A First Rate Tragedy Read online

  Barrie had recognized this romantic side of Scott’s nature. On the night of their first meeting he had walked through the streets of London quite enchanted with Scott and unwilling to part from him. He observed the extraordinary contradictions in him: ‘Scott was naturally a strange mixture of the dreamy and the practical, and never more practical than immediately after he had been dreamy. He forgot place and time altogether when thus abstracted.’7 Here we have an elegant and insightful updating of the ‘Old Mooney’ of Scott’s childhood which was clearly still a dominant part of Scott’s psychological make-up. It would not have surprised Barrie that Scott presented himself at a smart dinner party in white tie and waistcoat but no dinner jacket – a fact he only realized when handing his overcoat to a scandalized footman. Unlikely as an alliance between the diminutive playwright and the toughened young explorer might have seemed, there was a common bond. Each of them found aspects of modern adult life sad, unpalatable and inexplicable. Barrie found his comfort in the creation of his never-never land. Scott had Antarctica as his escapist kingdom of the imagination.

  In January 1907 Scott quietly began to put his plans into action, writing to the Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society that he reckoned he could mount an expedition for £30,000. However, something then happened which Scott had not foreseen. He had been worrying about the possibility of foreign rivals but had not anticipated a serious challenger much closer to home. In February 1907 Shackleton announced his own intention to lead a ‘British Antarctic Expedition’ to conquer the South Pole. To Scott this seemed an act of treachery and it did not bring out the best in him. Shackleton claimed that he had only learned of Scott’s plans when he wrote to Mulock, the man who had replaced him on the Discovery expedition when he was sent home, inviting him to join his expedition to find that he was already committed to Scott. Characteristically Wilson now resumed his role as peacemaker. Shackleton had also written to him, begging him to be his number two, an offer that Wilson felt obliged to turn down because of his work researching the cause of disease in grouse. However, on the very next day he received an agitated letter from Scott asking him what he thought Shackleton was playing at. Wilson did his best to defend his old friend, replying soothingly that Shackleton had been ignorant of his intentions and adding that he himself had had no idea that Scott meant to return.

  This mollified Scott a little, and he was prepared to proclaim publicly that what really mattered was that Britain should reach the Pole before any foreigner intervened. However, behind the scenes the wrangling continued. Scott was angry that Shackleton planned to make his base at McMurdo Sound, feeling this was not the act of a man of honour. Scott seemed, perversely, to see it as a personal fief. A man less anxious about position might have shown greater magnanimity. The problem from Shackleton’s point of view was that he had promised his sponsors, notably the Clydeside industrialist William Beardmore, that he would be starting out from Scott’s former base. A change of plan would look like sharp practice.

  However, Wilson, acting as a go-between, told him firmly that Scott had a prior claim. Shackleton listened to his gentle friend and accepted force majeure. In March he telegraphed to Scott that he would meet his wishes regarding the base. In May he met his erstwhile leader at Wilson’s instigation and drew up a memorandum renouncing the use of McMurdo Sound. It was very formal and more in tune with Scott’s disciplined, cautious way of doing business than the lively Irishman’s. He promised Scott that he was ‘leaving the McMurdo Sound base to you, and will land either at the place known as the Barrier Inlet or at King Edward VII Land, whichever is the most suitable. If I land at either of these places I will not work to the westward of the 170 meridian W. and shall not make any sledge journey going W . . .’ He concluded politely that ‘I hope this letter meets you on the points that you desire. – Yours very sincerely, E.H. SHACKLETON.’8

  Scott’s response was frigid and formal. He wrote that so long as Shackleton stuck to the arrangement they had agreed, ‘I do not think our plans will clash . . .’9 The dispute marked a profound shift in their relationship from the days of the Discovery expedition when a kindly Scott had tried to tempt his erstwhile sledging companion ‘Shackles’ with sardines and their camaraderie on Scott’s return. Scott now regarded Shackleton with suspicion bordering contempt. Shackleton on the other hand had been bitterly offended by the account in The Voyage of the Discovery of how he had had to be carried on the sledge, asserting he had only ridden on it to act as a brake, and this had soured his view of Scott.

