Adrift on an Ice-Pan | Page 2

the Labrador in the fight against
disease and disaster and distress along a stormy and uncharted coast.
On his mother's side, four of her brothers were generals or colonels in
the trying times of service in India. The eldest fought with distinction
throughout the Indian Mutiny and in the defence of Lucknow, and
another commanded the crack cavalry regiment, the "Guides," at
Peshawar, and fell fighting in one of the turbulent North of India wars.
Of teachers, there was Dr. Grenfell's paternal grandfather, the Rev.
Algernon Grenfell, the second of three brothers, house master at Rugby
under Arnold, and a fine classical scholar, whose elder and younger
brothers each felt the ancestral call of the sea and became admirals,
with brave records of daring and success.
Dr. Grenfell's father, after a brilliant career at Rugby School and at
Balliol College, Oxford, became assistant master at Repton, and later,
when he married, head master of Mostyn House School, a position
which he resigned in 1882 to become Chaplain of the London Hospital.
"He was a man of much learning, with a keen interest in science, a
remarkable eloquence, and a fervent evangelistic faith."
Mostyn House School still stands, enlarged and modernized, in the
charge of Dr. Grenfell's elder brother, and in it his mother is still the
real head and controlling genius.
Parkgate, at one time a seaport of renown, when Liverpool was still
unimportant, and later a seaside health resort to which came the fashion
and beauty of England, had fallen, through the silting of the estuary and
the broadening of the "Sands of Dee," to the level of a hamlet in the
time of Dr. Grenfell's boyhood. The broad stretch of seaward trending
sand, with its interlacing rivulets of fresh and brackish water, made a

tempting though treacherous playground, alluring alike in the varied
forms of life it harbored and in the adventure which whetted
exploration. Thither came Charles Kingsley, Canon of Chester, who
married a Grenfell, and who coupled his verse with scientific study and
made geological excursions to the river's mouth with the then Master of
Mostyn House School. In these excursions the youthful Wilfred was a
participant, and therein he learned some of his first lessons in that
accuracy of observation essential to his later life work.
Here in this trained, but untrammeled, boyhood, with an inherited
incentive to labor and an educated thirst for knowledge, away from the
thrall of crowded communities, close to the wild places of nature, with
the sea always beckoning and a rocking boat as familiar as the land, it
is small wonder that there grew the fashioning of the purpose of a man,
dimly at first, conceived in a home in which all, both of tradition and of
teaching, bred faith, reverence, and the sense of thanksgiving in
usefulness.
From the school-days at Parkgate came the step to Marlborough
College, where three years were marked by earnest study, both in books
and in play, for the one gained a scholarship and the other an enduring
interest in Rugby football. Matriculating later at the University of
London, Grenfell entered the London Hospital, and there laid not only
the foundation of his medical education, but that of his friendship with
Sir Frederick Treves, renowned surgeon and daring sailor and master
mariner as well. With plenty of work to the fore, as a hospital interne,
the ruling spirit still asserted itself, and the young doctor became an
inspiration among the waifs of the teeming city; he was one of the
founders of the great Lads' Brigades which have done much good, and
fostered more, in the example that they have set for allied activities.
Nor were the needs of his own bodily machine neglected; football,
rowing, and the tennis court kept him in condition, and his athletics
served to strengthen his appeals to the London boys whom he enrolled
in the brigades. He founded the inter-hospital rowing club at Putney
and rowed in the first inter-hospital race; he played on the Varsity
football team, and won the "throwing the hammer" at the sports.

A couple of terms at Queen's College, Oxford, followed the London
experience, but here the conditions were too easy and luxurious for one
who, by both inheritance and training, had within him the incentive to
the strenuous life. Need called, misery appealed, the message of life, of
hope, and of salvation awaited, and the young doctor turned from
Oxford to the medical mission work in which his record stands among
the foremost for its effectiveness and for the spirituality of its purpose.
Seeking some way in which he could satisfy his medical aspirations, as
well as his desire for adventure and for definite Christian work, he
appealed to Sir Frederick Treves, a member of the Council of the Royal
National Mission to