Ellesmere

“ Lord Ellesmere was a munificent and yet discriminating patron of artists. To the splendid collection of pictures which he inherited from his great-uncle, the 3rd duke of Bridgewater, he made numerous additions, and he built a noble gallery to which the public were allowed free access. Lord Ellesmere served as president of the Royal Geographical Society and as president of the Royal Asiatic Society, and he was a trustee of the National Gallery. ”

“ Long low comfortable hotels with bow windows prevail in Ellesmere, and they have ample accommodation for coaches and post-horses, though now grass grows in many of the roomy quadrangles round which their stables are built, as most of their occupation is gone. ”

“ They have discovered the western side of Ellesmere Island and the intricate system of fiords, as well as three large islands west of Ellesmere Island; they have explored the northern coast of North Devon; they have connected Belcher’s work with the coasts of Jones Sound; they have reached a point within 60 miles of Aldrich’s farthest; and they have discovered that land north of the Parry Islands, the existence of which was conjectured, as far west as the longitude of the eastern coast of Melville Island. This includes the discovery of the northern sides of North Cornwall and Findlay Islands. ”

“ Land had been purchased in England in 1607 on behalf of Robert Colvill or Colvin, a grandson of Lord Colvill of Culross, who was born in Edinburgh in 1605. A legal question arose, and the plea that the child was an alien and incapable of holding land in England was raised. Ellesmere decided that this plea was bad, and that the child was a natural-born subject of the king of England. Twelve of the fourteen judges concurred, and Ellesmere treated the two dissentients with scant courtesy. This judgment, the most important that Ellesmere delivered, was printed by order of the king in 1609. ”

“ Washington, D. C. The west coast of Ellesmere Land, which is to be the object of your expedition, is, in my opinion, the one field of exploration in all the Arctic that promises the largest results with the least amount of labor and danger. With a good boat and provisions for the party at the entrance of Jones Sound, four or six active young men should be able, with ordinary caution, to trace at least 300 miles of that unknown coast, in perfect safety, during a single summer. ”

“ Bessels from the Smith-Sound natives, and from information and drawings I received last summer during my stay on Davis Strait from natives who had crossed Lancaster and Jones Sound, and lived on Ellesmere Land, it is possible to learn something more about this long and unexplored coast. ”

“ Washington, D. C. Your proposed expedition to Ellesmere Land, if carried out as planned, going up and returning by one of the whalers that annually pass by that land, and remaining not more than five months, with a depot of provisions sufficient for two years, seems feasible and safe. If your assistants are scientific men. the results can not fail to be of value. ”

“ After having gone on with a number of maxims of a very base, selfish, and suspicious nature, to the increasing horror of the girls who are listening, Ellesmere passes from the consideration of modes of action to a much more important matter:—
Those who wish for self-advancement should remember, that the art in life is not so much to do a thing well, as to get a thing that has been moderately well done largely talked about. Some foolish people, who should have belonged to another planet, give all their minds to doing their work well. ”

“ And all this happened far away to the north, beyond Labrador, beyond Hudson’s Strait, where the great tides heave the ice about, north of Melville Peninsula—north even of the narrow Fury and Hecla Straits—on the north shore of Baffin Land, where Bylot’s Island stands above the ice of Lancaster Sound like a pudding-bowl wrong side up. North of Lancaster Sound there is little we know anything about, except North Devon and Ellesmere Land; but even there live a few scattered people, next door, as it were, to the very Pole. ”

“ The prospect from the castle is very extensive, comprehending a view of Welch Pool, Vale, and Freiddin Hills.
From hence to
MONTGOMERY,
the Ellesmere Canal accompanied us part of the way; and at length, after a fatiguing walk, we reached the Green Dragon, a small and comfortable inn. The scite of Montgomery is very pleasing, on a gentle ascent, and backed by a steep hill, beautifully clothed with the rich plantations belonging to Lord Powis. The town itself is a straggling place, and little to recommend it. The remains of the castle are now too trifling, to interest the passing traveller. ”

