Unpardonably rude, as I have said, as such a reply was, and to such a man as Allen, that rudeness is, I fancy, capable of explanation. To those who knew Whymper only slightly and--overlooking the sensitive breathing nostrils, so wide and circular at the opening--saw only the cold hardness of his face and eyes, the rat-trap-like snap of mouth and jaw, he seemed a man of iron; and this impression the story of his indomitable courage, his dogged determination to succeed where others had failed, went far to confirm. That such a man, a man rough-hewn as he seemed out of block granite, and with sinews of steel, could be cognisant of the fact that he had “nerves,” much less could suffer from them, would occur to no one. None the less, I happen to know that the shock of that tragedy in early life among the Alps, when, powerless to help them, he had to stand inactively by and see his companions hurled to certain death, left its mark upon him to the end of his life, and was sometimes re-enacted in his dreams. In his later years, when his iron constitution began to weaken and when his nerves were less steady than of old, any sudden reference to that early tragedy would, in his more irritable moments, annoy and anger him, and I am convinced that it was in such conditions his rude and surly rebuff to Grant Allen was spoken. That Whymper afterwards regretted it I have reason to know. I believe that it was because Clodd was the close and devoted friend of Allen, and had, moreover, been present when the rebuff was administered, and had been pained by it, that Whymper was anxious to meet Clodd, either for the reason that--indifferent as he generally was to what others thought of him--he was for once anxious to efface any bad impression that the incident had created, or because he hoped to have some opportunity of speaking of Allen (he was too proud a man to have written to Allen direct) in such a way as to mend matters.
That this is not mere surmise on my part I am convinced from what I have myself heard Whymper say and from the way he afterwards spoke of Allen. He was, as I say, a proud man, a taciturn man, and sometimes a rude man, but at heart he was just; and unnecessarily and undeservedly to have given pain to another troubled him as much, if not more, than anything _could_ trouble one whom few things outside himself could affect.