During the summer of the year 1888, McNair met with a very serious horse accident, one, indeed, that might with complete natural sequence have terminated his life on the spot. The vicious horse of a friend he was riding to tame the brute (for he was a skilful horseman as well as good at sports), reared and fell over on him. By the display of personal alacrity he managed to avoid vital injuries, but sufficient of the animal's body came on his own to render it necessary that he should be carried home in a "jhampan," or Sedan chair, used in the mountain sanitaria of India for the conveyance of ladies. A friend's house in the neighbourhood of the spot where the accident occurred was of great use in restoring him somewhat from the effects of the accident. The kind friends who helped him to undertake the journey to his house, about a mile distant (carried in this way on men's shoulders), did Mr. McNair one of those services for which India is renowned as a land of friendly help. The injuries sustained internally nevertheless kept the patient in bed for a month, and the nursing of a mother and sister brought him round sufficiently to enable him to do his work as usual to all appearance. During the ensuing winter he had very hard work, which involved much exposure, and he suffered exceedingly from the effects of that accident. Immediately after he felt indisposition of any kind he complained of a return of the pains due to the accident, and there can be but little doubt that the inward injuries then sustained had left their mark, though nominally healed. 1888-9 was a severe winter in the mountain regions of our frontier, and a letter I had from McNair in April, 1889 (the last letter I ever received from him), gave some description of the vicissitudes of temperature he had to undergo. I give the letter in his own words in the Appendix, as a facsimile of his handwriting, to show how precise a hand he wrote, and as a memento of himself which some of his many friends might wish to cherish, for I believe that in many respects handwriting bears marked characteristics of the qualities of the individual. Here I will only extract the following description of the trials my friend had to undergo in the matter of temperature. In camp, away from Quetta and all means of procuring supplies on the spot, he writes under date the 2nd of April, 1889: "For the past fortnight I have had a rough time of it with rain, wind, and haze. Since yesterday there has been a change for the better, so now I hope to push along with my observations. Just at present I am in a low valley, and consequently the heat is somewhat trying, but in another fortnight I expect I shall be complaining of it being a little bit too cold, at an elevation of 10,000 and odd. I have little or no news to give, as it is now some time since I saw a pale face, but somehow or another solitude has its charms for me." The writer of that letter soon after applied for three months' leave, having experienced broken health for some time previously, in constant returns of fever, but owing to the delay that occurs in getting post letters despatched from the frontier away from posting stations, and the circumlocution which is a feature in all great departments of State, McNair did not get his leave sanctioned till sometime in July, 1889, and he was not able to start from Quetta for his mountain home in Mussooree, a distance of several days' trying journey, until the early days of August. The fond hearts of a mother and sister that awaited him there had no knowledge of the dangerous character of the fever from which he had been suffering for nearly a fortnight before he started from Quetta.
Within a very few days after his arrival at Mussooree, the doctors held a consultation over his case, as the fever could not be subdued by any treatment tried, and then the truth that it was typhoid had to be acknowledged. All that medical skill and affectionate nursing of devoted relatives, friends, and a qualified nurse, could do towards saving the patient was done, and hopes were entertained of recovery till almost the last; but three days before the fatal end, hemorrhage of the intestines set in, and then the medical attendants despaired. McNair himself spoke soon after his arrival at Mussooree of the hour of separation having come, and asked for his brother George. The suddenness of the end gave all his friends a painful shock, for many had not even heard that he was dangerously ill; and, as to the relatives, silent consternation for the moment are the only words that can adequately describe their desolation and sorrow. A fervently attached younger brother George, a popular member of the well-known firm of Messrs. Morgan and Company, the solicitors for the East Indian Railway Company, hurried up from Calcutta, on a telegram to join his family at Mussooree, but when he left he did not know of his brother's death. It was only when he reached the foot of the mountains, at a place called "Rajpore," within two hours' ride of Mussooree, where he inquired of the hotel manager if any recent news had been received of his brother's condition, that he got news not only of his brother's death, but of his burial. The railway journey from Calcutta to Mussooree is a long one of about a thousand miles; but Indian Railways, travelling even at express speed, do not exceed twenty-five miles an hour. The sympathy experienced by the sorrowing family from near and distant friends was beyond mere conventional words of condolence. I have it, from the members of the family