Volume I Part 5 (1/2)
[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.)