I know Scott intimately, as you know. I have known him now for ten years, and I believe in him so firmly that I am often sorry when he lays himself open to misunderstanding. I am sure that you will come to know him and believe in him as I do, and none the less because he is sometimes difficult. However you will soon see for yourself.
— E.A. Wilson, in a letter to Cherry, April 1910
On June 6th, 1868, Robert Falcon Scott was born in Plymouth, where his father ran the family brewery. Robert and his younger brother Archibald followed their uncles into the armed forces. Arch – sunny, energetic, athletic – made his way in the Army, while Robert – contemplative, moody, cerebral – was enrolled as a Naval cadet. This drilled out of him several character traits he considered defective, but his tendency to reverie and reflection remained evident in his letters, and his relationships with loved ones saw no lapse in sensitivity.
By his mid-twenties, he was Lieutenant R.F. Scott, and beginning to make his name on torpedo ships. Matters at home were less promising: his father's business failed, the large family home had to be let, his four sisters took jobs, and his brother transferred to a better-paying regiment in Nigeria. Disaster was allayed for a while, but in 1897 Mr. Scott died, followed shortly by jolly Arch, leaving Lt. R.F. Scott head of the household and principal breadwinner. He was devoted to his mother, whose kindness had offset his father's volcanic temper, and to his sisters, who had been eager companions on childhood adventures, and he keenly felt this new responsibility. To keep them in something like respectable circumstances, Lt. Scott sent home as much of his meagre naval salary as he could.
Just before all this misfortune, Scott had fortuitously run into Sir Clements Markham, who had been impressed with his sailing many years before. Markham was, at the time, beginning to organise a scientific expedition to Antarctica, and though Scott had little inherent interest in snowy wastes per se, his curiosity and ambition prompted him to apply for the post of commander. It paid off: two years later, at the age of 33 and not yet a full captain, Scott set sail in command of the purpose-built R.R.S. Discovery with the crew and scientific staff he'd been in charge of assembling, including Dr Wilson and Ernest Shackleton.
The Discovery Expedition expanded Antarctic knowledge exponentially, and showed where existing Arctic knowledge and experience needed amendment. Markham believed in the flexibility of young minds and Scott lived up to his expectations, if not more; by the time he returned to Britain in 1904 he was an expert in polar science, exploration, and command, and had earned the firm loyalty of several men who would follow him back to the ends of the earth six years later. The expedition had provided him with an opportunity to expand his intellect and exercise broader skills than a naval job allowed, and his artistic instincts flourished in the writing of the expedition narrative, The Voyage of the Discovery.
The whole affair was enough of a popular sensation to get Scott a place in Society. When not preoccupied with naval work or golfing with the Prince of Wales, he was invited to cultured soirées, where his suppressed Bohemian side attracted him to people like J.M. Barrie and Kathleen Bruce, a sculptress who had trained under Rodin and liked to go “vagabonding” across Europe. A Discovery companion wrote that Scott “enjoyed [women's] company if they were pretty, and more so if they appeared to be intelligent. He was a great admirer of any woman who could 'do a job of work' successfully.” Miss Bruce fit all three, and moreover had a high opinion of him in return, and they fell deeply in love. Ever the responsible one, Scott was reluctant to marry, as he was still supporting his mother and sisters and felt he couldn't afford to keep a wife in any comfort on top of that. After insistence from his mother not to be silly and from Kathleen that she was perfectly capable of providing for herself, they wed in the autumn of 1908.
The following year, Shackleton arrived back from his own Antarctic expedition, having failed to attain the Pole by a narrow margin, so Scott leapt into planning the next attempt. Unlike the Discovery Expedition, Scott's second endeavour was a private enterprise. The first ship had been a bespoke scientific vessel; the second was bought used from a whaling fleet, then renovated and retrofitted with lab space. Scott was as preoccupied with drumming up sponsorships and donations as he was with organising the expedition itself. Despite his lack of resources this time around, he did have an asset in the capable help and cheerleading of Kathleen, who was far more involved with the business than the more traditional men in their company thought proper. On top of this, she was raising her much-longed-for son, who they christened Peter after Barrie's famous creation.
When the Terra Nova set sail for the Antarctic in June of 1910, Scott stayed behind to continue fundraising in England, and do yet more in South Africa before he rejoined the ship there. The charm offensive continued practically until the final departure from New Zealand at the end of November. They had managed to equip the expedition, but were depending on the eventual resale of the ship, press contracts, and post-expedition lecture tours to put the whole endeavour in the black before it was wrapped up.
