The Travels of Marco Polo 3 – Yule · Library Across
Literature · Adventure
The Travels of Marco Polo 3Preface (part 3)
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Literature · Adventure
The Travels of Marco Polo 3
Preface (part 3)
YuleEnglish
By this time Yule had obtained, without ever having sought it, a distinct and, in some respects, quite unique position in geographical science. Although his Essay on the Geography of the Oxus Region (1872) received comparatively little public attention at home, it had yet made its mark once for all, and from this time, if not earlier, Yule’s high authority in all questions of Central Asian geography was generally recognised. He had long ere this, almost unconsciously, laid the broad foundations of that “Yule method,” of which Baron von Richthofen has written so eloquently, declaring that not only in his own land, “but also in the literatures of France, Italy, Germany, and other countries, the powerful stimulating influence of the Yule method is visible.” More than one writer has indeed boldly compared Central Asia before Yule to Central Africa before Livingstone!
Yule had wrought from sheer love of the work and without expectation of public recognition, and it was therefore a great surprise as well as gratification to him, to find that the demand for his Marco Polo was such as to justify the appearance of a second edition only a few years after the first. The preparation of this enlarged edition, with much other miscellaneous work (see subjoined bibliography), and the superintendence of the building of the church already named, kept him fully occupied for the next three years.
Amongst the parerga and miscellaneous occupations of Yule’s leisure hours in the period 1869–74, may be mentioned an interesting correspondence with Professor W. W. Skeat on the subject of William of Palerne and Sicilian examples of the Werwolf; the skilful analysis and exposure of Klaproth’s false geography; the purchase and despatch of Sicilian seeds and young trees for use in the Punjab, at the request of the Indian Forestry Department; translations (prepared for friends) of tracts on the cultivation of Sumach and the collection of Manna as practised in Sicily; also a number of small services rendered to the South Kensington Museum, at the request of the late Sir Henry Cole. These latter included obtaining Italian and Sicilian bibliographic contributions to the Science and Art Department’s Catalogue of Books on Art, selecting architectural subjects to be photographed; negotiating the purchase of the original drawings illustrative of Padre B. Gravina’s great work on the Cathedral of Monreale; and superintending the execution of a copy in mosaic of the large mosaic picture (in the Norman Palatine Chapel, Palermo,) of the Entry of our Lord into Jerusalem.
In the spring of 1875, just after the publication of the second edition of Marco Polo, Yule had to mourn the loss of his noble wife. He was absent from Sicily at the time, but returned a few hours after her death on 30th April. She had suffered for many years from a severe form of heart disease, but her end was perfect peace. She was laid to rest, amid touching tokens of both public and private sympathy, in the beautiful camposanto on Monte Pellegrino. What her loss was to Yule only his oldest and closest friends were in a position to realise. Long years of suffering had impaired neither the soundness of her judgment nor the sweetness, and even gaiety, of her happy, unselfish disposition. And in spirit, as even in appearance, she retained to the very last much of the radiance of her youth. Nor were her intellectual gifts less remarkable. Few who had once conversed with her ever forgot her, and certainly no one who had once known her intimately ever ceased to love her.
Shortly after this calamity, Yule removed to London, and on the retirement of his old friend, Sir William Baker, from the India Council early that autumn, Lord Salisbury at once selected him for the vacant seat. Nothing would ever have made him a party-man, but he always followed Lord Salisbury with conviction, and worked under him with steady confidence.
In 1877 Yule married, as his second wife, the daughter of an old friend, a very amiable woman twenty years his junior, who made him very happy until her untimely death in 1881. From the time of his joining the India Council, his duties at the India Office of course occupied a great part of his time, but he also continued to do an immense amount of miscellaneous literary work, as may be seen by reference to the subjoined bibliography, (itself probably incomplete). In Council he invariably “showed his strong determination to endeavour to deal with questions on their own merits and not only by custom and precedent.” Amongst subjects in which he took a strong line of his own in the discussions of the Council, may be specially instanced his action in the matter of the cotton duties (in which he defended native Indian manufactures as against hostile Manchester interests); the Vernacular Press Act, the necessity for which he fully recognised; and the retention of Kandahar, for which he recorded his vote in a strong minute. In all these three cases, which are typical of many others, his opinion was overruled, but having been carefully and deliberately formed, it remained unaffected by defeat.
In all matters connected with Central Asian affairs, Yule’s opinion always carried great weight; some of his most competent colleagues indeed preferred his authority in this field to that of even Sir Henry Rawlinson, possibly for the reason given by Sir M. Grant Duff, who has epigrammatically described the latter as good in Council but dangerous in counsel.
Yule’s courageous independence and habit of looking at all public questions by the simple light of what appeared to him right, yet without fads or doctrinairism, earned for him the respect of the successive Secretaries of State under whom he served, and the warm regard and confidence of his other colleagues. The value attached to his services in Council was sufficiently shown by the fact that when the period of ten years (for which members are usually appointed), was about to expire, Lord Hartington (now Duke of Devonshire), caused Yule’s appointment to be renewed for life, under a special Act of Parliament passed for this purpose in 1885.
His work as a member of the Army Sanitary Committee, brought him into communication with Miss Florence Nightingale, a privilege which he greatly valued and enjoyed, though he used to say: “She is worse than a Royal Commission to answer, and, in the most gracious charming manner possible, immediately finds out all I don’t know!” Indeed his devotion to the “Lady-in-Chief” was scarcely less complete than Kinglake’s.
