Apsley Cherry Garrard Quotes

Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.

And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore.

Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on Earth has it worse than an Emperor penguin.

If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin's egg.

Accept yourself: be yourself. That seems a good rule. But which self? Even the simplest of us are complicated enough.

I am glad The Worst Journey is coming out in Penguins: after all it is largely about penguins.

We are a nation of shop keepers.

I might have speculated on my chances of going to Heaven; but candidly I did not care. I could not have wept if I had tried. I had no wish to review the evils of my past. But the past did seem to have been a bit wasted. The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions: the road to Heaven is paved with lost opportunities.

Those Hut Point days, would prove some of the happiest of my life. Just enough to eat and keep warm, no more - no frills or trimmings: there is many a worse and more elaborate life...the luxuries of civilisation satisfy only those wants which they themselves create.

The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions: the road to Heaven is paved with lost opportunities.

It is really not desirable for men who do not believe that knowledge is of value for its own sake to take up this kind of life. The question constantly put to us in civilization was and still is: "What is the use? Is there gold? or Is there coal?" The commercial spirit of the present day can see no good in pure science: the English manufacturer is not interested in research which will not give him a financial return within one year: the city man sees in it only so much energy wasted on unproductive work: truly they are bound to the wheel of conventional life.

I for one, had come to that point of suffering at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain. They talk of the heroism of the dying - the little they know - it would be so easy to die, a dose of morphia, a friendly crevasse, and blissful sleep. The trouble is to go on...

Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion

A war is like the Antarctic in one respect. There is no getting out of it with honour as long as you can put one foot before the other.

the luxuries of civilization satisfy only those wants which they themselves create.

The mutual conquest of difficulties is the cement of friendship, as it is the only lasting cement of matrimony.

Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion.

I liked the way the boats looked, but I didn’t do anything about it. After a blowup with the feculent Times bloater—lying there on his waterbed playing the paper comb and drinking black rum—I flew up to Houston, Texas— don’t ask me why—and bought a touring bike. A bicycle, not a motorcycle. And I pedaled it to Los Angeles. The most terrible trip in the world. I mean Apsley Cherry-Garrard with Scott at the pole didn’t have a clue. I endured sandstorms, terrifying and lethal heat, thirst, freezing winds, trucks that tried to kill me, mechanical breakdowns, a Blue Norther, torrential downpours and floods, wolves, ranchers in single-engine planes dropping flour bombs. And Quoyle, the only thing that kept me going through all this was the thought of a little boat, a silent, sweet sailboat slipping through the cool water. It grew on me. I swore if I ever got off that fucking bicycle seat which was, by that time, welded into the crack of me arse, if ever I got pried off the thing I’d take to the sea and never leave her.

Generally the risks were taken, for, on the whole, it is better to be a little over-bold than a little over-cautious, while always there was a something inside urging you to do it just because there was a certain risk, and you hardly liked not to do it. It is so easy to be afraid of being afraid!

For an hour or so we were furiously angry, and were possessed with an insane sense that we must go straight to the Bay of Whales and have it out with Amundsen and his men in some undefined fashion or other there and then. Such a mood could not and did not bear a moment's reflection; but it was natural enough. We had just paid the first instalment of the heart-breaking labour of making a path to the Pole; and we felt, however unreasonably, that we had earned the first right of way.

committing suicide, both for your own sake and that of your companions. Both sexually and socially the polar explorer must make up his mind to be starved. To what extent can hard work, or what may be called dramatic imagination, provide a substitute? Compare our thoughts on the march; our food dreams at night; the primitive way in which the loss of a crumb of biscuit may give a lasting sense of grievance. Night after night I bought big buns and chocolate at a stall on the island platform at Hatfield station, but always woke before I got a mouthful to my lips; some companions who were not so highly strung were more fortunate, and ate their phantom meals. And the darkness, accompanied it may be almost continually by howling blizzards which prevent you seeing your hand before your face. Life in such surroundings is both mentally and physically cramped; open-air exercise is restricted and in blizzards quite impossible, and you realize how much you lose by your inability to see the world about you when you are out-of-doors. I am told that when confronted by a lunatic or one who under the influence of some great grief or shock contemplates suicide, you should take that man out-of-doors and walk him about: Nature will do the rest. To normal people like ourselves living under abnormal circumstances Nature could do much to lift our thoughts out of the rut of everyday affairs, but she loses much of her healing power when she cannot be seen, but only felt, and when that feeling is intensely uncomfortable. Somehow in judging polar life you must discount compulsory endurance; and find out what a man can shirk, remembering always that it is a sledging life which

As it was he had moods and depressions which might last for weeks. And of these there is ample evidence in diary. The man with the nerves gets things done but sometimes he has a terrible time in doing them. " Written about Scott in Chapter 6

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a Heaven for? R. Browning, Andrea del Sarto.

