V
Edward Whymper was a man of few friends, I had almost written of no friends, for though he was upon what, in the case of another man, would be described as terms of friendship with many of the world’s most distinguished workers, and though he enjoyed their company and their intercourse as they enjoyed his, I should describe the bond which held him and them together as “liking” and interest in each other and in each other’s achievements rather than as friendship in the closer sense of the word. The mould into which he was cast was austere, stern, and could be forbidding. He was a “marked” man wherever he went; and in all companies a man of masterful personality, who inspired attention and respect in every one, and something like fear in a few, but who, except in the case of children, rarely inspired affection. That he was aware his manner was not always conciliatory—was in fact at times forbidding—seems likely from a story which I have heard him tell on several occasions and always with infinite gusto.
“I was walking up Fleet Street one day,” he began, pursing his lips, mouthing and almost smacking them over his words as if the flavour were pleasant to the palate, “when I chanced to see a sixpence lying upon the ground. Now according to the law of the land, anything we find in the street is in a public place and must be taken to the nearest police station. I wasn’t going to be at the bother of picking up a sixpence merely to take myself and it to the police station, so I cast an eye around and walking just behind me I saw a poor ragged devil without so much as a shirt to his back or a pair of shoes to his feet. I didn’t require to speak or even to point to the sixpence. I just caught the fellow’s eyes and looked with my own two eyes at the sixpence upon the pavement. That was quite enough. He followed my glance, saw the coin lying there, knew that my glance meant ‘You can have it if you like,’ and my good fellow was down on it in a moment. Well, I didn’t stop to let the fellow thank me, but just walked on. It so happens, however, that I’m peculiarly sensitive to outside impressions. If I’m in the street and some one is taking stock of me, even though I can’t see them, I’m conscious of it in a moment. If I’m in a hall, listening, say, to a lecture, and some one behind me has recognised me, or is interested in me for any reason, I’m just as aware of it as if I had eyes in the back of my head. Well, I passed up Fleet Street, and along the Strand till, approaching Charing Cross, I became suddenly aware that some one behind was watching me as if for a purpose. I turned, and there was my ragged, shirtless, bootless devil of a tramp, who had followed me all that way, poor devil, I supposed to thank me. So I thought it decent to slow my pace, and when he was just alongside of me I half turned to give him the chance to speak, and waited to hear what he had to say. What do you think it was? To express his thanks? Not a bit. When he was level with me, he hissed, almost spat in my ear, ‘You blank, blank, blankey blank, blank! too blanky proud blank, are you? to pick up a sixpence—blank you!’
“That, I said to myself at the time,” continued Whymper, “is all the thanks you get for trying to do a good turn to the British vagrant. But, on thinking it over, I’ve come to the conclusion that there was something unintentionally offensive or shall we say patronising, in the way I looked at the man and then at the sixpence—something which he resented so bitterly that he had to follow me all that way to spit it out.”
Another incident, which amused him at the time, happened when he and I had walked out from Southend to Shoeburyness, a distance of some four miles. It was on a Sunday morning, and when we arrived at Shoeburyness he remarked:
“I had some very salt bloaters for breakfast. Do you mind if, Sunday morning as it is, I call at the first inn to slake my thirst?”
“Of course not,” I replied.
As it was within the prohibited hours when inns are closed except to bona fide travellers—by which is meant those who have travelled three miles from the place where they slept the previous night—we found the inn door closed. Whymper knocked sharply and loudly at it in his usual masterful way, and, when it was opened by a frowsy looking fellow in shirt sleeves, said dryly, in more senses than one:
“I am thirsty and want a drink, please.”
“Are you bona fide travellers?” inquired the fellow.
“Well,” remarked Whymper partly to the fellow and partly to me, “there was a time early in my career when some doubts were cast upon my qualifications as a mountaineer and even, upon my word, in regard to my statement as to what had happened, but, this is the first time I have been challenged in regard to my being a bona fide traveller. I’ll say nothing about the qualification of my friend here, but considering that since the last time I passed this hostelry I have travelled some seven or eight thousand miles, I think I’m entitled to describe myself as a traveller in a very bona fide sense. As a matter of fact, we have come from Southend this morning, which I believe is outside the statutory three miles. Do I look, my good fellow, like a man who’d tell you a lie about a thing like that?”
“I don’t know,” replied the man looking Whymper very hard in the face, “but I’ll tell you what you do look like if you wish. You look to me like a man who if he’d made up his mind to have a drink would have it whether he was a bona fide traveller or not, and wouldn’t let no one else stop him from having it, and that’s more.”
“I observe, my man,” said Whymper sententiously, as the door was opened to admit us, “that you are no indifferent judge of character, but I am curious also to know whether you are disposed to have a drink yourself.”
The man’s answer, in Parliamentary parlance, was in the affirmative.