“ They are fellows one knows hardly any thing about."
"Or Russians, or Swedes, or Danes, or Dutchmen?"
"Dutchmen! Hah! the most cheating money-getting, narrow-souled, bargain-driving scoundrels!—No, damn me, a Dutchman is worse—.."
"Worse than a Frenchman?" cried Ellesmere.
"No, nothing can be worse; but I think they are almost as bad."
"Not one nation of Europe then has the honor of being held in any degree of esteem by you ”

“ At Llangollen are linen and woollen manufactures, and near are collieries, lime and iron works. Brewing, malting and slate-quarrying are also carried on. Within the parish, an aqueduct carries the Ellesmere canal across the Dee. ”

“ The Earl of Salisbury, lord high treasurer, lord chancellor Ellesmere, and Sir Ralph Winwood, who became in later years secretary of state, sympathised with his opinions, and a lavish hospitality at Lambeth, which James I strongly recommended him to maintain, secured him the favour of many ‘lords spiritual and temporal, divers privy councillors and men of highest rank.’ But enemies of Abbot were also to be found among the king’s councillors. Sir Robert Carr, the king’s favourite, afterwards Viscount Rochester and Earl of Somerset, viewed his stern integrity with suspicion. ”

“ North Devon island lies to the south of Ellesmere, being separated from it by Jones sound; Lancaster sound bounds it on the south. The island, in shape, somewhat resembles a swimming bird with the head to the northwest and the body east and west. The body is about 220 miles long and averages seventy-five miles across. Grinnell peninsula forms the head, the neck being very irregular, and nearly pierced through by several long bays; the length of head and neck is a hundred miles. ”

“ Yet she also knew that many men had remained unreported for a longer time than Ian Thomas and Eric Hedon and still had returned to civilisation safe at last. There were Greely's men, three-fourths of whom starved to death on their barren cape of Ellesmere Land, but seven finally were found alive by a relief ship; scores of others had come back after suffering disasters which it seemed they could not have survived.
Of course the explorers entering the Arctic in the last two years had made inquiry and search for the missing men. ”

“ It is to be remembered that he did not pretend to describe a good man, but only a successful one. And it is to be remembered likewise that prudence verges toward baseness: and that the difference between the suggestions of each lies very much in the fashion in which these suggestions are put and enforced. As to the use of the trumpet, how many advertising tailors and pill-makers could testify to the soundness of Ellesmere's principle? ”

“ His mood was that of the disciple only eager to be enrolled. And what he found was a quiet, friendly, host, surrounded by a group of men talking the ordinary pleasant Oxford chit-chat—the river, the schools, the Union, the football matches, and so on. Every now and then, as Elsmere stood at the edge of the circle listening, the rugged face in the centre of it would break into a smile, or some boyish speaker would elicit the low spontaneous laugh in which there was such a sound of human fellowship, such a genuine note of self-forgetfulness. ”

“ Meanwhile he was at work on an average three evenings in the week besides the Sunday. In West End drawing-rooms his personal gift had begun to tell no less than in this crowded, squalid East; and as his aims became known, other men, finding the thoughts of their own hearts revealed in him, or touched with that social compunction which is one of the notes of our time, came down and became his helpers. Of all the social projects of which that Elgood Street room became the centre, Elsmere was, in some sense, the life and inspiration. ”

“ The dreaming city seemed to be still brooding in the autumn calm over the long succession of her sons. The continuity, the complexity of human experience; the unremitting effort of the race; the stream of purpose running through it all; these were the kind of thoughts which, in more or less inchoate and fragmentary shape, pervaded the boy’s sensitive mind as he rambled with his mother from college to college.
Mrs. Elsmere, too, was fascinated by Oxford. But for all her eager interest, the historic beauty of the place aroused in her an under-mood of melancholy, just as it did in Robert. ”

