The Travels of Marco Polo
Chapter 3 : But though the beautiful city and surrounding country were full of charm and interest, Y

But though the beautiful city and surrounding country were full of charm and interest, Yule was too much pre-occupied by his own special engrossing pursuits ever really to get the good of his surroundings, of which indeed he often seemed only half conscious.

By this time Yule had obtained, without ever having sought it, a distinct and, in some respects, quite unique position in geographical science.

Although his _Essay on the Geography of the Oxus Region_ (1872) received comparatively little public attention at home, it had yet made its mark once for all,[62] and from this time, if not earlier, Yule's high authority in all questions of Central Asian geography was generally recognised. He had long ere this, almost unconsciously, laid the broad foundations of that "Yule method," of which Baron von Richthofen has written so eloquently, declaring that not only in his own land, "but also in the literatures of France, Italy, Germany, and other countries, the powerful stimulating influence of the Yule method is visible."[63] More than one writer has indeed boldly compared Central Asia before Yule to Central Africa before Livingstone!

Yule had wrought from sheer love of the work and without expectation of public recognition, and it was therefore a great surprise as well as gratification to him, to find that the demand for his _Marco Polo_ was such as to justify the appearance of a second edition only a few years after the first. The preparation of this enlarged edition, with much other miscellaneous work (see subjoined bibliography), and the superintendence of the building of the church already named, kept him fully occupied for the next three years.

Amongst the parerga and miscellaneous occupations of Yule's leisure hours in the period 1869-74, may be mentioned an interesting correspondence with Professor W. W. Skeat on the subject of _William of Palerne_ and Sicilian examples of the Werwolf; the skilful a.n.a.lysis and exposure of Klaproth's false geography;[64] the purchase and despatch of Sicilian seeds and young trees for use in the Punjab, at the request of the Indian Forestry Department; translations (prepared for friends) of tracts on the cultivation of Sumach and the collection of Manna as practised in Sicily; also a number of small services rendered to the South Kensington Museum, at the request of the late Sir Henry Cole. These latter included obtaining Italian and Sicilian bibliographic contributions to the Science and Art Department's _Catalogue of Books on Art_, selecting architectural subjects to be photographed;[65] negotiating the purchase of the original drawings ill.u.s.trative of Padre B. Gravina's great work on the Cathedral of Monreale; and superintending the execution of a copy in mosaic of the large mosaic picture (in the Norman Palatine Chapel, Palermo,) of the Entry of our Lord into Jerusalem.

In the spring of 1875, just after the publication of the second edition of _Marco Polo_, Yule had to mourn the loss of his n.o.ble wife. He was absent from Sicily at the time, but returned a few hours after her death on 30th April. She had suffered for many years from a severe form of heart disease, but her end was perfect peace. She was laid to rest, amid touching tokens of both public and private sympathy, in the beautiful camposanto on Monte Pellegrino. What her loss was to Yule only his oldest and closest friends were in a position to realise. Long years of suffering had impaired neither the soundness of her judgment nor the sweetness, and even gaiety, of her happy, unselfish disposition. And in spirit, as even in appearance, she retained to the very last much of the radiance of her youth. Nor were her intellectual gifts less remarkable. Few who had once conversed with her ever forgot her, and certainly no one who had once known her intimately ever ceased to love her.[66]

Shortly after this calamity, Yule removed to London, and on the retirement of his old friend, Sir William Baker, from the India Council early that autumn, Lord Salisbury at once selected him for the vacant seat. Nothing would ever have made him a party-man, but he always followed Lord Salisbury with conviction, and worked under him with steady confidence.

In 1877 Yule married, as his second wife, the daughter of an old friend,[67] a very amiable woman twenty years his junior, who made him very happy until her untimely death in 1881. From the time of his joining the India Council, his duties at the India Office of course occupied a great part of his time, but he also continued to do an immense amount of miscellaneous literary work, as may be seen by reference to the subjoined bibliography, (itself probably incomplete). In Council he invariably "showed his strong determination to endeavour to deal with questions on their own merits and not only by custom and precedent."[68] Amongst subjects in which he took a strong line of his own in the discussions of the Council, may be specially instanced his action in the matter of the cotton duties (in which he defended native Indian manufactures as against hostile Manchester interests); the Vernacular Press Act, the necessity for which he fully recognised; and the retention of Kandahar, for which he recorded his vote in a strong minute. In all these three cases, which are typical of many others, his opinion was overruled, but having been carefully and deliberately formed, it remained unaffected by defeat.

