Chapter VI: Part 6

Besides his reputation as a writer, Milnes occupied an unique position towards the world of letters, which it is not quite easy to define. It is not enough to say that he was a Mæcenas, though he knew and entertained the whole literary community both in London and at Fryston—a house which, as Thackeray said, ‘combined all the graces of the château and the tavern’; or that he was always ready to lend a helping hand to those in distress, though he spent a fortune in generously and delicately assisting others. His peculiar characteristics were a rare gift in detecting merit, and an untiring energy in bringing it out, and setting it in a position where it could bloom and flourish and be recognized by other people. In effecting this he spared no pains, and shrank from no annoyance. Often, indeed, he must have risked his own popularity by his importunity for favours to be conferred on others. Mr Reid describes at length the amusing scene between him and Sir Robert Peel, when he solicited and obtained pensions for Tennyson and Sheridan Knowles, of neither of whom the Minister had ever heard; and to Milnes must also be allowed the credit of having been the first, or nearly the first, to bring into prominent recognition the merits of Mr John Forster. He possessed, too, in a very high degree, the gift of sympathy, and, as a consequence, of influence. ‘Ever since I knew you,’ said his friend Macarthy, ‘you have been the chief person in my life; a friend and brother and confessor—the end and aim of all my actions and hopes’; and Robert Browning, in a long and most interesting letter, written to ask Milnes to use his interest to get him appointed secretary to the minister whom England, as he then believed, ‘must send before the year ends to this fine fellow, Pio Nono[87],’ admits that his own interest in Italy was due in the first instance to Milnes’s influence. ‘One gets excited,’ he says, ‘at least here on the spot, by this tiptoe strained expectation of poor dear Italy, and yet, if I had not known you, I believe I should have looked on with other bystanders.’ We have said that he was charitable; but to say this is to give an imperfect idea of the efforts he would make for literary men in difficulties. When Hood was in distress he found that he ‘preferred to receive assistance in the shape of gratuitous literary work for his magazine rather than in money.’ Milnes not only contributed himself, but ‘canvassed right and left among his friends for contributions.’ Nor was his help confined to the person whose work he valued. ‘The interest and friendship which the genius had aroused,’ says Mr Reid, ‘was extended to his or her friends and connexions. Many a widow and many an orphan had occasion to be thankful that the husband or father had during his lifetime excited the admiration of Milnes. Years after the death of Charlotte Brontë we find him trying to smooth the path of her father, and to secure preferment in the Church for her husband.’ This is only one instance out of many that might be adduced. Again, he seemed to regard his critical faculty as a trust for the benefit of others, and was never more congenially employed than in drawing attention to some young poet who had no influential friends. In proof of this we will only refer our readers to the touching story of poor David Gray, whom he nursed with almost feminine tenderness, and whose poem, _The Luggie_, he edited; and to his early recognition of the genius of Mr Swinburne, to whose merits he drew attention by an article in the _Edinburgh Review_. In close connexion with this kind help to men of whom he knew little or nothing may be mentioned his interest in the Newspaper Press Fund. The formation of such a fund was strenuously resisted, we are told, by the most influential members of the Press; but Milnes, from the first, brought the whole weight of his social influence to its support, and contributed, more than any other man, to its permanent and successful establishment.

Nor should his kindness to young men be forgotten. He may have sought their society in the first instance from the pleasure he took in all that was bright, and entertaining, and unaffected; but, as we have already tried to point out, his motives were commonly underlaid by some serious purpose which it was not always easy to discover. We do not maintain that he was specially successful in drawing young men out, for his own talk was often scrappy, anecdotical, and difficult to follow; still less do we mean that he tried to influence them in any particular direction by improving conversation, or the enunciation of any special opinions in politics or literature. But he certainly made his juniors feel sure of his sympathy and his good-will.

Of Milnes’s religious opinions it is difficult to give any positive account. His family had been Unitarian; at college he became an Evangelical; soon afterwards he fell under the influence of Irving, whom he proclaimed to be ‘the apostle of the age.’ Then, during his residence in Italy, as we have already mentioned, he chose Dr Wiseman for his intimate friend, and the higher Roman Catholic clergy had hopes of his conversion. ‘Mezzofanti,’ wrote one of his friends in 1832, ‘is full of hopes that you will return to the bosom of her whom Carlyle calls “the slain mother”.’ But, during this same period, while passing through what he calls ‘the twilight of his mind,’ he was the friend of Sterling and Maurice and Thirlwall, under whose influence he was hardly likely to submit to an infallible Church. He himself said that he was prevented from joining the Church of Rome by the uprising of a Catholic school in the Church of England. To this movement, as we have seen, he was deeply attached, and both spoke and wrote in its defence. In one of his commonplace books he called himself a Puseyite sceptic; sometimes he said he was a crypto-Catholic, and to the last he never entirely shook off the impressions of his youth. But Mr Reid is probably right in describing him as ‘a tolerant, liberal-minded man, apt to look at religion from many different points of view.’ We are not aware that he ever took part in any directly religious movement, or ever declared his allegiance to the Church of England except as a political organization. Partly from a love of paradox, partly from a habit of looking round a question rather than directly at it, he would have had something to say in defence of almost any system of religion, while his unfeigned charity would induce him to adopt that which recognized most fully the claims of suffering humanity.

