Games and Pastimes.
As an undergraduate George played tennis—not the modern out-door game, but that regal pursuit which is sometimes known as the game of kings and otherwise as the king of games. When George came up as an undergraduate there were two tennis courts in Cambridge, one in the East Road, the other being the ancient one that gave its name to Tennis Court Road, and was pulled down to make room for the new buildings of
Pembroke. In this way was destroyed the last of the College tennis courts of which we read in Mr. Clark’s History. I think George must have had pleasure in the obvious development of the tennis court from some primæval farm-yard in which the pent-house was the roof of a shed, and the grille a real window or half-door. To one brought up on evolution there is also a satisfaction about the French terminology which survives in e.g. the Tambour and the Dedans. George put much thought into acquiring a correct style of play; for in tennis there is a religion of attitude corresponding to that which painfully regulates the life of the golfer. He became a good tennis player as an undergraduate, and was in the running for a place in the inter-University match. The marker at the Pembroke court was Henry Harradine, whom we all sincerely liked and respected, but he was not a good teacher, and it was only when George came under Henry’s sons, John and Jim Harradine, at the Trinity and Clare court, that his game began to improve. He continued to play tennis for some years, and only gave it up after a blow from a tennis ball in January 1895 had almost destroyed the sight of his left eye.
In 1910 he took up archery, and zealously set himself to acquire the correct mode of standing, the position of the head and hands, etc. He kept an archery diary in which each day’s shooting is carefully analysed and the results given in percentages. In 1911 he shot on 131 days: the last occasion on which he took out his bow was September 13, 1912.
I am indebted to Mr. H. Sherlock, who often shot with him at Cambridge, for his impressions. He writes: “I shot a good deal with your brother the year before his death; he was very keen on the sport, methodical and painstaking, and paid great attention to style, and as he had a good natural ‘loose,’ which is very difficult to acquire, there is little doubt (notwithstanding that he came to archery rather late in life) that had he lived he would have been above the average of the men who shoot fairly regularly at the public meetings.” After my brother’s death Mr. Sherlock was good enough to look at George’s archery note-book. “I then saw,” he writes, “that he had analysed them in a way which, so far as I am aware, had never been done before.” Mr. Sherlock has given examples of the method in a sympathetic obituary published (p. 273)in The Archer’s Register. [177] George’s point was that the traditional method of scoring is not fair in regard to the areas of the coloured rings of the target. Mr. Sherlock records in his Notice that George joined the Royal Toxophilite Society in 1912, and occasionally shot in the Regent’s Park. In 1912 he won the Norton Cup and Medal (144 arrows at 120 yards.)
There was a billiard table at Down, and George learned to play fairly well, though he had no pretension to real proficiency. He used to play at the Athenaeum, and in 1911 we find him playing there in the Billiard Handicap, but a week later he records in his diary that he was “knocked out.”
Scientific Committees.
George served for many years on the Solar Physics Committee and on the Meteorological Council. With regard to the latter, Sir Napier Shaw has at my request given me his impressions: [178]
It was in February 1885, upon the retirement of Warren De la Rue, that your brother George, by appointment of the Royal Society, joined the governing body of the Meteorological Office, at that time the Meteorological Council. He remained a member until the end of the Council in 1905, and thereafter, until his death, he was one of the two nominees of the Royal Society upon the Meteorological Committee, the new body which was appointed by the Treasury to take over the control of the administration of the Office. . . .
The Commissioners, collectively known as the Meteorological Council, were a remarkably distinguished body of Fellows of the Royal Society, and when Darwin took the place of De la Rue, the members were men subsequently famous, as Sir Richard Strachey, Sir William Wharton, Sir George Stokes, Sir Francis Galton, Sir George Darwin, with E. J. Stone, a former Astronomer Royal for the Cape. . . .
I do not think that Darwin addressed himself spontaneously to meteorological problems, but he was always ready to help. He was very regular in his attendance at Council, and the minutes show that after Stokes retired, all questions involving physical measurement or mathematical reasoning were referred to him. There is a short and very characteristic report from him on the work of the harmonic analyser, and a considerable number upon researches by Mr. Dines or Sir G. Stokes on anemometers. It is hardly possible to exaggerate his aptitude for work of that kind. He could take a real interest in things that were not his own. He was full of sympathy and appreciation for efforts of all kinds, especially those of young men, and at the same time, using his wide experience, he was perfectly frank and fearless not only in his judgment but also in the expression of it. He gave one the impression of just protecting himself from boredom by habitual loyalty and a finely tempered sense of duty. My earliest recollection of him on the Council is the thrilling production of a new version of the Annual Report of the Council which he had written because the original had become more completely ‘scissors and paste’ than he could endure.
