The Voyages of Marco Polo. Марко Поло

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ to our dear and honoured friend, John Ruskin. As my dear mother stood on the threshold between life and death at Mornex that sad spring, he was untiring in all kindly offices of friendship. It was her old friend, Principal A. J. Scott (then eminent, now forgotten), who sent him to call. He came to see us daily when possible, sometimes bringing MSS. of Rossetti and others to read aloud (and who could equal his reading?), and when she was too ill for this, or himself absent, he would send not only books and flowers to brighten the bare rooms of the hillside inn (then very primitive), but his own best treasures of Turner and W. Hunt, drawings and illuminated missals. It was an anxious solace; and though most gratefully enjoyed, these treasures were never long retained.

      [55] Villa Mansi, nearly opposite the old Ducal Palace. With its private

       chapel, it formed three sides of a small place or court.

      [56] He also at all times spared no pains to enforce that ideal on other

       index-makers, who were not always grateful for his sound doctrine!

      [57] He saw a good deal of the outbreak when taking small comforts to a friend, the Commandent of the Military School, who was captured and imprisioned by the insurgents.

      [58] After 1869 he discontinued sea-bathing.

      [59] This was Yule's first geographical honour, but he had been elected into the Athenaeum Club, under "Rule II.," in January, 1867.

      [60] Garnier took a distinguished part in the Defence of Paris in 1870–71, after which he resumed his naval service in the East, where he was killed in action. His last letter to Yule contained the simple announcement "J'ai pris Hanoï" a modest terseness of statement worthy of the best naval traditions.

      [61] One year the present writer, at her mother's desire, induced him to take walks of 10 to 12 miles with her, but interesting and lovely as the scenery was, he soon wearied for his writing-table (even bringing his work with him), and thus little permanent good was effected. And it was just the same afterwards in Scotland, where an old Highland gillie, describing his experience of the Yule brothers, said: "I was liking to take out Sir George, for he takes the time to enjoy the hills, but (plaintively), the Kornel is no good, for he's just as restless as a water-wagtail!" If there be any mal de l'écritoire corresponding to mal du pays, Yule certainly had it.

      [62] The Russian Government in 1873 paid the same work the very practical compliment of circulating it largely amongst their officers in Central Asia.

      [63] "Auch in den Literaturen von Frankreich, Italien, Deutschland und andere Ländern ist der mächtig treibende Einfluss der Yuleschen Methode, welche wissenschaftliche Grundlichkeit mit anmuthender Form verbindet, bemerkbar." (Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, Band XVII. No. 2.)

      [64] This subject is too lengthy for more than cursory allusion here, but the patient analytic skill and keen venatic instinct with which Yule not only proved the forgery of the alleged Travels of Georg Ludwig von—— (that had been already established by Lord Strangford, whose last effort it was, and Sir Henry Rawlinson), but step by step traced it home to the arch-culprit Klaproth, was nothing less than masterly.

      [65] This is probably the origin of the odd misstatement as to Yule occupying himself at Palermo with photography, made in the delightful Reminiscences of the late Colonel Balcarres Ramsay. Yule never attempted photography after 1852.

      [66] She was a woman of fine intellect and wide reading; a skilful musician, who also sang well, and a good amateur artist in the style of Aug. Delacroix (of whom she was a favourite pupil). Of French and Italian she had a thorough and literary mastery, and how well she knew her own language is shown by the sound and pure English of a story she published in early life, under the pseudonym of Max Lyle (Fair Oaks, or The Experiences of Arnold Osborne, M.D., 2 vols., 1856). My mother was partly of Highland descent on both sides, and many of her fine qualities were very characteristic of that race. Before her marriage she took an active part in many good works, and herself originated the useful School for the Blind at Bath, in a room which she hired with her pocket-money, where she and her friend Miss Elwin taught such of the blind poor as they could gather together.

      In the tablet which he erected to her memory in the family burial-place of St. Andrew's, Gulane, her husband described her thus:—"A woman singular in endowments, in suffering, and in faith; to whom to live was Christ, to die was gain."

      [67] Mary Wilhelmina, daughter of F. Skipwith, Esq., B.C.S.

      [68] Collinson's Memoir of Yule.

      [69] See Notes from a Diary, 1888–91.

      [70] The identification was not limited to Yule, for when travelling in Russia many years ago, the present writer was introduced by an absent-minded Russian savant to his colleagues as Mademoiselle Marco Paulovna!

      [71] See Note on Sir George Yule's career at the end of this Memoir.

      [72] Addressed to the Editor, Royal Engineers' Journal, who did not, however, publish it.

      [73] Debate of 27th August, 1889, as reported in The Times of 28th August.

      [74] Yule had published a brief but very interesting Memoir of Major Rennell in the R. E. Journal in 1881. He was extremely proud of the circumstance that Rennell's surviving grand-daughter presented to him a beautiful wax medallion portrait of the great geographer. This wonderfully life-like presentment was bequeathed by Yule to his friend Sir Joseph Hooker, who presented it to the Royal Society.

      [75] Knowing his veneration for that noble lady, I had written to tell her of his condition, and to ask her to give him this last pleasure of a few words. The response was such as few but herself could write. This letter was not to be found after my father's death, and I can only conjecture that it must either have been given away by himself (which is most improbable), or was appropriated by some unauthorised outsider.

      [76] So Sir M. E. Grant Duff well calls it.

      [77] Academy, 19th March, 1890.

      [78] He was much pleased, I remember, by a letter he once received from a kindly Franciscan friar, who wrote: "You may rest assured that the Beato Odorico will not forget all you have done for him."

      [79] F.-M. Lord Napier of Magdala, died 14th January, 1890.

      [80] This notice includes the greater part of an article written by my father, and published in the St. James' Gazette of 18th January, 1886, but I have added other details from personal recollection and other sources.—A. F. Y.

      A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SIR HENRY YULE'S WRITINGS

       Table of Contents

      COMPILED BY H. CORDIER AND A. F. YULE[1]

      1842 Notes on the Iron of the Kasia Hills. (Jour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, XI. Part II. July-Dec. 1842, pp. 853–857.)

      Reprinted in Proceedings of the Museum of Economic Geology, 1852.

      1844 Notes on the Kasia Hills and People. By Lieut. H. Yule. (Jour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, XII. Part II. July-Dec. 1844, pp. 612–631.)

      1846 СКАЧАТЬ