Lord Houghton died at Vichy, August 11, 1885. He had been in failing health for some time, but the end was sudden and unexpected. Only a few hours before it came he had been entertaining a mixed company at the _table d’hôte_ by the brilliancy and variety of his conversation. It might almost be said that he died, as he had lived, in society.

We have tried to eliminate what we believe to have been the real Milnes from a cloud of misrepresentations and erroneous judgments—for both of which, it must be remembered, he was himself directly responsible. We leave to our readers the task of passing sentence on a singularly amiable, if eccentric, personality. Some opinions expressed by those who understood him and valued him will appropriately close this article. When he was young his friends recognized in him what Dr Johnson would have called the potentiality of greatness, though they doubted whether he would have sufficient steadiness of purpose to achieve it. ‘Your gay and airy mind,’ wrote Tennyson in 1833, ‘must have caught as many colours from the landscape you moved through as a flying soap-bubble—a comparison truly somewhat irreverent, yet I meant it not as such.’ ‘I think you are near something very glorious,’ said Stafford O’Brien, ‘but you will never reach it.’ Mr Aubrey de Vere decided that ‘he had not much solid ambition. The highlands of life were not what interested him much; its mountains cast their shadows too far and drew down too many clouds.’ But, if Milnes’s well-wishers were compelled to abandon their hopes of any great distinction for their friend, they recognized, with one accord, his charity and his sincerity. If they did not admire him, they loved him. ‘You are on the whole a good man,’ said Carlyle, ‘though with terrible perversities.’ Forster declared that he himself had ‘many friends who would be kind to him in distress, but only one who would be equally kind to him in disgrace.’ A distinguished German said of him, ‘Is it possible that an Englishman can be so loveable?’ and Mr Sumner described him as ‘a member of Parliament, a poet and a man of fashion, a Tory who does not forget the people, and a man of fashion with sensibilities, love of virtue and merit among the simple, the poor, and the lowly.’ Lastly, let us cite his own whimsical character of himself, which, though expressed in the language of paradox, is probably, in the main, nearer to the truth than one drawn by any critic could be:

‘He was a man of no common imaginative perceptions, who never gave his full conviction to anything but the closest reasoning; of acute sensibilities, who always distrusted the affections; of ideal aspirations and sensual habits; of the most cheerful manners and of the gloomiest philosophy. He hoped little and believed little, but he rarely despaired, and never valued unbelief, except as leading to some larger truth and purer conviction’ (vol. ii. p. 491).

EDWARD HENRY PALMER[88].

A dramatist who undertakes to write a play which is to be almost devoid of incident, and to depend for interest on the development of an eccentric character, with only a single strong situation, even though that situation be one of surpassing power, is considered by those learned in such matters to be almost courting failure. Such a work is therefore rarely attempted, and is still more rarely successful. Yet this is what Mr Besant has had to do in writing the Life of Edward Henry Palmer; and we are glad to be able to say at once that he has discharged a delicate and difficult task in a most admirable fashion. For in truth he had a very unpromising subject to deal with. It is always difficult to interest the general public in the sayings and doings of a man of letters, even when he has occupied a prominent position, and thrown himself with ardour into some burning question of the day, political or social. Palmer, however, was not such a man at all. He did ‘break his birth’s invidious bar,’ but alas! it was never given to him, until the end was close at hand, ‘to grasp the skirts of happy chance,’ or to rise into a position where he could be seen by the world. It is melancholy now to speculate on what might have been had he returned in safety from the perilous enterprise in which he met his death, for it is hardly likely that the Government would have failed to secure, by some permanent appointment, the services of a man who had proved, in so signal a manner, his capacity for dealing with Orientals. As it was, however, with the exception of the journeys to the Sinaitic Peninsula and the Holy Land, he lived a quiet student-life; not wholly retired, for he was no book-worm, and enjoyed, after a peculiar fashion of his own, the society of his fellow-men; but still a life which did not really bring him beyond the narrow circle of the few intimate friends who knew him thoroughly, and were proportionately devoted to him. He took no part in any movement; he was not ‘earnest’ or ‘intense.’ He did not read new books, or any of the ‘thoughtful’ magazines; nor had he any particular desire to alter the framework of society. The world was a good world so far as he was concerned; and men were strange and interesting creatures whom it was a pleasure to study, as a naturalist studies a new species; why alter it or them? The interest which attaches to such a life depends wholly on the way in which the central character is presented to the public. That Mr Besant should have succeeded where others would have failed need not surprise us. The qualities which have made him a delightful novelist are brought to bear upon this prose _In Memoriam_, with the additional incentives of warm friendship and passionate regret. It is clear that he realized all the difficulties of his task from the outset; and he has treated his materials accordingly, leading the reader forward with consummate art, chapter by chapter, to the final catastrophe, which is described with the picturesqueness of a romance, and the solemn earnestness of a tragedy. Such a book is almost above criticism. A mourner by an open grave, pronouncing the funeral oration of his murdered friend, has a prescriptive right to apportion praise and blame in what measure he thinks fit; and we should be the last to intrude upon his sacred sorrow with harsh and inconsiderate criticism. But we should be failing in our duty if we did not draw attention to one point. It has been Mr Besant’s object to show the difficulties of all kinds against which his hero had to contend—ill-health, heavy sorrows, debt—and how he came triumphant through them all, thanks to his indomitable pluck and energy; and further, as though no element of interest should be wanting, he has represented him as smarting under a sense of unmerited wrong done to him by his University, which ‘went out of the way to insult and neglect’ him. This is no mere fancy of Mr Besant’s; we know from other sources that Palmer himself thought he had not been treated at Cambridge as he ought to have been, and that he was glad to get away from it. We shall do our best to show that this was a misconception on his part, and we regret that his biographer should have given such prominence to it. But, though Mr Besant may have been zealous overmuch on this particular point, his book is none the less fascinating, and we venture to predict that it will live, as a permanent record of a very remarkable man. We are sensible that much of its charm will disappear in the short sketch which we are about to give, but if our remarks have the effect of sending our readers to the original, we shall not have written in vain.