Once out of sight of New Zealand, financial considerations could thankfully be put to one side, but the Antarctic brought is own strains. Scott was a capable commander whose leadership skills had been lauded by those both above and below him, and he had worked hard to wrestle his temperamental nature into his control. But he was still prone to depression, which tended to arise when circumstances kept his nervous energy from application. Once such situation was when the Terra Nova was stuck in the pack ice in the Ross Sea – aside from the frustrating immobility, Scott also worried about the consumption of their limited coal, and the impact of every day's delay on what provision they could make for the next year's polar journey. On the other hand, when energy could be turned into action, his enthusiasm and drive surpassed everyone else's – pulling up the Beardmore Glacier the following summer, he set a rigorous standard for how much time and distance could be got out of a day.
Scott's enormous capacity for planning, and personal feelings of responsibility for those in his care, were fully evident in the first year on the ice. While stuck in the hut during the winter, his drive was channelled into planning the details of the following season's journey to the Pole, taking into account the existing stores and depots, dozens of moving pieces including the ship and satellite parties, and layers of contingencies. When he learned, the previous autumn, that Amundsen stood to beat him to the prize, he resolved not to rise to the bait, and to carry on as if nothing had changed – if he came second, so be it; it would be a job done properly and with plenty of science along the way.
Nevertheless, there is obvious disappointment in Scott's journal when he discovers this is indeed what had come to pass. That old nervous energy was soon turned to getting the party home again, but when problems started to stack up, depression came creeping in. His self-discipline still had the upper hand, though, and no matter how despondent his journals reveal him to be, his actions were always in support of his companions and their drive to get home.
A crucial threshold was reached near the end, when his arch-enemy immobility caught up with him: frostbitten and snowed-in, this ought to have been the final straw, but instead all the strengths of Scott's character rallied and he poured himself out in page after page of letters to his friends, family, sponsors, advocates, and The Public. His primary concern was, as always, that those depending on him (and on those he got into this mess) were provided for; he overflows with sympathy for the families his companions leave behind; he bemoans his unfinished business and tries to arrange what he can from a tent in the middle of nowhere, including a heartfelt note trying to patch things up with his estranged friend Barrie. His Message to the Public – scribbled in tiny lines on the back leaves of his journal – is both a stirring testament to the human spirit, and a clear-headed, even-handed analysis of what went wrong; remarkable in its own right, all the more from someone starving, dehydrated, and utterly played out. And all this was written without any assurance that any of it would ever be found.
Found it was, though, and when delivered to its intended recipient, the Message to the Public (and the Polar Party's story) elicited such a swell of generosity that not only were the families looked after but the Expedition's debts paid off and, eventually, an eponymous institute of polar studies founded. Captain Scott, the Tragic Hero, was sainted in British popular culture for much of the twentieth century, but post-imperial historical revisionism came for him, and his character was unsubtly dragged in a very popular and influential book, and later TV miniseries.
Echoes of this had coloured my perception of him before I knew the story, but when I got into this subject seriously and started reading the first-hand accounts, it seemed there was more to him than the hubristic Victorian bungler. It was the centenary of the Expedition that truly changed my mind – starting in November of 2010 I read his diary entries, one a day, and in doing so got to know him on his own terms, and in fuller context. Both sainthood and infamy do a disservice to a deeply interesting and multi-faceted personality; I ended up rather fond of him, and full of admiration for what he achieved, both personally and professionally. I don't know if I'll succeed in changing anyone's mind with my work, but I'm determined to present the complex and honourable man I've come to know with the sympathy he deserves.
Scott's unfortunate history of character assassination via liberties with source material means his biographies are something of a minefield. Trying to stick as close to the facts as possible, I've drawn this writeup mainly from George Seaver's small biography, which was largely informed by Scott's sister, and the biography Kathleen commissioned from Stephen Gwynn, which is more or less a collection of letters with sufficient editorial filler to string his life together. I maintain that the best way to get to know him is to read his journal, but these are both sound books, and Diana Preston's portrait of him in A First-Rate Tragedy is also comprehensive and well-cited.
Regarding the art: He's a tricky one to figure out, visually, because the features that most invite caricature (big eyes, small nose, high forehead) make him look like a baby-faced old man, and that gives the wrong impression of his character. His bust at the Canterbury Museum in New Zealand – preternaturally lifelike –helped a lot, as the later images show.