Yet, looking back on him as I knew him all those years, I ask myself whether there was really one being in the world who really “mattered” to Edward Whymper, or by whose death his serenity would have been disturbed. It was Robert Montgomery, I believe, who wrote a poem in which he pictured the tragic loneliness of “the last man” left alone in the world.
Had it been possible, by some such universal cataclysm as, say, a world-wide earthquake, for every living creature, with one exception, to perish off the face of the earth, and had Edward Whymper been that one exception, I verily believe that, whistling softly to himself at the wonder of it all, he would, with untrembling fingers, calmly have filled and lit his pipe, and have sat down, were anything left to sit upon, to contemplate the ruins of a world, and then, first of all, to consider how to get his next meal, and, after that, to think out how to accommodate himself to the unusual and inconvenient circumstances in which he found himself. Nor would he have forgotten, with such instruments as happened to be within reach, to take such astronomical and meteorological bearings as he thought would prove valuable in the interests of science.
It is of course preposterous and inconceivable to suppose any such situation as I have imagined, and some of my readers may reasonably suppose that I am either laughing at them or wishing them to laugh at Whymper or myself. I assure them I am doing nothing of the sort, for, with no inconsiderable knowledge of the man, I honestly believe that in such circumstances he would have behaved exactly as I have said. They are magnificent, those qualities of absolute self-dependence, self-containment and self-contentment which Whymper possessed, but to me at least and at times they seemed almost superhuman. He walked, as I have said, in the shadow of self; was content so to walk, and apparently had no conception of and no wish to live a life to the happiness or sorrow of which it was in the power of others to contribute. A man who can so isolate himself is possibly to be envied, even if it never occurred to him that he is also to be pitied. Yet in spite of the fact that he was perfectly satisfied with his lot in life, and in living that life according to the cut-and-dried system by which he ordered it, and in spite, too, of the fact that he would have assured one that he was, and indeed believed himself to be, a happy man, Edward Whymper was, as I have said, not only the loneliest but the most pathetic human creature I have ever known.
VII
Whymper’s comments upon his contemporaries and their work were always exceedingly penetrative. Of some he spoke very generously but never effusively, of others critically and of a few sarcastically. I well remember the cynical smile with which he called my attention to an inscription in a presentation volume. It had been sent to him by a well-known writer, of whom I say no more than that he had once held a very distinguished position in the Society of Authors. The inscription ran: “To Edward Whymper, Esq. with the author’s complements,” and as I write, I seem to see Whymper’s squarish finger stubbed under the guilty “e” in compliments. No one did he seem to hold in greater respect and regard than Mr. Edward Clodd, of whom he once spoke to me as “not only a profound thinker and scholar and brilliant writer, but a loyal and true friend and the intimate associate of many of the great men of our time.” I remember once inviting Whymper to be my guest at a dinner in town, and mentioning that Clodd was to be of the party.
“You know,” said he, “how generally I hum and ha when anyone asks me to a function or a dinner, and that I’d rather at any time dine on bread and cheese and in pyjamas (which he often wore in the house) here in Southend than be at the trouble of getting into a black coat and journeying up to London to eat a ten-course dinner. But, if Clodd is to be one of your guests, I’m your man.”
I had only three guests, Whymper, Mr. Clodd, and Mr. Warwick Deeping, and the two older men who had not met for a very long time had so much to say about celebrities who were the friends of both, and of historic former meetings, that Deeping (always a silent man by choice) and myself (host though I was) were content for the most part to listen. Apart from his wish to see an old friend whom he held in great respect, Whymper had, if I am not mistaken, another and more personal reason for accepting my invitation to meet Clodd at dinner, which is why I refer to that otherwise unimportant function.
And this brings me to a somewhat painful incident of which, when Whymper was alive, I was occasionally reminded, always to his disparagement, by literary friends. If I touch briefly upon it here, it is not because I wish to rake up an old story, which, inasmuch as it concerns two distinguished men who are both dead, might very well be forgotten, but because since Whymper’s death it has again been going the rounds, and because I have an explanation to put forward in regard to what happened.
Whymper was on a certain occasion—it is no use mincing matters—unpardonably rude to one whom Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once described to me as “the most modest, the most unassuming, and at the same time the most learned man I have ever known”—the late Grant Allen. It was my privilege to know and to be the guest of Grant Allen in his home, and I am of opinion that he was not only the most modest, most unassuming, and most learned, but also the gentlest, most generous, and most lovable of men. Meeting Whymper at a dinner—I was not present, but in common, I expect, with some of my readers I have heard the story often—Allen quite innocently, and never dreaming that the question could give offence, asked Whymper concerning the historic accident on the Matterhorn, to be told curtly that the accident was his own business, and he did not choose to discuss it.
Unpardonably rude, as I have said, as such a reply was, and to such a man as Allen, that rudeness is, I fancy, capable of explanation. To those who knew Whymper only slightly and—overlooking the sensitive breathing nostrils, so wide and circular at the opening—saw only the cold hardness of his face and eyes, the rat-trap-like snap of mouth and jaw, he seemed a man of iron; and this impression the story of his indomitable courage, his dogged determination to succeed where others had failed, went far to confirm. That such a man, a man rough-hewn as he seemed out of block granite, and with sinews of steel, could be cognisant of the fact that he had “nerves,” much less could suffer from them, would occur to no one. None the less, I happen to know that the shock of that tragedy in early life among the Alps, when, powerless to help them, he had to stand inactively by and see his companions hurled to certain death, left its mark upon him to the end of his life, and was sometimes re-enacted in his dreams. In his later years, when his iron constitution began to weaken and when his nerves were less steady than of old, any sudden reference to that early tragedy would, in his more irritable moments, annoy and anger him, and I am convinced that it was in such conditions his rude and surly rebuff to Grant Allen was spoken. That Whymper afterwards regretted it I have reason to know. I believe that it was because Clodd was the close and devoted friend of Allen, and had, moreover, been present when the rebuff was administered, and had been pained by it, that Whymper was anxious to meet Clodd, either for the reason that—indifferent as he generally was to what others thought of him—he was for once anxious to efface any bad impression that the incident had created, or because he hoped to have some opportunity of speaking of Allen (he was too proud a man to have written to Allen direct) in such a way as to mend matters.