Edward Henry Palmer was born in Green Street, Cambridge, 7 August, 1840. His father died when he was an infant, and his mother did not long survive her husband. Her place was supplied to some extent by an aunt, then unmarried, who took the orphan child to her own home and educated him. She was evidently a person who combined great kindness with great good sense. Palmer, we read, ‘owed everything to her,’ and ‘never spoke of her in after years without the greatest tenderness and emotion.’ Of his real mother we do not find any record; but the father, who kept a small private school, was ‘a man of considerable acquirements, with a strong taste for art.’ We do not know whether any of Palmer’s peculiar talents had ever been observed in the father, or whether he can be said to have inherited anything from his family except a tendency to asthma and bronchial disease. From this, of which the father died before he was thirty, the son suffered all his life. He grew out of it to a certain extent, but it was always there, a watchful enemy, ready to start forth and fasten upon its victim.

The beginning of Palmer’s education was of the most ordinary description, and little need be said about it. He was sent in the first instance to a private school, and afterwards to the Perse Grammar School. There he made rapid progress, arriving at the sixth form before he was fifteen; but all we hear about his studies is that he distinguished himself in Greek and Latin, and disliked mathematics. By the time he was sixteen he had learnt all that he was likely to learn at school, and was sent to London to earn his living. He became a junior clerk in a house of business in East-cheap, where he remained for three years, and might have remained for the term of his natural life, had he not been obliged to resign his situation on account of ill-health. Symptoms of pulmonary disease manifested themselves, and he got worse so rapidly that he was told that he had little hope of recovery. He returned to Cambridge, with the conviction that he had but a few weeks to live, and that he had better die comfortably among his relations, than miserably among strangers. But after a few weeks of severe illness he recovered, suddenly and strangely. Mr Besant tells a curious story, which Palmer is reported to have believed, that the cure had been effected by a dose of _lobelia_, administered by a herbalist. That Palmer swallowed the drug—of which, by the way, he nearly died—is certain, and that he recovered is equally certain; but that the dose and the recovery can be correlated as cause and effect is more than we are prepared to admit. We are rather disposed to accept a less sensational theory, expressed by a gentleman who at that period was one of his intimate friends:

‘Careful watchfulness on the part of his aunt, open air, exercise, and freedom from restraint, were the principal means of patching him up. He had frequent attacks of blood-spitting afterwards, and was altogether one of those wonderful creatures that defy doctors and quacks alike, and won’t die of the disease which is theirs by inheritance. How little any of us thought that he would die a hero!’

Palmer’s peculiar gift of acquiring languages had manifested itself even before he went to London. Throughout his whole career his strength as a linguist lay in his extraordinary aptitude for learning a spoken language. The literature came afterwards. We are not aware that he was ever what is called a good scholar in Latin or in Greek, simply for the reason, according to our view, that those languages are no longer spoken anywhere. He did not repudiate the literature of a language; far from it. Probably few Orientalists have known the literatures of Arabia and Persia better than he knew them; but he learnt to speak Arabic and Persian before he learnt to read them. In this he resembled Cardinal Mezzofanti, who had the same power of picking up a language for speaking purposes from a few conversations—learning some words, and constructing for himself first a vocabulary and then a grammar. When Palmer was still a boy at school he learnt Romany. He learnt it, says Mr Besant, ‘by paying travelling tinkers sixpence for a lesson, by haunting the tents, talking to the men, and crossing the women’s palms with his pocket-money in exchange for a few more words to add to his vocabulary. In this way he gradually made for himself a Gipsy dictionary.’ In time he became a proficient in Gipsy lore, and Mr Besant tells several curious stories about his adventures with that remarkable people. We will quote the narrative supplied to him by Mr Charles Leland—better known as Hans Breitmann—Palmer’s intimate friend and brother in Romany lore.