After the Office came into my charge in 1900, so long as he lived I never thought of taking any serious step without first consulting him, and he was always willing to help by his advice, by his personal influence and by his special knowledge. For the first six years of the time I held a college fellowship, with the peculiar condition of four public lectures in the University each year and no emolument. One year, when I was rather overdone, Darwin took the course for me, and devoted the lectures to Dynamical Meteorology. I believe he got it up for the occasion, for he professed the utmost diffidence about it, but the progress which we have made in recent years in that subject dates from those lectures and the correspondence which arose upon them.
In Council it was the established practice to proceed by agreement and not by voting; he had a wonderful way of bringing a discussion to a head by courageously ‘voicing’ the conclusion to which it led, and frankly expressing the general opinion without hurting anybody’s feelings. . . .
It is not easy to give expression to the powerful influence which he exercised upon all departments of official meteorology without making formal contributions to meteorological literature. He gave me a note on a curious point in the evaluation of the velocity equivalents of the Beaufort Scale, which is published in the Office Memoirs No. 180, and that is all I have to show in print, but he was in and behind everything that was done, and personally, I need hardly add, I owe to him much more than this or any other letter can fully express.
On May 6, 1904, the year of the South African meeting, he was elected President of the British Association.
On July 29, 1905, he embarked with his wife and his son Charles, and arrived on August 15 at the Cape, where he gave the first part of his Presidential Address. Here he had the pleasure of finding as Governor, Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson, whom he had known as a Trinity undergraduate. He was the guest of the late Sir David Gill, who remained a close friend for the rest of his life. George’s diary gives his itinerary—which shows the
trying amount of travel that he went through. A sample may be quoted:
| August | 19 | Embark, |
| ,, | 22 | Arrive at Durban, |
| ,, | 23 | Mount Edgecombe, |
| ,, | 24 | Pietermaritzburg, |
| ,, | 26 | Colenso, |
| ,, | 27 | Ladysmith, |
| ,, | 28 | Johannesburg. |
August
19
Embark,
,,
22
Arrive at Durban,
,,
23
Mount Edgecombe,
,,
24
Pietermaritzburg,
,,
26
Colenso,
,,
27
Ladysmith,
,,
28
Johannesburg.
At Johannesburg he gave the second half of his Address. Then on by Bloemfontein, Kimberley, Bulawayo, to the Victoria Falls, where a bridge had to be opened. Then to Portuguese Africa on September 16, 17, where he made speeches in French and English. Finally he arrived at Suez on October 4, and got home October 18.
It was generally agreed that his Presidentship was a conspicuous success. The following appreciation is from the obituary notice in The Observatory, January 1913, p. 58:
The Association visited a dozen towns, and at each halt its President addressed an audience partly new, and partly composed of people who had been travelling with him for many weeks. At each place this latter section heard with admiration a treatment of his subject wholly fresh and exactly adapted to the locality.
Such duties are always trying, and it should not be forgotten that tact was necessary in a country which only two years before was still in the throes of war.
In the autumn he received the honour of being made a K.C.B. The distinction was doubly valued as being announced to him by his friend Mr. Balfour, then Prime Minister.
From 1899 to 1900 he was President of the Royal Astronomical Society. One of his last Presidential acts was the presentation of the Society’s Medal to his friend M. Poincaré.
He had the unusual distinction of serving twice as President of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, once in 1890–92 and again 1911–12.
In 1891 he gave the Bakerian Lecture [182a] of the Royal Society, his subject being “Tidal Prediction.” This annual prælection dates from 1775, and the list of lecturers is a distinguished roll of names.
In 1897 he lectured at the Lowell Institute at Boston, and this was the origin of his book on Tides, published in the following year. Of this Sir Joseph Larmor says [182b] that “it has taken rank with the semi-popular writings of Helmholtz and Kelvin as a model of what is possible in the exposition of a scientific subject.” It has passed through three English editions, and has been translated into many foreign languages.