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 taskin 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 reallybring 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 proseIn 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 thesolemn 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 beenobserved 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 toldthat 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 oflobelia, 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 toLondon. 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 inGipsy 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 atanwhere 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 notrakker! Once I remember he said this to a gipsy, who retaliated in a great rage, “How could I know that youwere a gipsy, if you come here dressed up like agorgioand 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 acaféin 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 theirpatois. 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 withargot; also—which points to acquaintance made incafés—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 photographycame 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 onceto 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 ourminds 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 hedeclared 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’sCollege, 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 descriptionfrom 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 probablethat 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 inThe 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. Hisown 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 interestingaccount. 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 inexcellent 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, notobscurely, 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 ofThe 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 groundat least, there does not existanother 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 ofexploring 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 withrecording 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 factbelonged 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 fairnessjustice 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 whateverbranch 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 brilliantOriental 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.
‘There were other circumstances which made the election more disappointing. It was known, before the election, that Dr Wright had been spoken to on the subject; it was also known that he would not stand because the stipend of the post, only 300l.a year, was not sufficient to induce him to give up the British Museum. It seemed, therefore, that the result of Palmer’s candidature would be a walk over. But the day before the election the Master of Queens’—then Dr Phillips, who was himself a Syriac scholar—went round to all the electors, and informed them that Dr Wright would be put up on the following day. He was put up; he was elected; and very shortly afterwards was made a Fellow of Queens’ probably in consequence of an understanding with Dr Phillips that, in the event of his election to the Professorship, an election to a Queens’ Fellowship should follow. Of course, one has nothing to say against the Fellowship. Probably a Queens’ Fellowship was never more honourably and usefully bestowed; but yet the man who ought to have obtained the Professorship, the man to whom it belonged, was kept out of it. Palmer was the kindest-hearted and most forgiving of men, and the last to think or speak evil; but this was a deliberate and uncalled-for injustice, an insult to his reputation which could never be forgotten. It embittered the whole of his future connexion with the University: it never was forgotten or forgiven[96].’
We notice two errors of fact in the abovenarrative. The election did not take place in 1871, but in 1870; and secondly, the Professorship was then worth only £70 a year. The stipend was not raised to £300 until the following November. The second of these errors is not of much importance; but the first is very material, as we shall show presently.
We will next give an exact narrative of what actually took place. Professor Williams, who had held the Arabic chair since 1854, died in the Long Vacation of 1870, and on October 1 the Vice-Chancellor announced the vacancy, and fixed the day of election for Friday, October 21. The only candidates who presented themselves in the ordinary way were Palmer and the Rev. Stanley Leathes, M.A., of Jesus College, a gentleman who had obtained the Tyrwhitt Hebrew Scholarship in 1853. It was thought that his merits were little known, and that he would not prove a formidable opponent; and Palmer, as Mr Besant rightly states, looked upon the Professorship as as good as won. However, on the day before, or the day but one before, the election, the President of Queens’ College left a card on each of the electors, to say that Dr Wright would be voted for. One of these cards wasgiven to Palmer, we do not know by whom. He showed it to a friend, who asked, ‘What does it mean?’ ‘It means that it is all up with me,’ was Palmer’s reply; and events proved that he was right in his forebodings. When the electors met, the Masters of Trinity Hall and Emmanuel were not present, and the Master of Gonville and Caius declined to vote. The remaining fourteen voted in the following way:—for Dr Wright, eight; for Mr Palmer, five; for Mr Leathes, one. Dr Wright, therefore, was declared to be elected.
