Centenary

Extract

As I shall, if I live till mid- July, complete a century of life, the Editor has asked me to write some of my views on archaeology, for I have seen the growth of that subject A practically from its beginning. There was no study of the past unless heavily documented, and the Bible was implicitly believed from 'cover to cover'. Curiously enough the discovery in France of early stone tools could be easily accepted if they were called antediluvian, for then they were the remains of the wicked people who were drowned in Noah's flood. Darwin and Huxley were out-and-out atheists. Fortunately for me my parents were interested in these new ideas, and long residence in Calcutta, where my father was in business, had given them sympathy with non-Christian religions. They had equally free-thinking ideas as to education, which according to them should be a training of the child's mind to think. This of course applied to girls as well as boys. Ordinary subjects, such as arithmetic, geography, history I learnt at home, but specialist subjects like music, drawing, French and German, I learnt from specialists. I had no illusions as to my ignorance or my want of brains. This had been well drummed into me, for when we sat for exams my elder sister always passed among the highest, whereas I never once succeeded in getting enough marks to obtain even a pass. But my family had always been very tactful about my invariable failures and I never was allowed to feel my deficiency. So that when on a day in early January, 1894, I made my way to the Edwards Library at University College to join F. L1. Griffith's class on hieroglyphs, I was as full of enthusiasm for a new subject as if I had always been successful.