James Geikie, the Man and the Geologist

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

Second, and this is a point which is much less familiar to the general public than in a democratic country it ought to be, his books were not of the kind which bring direct monetary reward to their author. His family was increasing, for his third son was born in this year of 1881; he himself was past forty, and the probability that he could continue to go on working for many years more at the rate at which he had been toiling during the last twenty was necessarily diminishing. Now it is universally admitted, as a general proposition, that when a man without private means has done and is doing important and highly specialised work for his country and for the world, work which does not bring direct pecuniary gain, then it is the duty of those in high places to see that he be established in such a position as to free him from financial anxiety for the future, to enable him to face his responsibilities with a calm mind, to obviate the necessity for his wasting his strength and intellect in hack-work in order to supplement his income. But, while this is admitted as a general proposition, there is always the possibility that petty personal interests will intervene in a particular case. James Geikie left the Survey partly under the pressure of such interests, which seemed to threaten his prospects of immediate promotion, and partly under that of friends who thought that the professorship offered more scope for him. Whether he was right or wrong it is difficult to say, but there is evidence that at least at first he regretted his decision. He might have quitted the Survey of his own free will, and would certainly have done this with a pang, but the thought that his decision to leave was not wholly voluntary, made the pang excessively bitter.

Many of the letters of this year of anxiety are too intimate to be quoted. We shall only insert sentences and phrases to make the narrative plain.

One of the first indications of coming events was an attack upon Prehistoric Europe in the early part of 1881, an attack which it seems quite clear was not motived wholly by an honest desire to promote the cause of science. It was this element which made the matter so hard to bear.

The affair has affected me more than I can tell.... You will laugh, but it is true all the same, that I can hardly eat or sleep. For the attack itself I don’t mind, I know that my book is a bit of honest true work, and will outlive the attempts ... to stifle it.... I wish the snow would go and let me out to have a walk. Sometimes I wish that I had kept clear of writing books altogether.... I remember wondering once when Green told me that when he was vexed with anything a romp with his bairns made him quite hearty. It seemed to me overstrained. I don’t think so now that I have bairns of my own. Their quaint and funny ways quite carry you out of yourself.... Dearly as I love life, I can already foresee that the time will come when I shall be glad to lie down and sleep the sleep that knows no waking.... Verily I do believe a good wife and loving mother is the only treasure of treasures that is worth striving for in this world!... How much you and I have to be thankful for!

These are a few extracts written to his friend Mr Horne at the moment when the history of the incident was just becoming plain, and at a time also when Mr Horne’s first child had just been born; they throw perhaps more light upon it and upon the character of James Geikie than any ordered narrative could do.

Later letters of the same spring emphasise the effect which the incident had upon him. “The whole thing,” he writes in one letter, “has worried me more than I can tell;” but a journey south, where, inter alia, he lectured at Hull, and led a big geological excursion, helped to change the current of his thoughts, while his reception at Hull gratified him greatly. Fresh letters from continental geologists also, not only praising his book but discussing the bearing of his results upon their observations in various parts of Europe, must have helped to assure him that it was worth while to do honest work, despite detractors. Further, the family moved from Perth to Birnam, where they took a charming cottage at the foot of Birnam Hill, covered with roses, and with a large untidy garden. The early summer was brilliantly fine, and the fresh air and open life of the country must have made it easier to take a more philosophical view of the affair, unpleasant as it was.

The letters of early summer show at least a perceptible recovery of balance and cheerfulness. His third son was born in June, and in answer to congratulations he says:—“A third boy was a great disappointment—a girl would have ‘completed’ all the family any reasonable man could desire!”

The arrival of the baby prevented him from accompanying Dr Helland on a projected trip to Iceland in early summer, but, rather curiously, an opportunity to visit the island occurred a little later in the same year, for he went to report on some sulphur mines.

On 17th September he writes to Mr Horne:—“I have just returned from Iceland, where I have had some very hard but very interesting work. What a country! Fancy me riding eleven hours over lava-beds, mountains, etc., devil a road or even path! However, all was fresh and new.”

By this time the question of changes in the Survey was becoming acute, and James Geikie was beginning to debate with himself as to whether he ought to try for the Chair in Geology at Edinburgh for his children’s sake. The indecision he found very unsettling. “I can settle to nothing—reading and writing are alike out of the question.” More than a month later he writes:—“I am pulled two ways—my own desire and wish is to remain in the Survey.” “My repugnance to that Chair,” he says a few days later, “increases as the days go past.”