Early Life and Family
Syme was born at North Berwick in Scotland, the youngest of the seven children and fourth son of George Alexander Syme (18?–1845), a parish schoolmaster. Syme's wife, David's mother, was Jean née Mitchell.
George Syme was a radical in church and state, his income was comfortable yet moderate, but it was stretched to provide for his large family and send three of his sons to universities (which he successfully did, while providing David with a relentlessly demanding education himself.) David Syme's childhood was one of study with little companionship with other boys of his own age. George Syme was not physically unkind to his sons, but Syme would write later "It was difficult to understand my father's attitude to we boys. He had naturally a kind disposition; he was a devoted husband and no-one ever asked him for help that he did not freely give … but his affection for us never found expression in words". Syme married Annabella Garnett-Johnson, of the Lancashire Garnett family of Waddow Hall, Clitheroe, England. Annabella was connected through her Garnett relations to William Garnett. David Syme was 17 years old when his father died and he continued his classical studies with some doubt to his future. Syme had thoughts of qualifying for the ministry but revolted from the Calvinistic teaching of the day; his brothers George and Ebenezer had renounced the Church of Scotland. Syme studied under James Morison at Kilmarnock for two years, attended some classes at Heidelberg and returned to Scotland obtaining a position about 1850 as a proofreader's assistant on a Glasgow newspaper. With low pay and little prospect of advancement, Syme sailed for San Francisco by way of Cape Horn in 1851 and arrived after a voyage of five months to search for gold but had little success.
Read more about this topic: David Syme
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or family:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious. For that we care for them; from that have issued endless consequences.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“Oh! what a poor thing is human life in its best enjoyments!—subjected to imaginary evils when it has no real ones to disturb it! and that can be made as effectually unhappy by its apprehensions of remote contingencies as if it was struggling with the pains of a present distress!”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“Our civility, England determines the style of, inasmuch as England is the strongest of the family of existing nations, and as we are the expansion of that people. It is that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of that profession.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)