In all matters connected with Central Asian affairs, Yule's opinion always carried great weight; some of his most competent colleagues indeed preferred his authority in this field to that of even Sir Henry Rawlinson, possibly for the reason given by Sir M. Grant Duff, who has epigrammatically described the latter as good in Council but dangerous in counsel.[69]

Yule's courageous independence and habit of looking at all public questions by the simple light of what appeared to him right, yet without fads or doctrinairism, earned for him the respect of the successive Secretaries of State under whom he served, and the warm regard and confidence of his other colleagues. The value attached to his services in Council was sufficiently shown by the fact that when the period of ten years (for which members are usually appointed), was about to expire, Lord Hartington (now Duke of Devons.h.i.+re), caused Yule's appointment to be renewed for life, under a special Act of Parliament pa.s.sed for this purpose in 1885.

His work as a member of the Army Sanitary Committee, brought him into communication with Miss Florence Nightingale, a privilege which he greatly valued and enjoyed, though he used to say: "She is worse than a Royal Commission to answer, and, in the most gracious charming manner possible, immediately finds out all I don't know!" Indeed his devotion to the "Lady-in-Chief" was scarcely less complete than Kinglake's.

In 1880, Yule was appointed to the Board of Visitors of the Government Indian Engineering College at Cooper's Hill, a post which added to his sphere of interests without materially increasing his work. In 1882, he was much gratified by being named an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, more especially as it was to fill one of the two vacancies created by the deaths of Thomas Carlyle and Dean Stanley.

Yule had been President of the Hakluyt Society from 1877, and in 1885 was elected President also of the Royal Asiatic Society. He would probably also have been President of the Royal Geographical Society, but for an untoward incident. Mention has already been made of his constant determination to judge all questions by the simple touchstone of what he believed to be right, irrespective of personal considerations. It was in pursuance of these principles that, at the cost of great pain to himself and some misrepresentation, he in 1878 sundered his long connection with the Royal Geographical Society, by resigning his seat on their Council, solely in consequence of their adoption of what he considered a wrong policy. This severance occurred just when it was intended to propose him as President. Some years later, at the personal request of the late Lord Aberdare, a President in all respects worthy of the best traditions of that great Society, Yule consented to rejoin the Council, which he re-entered as a Vice-President.

In 1883, the University of Edinburgh celebrated its Tercentenary, when Yule was selected as one of the recipients of the honorary degree of LL.D.

His letters from Edinburgh, on this occasion, give a very pleasant and amusing account of the festivity and of the celebrities he met. Nor did he omit to chronicle the envious glances cast, as he alleged, by some British men of science on the splendours of foreign Academic attire, on the yellow robes of the Sorbonne, and the Palms of the Inst.i.tute of France! Pasteur was, he wrote, the one most enthusiastically acclaimed of all who received degrees.

I think it was about the same time that M. Renan was in England, and called upon Sir Henry Maine, Yule, and others at the India Office. On meeting just after, the colleagues compared notes as to their distinguished but unwieldy visitor. "It seems that _le style n'est pas l'homme meme_ in _this_ instance," quoth "Ancient Law" to "Marco Polo."

And here it may be remarked that Yule so completely identified himself with his favourite traveller that he frequently signed contributions to the public press as MARCUS PAULUS VENETUS or M.P.V. His more intimate friends also gave him the same _sobriquet_, and once, when calling on his old friend, Dr. John Brown (the beloved chronicler of _Rab and his Friends_), he was introduced by Dr. John to some lion-hunting American visitors as "our Marco Polo." The visitors evidently took the statement in a literal sense, and scrutinised Yule closely.[70]

In 1886 Yule published his delightful _Anglo-Indian Glossary_, with the whimsical but felicitous sub-t.i.tle of _Hobson-Jobson_ (the name given by the rank and file of the British Army in India to the religious festival in celebration of Ha.s.san and Husan).

This _Glossary_ was an abiding interest to both Yule and the present writer. Contributions of ill.u.s.trative quotations came from most diverse and unexpected sources, and the arrival of each new word or happy quotation was quite an event, and gave such pleasure to the recipients as can only be fully understood by those who have shared in such pursuits.

The volume was dedicated in affecting terms to his elder brother, Sir George Yule, who, unhappily, did not survive to see it completed.

