Re-inventing the Inventors

It's been a while since I last added to the blog and during that time I've been reading some of Milne's earliest known stories.

Published in the Argonaut and around the spring of 1878 these early works help fill in some of the gaps as yet largely unaccounted for between Milne leaving Britain and his appearance at the 1874 San Francisco Inventor's Fare. As this could account for nearly a decade of his life any and all snippets pertaining to his life prior to becoming a writer are always useful.

A Reminiscence of Vasquez, In The Cow Countries and A Mexican Family on the Move mainly recall events from and around 1873 when Milne was still leading an itinerant lifestyle and working as a shepherd, cook and cow-hand. Although these were unlikely to be the careers of choice for a classics scholar, if Milne harbored any sense of regret for the direction his life had taken then it doesn't come across in what are lively, jolly recollections of a period that many people of his status might be tempted to play down or erase from their own personal history.  As was reiterated throughout a Eadweard Muybridge biography I read recently (Muybridge, who was living in San Francisco at the same time as Milne, conducted photographic motion studies which eventually played a part in the creation of cinema) California was at that time a place one could reinvent oneself- several times over if required, as Muybridge's 'creative' personal history demonstrated.

Eadweard Muybridge

This aspect of Milne's early years in America have long confused me, arriving as he did with such impeccable credentials; a descendant of Robert the Bruce, the son of a minister and a graduate (or at least a former student) of Oxford University he had a starting point which may have stretched credulity even for serial re-inventors like Muybridge. Perhaps though this was Milne's reasoning.It is quite possible that he thought no-one would actually believe him had he told them the truth- not that the stories of spring 1878 gave any clue as to how he actually presented himself to his prospective employers. Maybe, like some graduates today, he entirely played down his qualifications and credentials in order to obtain a post evidently beneath his considerable talents. A novel inversion of what was apparently the norm in 1870s California!

As with most of the biographical material I've thus far turned up about Milne anything approximating an answer only leads to a dozen new questions. The stories (which I'll go into in more depth in a later blog) give no clues as to how or why Milne initially emigrated or what happened between shepherding in the company of an infamous and dangerous outlaw in 1873 and his appearance at the Inventor's Fare the following year.

A Singular Circumstance

So, before leaving  behind the Album for the Cupar Antiquarian and Literary Society 1840 it might be worth a recap of the somewhat convoluted route my research took, and why I though it worthwhile.

The obituary for Milne’s father, Rev GG Milne, stated that he was a keen antiquarian, which lead me to the aforementioned album. Among the relatively small number of entries in the album were two which were definitely connected to Milne Snr. The second of these was a report of a public debate on the origin of archaeological finds discovered near Largoward, Fife. This in turn lead me to James Graham-Campbell’s  paper about the ‘Norrie’s Law’ dig which referenced JM Leighton’s 1840 book History of the County of Fife. 

 Following up on this I read Leighton’s chapter on Cupar which covered legends connected with the Milne’s family home, Carslogie House. These legends, apparently made famous by Sir Walter Scott, involved the ‘Clephane Horn’ which was sounded to rally troops affiliated to the previous occupants of Carslogie, the Clephanes. Leighton also noted that the Clephane family had, at some undetermined point, been gifted, by some undetermined monarch, a steel hand: a metal prosthetic made to compensate a member of the Clephanes who had lost such a limb in the service of the King in question.

With me so far?

As I mentioned previously, the Antiquarian’s album was by and large incomplete. In fact after flicking through several empty pages I nearly put the book down believing that there was no more to see. However, my perseverance paid off when, on the very last page, I spotted a few more cuttings- most of which concerned reports of stock shares.

No information about who had included any of these or why, but this one in particular caught my eye.

 The inclusion of such a small cutting pertaining to such an obscure story as reported, initially, in the Elgin Courant may seem a little odd but I believe the interest in this ‘Singular circumstance’ can be attributed to the Rev. Milne. I say this for two reasons; firstly Milne was, demonstrably, interested in archaeology and secondly he was born in Keith, Banffshire not far from Ballindaloch.

From these articles then we have references to tales which concern ancient and mysterious civilizations (Picts),  advanced technology (the steel hand), literary connections (via Sir Walter Scott) and, potentially, subterranean suspended animation (the unearthed toad) not to mention the aspect of wireless audio communication (the Clephane Horn). Any one of these could be viewed as fodder for an aspiring science fiction writer and I believe that Robert Duncan Milne may well have incorporated several of these aspects into what was perhaps his most famous, or indeed most infamous story, Ten Thousand Years in Ice.

First published 14 January 1889 (available to read here: http://ia700800.us.archive.org/3/items/argonaut241889251889sanf/argonaut241889251889sanf.pdf) Ten Thousand Years in Ice is a first-person account of “how a prehistoric man was resuscitated from a frozen state” and caused something of a sensation when it was translated for publication in Hungary, something I’ll look at in more detail in my next entry.

The Steel Hand

Following on from his paragraph about the apparently famous 'Horn of Carslogie' JM Leighton, in his book ‘History of the County of Fife’, continued with this absolute gem:

“Beside the horn, the family of Clephane had long been in possession of a hand made of steel, in imitation of that of a man, which has also been brought into notice by Sir Walter. The tradition is that this steel hand was a present from one of the kings of Scotland to a baron of Carslogie, who had lost his hand in battle, in defence of his country. It does not seem, however, to be an agreed point what king this was, or which of the long line of Barons of Carslogie received the royal gift. It has been said that the hand was lost at Bannockburn, and that the gift was made by Robert the Bruce; but others say that it was at a much more recent period, and that it was presented to the great grandfather of the late General Clephane.” pp37-38

Images of the steel hand can be seen here, pages 206-207:

  http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N9zVBQGNB1MC&pg=PA227&lpg=PA227&dq=horn+of+carslogie&source=bl&ots=ZuG2Xs5CJ_&sig=99okd0UF9wuYA4sKFhLcMqldJAc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0trdUMTXB8ih0QXIyoGIBQ&ved=0CGkQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=carslogie&f=false

The last few posts have been mainly concerned with the life and interests of Rev. George Milne and the previous owners of the house in which RDM grew up, the Clephanes of Carslogie.  Although not directly linked, as far as I can tell, to the Clephane family it would seem incredible if the Milnes knew nothing of the legends of Carslogie, especially given Rev. George’s apparent interest in local history.

An ancient castle; daring-do in the name of King and country; a steel hand (just how cool is that?):  already sounds like something out of a book! Certainly my first impressions were of Walpole’s gothic horror ‘The Castle of Otranto’ (1764) but the steel prosthetic (and one which allowed its wearer to still grasp a sword) sounds more akin to sci-fi. As yet I haven’t found a tangible link to this an RDM’s work but it’s hard to imagine that such a place wouldn't have influenced such an imaginative mind.