In early days the class was small, and as the income derived from Sir Roderick Murchison’s endowment was supplemented by the students’ fees, then paid direct to the professor, their number was an important matter. Further, at the time of the appointment, as for many years later, geology was not compulsory for any degree, and was not even an optional degree for the ordinary course in Arts. This meant that the professor had not a status in the University comparable to that of those of the Arts professors whose courses were compulsory, or of the members of the Medical Faculty. On the other hand, it meant that the students who took the class did so from a genuine interest in the subject. The fact that Prof. Geikie soon acquired much weight in the Senate was due entirely to his strong personality, unassisted, at least at first, by any advantages of position.
The letters of this first winter session are filled, as might be expected, with the business of settling down in Edinburgh, the buying of furniture and carpets, the “grind” of getting up the lectures, and recurring regrets at parting with old friends. A letter to Mr Horne, written at the beginning of January 1883, illustrates very clearly the dawning of genuine interest in the new work, still mingled with longings for the old. The following passages may be quoted:—
I was at the office the other day.... But how the days flash by. And how the dear old days are gone when you and I and the others used to chaff and make a noise o’ winter in that office. It makes me melancholy sometimes when I think of it all. I am Professor in Edinburgh University, but my heart is in the Survey with my old Survey chums. Here are tall hats, black coats, pompous windbags—and in a word, starch and humbug. My boy, I have been caught too old. Had I come here earlier I might have become “respectable” too—but it is too late! However, I get on well with my students who, being young, understand fun and such improvised nonsense as I endeavour to cheer them with. I fancy some of my colleagues would have their hair elevated if they heard me. I like the work much better than I expected, but eh man! I miss the freedom of the country.
The office alluded to above was, of course, the Survey Office, and Prof. Geikie’s colleagues record that at first he found it difficult to keep away from it. He generally dropped in on his way to or from the University to see how things were getting on, and never missed an opportunity of meeting his old friends. When he began to have students’ parties some of the Survey men were generally asked also, so that the students might have an opportunity of coming into direct contact with the men who were making geology in Scotland.
Many allusions in the early letters show that the new professor found the task of arranging his class work irksome. In certain branches of geology he had himself taken little interest, having specialised early, and as at first he had no assistant, all the work fell on his own shoulders. For microscopic work and some aspects of mineralogy he had always expressed contempt, as being only suitable for the men who could not or did not work in the field; and these despised subjects he now felt himself constrained to “get up” for class purposes, and this necessity drew from him many groans. One must admit that there was a certain tragedy in this taking of a man of forty-four off his own highly specialised work to grind up a subject of practically no use to him in that work; but such tragedies are frequent when original thinkers are placed in professorial chairs which demand much elementary teaching. Preparing for his microscopic class, he complains, means sitting up half the night, and is “fiddling work,” requiring little in the way of brains.
A letter to Prof. Stevenson of New York, dated 26th January 1883, is not without interest in the same connection, in showing the effect of this drudgery on his own work. In acknowledging one of the former’s publications, he says:—“I am sorry I have no papers to send you. My preparations for a new start as professor in our University here have absorbed nearly all my leisure time, so that several papers I had chalked out have been laid aside for the present.” A letter to Mr Horne, written a few weeks later, while the author was invigilating a class examination, shows where his thoughts turned as soon as the strain was lifted for a moment. It records the receipt of a letter from Prof. Nathorst of Stockholm, who had been doing work in Spitsbergen, and had come independently to the same conclusion in regard to certain points as James Geikie. The latter adds:—“He says he is delighted that his conclusions, arrived at independently, should corroborate and support mine. Very nice.”
The same letter to Mr Horne contains an allusion to an odd form of compliment which had just reached the writer. A lady in Nova Scotia, apparently a total stranger, had written to ask if the author of The Great Ice Age would stand godfather to her baby. The cream of the jest was, however, that the said baby was not expected to enter this vale of tears till some three or four months after the date of the letter. History, unfortunately, does not record whether or not the infant put in an appearance, nor whether it had to be baptised as James or Jamesina, but the professor gave his consent without, as he says, any ungentlemanly reference to common proverbs.
At the close of this, his first winter session, the new professor took a party of students on a long geological excursion to the Border district, his old hunting-ground. During the course of the excursion, which lasted several days, the party visited Buchtrig, whether wholly from geological or partly from sentimental reasons does not appear. Some fine tramps were taken over the hills, and the fact that the leader had himself worked out the geology of the district must have added much zest to the excursion.
In May the first summer class in geology was held, this being one of Prof. James Geikie’s innovations. It was well attended, twenty-six students taking part, and consisted of both indoor work and excursions. After this year this summer course became a part of the regular routine, and while it was a great improvement from the point of view of teaching, it naturally still further diminished the professor’s spare time, and placed him at a disadvantage, so far as independent work was concerned, with his colleagues of the Arts Faculty who then had only a short winter session.
The summer holiday was spent at Largo in Fife, and the summer was clouded by the death of Prof. Geikie’s father, who passed away at the age of seventy-three, having seen both his geologist sons established in positions of importance.