  With so much at stake all of a sudden, the tension must have been unbearable for Scott as he tried to pull his own plans together. He had the comfort of knowing that Wilson would be going with him. In March the doctor had accepted his offer, adding that his wife Oriana was one hundred per cent behind him. Yet in July Scott had to endure the send-off given to Shackleton as he set sail aboard the rundown old sealer Nimrod, taking with him a motor vehicle – indeed, he was the first man to land a car in Antarctica – and two seamen from the Discovery expedition, Frank Wild and Ernest Joyce. At least the jealous and proprietorial Scott had the satisfaction of knowing that none of the Discovery’s officers had joined the venture.

  However, the year 1907 had not yet done with Scott. Other traumatic times awaited him because he was now in love. The woman who had caught his heart was at first glance the very antithesis of Scott. She challenged his middle-class ideas and insecurities. She was an artist, a free spirit, and fearless. Scott recognized that here at last was the being to whom he could reveal his doubts and his aspirations. Yet the prospect of marriage brought his insecurities to the fore. He had the courage to be a Polar explorer but could he take on the challenge of such an unconventional wife?

  8

  Captain Scott in Love

  At first glance Kathleen Bruce was an extraordinary mate for Scott. Artistic and cosmopolitan, she had a knack of getting away with things that would have sunk lesser women, from junketing across Europe with Isadora Duncan and camping out on the thyme-covered slopes of Mount Hymettus to making midnight calls in Chelsea with the district maternity nurse and touring the doss houses and opium dens of the East End. She also had considerable talent as a sculptress.

  Scott first met her at a lunch party given by Mabel Beardsley, sister of Aubrey, in December 1906. Scott’s actress sister Ettie Ellison-Macartney had toured with Mabel, who had taken a fancy to Scott. Indeed, her possessiveness about him was a standing joke. Scott, in turn, enjoyed these forays into the bohemian artistic world. This seemingly unfettered existence had attractions for a man who from an early age had struggled with the weight of family responsibilities and whose career was in thrall to that inflexible machine, the navy. Kathleen was sitting between Barrie and Max Beerbohm but glancing down the table she spied Scott and something about him arrested her attention. As she later described: ‘He was not very young, perhaps forty, nor very good-looking, but he looked very healthy and alert, and I glowed rather foolishly and suddenly when I clearly saw him ask his neighbour who I was.’ She was introduced to him after lunch and he asked her how she had acquired her ‘wonderful sunburn’. She told him she had been ‘vagabonding in Greece, and he thought how entrancing to vagabond like that’.

  That was that for the time being because Kathleen had to leave to catch a train. She later wrote that Scott had hurried after her ‘but he saw me just ahead carrying a rather large suitcase, and his “English gentlemen don’t carry large objects in the street” upbringing was too much for him. He did not catch me up.’ In those few words she captured some of the essence of Scott – his shyness, his middle-classness and his fears about what other people thought.

  It was ten months before their paths crossed again. Then in October 1907 Scott cajoled Mabel Beardsley into inviting them both to tea. Kathleen took unusual care with her wardrobe, hacking two hats into one and cutting up a handkerchief to make a new collar and cuffs. She was excited and curious but also aware of a certain incongruity – writing th
at ‘the like of him should not go to tea parties’. She left a vivid account of their meeting. At one moment she was being entertained by Ernest Thesiger and Henry James, but then:

  . . . all of a sudden, and I did not know how, I was sitting in a stiff, uncomfortable chair with an ill-balanced cup of tea, being trivially chaffed by this very well-dressed, rather ugly and celebrated explorer. He was standing over me. He was of medium height, with broad shoulders, very small waist, and dull hair beginning to thin, but with a rare smile and with eyes of a quite unusually dark blue, almost purple. I had noticed those eyes ten months before. I noticed them again now, although by electric light. I had never seen their like. He suggested taking me home.

