Part 15

We must pass rapidly over the next ten years. They were years of incessant labour, labour which must have been often most painful and irksome, for it had to be undertaken in the midst of heavy sorrow, ill-health, pecuniary difficulties—everything, in short, which damps a man’s energies and takes the heart out of his work. His married life began brightly enough: he had an assured income of nearly £600 a year, which he could increase at pleasure, and we know did increase, by literary work. In 1871 he entered at the Middle Temple, probably with the intention of practising at the Indian bar at some future time; but after he had given up all thoughts of India he joined the Eastern Circuit, and attended assizes and quarter sessions regularly. He had a fair amount of business, and is said to have made a good advocate, though he could have had little knowledge of law, and, in fact, regarded his legal work as a relaxation from severer studies. These he pursued without intermission. Besides his lectures, which he gave regularly, he produced work after work with amazing rapidity. In 1871, in addition to the _Desert of the Exodus_, he published a _History of Jerusalem_, written in collaboration with his friend Mr Besant; in 1873 he undertook to write an Arabic Grammar, which appeared in the following year; in 1874 he wrote _Outlines of Scripture Geography_, and a _History of the Jewish Nation_, for the Christian Knowledge Society, and began a Persian Dictionary, of which the first part was published in 1876; in 1876—77 he edited the works of the Arabian poet Beda ed din Zoheir for the Syndics of the University Press, the text appearing in 1876 and the translation in 1877; and during the next few years he was at work upon a _Life of Haroun Alraschid_, a new translation of the Koran, and a revision of Henry Martyn’s translation of the New Testament into Persian. Besides this vast amount of solid work it would be easy to show that he produced nearly as great a quantity of that other literature which, when we consider the labour which it entails upon him who writes it, it is surely a misnomer to call ‘light.’ Professor Nicholls, of Oxford, gives an account, in a most interesting appendix to Mr Besant’s book, of the quantity of Persian, Arabic, and Hindustani which Palmer was continually writing. In the last-mentioned language there were a poem on the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh, and a wonderful account of the visit of the Shah to England, which occupied thirty-six columns of the _Akhbar_, a space equivalent to about twenty columns of the _Times_; and, although Palmer admitted that ‘the writing of such things is a laborious and artificial task to me, as I am not as familiar with the Urdú of everyday life as I am with the Persian,’ he still went on writing them. How familiar he was with Arabic and Persian is shown by the curious fact that whenever he was under strong emotion he would plunge abruptly into one or other language, sometimes writing a whole letter in it, sometimes only a sentence or two, or a few verses. Besides these Oriental ‘trifles’ as he would probably have called them, we find continual contributions to English periodical literature, and three volumes of poetry: _English Gipsy Songs in Romany_ (1875); the _Song of the Reed, and other Pieces_ (1876); and _Lyrical Songs_, &c. by John Ludwig Runeberg (1878). In the first of these he collaborated with Mr Leland, whom we mentioned before, and Miss Janet Tuckey; and in the last with Mr Magnusson; but the second is entirely his own. We regret that we cannot find room for a specimen of these graceful verses. Those who have leisure to look into the _Song of the Reed_, or the translation of Zoheir, will find themselves introduced to a new literature by one who, if not a poet, was unquestionably, as Mr Besant says, a versifier of a high order, and in the very front rank of translators.

We have said that most of this work—were it grave or gay, it mattered not—had to be got through in the midst of serious anxieties. Mrs Palmer’s health began to fail before they had been married long, and it soon became evident that her lungs were affected. It was necessary that she should leave Cambridge. In the spring of 1876, Wales was tried, with results which were so reassuring that it was decided to complete her cure (as it was then believed) by a winter in Paris. There, however, she got worse instead of better, and early in the following year her husband began to realize that she would die. In the autumn of 1877, they returned home to try Wales once more, and then, as a last resource, Bournemouth. There, in the summer of 1878, Mrs Palmer died. The expenses of so long an illness, added to journeyings to and fro, and the cost of keeping up two establishments (for he was obliged to continue his Cambridge lectures all the while), crippled his resources, and produced embarrassments from which he never became wholly free. His own health, too, never strong, gave way under his fatigues and worries, and he became only not quite so ill as his wife. Yet he never complained; never said a word about his troubles to any of his friends. Those who were most with him at this dreary time have recorded that he always met them with a smiling face, and went about his work as calmly as if he had been well and happy.

