In good company

by Coulson Kernahan

I

Though I head this article “Edward Whymper as I Knew Him,” I prefer first to write of Edward Whymper as he was before I knew him—or rather before he knew me. In the town where he and I were then living he had been dubbed “Bradlaugh turned Baedeker” by one resident who insisted on Whymper’s likeness to the late Charles Bradlaugh, and was aware that the Great Mountaineer had written various “Guides.” Another name by which he was known was “The Sphinx,” possibly because of his silence, his aloofness, and the mystery with which he was supposed to surround himself. To the good folk of the town he was indeed always something of an enigma. In the street he stalked straightforwardly along, looking only in front of him, set of mouth, stony of eye and severe of brow, if anyone either spoke to, or stared at him. On the journey up to London, when most people read their morning paper, he was rarely seen with a newspaper in his hand, but stared, pipe in mouth, out of the window, except when going through proofs or working at papers which he produced from a black leather bag, without which he was never seen in the train. On the journey down, when work for the day was done, his would-be sociable fellow passengers found Whymper taciturn and reticent, responding, or rather not responding, to any conversational advance, if possible, in a monosyllable.

The town in question was Southend, where he lived in Cliff Town Parade, and I, ten minutes’ walk away at Westcliff. Though he contended that there was no place within fifty miles of London with such fine air, and though he never wearied (like Robert Buchanan, who, as well as his brother poet, Sir Edwin Arnold, was at one time a resident of Southend) of extolling the atmospheric effects of sunshine and shadow upon the saltings, and though (again like Buchanan, who had said as much to me) he vowed that nowhere else in England were there to be seen more glorious pageants of sunrise and sunset—to the people of Southend, especially to his fellow travellers on the railway, he had taken an implacable dislike. When in London I was first introduced to him, he and I fell out upon the subject. Hearing that I lived at Southend, he asked me whether I did not agree with him that nowhere else would one meet such objectionable folk as those who journeyed backward and forward to town.

I replied that though Southend had no claim to be the home of rank and fashion (overrun as it was and is, during the summer months, by swarming hordes of East End trippers), I had found my fellow travellers and the residents generally—of the middle classes as they admittedly were—cordial, sociable, and kindly, and that for my part, so far from feeling as he did, I liked them and had many friends among them.

This for some reason exasperated Whymper, who launched out in fierce abuse of his unoffending fellow townsmen.

“My good sir,” he stormed, “I ask you where else in England, where else in God’s world if you like, will you come across such a collection and crew of defaulting solicitors, bagmen, undischarged bankrupts, shady stockbrokers and stock jobbers, potmen, pawnbrokers and publicans as on that particular railway which you and I use?”

I did not agree with him, and told him so plainly if courteously, whereupon, seeing that I was more amused than annoyed by his storming, he suddenly turned good-tempered, diverted the conversation into other channels, and when we parted was quite friendly.

His attitude on this occasion, as I afterwards discovered, was characteristically Whymperian. He could respect a man who stood up to him and was undismayed by his storming; he had “no use,” as the Americans say, for one who was ready cheaply and insincerely to profess himself entirely in agreement. He would at any time rather be bearded than humoured, and the fact that on our first meeting I refused to be browbeaten was, I now believe, one of the reasons why he and I thereafter became good friends.

One picture of Edward Whymper, as I saw him many times, is vivid in my memory. The morning train to town is on the point of starting, the guard has waved his flag, blown his whistle, and is urging late comers to “hurry up.” Along the platform, indifferent to the guard’s frantic arm-waving, never lengthening his step by so much as one inch, never quickening his pace by as much as by one second, but strolling as leisurely as if the train were not to start for an hour, and looking at each carriage for the face he is seeking, walks a closely-knit, sturdily-built man of middle height. His dress is unusual, as he is well aware, accounting for it once by reminding me of a great nobleman who, equally eccentric in the matter of dress, remarked, “Where I live, every one knows who and what I am, so it doesn’t matter what I wear. In London no one knows who and what I am, so I am equally free to please myself.”

More often than not Whymper, when going to town, wore a black greatcoat over a woollen sweater, and had a brown seal fur cap with lapels pulled down over the ears and fastened under the chin, for, like many who have spent much time in Canada, he felt colder in the damp and foggy climate of England, even when the temperature is moderate, than he did in the drier, clearer atmosphere of the Great Dominion, and when the thermometer stands at 40 degrees below zero.

But unusual as are a fur cap and sweater, when worn as I have seen Whymper wear them even when journeying to London, at the height of the season, they struck one as less incongruous than the ill-brushed, out-of-date silk hat in which, with black leather or cloth leggings, he occasionally weirdly arrayed himself. He sees my face at the window, stops, and, as leisurely as he had walked, enters the carriage and seats himself opposite to me, his back to the engine. To me he merely nods, or if on that occasion inclined to be loquacious, goes so far as to say “Good morning,” but never another word. The other occupants of the compartment he either entirely ignores or favours with a baleful glare. Then he puts his bag upon his knee, produces a packet of biscuits, and, looking out of the window all the time, munches them with jaws that move as rhythmically and methodically as if run by clockwork. His breakfast of dry biscuits finished, he dives into his bag for a flask, solemnly unscrews the stopper, as solemnly lifts the flask to his mouth, takes a drink, smacks his lips, replaces the stopper in the flask and then the flask in the bag, snaps the lock and puts the bag at his side. This done, he fishes in his pocket for pipe, tobacco and matches, charges and lights his pipe, takes with evident enjoyment two or three long draws at it, sniffing possibly with relish and with open nostrils at the smoke which rises from the bowl, settles himself comfortably in his corner, and then, and not till then, turns to me with a cheery “Well, and how are you this morning?” I reply with equal cheeriness, and probably the whole way up to town we talk—only we two—incessantly.

But had I, before he had munched his biscuits, swigged at his flask, replaced the latter in his bag, lit his pipe and settled himself in the corner, addressed him in any way, I should have had the shortest of answers, and the chances are that for the rest of the journey he would have remained silent. That was Edward Whymper’s way, and a man who liked more to have his own way I never met. My liking was for himself, not for his ways; but since it was his whim to be let alone, to speak to no one and to be spoken to by no one until he had breakfasted and lit his pipe, I was quite willing so to let him go his own way, knowing that soon the oracle would speak of its own accord, and would say many things which were well worth anyone’s attention and hearing.