ON THEIR RETURN the three Atkinsons settled into Hawk Cottage, a ‘ramshackle but picturesque residence’1 in what was then Old Brompton on the western edge of London, with only fields and orchards to the north, today just off the busy Brompton Road. It was a two-storeyed cottage with a small garden and a palisaded fence on an unmade road. They took on one young maid, probably Helen Ryan if the reference which Lucy requested from her previous employer was good.

Thomas had been away for seven years, Lucy for sixteen (eight years with the Muravyov family and another eight with Thomas), and London was growing the while. In Thomas’s lifetime, indeed, its population doubled from under one million to two and a half.2 While he was in Russia Queen Victoria had come to the throne, the Crimean War had taken place, Britain’s Corn Laws were finally repealed (1846), 1848 became known as the Year of Revolutions (eight in Europe) and the Crystal Palace had been built in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition. During his long absence ‘the writer of Thomas’s entry in the Dictionary of the Architectural Publication Society killed him – on paper. And his reappearance in the doubtless foggy, smoky streets of London was a surprising resuscitation to many of his old acquaintances.’

Hawk Cottage
On their return to London the three Atkinsons settled into Hawk Cottage, Old Brompton, then on the edge of the countryside, now on the Brompton Road, where they were visited by (unknown) high-born Russians.

The first letter we know Thomas received on his return to England was sent on behalf of Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister, writing from his estate at Broadlands in Hampshire on 8 October 1856, acknowledging Thomas’s letter of five days before and thanking him for ‘the offers therein made’ (if we only knew what they were!), but could not avail himself of Mr Atkinson’s kindness until his return to town.3 Henry Blackett of his future London publishers, Hurst and Blackett, wrote the same month asking for the manuscript of ‘Eastern [sic] & Western Siberia’ by 1 January 1857 – hardly two and a half months ahead – although we don’t know when Thomas began it. On its receipt they would pay Thomas £150 towards his proportion of the profits and produce the book ‘in the most handsome and attractive manner [true], with elegantly bound copies for the Emperor of Russia and Queen Victoria’, and later the same month for Lord Clarendon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (who had been attaché in St Petersburg for three years). His private secretary informed Thomas by letter that ‘The Queen will receive you at Windsor Castle to examine your drawings … tomorrow at 2.30 o’clock’4 and it is likely that he presented one or more watercolours, but the Royal Collection has no knowledge of them.

His return thus got off to an astonishing start. The same month he went to Germany, according to a letter to him from Sir Roderick Murchison, President of the Geographical Society (Royal only from 1859, founded in 1830), taking books and letters to the latter’s scientific friends including Alexander von Middendorff, of whom more anon:5 ‘I cannot express’, wrote Murchison, ‘how highly I have been gratified by making your acquaintance nor can I adequately express the admiration I entertain for such a traveler and such a delineator of the grand natural features of the heart of Asia as yourself.’6

Later that autumn the leading London gallery Colnaghi’s put on a special exhibition of Thomas’s Russian work which the Art-Journal called ‘a most extraordinary collection of water-colour drawings…. We could fill a page or two…’, but they did not, producing a very lame review, and sadly the exhibition was not a great commercial success.7

The following autumn of 1857 saw the publication of his first book, Oriental and Western Siberia: A Narrative of Seven Years’ Exploration and Adventures in Siberia, Mongolia, the Kirghis Steppes, Chinese Tartary, and a Part of Central Asia, dedicated to Alexander II who rewarded him with a diamond ring. At 611 pages, it contained twenty well-printed lithographs, thirty-two wood engravings and a fold-out map of his route (not entirely accurate). It proved a great success and there was a second edition the following year, but it was an even greater success in America: it was published in New York in 1858 by Harper and Brothers, then in 1859 by a second publisher, J.W. Badley, in Philadelphia, going into seven editions. There was a Spanish edition but no French one, only an article in the Tour de Monde, and in Germany merely a lengthy extract in an 1864 travel anthology.8 And, strangely, there was no Russian edition either then or since, other than a translation of that German anthology and one chapter translated only recently.9

