Dear to the heart o’ learned Misses.
To Appin also the family returned in summer, after Prof. Geikie’s retirement from the Chair at Edinburgh, and it was there that they got the news of the outbreak of war. Prof. Geikie gave his last lecture at Edinburgh on 19th June, and his successor, a former student of his own, Prof. Jehu of St Andrews, was appointed shortly afterwards.
The rest of the story is soon told, for Prof. Geikie’s hope that his retiral from the professorship would give him time for his own work was not destined to be fulfilled. The autumn was spent—as all spent that fateful autumn—in watching and waiting, but unlike some of his fellow-countrymen, Prof. Geikie, if he never doubted of the ultimate result, was yet sure from the first that the war would be long and terrible. He was not well throughout the winter, for an attack of influenza in November weakened him, and he seemed to have lost his power of recovery. Later he suffered from his old enemy, dyspepsia, though there did not appear to be any particular cause for alarm. On the 1st of March he died suddenly as the result of a heart attack, some months before completing his seventy-sixth year.
He died as he would himself have wished to die, without any slow progress of decay, and without knowledge that the end was so near.
His contributions to science are discussed in the [section] which follows: his personal character should be apparent from what has been already said, without the need of an elaborate analysis. As a friend wrote to Mrs Geikie in the first days of her loss:—“There was always an out-of-door atmosphere about him, like a strong wind sweeping over the moors bringing life and health with it;” for the hills and open country which he loved had taught him much.
In sum, he was through and through one of the island folk, a true native of “this little island, this England,” with its wide, wind-swept moorlands, its disciplined freedom, its ordered life, and had in addition the strong individuality of the northerner to whom nothing comes without labour. Even the milieu in which he was born is significant, for it was that from which so many of the intellectuals of Scotland have come; and it is noteworthy that he remained a Scot to the end, at once fiercely critical of his country and fellow-countrymen, and full of intense love for the one and of profound sympathy with the other. He never, like some anglicised Scots, sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, or faltered in the conviction that he was the heir of a glorious heritage, won by the toil and sweat of generations, and the result was to give something of that poise and assuredness which those who are false to their own traditions can never possess. It will be clear also that there was nothing of the dry-as-dust pedant about him, for he was above all things a man, one for whom life in all its aspects was sweet. He gave freely—to the world of his labours, to his intimates of his affection, and he received much—honour from his fellows, and what he perhaps prized more, the love of those who knew the real man beneath the northern shyness and reserve.
All is transitory—his conclusions may be disputed, new lights may be thrown on problems which seemed to him conclusively solved; but the nation which can produce such men can never be poor, and his uprightness, steadfastness, and simplicity of character enabled him to leave an abiding imprint upon his day and generation.