‘In one respect Palmer was truly remarkable. He combined plain common sense, clear judgment, and great quickness of perception into all the relations of a question, with a keen love of fun and romance. I could fill a volume with the eccentric adventures which we had in common, particularly among the gipsies. To these good folk we were always a first-class mystery, but none the less popular on that account. What with our speaking Romany “down to the bottom crust,” and Palmer’s incredible proficiency at thimble-rig, “ringing the changes,” picking pockets, card-sharping, three-monté, and every kind of legerdemain, these honest people never could quite make up their minds whether we were a kind of Brahmins, to which they were as Sudras, or what. Woe to the gipsy sharp who tried the cards with the Professor! How often have we gone into a _tan_ where we were all unknown, and regarded as a couple of green Gentiles! And with what a wonderful air of innocence would Palmer play the part of a lamb, and ask them to give him a specimen of their language; and when they refused, or professed themselves unable to do so, how amiably he would turn to me and remark in deep Romany that we were mistaken, and that the people of the tent were only miserable “mumpers” of mixed blood, who could not _rakker_! Once I remember he said this to a gipsy, who retaliated in a great rage, “How could I know that you were a gipsy, if you come here dressed up like a _gorgio_ and looking like a gentleman?”

‘One day, with Palmer, in the fens near Cambridge, we came upon a picturesque sight. It was a large band of gipsies on a halt. As we subsequently learned, they had made the day before an immense raid in robbing hen-roosts and poaching, and were loaded with game, fowls, and eggs. None of them knew me, but several knew the Professor as a lawyer. One took him aside to confide as a client their late misdoings. “We have been,” said he——

‘“You have been stealing eggs,” replied Palmer.

‘“How did you know that?”

‘“By the yolk on your waistcoat,” answered the Professor in Romany. “The next time you had better hide the marks[89].”’

These experiences among the gipsies took place in 1874 or 1875, when Palmer had perfected himself in their language, and we must go back for a moment to the period spent in London. There, in his leisure hours, he managed to learn Italian and French, by a process similar to that by which he had previously acquired the rudiments of Romany.

‘The method he pursued is instructive. He found out where Italians might be expected to meet, and went every evening to sit among them and hear them talk. Thus, there was in those days a _café_ in Titchborne Street frequented by Italian refugees, political exiles, and republicans. Here Palmer sat and listened and presently began to talk, and so became an ardent partisan of Italian unity. There was also at that time—I think many of them have now migrated to Hammersmith—a great colony of Italian organ-grinders and sellers of plaster-cast images in and about Saffron Hill. He went among these worthy people, sat with them in their restaurants, drank their sour wine, talked with them, and acquired their _patois_. He found out Italian waiters at restaurants and talked with them; at the docks he went on board Italian ships, and talked with the sailors; and in these ways learned the various dialects of Genoa, Naples, Nice, Livorno, Venice, and Messina. One of his friends at this time was a well-known Signor Buonocorre, the so-called “Fire King,” who used to astonish the multitude nightly at Cremorne Gardens and elsewhere by his feats. For Palmer was always attracted by people who run shows, “do” things, act, pretend, persuade, deceive, and in fact are interesting for any kind of cleverness. However, the first result of this perseverance was that he made himself a perfect master of Italian, that he knew the country speech as well as the Italian of the schools, and that he could converse with the Piedmontese, the Venetian, the Roman, the Sicilian, or the Calabrian, in their own dialects, as well as with the purest native of Florence.

‘Also while he was in the City he acquired French by a similar process. I do not know whether he carried on his French studies at the same time with the Italian, but I believe not. It seems certainly more in accordance with the practice which he adopted in after life that he should attempt only one thing at a time. But as with Italian so with French; he joined to a knowledge of the pure language a curious acquaintance with _argot_; also—which points to acquaintance made in _cafés_—he acquired somehow in those early days a curious knowledge and admiration of the French police and detective system[90].’

The illness which compelled Palmer to give up London had evidently been very serious, and his convalescence was tedious. Nor, when supposed to be well, did he feel any inclination to resume work as a clerk. So he stayed in Cambridge at his aunt’s house, with no definite aim in life, but taking up now one thing, now another, after the manner of clever boys when they are at home for the holidays. He did a little literature in the way of burlesques, one of which, _Ye Hole in ye Walle_, a legend told after the manner of Ingoldsby, was afterwards published by Messrs Macmillan; he wrote a farce, which was acted in that temple of Thespis, once dear to Cambridge undergraduates, the old Barnwell Theatre; he acted himself with considerable success, and for a week or so thought of adopting the stage as a profession; he tried conjuring, in which in after years he became an adept, and ventriloquism, where he failed; he took up various forms of art, as wood-engraving, modelling, drawing, painting, photography; in all of which, except the last, he arrived at creditable results. His aunt is reported to have borne her nephew’s changeable tastes with exemplary patience, until photography came to the front; but ‘the waste of expensive materials, the damage to clothes, stair carpets—he could always be traced—his disreputable piebald appearance,’ and (last, but not least!) ‘the results on glass,’ were too much for even her good-nature. The camera was banished, and the artist was bidden to adopt some pursuit less annoying to his neighbours. The one really useful study of this period was shorthand-writing; and in after years, when he practised as a barrister, he found the usefulness of it.

