CHAPTER VI

LAST YEARS ON THE SURVEY

1878-1882

The spring of 1878 saw James Geikie engaged in active correspondence with Prof. Ramsay in regard to their joint paper on the Gibraltar work, and also occupied, in his own words, in fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus and elsewhere, that is to say, in sundry controversies over glacial matters.

His happiness at home was clouded by the severe illness of his little son. In his letters he speaks of being knocked up with night-nursing, for he walked up and down the greater part of the night with the child in his arms during the most anxious period. Happily the baby made a good recovery, and in a letter to Mr Horne towards the end of the year he says:--“‘The boy’ is hale and flourishing, and a great amusement in the evenings when I come home. I prefer his company even to that of a pipe! Excuse the ‘eavy fawther.’” He was very fond of children at all times, and his own were a source of great joy to him.

In summer he went back to the Cheviot region for a couple of months to finish off his work there, and revisited Buchtrig. It was during this visit that he met Sir George Douglas (_cf._ p. 67). In August he went abroad with his wife and her sister, the baby, now quite recovered, being left with his grandmother. The tour was _via_ the Rhine to Switzerland, and then across the St Gothard by carriage into Italy. Some interesting letters to the home people record the experiences met with, but as the ground covered is very well known they need not be quoted here. During the course of the tour some geological observations were made bearing on points treated in _Prehistoric Europe_, which was being written during this year.

Signs of overwork and some worry were, however, observable as the year went on. In an undated letter to Mr Horne he complains of not feeling good for much:--“I was busy at a new book, but being in the blues now for some time, the MS. lies aside, and I sometimes wonder whether I shall ever finish it. I thought my trip abroad would have cleared up my faculties, but no such luck!”

Among his causes for anxiety were his own future and that of the Survey. Prof. Ramsay’s health was breaking down, a fact which grieved James Geikie very much, and the possibility that difficult days for the Survey and its members were coming loomed ahead. In an unwonted fit of melancholy he says in the same letter:--“It makes one sad to think that the ‘brave days of old’ are all passing or past away. One gets sick of the strife and din and wishes for peace and rest, which, however, will only come when one shuts his eyes for the last time.” He found also that his distance from a good library was a great drawback in his work. The letter, with all its sadness, speaks of the pleasure which he found in the company of the “small chick,” who seems to have had a potent charm wherewith to dispel his father’s clouds of gloom.

Among the letters of the spring of 1879 are several to Mr Lamplugh, now of the Geological Survey. In regard to these Mr Lamplugh says:--“I do not know that they contain anything that is now of sufficient consequence to warrant their reproduction. But they illustrate very well the kindly attention and trouble that the late Prof. Geikie was always ready to give to a beginner in science. I was under twenty years of age when the first of these letters came to me, and I have kept them as treasures from those days.”

The letters in their friendliness and unaffectedness bear out this description, and some other letters of the same period show that while the writer was never deaf to the appeal of a common interest in the progress of knowledge, when to this was added the stronger appeal of friendship, he gave himself whole-heartedly. His friends Messrs Peach and Horne had written a paper on “The Glaciation of the Shetland Islands” for the Geological Society of London, and in this James Geikie took the keenest interest, giving advice freely both on the method of presenting the contents, and on the technical points connected with the effort to obtain for the paper a fair hearing and speedy publication. A hitch in the matter of publication brings from him a letter full of genuine and practical sympathy, combined with a whole-hearted espousal of his friends’ cause.