“ The Squire kept up with difficulty awhile, a faint glimmer of sarcasm playing now and then round the straight thin-lipped mouth. Then suddenly he stopped.
‘No, let it be. Forget me and my book, Elsmere. Everything can be got out of in this world. By the way, we seem to have reached the ends of the earth. Those are the new Mile End cottages, I believe. With your leave, I’ll sit down in one of them, and send to the Hall for the carriage.’
Elsmere’s repentant attention was drawn at once to his companion. ”

“ She laid on her colours thickly, and Elsmere at once assumed extravagance.
'A saint, a beauty, and a wit all to yourselves in these wilds!' he said, laughing. 'What luck! But what on earth brought them here—a widow and three daughters—from the south? It was an odd settlement surely, though you have one of the loveliest valleys and the purest airs in England.'
'Oh, as to lovely valleys,' said Mrs. Thornburgh, sighing, 'I think it very dull; I always have. When one has to depend for everything on a carrier that gets drunk, too! Why, you know they belong here. ”

“ I look at the people in the streets; I even begin to take an outsider’s interest in social questions, in the puny dikes, which well-meaning people are trying to raise all round us against the encroaching, devastating labor-troubles of the future. By dint of running away from life, I may end by cutting a much more passable figure in it than before. Be consoled, my dear Elsmere; reconsider your remonstrances.’
There, under the great cedar by the gate, stood Mr. Wendover. Illumined as he was by the spring sunshine, he struck Elsmere as looking unusually shrunken and old. ”

“ Elsmere sat indoors reading up the history of the parish system of Surrey, or pretending to do so. He sat in a corner of the study, where he and the vicar protected each other against Mrs. Thornburgh. That good woman would open the door once and again in the morning, and put her head through in search of prey; but on being confronted with two studious men instead of one, each buried up to the ears in folios, she would give vent to an irritable cough and retire discomfited. In reality Elsmere was thinking of nothing in the world but what Catherine Leyburn might be doing that morning. ”

“ On the other hand, London is kind to such men as Robert Elsmere. His talk, his writing, were becoming known and relished; and even the most rigid of the old school found it difficult to be angry with him. His knowledge of the poor and of social questions attracted the men of action; his growing historical reputation drew the attention of the men of thought. Most people wished to know him and to talk to him, and Catherine, smiled upon for his sake, and assumed to be his chief disciple, felt herself more and more bewildered and antagonistic as the season rushed on. ”

“ In these performances Elsmere's aim had always been twofold—the rousing of moral sympathy and the awakening of the imaginative power pure and simple. He ranged the whole world for stories. Sometimes it would be merely some feature of London life itself—the history of a great fire, for instance, and its hairbreadth escapes; a collision in the river; a string of instances as true and homely and realistic as they could be made of the way in which the poor help one another. ”

“ Ellermore itself was a comparatively new house, built upon a fine slope of lawn over the lake, and sheltered by fine trees—great beeches which would not have done discredit to Berkshire, though that is not what we expect to see in Scotland: besides the ashes and firs which we are ready to acknowledge as of northern growth. I was not prepared for the luxuriance of the West Highlands—the mantling green of ferns and herbage everywhere, not to say the wealth of flowers, which formed a centre of still more brilliant colour and cultivation amid all the purple of the hills. ”

“ Henslowe must give way. The law was on their side, and every labourer in Surrey would be the better off for their refusal to be housed like pigs and poisoned like vermin.
In vain. There is an inexhaustible store of cautious endurance in the poor against which the keenest reformer constantly throws himself in vain. Elsmere was beaten. The two men got his word, and shuffled off back to their pestilential hovels, a pathetic content beaming on each face.
Catherine and Robert went back into the study. Rose heard her brother-in-law's passionate sigh as the door swung behind them. ”

“ The cassocked monk-like clergy might preach and ‘process’ in the open air as much as they pleased. The populace, where it was not indifferent, was friendly, and devoted living had borne its natural fruits.
A small incident, which need not be recorded, recalled to Elsmere’s mind—after he had been working some six weeks in the district—the forgotten unwelcome fact that St. Wilfrid’s was the very church where Newcome, first as senior curate and then as vicar, had spent those ten wonderful years into which Elsmere at Murewell had been never tired of inquiring. ”