It will be seen from what is here stated—and the accuracy of our facts is, we know, beyond question—that it was not the Heads of Houses in their collective capacity who rejected Palmer, but less than half of them. Again, we submit that there is no evidence that those who voted against him were actuated by either of the prejudices which Mr Besant imputes to them. A high place in a tripos is no longer regarded at Cambridge as indispensable, unless the candidate be trying for a post the duties of which are in direct relation to the tripos in which he has sought distinction. Four years afterwards, the resident members of the Senate chose as Woodwardian Professorof Geology a gentleman who had taken an ordinary degree, in opposition to one who had been placed thirteenth in the first class of the mathematical tripos, on the ground that they believed him to be a better geologist than his opponent. It will be said they were not the Heads of Colleges; but we would remark that, even in the election we are discussing, the case against them breaks down on this point; for the successful candidate was not even a member of the University, and surely an indifferent degree is better than no degree at all. As to the second prejudice against Palmer, we simply dismiss it with contempt. We never heard of a Cambridge elector who was influenced by hearsay evidence; and, as a matter of fact, Palmer was supported by the Master of his own College, who must have known more about his habits than all the other Heads put together. If we consider the result arrived at by the light of subsequent events, it is natural for those who, like his biographer and ourselves, are strongly prepossessed in Palmer’s favour, to regret that he was unsuccessful; and we are delighted to find Mr Besant asserting, as he does, that University distinctions ought to be given,ceteris paribus, to University men. Butif we try to put ourselves in the position of the electors, and survey the two candidates as they surveyed them, there is, we feel bound to assert, ample justification for the selection they made, having regard to the particular post to be filled at that time. They had, in fact, to choose between a tried and an untried man. Dr Wright was known to have received a regular education in Oriental languages in Germany and in Holland, and to be thought highly of by the most competent judges in those countries. He had given proof of sound scholarship in various publications, and it was considered by several scholars in the University that the studies to which he had given special attention, viz.—Syriac, Samaritan, Ethiopic, and the Semitic group of languages generally—would be specially useful there. He had held a Professorship in Trinity College, Dublin, where he had been distinguished as a teacher; he was personally known in Cambridge, not merely to Dr Phillips, but to the University at large, at whose hands he had received the honorary degree of Doctor of Law in 1868. Moreover, he was already an honorary Fellow of Queens’ College, and therefore it was not strange that a Society which had already gone so far should signify to him theirintention of proceeding a step further, in the event of his consenting to come and reside at Cambridge as a Professor. He was accordingly elected Fellow January 5, 1871[97].
Palmer, on the other hand, had submitted to the electors testimonials which testified to his wonderful knowledge of Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic as spoken languages; he was known to have given special attention to the languages of India; he had catalogued the Oriental MSS. in the Libraries of the University, of King’s College, and of Trinity College; he had translated Moore’sParadise and the Periinto Arabic verse; and he had published a short treatise on the Sufistic and Unitarian Theosophy of the Persians. But here the direct evidence of his acquirements ceased; and it is at this point that the date of the election becomes material. None of his more important works had as yet appeared. The official Report of his journeys in the East was not published until January 1871; and the preface to hisDesert of the Exodusis
dated June of the same year[98]. The Heads, therefore, could not know that he ‘had relied on his knowledge of the language for safety in a dangerous expedition.’
After a disappointment so severe as the loss of the much-coveted professorship, it might have been expected that Palmer’s connexion with Cambridge would soon have been severed; that he would have sought and obtained a lucrative appointment elsewhere. On the contrary, it was written in the book of fate, as one of his favourite Orientals would have said, that he should not only remain at Cambridge, but remain there in connexion with Oriental studies. Cambridge has two chairs of Arabic: a Professorship founded by Sir Thomas Adams in 1632; and a Readership, founded by King George I. in 1724, at the instance of Lancelot Blackburn, Bishop of Exeter and Lord Almoner. It is endowed with an income of £50 a year, paid out of the Almonry bounty, but reduced by fees to £40. 10s.If, however, the income be small the duties are none—or, rather, none are attached to the office as such;and moreover the Reader is technically regarded as a Professor, and has a Professor’s privilege of retaining a College Fellowship for life as a married man. The previous holder of the office, the Rev. Theodore Preston, Fellow of Trinity College, had regarded it as a sinecure, and moreover had generally been non-resident. On his resignation in 1871, the Lord Almoner for the time being, the Hon. and Rev. Gerald Wellesley, Dean of Windsor, gave the office to Palmer. At last, therefore, he seemed to have obtained his reward—congenial occupation in a place which had been the first to find him out and help him, where he had many devoted friends, and where he was now enabled to establish himself as a married man; for on the very day after he received his appointment he married a lady to whom he had been engaged for some years.