But we wasted our man-power in one way which could have been avoided. I have described how every emergency was met by calling for volunteers, and how the volunteers were always forthcoming. Unfortunately volunteering was relied on not only for emergencies, but for a good deal of everyday work that should have been organised as routine; and the inevitable result was that the willing horses were overworked. It was a point of honour not to ca' canny. Men were allowed to do too much, and were told afterwards that they had done too much; and that is not discipline. They should not have been allowed to do too much. Until our last year we never insisted on a regular routine.

Laurie in bright and early. At 2 p.m. a customer with a very neatly trimmed moustache came to the counter and said, ‘I’ve been looking for a copy of Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World for years after I lent mine to a friend who never gave it back to me. I see you have a copy, but it’s £23. It seems a lot of money for an old book.’ So, after years of looking for a copy of The Worst Journey in the World, he finally found one, and a scarce edition too, but £23 was too much. As I was sorting through the

and then "How's the enemy, Titus?" to Oates, who would hopefully reply that it was, say, seven o'clock.

From the masthead one can see a few patches of open water in different directions, but the main outlook is the same scene of desolate hummocky pack.

He remarked afterwards to me, apropos to Hooper, that it was a curious thing that a number of men, knowing that there was nothing they could do, could quietly watch a man fighting for his life, and he did not think that any but the British temperament could do so.

The point, one begins to see, was not merely to survive; it was to come through intact, true to one’s most decent self — in short, to survive as English gentlemen.

Whilst we knew what we had suffered and risked better than any one else, we also knew that science takes no account of such things; that a man is no better for having made the worst journey in the world; and that whether he returns alive or drops by the way will be all the same a hundred years hence if his records and specimens come safely to hand.

If you think your own life hard, and would like to leave it for a short hour I recommend you to beg, borrow or steal this tale, and read and see how the penguins live. It is all quite true.

We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint....

The mind of a horse is a very limited concern, relying almost entirely upon memory. He rivals our politicians in that he has little real intellect.

I for one had come to that point of suffering at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain. They talk of the heroism of the dying—they little know—it would be so easy to die, a dose of morphia, a friendly crevasse, and blissful sleep. The trouble is to go on....

More than once in my short life I have been struck by the value of the man who is blind to what appears to be a common-sense certainty: he achieves the impossible.

Thus the Emperor penguin is compelled to undertake all kinds of hardships because his children insist on developing so slowly, very much as we are tied in our human relationships for the same reason. It is of interest that such a primitive bird should have so long a childhood.

Yes! comfortable, warm reader. Men do not fear death, they fear the pain of dying.

And now the reader will ask what became of the three penguins' eggs for which three human lives had been risked three hundred times a day, and three human frames strained to the utmost extremity of human endurance. Let us leave the Antarctic for a moment and conceive ourselves in the year 1913 in the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. I had written to say that I would bring the eggs at this time. Present, myself, C.-G., the sole survivor of the three, with First or Doorstep Custodian of the Sacred Eggs. I did not take a verbatim report of his welcome; but the spirit of it may be dramatized as follows: First Custodian. Who are you? What do you want? This ain't an egg-shop. What call have you to come meddling with our eggs? Do you want me to put the police on to you? Is it the crocodile's egg you're after? I don't know nothing about 'no eggs. You'd best speak to Mr. Brown: it's him that varnishes the eggs. I resort to Mr. Brown, who ushers me into the presence of the Chief Custodian, a man of scientific aspect, with two manners: one, affably courteous, for a Person of Importance (I guess a Naturalist Rothschild at least) with whom he is conversing, and the other, extraordinarily offensive even for an official man of science, for myself. I announce myself with becoming modesty as the bearer of the penguins' eggs, and proffer them. The Chief Custodian takes them into custody without a word of thanks, and turns to the Person of Importance to discuss them. I wait. The temperature of my blood rises. The conversation proceeds for what seems to me a considerable period. Suddenly the Chief Custodian notices my presence and seems to resent it. Chief Custodian. You needn't wait. Heroic Explorer. I should like to have a receipt for the eggs, if you please. Chief Custodian. It is not necessary: it is all right. You needn't wait. Heroic Explorer. I should like to have a receipt. But by this time the Chief Custodian's attention is again devoted wholly to the Person of Importance. Feeling that to persist in overhearing their conversation would be an indelicacy, the Heroic Explorer politely leaves the room, and establishes himself on a chair in a gloomy passage outside, where he wiles away the time by rehearsing in his imagination how he will tell off the Chief Custodian when the Person of Importance retires. But this the Person of Importance shows no sign of doing, and the Explorer's thoughts and intentions become darker and darker. As the day wears on, minor officials, passing to and from the Presence, look at him doubtfully and ask his business. The reply is always the same, "I am waiting for a receipt for some penguins' eggs." At last it becomes clear from the Explorer's expression that what he is really waiting for is not to take a receipt but to commit murder. Presumably this is reported to the destined victim: at all events the receipt finally comes; and the Explorer goes his way with it, feeling that he has behaved like a perfect gentleman, but so very dissatisfied with that vapid consolation that for hours he continues his imaginary rehearsals of what he would have liked to have done to that Custodian (mostly with his boots) by way of teaching him manners.

