Sunday, July 20, 2008

Chasing Haldane to Sennen Cove


Still in gentle pursuit of my biographical subject John Scott Haldane, as the paperback of his life comes due, we took a two day summer break near the rim of Sennen Cove. Haldane brought his family here for their summer holidays a century ago.
I like my chapter on the place, but a research visit would have made it even better. Walking the coastline gave me a true sense of the family's journey out to Longships Lighthouse (above) - while a painting in Penzance's Penlee House Gallery showed me what the lighthouse looked like in Haldane's day.
I hadn't realized the proximity of Sennen Cove to Land's End, and came to know the route Haldane took with his children to run inside Nanjizel Cave. It reminded me of the value of site visits to fuel a biography with all-important details. I like visiting a landscape and trace its features back a hundred years or so. For Haldane I chased his ghost round his homeland, his university, a coal mine where he achieved his initial breakthroughs, and up Pikes Peak in Colorado, but only now am getting round to his holidays.
I wrote of the Haldane family staying with a Mrs Pendar, who ran the Ship Inn. Pendar is still a local name, but I found no sign of the Inn and began to worry for my facts. However asking around, I learned the 17th century Old Success Inn did go by the name of the Ship in the early 20th century. that brought a small phew of satisfaction.
The weather was largely a sweep of winds and rain, so we dipped underground at Geevor Mine to imagine Haldane's work deep inside the tin mines of the region. After a tour of the workshops we were guided down a mine shaft of the 1700s by a former miner ... and again I learned something that would have entered the book. Haldane was an expert on gases and pioneered methods to help workers in the intense heat of the deepest tin mines. What he didn't know, because this gas stayed hidden till recent years, was that the heat stemmed from radon, a gas emitted by decomposing granite. The examiner filled me in on the latest information.
You have to let a book, and a biographical subject, go - but there's always more to learn.

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