James Geikie, the Man and the Geologist

by Marion I. Newbigin; Sir J. S. Flett

At Coblentz two of the party, Messrs Horne and Skae, turned back, while the rest went on to Goarshausen, where they passed a delightful couple of days. “It is one of the prettiest spots in all the Rhine country.” The next stop was at Heidelberg, where the customary sights were visited, and the scarred countenances of the students commented on with true British disgust; the journey was then continued viâ Basle, Berne, Thun, and Interlaken to Grindelwald. Here the famous guide Peter Michel was engaged, and the party spent “a most interesting day” on the glaciers. “The ice phenomena were well seen, but best on the lower glacier.” So successful was the excursion that it was resolved, though all were inexperienced, to make the crossing of the Strahlegg to the Grimsel. Bad weather made it necessary to stop two nights at the Bäregg hut, and of these and the day’s imprisonment an amusing description is given. On the second day the weather cleared and the chalet was left at five, and, after a tiring day, the party reached the Grimsel at six in the evening, some of the members being much fatigued. Some interesting observations were made en route. From the Grimsel the party made their way down the Rhone valley to Lake Geneva, and at this point the diary ends abruptly. The excursion, it is clear, was one of great interest, and coupled with the previous visit to Norway, must have played an important part in helping James Geikie to visualise the Europe of the Ice Age.

The next three years, 1869, 1870, and 1871, were spent for the most part in hard and continuous work on the coalfields, though in all three years the published papers, no less than the letters, show that all the energy which could be spared from the daily routine was being given to glacial work.

In the spring of 1869 James Geikie started work at Carluke, and an entertaining letter to his mother has been preserved, dated from here on 4th April. It is long and largely about family affairs, but a few quotations may be made, for the tone throws light upon the character both of mother and son. The letter begins abruptly as follows:—

This being a day of rest not only for the beasts that do the work of men, but also for the men that do the work of beasts, it behoveth me thy son to throw aside the cares of the world and the many humbugs that do so easily beset me, and to refresh my soul and peradventure thine also by inditing these few words, to the intent that thou, O my maternal parent! may know of a surety that I thy son am well, and that thy two daughters who sojourn with me here in the wilderness are even as I am....

Write unto me, O my maternal parent! and tell me how it fareth with thy trees which yield fruit of their kind, and with the flowers which thou dost tend in the house that is heated with pipes and hot water in the pipes. And say unto my paternal parent that he hath forgotten me—that I am even as one of the dead—that I long to see the writing of his hand.

Here many friends visit me not—but I am not grieved—and my waistcoats grow tight about me....

Thy daughters salute thee and the paternal—so I salute ye all in like manner. My blessing abide with ye—and in the bonds of love I subscribe myself.—Yours affectionately.

Other family letters in the same year are written from Hamilton, one, dated 19th July, containing the information in regard to his translations that “I have so many now that I think if I go on for a month or so longer I shall have enough to make a small volume.”

The allusion to fruit-trees, in the letter quoted above, it is interesting to note, was especially to a pear-tree which grew in the garden of the house in Duncan Street where the family lived at this time. The house is one of two which a few years ago were converted by the Edinburgh School Board into a special school, and in the course of the alterations the jargonelle pear-tree, which figures in many of the family letters, was cut down. It seems to have been a prolific bearer in its prime, and in one of his letters James Geikie alludes to receiving a basket of the fruit, and at the same time to the prolonged silence of the members of the family, which he explains as the result of the “pear-disease,” i.e., the absorption of his sisters in the task of consuming the fruit. He himself sends some rhymes in return for his share.

The year 1870 finds him still busy on the coalfield, his diary for that year being full of notes of appointments with people connected with the pits, while he seems to have been constantly moving from place to place in Lanarkshire.

Two letters from Prof. Ramsay in July of this year have an historical interest. The first suggests a joint tour on the Rhine to solve a geological problem, and is followed almost at once by another, saying, “Now I fear my Rhine journey is blown to the winds.... This most wicked and accursed war will upset half the Continent of Europe, and it is by no means impossible that we may be dragged into it”—upon which one feels disposed to make the comment that if we had been it is possible that infinite suffering might have been saved forty-four years later! A letter from James Geikie to Mr Horne, written later in the same year, says:—“My holidays, I think I told you, were all botched. I could not get abroad, and I had nowhere particular to go at home.”

At this time he was stationed at Salsburgh by Holytown, where he made several friends, notably Dr Grossart, with whom afterwards he kept up a correspondence for many years.