Clements Markham - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

On 29 January 1916, while reading in bed by candlelight, Markham set fire to the bedclothes and was overcome by smoke. He died the following day. His last diary entry, a few days earlier, had recorded a visit from Peter Markham Scott.

The family received tributes from King George V, who acknowledged the debt the country owed to Markham's life work of study and research; from the Royal Geographical Society and the other learned bodies with which Markham had been associated; from the Naval Commander-in-Chief at Devonport; and from Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian Arctic explorer. Other messages were received from France, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, the United States, and from Arequipa in Peru.

More critical assessments of Markham's life and work were to follow. Hugh Robert Mill, Shackleton's first biographer and for many years the RGS librarian, referred to the dictatorial manner in which Markham had run the Society. In time, questions would be raised about the accuracy of some of his Hakluyt translations, and about the evidence of haste in the preparation of other publications. On a personal level he had made enemies as well as friends; Frank Debenham, the geologist who served with both Scott and Shackleton, called Markham "a dangerous old man", while William Speirs Bruce wrote of Markham's "malicious opposition to the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition". Bruce's colleague Robert Rudmose-Brown went further, calling Markham "that old fool and humbug". These protestations reflected Markham's protective attitude towards Scott; according to Bruce, "Scott was Markham's protégé, and Markham thought it necessary, in order to uphold Scott, that I should be obliterated". He added that "Scott and I were always good friends, in spite of Markham."

It has been suggested that Markham's prejudices about polar travel, particularly his belief in the "nobility" of manhauling, had been passed to Scott, to the detriment of all future British expeditions. Mill's measured opinion, that Markham was "an enthusiast rather than a scholar", has been asserted as a fair summary of his strengths and weaknesses, and as the basis for his influence on the discipline of geography in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is commemorated by Mount Markham, 82°51′S 161°21′E / 82.85°S 161.35°E / -82.85; 161.35, in the Transantarctic range, discovered and named by Scott on his southern march during the Discovery expedition in 1902. The Markham River in Papua New Guinea was named after him; Carsten Borchgrevink discovered and named Markham Island in the Ross Sea during his 1900 expedition, a gesture that was not, however, acknowledged by Markham. The name lives on in Lima, Peru, through Markham College, a private co-educational school. Minna Bluff, a promontory extending into the Ross Ice Shelf, was named by Scott for Lady Markham.

Markham's estate was valued for probate purposes at £7,740 (2008 equivalent £376,000). He was survived by his wife Minna, to whom Albert Hastings Markham's 1917 biography of Sir Clements is dedicated. Markham's only child, May, avoided public life and devoted herself to church work in the East End of London. According to the family's entry in Burke's Landed Gentry she died in 1926.