Family breaks the ice to reveal Scott’s treasured love letter
BRITAIN: When the body of Captain Robert Falcon Scott was found near the South Pole, rescuers recovered a letter from a pocket of the explorer’s frozen clothing. Written by his wife Kathleen, it was filled with hope, love and anxiety.
For almost a century after Scott’s death, the undated letter remained secret – a treasured private memento for his family. Now, however, the explorer’s grandson, Falcon Scott, has decided to make its contents public. ‘‘I think it’s time to have everything in the public domain because of the centenary of the deaths. I’ve kept the letter because it’s so personal,’’ he said.
In the letter, Kathleen, who married Scott in September 1908, wrote: ‘‘My dear one, how can I guess how things will be when you get this. But, oh dearie, I am full of hope. My brave man will win – with his right hand and his mighty arm hath he gathered himself the victory.’’
Given the privations suffered by Scott’s team, Kathleen, a sculptor, rather optimistically urged her husband, who she refers to by his nickname ‘‘Con’’, ‘‘not to forget to brush his hair’’ and ‘‘not to smoke too much’’.
She wrote: ‘‘I don’t know if you will ever get these silly little letters, and it’s truly to tell you that I love you more than is at all comfy, and moreover I think you are splendid. When you come home, we’ll feel closer and closer together, and the long time we’ve been apart will seem only a little hour.’’
The Scott family presume the letter and instructions on when it should be opened were either handed to the explorer by Kathleen when he left New Zealand in November 1910 on his unsuccessful bid to beat Roald Amundsen to the South Pole or was entrusted to one of his closest colleagues.
Despite the moving contents of the letter, which will be shown in a British television documentary about Scott on March 30, rumours of an affair between Kathleen and Fridtjof Nansen, one of Scott’s rivals, have long swirled.
Roland Huntford, who wrote biographies of Scott and Nansen, a Norwegian polar explorer, claimed the pair met in 1909 and that he wrote her a letter asking: ‘‘What kind of place are you going to arrange for us in Paris?’’ He wrote in a further letter: ‘‘I feel like a Faust, who has got a draught of the fountain of life, and become young again, suddenly and unexpectedly.’’
A blue plaque to commemorate Captain Lawrence Oates, who sacrificed his life as Scott’s team returned from the pole, was unveiled yesterday at a Leeds park once owned by the Oates family. Oates fell ill on the return leg and, when his fellow explorers refused to leave him, he took matters into his own hands, leaving their tent with the words: ‘‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’’