grasp of the situation that was wanted at such a time of crisis. But there is a virtue which in these days seems unknown to Parliamentary statesmen in England--Magnanimity. Lord Canning was an English statesman, and he was surpa.s.singly magnanimous. There is another virtue which in Holy Writ is taken as the type and sum of all righteousness--Justice--and he was eminently just. The misuse of special powers granted early in the Mutiny called for Lord Canning's interference, and the consequence was a flood of savage abuse; the violence and bitterness of which it is now hard to realise." (_Quarterly Review_, April, 1883, p. 306.)

[51] During the next ten years Yule continued to visit London annually for two or three months in the spring or early summer.

[52] Now in the writer's possession. They appear in the well-known portrait of Lord Canning reading a despatch.

[53] Lord Canning's recommendation had been mislaid, and the India Office was disposed to ignore it. It was Lord Canning's old friend and Eton chum, Lord Granville, who obtained this tardy justice for Yule, instigated thereto by that most faithful friend, Sir Roderick Murchison.

[54] I cannot let the mention of this time of lonely sickness and trial pa.s.s without recording here my deep grat.i.tude to our dear and honoured friend, John Ruskin. As my dear mother stood on the threshold between life and death at Mornex that sad spring, he was untiring in all kindly offices of friends.h.i.+p. It was her old friend, Princ.i.p.al A. J.

Scott (then eminent, now forgotten), who sent him to call. He came to see us daily when possible, sometimes bringing MSS. of Rossetti and others to read aloud (and who could equal his reading?), and when she was too ill for this, or himself absent, he would send not only books and flowers to brighten the bare rooms of the hillside inn (then very primitive), but his own best treasures of Turner and W. Hunt, drawings and illuminated missals. It was an anxious solace; and though most gratefully enjoyed, these treasures were never long retained.

[55] Villa Mansi, nearly opposite the old Ducal Palace. With its private chapel, it formed three sides of a small _place_ or court.

[56] He also at all times spared no pains to enforce that ideal on other index-makers, who were not always grateful for his sound doctrine!

[57] He saw a good deal of the outbreak when taking small comforts to a friend, the Commandent of the Military School, who was captured and imprisioned by the insurgents.

[58] After 1869 he discontinued sea-bathing.

[59] This was Yule's first geographical honour, but he had been elected into the Athenaeum Club, under "Rule II.," in January, 1867.

[60] Garnier took a distinguished part in the Defence of Paris in 1870-71, after which he resumed his naval service in the East, where he was killed in action. His last letter to Yule contained the simple announcement "_J'ai pris Hano_" a modest terseness of statement worthy of the best naval traditions.

[61] One year the present writer, at her mother's desire, induced him to take walks of 10 to 12 miles with her, but interesting and lovely as the scenery was, he soon wearied for his writing-table (even bringing his work with him), and thus little permanent good was effected. And it was just the same afterwards in Scotland, where an old Highland gillie, describing his experience of the Yule brothers, said: "I was liking to take out Sir George, for _he_ takes the time to enjoy the hills, but (plaintively), the Kornel is no good, for he's just as restless as a water-wagtail!" If there be any _mal de l'ecritoire_ corresponding to _mal du pays_, Yule certainly had it.

[62] The Russian Government in 1873 paid the same work the very practical compliment of circulating it largely amongst their officers in Central Asia.

[63] "Auch in den Literaturen von Frankreich, Italien, Deutschland und andere Landern ist der machtig treibende Einfluss der Yuleschen Methode, welche wissenschaftliche Grundlichkeit mit anmuthender Form verbindet, bemerkbar." (_Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde zu Berlin_, Band XVII. No. 2.)

[64] This subject is too lengthy for more than cursory allusion here, but the patient a.n.a.lytic skill and keen venatic instinct with which Yule not only proved the forgery of the alleged _Travels of Georg Ludwig von ----_ (that had been already established by Lord Strangford, whose last effort it was, and Sir Henry Rawlinson), but step by step traced it home to the arch-culprit Klaproth, was nothing less than masterly.

