The Great Arc by John Keay

Author:John Keay [Keay, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780007404520
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2000-06-08T14:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

Crossing the Rubicon

Lambton’s death in January 1823 meant that Everest, as his only assistant of rank, now took acting charge of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. With it went responsibility for the Great Arc. At last the direction of the world’s longest meridional measurement was his; Greenwich would be proud of him. For the next twenty years George Everest would make the Great Arc his personal affair.

At thirty-two, he was younger than Lambton had been when he first launched the Survey, and less obviously a servant to science. No portrait of Everest exists from this period but, in a pen drawing dated 1843, he appears to have retained the Olympian profile of an ambitious youth. Black hair, close-cropped, surmounts the cloudless brow; a frigid stare complements the long cornice of a nose. Glimpsed looming by lamplight over the circle of the Great Theodolite, he may have looked a towering figure. Yet his stature was modest and the imperious brow was belied by a tight mouth and an irrelevant chin. Muttonchop whiskers only emphasised these deficiencies and, in old age, would be allowed to encroach across them, smothering his lower face in a tangle of beard. Then too, lionised by the scientific establishment, he would grow his hair into a mane and thus reward an 1860s photographer with a suitably leonine aspect. As for the lion’s roar, he already had it.

In February 1823, having hastened back to base at Hyderabad, he had immediately begun berating those, now at Nagpur, who had been with Lambton at the time of his death. A visit to the graveside in Hinganghat and some active support for the idea of a memorial to the great man would have gone down well with Lambton’s mourning companions; but Everest thought only of the instruments and papers which might have been lost to the Survey by the hasty sale of the Colonel’s effects.

March brought more soothing news: Everest was officially confirmed as Superintendent of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. The only uncertainty now was over whether there would be anyone for him to superintend. His promotion had prompted a staff crisis as ominous for the prospects of the Great Arc as had once been the Yellapuram fever or was now the haze of Hindustan.

Dr Voysey, his companion in adversity in the Kistna-Godavari jungles, was the first to insist on leaving. Lambton had recently urged Voysey’s promotion to Assistant and may have hoped that he, rather than Everest, would succeed him. But the promotion had not been sanctioned and in late 1823 a disenchanted Voysey preferred an uncertain career in England to a subordinate role under Everest. During his recent reconnaissance south from Agra the Doctor had been much troubled by tigers. One, ‘a ferocious animal which had carried off five human beings’, killed his groom in a lightning attack which Voysey actually witnessed. With Everest, as with tigers, close personal acquaintance evidently argued strongly for a quick retreat. Additionally, Voysey was still suffering from the after-effects of the Yellapuram fever. He would in fact die before reaching Calcutta, let alone England.

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