Clements Markham spent 12 years as President of the Royal Geographic Society, went on several voyages and expeditions in the middle decades of the c19th, and was a driving force behind late Victorian and Edwardian Antarctic exploration. But, was he an adventurer?
Isobel Williams‘ interesting recent talk at the RGS – “Be Inspired: Sir Clements Markham President of the RGS: success or failure?” – discusses his life and career .
As a teenage naval cadet, Markham spent four years on a tour of duty of the Pacific that included the Southern Ocean and Cape Horn, several months in Lima and Valparaiso, as well as Hawaii and Tahiti. He then became the youngest member of an expedition searching for Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition of 1845, which had been trying to force the Northwest Passage (sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific through the Arctic Ocean). After leaving the Navy, he travelled twice to Peru. On his second journey, accompanied by Richard Bruce, he collected cinchona specimens (at that time the only known source of the malarial treatment quinine) and introduced them to India. After his father died, he joined the India Office and married. He later traveled to Abyssinia in 1867, as surveyor and naturalist, on Robert Napier’s expedition. He become a Fellow of the RGS in 1854, Hon Secretary 1863-88, President from 1893-1905, and was active in the Hakluyt Society.
As PRGS, he was very influential on the development of British Antarctic exploration. Captain RF Scott was a protégé of Markham’s throughout Scott’s life. Markham appointed Scott to lead the Discovery expedition to the Antarctic, and his diary entry, on learning of Scott’s death is revealing:
“…heartbreaking to think of Kathleen and Mrs Wilson. Even now I can hardly believe it. There has passed away, if it is really true, a very exceptionally noble Englishman. What struck me was his chivalrous nature in dealing with contemptible self-seekers such as Shackleton and Amundsen. Very rarely have so many great qualities been combined in one man.”
Markham wrote the preface to Scott’s Last Expedition, where he describes Scott as “among the most remarkable men of our time”, a “great leader” with “beauty of…character”. He was also godfather to Scott’s son Peter, who was named after him.
Was Clements Markham adventurous in Bruno Macaes’ sense? Clearly, he was a “great man” in the Victorian mould, with vision and strength of character. He was part of a society that was much more adventurous than today’s, and part of a culture that prized endeavour. It is unclear whether he had an “anxiety that there might be a different lifestyle that is passing you by, just because you aren’t looking for it“. Perhaps introducing cinchona to India, searching for Sir John Franklin’s expedition, and enabling Polar exploration, showed awareness “that we don’t know the answers“.