Up to this time—the year 1860—he had never turned his attention to Oriental literature, and very likely had never seen an Oriental character. The friend whose reminiscences we have quoted more than once already says that he remembers ‘going one morning into his bedroom (he was a very late riser) and finding him looking at some Arabic characters. They interested him; he liked the look of them; it was an improvement on shorthand; he would find it all out; and so he did!’ He set to work without delay to find somebody he could talk to about his new fancy, and, as the supply of Oriental scholars is necessarily limited even at one of the Universities, he was led at once to the only two persons competent to instruct him—the Rev. George Skinner, and a Mohammedan named Syed Abdullah. The former was a Master of Arts of the University, who had published a translation of the Psalms; the latter was a native of Oudh, who had resided in England since 1851, and who about this time came to Cambridge to prepare students for the Civil Service of India. Under the guidance of these gentlemen, Palmer plunged into Oriental languages with the same enthusiasm with which he had followed the various pursuits we have mentioned above. There was this difference, however, between the new love and the old; there was no turning back; the day of transient fancies was over; that of serious work had begun. His ardour now knew no abatement; he is said to have worked at this time eighteen hours a day. This may well be doubted; but without pressing such a statement too closely, we may admit that he gave himself up to his new studies with unwonted perseverance, and that his progress was rapid. Mr Skinner used to take him out for walks in the country, and discourse to him on Hebrew grammar. Hebrew, however, was a language which did not attract him greatly, and in after years he used to say that he did not know it. Syed Abdullah gave him more regular and systematic instruction in Urdú, Persian, and Arabic. Palmer was ‘constantly writing prose and verse exercises for him.’ They became intimate friends; and it was probably through his representations that Palmer was allowed to give up all thoughts of resuming work as a clerk, and to take up Oriental languages and literature as a profession. Through him, too, he was introduced to the Nawab Ikbal ud Dawlah, son of the late Rajah of Oudh, who took a very warm interest in Palmer’s studies, allowed him to live in his house when he pleased, and gave him the assistance of two able native instructors. Next he struck up a friendship with a Bengalee gentleman named Bazlurrahim, with whom he spent some time, composing incessantly under his supervision in Persian and Urdú. Besides these he was on terms of intimacy with other Orientals resident at that time in England, and also with Professor Mir Aulad Ali, of Trinity College, Dublin, ‘who was constantly his adviser, critic, teacher, friend, and sympathizer.’ Hence, as Mr Besant points out, we may see that he had no lack of instructors; and may at once dismiss from our minds two common misconceptions about him—first that Oriental languages ‘came natural’ to him; and, secondly, that he was a poor, friendless, solitary student, burning the midnight lamp in a garret, and learning Arabic all alone. On the contrary, he never felt any pressure of poverty, and was helped, sympathized with, encouraged, by all those with whom he came in contact. His progress was rapid, and in 1862 he was able to send a copy of original Arabic verses to the Lord Almoner’s Reader in that language, who described them as ‘elegant and idiomatic.’

Up to this time Palmer does not appear to have known much of University men, or to have thought of becoming a member of the University himself. He would probably have never joined S. John’s College had he not been accidentally ‘discovered,’ as Mr Besant happily puts it, by two of the Fellows. The result of this discovery was that he was invited to become a candidate for a sizarship in October 1863, and in the interval prepared himself for the examination by reviving his former studies in classics, and in working at mathematics. He was assisted in this preparation by one of the Fellows, who tells us that, though he declared that he knew no mathematics at all, he ‘always did what I set him, passed the examinations very easily, and presumably obtained his sizarship on it.’ His known proficiency in Oriental languages was evidently not taken into account at the outset of his University career, but some two years afterwards, in 1865 or 1866, a scholarship was given to him on that account only. He took his degree in 1867, and, as there was no Oriental Languages Tripos in those days, he presented himself for the Classical Tripos, in which he obtained only a third class. Such a place cannot, as a general rule, be considered brilliant; but in his case it should be regarded as a distinction rather than a failure, for it shows that he must have possessed a more than respectable knowledge of Latin and Greek, and, moreover, have been able to write composition in those languages. At the time of his matriculation (November 1863) he could have known but little of either; and during the succeeding three years he had been much occupied with vigorous prosecution of his Oriental studies, with taking pupils in Arabic, and with making catalogues of the Oriental manuscripts in the libraries of the University, of King’s College, and of Trinity College. But he always had a surprising power of getting through an enormous quantity of work without ever seeming to be in a hurry. A friend tells us that Palmer

‘Did not strike one as a man of method, as an economist of time, as moving about wrapped in thought. You met him apparently lounging along, ready for a talk, perhaps in company with a rather idle man; yet when you came to measure up his work you were puzzled to know how any one man could do it.’

