The Portland daily press., 1883-11-05
A Wonderful Man.

Dr. Edward Henry Palmer, Englishman,
Orientalist, Cambridge professor, artist,
journalist, who was brutally murdered last
year by the Arabs of the Sinaitic Peninsular.
while on diplomatic errand In behalf of
his native land, was one of the extraordi-
nary men of the time. and the story of his
Life and Achievements by Walter Besant,
an acquaintance Of dozen years, who be-
came a friend, and in several undertakings
was fellow-workman, is a romance of
genius, affection, learning and enthusiasm,
consecrated to the highest ends and yielded
finally in the spirit of a martyr Professor
Palmer's short life ran deep; and stretched
all the way along from the very humanest
connections on the one side to the very edge
of the supernatural on the other. A COM
rade of gypsies, whose language he learned
when boy and could speak as if he were
one OF them; mesmerist, who could sub
ject girl TO an an@sthetic influence sufi-
Gent to carry her through severe surgical
operation without pain; alinguist of aston
ishing facility, who learned to speak Italian
and French before he was eighteen, and
mastered Arabic, Persian, and HIndostani
before be was thirty: an artist with rare
eye for color, whose caricatures with the
pencil filed portfolios and were only
equaled by the burlesques in verse which he
turned off impromptu with his pen; a stu
dent who thought nothing OF twelve, four
teen, sixteen, eighteen hours day of close
application to books, and that day after day
gymnast, who had the nerve and skill to
hang himself by heel and toe from a bar at
at the top of st. Johns Chapel tower at
Cambridge, over drop of three hundred
feet; Cambridge professor giving lectures
in three languages; conjuror who could
delight and amaze a private company of
spectators with the most inscrutable tricks
in legerdemain; ''mind-reader'' who ri
vailed Bishop, and medium who sur
passed Maskeyne and Cooke; translator
equally at home in rendering dreamy Per-
sian poetry into exquisite English verse, and
in critically revising for the British and
Foreign Bible Society, Henry Martyrs
Persian version of the New Testament; a
disciple of lzaak Walton, who, with another
Cambridge scholar for boon companion,
loved to dress up as a wandering monde
script and roam the fens of Lincolnshire tor
weeks at a time; Palestine explorer, who
dld noble work for Biblical science in the
Holy Land. and in his Desert of the Exc
partment of literature; story-teller on
whose lips men hung breathless; a prince
of good fellows, the favorite of the clubs,
and radiating personal magnetism at every
point of contact; man who could intone
the Koran, curse in Arabic, and as nurse
was one of a thousand; man with the gen.
tleness and tenderness of woman, who
could yet in the desert by gesture and a
word awe three hundred Bedouin into SUBJ
lection and bring them to their knees before
him; London journalist of versatility
that never halted, an industry that never
halted, an industry that never tagged, and
a good nature that nothing disturbed; as
intrepid an adventurer as ever handled
rifle and penetrated jungle, and husband
and father of the most loving heart; alike
the friend of Henry Irving, the actor, and of
the gypsy tinker at the roadside; man who
could speak and write in ten languages, and
then take to Chinese as if his mind were
vacant and unemployed; hero whose name
deserves TO be written with Wellington's
and Nelson's, even as his body rests with
th sirs; such was Edward Henry Palmer.
And all his full, productive life was lived,
and all his wonderful achievements were
done, before he was many days past forty
three. The capacity, the energy, the elias
ITCHY of the human mind have had in mod
ern times no more astonishing illustration.
Mr.. Palmer was born in 1S40 His youth
was day of small things. His only inheri-
lance was consumptive tendency. The
first language he learned next to his own
was Romany-the language of the gypsies.
He mastered Italian and French in the cafes
and on the wharyes of London, where he
lived for awhile as clerk. His pulmonary
tendency was sngularly broken up by dose
of lobelia. He was short man and little,
with STOPPING shoulders and narrow chest.
When roaming the streets OF Paris in East
ern costume The very Arabs whom he met
mistook him for Moslem like themselves.
He rode through the Sinaitic Desert in dis
guise which deceived the very elect OF the
Sheiks He had remarkable fingers, which
acted like sentient organs. He had curious
ly large and impid eyes of the sort that
woman loves. He was naturally a weak
man, but was an easy match for the
sDatch thief who grabbed his watch
one day as he was walking down the
Whitechapel Road in London. 1t was con-
tact at Cambridge with learned Pundit,
Syed Abdullah, whichawoke within him the
slnmbering genius for Orentalism, and
made of him in breath almost the man he
was destined to be. He got sizarship az
Cambridge, and then a scholarship, and then
a fellowship, and then professorship,
though jealousy and old-fogyism on the part
of others kept him out of the posts which
really belonged to him. BY the time he was
twenty-six it was an acknowledged fact that
no European was so well versed in Oriental
languages as he. He sought an Eastern