themselves, that they were comforted in a very real and essential manner by the tender and extremely touching devotion of their friends, the depth of whose regard was then for the first time in many cases discovered. Rising above and beyond this general sympathy, two proofs came with a binding and enduring force that mark them out for special mention. They typify the two extremes of human life and the complexity of human relations. On the one hand there was the perfect knowledge of every detail of daily life and sacrifice, and the loyalty and enthusiasm that made such a life possible, which sharing a life to the full means. On the other, there was the tender reverence bred of looking up to something that seemed better and higher than the common lot of men. The two extremes I refer to were centered in the man who had most scientific knowledge of William McNair's worth, and the closest sympathy with his life, namely, Colonel Holdich, of the Royal Engineers, under whom McNair served, and for whom I know McNair had the highest admiration and the warmest personal regard, and native subordinates McNair had under him, who loved as only Asiatics can love Europeans whom they revere. An intrepid explorer himself, vide the announcement made regarding Colonel Holdich by Sir Henry Rawlinson at the close of the discussion on the paper read by McNair, Colonel Holdich has added year by year to his many signal scientific services rendered to the Indian Government; and recently he has added to his many accomplishments the rarer merit among men of that love of worth in others, which culminates in human brotherhood. His words of appropriate Oriental metaphor, in writing to the family, that his sense of personal loss in the man with whom he had for years, in the wildest solitudes and the most prolonged hardships, eaten "bread and salt" together, made it difficult for him to say all he felt, were emphasised by the human grief he could not repress at the funeral; where, owing to the suddenness with which everything had happened, he was indeed the "chief mourner"—in touching emotion that bore witness to the depth and susceptibility of the man's noble nature. The other testimony, which kindled great comfort in the desolate household, came from the scene of McNair's latest exploit, far away, at and near Quetta, when his native companions and friends heard of his death. The grief felt was so profound, that it seemed irreparable to the men who mourned their beloved friend, as the leader who was also their constant companion, and always cheerful with them under every adversity. The Oriental may be unappreciated by the Saxon till the latter knows the sentimental side of every Asiatic character, but then the floodgates of human sympathy are opened, and the very counterpart of characteristics and qualities exhibited by Saxon and Asiatic, conduce and contribute to a closer and more romantic union between them. It is on the principle which Bagehot so profoundly illustrated when he said that no age is just to the age immediately preceding it, because of their similarity and proximity. The appreciation of Colonel Holdich for his valued coadjutor and the executant of many of his plans was based on the contrary principle acutely observed on by George Henry Lewes, when he remarked that surprise, like appreciation, can only have for foundation of any worth, a background of close observation and exact perception.
I state the simple truth when I record that the testimonies, received in this way from the two extremes of highest knowledge and most diverse social and national conditions, remain the most grateful and enduring memorials of a life's work to those who must ever cherish the memory of what this memoir is precluded from touching on, namely, the more sacred domestic endearments of the life-long devotion to family ties of a son and a brother. This much I may be permitted to reveal without any intrusion on the hallowed reserves of the family circle. A more united or more tenderly-knit family, of strong religious feeling, I have never known. I had the privilege twenty-one years ago, of knowing a younger brother of the deceased, named John, who in less than three years attained to an honoured position in the Finance Department of the Indian Government. He was preternaturally grave and philanthrophic, and died at the age of a youth in England (I think he was not 23 years old) of small-pox contracted at Lahore, in the Punjab, where he was stationed at the time. He had for some time, although but a lad in years, spent his leisure hours in attending the hospital, and reading to sick soldiers, where it is believed he contracted the disease. Of the living, conventional usage forbids all mention, but I have deemed it right to reproduce as appendices to this skeleton and imperfect memoir the notices that appeared in the principal Indian papers of William McNair's death, as also the obituary notices taken from the proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society for October and November, 1889.
The extract reprinted from the Pioneer editorial gives the most complete and faithful description of Mr. McNair's achievements during a too brief day of usefulness. Portions of that editorial need a passing word so far as the subject of this memoir is concerned. With regard to the disapproval of the Indian Government of McNair's venture in entering Kafiristan without the permission of his Government, I never heard a word from his lips by way of complaint, although no doubt the paper accurately describes the facts.