During this spring also he was still engaged, with varying fortunes, upon his _Prehistoric Europe_, a task of great magnitude on account of the enormous number of references and the labour which these involved. Thus a letter written early in March represents, as it were, the trough of the wave--he tires of the book at intervals, thinking it will never do, and throws it aside in a “kind o’ scunner.” Another letter at the end of May shows him on the crest of a new wave of enthusiasm. He had just received many new pamphlets from “furrin’ parts,” mostly inspired by his own glacial work, often accompanied by letters from the authors. Thus he says:--

Dr A. Penck of Leipzig writes to the effect that it was the reading of _Great Ice Age_ that first opened his eyes to the meaning of the Diluvium of Northern Germany. He says he has got evidence of three glaciations with intervening glacial deposits! He says he has all the burning enthusiasm of a convert! His letter has greatly gratified me, of course. I see he is an old hand and has done a lot of geological work. Then I have a long letter from a Dr R. Lehmann of Halle, who is also congratulatory at the success with which the German Drifts have recently been explained on the principles laid down in my book!! Also, some duffers have sent me their photographs! I wonder what has so suddenly wakened them up. Helland has a long and interesting paper on the German Drift which I suppose you will see: also a batch of papers on same subject from Prof. Berendt of Berlin. I don’t know how I am to get through all the Swedish and Norwegian papers I have received. They are so hard to read.

A postscript to this letter says:--“Pray excuse the exulting egotism of this epistle. I would not write so to anyone else.”

But while glacial work was thus occupying most of his attention, lighter subjects were not altogether forgotten. In another letter to Mr Horne, written on Good Friday, he says:--

In a few days I am going to ask you to do me a favour, which is to run your eye over some MS. I shall send you. You need not read it all through--that would be too much of a good thing--but just dip into it here and there, and see what it is like. You will laugh when I tell you that the MS. is poetry, translations from the German. These have been lying beside me for some ten or twelve years. I was urged by several friends of good judgment to publish them long ago. But I would not be induced to do so, so I laid them aside until I had quite forgotten them and could read them and criticise them as if they had been the lucubrations of another man. They bore this better than I expected, and I gathered together all I could find and have had them copied out and stitched into a volume.

It is perhaps needless to say that this MS. was the translation of Heine’s poems, of which mention has already been made here repeatedly. The intention to publish at this time was abandoned, partly because of the possible effect on the “new book,” i.e., _Prehistoric Europe_.

During this spring James Geikie was also corresponding with Dr Helland on glacial topics, and had arranged to accompany him to the Färoe Islands, to study the glacial phenomena there. A start was made at the end of May, and the two spent a delightful time together, Prof. Helland’s knowledge of the language being a great help. James Geikie’s paper on his observations was published a year or two later, and his note-books contain long descriptions of his experiences, with many sketches and diagrams. A more informal account is given in a letter to Mrs Johnston of Crailing Hall:--

I enjoyed my trip very much though I had to rough it more than most people would care to do. But what I saw was quite enough to make me forget all discomforts. Perhaps the most striking features of the Färoe Islands are their sea-cliffs. These range in height from 300 feet to 2000 feet. I sailed in a little boat round a large part of the coast-line and was very much impressed. The cliffs rise sheer up out of deep water, seeming in some places almost to overhang. Fancy the sun shining brightly on a great wall of brown rock 2000 feet high--a wall which shows an infinite number of little shelves and ledges, and all these ledges thickly set with sea-birds in myriads, while the air is filled with them, wheeling and screaming above you, and the water is alive with them swimming, diving, floating, and capering! The great Atlantic rollers come smoothly up to the base of the cliffs and sweep into the caves, only to rush out again with a hoarse roar, and a wild splash of spray and broken water.

Not very long after his return from the Färoes, at the end of July, his second son was born.

Several letters from Prof. Ramsay, on the Färoes work and other subjects, in the course of the summer show the friendly terms upon which the two were. Thus in announcing that he (Ramsay) had been chosen President of the British Association for the Swansea meeting in 1880, he adds:--“And unless you write the Presidential Address for me, I will take steps to have you dismissed from the Survey!” Unfortunately for James Geikie, the time during which Ramsay had anything to say upon Survey matters was fast drawing to a close. A few days later Ramsay writes in jubilant spirits because their joint work at Gibraltar had proved correct, although certain borings had seemed at first to cast doubt upon some of their conclusions. Prof. Ramsay’s feelings in the matter are expressed as follows:--“Ho ho ho! Ha ha ha! also he he he!” In the same letter Ramsay speaks of Prof. Penck’s results, saying:--“It is a grand coup for you.”