In 1880, Yule was appointed to the Board of Visitors of the Government Indian Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill, a post which added to his sphere of interests without materially increasing his work. In 1882, he was much gratified by being named an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, more especially as it was to fill one of the two vacancies created by the deaths of Thomas Carlyle and Dean Stanley.
Yule had been President of the Hakluyt Society from 1877, and in 1885 was elected President also of the Royal Asiatic Society. He would probably also have been President of the Royal Geographical Society, but for an untoward incident. Mention has already been made of his constant determination to judge all questions by the simple touchstone of what he believed to be right, irrespective of personal considerations. It was in pursuance of these principles that, at the cost of great pain to himself and some misrepresentation, he in 1878 sundered his long connection with the Royal Geographical Society, by resigning his seat on their Council, solely in consequence of their adoption of what he considered a wrong policy. This severance occurred just when it was intended to propose him as President. Some years later, at the personal request of the late Lord Aberdare, a President in all respects worthy of the best traditions of that great Society, Yule consented to rejoin the Council, which he re-entered as a Vice-President.
In 1883, the University of Edinburgh celebrated its Tercentenary, when Yule was selected as one of the recipients of the honorary degree of LL.D. His letters from Edinburgh, on this occasion, give a very pleasant and amusing account of the festivity and of the celebrities he met. Nor did he omit to chronicle the envious glances cast, as he alleged, by some British men of science on the splendours of foreign Academic attire, on the yellow robes of the Sorbonne, and the Palms of the Institute of France! Pasteur was, he wrote, the one most enthusiastically acclaimed of all who received degrees.
I think it was about the same time that M. Renan was in England, and called upon Sir Henry Maine, Yule, and others at the India Office. On meeting just after, the colleagues compared notes as to their distinguished but unwieldy visitor. “It seems that le style n’est pas l’homme même in this instance,” quoth “Ancient Law” to “Marco Polo.” And here it may be remarked that Yule so completely identified himself with his favourite traveller that he frequently signed contributions to the public press as MARCUS PAULUS VENETUS or M.P.V. His more intimate friends also gave him the same sobriquet, and once, when calling on his old friend, Dr. John Brown (the beloved chronicler of Rab and his Friends), he was introduced by Dr. John to some lion-hunting American visitors as “our Marco Polo.” The visitors evidently took the statement in a literal sense, and scrutinised Yule closely.
In 1886 Yule published his delightful Anglo-Indian Glossary, with the whimsical but felicitous sub-title of Hobson-Jobson (the name given by the rank and file of the British Army in India to the religious festival in celebration of Hassan and Husaïn).
This Glossary was an abiding interest to both Yule and the present writer. Contributions of illustrative quotations came from most diverse and unexpected sources, and the arrival of each new word or happy quotation was quite an event, and gave such pleasure to the recipients as can only be fully understood by those who have shared in such pursuits. The volume was dedicated in affecting terms to his elder brother, Sir George Yule, who, unhappily, did not survive to see it completed.
In July 1885, the two brothers had taken the last of many happy journeys together, proceeding to Cornwall and the Scilly Isles. A few months later, on 13th January 1886, the end came suddenly to the elder, from the effects of an accident at his own door.
It may be doubted if Yule ever really got over the shock of this loss, though he went on with his work as usual, and served that year as a Royal Commissioner on the occasion of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition of 1886.
From 1878, when an accidental chill laid the foundations of an exhausting, though happily quite painless, malady, Yule’s strength had gradually failed, although for several years longer his general health and energies still appeared unimpaired to a casual observer. The condition of public affairs also, in some degree, affected his health injuriously. The general trend of political events from 1880 to 1886 caused him deep anxiety and distress, and his righteous wrath at what he considered the betrayal of his country’s honour in the cases of Frere, of Gordon, and of Ireland, found strong, and, in a noble sense, passionate expression in both prose and verse. He was never in any sense a party man, but he often called himself “one of Mr. Gladstone’s converts,” i.e. one whom Gladstonian methods had compelled to break with liberal tradition and prepossessions.
Nothing better expresses Yule’s feeling in the period referred to than the following letter, written in reference to the R. E. Gordon Memorial, but of much wider application: “Will you allow me an inch or two of space to say to my brother officers, ‘Have nothing to do with the proposed Gordon Memorial.’
“That glorious memory is in no danger of perishing and needs no memorial. Sackcloth and silence are what it suggests to those who have guided the action of England; and Englishmen must bear the responsibility for that action and share its shame. It is too early for atoning memorials; nor is it possible for those who take part in them to dissociate themselves from a repulsive hypocrisy.
“Let every one who would fain bestow something in honour of the great victim, do, in silence, some act of help to our soldiers or their families, or to others who are poor and suffering.
“In later days our survivors or successors may look back with softened sorrow and pride to the part which men of our corps have played in these passing events, and Charles Gordon far in the front of all; and then they may set up our little tablets, or what not—not to preserve the memory of our heroes, but to maintain the integrity of our own record of the illustrious dead.”
Happily Yule lived to see the beginning of better times for his country. One of the first indications of that national awakening was the right spirit in which the public, for the most part, received Lord Wolseley’s stirring appeal at the close of 1888, and Yule was so much struck by the parallelism between Lord Wolseley’s warning and some words of his own contained in the pseudo-Polo fragment (see above, end of Preface), that he sent Lord Wolseley the very last copy of the 1875 edition of Marco Polo, with a vigorous expression of his sentiments.