It was fortunate for him that he had a singularly joyous nature, which could never be saddened for long together. He was always surrounded by a pleasant atmosphere of cheerfulness, which not only did good to those about him, but had a salutary effect upon himself, enabling him to maintain his elasticity and vigour, even in the face of sorrow and ill-health. Most things have their comic side, if only men are not blind to it; and he could see the humorous aspect of the most melancholy or the most perilous situation. To the last he was full of life and fun. Though he no longer, as of old, wrote burlesques, he could draw clever caricatures of his friends and acquaintances; tell stories which convulsed his hearers with laughter; and sing comic songs—especially a certain Arab ditty, in which he turned himself into an Arab minstrel with really wonderful power of impersonation. Again, whatever he came across—especially in great cities like London or Paris—was full of interest for him. Without being a philanthropist, or, indeed, having a spark of humanitarian sentiment in his nature, he took a pleasure in investigating his fellow-creatures, talking to men and finding out all about them. He was endowed in the highest degree with the gift of sympathy; and this, while it made him the most loveable of friends, made him also a singularly acute investigator, and gave him a power of influencing others which was truly wonderful. He possessed, too, great manual dexterity, and took a pleasure in finding out how all those things were done which depend for their success upon sleight of hand; and in all such he became a proficient himself. He was a first-rate conjuror, and besides doing the tricks, ordinary and extraordinary, of professed conjurors, he took much satisfaction in reproducing the most startling phenomena of spiritualism, which he regarded as a debased form of conjuring—‘a swindle of the most palpable and clumsy kind.’ It was in such pursuits that he found the recreation which other men find in hard exercise. Of this he took very little. Even in his younger days he did not care for games, and his one attempt at cricket was nearly fatal to the wicket-keeper, whom he managed to hit on the head with his bat; but he was an expert gymnast, and loved boating and fishing in the Fens, to which he used to retire from time to time with one of his friends. It may be doubted whether he cared about the sport and the fresh air so much as the absolute repose; the old-world character of that curious corner of England; the total absence of convention. There he could dress as he pleased; and he took full advantage of his liberty. It is recorded that once, as he was coming home to College, he happened to meet the Master, Dr Bateson, who, casting his eye over the water-boots and flannels, stained with mud and weather, in which the learned Professor had encased himself, remarked, ‘This is Eastern costume, I suppose.’ ‘No, Master; Eastern Counties costume,’ was the reply.

It is pleasant to be able to record that the happiness which had been so long delayed came at last. In about a year after his wife’s death he married again. His choice was fortunate, and for the last three years of his life he was able to enjoy that greatest of all luxuries—a thoroughly happy home. He stood sorely in need of such consolation, for in other directions he had plenty to distress and worry him. His pecuniary difficulties pressed upon him as hardly as ever, and his relations with the University began to be somewhat strained. He had had the mortification of seeing Professor Wright’s salary raised to £500 a year, with no hint of any corresponding proposition being made for him[101]; and when the Commissioners promulgated their scheme his office was not included in it, a suggestion for raising his salary which had been made by the Board of Oriental Studies being wholly disregarded by them. Moreover, the undertaking to deliver three courses of lectures in each year turned out to be infinitely more laborious than he had expected. Candidates for the Indian Civil Service increased in number; and the pupils of any given term were pretty sure to want to go on with their work in the next, when he was teaching a different language, so that he was compelled in practice to give, not one, but two, or even three, courses in each term. Moreover, the elementary nature of much of this instruction—the ‘teaching boys the Persian alphabet,’ as he called it—became every year more and more irksome. We are not surprised that he got disgusted with the University; but at the same time we cannot agree with Mr Besant that the University was wholly to blame. They were in no wise responsible for the conduct of the Commissioners; in fact, all that could be done to make them take a different view was done. Had Palmer resided continuously in the University, and pressed his own claims, things might have been very different. But this he had been unable to do, for reasons which, as we have seen, were beyond his own control, and for which, therefore, he is not to be blamed; but the fact cannot be denied that for some years he had been practically non-resident. There was also another cause which has to be taken into consideration—his own disposition. The life of a University is a peculiar life, which does not suit everybody, and certainly did not suit him. He felt ‘cabined, cribbed, confined,’ in it; and he said afterwards that ‘he never really began to live till he was emancipated from academic trammels.’ Our wonder is, not that he left Cambridge when he did, but that he remained so long connected with it. The final break took place in 1881, when he voluntarily rescinded the engagement which he had made to lecture, and, retaining the Readership and the Fellowship at S. John’s College—neither of which he could afford to resign—took up his abode in London, where he obtained a place on the staff of the _Standard_ newspaper. He readily adapted himself to this new life, and soon became a successful writer. One of the assistant-editors at that time, Mr Robert Wilson, has recorded that

‘Palmer considered his career as a journalist in London, short as it was, one of the pleasantest episodes of his life. Those who were associated with him in that career professionally can say that they reckoned his companionship one of the brightest and happiest of their experiences. He was

The dearest friend to me, the kindest man, The best-conditioned and unwearied spirit In doing courtesies;

and what he was to me he was to all who worked with him.’