The book brought him fame in his native land, not so much as an artist but as ‘the Siberian traveller’, and paved his way into Victorian London society. The reviews generally greeted it with praise, but The Times in its review of over 6,000 words criticises its lack of information (not so, surely), ‘the many tedious details through which the reader has to wade’ (certainly the many landscape descriptions are verbose), the total lack of any year (agreed), apparently a four-year gap in the narrative between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next, the lack of any latitude, longitude or elevation, and the silence on Russia’s approach towards British India. Nevertheless, The Times condescended, its plentiful illustrations ‘will find it a place in many London drawing rooms’ and the average reader is recommended to read the last half first, ‘much the best written’.10

Other reviews were distinctly more positive. The Daily News called it ‘a book of travels which in value and sterling interest must take rank as a landmark in geographical literature’ embellished by ‘coloured illustrations and woodcuts of a high order’. The Art-Journal found it ‘a most entertaining narrative’, difficult to put down, and found national pride in the ‘energy, boldness and daring of our fellow-countryman’.11 The Athenaeum considered it ‘an animated and intelligent narrative’.12 The Saturday Review wrote that despite the ‘somewhat monotonous descriptions’, the disjointed style and imperfect English, this is a ‘very remarkable work … most important, instructive, and amusing’.13

The Observer of 29 November 1857 wrote that no work of modern travel

records greater energy or privations and dangers braved by a traveller determined to investigate for himself the physical peculiarities of an immense territory. What Livingston has done for Europeans in opening up Southern and Central Africa, Mr Atkinson has achieved in his seven years’ exploration and adventures in Siberia, Mongolia, the Kirghis Steppes, Chinese Tartary, and a great part of Central Asia. His book … merits a place in every library and in every collection of works of travel.

And across the Atlantic the New York Daily Tribune gave it a long review starting: ‘Few of the recent books of travel, which have attained such an extensive and well-deserved popularity, surpass this volume in rare and curious information, or in the combination of picturesque effects with solid intelligence.’ It also included three long excerpts, praising the author’s power of description, and concluded it was ‘not only for the cursory reader, but entitled to a place in the libraries of the studious’.14

In January 1858, following its publication, Thomas sought election to London’s Geographical Society. He was proposed by Murchison, the President (and founder member), from personal knowledge, with four supporting signatures, and was elected a Fellow. Murchison, with whom he was to have many dealings and who had preceded him to the Urals, was also head of the Geological Society, of which Thomas also became a Fellow, addressing it on the bronze relics he had found in a Siberian goldmine. Murchison has been described as ‘imperious … ambitious, tyrannical, possessed of seemingly limitless energy and ego … [although he] could also be urbane and charming’.15 Some of the same attributes could be equally applied to Thomas, whose one-time travelling companion Charles Edward Austin had also returned to England and in 1858 joined both the Geological and Geographical societies as a Fellow. It is interesting in the latter case that, although Murchison proposed Austin similarly as a candidate from personal knowledge, the six seconders did not include Thomas.

‘Discussing the journey to Nor-Zaisan’
An incident in Thomas’s first book: the two Kazakhs are wearing horseskin coats.

That same year, 1858, started with the first of many letters from William Spottiswoode, outstanding mathematician and physicist, junior partner of the printers Eyre and Spottiswoode and future president of both the British Association and the Royal Society. He had returned from a ‘very successful tour’ in Russia which he wrote up as a book16 and thanked Thomas for his ‘very valuable letters’.17 Thomas evidently had great charm, was much in demand in London society, and many people wanted to see his sketches. He was in touch with the great and the good, Charles Dickens for one, whose books in translation were immensely popular in Russia.18 Thomas had written to him – Tolstoy’s favourite author – and he replied to Thomas’s ‘very interesting letter’:

I have been deeply touched by your communication to me of the approval and good will of those unfortunate gentlemen among whom your wanderings have carried you [the Decembrist exiles]. If you ever see any of them pray assure them that I believe I have never received a token of remembrance in my life with so much sadness mingled with so much gratification.… God help them, and speed the time when their descendants shall speak of their sufferings as of the sacrifice that secured their own happiness and freedom.19

Sir Roderick Murchison, four times President of the Royal Geographical Society

He also heard from Thackeray, another other great literary figure of the time, to whom he had sent one or more manuscripts which unfortunately were mislaid.20

A well-known English artist of that era, James Duffield Harding (1797–1863), thanked Thomas for the ‘very handsome vol.’ of his travels, and said, ‘It is strange that from unexplored fields in the frozen and torrid zones we should simultaneously have such travellers as you and Dr Livingstone.’21 And after Thomas shared a platform with Livingstone at the RGS, the Illustrated London News headed its report ‘The Travellers Atkinson and Livingstone’, which must have greatly pleased Thomas. Evidently his name was put forward to receive the RGS’s Gold Medal of 1858. But Colonel George Everest, the first Surveyor-General of India, after whom the world’s highest mountain is named, for one did not approve: ‘although his merits as an artist are unquestionably great, yet as a geographer they are of little or no account’.22

And the same month Palmerston’s Private Secretary sent thanks from Downing Street for Thomas’s letter with its account of ‘your work on Siberia’.23 Lord Clarendon, via the Foreign Office’s Assistant Under Secretary, T.V. Lister,24 thanked Thomas for his ‘most interesting work’ and advised him (re Thomas’s query) to forward a copy of his book to the Tsar through the Russian Legation in London; he said he would consult Queen Victoria and Prince Albert about Thomas’s offer to present them with copies of his books in person. Lister added that he was himself reading the book with great pleasure.25 Sure enough, Thomas was invited to Windsor Castle in late December to present ‘the elegantly bound copy’ of his first book to the Queen and Prince Consort26 – his second meeting with the monarch.

The same month of December Thomas was invited to the Geographical Society’s very select Club Dinner,27 as there was much interest in his book and many requests to see his watercolours. Lister of the Foreign Office, for instance, had a friend, both architect and watercolourist, who ‘expressed … so strong a desire to see your drawings & sketches that remembering the pleasure & interest they afforded me’ he hoped he would be allowed to see them.28

Early in 1858 Spottiswoode, who was to print Thomas’s second book, sent him two requests from his friends to see his sketches, and Francis Galton, scientist, explorer, founder of eugenics29 and cousin of Charles Darwin, later knighted and FRS, sent a homely invitation to both Atkinsons to dine.30 The Rev. Charles Kingsley, author of The Water-Babies, Westward Ho! and other books, thanked him ‘much’ for his ‘splendid book’ which he was shortly to review,31 and Thomas answered Kingsley’s queries including one on the population of Central Asia which he ‘was fully persuaded [was] on the increase, that is when you reach the plains of Mongolia beyond the influence of Russian Brandy. This has been more fatal to the Tribes than Gunpowder.’32

There was a sizeable correspondence with Henry Blackett which included a request for a note of introduction to Faraday, the famous inventor and electrical pioneer,33 and there was a query regarding the northernmost latitude at which he had met the ‘Bearded Vulture’ (or lammergeier, Gypaetus barbatus).34 His answer was approximately 44 degrees latitude in the Alatau mountains.

In June 1858, more than a year and a half after their return, there was a first sale of his watercolours at Christie’s –perhaps he was waiting for publication in the hope of better sales. Of the sixty-three ‘watercolour drawings’ only half were sold, which must have been a huge disappointment. Three more sales at Christie’s followed across three years (1861–63) of nineteen watercolours – some repeats from the first sale and a few new ones – plus the original drawings for his two books: all apparently unsold. This was even more disappointing, particularly because of his success otherwise. But, as was pointed out, the unknown landscapes were not very likely to appeal to people who would never see them in person and to whom they would mean almost nothing.