That was probably Yule’s last utterance on a public question. The sands of life were now running low, and in the spring of 1889, he felt it right to resign his seat on the India Council, to which he had been appointed for life. On this occasion Lord Cross, then Secretary of State for India, successfully urged his acceptance of the K.C.S.I., which Yule had refused several years before.
In the House of Lords, Viscount Cross subsequently referred to his resignation in the following terms. He said: “A vacancy on the Council had unfortunately occurred through the resignation from ill-health of Sir Henry Yule, whose presence on the Council had been of enormous advantage to the natives of the country. A man of more kindly disposition, thorough intelligence, high-minded, upright, honourable character, he believed did not exist; and he would like to bear testimony to the estimation in which he was held, and to the services which he had rendered in the office he had so long filled.”
This year the Hakluyt Society published the concluding volume of Yule’s last work of importance, the Diary of Sir William Hedges. He had for several years been collecting materials for a full memoir of his great predecessor in the domain of historical geography, the illustrious Rennell. This work was well advanced as to preliminaries, but was not sufficiently developed for early publication at the time of Yule’s death, and ere it could be completed its place had been taken by a later enterprise.
During the summer of 1889, Yule occupied much of his leisure by collecting and revising for re-issue many of his miscellaneous writings. Although not able to do much at a time, this desultory work kept him occupied and interested, and gave him much pleasure during many months. It was, however, never completed. Yule went to the seaside for a few weeks in the early summer, and subsequently many pleasant days were spent by him among the Surrey hills, as the guest of his old friends Sir Joseph and Lady Hooker. Of their constant and unwearied kindness, he always spoke with most affectionate gratitude. That autumn he took a great dislike to the English climate; he hankered after sunshine, and formed many plans, eager though indefinite, for wintering at Cintra, a place whose perfect beauty had fascinated him in early youth. But increasing weakness made a journey to Portugal, or even the South of France, an alternative of which he also spoke, very inexpedient, if not absolutely impracticable. Moreover, he would certainly have missed abroad the many friends and multifarious interests which still surrounded him at home. He continued to take drives, and occasionally called on friends, up to the end of November, and it was not until the middle of December that increasing weakness obliged him to take to his bed. He was still, however, able to enjoy seeing his friends—some to the very end, and he had a constant stream of visitors, mostly old friends, but also a few newer ones, who were scarcely less welcome. He also kept up his correspondence to the last, three attached brother R.E.’s, General Collinson, General Maclagan, and Major W. Broadfoot, taking it in turn with the present writer to act as his amanuensis.
On Friday, 27th December, Yule received a telegram from Paris, announcing his nomination that day as Corresponding Member of the Institute of France (Académie des Inscriptions), one of the few distinctions of any kind of which it can still be said that it has at no time lost any of its exalted dignity.
An honour of a different kind that came about the same time, and was scarcely less prized by him, was a very beautiful letter of farewell and benediction from Miss Florence Nightingale, which he kept under his pillow and read many times. On the 28th, he dictated to the present writer his acknowledgment, also by telegraph, of the great honour done him by the Institute. The message was in the following words: “Reddo gratias, Illustrissimi Domini, ob honores tanto nimios quanto immeritos! Mihi robora deficiunt, vita collabitur, accipiatis voluntatem pro facto. Cum corde pleno et gratissimo moriturus vos, Illustrissimi Domini, saluto. YULE.”
Sunday, 29th December, was a day of the most dense black fog, and he felt its oppression, but was much cheered by a visit from his ever faithful friend, Collinson, who, with his usual unselfishness, came to him that day at very great personal inconvenience.
On Monday, 30th December, the day was clearer, and Henry Yule awoke much refreshed, and in a peculiarly happy and even cheerful frame of mind. He said he felt so comfortable. He spoke of his intended book, and bade his daughter write about the inevitable delay to his publisher: “Go and write to John Murray,” were indeed his last words to her. During the morning he saw some friends and relations, but as noon approached his strength flagged, and after a period of unconsciousness, he passed peacefully away in the presence of his daughter and of an old friend, who had come from Edinburgh to see him, but arrived too late for recognition. Almost at the same time that Yule fell asleep, his “stately message,” was being read under the great Dome in Paris. Some two hours after Yule had passed away, F.-M. Lord Napier of Magdala, called on an errand of friendship, and at his desire was admitted to see the last of his early friend. When Lord Napier came out, he said to the present writer, in his own reflective way: “He looks as if he had just settled to some great work.” With these suggestive words of the great soldier, who was so soon, alas, to follow his old friend to the work of another world, this sketch may fitly close.
The following excellent verses (of unknown authorship) on Yule’s death, subsequently appeared in the Academy:
“‘Moriturus vos saluto’
Breathes his last the dying scholar—
Tireless student, brilliant writer;
He ‘salutes his age’ and journeys
To the Undiscovered Country.
There await him with warm welcome
All the heroes of old Story—
The Venetians, the Cà Polo,
Marco, Nicolo, Maffeo,
Odoric of Pordenone,
Ibn Batuta, Marignolli,
Benedict de Goës—‘Seeking
Lost Cathay and finding Heaven.’
Many more whose lives he cherished
With the piety of learning;
Fading records, buried pages,
Failing lights and fires forgotten,
By his energy recovered,
By his eloquence re-kindled.
‘Moriturus vos saluto’
Breathes his last the dying scholar,
And the far off ages answer:
Immortales te salutant. D. M.”