[65] This is probably the origin of the odd misstatement as to Yule occupying himself at Palermo with photography, made in the delightful _Reminiscences_ of the late Colonel Balcarres Ramsay. Yule never attempted photography after 1852.

[66] She was a woman of fine intellect and wide reading; a skilful musician, who also sang well, and a good amateur artist in the style of Aug. Delacroix (of whom she was a favourite pupil). Of French and Italian she had a thorough and literary mastery, and how well she knew her own language is shown by the sound and pure English of a story she published in early life, under the pseudonym of Max Lyle (_Fair Oaks, or The Experiences of Arnold Osborne, M.D._, 2 vols., 1856). My mother was partly of Highland descent on both sides, and many of her fine qualities were very characteristic of that race. Before her marriage she took an active part in many good works, and herself originated the useful School for the Blind at Bath, in a room which she hired with her pocket-money, where she and her friend Miss Elwin taught such of the blind poor as they could gather together.

In the tablet which he erected to her memory in the family burial-place of St. Andrew's, Gulane, her husband described her thus:--"A woman singular in endowments, in suffering, and in faith; to whom to live was Christ, to die was gain."

[67] Mary Wilhelmina, daughter of F. Skipwith, Esq., B.C.S.

[68] Collinson's _Memoir of Yule_.

[69] See _Notes from a Diary_, 1888-91.

[70] The identification was not limited to Yule, for when travelling in Russia many years ago, the present writer was introduced by an absent-minded Russian _savant_ to his colleagues as _Mademoiselle Marco Paulovna_!

[71] See Note on Sir George Yule's career at the end of this Memoir.

[72] Addressed to the Editor, _Royal Engineers' Journal_, who did not, however, publish it.

[73] Debate of 27th August, 1889, as reported in _The Times_ of 28th August.

[74] Yule had published a brief but very interesting Memoir of Major Rennell in the _R. E. Journal_ in 1881. He was extremely proud of the circ.u.mstance that Rennell's surviving grand-daughter presented to him a beautiful wax medallion portrait of the great geographer. This wonderfully life-like presentment was bequeathed by Yule to his friend Sir Joseph Hooker, who presented it to the Royal Society.

[75] Knowing his veneration for that n.o.ble lady, I had written to tell her of his condition, and to ask her to give him this last pleasure of a few words. The response was such as few but herself could write. This letter was not to be found after my father's death, and I can only conjecture that it must either have been given away by himself (which is most improbable), or was appropriated by some unauthorised outsider.

[76] So Sir M. E. Grant Duff well calls it.

[77] _Academy_, 19th March, 1890.

[78] He was much pleased, I remember, by a letter he once received from a kindly Franciscan friar, who wrote: "You may rest a.s.sured that the Beato Odorico will not forget all you have done for him."

[79] F.-M. Lord Napier of Magdala, died 14th January, 1890.

[80] This notice includes the greater part of an article written by my father, and published in the _St. James' Gazette_ of 18th January, 1886, but I have added other details from personal recollection and other sources.--A. F. Y.

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SIR HENRY YULE'S WRITINGS

COMPILED BY H. CORDIER AND A. F. YULE[1]

1842 Notes on the Iron of the Kasia Hills. (_Jour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal_, XI. Part II. July-Dec. 1842, pp. 853-857.)

Reprinted in _Proceedings of the Museum of Economic Geology_, 1852.

1844 Notes on the Kasia Hills and People. By Lieut. H. Yule. (_Jour.

Asiatic Soc. Bengal_, XII. Part II. July-Dec. 1844, pp. 612-631.)

1846 A Ca.n.a.l Act of the Emperor Akbar, with some notes and remarks on the History of the Western Jumna Ca.n.a.ls. By Lieut. Yule. (_Jour. Asiatic Society Bengal_, XV. 1846, pp. 213-223.)