CHAPTER VI
Last Years on the Survey
1878–1882
The spring of 1878 saw James Geikie engaged in active correspondence with Prof. Ramsay in regard to their joint paper on the Gibraltar work, and also occupied, in his own words, in fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus and elsewhere, that is to say, in sundry controversies over glacial matters.
His happiness at home was clouded by the severe illness of his little son. In his letters he speaks of being knocked up with night-nursing, for he walked up and down the greater part of the night with the child in his arms during the most anxious period. Happily the baby made a good recovery, and in a letter to Mr Horne towards the end of the year he says:—“‘The boy’ is hale and flourishing, and a great amusement in the evenings when I come home. I prefer his company even to that of a pipe! Excuse the ‘eavy fawther.’” He was very fond of children at all times, and his own were a source of great joy to him.
In summer he went back to the Cheviot region for a couple of months to finish off his work there, and revisited Buchtrig. It was during this visit that he met Sir George Douglas (cf. [p. 67]). In August he went abroad with his wife and her sister, the baby, now quite recovered, being left with his grandmother. The tour was via the Rhine to Switzerland, and then across the St Gothard by carriage into Italy. Some interesting letters to the home people record the experiences met with, but as the ground covered is very well known they need not be quoted here. During the course of the tour some geological observations were made bearing on points treated in Prehistoric Europe, which was being written during this year.
Signs of overwork and some worry were, however, observable as the year went on. In an undated letter to Mr Horne he complains of not feeling good for much:—“I was busy at a new book, but being in the blues now for some time, the MS. lies aside, and I sometimes wonder whether I shall ever finish it. I thought my trip abroad would have cleared up my faculties, but no such luck!”
Among his causes for anxiety were his own future and that of the Survey. Prof. Ramsay’s health was breaking down, a fact which grieved James Geikie very much, and the possibility that difficult days for the Survey and its members were coming loomed ahead. In an unwonted fit of melancholy he says in the same letter:—“It makes one sad to think that the ‘brave days of old’ are all passing or past away. One gets sick of the strife and din and wishes for peace and rest, which, however, will only come when one shuts his eyes for the last time.” He found also that his distance from a good library was a great drawback in his work. The letter, with all its sadness, speaks of the pleasure which he found in the company of the “small chick,” who seems to have had a potent charm wherewith to dispel his father’s clouds of gloom.
Among the letters of the spring of 1879 are several to Mr Lamplugh, now of the Geological Survey. In regard to these Mr Lamplugh says:—“I do not know that they contain anything that is now of sufficient consequence to warrant their reproduction. But they illustrate very well the kindly attention and trouble that the late Prof. Geikie was always ready to give to a beginner in science. I was under twenty years of age when the first of these letters came to me, and I have kept them as treasures from those days.”
The letters in their friendliness and unaffectedness bear out this description, and some other letters of the same period show that while the writer was never deaf to the appeal of a common interest in the progress of knowledge, when to this was added the stronger appeal of friendship, he gave himself whole-heartedly. His friends Messrs Peach and Horne had written a paper on “The Glaciation of the Shetland Islands” for the Geological Society of London, and in this James Geikie took the keenest interest, giving advice freely both on the method of presenting the contents, and on the technical points connected with the effort to obtain for the paper a fair hearing and speedy publication. A hitch in the matter of publication brings from him a letter full of genuine and practical sympathy, combined with a whole-hearted espousal of his friends’ cause.
During this spring also he was still engaged, with varying fortunes, upon his Prehistoric Europe, a task of great magnitude on account of the enormous number of references and the labour which these involved. Thus a letter written early in March represents, as it were, the trough of the wave—he tires of the book at intervals, thinking it will never do, and throws it aside in a “kind o’ scunner.” Another letter at the end of May shows him on the crest of a new wave of enthusiasm. He had just received many new pamphlets from “furrin’ parts,” mostly inspired by his own glacial work, often accompanied by letters from the authors. Thus he says:—
Dr A. Penck of Leipzig writes to the effect that it was the reading of Great Ice Age that first opened his eyes to the meaning of the Diluvium of Northern Germany. He says he has got evidence of three glaciations with intervening glacial deposits! He says he has all the burning enthusiasm of a convert! His letter has greatly gratified me, of course. I see he is an old hand and has done a lot of geological work. Then I have a long letter from a Dr R. Lehmann of Halle, who is also congratulatory at the success with which the German Drifts have recently been explained on the principles laid down in my book!! Also, some duffers have sent me their photographs! I wonder what has so suddenly wakened them up. Helland has a long and interesting paper on the German Drift which I suppose you will see: also a batch of papers on same subject from Prof. Berendt of Berlin. I don’t know how I am to get through all the Swedish and Norwegian papers I have received. They are so hard to read.