In The Spring Of 1875, Just After The Publication Of The Second Edition Of
Marco Polo, Yule Had To Mourn The Loss Of His Noble Wife.
He was absent
from Sicily at the time, but returned a few hours after her death on 30th
April.
She had suffered for many years from a severe form of heart
disease, but her end was perfect peace. She was laid to rest, amid
touching tokens of both public and private sympathy, in the beautiful
camposanto on Monte Pellegrino. What her loss was to Yule only his oldest
and closest friends were in a position to realise. Long years of suffering
had impaired neither the soundness of her judgment nor the sweetness, and
even gaiety, of her happy, unselfish disposition. And in spirit, as even
in appearance, she retained to the very last much of the radiance of her
youth. Nor were her intellectual gifts less remarkable. Few who had once
conversed with her ever forgot her, and certainly no one who had once
known her intimately ever ceased to love her.[66]
Shortly after this calamity, Yule removed to London, and on the retirement
of his old friend, Sir William Baker, from the India Council early that
autumn, Lord Salisbury at once selected him for the vacant seat. Nothing
would ever have made him a party-man, but he always followed Lord
Salisbury with conviction, and worked under him with steady confidence.
In 1877 Yule married, as his second wife, the daughter of an old
friend,[67] a very amiable woman twenty years his junior, who made him
very happy until her untimely death in 1881. From the time of his joining
the India Council, his duties at the India Office of course occupied a
great part of his time, but he also continued to do an immense amount of
miscellaneous literary work, as may be seen by reference to the subjoined
bibliography, (itself probably incomplete). In Council he invariably
"showed his strong determination to endeavour to deal with questions on
their own merits and not only by custom and precedent."[68] Amongst
subjects in which he took a strong line of his own in the discussions of
the Council, may be specially instanced his action in the matter of the
cotton duties (in which he defended native Indian manufactures as against
hostile Manchester interests); the Vernacular Press Act, the necessity for
which he fully recognised; and the retention of Kandahar, for which he
recorded his vote in a strong minute. In all these three cases, which are
typical of many others, his opinion was overruled, but having been
carefully and deliberately formed, it remained unaffected by defeat.
In all matters connected with Central Asian affairs, Yule's opinion always
carried great weight; some of his most competent colleagues indeed
preferred his authority in this field to that of even Sir Henry Rawlinson,
possibly for the reason given by Sir M. Grant Duff, who has
epigrammatically described the latter as good in Council but dangerous in
counsel.[69]
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