Palmer took a very different view of his duties as Reader in Arabic from what his predecessor had done. He delivered his inaugural lecture on Monday, 4 March, 1872, choosing for his subject ‘The National Religion of Persia; an Outline Sketch of Comparative Theology[99],’ and during the Easter andMichaelmas terms he lectured on six days in each week, devoting three days to Persian and three to Arabic. To these subjects there was subsequently added a course in Hindustani. In consequence of this large amount of voluntary work the Council of the Senate recommended (February 24, 1873)[100]‘that a sum of £250 per annum should be paid to the present Lord Almoner’s Reader out of the University Chest,’ and that he should be authorized to receive a fee of £2. 2s.in each term for each course of lectures from every student attending them, provided he declared in writing his readiness to acquiesce in certain regulations, of which the first was: ‘That it shall be his ordinary duty to reside within the precincts of the University for eighteen weeks during term time in every academical year, and to give three courses of lectures—viz. one course in Arabic, one in Persian, and one in Hindustani.’ The Senate accepted this proposal March 6, 1873, and Palmer signed the new regulations five days afterwards. In recording this transaction Mr Besant remarks: ‘It must be acknowledged that the University got full value for their money.’ We reply to this sneerthat the University asked no more from Palmer than it asked from every other professor whose salary was augmented. The clause imposing residence had been accepted in the same form by all the other professors; and one course of lectures in each term is surely the very least that a teaching body can require from one of its staff. It must also be remembered that the Lord Almoner’s Readership is an office to which the University does not appoint, which therefore it cannot control, and which, until Palmer held it, had been practically useless. He, however, being disposed to reside, and to discharge his self-imposed duties vigorously, the University came forward with an offer which was meant to be generous, in recognition of his personal merits; for the whole arrangement, it will be observed, had reference to thepresentReader only—that is, to himself. The precise amount offered, £250, was evidently selected with the intention of placing the Lord Almoner’s Reader on the same footing as a professor, for the salaries of nearly all the professorial body had been already raised to £300; and, if a comparison between the Reader and the Professor of Arabic be inevitable, it may be remarked that while theUniversity offered £250 to the former, they offered only £230 to the latter. The intention, we repeat, was generous, and we protest with some indignation against Palmer’s bitter words: ‘The very worst use a man can make of himself is to stay up at Cambridge and work for the University.’ The truth is that University life did not suit him, and though he tried hard for ten years to believe that it did, the attempt ended in failure, and it is much to be regretted that it was ever made.
We must pass rapidly over the next ten years. They were years of incessant labour, labour which must have been often most painful and irksome, for it had to be undertaken in the midst of heavy sorrow, ill-health, pecuniary difficulties—everything, in short, which damps a man’s energies and takes the heart out of his work. His married life began brightly enough: he had an assured income of nearly £600 a year, which he could increase at pleasure, and we know did increase, by literary work. In 1871 he entered at the Middle Temple, probably with the intention of practising at the Indian bar at some future time; but after he had given up all thoughtsof India he joined the Eastern Circuit, and attended assizes and quarter sessions regularly. He had a fair amount of business, and is said to have made a good advocate, though he could have had little knowledge of law, and, in fact, regarded his legal work as a relaxation from severer studies. These he pursued without intermission. Besides his lectures, which he gave regularly, he produced work after work with amazing