In July 1885, the two brothers had taken the last of many happy journeys together, proceeding to Cornwall and the Scilly Isles. A few months later, on 13th January 1886, the end came suddenly to the elder, from the effects of an accident at his own door.[71]

It may be doubted if Yule ever really got over the shock of this loss, though he went on with his work as usual, and served that year as a Royal Commissioner on the occasion of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition of 1886.

From 1878, when an accidental chill laid the foundations of an exhausting, though happily quite painless, malady, Yule's strength had gradually failed, although for several years longer his general health and energies still appeared unimpaired to a casual observer. The condition of public affairs also, in some degree, affected his health injuriously. The general trend of political events from 1880 to 1886 caused him deep anxiety and distress, and his righteous wrath at what he considered the betrayal of his country's honour in the cases of Frere, of Gordon, and of Ireland, found strong, and, in a n.o.ble sense, pa.s.sionate expression in both prose and verse. He was never in any sense a party man, but he often called himself "one of Mr. Gladstone's converts," i.e. one whom Gladstonian methods had compelled to break with liberal tradition and prepossessions.

Nothing better expresses Yule's feeling in the period referred to than the following letter, written in reference to the R. E. Gordon Memorial,[72]

but of much wider application: "Will you allow me an inch or two of s.p.a.ce to say to my brother officers, 'Have nothing to do with the proposed Gordon Memorial.'

"That glorious memory is in no danger of peris.h.i.+ng and needs no memorial.

Sackcloth and silence are what it suggests to those who have guided the action of England; and Englishmen must bear the responsibility for that action and share its shame. It is too early for atoning memorials; nor is it possible for those who take part in them to dissociate themselves from a repulsive hypocrisy.

"Let every one who would fain bestow something in honour of the great victim, do, in silence, some act of help to our soldiers or their families, or to others who are poor and suffering.

"In later days our survivors or successors may look back with softened sorrow and pride to the part which men of our corps have played in these pa.s.sing events, and Charles Gordon far in the front of all; and then they may set up our little tablets, or what not--not to preserve the memory of our heroes, but to maintain the integrity of our own record of the ill.u.s.trious dead."

Happily Yule lived to see the beginning of better times for his country.

One of the first indications of that national awakening was the right spirit in which the public, for the most part, received Lord Wolseley's stirring appeal at the close of 1888, and Yule was so much struck by the parallelism between Lord Wolseley's warning and some words of his own contained in the pseudo-Polo fragment (see above, end of Preface), that he sent Lord Wolseley the very last copy of the 1875 edition of _Marco Polo_, with a vigorous expression of his sentiments.

That was probably Yule's last utterance on a public question. The sands of life were now running low, and in the spring of 1889, he felt it right to resign his seat on the India Council, to which he had been appointed for life. On this occasion Lord Cross, then Secretary of State for India, successfully urged his acceptance of the K.C.S.I., which Yule had refused several years before.

In the House of Lords, Viscount Cross subsequently referred to his resignation in the following terms. He said: "A vacancy on the Council had unfortunately occurred through the resignation from ill-health of Sir Henry Yule, whose presence on the Council had been of enormous advantage to the natives of the country. A man of more kindly disposition, thorough intelligence, high-minded, upright, honourable character, he believed did not exist; and he would like to bear testimony to the estimation in which he was held, and to the services which he had rendered in the office he had so long filled."[73]

This year the Hakluyt Society published the concluding volume of Yule's last work of importance, the _Diary of Sir William Hedges_. He had for several years been collecting materials for a full memoir of his great predecessor in the domain of historical geography, the ill.u.s.trious Rennell.[74] This work was well advanced as to preliminaries, but was not sufficiently developed for early publication at the time of Yule's death, and ere it could be completed its place had been taken by a later enterprise.