In September 1858 John Arrowsmith, the cartographer who had produced the fold-out map for Thomas’s first book, returned the rough drawing of his map for his second book and sends his ‘kind remembrance to Mrs Atkinson’.35 That month Thomas spoke in Leeds twice at the British Association for the Advancement of Science on the volcanoes of Central Asia, ‘illustrated by a beautiful series of drawings’, and on a journey ‘through parts of the Alatou in Chinese Tartary’. And the next month the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, ‘naturally proud of their Country man’, invited him to lecture. He accepted with much pleasure but wrote that he had hitherto

resisted all attempts to bring me before the public in such a capacity [as a writer] and many have tried in vain. I have a great dread of making myself ridiculous or appearing egotistical by relating matters connected with my wanderings. However my first effort will be in my native county [yet he had only just spoken twice in Leeds] and I can only hope that the good people of Leeds who listen to my description of the regions and people so little known will let kindness govern their criticism [a surprising touch of false modesty].36

In January 1859 Thomas was unanimously elected an honorary member. He deemed it an honour ‘to be associated with a society of yours and such men in my own native county’ and it was ‘some recompense after the years of toil besides which it makes me feel that I have added a few scraps of information to the knowledge of my countrymen’.37

In October he was invited by the Ethnological Society of London38 to read his paper ‘on the migration of the Kirghis [Kazakhs] through their Mountain Passes to their Summer Pastures’, a ‘very personal, non-scientific account’ which he had read at the British Association in Leeds (under a different title). More significantly, that month Lord Clarendon, the Foreign Secretary, surfaced again, happy to receive Thomas the following Monday (10 October 1858) – to discuss Russia’s advance?

In December Spottiswoode invited Thomas to hear the new President of the Royal Society speak, reminding Thomas that he had offered to make a drawing of one of Spottiswoode’s ‘Eastern sketches’. Although he knew that Thomas was much occupied in writing his second book, he might ‘sometimes like a little change of occupation’ and would be pleased to pay £50 for it.39

In January 1859 Thomas was proposing to sell his watercolours at Colnaghi’s, but his publisher Blackett warned him against this, advising him (it turned out wrongly) that in May and June instead he would be ‘certain to find a sale, they [his works] are unique, no one has trodden this way before’,40 and he proposed at the end of the month to give Thomas £100 for his projected work on the Amur (‘two slight volumes’ at this time), sending his kind regards to Mrs Atkinson. A note in February from Lord Clarendon’s office sent his ‘best thanks’ for his copy, which ‘he will read with very great interest’.41

That month he was invited to the House of Commons to address committees on two successive days: first by William Ewart, MP and humanitarian reformer – asked to choose his subject, he opted appropriately for Russia’s penal system42 – and secondly by the Colonisation & Settlement India Committee chaired by Ewart,43 which questioned him on the commerce and products of the regions he had visited. A year later Ewart thanked Thomas44 for showing his daughters his ‘interesting drawings’ and was to write again, inviting Thomas to dinner, as he was about to speak in the House of Commons on Britain’s trade with Central Asia and Russia’s competition there and wanted some facts.45 As for the prestigious Royal Society, among the most important exhibits at a scientific and literary party at Burlington House (then its headquarters) was ‘a variety of extremely beautiful vases and cut gems from the imperial establishment of Ekaterinburg, in Siberia, exhibited by Mr Atkinson’.46

In March Blackett asked if Thomas had given consideration to ‘a work on the Amoor [Amur]’47 and in May asked him to see Captain Speke (John Hanning Speke, 1827–64, the famous African explorer), ideally as soon as possible as he had just returned from discovering and naming Lake Victoria, and Blackett feared he might publish elsewhere.