rapidity. In 1871, in addition to theDesert of the Exodus, he published aHistory of Jerusalem, written in collaboration with his friend Mr Besant; in 1873 he undertook to write an Arabic Grammar, which appeared in the following year; in 1874 he wroteOutlines of Scripture Geography, and aHistory of the Jewish Nation, for the Christian Knowledge Society, and began a Persian Dictionary, of which the first part was published in 1876; in 1876—77 he edited the works of the Arabian poet Beda ed din Zoheir for the Syndics of the University Press, the text appearing in 1876 and the translation in 1877; and during the next few years he was at work upon aLife of Haroun Alraschid, a new translation of the Koran, and a revision of Henry Martyn’s translation of theNew Testament into Persian. Besides this vast amount of solid work it would be easy to show that he produced nearly as great a quantity of that other literature which, when we consider the labour which it entails upon him who writes it, it is surely a misnomer to call ‘light.’ Professor Nicholls, of Oxford, gives an account, in a most interesting appendix to Mr Besant’s book, of the quantity of Persian, Arabic, and Hindustani which Palmer was continually writing. In the last-mentioned language there were a poem on the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh, and a wonderful account of the visit of the Shah to England, which occupied thirty-six columns of theAkhbar, a space equivalent to about twenty columns of theTimes; and, although Palmer admitted that ‘the writing of such things is a laborious and artificial task to me, as I am not as familiar with the Urdú of everyday life as I am with the Persian,’ he still went on writing them. How familiar he was with Arabic and Persian is shown by the curious fact that whenever he was under strong emotion he would plunge abruptly into one or other language, sometimes writing a whole letter in it, sometimes only a sentence or two, or a few verses. Besidesthese Oriental ‘trifles’ as he would probably have called them, we find continual contributions to English periodical literature, and three volumes of poetry:English Gipsy Songs in Romany(1875); theSong of the Reed, and other Pieces(1876); andLyrical Songs, &c. by John Ludwig Runeberg (1878). In the first of these he collaborated with Mr Leland, whom we mentioned before, and Miss Janet Tuckey; and in the last with Mr Magnusson; but the second is entirely his own. We regret that we cannot find room for a specimen of these graceful verses. Those who have leisure to look into theSong of the Reed, or the translation of Zoheir, will find themselves introduced to a new literature by one who, if not a poet, was unquestionably, as Mr Besant says, a versifier of a high order, and in the very front rank of translators.
We have said that most of this work—were it grave or gay, it mattered not—had to be got through in the midst of serious anxieties. Mrs Palmer’s health began to fail before they had been married long, and it soon became evident that her lungs were affected. It was necessary that she should leave Cambridge. In the spring of 1876, Wales was tried, withresults which were so reassuring that it was decided to complete her cure (as it was then believed) by a winter in Paris. There, however, she got worse instead of better, and early in the following year her husband began to realize that she would die. In the autumn of 1877, they returned home to try Wales once more, and then, as a last resource, Bournemouth. There, in the summer of 1878, Mrs Palmer died. The expenses of so long an illness, added to journeyings to and fro, and the cost of keeping up two establishments (for he was obliged to continue his Cambridge lectures all the while), crippled his resources, and produced embarrassments from which he never became wholly free. His own health, too, never strong, gave way under his fatigues and worries, and he became only not quite so ill as his wife. Yet he never complained; never said a word about his troubles to any of his friends. Those who were most with him at this dreary time have recorded that he always met them with a smiling face, and went about his work as calmly as if he had been well and happy.