Among James Geikie’s other correspondents this summer were Prof. Stevenson of New York, a very warm friend of later years after the two had met in the flesh, and Mr T. F. Jamieson, who like Ramsay was greatly interested in the Färoes work. Towards the end of the year he writes to Mr Horne:--

I have recently got heaps of new facts from Germany, France, and Austria, not to mention Italy, which will greatly aid me in working off my present book. That same book drags its slow length along, but I hope to finish it in time for publication next year.

After giving a general sketch of the contents of the book he goes on:--

My references to foreign writers will astonish you with their “learned profundity”--what do you think of Italian, Greek, Spanish, Austrian, German, Hungarian, French, Danish, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic references! The time I have spent over these with grammar and dictionary, and the trouble in having others translated for me by learned pundits, are such that I will never, I think, undertake anything of the kind again. Sometimes two or three long nights’ work is summed up in a short line; or even has no mention at all! I only hope the result will justify the time expended. It is all intensely interesting, however.

Perhaps it may be well to repeat in connection with this letter that this laborious work was the occupation of what should have been leisure hours, and that in addition to it James Geikie was putting in some eight or nine hours’ work per day in the field or at office work, was carrying on an extensive correspondence, was lecturing in various parts of Scotland, and was writing scientific papers. Much of his writing had thus to be done by curtailing the hours of sleep, and most of those who came into close contact with him at this time regarded his capacity for work as something almost superhuman. But despite his heavy labours, this year seems to have been a happy one, and perhaps helped him to bear the period of storm and stress which was to come.

The chief incident of the following year, 1880, was the completion and publication of _Prehistoric Europe_, and the letters are full of allusions to it. Thus towards the end of January he writes to Mr Horne:--“Still grinding away at my tome. Got about a third to write yet. The thing swells out, I am sorry to say; there is so much more to tell than I had any idea of.” The severity of the strain was, however, obviously telling upon him, for only a week or two later he says:--“All at present is at a standstill. My head has given up work, and I must leave it alone a little: been going at it early and late too much!” A little later he says again:--“I am going to rest and do nothing but read. You have no idea what a loathing one takes to paper and pen sometimes! But doubtless you have the same.”

It was nearly the end of July before the MS. was finally completed, and the nature of the effort is indicated by the fact that the concluding sentences of the book were written in his sleep! He was working at it as usual till far into the night, and could not find a fitting sentence to round off the whole. After trying for some time ineffectively, he decided to leave the matter till the morning, and went off to bed, the time being 2 A.M. In his usual orderly fashion he had placed the last sheets on his writing-table, putting two books on top to prevent the papers from being scattered by a chance draught. In the morning he found them scattered over the table, to his great disgust, for it was a stern household regulation that papers were _taboo_ for all hands save their owner’s. The maid when taxed, however, denied indignantly that she had touched them, and when the injured author gathered up his treasures he was astonished to find, written in his own handwriting, though not with his usual neatness, the sentence which now stands as the final one. Evidently he had dropped to sleep and come down to complete the unfinished task in a subconscious condition. The story shows clearly that it was time the book was done with.

But the labour did not cease with the completion of the MS. The holiday, which began early in August, was spent partly in London, looking up final references, and partly in South Wales, with a view to making out some further glacial points. A letter to Mr Horne suggests the mixed feelings which the completion of the task brought. He says:--“I am well pleased now to have the thing off my hands. I will not soon begin another such work. It is too much worry and labour--and yet pleasant withal.” Later he writes:--“Now that my book is off my hands, time in the evenings hangs heavy on my hands”--the Nemesis, a psychologist would say, of overwork, for it was obviously the condition when nothing but work had become possible!

Various pleasant little incidents, however, occurred this autumn. Thus the French geologists, MM. Falsan and Chantre, sent him a copy of their Monograph on the old glaciers of the Rhone basin. In sending the