The same idea had been previously embodied, in very felicitous language, by the late General Sir William Lockhart, in a letter which that noble soldier addressed to the present writer a few days after Yule’s death. And Yule himself would have taken pleasure in the idea of those meetings with his old travellers, which seemed so certain to his surviving friends.
He rests in the old cemetery at Tunbridge Wells, with his second wife, as he had directed. A great gathering of friends attended the first part of the burial service which was held in London on 3rd January, 1890. Amongst those present were witnesses of every stage of his career, from his boyish days at the High School of Edinburgh downwards. His daughter, of course, was there, led by the faithful, peerless friend who was so soon to follow him into the Undiscovered Country. She and his youngest nephew, with two cousins and a few old friends, followed his remains over the snow to the graveside. The epitaph subsequently inscribed on the tomb was penned by Yule himself, but is by no means representative of his powers in a kind of composition in which he had so often excelled in the service of others. As a composer of epitaphs and other monumental inscriptions few of our time have surpassed, if any have equalled him, in his best efforts.
SIR GEORGE UDNY YULE, C.B., K.C.S.I.
George Udny Yule, born at Inveresk in 1813, passed through Haileybury into the Bengal Civil Service, which he entered at the age of 18 years. For twenty-five years his work lay in Eastern Bengal. He gradually became known to the Government for his activity and good sense, but won a far wider reputation as a mighty hunter, alike with hog-spear and double barrel. By 1856 the roll of his slain tigers exceeded four hundred, some of them of special fame; after that he continued slaying his tigers, but ceased to count them. For some years he and a few friends used annually to visit the plains of the Brahmaputra, near the Garrow Hills—an entirely virgin country then, and swarming with large game. Yule used to describe his once seeing seven rhinoceroses at once on the great plain, besides herds of wild buffalo and deer of several kinds. One of the party started the theory that Noah’s Ark had been shipwrecked there! In those days George Yule was the only man to whom the Maharajah of Nepaul, Sir Jung Bahadur, conceded leave to shoot within his frontier.
Yule was first called from his useful obscurity in 1856. The year before, the Sonthals in insurrection disturbed the long unbroken peace of the Delta. These were a numerous non-Aryan, uncivilised, but industrious race, driven wild by local mismanagement, and the oppressions of Hindoo usurers acting through the regulation courts. After the suppression of their rising, Yule was selected by Sir F. Halliday, who knew his man, to be Commissioner of the Bhagulpoor Division, containing some six million souls, and embracing the hill country of the Sonthals. He obtained sanction to a code for the latter, which removed these people entirely from the Court system, and its tribe of leeches, and abolished all intermediaries between the Sahib and the Sonthal peasant. Through these measures, and his personal influence, aided by picked assistants, he was able to effect, with extraordinary rapidity, not only their entire pacification, but such a beneficial change in their material condition, that they have risen from a state of barbarous penury to comparative prosperity and comfort.
George Yule was thus engaged when the Mutiny broke out, and it soon made itself felt in the districts under him. To its suppression within his limits, he addressed himself with characteristic vigour. Thoroughly trusted by every class—by his Government, by those under him, by planters and by Zemindars—he organised a little force, comprising a small detachment of the 5th Regiment, a party of British sailors, mounted volunteers from the districts, etc., and of this he became practically the captain. Elephants were collected from all quarters to spare the legs of his infantry and sailors; while dog-carts were turned into limbers for the small three-pounders of the seamen. And with this little army George Yule scoured the Trans-Gangetic districts, leading it against bodies of the Mutineers, routing them upon more than one occasion, and out-manœuvring them by his astonishing marches, till he succeeded in driving them across the Nepaul frontier. No part of Bengal was at any time in such danger, and nowhere was the danger more speedily and completely averted.
After this Yule served for two or three years as Chief Commissioner of Oudh, where in 1862 he married Miss Pemberton, the daughter of a very able father, and the niece of Sir Donald MacLeod, of honoured and beloved memory. Then for four or five years he was Resident at Hyderabad, where he won the enduring friendship of Sir Salar Jung. “Everywhere he showed the same characteristic firm but benignant justice. Everywhere he gained the lasting attachment of all with whom he had intimate dealings—except tigers and scoundrels.”
Many years later, indignant at the then apparently supine attitude of the British Government in the matter of the Abyssinian captives, George Yule wrote a letter (necessarily published without his name, as he was then on the Governor-General’s Council), to the editor of an influential Indian paper, proposing a private expedition should be organised for their delivery from King Theodore, and inviting the editor (Dr. George Smith) to open a list of subscriptions in his paper for this purpose, to which Yule offered to contribute £2000 by way of beginning. Although impracticable in itself, it is probable that, as in other cases, the existence of such a project may have helped to force the Government into action. The particulars of the above incident were printed by Dr. Smith in his Memoir of the Rev. John Wilson, but are given here from memory.
From Hyderabad he was promoted in 1867 to the Governor-General’s Council, but his health broke down under the sedentary life, and he retired and came home in 1869.