Palmer’s proficiency in Oriental languages at this time, 1867—only seven years, it should be remembered, after he had begun to study them—is abundantly attested by a very remarkable body of testimonials[91] which he obtained when a candidate for the post of interpreter to the English embassy in Persia. His old friend the Nawab said:

‘Notwithstanding the fact that he has never visited any Eastern kingdom, or mixed with Oriental nations, he has yet, by his own perseverance, application, and study, acquired such great proficiency, fluency, and eloquence, in speaking and writing three Oriental tongues—to wit, Urdú (Hindoostani), Persian, and Arabic—that one would say he must have associated with Oriental nations, and studied for a lengthened period in the Universities of the East.’

We have no room for quotations from the curious and flowery compositions in which numerous learned Orientals held up his excellencies of every sort to admiration; but we will cite a short passage from what was said by Mr Bradshaw, Librarian to the University of Cambridge, who had naturally seen a great deal of him while working at the manuscripts:

‘What was at once apparent was the radical difference of his knowledge of these languages [Arabic and Persian] from that of any other Orientalist I had met. It was the difference between native knowledge and dictionary knowledge; between one who uses a language as his own and one who is able to make out the meaning of what is before him with more or less accuracy by help of a dictionary.’

In the autumn of 1867, a fellowship at S. John’s College being vacant, the then Master, Dr Bateson, knowing Palmer’s reputation as an Orientalist, asked Professor Cowell, then recently made Professor of Sanskrit, to examine him. Professor Cowell writes:

‘I undertook to examine him in Persian and Hindustani, as I felt that my knowledge of Arabic was too slight to justify my venturing to examine him in that language. I well remember my delight and surprise in this examination. I had never had any intercourse with Palmer before, as I had been previously living in India; and I had no idea that he was such an Oriental scholar. I remember well that I set him for translation into Persian prose a florid description from Gibbon’s chapter on Mohammed. Palmer translated it in a masterly way, in the true style of Persian rhetoric, every important substantive having its rhyming doublet, just as in the best models of Persian literature. In fact, his vocabulary seemed exhaustless. I also set him difficult pieces for translation from the Masnaví, Khondemir, and I think Saudá; but he could explain them all without hesitation. I sent a full report to the Master, and the college elected him at once to the vacant fellowship[92].’

It has now become an understood thing at Cambridge that a man who is really distinguished in any branch of study has a good chance of a fellowship; but twenty years ago this was not the case, and we believe that Palmer was the first, at least in the present century, to obtain that blue ribbon of Cambridge life for proficiency in other languages than those of Greece and Rome. Such a distinction meant more to him than it would have meant to most men. No further anxieties on the score of money need trouble him for the future; he need no longer be dependent on the generosity of relations who were not themselves overburdened with the goods of this world. He might study Oriental languages to his heart’s content without let or hindrance from anybody; and it was more than probable that one piece of good fortune would be the parent of another—a distinction so signal would bring him into notice, and obtain for him the offer of something which would be worth accepting. He had not long to wait. In less than a year a post was offered to him which presented, in delightful combination, study, travel, some emolument, and a reasonable prospect of fame and fortune if he worked hard and was successful. At the suggestion of the Rev. George Williams, then a resident Fellow of King’s College, he was asked to take part in the exploration of the Holy Land, and to accompany an expedition then about to start for the survey of Sinai and the neighbourhood. He was to investigate the names and traditions of the country, and to copy and decipher the inscriptions with which the rocks in the so-called ‘Written Valley’ and in other places are covered. He accepted without hesitation, and left England in November 1868.

The results of this expedition will be found in _The Desert of the Exodus_[93], a delightful book, in which Palmer has narrated in a pleasing style the daily doings of the surveyors, and the conclusions at which they arrived. His own proceedings are kept modestly in the background; but a careful reader will soon discover that, in addition to his appointed task as collector of folk-lore, he did his full share of topographical investigation, in which he evidently took a keen and growing interest, all the more remarkable as he could have had but little previous preparation for it. A detailed analysis of the results achieved would occupy far more space than we have at our disposal. We will only mention that the investigations of the expedition ‘materially confirmed and elucidated the history of the Exodus’; that objections founded on the supposed incapacity of the peninsula to accommodate so large a host as that of Israel were disposed of by pointing out abundant traces of ancient fertility; that the claims of Jebel Musa to be the true Sinai were vindicated by a comparison of its natural features with the Bible narrative, and by the collection of Arab and Mohammedan traditions; and, lastly, that the site of Kibroth Hattaavah was determined, partly on geographical grounds, partly on the traditions still current among the Towarah Bedouin, whose language Palmer mastered, and of whose manners and customs he has drawn up a very full and interesting account. The intimate acquaintance which he thus formed with one of these tribes stood him in good stead in the following year, when he took a far more responsible journey. The ease with which he spoke the Arab language was, however, one of the least of his many gifts: he thoroughly understood Arab character, and was generally successful, not merely in making the natives do what he wanted, but, what is far more wonderful, in making them speak the truth to him. He thus sums up his method of dealing with them:

‘An Arab is a bad actor, and with but a very little practice you may infallibly detect him in a lie; when directly accused of it, he is astonished at your, to him, incomprehensible sagacity, and at once gives up the game. By keeping this fact constantly in view, and at the same time endeavouring to win their confidence and respect, I have every reason to believe that the Bedawín gave us throughout a correct account of their country and its nomenclature.

