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EDWARD ALEXANDER NEWELL ARBER. 



(1870-1918.) 

 (With Portrait after a Drawing by Janet Robertson.) 



On his father's side Edward Alexander Newell Arber was descended 

 from East Anglian and Welsh stocks, while his mother's extraction 

 was entirely Scottish. His father's mother, Eleanor Newell, traced 

 her descent, according to family tradition, from a Jersey sailor 

 wrecked in Cardigan Bay, whose name " Noel " became corrupted into 

 "Newell." From both sides Newell Arber derived a love of books. 

 His father. Professor Edward Arber, D.Litt.(Oxon.), of Mason's 

 College, Birmingham, published numerous reprints of the w^orks of 

 the less accessible English writers, at a time when such reprints were 

 almost unknown. He married Marion, the daughter of another 

 publisher, Alexander Murray of Glasgow. There was evidently a 

 scientific bent in Mrs. Arber's family which came out strongly in her 

 uncle. Dr. John Sutherland (1808-1891) who did pioneer work as a 

 sanitarian, and was appointed head of the Commission sent out by 

 Palmerston to enquire into the condition of the British troops in the 

 Crimea. 



Newell Arber's early life was a constant battle against the ill- 

 health resulting from a severe attack of pneumonia at the age of five, 

 and when he was fifteen it became necessary to send him to Davos, 

 where he spent two seasons. It was at this time that the foundations 

 were laid of his love of the Alps and alpine flowers ; his first summer 

 in Switzerland left him, as he wrote, " wedded to Botany with a con- 

 suming passion." This passion was fostered by twenty-live subse- 

 quent visits to Switzerland supplemented by one expedition to the 

 Austrian Tyrol, where he went in order to examine a slightly different 

 mountain flora. His studies of alpine vegetation bore fruit in a 

 volume. Plant Life in Alpine Switzerland (1910), illustrated by his 

 own photographs of the plants in their natural environment. Switzer- 

 land in winter was almost as dear to him as in summer, and skating 

 in tlie "Continental" style became his favourite recreation. He 

 himself attributed the final breakdown of his health largely to the 

 fact that Switzerland had been rendei'ed inaccessible by the European 

 War. "The Al])s," he wrote, "taken as a whole probably represent 

 that particular side oi- phase of nature which I am by nature best able 

 to appreciate and understand. It is the i-ight key to me. It is 

 chi'omatic rather than diatonic wliicli in music I prefer as a whole." 

 Newell Arber's idea of an a'sthetic relationship between the A.lps and 

 chromatic music, recalls the fact that it was at Davos, also, that 

 music first claimed him. He had a useful tenor voice and a great 

 deal of that "watermanship" which is such an asset in choral 

 singing. He gained a wide experience, especially in cluirch nmsic, 

 Bach being his chief delight. I?ut his taste was catholic, and his 

 love of Wagner did not jjrevent his glorying in Handel. 



As a boy, Arber's education was somewhat spasmodic on account 

 of the interruptions of ill-health, and after he went up to Trinity 

 College, Cambridge, in 189.5. he again lost much time through 

 Journal of BoxANr. — Vol. 5C. [Novemjjer, 1918.] y 