There were other public appearances at a lower level; for instance, Thomas offered to exhibit some Siberian sketches to north London’s Hampstead Society and answer questions, and was inevitably invited to talk about his travels.48 Many (undated) friendly invitations came from Admiral H.T. Murray, an illegitimate son of William IV (according to the adult Alatau), living in Albany, an exclusive address off Piccadilly.49 The invitations were inter alia to meet Burton, of Central Africa fame, and the elusive Captain Pim, whom the Atkinsons had been expecting in vain in Irkutsk.50 And an invitation to dinner came from another Murray and his wife: John Murray, the best-known publisher of the time, who had made his name (and fortune) with Scott and Byron. Then on New Year’s Day 1860 Windsor Castle informed Thomas that the Queen had permitted him to dedicate to her his work on Central Asia.51 This Yorkshire village lad could hardly have done better than dedicate, with their permission, his first book to the Emperor of Russia and his second to the Queen of Great Britain.

The aristocracy entered the scene too. Thomas wanted to see at the War Department Earl de Grey and Ripon (elected president of the RGS in 1859 and, as amateur architect, first president of the RIBA, 1835–59).52 We do not know the reason for that visit, but they must have at least touched on architecture. The Earl marked his ‘high esteem’ for Thomas by sending a cheque for £25 for any drawing that he would choose ‘which I shall always value highly’.53 He later felt confident that he would be ‘greatly pleased with the drawing. I like the subject you have chosen very much’,54 and the next year (1860) he ‘gladly’ accepted Thomas’s offer of exhibiting his ‘drawings’ at the Earl’s Geographical Soirée.55 Lord Ashburton, President of the RGS between two of Murchison’s presidencies, invited him to dine, bringing a portfolio of his sketches; Lord Somers was ‘very anxious to see his drawings’,56 and the 3rd Earl of Ducie sent £90 for his two.57 Conceivably Ducie may have planted some Siberian species, obtained from Thomas, at his home, Tortworth Court, near Bristol, then noted for its worldwide specimens. In 1860 the Duke of Manchester58 (who had ordered Thomas’s second book) was keen to invite both the Atkinsons to his castle (Kimbolton), although it was never to happen.59 And Russian aristocracy appeared on the scene, including Prince P.E. Dolgoruky (descendant of the twelfth-century founder of Moscow),60 whom he had probably met in Russia and to whom, for reasons unknown, he had sent (to Revel, now Tallinn) ‘200 lb silver’ – very odd.61 On one occasion62 Mr and Mrs Atkinson were invited to an exhibition, so once again she was not excluded totally from what was basically a man’s world.

Thomas’s publisher Blackett believed that the interest in Thomas’s second book would depend on the information about ‘the Amoor’, which so far (late April) he had totally omitted,63 and he was increasingly concerned about the incomplete manuscript, writing on 8 May that 1 June was ‘the very latest time the book should appear’.64 By 12 July everything was finally ready except the map which was ‘fast driving me mad’ (Blackett to Thomas).

But the book was out by the end of the month.65 Travels in the Regions of the Upper and Lower Amoor and the Russian Acquisitions on the Confines of India and China, a sequel to his first, successful book, bore on the title page after his own name the initials ‘F.R.G.S.’ and ‘F.G.S.’ plus ‘Author of Oriental and Western Siberia’. There was a long subtitle, too. Having presented papers to learned societies and been elected to two of them, he included those initials, aspiring to be seen as more than an artist and travel writer and indeed downgrading his first book as ‘nothing beyond a narrative of incidents and observations … to explain and illustrate pictorial representations’. Now, ‘the higher interest of the subject has induced me to attempt to produce information of a more elevated character … [for] the Geologist, Botanist, Ethnologist, and other scientific scholars…’.66 The book went into a second edition the following year, trading off the success of its predecessor, but it was a curious and rather unsatisfactory book in many ways. Despite the main title, only the last five of the nineteen chapters refer to the Amur, almost entirely written in the third person, so the reader may well wonder if this really is a personal description. And once again Lucy and Alatau were totally omitted; a wife would have been bad enough, totally inconsistent with such macho travels in perilous places, but a baby was unthinkable!