‘When once an Arab has ceased to regard you with suspicion, you may surprise a piece of information out of him at any moment; and if you repeat it to him a short time afterwards, he forgets in nine cases out of ten that he has himself been your authority, and should the information be incorrect will flatly contradict you and set you right, while if it be authentic he is puzzled at your possessing a knowledge of the facts, and deems it useless to withhold from you anything further[94].’

The survey of Sinai had been completed but a few months when Palmer left England again, for a second journey of exploration. It is evident that he must have taken a more prominent part in the management of the first expedition than the precise terms of his engagement with the explorers would have led us to expect, and that he had thoroughly satisfied those responsible for it, for this second expedition was practically entrusted to him to arrange as he pleased. He was instructed in general terms to clear up, first, certain disputed points in the topography of Sinai; next, to examine the country between the Sinaitic Peninsula and the Promised Land—the ‘Desert of the Wanderings’; and, lastly, to search for inscriptions in Moab. He determined to take with him a single companion only, Mr Charles Tyrwhitt-Drake, of Trinity College, Cambridge, who had had already some experience of the East, and who proved himself in every way to be the man of men for rough journeys in unknown lands; to travel on foot, without dragoman, servant, or escort; and to take no more baggage than four camels could carry. The two friends started from Suez on December 16, 1869, and reached Jerusalem in excellent health and spirits on February 26, 1870. They had performed a feat of which anybody might well be proud. They had traversed ‘the great and terrible desert,’ the Desert of El Tih, and the Negeb, or ‘south country’ of Palestine, exactly as they had proposed to do—on foot, with no attendants except the owners of the baggage-camels. They had walked nearly 600 miles; but this fact, though it says much for their endurance, gives but little idea of the real fatigues of such a journey. The mental strain must have been far more exhausting than the physical fatigue. They were not tourists, but explorers, whose duty it was to observe carefully, to record their observations on the spot, to make plans and sketches, and to collect such information as could be extracted from the inhabitants. These various pursuits—in addition to their domestic arrangements—had to be carried on in the midst of an Arab population always suspicious, and sometimes openly hostile, who worried them from daybreak until far into the night, and against whom their only weapons were incessant watchfulness, tact, and good humour. Readers of Palmer’s narrative will not be surprised to find him hinting, not obscurely, that the only way to solve the ‘Bedouin question’ is to adopt what was called a few years afterwards, with reference to another not wholly dissimilar race, ‘the bag and baggage policy.’ This deliberate opinion, expressed by one who knew the Arabs well, and who had obtained singular influence over them, is worthy of careful attention, as, indeed, are all the chapters in the second part of _The Desert of the Exodus_, where this journey is fully described and illustrated. After reading that narrative no one can be surprised that the mission which ended so triumphantly and so fatally twelve years afterwards should have been entrusted to Palmer.

After a brief repose in Jerusalem they started afresh, and, passing again through the South Country by a different route, travelled eastward of the Dead Sea through the unknown lands of Edom and Moab. They made numerous observations of great value to Biblical students; but they failed to find what they had come to seek—inscriptions—though they succeeded in inspecting every known ‘written stone’ in the country; and the conclusion at last forced itself upon them, ‘that, _above ground_ at least, there does not exist another Moabite stone[95].’ It will be remembered that the famous inscription of King Mesha was found built into a wall of late Roman work, the ancient Moabite city being buried some feet below the present surface of the ground. This fact induced Palmer to adopt the following opinion:

‘If a few intelligent and competent men, such as those employed in the Jerusalem excavations, could be taken out to Moab, and certain of the ruins be excavated, further interesting discoveries might be made. Such researches might be made without difficulty if the Arabs were well managed and the expedition possessed large resources; but it must be remembered that the country is only nominally subject to the Turkish Government, and is filled with lawless tribes, jealous of each other and of the intrusion of strangers, and all greedily claiming a property in every stone, written or unwritten, which they think might interest a Frank.

‘That many treasures do lie buried among the ruins of Moab there can be but little doubt; the Arabs, indeed, narrated to us several instances of gold coins and figures having been found by them while ploughing in the neighbourhood of the ancient cities, and sold to jewellers at Nablous, by whom they were probably melted up[95].’

But, though there was no inscription to bring home as visible evidence of what had been done, the expedition was not barren of results. In the first place, the possibility of exploring the little-known parts of Palestine at a comparatively trifling cost had been demonstrated; and, secondly, numerous sites had been discovered where further research would probably yield information of the greatest value. It is a misfortune that Palmer was not able in after years to give undivided attention to these interesting problems of Biblical topography. Unless we are much mistaken, he would have made a revolution in many of them, and notably in the architectural history of the city of Jerusalem, upon which he did throw new light from an unexpected quarter—the Arab historians. He would, in fact, have pursued for the Temple area at Jerusalem the method which Professor Willis pursued so successfully for some of our own cathedrals; he would have marshalled in chronological order the notices of the Arab works there; and then, by comparing the historical evidence with the existing structures, have assigned their respective dates with certainty to each of them.