During the summer of 1889, Yule occupied much of his leisure by collecting and revising for re-issue many of his miscellaneous writings. Although not able to do much at a time, this desultory work kept him occupied and interested, and gave him much pleasure during many months. It was, however, never completed. Yule went to the seaside for a few weeks in the early summer, and subsequently many pleasant days were spent by him among the Surrey hills, as the guest of his old friends Sir Joseph and Lady Hooker. Of their constant and unwearied kindness, he always spoke with most affectionate grat.i.tude. That autumn he took a great dislike to the English climate; he hankered after suns.h.i.+ne, and formed many plans, eager though indefinite, for wintering at Cintra, a place whose perfect beauty had fascinated him in early youth. But increasing weakness made a journey to Portugal, or even the South of France, an alternative of which he also spoke, very inexpedient, if not absolutely impracticable. Moreover, he would certainly have missed abroad the many friends and multifarious interests which still surrounded him at home. He continued to take drives, and occasionally called on friends, up to the end of November, and it was not until the middle of December that increasing weakness obliged him to take to his bed. He was still, however, able to enjoy seeing his friends--some to the very end, and he had a constant stream of visitors, mostly old friends, but also a few newer ones, who were scarcely less welcome. He also kept up his correspondence to the last, three attached brother R.E.'s, General Collinson, General Maclagan, and Major W.

Broadfoot, taking it in turn with the present writer to act as his amanuensis.

On Friday, 27th December, Yule received a telegram from Paris, announcing his nomination that day as Corresponding Member of the Inst.i.tute of France (Academie des Inscriptions), one of the few distinctions of any kind of which it can still be said that it has at no time lost any of its exalted dignity.

An honour of a different kind that came about the same time, and was scarcely less prized by him, was a very beautiful letter of farewell and benediction from Miss Florence Nightingale,[75] which he kept under his pillow and read many times. On the 28th, he dictated to the present writer his acknowledgment, also by telegraph, of the great honour done him by the Inst.i.tute. The message was in the following words: "Reddo gratias, Ill.u.s.trissimi Domini, ob honores tanto nimios quanto immeritos! Mihi robora deficiunt, vita collabitur, accipiatis voluntatem pro facto. c.u.m corde pleno et gratissimo moriturus vos, Ill.u.s.trissimi Domini, saluto.

YULE."

Sunday, 29th December, was a day of the most dense black fog, and he felt its oppression, but was much cheered by a visit from his ever faithful friend, Collinson, who, with his usual unselfishness, came to him that day at very great personal inconvenience.

On Monday, 30th December, the day was clearer, and Henry Yule awoke much refreshed, and in a peculiarly happy and even cheerful frame of mind. He said he felt so comfortable. He spoke of his intended book, and bade his daughter write about the inevitable delay to his publisher: "Go and write to John Murray," were indeed his last words to her. During the morning he saw some friends and relations, but as noon approached his strength flagged, and after a period of unconsciousness, he pa.s.sed peacefully away in the presence of his daughter and of an old friend, who had come from Edinburgh to see him, but arrived too late for recognition. Almost at the same time that Yule fell asleep, his "stately message,"[76] was being read under the great Dome in Paris. Some two hours after Yule had pa.s.sed away, F.-M. Lord Napier of Magdala, called on an errand of friends.h.i.+p, and at his desire was admitted to see the last of his early friend. When Lord Napier came out, he said to the present writer, in his own reflective way: "He looks as if he had just settled to some great work." With these suggestive words of the great soldier, who was so soon, alas, to follow his old friend to the work of another world, this sketch may fitly close.

The following excellent verses (of unknown authors.h.i.+p) on Yule's death, subsequently appeared in the _Academy_:[77]

"'Moriturus vos saluto'

Breathes his last the dying scholar-- Tireless student, brilliant writer; He 'salutes his age' and journeys To the Undiscovered Country.

There await him with warm welcome All the heroes of old Story-- The Venetians, the Ca Polo, Marco, Nicolo, Maffeo, Odoric of Pordenone, Ibn Batuta, Marignolli, Benedict de Goes--'Seeking Lost Cathay and finding Heaven.'

Many more whose lives he cherished With the piety of learning; Fading records, buried pages, Failing lights and fires forgotten, By his energy recovered, By his eloquence re-kindled.

'Moriturus vos saluto'

Breathes his last the dying scholar, And the far off ages answer: _Immortales te salutant_. D. M."

The same idea had been previously embodied, in very felicitous language, by the late General Sir William Lockhart, in a letter which that n.o.ble soldier addressed to the present writer a few days after Yule's death. And Yule himself would have taken pleasure in the idea of those meetings with his old travellers, which seemed so certain to his surviving friends.[78]

He rests in the old cemetery at Tunbridge Wells, with his second wife, as he had directed. A great gathering of friends attended the first part of the burial service which was held in London on 3rd January, 1890. Amongst those present were witnesses of every stage of his career, from his boyish days at the High School of Edinburgh downwards. His daughter, of course, was there, led by the faithful, peerless friend who was so soon to follow him into the Undiscovered Country.[79] She and his youngest nephew, with two cousins and a few old friends, followed his remains over the snow to the graveside. The epitaph subsequently inscribed on the tomb was penned by Yule himself, but is by no means representative of his powers in a kind of composition in which he had so often excelled in the service of others.