  His photographs show that her impression of Scott as ‘rather ugly’ is surprising – perhaps there was a loving touch of irony at his vanity, perhaps she was comparing him with the dazzling young men who were her regular companions, but she certainly did not think him unattractive.

  Kathleen had expected Scott to do the conventional thing and hail a hansom cab, but instead they walked to her little flat in Cheyne Walk ‘laughing, talking, jostling each other’. This horseplay seems unlikely public behaviour for a mature naval officer, but Kathleen’s exuberant love of life liberated and excited Scott. From that day onwards he wrote or called constantly and his notes were intimate and tender and in the high-flown language of the day – ‘Uncontrollable footsteps carried me along the Embankment to find no light – yet I knew you were there dear heart – I saw the open window and, in fancy, a sweetly tangled head of hair upon the pillow within . . .’1 Within just a few days of that merry and boisterous promenade through Chelsea he was thinking of marriage.

  This was by no means Scott’s first romantic foray. He had always been attracted to pretty, lively, intelligent women but lack of time, money and opportunity had been powerful obstacles. His sister believed that ‘The sailor’s life and his romantic nature caused him to idealize women. His affections were easily caught though not easily held.’2 According to Bernacchi he particularly admired women who could ‘do a job of work successfully’.3 In her biography of Scott, Elspeth Huxley cites evidence that during 1907 he suffered the pangs of disappointed love. The object of his adoration was Marie-Carola, a wealthy young society widow and daughter of an Irish baronet. Scott was entranced by this clever, sophisticated, cosmopolitan woman who divided her life between the drawing rooms of fashionable London and the Paris salons. Yet it came to nothing and there is a story that after she rejected him they met unexpectedly at a dinner party and Scott was so overcome with emotion that his linen napkin was found torn to shreds beneath the table.

  He had also been attracted to the actress Pauline Chase, the toast of London for her boyish portrayal of Peter Pan, evidence again that he liked women from outside his own rather restricted milieu. Barrie acted as go-between and, when he could, Scott used to take her to supper after the performance and away for weekends in the country. The photographs show a slight girl with a charming, regular-featured face, very different from Kathleen Bruce’s strong, striking Mediterranean looks.

  Kathleen derived these from her unusual ancestry. Her father was the Reverend Lloyd Stewart Bruce, Canon of York and son of Sir James Bruce, Baronet of Downhill, Londonderry, but her mother was the granddaughter of a Greek prince. Nearly ten years Scott’s junior, Kathleen was born in March 1878 in her father’s rectory, the youngest of eleven children. She was orphaned young – Canon Bruce died in 1886 and his wife expired six years earlier, apparently of Bright’s Disease, but also worn out, no doubt, by all that childbearing. Kathleen’s childhood was spent in the household of her childless Episcopalian great uncle William Forbes Skene, an eccentric though fond old gentleman who was Historiographer Royal of Scotland. However, he was no substitute for a mother. Kathleen grew up restless and attention-seeking.

  She and her siblings were clearly a handful. Her older sister Podge later recalled how parents were ‘warned not to let their children associate with those dreadful Bruce girls!!’ after a row at Kathleen’s school.4 When her great uncle died Kathleen was left with just £72 a year and life became a succession of boarding schools interspersed with living with her sister Elma and her husband Canon Keating, a gloomy and eccentric couple. It was a dreary and spartan existence for this bright-eyed exuberant girl anxious to be noticed and hungry for affection. The ping-pong existence of her early years contributed to her feeling that she was a gypsy who could afford to travel light through life. She never attached much importance to possessions or appearances.

  After studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in London Kathleen chose a life as a near-penniless art student in Paris. She enrolled as a pupil at a popular studio, the Academie Colarossi, learning the skill of drawing but soon finding her greatest satisfaction in sculpting. Like many girls of her class and time she was very innocent. The sight of a naked male model posing for a life class apparently made her physically sick. However, she soon adapted to a bohemian way of life that came to suit her admirably. Because she had never known real maternal affection and had been a tomboy she had little time for members of her own sex, unless they were exceptional. She quickly abandoned classes for women only – dames seules, nicknamed ‘damned souls’ – a soubriquet she agreed with. She joined mixed classes where she was popular with the male students who were attracted by her striking looks and zest for life. She had a mass of dark hair, vivid blue eyes and an athletic figure.

