Arthur Christian Newton Treadgold, whose dispatches from the Yukon lie in the 1898 files of the then Manchester Guardian, was the most thrusting pioneer of the great Klondike gold rush. He was also the most powerful. This little thickset man from a Lincolnshire yeoman family, a collateral descendant of Sir Isaac Newton, a classics graduate of Oxford, and a Blue, had both the brain – brilliant, ranging, dynamic, above all, tenacious (he was known as the Klondike Spider) – and the incredibly formidable physique for sustaining all he did.

For the Guardian he covered the gold rush, writing about the brave men who went in with pick and shovel, about the lurid riches of Dawson City and the wretched poverty of those who failed. In one article he said: “The golden paving of Bonanza is unfortunately overlaid with a frozen black substance locally designated ‘muck.’”

But the dispatches to CP Scott were chicken-feed. His aim was, quite simply, to become King of the Klondike by establishing complete control over the whole amalgamation of interested financial companies. Through endless and notorious litigation, he lost the fortune amassed for himself and others, and he spent his last years, a lonely tough penniless old recluse in Oxford lodgings, scheming to the last to carry his appeal up to the House of Lords.

This admired, feared, and hated phenomenon on both sides of the Atlantic was, to me, just Great-Uncle Arthur, the family legend and skeleton. I had never seen him until he was on his deathbed. Such names as Granville Mining, Yukon Consolidated, and the Guggenheims had passed over my head. But I had, as a child, heard the story of a prodigal great-uncle, the alluvial Yukon mud on his boots, who had walked into the Victorian house in Dulwich to scatter a bag of nuggets round the epergne at family luncheon. I forgot neither the defiance nor the timing of the gesture.

Still from Washing gold on 20 Above Hunter, Klondike,1901. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Years later, when I left home, my father ended the appropriate warnings with an unexpected: “And if you ever should meet Uncle Arthur, don’t let him offer to make your fortune,” adding: “The last time he had a top-hat, and a suite in the Hotel Cecil.” It was, of course, like the one warning too many against the Church of Rome. Inevitably I “poped.”

Twenty-five years later, in 1951, my father telephoned from the country: “Uncle Arthur’s turned up. Stepped off a moving bus at the traffic-lights. I told the hospital I wasn’t well. But I said” – voice faintly malicious – “I said my daughter would be interested.”

I was. Instantly. If Uncle Arthur had been left on my doorstep in a snow-storm, the melodrama could have had no greater appeal. Stopping the taxi only for some flowers – a conventional gesture I was fairly sure would be misplaced – I was down at the large London hospital. Uncle Arthur had been accorded a private room, not, as I hoped, because of his status, but because he had been so rampageous as to upset the other old men in his ward.

His bellows greeted me outside the lift. But, when I stood in the door, the raging face that swung towards me provided a most extraordinary moment. Alien, unknown, cunning, gnarled, unbelievably ancient – there they all were, the features of my own family, the keen-eyed, handsome, amused and amusing men among whom I had been brought up. And there too – recognised, acknowledged, even in that first flash – the great Sir Isaac, whose print I had seen many years ago in Grantham.

“I’m your great-niece,” I bawled (for he was stone-deaf). A warm, delighted smile crossed Uncle Arthur’s face, exposing long yellow teeth. “Darlin’,” he said enthusiastically, and held out both arms. Dodging an intrusive association with Red Riding Hood, I said : “Oh, Uncle Arthur,” and swept into them, polyanthus and all. We then drew back in mutual appreciation, each gratifyingly aware of the other’s talented play-acting.

I saw quite a bit of Uncle Arthur. He had closer friends than I. But we were too charmed with our bizarre situation not to exploit it. We kept on shaking with laughter at what had happened to us. He was like a tough surviving old tree, hit by lightning, flailing skeleton branches in some private and monstrous storm. Speech he found difficult. But our exchanges, at the top of our lungs, were very civilised. He had a courteous, cultured, friendly mind of many interests.

I had meant to draw him on the Klondike. But we talked about the English countryside. About timber, and apples, and about moths, for he was an expert entomologist. In all this, I never, deluded myself. I knew that I was, like the traffic-lights, only a passing incident. My father, safely at the end of a trunk line, was fascinated but more apprehensive: “If Uncle Arthur offers to make your fortune. . .”

The Guardian, 16 January 1964.

“Darlin’” croaked Uncle Arthur the very next day, “when I’m on my feet. I’m going to make a packet for you.” And such was his charm – yes, even at 87 – that I assented with enthusiasm, as I understand had many women before me.

The traffic-lights were not an incident. Uncle Arthur nosedived suddenly. I rang my father one night. “He’s died,” I said shortly. “What! But I’ve still got a case of his moths!” said my father, shocked back into boyhood. There was a pause. Then my father said musingly: “So Uncle Arthur’s dead.” And, for a moment, the legend held us both.

I shouldn’t think the Guardian has ever had a correspondent like Uncle Arthur since. If anybody reads this who got worsted by him in private quarrel, or across the boardroom table, or up the creeks in the Klondike, he may like to know I saw the old man in his turn worsted. By a woman. The ward sister! I saw this splendid woman, who would herself have gone far in Dawson City, standing over Uncle Arthur. shouting “You’ll behave yourself while you’re in this hospital, you tiresome old man!”

11 August 1898