It was fortunate for him that he had a singularly joyous nature, which could neverbe saddened for long together. He was always surrounded by a pleasant atmosphere of cheerfulness, which not only did good to those about him, but had a salutary effect upon himself, enabling him to maintain his elasticity and vigour, even in the face of sorrow and ill-health. Most things have their comic side, if only men are not blind to it; and he could see the humorous aspect of the most melancholy or the most perilous situation. To the last he was full of life and fun. Though he no longer, as of old, wrote burlesques, he could draw clever caricatures of his friends and acquaintances; tell stories which convulsed his hearers with laughter; and sing comic songs—especially a certain Arab ditty, in which he turned himself into an Arab minstrel with really wonderful power of impersonation. Again, whatever he came across—especially in great cities like London or Paris—was full of interest for him. Without being a philanthropist, or, indeed, having a spark of humanitarian sentiment in his nature, he took a pleasure in investigating his fellow-creatures, talking to men and finding out all about them. He was endowed in the highest degree with the gift of sympathy; and this, while it made him themost loveable of friends, made him also a singularly acute investigator, and gave him a power of influencing others which was truly wonderful. He possessed, too, great manual dexterity, and took a pleasure in finding out how all those things were done which depend for their success upon sleight of hand; and in all such he became a proficient himself. He was a first-rate conjuror, and besides doing the tricks, ordinary and extraordinary, of professed conjurors, he took much satisfaction in reproducing the most startling phenomena of spiritualism, which he regarded as a debased form of conjuring—‘a swindle of the most palpable and clumsy kind.’ It was in such pursuits that he found the recreation which other men find in hard exercise. Of this he took very little. Even in his younger days he did not care for games, and his one attempt at cricket was nearly fatal to the wicket-keeper, whom he managed to hit on the head with his bat; but he was an expert gymnast, and loved boating and fishing in the Fens, to which he used to retire from time to time with one of his friends. It may be doubted whether he cared about the sport and the fresh air so much as the absolute repose; the old-worldcharacter of that curious corner of England; the total absence of convention. There he could dress as he pleased; and he took full advantage of his liberty. It is recorded that once, as he was coming home to College, he happened to meet the Master, Dr Bateson, who, casting his eye over the water-boots and flannels, stained with mud and weather, in which the learned Professor had encased himself, remarked, ‘This is Eastern costume, I suppose.’ ‘No, Master; Eastern Counties costume,’ was the reply.
It is pleasant to be able to record that the happiness which had been so long delayed came at last. In about a year after his wife’s death he married again. His choice was fortunate, and for the last three years of his life he was able to enjoy that greatest of all luxuries—a thoroughly happy home. He stood sorely in need of such consolation, for in other directions he had plenty to distress and worry him. His pecuniary difficulties pressed upon him as hardly as ever, and his relations with the University began to be somewhat strained. He had had the mortification of seeing Professor Wright’s salary raised to £500 a year, with no hint of any corresponding propositionbeing made for him[101]; and when the Commissioners promulgated their scheme his office was not included in it, a suggestion for raising his salary which had been made by the Board of Oriental Studies being wholly disregarded by them. Moreover, the undertaking to deliver three courses of lectures in each year turned out to be infinitely more laborious than he had expected. Candidates for the Indian Civil Service increased in number; and the pupils of any given term were pretty sure to want to go on with their work in the next, when he was teaching a different language, so that he was compelled in practice to give, not one, but two, or even three, courses in each term. Moreover, the elementary nature of much of this instruction—the ‘teaching boys the Persian alphabet,’ as he called it—became every year more and more irksome. We are not surprised that he got disgusted with the University; but at the same time we cannot agree with Mr Besant that the University was wholly to blame. They were in no wise responsiblefor the conduct of the Commissioners; in fact, all that could be done to make them take a different view was done. Had Palmer resided continuously in the University, and pressed his own claims, things might have been very different. But this he had been unable to do, for reasons which, as we have seen, were beyond his own control, and for which, therefore, he is not to be blamed; but the fact cannot be denied that for some years he had been practically non-resident. There was also another cause which has to be taken into consideration—his own disposition. The life of a University is a peculiar life, which does not suit everybody, and certainly did not suit him. He felt ‘cabined, cribbed, confined,’ in it; and he said afterwards that ‘he never really began to live till he was emancipated from academic trammels.’ Our wonder is, not that he left Cambridge when he did, but that he remained so long connected with it. The final break took place in 1881, when he voluntarily rescinded the engagement which he had made to lecture, and, retaining the Readership and the Fellowship at S. John’s College—neither of which he could afford to resign—took up his abode in London, where he obtaineda place on the staff of theStandardnewspaper. He readily adapted himself to this new life, and soon became a successful writer. One of the assistant-editors at that time, Mr Robert Wilson, has recorded that
‘Palmer considered his career as a journalist in London, short as it was, one of the pleasantest episodes of his life. Those who were associated with him in that career professionally can say that they reckoned his companionship one of the brightest and happiest of their experiences. He was