In his first chapter, Thomas explained that recent Russian acquisitions in Central Asia stretched out ‘far towards the Himalaya; and in 1857 that vast tract of country, the valley of the Amoor [was] said to have been ceded by the Emperor of China to the Emperor of Russia’. What had been published ‘in the public prints’, however, ‘had no foundation in fact’, there had been no reliable description of the area and ‘no recent traveller, it was believed, had penetrated [it].… In short … it was a terra incognita’.67 But, as he ‘had passed several years exploring this remote portion of the globe’ (true perhaps of Siberia and Central Asia but not the Amur) and was the only European who had been permitted to enter the new Russian territory (true again of Central Asia except for Austin and, of course, Lucy – Alatau had not entered it, strictly speaking, having been born there), he concluded that his wanderings might be ‘of some interest’ to his countrymen.

He pointed out the economic significance of this huge addition of territory – ‘incalculable’ mineral wealth and a ‘prodigious’ amount of agricultural produce. But his optimistic predictions were too early to be sound: West Siberia was to prove far more significant both economically and agriculturally. And he stressed that as Russia had ‘now very nearly approached the possessions of Great Britain in India’ it would not be unreasonable to expect, considering the speed of Russia’s advance ‘in the East’, the desire to expand south, and ‘a further stride across the Himalayas to Calcutta’ might seem inevitable to ‘the English statesman’, although Thomas was careful to stress that there was no proof of such intention.68 Nonetheless this was the age of the so-called ‘Great Game’: the rivalry between Russia and Britain for parts of mainland Asia. Thomas’s first-hand information would certainly have been of interest to his own government, but he was hardly a player; he had his own artistic agenda.

His first fifteen chapters take us back to Kopal and the Kazakh steppe, the elopement of the young Sultan Suk’s intended and her tragic fate (two chapters’ worth), and, basically, overmatter from his first book. This one is enlivened by his first chapter: reports reached Barnaul that, first 3,000, then 7,000 and later 10,000 ‘Asiatics’ were invading West Siberia, rapidly advancing, and furthermore that they were led by Atkinson himself. It was said that some towns were defended, others deserted and many troops despatched, but the whole thing was an absurdly inflated myth, based on the escape of forty Circassian prisoners from a Siberian goldmine. Yet was it true at all?

The Athenaeum gave the book eight and a half columns including several long quotes, and felt that ‘The entire volume is admirable for the spirit, unexaggerated tone, and the mass of fresh materials by which this really new world is made accessible to us’.69 The Literary Examiner of 28 July 1860 believed

Even if some reviews were critical there was a positive note from Lord Palmerston’s secretary at 10 Downing Street at the end of July 1860, sending his ‘best thanks for the highly interesting work on the Amoor’, and another note of thanks from Gladstone, the future Prime Minister, thanking Atkinson ‘very particularly’ for sending him his new work on the Amoor (sic). ‘I do not doubt from your high reputation but its matter … is in due keeping with the importance of the subject and the beauty of the form.’70 Thomas’s hope of presenting his book personally to Queen Victoria (to whom it was dedicated) came to naught as she was ‘much occupied’ with her departure to Scotland, so he was asked to send it instead,71 and within three days received thanks from the Queen and Prince Albert ‘for his valuable and interesting addition to their libraries’.72

However, Thomas’s health had now started to decline and in August Blackett was ‘exceedingly glad to hear the change [probably to the South Wales coast] is doing you good’ and hoped that he and ‘Mrs Atkinson’ – the customary appellation – ‘will take in a good share of health and strength for the winter’.73 In September, however, he wrote to say that Thomas owed him altogether £112 12s 5d for his first book (where had all the money gone? free copies? living the life of a gentleman? had he forgotten his imprisonment for debt many years before?), the Amur book had not yet paid its expenses and, happy though he would be to grant Thomas a further advance as requested, ‘some limit must be put upon advances’.74

