Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/118

 George was called to the bar at the Inner Temple on 6 June 1864, and followed the western circuit till 1867, when he returned to New College as tutor in the combined school of law and history. He was ordained in 1868, but undertook no parochial work. After the separation of the law and history schools in 1872 he became history tutor of New College, and filled that office till 1891. He played a prominent part in the establishment of the inter-collegiate system of lecturing at Oxford. He remained a fellow of New College till his death. His historical writing and teaching were chiefly concerned with military history (in which he was a pioneer at Oxford) and with the correlation of history and geography. His chief publications, 'Battles of English History' (1895), 'Napoleon's Invasion of Russia' (1899), 'Relations of Geography and History' (1901; 4th edit. 1910), and 'Historical Evidence' (1909), all show critical acumen and fertility of illustration, if no recondite research. His 'Genealogical Tables illustrative of Modern History' (1874; 4th edit. 1904) and 'Historical Geography of the British Empire' (1904; 4th edit. 1909) are useful compilations.

George took a large part in the work of the university as well as in the re-organisation of his own college, which he described in his 'New College, 1850-1906' (1906). He was one of the first members of the Oxford University volunteer corps, and for many years he took an important share in the work of the local examinations delegacy. George's interests received a new direction from his first visit to Switzerland in 1860, when he met Leslie Stephen at Zermatt and accompanied him up to the Riffel by the Gorner glacier. In 1862 he accompanied Stephen on the first passage by the Jungfrau Joch Life of Stephen, chap, vi.), and achieved a first ascent of the Gross Viescherhorn (Alpine Journal, i. 97). In 1863 he made a passage of the Col du Tour Noir with Christian Aimer as guide, and 'finally settled the long-debated question about the relative positions of the heads of the Argentine, Tour, and Saline glaciers, which every successive map had professed to explain in a different way' (ibid. pp. 125, 286). Though he enjoyed the physical exercise, his interest in climbing was chiefly geographical and scientific. He was one of the first Alpine climbers to employ photography. He joined the Alpine Club in 1861, and the establishment of the 'Alpine Journal' was suggested at a meeting in his rooms at New College; he edited its first three volumes (1863-7). In 1866 he published 'The Oberland and its Glaciers,' written 'to popularise the glacier theory of Tyndall' (Alpine Journal, xxv.). George was the founder of the Oxford Alpine Club.

George, who inherited a moderate fortune from his father, was director of the West of England and South Wales Bank at Bristol, although he took no active part in the management of its affairs. The failure of the bank in 1880 not only injured George financially but involved him with his fellow-directors in an abortive trial for irregularities in keeping the accounts (Annual Reg. 3 May 1880, p. 38). George died at Holywell Lodge, Oxford, on 15 Dec. 1910. In 1870 he married Alice Bourdillon (d. 1893), youngest daughter of William Cole Cole of Exmouth, by whom he had two sons.

 GERARD, [JANE] EMILY, (1849–1905), novelist, born on 7 May 1849 at Chesters, Jedburgh, near Airdrie, Roxburghshire, was eldest sister of General Sir Montagu Gilbert Gerard [q. v. Suppl. II for parentage]. Her great-grandfather was Gilbert Gerard [q. v.], formerly a Scottish Episcopalian. Her mother became a Roman catholic in 1848, and Emily belonged to that faith. Until the age of fifteen she was educated at home; for eighteen months of a long residence with her family in Venice (1863-6) she took lessons at the house of the Comte de Chambord with his niece. Princess Marguerite, afterwards wife of Don Carlos, and with her formed a life-long intimacy; the princess died in 1893. After three years at the convent of the Sacré Coeur at Riedenburg near Bregenz in Tyrol, Emily married on 14 Oct. 1869 Chevalier Miecislas de Laszowski, member of an old Polish noble family, and an officer in the Austrian army, whose acquaintance she made in Venice. She lived first at Bræzum, Galicia, and after the death of her mother in 1870 her sisters joined her there. From 1880 onwards she devoted much time to recording her foreign experience in the form of fiction. In 1883 her husband was appointed to the command of the cavalry brigade in Transylvania, and she spent two years in the province, at Hermannstadt and Kronstadt. She embodied her observations in 'The Land beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures and Fancies from Transylvania' (1888), an 