This book tells the stories of three women whose husbands were part of Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated journey to the South Pole. One was Kathleen Scott, one was Oriana Wilson, wife of the expedition’s chief scientist, and one was Lois Evans the Welsh working-class wife of a common sailor admired by Scott.
It was stimulating to read detailed backgrounds for each of these women. Oriana lived by the mantra: Is it kind? Is it true? is it necessary? Before marriage she signed a pre-nuptial agreement that the decision for her husband to join the Antarctic expedition had been a mutual one. Her husband wrote his will just nine days after they were married, and left on the Discovery three weeks after their wedding. Oriana waited for him in Christchurch, staying in a hut at the Kinsey’s home in Sumner. This hut survived the 2011 earthquakes, and has now been re-located to Godley Head.
Kathleen came from an aristocratic family, studied sculpture with Rodin, and was friends with George Bernard Shaw, Isodora Duncan, and JM Barrie. She later made statues of various famous men including her husband, but there was no mention in this book of her replica statue of her husband which stands beside the Avon/Ōtākaro River. Kathleen did not support the movement for Women’s suffrage in Britain because she felt it was unnecessary and in some cases damaging to let women vote.
There is less known about Lois, because unlike the others neither she nor her husband left a written record.
It was sad to read how each of these women received the news of their husband’s death and how they dealt with the ensuing publicity. The author dissects the idea of British imperial heroism in a matter-of-fact way, and discusses how any problems with the expedition were kept out of the public eye.
This is a meticulously researched book which provides enthralling information about an expedition which has become part of our folklore, and its aftermath. My interest was heightened because Antarctica is to be the subject of our next U3A course.
The women who were left behind
had lives forever intertwined