After some years of country life in Scotland, where he bought a small property, he settled near his brother in London, where he was a principal instrument in enabling Sir George Birdwood to establish the celebration of Primrose Day (for he also was “one of Mr. Gladstone’s converts”). Sir George Yule never sought ‘London Society’ or public employment, but in 1877 he was offered and refused the post of Financial Adviser to the Khedive under the Dual control. When his feelings were stirred he made useful contributions to the public press, which, after his escape from official trammels, were always signed. The very last of these (St. James Gazette, 24th February 1885) was a spirited protest against the snub administered by the late Lord Derby, as Secretary of State, to the Colonies, when they had generously offered assistance in the Soudan campaign. He lived a quiet, happy, and useful life in London, where he was the friend and unwearied helper of all who needed help. He found his chief interests in books and flowers, and in giving others pleasure. Of rare unselfishness and sweet nature, single in mind and motive, fearing God and knowing no other fear, he was regarded by a large number of people with admiring affection. He met his death by a fall on the frosty pavement at his door, in the very act of doing a kindness. An interesting sketch of Sir George Yule’s Indian career, by one who knew him thoroughly, is to be found in Sir Edward Braddon’s Thirty Years of Shikar. An account of his share in the origin of Primrose Day appeared in the St. James’ Gazette during 1891.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a vague tradition that these Yules descend from the same stock as the Scandinavian family of the same name, which gave Denmark several men of note, including the great naval hero Niels Juel. The portraits of these old Danes offer a certain resemblance of type to those of their Scots namesakes, and Henry Yule liked to play with the idea, much in the same way that he took humorous pleasure in his reputed descent from Michael Scott, the Wizard! (This tradition was more historical, however, and stood thus: Yule’s great grandmother was a Scott of Ancrum, and the Scotts of Ancrum had established their descent from Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie, reputed to be the Wizard.) Be their origin what it may, Yule’s forefathers had been already settled on the Border hills for many generations, when in the time of James VI. they migrated to the lower lands of East Lothian, where in the following reign they held the old fortalice of Fentoun Tower of Nisbet of Dirleton. When Charles II. empowered his Lord Lyon to issue certificates of arms (in place of the Lyon records removed and lost at sea by the Cromwellian Government), these Yules were among those who took out confirmation of arms, and the original document is still in the possession of the head of the family.
Though Yules of sorts are still to be found in Scotland, the present writer is the only member of the Fentoun Tower family now left in the country, and of the few remaining out of it most are to be found in the Army List.
The literary taste which marked William Yule probably came to him from his grandfather, the Rev. James Rose, Episcopal Minister of Udny, in Aberdeenshire. James Rose, a non-jurant (i.e. one who refused to acknowledge allegiance to the Hanoverian King), was a man of devout, large, and tolerant mind, as shown by writings still extant. His father, John Rose, was the younger son of the 14th Hugh of Kilravock. He married Margaret Udny of Udny, and was induced by her to sell his pleasant Ross-shire property and invest the proceeds in her own bleak Buchan. When George Yule (about 1759) brought home Elizabeth Rose as his wife, the popular feeling against the Episcopal Church was so strong and bitter in Lothian, that all the men of the family—themselves Presbyterians—accompanied Mrs. Yule as a bodyguard on the occasion of her first attendance at the Episcopal place of worship. Years after, when dissensions had arisen in the Church of Scotland, Elizabeth Yule succoured and protected some of the dissident Presbyterian ministers from their persecutors.
General Collinson in Royal Engineers’ Journal, 1st Feb. 1890. The gifted author of this excellent sketch himself passed away on 22nd April 1902.
The grave thoughtful face of William Yule was conspicuous in the picture of a Durbar (by an Italian artist, but not Zoffany), which long hung on the walls of the Nawab’s palace at Lucknow. This picture disappeared during the Mutiny of 1857.
Colonel Udny Yule, C.B. “When he joined, his usual nomen and cognomen puzzled the staff-sergeant at Fort-William, and after much boggling on the cadet parade, the name was called out Whirly Wheel, which produced no reply, till some one at a venture shouted, ‘sick in hospital.’” (Athenæum, 24th Sept. 1881.) The ship which took Udny Yule to India was burnt at sea. After keeping himself afloat for several hours in the water, he was rescued by a passing ship and taken back to the Mauritius, whence, having lost everything but his cadetship, he made a fresh start for India, where he and William for many years had a common purse. Colonel Udny Yule commanded a brigade at the Siege of Cornelis (1811), which gave us Java, and afterwards acted as Resident under Sir Stamford Raffles. Forty-five years after the retrocession of Java, Henry Yule found the memory of his uncle still cherished there.
Article on the Oriental Section of the British Museum Library in Athenæum, 24th Sept. 1881. Major Yule’s Oriental Library was presented by his sons to the British Museum a few years after his death.
It may be amusing to note that he was considered an almost dangerous person because he read the Scotsman newspaper!
Athenæum, 24th Sept. 1881. A gold chain given by the last
Dauphiness is in the writer’s possession.
Dr. John Yule (b. 176–, d. 1827), a kindly old savant. He was one of the earliest corresponding members of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and the author of some botanical tracts.
According to Brunet, by Lucas Pennis after Antonio Tempesta.
Concerning some little-known Travellers in the East. ASIATIC QUARTERLY, vol. v. (1888).
