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Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Having coming across Apsley Cherry-Garrard's picture pretty much by chance as a mental image for Arctic Raoul (interestingly, apparently he was actually dark-haired; the fair/white beard in the photo was an unexpected side-effect of the extreme cold), I then stumbled across a discarded copy of his autobiographical account of the Antarctic, "The Worst Journey in the World". It's a massive tome about seven hundred pages long (counting a hundred pages or so of historical introduction by both the author and the editor)... and it turns out to be absolutely fascinating.
'Cherry' was intelligent and observant, sometimes palpably schoolboyish and sometimes painfully mature, he had access to all the archive material and personal diaries from the expedition records (he was supposed to be writing up the official report, before he decided he couldn't produce the sort of detached dry document they wanted), and he couldn't half *write*. It's a worm's-eye view of the expedition from a small and junior -- and unpaid volunteer -- member, with the benefit of the hindsight of the 1920s, minus the dubious benefit of the scornful revisionism that came later; the book is pretty much the nearest thing to actually being there at the time, from someone who actually knew what it was like to lie in a tent freezing to death on the assumption that you would never wake again, but had also shared the high spirits of hut life, and been amazed by the overwhelming beauty of elements of the Antarctic landscape.
There are flashes of humour throughout, from the opening lines (Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised) to irreverent observations on his companions (Meanwhile, the more hardy ones were washing: that is, they rubbed themselves, all shivering, with snow, of a minus temperature, and pretended they liked it. Perhaps they were right, but we told them it was swank), but it is often also profoundly poetic, and sometimes both (Whatever a penguin does has individuality, and he lays bare his whole life for all to see. He cannot fly away. And because he is quaint in all that he does, but still more because he is fighting against bigger odds than any other bird, and fighting always with the most gallant pluck, he comes to be considered as something apart from the ordinary bird — sometimes solemn, sometimes humorous, enterprising, chivalrous, cheeky — and always (unless you are driving a dog-team) a welcome and, in some ways, an almost human friend). In a way, it seems the worst tragedy of this account was not that Scott died -- many of them nearly did, on many occasions, and it was a risk they all accepted -- but that the cheerful, eager young man whom we get to know in the course of the book effectively didn't return from the expedition either.
There is no hint of it in his own text, but the biographical notes in the foreword reveal that Cherry was haunted by those two brief years and their outcome for the rest of his life, to a degree that would nowadays be described as clinical depression. It was perhaps the first time he'd been really happy, really belonged and been useful -- the best and worst thing in his life -- and he couldn't let go of it or of his survivor's guilt, turning his existence more or less into a living memorial. I can identify with that experience, hard... but of all the people in the world to become a self-tormenting recluse, the endearing boy we meet in the pages of this book -- of whom Wilson (who had been instrumental in getting him his much-longed-for place on the expedition) writes "Cherry... is such a success — and it is apparent to everyone. I am so delighted with him" and Scott, with affectionate amusement, "Really Cherry is very delightful — he has just come to me with a very anxious face..." -- seems the last person to whom it should have happened :-(
Unexpected connections: Hugh Grant, of all people, played Cherry-Garrard in a TV mini-series right at the start of his career (although by all accounts the production in question seems to have been made as a hatchet-job on Scott): https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000424/?ref_=tt_cl_t_6#actor
I'm now seriously tempted (having disappeared down this particular rabbit-hole) by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tealin's Scott Expedition Graphic Novel Project, and if it were a one-off Patreon commitment I probably would. But an indefinite £2 per month drain on my strictly limited remaining PayPal balance is a more difficult choice, especially as I can't actually see any of the posts from this computer, even the ones that are set as 'public'...
Her own (pictorial) version of how she got into the project: https://tealin.dreamwidth.org/486568.html
Sample pages: The Sea Ice Incident (which I suspect doesn't make much sense out of context until after you already know the story)
N.B. Tumblr images have changed server (as I discovered when looking back at my own posts containing embedded images!), so the seven pages that were originally visible in that post are now located here:
https://64.media.tumblr.com/47d1eb9a09fc754add21bc27b5381131/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo1_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/c262c70bae199d295c10a8bc3a71c05a/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo3_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/e0d8abbbbda34c50092bc08f96d60d53/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo2_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/afcd9d935681fd4ed91729e0cfa8b05f/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo4_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/218082c9c4064136ebbbafd0a498bc12/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo7_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/dad03b8f85f0a2ffe67a1af14d1db8ba/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo6_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/8e976a51923f30960a803003358a49f3/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo5_1280.jpg
The Prologue, which I think does stand alone: https://tealin.gumroad.com/l/WJprologue
It's odd reading all this polar exploration material while typing up Arctic Raoul; my own text was written months earlier and has no influence from Scott's expedition at all (mainly Nansen plus Worsley for the current chapter), but there are undoubted echoes. Which presumably means that I got the dynamics of a socially-mixed single-sex environment around the turn of the 20th century about right, and the mindset of an eager-to-please young man from the upper crust who is conscious of his own relative inexperience...
