In the year 1872 James Geikie was somewhat late in beginning field-work, but the end of April saw him established at Kelso. An interesting letter to his friend Dr Grossart at Holytown, dated 4th May, may be quoted as showing his feelings in regard to his new sphere:—
I found I could not make out a flying visit to Salsburgh before leaving the west country for good. But I hope to see you some time before the year is very old. I have been knocking about a good deal since I saw you, but, praise be thankit! I have at last got back into the country. And what a lovely country it is! Coming so soon after Airdrie and Coatbridge it looks quite like another world. I can hardly believe that I am in the same planet where coal and iron are being worked. Here is nothing but the sandstones below the limestones and the Old Red with its trap rocks. The people too are as sleepy and old-fashioned and “respectable” as the rocks they live upon or rather above. This is the kind of land that would be after your own heart. Here are old abbeys and tumble-down castles, and every field and stream has some old-world story connected with it. At first I hardly could thole the quiet of Kelso. I have lived so much of late amongst smoke and din that for a week or so I felt like a fish out of water. The big market-place here, with nobody in it, was depressing to look at. I didn’t like the way either that the shopkeepers rushed upon me when I ventured into their shops—it looked for all the world as if they never had had any customer but me since the New Year. And yet they tell me that Kelso is a thriving country town. It may be so—very likely it is so—but it seems to one newly come from the stirring “west” like a dead-alive place.
What are you about? How does the great “work”[1] progress? I have been compelled to drop scribbling for a little, having rather overdone it this winter in Bathgate and Edinburgh. But the smell of the spring woods and hedges has set me up again, and I meditate an early assault on pen and ink.
[1] A book on The History of the Shotts upon which Dr Grossart was engaged. It appeared in 1880.
A letter to Mr Horne, from Kelso, in the same month of May, strikes a somewhat similar note:—
Here I am, in the midst of green trees, purling brooks, whistling mavises and love-sick young ladies. I feel quite a new man now that I am released from the presence of coal smoke and pits; up to any amount of fun as of yore.
In the same letter he speaks of the reception met with by his glacial papers:—
I have had some very gratifying letters from Sweden and Switzerland from geologists there—saying how much they are pleased with my results, and giving me more notes which help out my conclusions. It seems they have interglacial periods in Sweden also. Of all places in the world I had also a letter from a Prof. Szabó of Pest in Hungary. So that you see a prophet is not without honour save in his own country.
Another letter, also written from Kelso, on 15th June, says:—
Man—I feel awfully tempted to go to Sweden, where I have the promise of meeting with a warm welcome from some of the geologists. But I can’t go, and have reluctantly had to delay a visit till next year. I continue now and again to get a gratifying letter about my papers which cheers me up amazingly. Woodward the editor[2] writes to-night congratulating me on the wind-up, and saying that everyone speaks highly of my lucubrations. After trying my hands at many things I think I have at last got into the right groove. The noble hammer-bearing fraternity have not heard the last of my “theories.” ... What a fertile source of amusement this blessed Glacial Epoch has been!
[2] Of the Geological Magazine, in which the glacial papers had appeared.