Henry Yule - Return To England

Return To England

He retired in 1862 and Canning's death in that year made it difficult for him to find any official appointment in London. In 1863 he was created CB through the influence of Sir Roderick Murchison. He devoted his leisure to the medieval history and geography of Central Asia. His wife became unwell and he travelled to Europe and settled in Palermo, Sicily. He made use of the richly stocked public libraries during this period. He published Cathay and the Way Thither (1866), and the Book of Marco Polo (1871), for which he received the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. His wife died in 1875 and he returned to England where he was appointed to the Council of India. Yule's married for a second time in 1877 to Mary Wilhelmina (died on 26 April 1881), daughter of a Bengal civil servant Fulwar Skipwith.

Yule was a member and for sometime the president of the Hakluyt Society, and for them he edited the Mirabilia Descripta (1863) a translation of the travels of translation from the Latin work of Friar Jordanus and The Diary of William Hedges (1887–89). He was also vice-president of the Royal Geographical Society (1887-9) and would have become a president but for a protest that he led along with H. M. Hyndman against Henry Morton Stanley. The Society wanted to welcome Stanley but Yule stood against the violent methods used in Africa. The latter contains a biography of Governor Pitt, grandfather of William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham. Yule wrote an introduction to Nikolay Przhevalsky's Mongolia (1876) and Captain William Gill's The River of Golden Sand (1880). He wrote biographical notes for the Royal Engineers' Journal and many geographical entries in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Yule's most famous work however was a glossary that he compiled along with Arthur C. Burnell called the Hobson-Jobson (1886). This was a dictionary of Anglo-Indian phrases and continues to provide an insight into the language used in British India. He died at his home at Earls Court, London on 30 December and is buried at Tunbridge Wells.

Yule was awarded an honorary LL.D. from Edinburgh in 1884 and served as royal commissioner for the Indian and Colonial Exhibition of 1886. He was created Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India in 1889.