As a composer of epitaphs and other monumental inscriptions few of our time have surpa.s.sed, if any have equalled him, in his best efforts.

SIR GEORGE UDNY YULE, C.B., K.C.S.I.[80]

George Udny Yule, born at Inveresk in 1813, pa.s.sed through Haileybury into the Bengal Civil Service, which he entered at the age of 18 years. For twenty-five years his work lay in Eastern Bengal. He gradually became known to the Government for his activity and good sense, but won a far wider reputation as a mighty hunter, alike with hog-spear and double barrel. By 1856 the roll of his slain tigers exceeded four hundred, some of them of special fame; after that he continued slaying his tigers, but ceased to count them. For some years he and a few friends used annually to visit the plains of the Brahmaputra, near the Garrow Hills--an entirely virgin country then, and swarming with large game. Yule used to describe his once seeing seven rhinoceroses at once on the great plain, besides herds of wild buffalo and deer of several kinds. One of the party started the theory that Noah's Ark had been s.h.i.+pwrecked there! In those days George Yule was the only man to whom the Maharajah of Nepaul, Sir Jung Bahadur, conceded leave to shoot within his frontier.

Yule was first called from his useful obscurity in 1856. The year before, the Sonthals in insurrection disturbed the long unbroken peace of the Delta. These were a numerous non-Aryan, uncivilised, but industrious race, driven wild by local mismanagement, and the oppressions of Hindoo usurers acting through the regulation courts. After the suppression of their rising, Yule was selected by Sir F. Halliday, who knew his man, to be Commissioner of the Bhagulpoor Division, containing some six million souls, and embracing the hill country of the Sonthals. He obtained sanction to a code for the latter, which removed these people entirely from the Court system, and its tribe of leeches, and abolished all intermediaries between the Sahib and the Sonthal peasant. Through these measures, and his personal influence, aided by picked a.s.sistants, he was able to effect, with extraordinary rapidity, not only their entire pacification, but such a beneficial change in their material condition, that they have risen from a state of barbarous penury to comparative prosperity and comfort.

George Yule was thus engaged when the Mutiny broke out, and it soon made itself felt in the districts under him. To its suppression within his limits, he addressed himself with characteristic vigour. Thoroughly trusted by every cla.s.s--by his Government, by those under him, by planters and by Zemindars--he organised a little force, comprising a small detachment of the 5th Regiment, a party of British sailors, mounted volunteers from the districts, etc., and of this he became practically the captain. Elephants were collected from all quarters to spare the legs of his infantry and sailors; while dog-carts were turned into limbers for the small three-pounders of the seamen. And with this little army George Yule scoured the Trans-Gangetic districts, leading it against bodies of the Mutineers, routing them upon more than one occasion, and out-manoeuvring them by his astonis.h.i.+ng marches, till he succeeded in driving them across the Nepaul frontier. No part of Bengal was at any time in such danger, and nowhere was the danger more speedily and completely averted.

After this Yule served for two or three years as Chief Commissioner of Oudh, where in 1862 he married Miss Pemberton, the daughter of a very able father, and the niece of Sir Donald MacLeod, of honoured and beloved memory. Then for four or five years he was Resident at Hyderabad, where he won the enduring friends.h.i.+p of Sir Salar Jung. "Everywhere he showed the same characteristic firm but benignant justice. Everywhere he gained the lasting attachment of all with whom he had intimate dealings--except tigers and scoundrels."

Many years later, indignant at the then apparently supine att.i.tude of the British Government in the matter of the Abyssinian captives, George Yule wrote a letter (necessarily published without his name, as he was then on the Governor-General's Council), to the editor of an influential Indian paper, proposing a private expedition should be organised for their delivery from King Theodore, and inviting the editor (Dr. George Smith) to open a list of subscriptions in his paper for this purpose, to which Yule offered to contribute 2000 by way of beginning. Although impracticable in itself, it is probable that, as in other cases, the existence of such a project may have helped to force the Government into action. The particulars of the above incident were printed by Dr. Smith in his _Memoir of the Rev. John Wilson_, but are given here from memory.