It will be well, before we relate the heroic achievement with which the career of our friend closed, to try to estimate his position as an Oriental scholar, for as such he will be remembered, especially in Cambridge. For this purpose Mr Besant has, most judiciously, supplied ample materials to those competent to use them, by printing an essay by Professor Nicholls, of Oxford, which we have already quoted, and a paper by Mr Stanley Lane Poole. The former points out Palmer’s extraordinary facility in the use of Persian and Arabic, and gives a minute, and in the main highly laudatory, criticism of some of his performances, which ends with these words: ‘In him England loses her _greatest_ Oriental linguist, and _readiest_ Oriental scholar.’ From the latter we will quote a few sentences:

‘Palmer was a scholar of the kind that is born, not made. No amount of mere teaching could develop that wonderful instinct for language which he possessed. He stood in strongly-marked contrast to the other scholars of his time. Most of them were brought up on grammars and dictionaries; he learned Arabic by the ear and mouth. Others were careful about their conjugations and syntax; Palmer dashed to the root of all grammatical rules, and spoke or wrote so and so because it would not be spoken or written any other way. To him strange idioms that a book-student could not understand were perfectly clear; he had used them himself in the Desert again and again[102].’

He then proceeds to examine Palmer’s principal Arabic works, and decides that while the edition of Zoheir is the most finished of them, and the translation represents the original with remarkable skill, the version of the Koran ‘is a very striking performance.’

‘It has the grave fault of immaturity; it was written, or rather dictated, at great speed, and is consequently defaced by some oversights which Palmer was incapable of committing if he had taken more time over the work. But, in spite of all the objections that may be urged against it, his translation has the true Desert ring in it; we may quarrel with certain renderings, puzzle over occasional obscurities, regret certain signs of haste or carelessness; but we shall be forced to admit that the translator has carried us among the Bedawí tents, and breathed into us the strong air of the Desert, till we fancy we can hear the rich voice of the Blessed Prophet himself as he spoke to the pilgrims on Akabah[103].’

Lastly, Mr Poole points out the peculiar excellence of Palmer’s Arabic Grammar, which is arranged on the Arab system, in bold defiance of the usual custom of treating Arabic in the same way that one treats Latin. To these favourable criticisms of works beyond our powers of appreciation we should like to add a word of praise of our own for the historical introduction to the Koran, in which the career of Mahomet is sketched in a few bold, vigorous lines, and the scope and object of the work are analysed and explained. We regret that Palmer was not able to devote more time to history; the above _Introduction_, and the _Life of Haroun Alraschid_, seem to us to show that he would have excelled in that style of composition. He could read the native authorities with facility, and he knew how to put his materials to a good use. But alas! all these peaceful studies were to be closed for ever by an enterprise as masterly in its execution as it was terrible in its conclusion.

The suppression of Arabi’s revolt in Egypt created the greatest enthusiasm in this country. The British Public dearly loves a war, and every event in which our troops were concerned was eagerly read and proudly commented on by enthusiastic sympathizers. But there were probably not many who so much as read the scanty paragraphs which noted, first, the anxiety respecting the fate of some Englishmen who had gone into the Desert on a certain day in August 1882; and, subsequently, the certainty of their murder. Palmer’s wonderful achievement has been told for the first time by Mr Besant with a fulness of detail, a vividness of descriptive power, and, we may add, a bitterness of grief, that only those who read it carefully more than once can appreciate as such a piece of work deserves to be appreciated. We shall try to set before our readers the principal circumstances of those eventful days, treading in his steps, and often using his very words.

Early in the month of June 1882, when it became evident that the Egyptian revolt must be put down by force, two great causes of anxiety arose: (1) the safety of the Suez Canal; (2) the amount of support which Arabi was likely to receive, and the allies on whom he could depend. These two questions were of course closely connected with each other; and it is now known that as regards the second of them, Arabi hoped to obtain the support of the Arabs of the Desert on both sides of the Canal, and by their aid to seize, and, if possible, to destroy, the Canal itself. These Arabs, it is important to recollect, rise or remain quiet at the command of their sheikhs. The sheikhs, therefore, had to be won over. This he hoped to accomplish by the assistance of the governors of the frontier castles of El Arish on the Mediterranean, Kulat Nakhl, Suez, Akabah, and Tor on the west coast of the Sinaitic Peninsula, all of whom, at the beginning of the rebellion, were his frantic partisans. He had therefore an easy means of access to the Bedouin sheikhs. The number of men whom they could put into the field was estimated by Palmer himself at about 50,000; but this was not all. It was feared that if a single tribe joined Arabi, it would be followed by all the others, and that the Bedouin of the Syrian and Sinaitic deserts might presently be joined by their kinsfolk of Arabia and the Great Desert, a countless multitude.

