Cross stones and correspondence

Throughout the course of some earlier blogs I have hypothesised that Rev Milne's antiquarian interests may well have rubbed off onto his son. In particular I wondered if a news cutting, regarding a toad which had apparently emerged from the centre of a block of sandstone, had been placed in Cupar's Antiquarian Society Book of 1840 by Rev Milne and subsequently provided a starting point for Robert's story of suspended animation, Ten Thousand Years In Ice .

This I felt was likely as it appeared, from the cutting above, that Rev Milne had an interest in archaeology as demonstrated by this report which, I believed, concerned items uncovered at the 'Norries's Law' find of 1819.  However, having recently searched the St Andrews University Library Special Collection I now have reason to believe that this article may in fact refer to a discovery Rev Milne made himself some years later:

"On the 9th of last month when walking through the cathedral grave ground accompanied by a friend we went out by the eastern door, outside which were deported about half a cartload of stones, on turning some of them over we came upon a slab on which we were able with great difficulty to trace several lines... We found an ancient cross partly incised as in relief...  Cross No.1 is a beautiful specimen of the ancient Keltic[sic] cross perhaps coeval with the early Culdees as to be sen at Iona, Largo and on 'Sueno's Stone' at Forres." Extract from a 'Binder of papers submitted to the St Andrews Literary and Philosophical Society': "Some Remarks on a Keltic or Mediaeval Cross found 9th February 1869 in a Grave near the South East end of the Cathedral of St Andrews", by Rev George Gordon Milne.

If these stones are indeed the 'cross stones' mentioned in the above cutting this obviously raises questions about the apparently anachronistic inclusion of the undated newspaper article, potentially from 1869 or thereabouts, appearing in Cupar's Antiquarian Book of 1840. However the fact that Rev Milne was clearly interested in not just local finds but those from further afield remains unaltered, as evidenced by his apparently detailed knowledge of Pictish stones.  Indeed if anything I feel this lends weight to my argument that he was responsible for the inclusion of the cutting entitled 'Singular Circumstance' detailed in an earlier post which I have speculated may have formed the basis for one of Robert's stories.

That his father's interests perhaps influenced his storytelling is one thing but what has never really been explained about RDM is where he developed his aptitude for science and technology. Milne himself wrote about having attended lectures by 'Darwin's bulldog' Thomas Huxley and physicist John Tyndall prior to leaving for America, but these alone cannot account for him turning up at the San Francisco 'Mechanics Institute Fair of 1874' to demonstrate a steam engine of his own design and for which he (among several others) held a patent.

Robert Duncan Milne left Oxford University before completing his degree in classics and to the best of our knowledge the years between 1868-74 had been spent mainly working as a hired hand on sheep ranches throughout California, so quite how the engine came about is still yet a mystery.

One aspect however which I believe may have had a lasting impact was, again, those interests of his father who, through his fellow Antiquarians and friends was connected with the great and good of Victorian science. Rev Milne provides a link between the St Andrews and Cupar Antiquarian Societies, contributing as he did to both. Through this he would undoubtedly have known Sir David Brewster, inventor of the kaleidoscope and one of the St Andrews' society's founding members. Among Brewster's notable acquaintances and correspondents was William Henry Fox-Talbot, most famous for developing Calotype photography.

 Letters in the Special Collection also see Milne Snr. writing to a George Hay Forbes regarding a church matter but, perhaps more pertinently, Forbes Snr, with whom Rev George must surely have been acquainted,  corresponded with the likes of James Watt, Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday and Charles Babbage.

Leaders in their respective fields the aforementioned pioneered discoveries in optics, engineering, natural history, physics and computing: could this be where Robert gained his interest and formative schooling in science and technology?

Even if Rev Milne wasn't himself in direct contact with these giants of nineteenth century scientific thought isn't it likely that, given his relative proximity to them, he would have seen fit to share his second-hand knowledge of their achievements with his family? The closest modern day analogy I can come up with would be having a friend whose father was in regular contact with Stephen Hawking: that's something you'd at least mention to your family, isn't it?

References

http://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/propertyresults/propertydetail.htm?PropID=PL_281
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~ahmicros/MGS/reflect/david.html
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/library/specialcollections/manuscripts/personal/forbesjd1809-1868/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/faraday_michael.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/babbage_charles.shtml

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.