Every one who has been through such an extraordinary experience has much to say, and ought to say it if he has any faculty that way.

There is a sort of fascination with the past that is an act of deliberate forgetting: it’s called “nostalgia.” Religious communities are particularly prone to this. Faith is “handed down,” a matter of traditio, and hence faithfulness can be confused with preserving the past rather than having gratitude for a legacy meant to propel us forward. The most significant problem with nostalgia is not that it remembers but what it forgets. “So much of the trouble of this world is caused by memories,” wrote Apsley Cherry-Garrard, “for we only remember half.”19 The “past” that is pined for is always selected, edited, preserved in amber, and thus decontextualized, even if this past is invoked as marching orders for restoration and recovery.20 Whenever the past is invoked as a template for the present, the first question we should always ask is, Whose past? Whose version of the past? And what does this invoked past ignore, override, and actively forget? Which half is recalled? Whose half is forgotten?

They are extraordinarily like children, these little people of the Antarctic world,” wrote Apsley Cherry-Garrard, a twenty-five-year-old adventurer who visited Cape Crozier in 1911 during Robert Scott’s ill-fated South Pole expedition. “Their little bodies are so full of curiosity,” he observed, “that they have little room for fear.

Men do not fear death, they fear the pain of dying.

Unfortunately the dogs misunderstood their orders and, instead of piloting us, dashed off on their own. We saw them like specks in the distance in the direction of the old seal crack.

Poor trustful creatures! If I could have done it then, I would gladly have killed them rather than picture them starving on that floe out on the Ross Sea, or eaten by the exultant Killers that cruised around.

And at the end, when Scott himself lay dying, he wrote to Mrs. Wilson: "I can do no more to comfort you, than to tell you that he died as he lived, a brave, true man—the best of comrades and staunchest of friends.

For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott; for a Winter Journey, Wilson; for a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen: and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time.

When I went South I never meant to write a book: I rather despised those who did so as being of an inferior brand to those who did things and said nothing about them. But that they say nothing is too often due to the fact that they have nothing to say, or are too idle or too busy to learn how to say it. Every one who has been through such an extraordinary experience has much to say, and ought to say it if he has any faculty that way.

Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on earth has a worse time than an Emperor penguin.

A telegram was waiting for Scott: "Madeira. Am going South. Amundsen.

Five men went forward, Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and Seaman Evans. They reached the Pole on January 17 to find that Amundsen had reached it thirty-four days earlier. They returned 721 statute miles and perished 177 miles from their winter quarters.

There is nothing so irritating as the man who is always coming in and informing all and sundry that he has repaired his sledge, or built a wall, or filled the cooker, or mended his socks.

It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.

Last entry. "For God's sake, look after our people.

If you want a good polar traveller get a man without too much muscle, with good physical tone, and let his mind be on wires—of steel. And if you can't get both, sacrifice physique and bank on will.

Then some prayers from the Burial Service: and there with the floor-cloth under them and the tent above we buried them in their sleeping-bags—and surely their work has not been in vain.

a moderate roll rings the bell, and a big roll brings out the cook.

We traveled for science: those three small embryos from Cape Crozier, that weight of fossils from Barkley Island, and that mass of material less spectacular but gathered just as carefully hour by hour, in wind and drift, darkness and cold, was striven for in order that the world may have a little more knowledge, that it may build on what it knows instead of on what it thinks.