The latter lived with the Geikie family in Edinburgh for some time in his student days. The MS. from which the above quotation is made, which is annotated in pencil by its author, is, as stated, a mere fragment and undated. Internal evidence, however, suggests that it may have been written about 1856, the writing and composition recalling some extant letters of this period, and it shows, as further quotations will indicate, that its author, with all his obvious immaturity, was even then feeling after a style.
James Geikie’s mother was a Miss Thom, a daughter of a merchant captain, who was born in Inverness but established himself at Dunbar. Here he married the daughter of a local shipbuilder, whose family was connected by marriage—to quote again the MS. already mentioned—with “that Roderick MacKenzie who suffered his head to be taken from him that he might save that of Prince Charles Stewart”; a fact of which the boy James confesses himself very proud. In his later days Captain Thom often visited his married daughter, and the important part which he played in developing the imagination of the children is suggested in the following sentences (from MS.):—“My Grandfather Thom when I first knew him had not ceased to plough the sea for his living. He was of a middle stature, well-made, and muscular. I can still see his fine head nearly bald—what hair he had was of a beautiful silver white—his Roman nose. I can still at this late period follow him in his walks. I see him sitting with his old cronies—relics of fights by land and sea—on that seat between the two old trees—long since pulled down to make way for those improvements, so-called, which have altered entirely what in my young days went by the name of ‘The Meadows.’ His stories of adventures with the robbers of the sea are rife in my memory. His voyages to places whose very names smack of fairy-land—his hairbreadth escapes—his deeds of daring—the recollection of all these rises vividly before me at the mere mention of his name. I looked upon him as another Sinbad—a second Robinson Crusoe; and my acquaintance with his queer old friends served to heighten the romantic colours in which I viewed him! Alas! all these school-boy dreamings are past; but they will sometimes flit before me as I lie gazing up into the deep blue of a summer sky, recalling the old days which have gone away into dim forgetfulness: and they will sometimes come again as I sit alone musing by the winter fireside. Verily there is a something—call it what you will—about the past which renders it infinitely more endearing to us than all the brightest dreams of the future.”
The only comment which it is necessary to make upon the above is to repeat that it was apparently written when the boy was about seventeen, and thus, as we shall see, at a period when he was engaged in uncongenial work, and when his future was uncertain: these facts help to explain what the James Geikie of a later day would have contemptuously denounced as the “high-falutin” style.
In addition to the visits of Captain Thom to Edinburgh, family intercourse was kept up by return visits of the children to Dunbar, where the ships appealed strongly to the imagination of James. He was fond of saying in later years that he used to watch them dipping below the horizon and longed to follow them to see what lay beyond; and the Wanderlust, so early developed, lasted till the end of life. In a letter to one of his sons, written to Egypt in 1901, he says:—“Old man tho’ I am, I’m just as keen to knock about the world as ever I was. It is like renewing my youth even to think about it!”
In connection with the seafarer’s blood which he inherited from his mother’s side, it is also of interest to note that James was an excellent traveller both by sea and land; the sea had no terrors for him, and his voyages were a source of continuous pleasure, both at the time and in recollection.
As to his immediate intellectual heritage, it seems probable that James took the majority of his qualities from his father’s side. But his mother, of whom he was very fond, was a woman of great ability and much ambition for her clever sons, whom she spurred on in their careers. Her extraordinary skill as a needlewoman, and her capacity for hard work, are enshrined in the family traditions, and it is probable that James took from her his remarkable perseverance and his manual dexterity. The father was full of bonhomie, probably as deeply impregnated as his son with the joie de vivre, and like him more desirous of a full life than given to the narrow concentration which achieves a particular purpose at the expense of so much.
From his father James seems to have inherited his imagination and the touch of constructive genius which enabled him to do such noteworthy work; but one can well believe that the instinct which led the son to interleave his scientific observations in his geological note-books with verses, prevented the father from devoting himself as whole-heartedly to the pursuit of worldly prosperity as his wife may have thought desirable in view of the large and growing family.
It is at least certain that money was not very abundant in the early days, though the house contained many books, and there seems to have been much music and liveliness, the father, like the son, being a capital story-teller. He must also have been a traveller in his day, for James in a letter to his brother William speaks of him as going off to the Continent in 1858, a much rarer adventure for a man of moderate means then than now. The occasion was a musical festival at Bonn, and was apparently taken advantage of to the full, the tour being extended to Paris and elsewhere.
Details in regard to the early life of James Geikie are scanty. These were days long before the time when conscientious parents recorded in neatly kept note-books all details as to the growth and development of their offspring; while with babies following each other at regular intervals throughout a long period of years, the mother had probably little time to put on record any signs of precocity in the elder boys, if such existed. Two little stories, however, emphasise the statements made above as to the effect on the children’s imagination of Captain Thom’s yarns. When very small James, in company with his brother William, who was two years older, set off to walk down to Joppa, some three and a half miles from Edinburgh, to see the world, and incidentally to visit an aunt who lived in the district. The two arrived very tired, only, after a meal and a rest, to be ignominiously taken home again by their aunt. In those days communications between the shore and the city were difficult, and the party had to trudge back on foot, the small James, whose ambition on this occasion had somewhat outrun his strength, having to be carried most of the way.
But this inglorious finale did not quench the ardour of the youthful pair, who were probably slow to grasp the attitude of grown-up people towards displays of initiative on the part of the young. Next time they planned to make a voyage on their own account, and to place the water between them and over-zealous family affection. They were so far successful as to reach Leith and find their way on board a ship. But alas! even here they were met by a display of the adult passion for interference, and were taken home by a sailor who, regardless of the soul within, maintained that their diminutive stature debarred them from seeking life and adventure on the high seas. As one of the grandfather’s most popular stories related how he had sunk a pirate boat in the Bay of Naples, by means of a small gun loaded with scrap iron, and how in consequence he had been fêted by the Neapolitans, and had had his portrait painted, one can imagine that the brothers were very bitter at this second check to their own ambitions. James had to wait many years before he faced Italian pirates and brigands, and then it was the milder variety which requires to be treated with another metal rather than iron, and cannot be disposed of by Captain Thom’s summary methods.