But that September John Spencer Stanhope, the squire of Thomas’s native village, Cawthorne, wrote from Cannon Hall where Thomas’s father had been stonemason and his mother housemaid, thanked Thomas for his letter and ‘splendid book’ which he would read with much interest, was sorry to hear of his health problems and hoped for his speedy recovery. Thomas was thinking of a visit to shoot, and Spencer Stanhope hoped to be at home to receive him although ‘we have scarcely anything to shoot at’.75 The squire’s younger brother, the Rev. Charles – Thomas’s supporter all his life – wrote to thank him for the very handsome volume (‘much more interesting than the first, as the area covered is more unexplored’). He valued the present from the author who ‘does not forget an old friend who knew him in his low estate. I honour you the more for your true [nobility] in not ignoring your origins.’ He also invited Thomas to stay (in Weaverham, Cheshire, where he was vicar, and there was much game) and was sorry to hear of his health.76 Thomas did stay, they went hunting together that autumn77 and then went on – Thomas an honoured guest – to Cannon Hall, which led to Thomas’s proposing the son of his host, the squire (a great traveller in his youth and Thomas’s inspiration), for election to the Royal Geographical Society – a true reversal of roles.

Thomas was the chief speaker at Cawthorne’s harvest festival,78 where he was ‘very warmly received’ by ‘the large assembly’ and presented a signed copy of his second book to the village library.

He went on with the Rev. Charles to Earl Fitzwilliam’s Wentworth Woodhouse in south Yorkshire, reputed to have been the largest privately owned house in Europe,80 where he was the ‘lion of the evening’ at one of its great dinners, and to other country houses.

Arrowsmith wrote in early October, very sorry that Thomas was not gaining strength as fast as anticipated, and hoped that a little dry weather would help him greatly. In November Spottiswoode wrote again, very glad to hear that Thomas had arranged with Longman’s for the publication of a third work (probably about the Decembrist exiles).

Despite the state of his health, Thomas was planning a second trip to the north in late November, invited to Yorkshire country houses, if not stately homes: among them Farnley Hall, where J. M.W. Turner was a frequent guest for almost twenty-five years.81 He does seem to have gone to the north, but on his return to London was taken ‘very ill’ and Christmas was his worst ever. The doctor wanted to send him to a warmer climate, but funds would not permit. However, Cawthorne’s squire did send him a box of ham and some famous Cannon Hall grapes, and another Yorkshire friend sent a turkey and some Yorkshire bacon by train to be enjoyed on Christmas Day. He was thanked for sending in return two photographs, one of ‘yourself and your dear Alatau’, the other an ‘interesting photograph of Alatau’s birthplace’ (does that still exist, and who would have had a camera there in the 1840s or 50s?). The Rev. Charles wished (by post) the three Atkinsons a happy Christmas – and wrote again in February 1861, having heard nothing and impatient to know if Thomas’s health was improving. Then, ‘very much grieved’ to hear that it had worsened, he offered to get him a cottage on the Isle of Wight and suggested different medicines.

Blackett wrote twice, once to say ‘very glad to hear of your presentation to Her Majesty’ – so did he present his second book in person after all? – and secondly to say that the final advances of £30 and £70 were brought forward; Thomas now had a credit of £7 14s 1d and, having carefully considered the question of buying his remaining interest in the two books, he was happy to settle for 100 guineas.

In May Lucy wrote to the Rev. Charles on his behalf saying that it has become ‘one continued and painful illness – he is now reduced to a complete skeleton, having had so many drawbacks to his recovery’, particularly when thrown from an omnibus on to the pavement, breaking one rib and injuring two others, which their doctor said, ‘not another man in ten thousand would have survived’, followed by a severe cold. Thomas asked her to write that at present ‘he appears to be of no earthly value to anyone excepting … Madame Tussaud, and provided she would pay the price he would have no objection to being exhibited as a living mummy’. She added that Thomas had received ‘another splendid ring’ from the Tsar, a large emerald set in diamonds, a mark of approbation for the volume on the Amur.82