  Her attraction had nothing to do with how she dressed. She had no interest in clothes. In later life she was described as one of the worst-dressed women in London with a ‘sort of aggressive no-taste’.5 However, she had undeniable sex appeal and enjoyed the power it gave her over men. She admitted she found their admiration ‘so exciting, so stimulating, so sunshiny’. In modern parlance she would probably be called a ‘tease’. Aleister Crowley, who met her in 1902, described her as ‘strangely seductive’ and insinuated that her chastity, or as she called it ‘my determined, my masterful virginity’, was a device with which to torture men. Whatever the case, one frustrated young Swede became so enraged that he lay in wait for her with a revolver.

  Her behaviour was at least partly the result of a need for attention and admiration unfulfilled from childhood and a determination to preserve her independence and to be in no one’s power. She was shrewd enough to know that plenty of men would be only too eager to take advantage of a young ingénue. An incident in her youth may also have had an influence. While she was still a little girl a drunk tried to abduct Kathleen in the street in Edinburgh. She bit him hard and managed to escape.6 She later described how the incident had given her a horror of drink. It also made her nervous of men but as she grew up she came to look on them ‘as fairly ordinary mortals’ according to Podge.7 Her diaries suggest that by the time she met Scott in her late twenties she was still a virgin. She claimed that she had been saving herself for a man worthy of siring the son on whom she had set her heart. This was certainly true – she scrutinized any man she was interested in with the coolness of a genetic scientist – but there may have been something deeper behind this determined chastity.

  Kathleen studied in Paris for five years and it could hardly have been a headier, more conducive environment. She was soon on easy terms with some of the foremost artists of the day, including Picasso and Rodin, who taught and encouraged her. Rodin also introduced her to the American dancer Isadora Duncan and told them to help each other. They became friends and Isadora asked Kathleen to be with her during the birth of her child. The pregnancy was supposed to be a secret and to put the press off the scent, Isadora asked Kathleen to dress in her clothes and dance about on the beach. She later accompanied Isadora and her family or ‘the dancing vagabonds’ as she called them, to Greece where they slept out of doors and danced to greet the dawn.

  It was shortly after this back-to-nature existence that Kathleen returned to London to begin her life as a sculptress, met Scott for the first time and dazzled him with h
er tales of vagabonding and her marvellous golden suntan. She must have seemed like a being from another world to this shy, restrained naval officer. Certainly from the time of their second meeting he was caught. Kathleen in turn was touched by his obvious sterling qualities. There was something reassuring about him. Her own world was peppered with admirers, talented, good-looking and amusing but also raffish, volatile, egocentric and unpredictable. As she recognized, they could not offer the stability she sought as she approached the end of her twenties, and none of them was fit to give her the son she yearned for – ‘this healthy, fresh, decent, honest, rock-like naval officer was just exactly what I had been setting up in my mind as a contrast to my artist friends, as the thing I had been looking for.’ She did not want an ordinary man. Her mate must be remarkable but he must also be reliable and someone she could look up to. He must be father figure and potential father. In Scott she believed she had found him.

  Within just a few weeks they had decided unofficially to marry and Kathleen met Hannah Scott. This was a crucial step. Like other men of his era Scott had a deeply reverential attitude towards his mother and he wanted Kathleen ‘to know and love that dear mother’.8 This was alien to Kathleen but she indulged him. Scott’s mother, in turn, did her best to respond to her disconcertingly exotic future daughter-in-law. Scott wrote to Kathleen: ‘You’re in a fair way to capture my mother’s head, she was full of you today. What did you say to her, do or say you little witch?’9 But, whatever Scott chose to believe, the relationship was never to be an easy one. Hannah Scott did her best but she would perhaps have preferred a more conventional woman and preferably one who had some money.