James Geikie, the Man and the Geologist

Part I.--Life and Letters

BY MARION I. NEWBIGIN

CHAP. PAGE

I. BOYHOOD AND YOUTH, 1839-61 3

II. FIRST YEARS ON THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, 1862-64 19

III. “THE GREAT ICE AGE”: (1) YEARS OF PREPARATION, 1865-71 34

IV. “THE GREAT ICE AGE”: (2) PUBLICATION, 1872-74 52

V. MARRIAGE AND LIFE AT PERTH, 1875-77 62

VI. LAST YEARS ON THE SURVEY, 1878-82 82

VII. EDINBURGH AND THE PROFESSORSHIP, 1882-88 100

VIII. FINAL EDITION OF “THE GREAT ICE AGE,” 1889-1903 116

IX. RETIREMENT FROM THE PROFESSORSHIP AND LAST DAYS, 1904-15 130

Part Ii.--Geological Work

BY J. S. FLETT

X. THE GLACIAL PROBLEM BEFORE JAMES GEIKIE 149

XI. “THE GREAT ICE AGE” AND “PREHISTORIC EUROPE” 164

XII. EDUCATIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE WORK 180

XIII. INTERGLACIAL CONTROVERSIES 194

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS 213

INDEX 221

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PROF. GEIKIE IN HIS LATER YEARS. (Photograph by Mr John Horsburgh) Frontispiece

A STUDY OF PROF. GEIKIE IN 1884. (From Mr William Hole’s Etching in Quasi Cursores, published for the Edinburgh University Tercentenary Celebrations) to face p. 104

PROF. GEIKIE IN 1888. (From a Photograph taken in Philadelphia) to face p. 108

PROF. GEIKIE AT THE AGE OF SIXTY. (From a Photograph by Messrs Elliott & Fry) to face p. 116

PART I. Life and Letters

LIFE AND LETTERS

CHAPTER I

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

1839-1861

James Geikie was born on 23rd August 1839, in a house in Edinburgh which was later pulled down to make room for the University Union. He was the third son and the third child in a family of eight, consisting of five sons and three daughters, and was baptised as James Murdoch Geikie. He abolished--to use his own word--the Murdoch in boyhood.

His father was in business in Edinburgh, but by taste and inclination was a musician, and in later years, after retiring from business, devoted himself entirely to music, and was the author of a number of compositions, sacred and secular. A little anecdote, recalled by his son in later years, suggests that it had always been his ambition to be a professional musician, and that he had been thwarted in youth. The story relates that one day he said to James somewhat sadly:--“If ever you have a son who wants to make music his profession, do not oppose his wish.” In the fulness of time, it is interesting to note, one of James Geikie’s sons did express this desire, and his father scrupulously observed the injunction of the long-dead grandfather. The point is not without importance, from more than one aspect, and is at least a partial refutation of the pessimists who, like Samuel Butler, maintain that each generation repeats the mistakes of the last in dealing with youth.

Another artistic strain in the family was represented in the person of Walter Geikie, an uncle, who was a well-known painter of Scotch scenes and left also some good etchings. Of him James Geikie, in an undated fragment of what was apparently intended to be a history of the family, says:--“Of my Uncle Walter I will say nothing: the Life prefixed to his etchings having already forestalled anything I could tell. He was a capital mimic and possessed of boundless good nature. Had he been longer spared he might well have become famous in his profession, but Death, to whom the genius and the numbskull are one and the same, carried him off in the year 1837--two years before I was born.” James, it may be noted here, had himself considerable skill as a draughtsman, as both his published works and his geological note-books show clearly, which adds interest to this note upon his artist uncle. Another uncle, who was a minister and went out to the United States when James was young, was the father of Cunningham Geikie the divine, author of a widely-read Life of Christ.