William Yule died in 1839, and rests with his parents, brothers, and many others of his kindred, in the ruined chancel of the ancient Norman Church of St. Andrew, at Gulane, which had been granted to the Yule family as a place of burial by the Nisbets of Dirleton, in remembrance of the old kindly feeling subsisting for generations between them and their tacksmen in Fentoun Tower. Though few know its history, a fragrant memorial of this wise and kindly scholar is still conspicuous in Edinburgh. The magnificent wall-flower that has, for seventy summers, been a glory of the Castle rock, was originally all sown by the patient hand of Major Yule, the self-sowing of each subsequent year, of course, increasing the extent of bloom. Lest the extraordinarily severe spring of 1895 should have killed off much of the old stock, another (but much more limited) sowing on the northern face of the rock was in that year made by his grand-daughter, the present writer, with the sanction and active personal help of the lamented General (then Colonel) Andrew Wauchope of Niddrie Marischal. In Scotland, where the memory of this noble soldier is so greatly revered, some may like to know this little fact. May the wall-flower of the Castle rock long flourish a fragrant memorial of two faithful soldiers and true-hearted Scots.
Obituary notice of Yule, by Gen. R. Maclagan, R.E. Proceedings, R. G. S. 1890.
This was the famous “Grey Dinner,” of which The Shepherd made grim fun in the Noctes.
Probably the specimen from South America, of which an account was published in 1833.
Rawnsley, Memoir of Harvey Goodwin, Bishop of Carlisle.
Biog. Sketch of Yule, by C. Trotter, Proceedings, R.S.E. vol. xvii.
Biog. Sketch of Yule, by C. Trotter, Proceedings, R.S.E. vol. xvii.
After leaving the army, Yule always used this sword when wearing uniform.
The Engineer cadets remained at Addiscombe a term (= 6 months) longer than the Artillery cadets, and as the latter were ordinarily gazetted full lieutenants six months after passing out, unfair seniority was obviated by the Engineers receiving the same rank on passing out of Addiscombe.
Yule, in Memoir of General Becher.
Collinson’s Memoir of Yule in R. E. Journal.
The picture was subscribed for by his brother officers in the corps, and painted in 1880 by T. B. Wirgman. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881. A reproduction of the artist’s etching from it forms the frontispiece of this volume.
In Memoir of Gen. John Becher.
General Patrick Yule (b. 1795, d. 1873) was a thorough soldier, with the repute of being a rigid disciplinarian. He was a man of distinguished presence, and great charm of manner to those whom he liked, which were by no means all. The present writer holds him in affectionate remembrance, and owes to early correspondence with him much of the information embodied in preceding notes. He served on the Canadian Boundary Commission of 1817, and on the Commission of National Defence of 1859, was prominent in the Ordnance Survey, and successively Commanding R.E. in Malta and Scotland. He was Engineer to Sir C. Fellows’ Expedition, which gave the nation the Lycian Marbles, and while Commanding R.E. in Edinburgh, was largely instrumental in rescuing St. Margaret’s Chapel in the Castle from desecration and oblivion. He was a thorough Scot, and never willingly tolerated the designation N.B. on even a letter. He had cultivated tastes, and under a somewhat austere exterior he had a most tender heart. When already past sixty, he made a singularly happy marriage to a truly good woman, who thoroughly appreciated him. He was the author of several Memoirs on professional subjects. He rests in St. Andrew’s, Gulane.
Collinson’s Memoir of Yule.
Notes on the Iron of the Khasia Hills and Notes on the Khasia Hills and People, both in Journal of the R. Asiatic Society of Bengal, vols. xi. and xiii.
Mr. (afterwards Sir) George Clerk, Political Officer with the expedition. Was twice Governor of Bombay and once Governor of the Cape: “A diplomatist of the true English stamp—undaunted in difficulties and resolute to maintain the honour of his country.” (Sir H. B. Edwardes, Life of Henry Lawrence, i. 267). He died in 1889.
Note by Yule, communicated by him to Mr. R. B. Smith and printed by the latter in Life of Lord Lawrence.
And when nearing his own end, it was to her that his thoughts turned most constantly.
Yule and Maclagan’s Memoir of Sir W. Baker.
Maclagan’s Memoir of Yule, P.R.G.S., Feb. 1890.
On hearing this, Yule said to him, “Your story is quite correct except in one particular; you understated the amount of the fine.”
Yule and Maclagan’s Memoir of Baker.
It would appear that Major Yule had presented the Rodgers with some specimens of Indian scissors, probably as suggestions in developing that field of export. Scissors of elaborate design, usually damascened or gilt, used to form a most important item in every set of Oriental writing implements. Even long after adhesive envelopes had become common in European Turkey, their use was considered over familiar, if not actually disrespectful, for formal letters, and there was a particular traditional knack in cutting and folding the special envelope for each missive, which was included in the instruction given by every competent Khoja as the present writer well remembers in the quiet years that ended with the disasters of 1877.
Collinson’s Memoir of Yule, Royal Engineer Journal.
Extract from Preface to Ava, edition of 1858.
The present whereabouts of this picture is unknown to the writer. It was lent to Yule in 1889 by Lord Dalhousie’s surviving daughter (for whom he had strong regard and much sympathy), and was returned to her early in 1890, but is not named in the catalogue of Lady Susan’s effects, sold at Edinburgh in 1898 after her death. At that sale the present writer had the satisfaction of securing for reverent preservation the watch used throughout his career by the great Marquess.
Now in the writer’s possession. It was for many years on exhibition in the Edinburgh and South Kensington Museums.
Article by Yule on Lord Lawrence, Quarterly Review for April, 1883.
Messrs. Smith & Elder.