Nor did I ever hear a syllable from the brave, unselfish man of disappointment at the way in which his worldly prospects were never advanced in the slightest by the nobly adventurous work he had done. By nature he was too bent on doing the work in hand to theorise about anything. By character he was too loftily absorbed in loyalty and reverence for the law of obedience as a root-principle of his life, to deplore any want of appreciation of his worth on the part of the Government which he had so loyally served. It is true, as the "Pioneer" points out, that on the Russian side such a man would have had honours and distinctions showered upon him. He would have been dragged out of his retirement and made to feel he was the favourite of the monarch, for the risk to life he had undertaken in spontaneous devotion to the State. Not only is such warmth and enthusiasm not the English method, but the Indian Government is a huge machine which goes grinding on in its mechanical way, and is besides, a bureaucracy which has a good deal of pride in regarding any new departure as a dangerous token of disrespect to its old and consecrated tradition of simple obedience to written orders and codified instructions. The highest originality is smothered in a secretariat as its fitting cabinet. McNair knew these attributes of the Indian Government, and never troubled his head about preferment or official promotion. It is said he was on the eve of it, and the State is believed to somewhat deplore the loss of an opportunity for rewarding a servant it prized, doubtless, in its own dull, routine sort of way. But he is now beyond earthly rewards or distinctions, and neither the praise nor the blame of men can touch him. In life he was very sensitive to kindness or coldness, but he was of too masculine a fibre to allow the natural sweetness and contentment of his disposition to be alloyed or marred by any such influence from without. He loved his work for its own sake. It became his sole occupation and serious aim in life. He deplores the weather in his very last letter to me, most characteristically, because it interfered with his "observations," which, with "the change" he hoped for and partly realized, he would "push along."
The epithet describes the simple, practical side of his character. His later love of solitude was the natural outcome of that closer contact with nature which made to him a living daily reality the command, "Thou shalt have no other gods but Me." His last hours were ministered to faithfully by a chaplain of the English Church in Mussooree. The religious life of the family resigned itself speedily to that sovereign will of heaven which means to all who have tasted of its majesty and glory, and have seen glimpses of the wisdom and foresight that put man's desires to shame, the submission of heart and mind in all their integrity. Nay, more, as one from that inner circle very beautifully put it in a letter to the writer of this memoir, "It was 'infinite love' alone that permitted his return to us to die, surrounded by our love," and in a lovely mountain region where for many years he spent his annual summer and autumn "recess," working out the results of the observations made during the rough winter's campaign, he lies buried near the home of his loved ones. There the eternal stars give a more brilliant light to the pure air surrounding his last resting place, and the solemn pines and firs pointing heavenwards with their venerable age and sighing their constant hymn give an everlasting pathos to the story of man's day on earth. The hill sides, terraced into beds of flowers—many wild and more cultivated, especially dahlias, which grow in great luxuriance and richness of colour in the hills of India—form the beautiful ground-work of an Indian cemetery in a sanitarium like Mussooree. On that spot, as it lies, the visitor will behold on one side, to the south, the dark shadow of a mountain elevation, called the "Camel's Back," by reason of its shape and sheer projection upwards, typifying the wall of human sense at sight of death; and on the other he will look out upon the ever-changing, though distant line of perpetual snow. The snow view in India, on mountain regions, is beyond description. No word-painting could give an idea of it; and few artists have been able to reproduce the magical effects of sunrise and sunset on the snows during the varying seasons of the year. The roseate tints of dawn blush on their peaks till they become a flame, and pale into iciest marble; and the evening splendours of purple and violet and death-like blue are the phantasmagoria which no human hand has ever made a living picture. Like the human life, it grows into beauty, coruscates, and then passes into darkness.
Looked at from the purely materialistic side, doubtless, the lives of men are mere seaweed thrown up by the mighty ocean of Creation on the shores of Time. But from the Christian's higher standpoint, the broken arc is made a magic circle on the side we cannot see.
There, let us trust, all lives which seem to us to have snapped asunder here, in imperfect fruition of bright promise, may find their perfect fulfilment of desire. As Faber poetically says:—"Death, after all, is a darkening and disappearance of those we love, and we must be content to take it so. It is only a question of more or less, where the darkness shall begin, and what it shall eclipse first. To the others who have loved the dying, and have gone before him, it is not a darkening, but a dawning. Perhaps to them it is the brightest dawn when it has been the most opaque and colourless sunset on the side of the earth." Or as Keble, with divine humility of richest spiritual imaginativeness, expresses it—
"Ever the richest tenderest glow
Sets round the autumnal sun—
But there sight fails: no heart may know
The bliss when life is done."