IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
AGE, 37-38. LORD CLYDE—SIR W. BAKER
quiet gentle manner, with its underlying keen dry humour.
But then if you did happen to offend Sir Colin, it was like
treading on crackers, which was not our General's way."
When Lucknow had been relieved, besieged, reduced, and
finally remodelled by the grand Roads and Demolitions Scheme
of his friend Napier, the latter came down to Allahabad, and he
and yule sought diversion in playing quoits and skittles, the
only occasion on which either of them is known to have evinced
any liking for games.
Before this time Yule had succeeded his friend Baker as
de facto Secretary to Government for Public Works, and on
Baker's retirement in 1858, Yule was formally appointed his
successor.43 Baker and Yule had, throughout their association,
worked in perfect unison, and the very differences in their char-
acters enhanced the value of their co-operation ; the special
qualities of each friend mutually strengthened and completed
each other. Yule's was by far the more original and creative
mind, Baker's the more precise and, at least in a professional
sense, the more highly-trained organ. In chi\ alrous sense of
honour, devotion to duty, and natural generosity, the men stood
equal ; but while Yule was by nature impatient and irritable, and
liable, until long past middle age, to occasional sudden bursts of
uncontrollable anger, generally followed by periods of black
depression and almost absolute silence,44 Baker was the very
reverse. Partly by natural temperament, but also certainly by
severe self-discipline, his manner was invincibly placid and his
temper imperturbable.45 Yet none was more tenacious in main-
taining whatever he judged right.
Baker, whilst large-minded in great matters, was extremely
s conventional in small ones, and Yule must sometimes have tried
his feelings in this respect. The particulars of one such tragic
occurrence have survived. Yule, who was colour-blind,4G and in
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a
43 Baker went home in November, 18 57, but did not retire until the following year.
44 Nothing was more worthy of respect in Yule's fine character than the energy and success with which he mastered his natural temperament in the last ten years of his life, when few would have guessed his original fiery disposition.
45 Not without cause did Sir J. P. Grant officially record that " to his imperturbable temper the Government of India owed much."
46 Yule's colour-blindness was one of the cases in which Dalton, the original investigator of this optical defect, took special interest. At a later date (1859) he sent Yule, through Professor Nilson, skeins of coloured silks to name. Yule's elder brother Robert had the same peculiarity of sight, and it was also present in two earlier
d
VOL. I.
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