Preface to Narrative of a Mission to the Court of Ava. Before these words were written, Yule had had the sorrow of losing his elder brother Robert, who had fallen in action before Delhi (19th June, 1857), whilst in command of his regiment, the 9th Lancers. Robert Abercromby Yule (born 1817) was a very noble character and a fine soldier. He had served with distinction in the campaigns in Afghanistan and the Sikh Wars, and was the author of an excellent brief treatise on Cavalry Tactics. He had a ready pencil and a happy turn for graceful verse. In prose his charming little allegorical tale for children, entitled The White Rhododendron, is as pure and graceful as the flower whose name it bears. Like both his brothers, he was at once chivalrous and devout, modest, impulsive, and impetuous. No officer was more beloved by his men than Robert Yule, and when some one met them carrying back his covered body from the field and enquired of the sergeant: “Who have you got there?” the reply was: “Colonel Yule, and better have lost half the regiment, sir.” It was in the chivalrous effort to extricate some exposed guns that he fell. Some one told afterwards that when asked to go to the rescue, he turned in the saddle, looked back wistfully on his regiment, well knowing the cost of such an enterprise, then gave the order to advance and charge. “No stone marks the spot where Yule went down, but no stone is needed to commemorate his valour” (Archibald Forbes, in Daily News, 8th Feb. 1876). At the time of his death Colonel R. A. Yule had been recommended for the C.B. His eldest son, Colonel J. H. Yule, C.B., distinguished himself in several recent campaigns (on the Burma-Chinese frontier, in Tirah, and South Africa).
Baker went home in November, 1857, but did not retire until the following year.
Nothing was more worthy of respect in Yule’s fine character than the energy and success with which he mastered his natural temperament in the last ten years of his life, when few would have guessed his original fiery disposition.
Not without cause did Sir J. P. Grant officially record that “to his imperturbable temper the Government of India owed much.”
Yule’s colour-blindness was one of the cases in which Dalton, the original investigator of this optical defect, took special interest. At a later date (1859) he sent Yule, through Professor Wilson, skeins of coloured silks to name. Yule’s elder brother Robert had the same peculiarity of sight, and it was also present in two earlier and two later generations of their mother’s family—making five generations in all. But in no case did it pass from parent to child, always passing in these examples, by a sort of Knight’s move, from uncle to nephew. Another peculiarity of Yule’s more difficult to describe was the instinctive association of certain architectural forms or images with the days of the week. He once, and once only (in 1843), met another person, a lady who was a perfect stranger, with the same peculiarity. About 1878–79 he contributed some notes on this obscure subject to one of the newspapers, in connection with the researches of Mr. Francis Galton, on Visualisation, but the particulars are not now accessible.
From Yule’s verses on her grave.
Lord Canning to Lady Clanricarde: Letter dated Barrackpoor, 19th Nov. 1861, 7 A.M., printed in Two Noble Lives, by A. J. C. Hare, and here reproduced by Mr. Hare’s permission.
Lord Canning’s letter to Lady Clanricarde. He gave to Yule Lady Canning’s own silver drinking-cup, which she had constantly used. It is carefully treasured, with other Canning and Dalhousie relics, by the present writer.
Many years later Yule wrote of Lord Canning as follows: “He had his defects, no doubt. He had not at first that entire grasp of the situation that was wanted at such a time of crisis. But there is a virtue which in these days seems unknown to Parliamentary statesmen in England—Magnanimity. Lord Canning was an English statesman, and he was surpassingly magnanimous. There is another virtue which in Holy Writ is taken as the type and sum of all righteousness—Justice—and he was eminently just. The misuse of special powers granted early in the Mutiny called for Lord Canning’s interference, and the consequence was a flood of savage abuse; the violence and bitterness of which it is now hard to realise.” (Quarterly Review, April, 1883, p. 306.)
During the next ten years Yule continued to visit London annually for two or three months in the spring or early summer.
Now in the writer’s possession. They appear in the well-known portrait of Lord Canning reading a despatch.
Lord Canning’s recommendation had been mislaid, and the India Office was disposed to ignore it. It was Lord Canning’s old friend and Eton chum, Lord Granville, who obtained this tardy justice for Yule, instigated thereto by that most faithful friend, Sir Roderick Murchison.
I cannot let the mention of this time of lonely sickness and trial pass without recording here my deep gratitude 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.
Villa Mansi, nearly opposite the old Ducal Palace. With its private chapel, it formed three sides of a small place or court.
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!
He saw a good deal of the outbreak when taking small comforts to a friend, the Commandant of the Military School, who was captured and imprisoned by the insurgents.
After 1869 he discontinued sea-bathing.
This was Yule’s first geographical honour, but he had been elected into the Athenæum Club, under “Rule II.,” in January, 1867.
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.
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.
The Russian Government in 1873 paid the same work the very practical compliment of circulating it largely amongst their officers in Central Asia.
“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.)
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.
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.
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.”
Mary Wilhelmina, daughter of F. Skipwith, Esq., B.C.S.
Collinson’s Memoir of Yule.
See Notes from a Diary, 1888–91.
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!
See Note on Sir George Yule’s career at the end of this Memoir.
Addressed to the Editor, Royal Engineers’ Journal, who did not, however, publish it.
Debate of 27th August, 1889, as reported in The Times of 28th August.
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.
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.
So Sir M. E. Grant Duff well calls it.
Academy, 19th March, 1890.
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.”
F.-M. Lord Napier of Magdala, died 14th January, 1890.
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
COMPILED BY H. CORDIER AND A. F. YULE
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 A Canal Act of the Emperor Akbar, with some notes and remarks on the History of the Western Jumna Canals. By Lieut. Yule. (Jour. Asiatic Society Bengal, XV. 1846, pp. 213–223.)