Palmer returned to England in the autumn of 1870, and soon afterwards became a candidate for the Professorship of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. He was unsuccessful, and we should have contented ourselves with recording the fact without comment, had not Mr Besant stated the whole question in a way reflecting so unfavourably on the electors, and through them on the University, that we feel compelled to investigate the circumstances in detail. This is what he says:

‘In the same year Palmer experienced what one is fully justified in calling the most cruel blow ever dealt to him, and one which he never forgot or forgave.

‘The vacancy of the Professorship of Arabic in 1871 seemed to give him at last the chance which he had been expecting.... He became a candidate for the vacant post; the place in fact _belonged to him_; it was his already by a right which it is truly wonderful could have been contested by any—the right of Conquest. The electors were the Heads of the colleges.

‘Consider the position: Palmer by this time was a man known all over the world of Oriental scholarship; he was not a single untried student and man of books; he had proved his powers in the most practical of all ways, viz. by relying on his knowledge of the language for safety on a dangerous expedition; he had written, and written wonderfully well, a great quantity of things in Persian, Urdú, and Arabic; he was known to everybody who knew anything at all about the subject; he had been greatly talked about by those who did not; he was a graduate of the University and Fellow of S. John’s, an honour which, as was well known, he received solely for his attainments in Oriental languages; he had a great many friends who were ready to testify, and had already testified, in the strongest terms, to his extraordinary knowledge; he was, in fact, the only Cambridge man who could, with any show of fairness justice at all, be elected. He was also young, and full of strength and enthusiasm; if Persian and Arabic lectures and Oriental studies could be made useful or attractive at the University, he would make them so. What follows seems incredible.

‘On the other hand, the electing body consisted, as stated above, of the Heads of colleges. It is in the nature of things that the Heads, who are mostly men advanced in years, who have spent all their lives at the University, should retain whatever old prejudices, traditions, and ancient manner of regarding things, may be still surviving. There were—it seems childish to advance this statement seriously, and yet I have no doubt it is true and correct—two prejudices against which Palmer had then to contend. The first was the more serious. It was at that time, even more than it is now, the custom at Cambridge to judge the abilities of every man entirely with regard to his place in one of the two old Triposes; and this without the least respect or consideration for any other attainments, or accomplishments, or learning. Darwin, for instance, whose name does not occur in the Honour list at all, never received from his college the slightest mark of respect until his death. Long after he had become the greatest scientific man in Europe the question would have been asked—I have no doubt it was often asked—what degree he took. Palmer’s name did occur in the Classical Tripos—but alas! in the third class. Was it possible, was it probable, that a third-class man could be a person worthy of consideration at all? Third-class men are good enough for assistant-masters in small schools, for curacies, or for any other branch of labour which can be performed without much intellect. But a third-class man must never, under any circumstances, consider that he has a right to learn anything or to claim distinction as a scholar. I put the case strongly; but there is no Cambridge man who will deny the fact that, in whatever branch of learning distinction be subsequently attained, the memory of a second or third class is always prejudicial. Palmer, therefore, went before the grave and reverend Heads with this undeniable third class against a whole sheaf of proofs, testimonials, letters, opinions, statements, and assertions of attainments extraordinary, and, in some respects, unrivalled. To be sure they were only letters from Orientals and Oriental scholars. What could they avail against the opinion of the Classical Examiners of 1867 that Palmer was only worth a third class?

‘As I said above, it seems childish. But it is true. And this was the first prejudice.

‘The second prejudice was perhaps his youth. He was, it is true, past thirty, but he had only taken his degree three or four years, and therefore he only ought to have been five-and-twenty. He looked no more than five-and-twenty; he still possessed—he always possessed—the enthusiasm of youth; his manners, which could be, when he chose, full of dignity even among his intimates, were those of a man still in early manhood; he had been talked about in connection with his adventures in the East; and stories were told, some true and some false, which may have alarmed the gravity of the Heads. There must be no tincture of Bohemianism about a Professor of the University. Perhaps rumours may have been whispered about the gipsies and the tinkers, or the mesmerizing, or the conjuring; but I think the conjuring had hardly yet begun.

‘In speaking of this election, I beg most emphatically to disclaim any comparison between the most eminent and illustrious scholar who was elected and the man who was rejected. I say that it is always the bounden duty of the University to give her prizes to her own children if they have proved themselves worthy of them. Not to do so is to discourage learning and to drive away students. Now, the Professorship of Arabic was vacant; the most brilliant Oriental scholar whom the University has produced in this century—perhaps in any century—became a candidate for it; he was the only Cambridge man who could possibly be a candidate; the Heads of Houses passed him by and elected a scholar of wide reputation indeed, but not a member of the University.