With Thomas’s health deteriorating, he and Lucy finally left London for some sea air – and a hoped-for return to health – on the east Kent coast at Walmer, where they lodged in a modest house on the front. (Lucy’s great-uncle and benefactor, Joseph Sherrard, who had voyaged to Australia, the Pacific and Latin America in the Royal Navy, had died in Walmer in 1835.)83 In early September Lucy wrote to the Rev. Charles:

For months past I had been anxious about him, and when we had to leave home for the sea side, I felt loth to quit my home. Arrived at Walmer, we had a most comfortable and pretty lodging, facing the sea. Here he had the sofa drawn to the window where he used to lie and watch the beautiful vessels passing to and fro; – he appeared so happy gazing on England’s wealth. Then I used to lead him down to the sea-beach and there he, stretched on a mattress, dozed away his days. When awake I read to him, and all went on well; still I knew he was growing daily weaker: his step became heavier, and he leaned with greater weight upon me. At length we were compelled to call in a doctor, and he urged the necessity of staying indoors altogether, but before this I must tell you the very great interest he excited in everybody: the poor sailors and fishermen used to look upon him with such pitying eyes, and as he passed near a form on which some of them sat they would rise to allow him to pass. Even the little children, when they had perceived he was asleep, would pass by on tiptoe. One fine little fellow not four years of age, with beautiful dark Italian eyes, came to me one day and asked if the gentleman was very ill. I answered that he was ill; he looked very searchingly into his face, and then went and laid his head down beside him on the pillow. I could but look and think what a beautiful facsimile of winter and spring; there was the opening and closing bud – the one leaving the world, and the other just entering upon it; instantaneous came the thought, which is happiest, he who had fought the world’s battles, or he who was just about encountering them? …

Reluctantly I abandoned our short walk; then came the time when he could no longer, even with my aid, walk to his bedroom. Then I had a sailor to carry him. You should have seen the honest rough fellow take him up as if he were a baby; and then when he laid him down, it was with such a look of sorrow and pity, he would say, ‘I wish you better, sir.’ I quite loved that man. Then came a time when he could no longer wash himself, for long I had dressed and undressed him; then came the day when he would have only a dressing gown on; then that was cast aside on his last day. On the night before he left us I watched and never supposed he would see daylight again, and yet his sleep was calm and beautiful; he awoke about every half-hour, and then the breathing was very heavy, and the incessant ais! ais! but he never once murmured – not a sound passed his lips – he was perfectly collected, his mind never wondered for a moment. I had never been near the death-bed before – but there was that about him told me he was not too long. When daylight came I sat down on the bed beside him and ventured to tell him that it might please the Almighty to take him, but he seemed so tenacious of life and so hopeful, I thought perhaps he feared death. I asked him, but he said very mildly and gently, ‘I hope not.’ He became very anxious to leave his bed, after I had talked with him some little time. I had him carried to his sofa; I could have carried him, but he would not let me – his sorrow always was that I had so much to do for him, and yet he never liked me to be out of his sight a moment. He appeared all the morning to be in deep prayer, he had his hands constantly clasped; once he asked me to raise him; I placed him in a sitting posture. He then asked for the middle and side windows to be closed, and the blinds drawn down; he looked to the east, clasped his hands, and I for the first instant thought he was amused with the vessels – but I shortly perceived he was in prayer – he remained thus for a quarter of an hour, and then asked to be laid down. I did so, – then he asked for all windows to be open, and the blinds drawn up. At this moment the sun shone forth, and with a smile he said, ‘What a beautiful glim of sunshine.’ Ten minutes before he quitted us he enquired for the doctor; I told him I had sent for him. I was kneeling beside him when I saw the change come over him; he tried to speak, but could not. He then as I held his head fixed his eyes upon me, and so passed off into eternity like an infant closing his eyes for sleep, – there was no struggle – so calm, so placid, and so beautiful he looked – there was no pallor of death – the hands to the last were just as when living – it was the forehead which was so marble like. Poor Alatau – my heart bled to see my child – he and his father were such good friends. I was obliged to put my own sorrow on one side to comfort my child.…

 

Yours very sincerely

 

Lucy Atkinson84