“And the same suit?”
“Anything else?”
“Well,” I said desperately, “you look so cheerful, so well fed and so happy, that I can only suppose you had just had your supper. Now as I lunched at one o’clock and haven’t had as much as a sup of tea since, I’m horribly hungry, and in want of mine.”
Saying no more than a mere “Come along,” and carrying the pipe and the photograph in his hand, he led the way into the next room, where supper—all cold—was upon the table. But such a supper! Anchovies, chicken, calves’ foot jelly, clotted Devonshire cream and other delicacies, with rare old Burgundy and the best of champagne.
When I had been abundantly helped, Whymper took up the photograph, and again pointing at it with the pipe-stem, said:
“What I wondered was whether you’d notice that the smoke coming from the bowl of the pipe has been painted-in upon the negative. There was no smoke visible in the original picture. When you get to know me better you’ll find that I’m slow and methodical but minutely accurate, even about little things. I think you told me once that you set some store by the many signed portraits that have been given to you by your literary friends. Since the portrait was the cause of keeping you from your supper, and if you’d care to add so uncouth a face as mine to your gallery, I’ll give it you. But I’ll sign it first.”
It was well that he had warned me that he was slow and methodical. Never was there such a business as the signing of that portrait. First he carefully washed and examined his pen, trying it at least half a dozen times upon a sheet of note-paper. Then the ink did not run as freely as it should, and further protracted operations of a cleansing and refilling nature were necessary. Next a book on which to rest the picture and a blotting-pad had to be found and placed in position. Then, after further and repeated trial-trips of his pen upon the harbour waters of a sheet of note-paper, he launched his craft upon the big seas and settled down seriously to the business of signing the photograph. Had it been a death-warrant or a cheque for £100,000 to which he was momentously affixing a signature, he could not have gone to work more carefully. In a round, neat, clerkly hand he slowly and laboriously penned his name “Edward Whymper” with the date beneath the portrait—and the deed was done.
I have described thus lengthily the slow and methodical way in which he set about signing this photograph for the reason that, trivial as the incident may seem, it is illustrative of the character and methods of the man. He walked slowly, thought slowly, worked slowly, and talked slowly, not because of any sluggishness of brain or body, but because every word, every action, was calculated and deliberate. It was because he was so slow that he was so sure. Just as in mountaineering he never moved a step until he was certain of the foothold in front of him, so in conversation he never spoke before he thought.
Artist as he originally was by profession, lecturer and mountaineer as, either by chance or by circumstance, he afterwards became, by temperament he was essentially a man of science; and even in casual conversation he hated what was slipshod, random, or inexact. He was an admirable listener to anyone who was speaking from knowledge; and I have often admired the courtly, if somewhat stately, attention he would accord to those who spoke, and with authority upon some subject on which Whymper himself was not an expert. But when the conversation was mainly in his hands, he liked to feel that he was chairman as well as principal speaker at the meeting, and would never allow the talk to run off at a tangent. If his companion ventured an opinion upon some side issue which the conversation had suggested, Whymper would pull him up magisterially by interposing, “You were saying just now that you thought so and so. We will, if you please, confine ourselves to that side of the matter before opening up another.” Courteously as he phrased it, his “if you please” was peremptory rather than persuasive, and so in a sense was merely formally polite.