'Cherry' was intelligent and observant, sometimes palpably schoolboyish and sometimes painfully mature, he had access to all the archive material and personal diaries from the expedition records (he was supposed to be writing up the official report, before he decided he couldn't produce the sort of detached dry document they wanted), and he couldn't half *write*. It's a worm's-eye view of the expedition from a small and junior -- and unpaid volunteer -- member, with the benefit of the hindsight of the 1920s, minus the dubious benefit of the scornful revisionism that came later; the book is pretty much the nearest thing to actually being there at the time, from someone who actually knew what it was like to lie in a tent freezing to death on the assumption that you would never wake again, but had also shared the high spirits of hut life, and been amazed by the overwhelming beauty of elements of the Antarctic landscape.
There are flashes of humour throughout, from the opening lines (Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised) to irreverent observations on his companions (Meanwhile, the more hardy ones were washing: that is, they rubbed themselves, all shivering, with snow, of a minus temperature, and pretended they liked it. Perhaps they were right, but we told them it was swank), but it is often also profoundly poetic, and sometimes both (Whatever a penguin does has individuality, and he lays bare his whole life for all to see. He cannot fly away. And because he is quaint in all that he does, but still more because he is fighting against bigger odds than any other bird, and fighting always with the most gallant pluck, he comes to be considered as something apart from the ordinary bird — sometimes solemn, sometimes humorous, enterprising, chivalrous, cheeky — and always (unless you are driving a dog-team) a welcome and, in some ways, an almost human friend). In a way, it seems the worst tragedy of this account was not that Scott died -- many of them nearly did, on many occasions, and it was a risk they all accepted -- but that the cheerful, eager young man whom we get to know in the course of the book effectively didn't return from the expedition either.
There is no hint of it in his own text, but the biographical notes in the foreword reveal that Cherry was haunted by those two brief years and their outcome for the rest of his life, to a degree that would nowadays be described as clinical depression. It was perhaps the first time he'd been really happy, really belonged and been useful -- the best and worst thing in his life -- and he couldn't let go of it or of his survivor's guilt, turning his existence more or less into a living memorial. I can identify with that experience, hard... but of all the people in the world to become a self-tormenting recluse, the endearing boy we meet in the pages of this book -- of whom Wilson (who had been instrumental in getting him his much-longed-for place on the expedition) writes "Cherry... is such a success — and it is apparent to everyone. I am so delighted with him" and Scott, with affectionate amusement, "Really Cherry is very delightful — he has just come to me with a very anxious face..." -- seems the last person to whom it should have happened :-(
Unexpected connections: Hugh Grant, of all people, played Cherry-Garrard in a TV mini-series right at the start of his career (although by all accounts the production in question seems to have been made as a hatchet-job on Scott): https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000424/?ref_=tt_cl_t_6#actor
I'm now seriously tempted (having disappeared down this particular rabbit-hole) by
tealin's Scott Expedition Graphic Novel Project, and if it were a one-off Patreon commitment I probably would. But an indefinite £2 per month drain on my strictly limited remaining PayPal balance is a more difficult choice, especially as I can't actually see any of the posts from this computer, even the ones that are set as 'public'...Her own (pictorial) version of how she got into the project: https://tealin.dreamwidth.org/486568.html
Sample pages: The Sea Ice Incident (which I suspect doesn't make much sense out of context until after you already know the story)
N.B. Tumblr images have changed server (as I discovered when looking back at my own posts containing embedded images!), so the seven pages that were originally visible in that post are now located here:
https://64.media.tumblr.com/47d1eb9a09fc754add21bc27b5381131/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo1_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/c262c70bae199d295c10a8bc3a71c05a/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo3_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/e0d8abbbbda34c50092bc08f96d60d53/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo2_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/afcd9d935681fd4ed91729e0cfa8b05f/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo4_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/218082c9c4064136ebbbafd0a498bc12/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo7_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/dad03b8f85f0a2ffe67a1af14d1db8ba/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo6_1280.jpg
https://64.media.tumblr.com/8e976a51923f30960a803003358a49f3/tumblr_p878tzYi8t1ra9lleo5_1280.jpg
The Prologue, which I think does stand alone: https://tealin.gumroad.com/l/WJprologue
It's odd reading all this polar exploration material while typing up Arctic Raoul; my own text was written months earlier and has no influence from Scott's expedition at all (mainly Nansen plus Worsley for the current chapter), but there are undoubted echoes. Which presumably means that I got the dynamics of a socially-mixed single-sex environment around the turn of the 20th century about right, and the mindset of an eager-to-please young man from the upper crust who is conscious of his own relative inexperience...