Lo! when a man obscene and superstitious,
Lo! when a woman brainless and absurd,
Strive to idealize the meretricious,
Love one another like a beast or bird.
This could not be included in Lapsus Calami, nor unfortunately would he include one of his most ingenious extravagances, and I cannot find that it has ever been published. The subject matter was that a burglar “desperate and true” awoke in the night and found an angel standing in his room, who asked him whether, being what he was, he would sooner go to heaven or hell, the choice being entirely his. His admirably logical conclusion was as follows:
The burning at first no doubt would be worst,
But custom that anguish would soften;
But those who are bored by praising the Lord,
Would be more so by praising him often.
He chooses accordingly.
All that year Jim remained in residence at Cambridge; during one vacation he stayed with us at Addington, during another I went over to his Irish home, where, one evening after an argument about Kipling, he took up his bedroom candle saying, “Well, I wish he would stop kipling. Good night.” In ten minutes he came back, “I’ve written a poem about it,” he said, and proceeded to read the two immortal stanzas which end,
When the Rudyards cease from kipling,
And the Haggards ride no more.
Close friends though we were, I was always conscious of a side of him that was formidable, of the possibility of a sudden blaze of anger flaring up though quickly extinguished again: there was, too, always present the knowledge of that “dark tremendous sea of cloud” in the skirts of which he had been before, and into the heart of which it was inscrutably decreed that he must go. There came a dark December morning; that time the breakdown was final, and he lived not many weeks.
Once again I made a triumphant tripos in the matter of archæology, was given an open scholarship at King’s, and immediately afterwards applied for one of those grants that seemed to hang like ripe plums on the delightful tree of knowledge. Hitherto those branches had waved high above my head, but now they graciously swept downwards and I plucked at the first plum I saw, and applied for a small grant to excavate in the town-walls at Chester. There was reason to suppose that quantities of the Roman tombstones of the legionaries that had been stationed there, had been utilized in the building of the town-wall, and though there were only Roman remains to be discovered (would that they had been Greek!) the search for them would be a very pleasant pursuit for the autumn, and might yield material for a fellowship-dissertation. To my intense surprise some grant—from the Würtz Fund, I think—was given me, for the purpose of discovering, if possible, new facts about the distribution of Roman legions in Britain.
The family went out to Pontresina that August, and I with them for a week or two before the work at Chester began. There I had a most horrible experience with Hugh on the Piz Palu, one of the peaks of the Bernina. Our plan was to make a “col” of it, that is to ascend it on one side, pass over the top, and descend on another. We tramped and perspired up southern slopes in deep snow on the ascent, struck an arête which led to the top, made the summit, and began to descend by another route. The way lay over a long ridge swept by the most biting north wind, from which on the ascent the mountain had screened us, and never have I encountered so wicked a blast. The loose snow whirled up from the rocks was driven against us as if it was torrents of icy rain, piercing and penetrating. Once as we halted, I noticed that Hugh shut his eyes, and seemed sleepy, but he said that he was all right and on we went. He was on the rope just in front of me behind the leading guide, and suddenly, without stumbling, he fell down in a heap. He was just conscious when we picked him up and said, “I’m only rather sleepy; let me go to sleep ...” and then collapsed again.
He was alive and little more. Raw brandy, of which we had about half a pint, stimulated him for a moment, and soon, after another and another dose, our brandy was gone. There was no question of the inadvisability of giving him spirits, in order to warm him, which is one of the most fatal errors when a climber is suffering from mere cold: there was just the hope of keeping him alive by any stimulant. It was not possible to go back over the summit, and so to get into more sheltered conditions again; the best chance, and that a poor one, was to convey him down somehow along the rest of this bitter ridge, till we could find shelter from the wind. Very soon he became completely unconscious, he could move no more at all, and the guide and the porter whom we had with us simply carried him along the rest of the ridge. The rope was altogether a hindrance, so we took it off, and proceeded in two separate parties. The guides carried Hugh between them, and I followed.