It was on the evening of Saturday, June 24, that Captain Gill, whose unhappy fate it was to perish with Palmer on the expedition which they planned together, was sent to him from the Admiralty, to ask him for information respecting ‘the character, the power, the possible movement, of the Sinai Arabs.’ The interview was short, but long enough for Palmer to sketch the position of affairs, and to convince Gill that a man whom the Government could thoroughly trust must be sent out to arrange matters personally with the sheikhs. When Gill had left, Palmer said to his wife, ‘They must have a man to go to the Desert for them; and they will ask me, because there is nobody else who can go.’ On Monday Captain Gill came again, and the whole question was carefully talked over.

‘It was agreed that no time ought to be lost in detaching the tribes from Arabi, in preventing any injury to the Canal, and in quieting fanaticism, which might assume such proportions as to set the whole East aflame. It now became perfectly evident to Gill that Palmer was the only man who knew the sheikhs, and could be asked to go, and could do the work; it was also perfectly evident to Palmer that he would be urged to undertake this difficult and delicate mission; he had, in fact, already laid himself open by speaking of the ease with which these people may be managed by one who can talk with them. When Gill left him on that Monday morning he was already more than half-persuaded to accept the mission.’

It is evident that after this interview Captain Gill returned to the Admiralty, and gave a glowing account to his superiors of the man whom he had discovered, and the information he had obtained; for in the course of the same afternoon Palmer received an invitation to breakfast with Lord Northbrook on the following morning, Tuesday, June 27, which he accepted. The interest which he had already excited is proved by the fact

‘that all the notes and reports which Gill had made during the interviews on the subject were already set up in type and laid on the table. The whole conversation at breakfast was concerning the tribes, and how they might be prevented from giving trouble. Palmer stated again his belief that the sheikhs might, if some one could be got to go, be persuaded to sit down and do nothing, if not to take an active part against the rebels.’

At this point it is material to notice that the Government did not send for Palmer and ask him to undertake a certain mission to the East; neither did Palmer communicate with the Government and volunteer, in the ordinary sense of that word; but that in the course of three successive interviews it became evident to the Government that the mission must be undertaken by somebody; and to Palmer, that if he did not go himself the chance would be lost. No one equally fit for such a mission was available at that moment; no one knew the sheikhs personally as he did, and could travel among them as an old friend, for it must always be remembered that the country he was about to visit was the same which he had traversed with Drake in 1869-70. He did not exactly wish to go; he was too fondly devoted to his wife and children to find any pleasure in courting dangers of which he was fully sensible; but he seems to have felt that his duty to his country demanded the sacrifice; and perhaps the thought may have crossed his mind that, if he ran the risk and came out of it safe and successful, his fortune would be made; and therefore, when Lord Northbrook inquired, ‘Do you know anyone who would go?’ he replied, ‘I will go myself.’

This decision was not arrived at until Thursday, June 29. On the following evening he left London, and on Tuesday, July 4, he was on board the _Tanjore_, between Brindisi and Alexandria, writing to his wife:

‘I am sure this trip will do me an immense deal of good, for I wanted a change of air and complete rest from writing, and now I have got both. Of course, the position is not without its anxieties, but I have no fear.... It is such a chance!’

Such a chance! It was worth while running the risk, for, though there was danger in it, there was fame and fortune beyond the danger: there would be no more debt and difficulty; no more days and nights of uncongenial toil. No wonder as he sat under the awning, ‘like a tent,’ as he said, and did nothing, that these thoughts came into his mind, and found their way on to his paper—it was a chance indeed!

It seems certain that the plan of the enterprise had been laid down before Palmer left London, though no formal instructions were given to him in writing. It was understood between him and the Government that he was to travel about in the Desert and Peninsula of Sinai, and ascertain the disposition of the tribes; secondly, that he was to attempt the detachment of the said tribes from the Egyptian cause, in order to effect which he was to make terms with the sheikhs; thirdly, that he was to take whatever steps he thought best for an effective guard of the banks of the Canal, and for the repair of the Canal, in case Arabi should attempt its destruction. Lastly, he was instructed, probably at Alexandria, to ascertain what number of camels could be purchased, and at what price.

Arrived at Alexandria, Palmer put himself under the orders of Admiral Lord Alcester, then Sir Beauchamp Seymour, who, after a few words of welcome and encouragement, ordered him to go at once to the Desert and begin work. It was decided that he should proceed by steamer to Jaffa, thence to Gaza, and across the Desert to Tor in the Sinaitic Peninsula, where he could be taken up and join the fleet at Suez. On the morning of July 9 he reached Jaffa, where he bought his camp-equipage and stores, hired a servant, and opened communications with certain Arabs of the Desert, whom he ordered to meet him at Gaza. We know the details of this time from a long letter which he wrote to his wife just before he left Jaffa.