The latter lived with the Geikie family in Edinburgh for some time in his student days. The MS. from which the above quotation is made, which is annotated in pencil by its author, is, as stated, a mere fragment and undated. Internal evidence, however, suggests that it may have been written about 1856, the writing and composition recalling some extant letters of this period, and it shows, as further quotations will indicate, that its author, with all his obvious immaturity, was even then feeling after a style.

James Geikie’s mother was a Miss Thom, a daughter of a merchant captain, who was born in Inverness but established himself at Dunbar. Here he married the daughter of a local shipbuilder, whose family was connected by marriage--to quote again the MS. already mentioned--with “that Roderick MacKenzie who suffered his head to be taken from him that he might save that of Prince Charles Stewart”; a fact of which the boy James confesses himself very proud. In his later days Captain Thom often visited his married daughter, and the important part which he played in developing the imagination of the children is suggested in the following sentences (from MS.):--“My Grandfather Thom when I first knew him had not ceased to plough the sea for his living. He was of a middle stature, well-made, and muscular. I can still see his fine head nearly bald--what hair he had was of a beautiful silver white--his Roman nose. I can still at this late period follow him in his walks. I see him sitting with his old cronies--relics of fights by land and sea--on that seat between the two old trees--long since pulled down to make way for those improvements, so-called, which have altered entirely what in my young days went by the name of ‘The Meadows.’ His stories of adventures with the robbers of the sea are rife in my memory. His voyages to places whose very names smack of fairy-land--his hairbreadth escapes--his deeds of daring--the recollection of all these rises vividly before me at the mere mention of his name. I looked upon him as another Sinbad--a second Robinson Crusoe; and my acquaintance with his queer old friends served to heighten the romantic colours in which I viewed him! Alas! all these school-boy dreamings are past; but they will sometimes flit before me as I lie gazing up into the deep blue of a summer sky, recalling the old days which have gone away into dim forgetfulness: and they will sometimes come again as I sit alone musing by the winter fireside. Verily there is a something--call it what you will--about the past which renders it infinitely more endearing to us than all the brightest dreams of the future.”

The only comment which it is necessary to make upon the above is to repeat that it was apparently written when the boy was about seventeen, and thus, as we shall see, at a period when he was engaged in uncongenial work, and when his future was uncertain: these facts help to explain what the James Geikie of a later day would have contemptuously denounced as the “high-falutin” style.

In addition to the visits of Captain Thom to Edinburgh, family intercourse was kept up by return visits of the children to Dunbar, where the ships appealed strongly to the imagination of James. He was fond of saying in later years that he used to watch them dipping below the horizon and longed to follow them to see what lay beyond; and the Wanderlust, so early developed, lasted till the end of life. In a letter to one of his sons, written to Egypt in 1901, he says:--“Old man tho’ I am, I’m just as keen to knock about the world as ever I was. It is like renewing my youth even to think about it!”

In connection with the seafarer’s blood which he inherited from his mother’s side, it is also of interest to note that James was an excellent traveller both by sea and land; the sea had no terrors for him, and his voyages were a source of continuous pleasure, both at the time and in recollection.

As to his immediate intellectual heritage, it seems probable that James took the majority of his qualities from his father’s side. But his mother, of whom he was very fond, was a woman of great ability and much ambition for her clever sons, whom she spurred on in their careers. Her extraordinary skill as a needlewoman, and her capacity for hard work, are enshrined in the family traditions, and it is probable that James took from her his remarkable perseverance and his manual dexterity. The father was full of bonhomie, probably as deeply impregnated as his son with the joie de vivre, and like him more desirous of a full life than given to the narrow concentration which achieves a particular purpose at the expense of so much.

From his father James seems to have inherited his imagination and the touch of constructive genius which enabled him to do such noteworthy work; but one can well believe that the instinct which led the son to interleave his scientific observations in his geological note-books with verses, prevented the father from devoting himself as whole-heartedly to the pursuit of worldly prosperity as his wife may have thought desirable in view of the large and growing family.

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