Major
Yule's Only Printed Work Was A Lithographed Edition Of The Apothegms Of
'Ali, The Son Of Abu Talib, In The Arabic, With An Old Persian Version And
An English Translation Interpolated By Himself.
"This was privately issued
in 1832, when the Duchesse d'Angouleme was living at Edinburgh, and the
little work was inscribed to her, with whom an accident of neighbourhood
and her kindness to the Major's youngest child had brought him into
relations of goodwill."[8]
Henry Yule's childhood was mainly spent at Inveresk. He used to say that
his earliest recollection was sitting with the little cousin, who long
after became his wife, on the doorstep of her father's house in George
Street, Edinburgh (now the Northern Club), listening to the performance of
a passing piper. There was another episode which he recalled with humorous
satisfaction. Fired by his father's tales of the jungle, Yule (then about
six years old) proceeded to improvise an elephant pit in the back garden,
only too successfully, for soon, with mingled terror and delight, he saw
his uncle John[9] fall headlong into the snare. He lost his mother before
he was eight, and almost his only remembrance of her was the circumstance
of her having given him a little lantern to light him home on winter
nights from his first school. On Sundays it was the Major's custom to lend
his children, as a picture-book, a folio Arabic translation of the Four
Gospels, printed at Rome in 1591, which contained excellent illustrations
from Italian originals.[10] Of the pictures in this volume Yule seems
never to have tired. The last page bore a MS. note in Latin to the effect
that the volume had been read in the Chaldaean Desert by Georgius
Strachanus, Milnensis, Scotus, who long remained unidentified, not to say
mythical, in Yule's mind. But George Strachan never passed from his
memory, and having ultimately run him to earth, Yule, sixty years later,
published the results in an interesting article.[11]
Two or three years after his wife's death, Major Yule removed to
Edinburgh, and established himself in Regent's Terrace, on the face of the
Calton Hill.[12] This continued to be Yule's home until his father's
death, shortly before he went to India. "Here he learned to love the wide
scenes of sea and land spread out around that hill - a love he never lost,
at home or far away. And long years after, with beautiful Sicilian hills
before him and a lovely sea, he writes words of fond recollection of the
bleak Fife hills, and the grey Firth of Forth."[13]
Yule now followed his elder brother, Robert, to the famous High School,
and in the summer holidays the two made expeditions to the West Highlands,
the Lakes of Cumberland, and elsewhere. Major Yule chose his boys to have
every reasonable indulgence and advantage, and when the British
Association, in 1834, held its first Edinburgh meeting, Henry received a
member's ticket. So, too, when the passing of the Reform Bill was
celebrated in the same year by a great banquet, at which Lord Grey and
other prominent politicians were present, Henry was sent to the dinner,
probably the youngest guest there.[14]
At this time the intention was that Henry should go to Cambridge (where
his name was, indeed, entered), and after taking his degree study for the
Bar. With this view he was, in 1833, sent to Waith, near Ripon, to be
coached by the Rev. H. P. Hamilton, author of a well-known treatise, On
Conic Sections, and afterwards Dean of Salisbury. At his tutor's
hospitable rectory Yule met many notabilities of the day. One of them was
Professor Sedgwick.
There was rumoured at this time the discovery of the first known (?)
fossil monkey, but its tail was missing. "Depend upon it, Daniel
O'Conell's got hold of it!" said 'Adam' briskly.[15] Yule was very happy
with Mr. Hamilton and his kind wife, but on his tutor's removal to
Cambridge other arrangements became necessary, and in 1835 he was
transferred to the care of the Rev. James Challis, rector of Papworth St.
Everard, a place which "had little to recommend it except a dulness which
made reading almost a necessity."[16] Mr. Challis had at this time two
other resident pupils, who both, in most diverse ways, attained
distinction in the Church. These were John Mason Neale, the future eminent
ecclesiologist and founder of the devoted Anglican Sisterhood of St.
Margaret, and Harvey Goodwin, long afterwards the studious and
large-minded Bishop of Carlisle. With the latter, Yule remained on terms of
cordial friendship to the end of his life. Looking back through more than
fifty years to these boyish days, Bishop Goodwin wrote that Yule then
"showed much more liking for Greek plays and for German than for
mathematics, though he had considerable geometrical ingenuity."[17] On one
occasion, having solved a problem that puzzled Goodwin, Yule thus
discriminated the attainments of the three pupils: "The difference between
you and me is this: You like it and can't do it; I don't like it and can do
it. Neale neither likes it nor can do it." Not bad criticism for a boy of
fifteen.[18]
On Mr. Challis being appointed Plumerian Professor at Cambridge, in the
spring of 1836, Yule had to leave him, owing to want of room at the
Observatory, and he became for a time, a most dreary time, he said,
a student at University College, London.
By this time Yule had made up his mind that not London and the Law, but
India and the Army should be his choice, and accordingly in Feb. 1837 he
joined the East India Company's Military College at Addiscombe. From
Addiscombe he passed out, in December 1838, at the head of the cadets of
his term (taking the prize sword[19]), and having been duly appointed to
the Bengal Engineers, proceeded early in 1839 to the Headquarters of the
Royal Engineers at Chatham, where, according to custom, he was enrolled as
a "local and temporary Ensign." For such was then the invidious
designation at Chatham of the young Engineer officers of the Indian army,
who ranked as full lieutenants in their own Service, from the time of
leaving Addiscombe.[20] Yule once audaciously tackled the formidable
Pasley on this very grievance.
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