1850 The African Squadron vindicated. By Lieut. H. Yule. Second Edition. London, J. Ridgway, 1850, 8vo, pp. 41.
Had several editions. Reprinted in the Colonial Magazine of March, 1850.
——— L’Escadre Africaine vengée. Par le lieutenant H. Yule. Traduit du Colonial Magazine de Mars, 1850. (Revue Coloniale, Mai, 1850.)
1851 Fortification for Officers of the Army and Students of Military History, with Illustrations and Notes. By Lieut. H. Yule, Blackwood, MDCCCLI. 8vo, pp. xxii.–210. (There had been a previous edition privately printed.)
——— La Fortification mise à la portée des Officiers de l’Armée et des personnes qui se livrent à l’étude de l’histoire militaire (avec Atlas). Par H. Yule. Traduit de l’Anglais par M. Sapia, Chef de Bataillon d’Artillerie de Marine et M. Masselin, Capitaine du Génie. Paris, J. Corréard, 1858, 8vo, pp. iii.–263, and Atlas.
1851 The Loss of the Birkenhead (Verses). (Edinburgh Courant, Dec. 1851.)
Republished in Henley’s Lyra Heroica, a Book of Verse for Boys. London, D. Nutt, 1890.
1856 Narrative of Major Phayre’s Mission to the Court of Ava, with Notices of the Country, Government, and People. Compiled by Capt. H. Yule. Printed for submission to the Government of India. Calcutta, J. Thomas, ... 1856, 4to, pp. xxix. + 1 f. n. ch. p. l. er. + pp. 315 + pp. cxiv. + pp. iv. and pp. 70.
The last pp. iv.–70 contain: Notes on the Geological features of the banks of the River Irawadee and on the Country north of the Amarapoora, by Thomas Oldham ... Calcutta, 1856.
——— A Narrative of the Mission sent by the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava in 1855, with Notices of the Country, Government, and People. By Capt. H. Yule. With Numerous Illustrations. London, Smith, Elder & Co., 1858, 4to.
1857 On the Geography of Burma and its Tributary States, in illustration of a New Map of those Regions. (Journal, R.G.S., XXVII. 1857, pp. 54–108.)
——— Notes on the Geography of Burma, in illustration of a Map of that Country. (Proceedings R.G.S., vol. i. 1857, pp. 269–273.)
1857 An Account of the Ancient Buddhist Remains at Pagân on the Iráwadi. By Capt. H. Yule. (Jour. Asiatic Society, Bengal, XXVI. 1857, pp. 1–51.)
1861 A few notes on Antiquities near Jubbulpoor. By Lieut.-Col. H. Yule. (Journal Asiatic Society, Bengal, XXX. 1861, pp. 211–215.)
——— Memorandum on the Countries between Thibet, Yunân, and Burmah. By the Very Rev. Thomine D’Mazure (sic), communicated by Lieut.-Col. A. P. Phayre (with notes and a comment by Lieut.-Col. H. Yule). With a Map of the N. E. Frontier, prepared in the Office of the Surveyor-Gen. of India, Calcutta, Aug. 1861. (Jour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, XXX. 1861, pp. 367–383.)
1862 Notes of a brief Visit to some of the Indian Remains in Java. By Lieut.-Col. H. Yule. (Jour. Asiatic Society, Bengal, XXXI. 1862, pp. 16–31.)
——— Sketches of Java. A Lecture delivered at the Meeting of the Bethune Society, Calcutta, 13th Feb. 1862.
——— Fragments of Unprofessional Papers gathered from an Engineer’s portfolio after twenty-three years of service. Calcutta, 1862.
Ten copies printed for private circulation.
1863 Mirabilia descripta. The Wonders of the East. By Friar Jordanus, of the Order of Preachers and Bishop of Columbum in India the Greater (circa 1330). Translated from the Latin original, as published at Paris in 1839, in the Recueil de Voyages et de Mémoires, of the Society of Geography, with the addition of a Commentary, by Col. H. Yule, London.
Printed for the Hakluyt Society, M.DCCC.LXIII, 8vo, p. iv.–xvii.–68.
——— Report on the Passes between Arakan and Burma [written in 1853]. (Papers on Indian Civil Engineering, vol. i. Roorkee.)
1866 Notices of Cathay. (Proceedings, R.G.S., X. 1866, pp. 270–278.)
——— Cathay and the Way Thither, being a Collection of Mediæval Notices of China. Translated and Edited by Col. H. Yule. With a Preliminary Essay on the Intercourse between China and the Western Nations previous to the Discovery of the Cape route. London, printed for the Hakluyt Society. M.DCCC.LXVI. 2 vols. 8vo.
1866 The Insurrection at Palermo. (Times, 29th Sep., 1866.)
——— Lake People. (The Athenæum, No. 2042, 15th Dec. 1866, p. 804.)
Letter dated Palermo, 3rd Dec. 1866.
1867 General Index to the third ten Volumes of the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society. Compiled by Col. H. Yule. London, John Murray, M.DCCCLXVII, 8vo, pp. 228.
——— A Week’s Republic at Palermo. (Quarterly Review, Jan. 1867.)
——— On the Cultivation of Sumach (Rhus coriaria), in the Vicinity of Colli, near Palermo. By Prof. Inzenga. Translated by Col. H. Yule. Communicated by Dr. Cleghorn. From the Trans. Bot. Society, vol. ix., 1867–68, ppt. 8vo, p. 15.
