I Am Just Going Outside: Captain Oates - Antarctic Tragedy E-Book

Michael Smith

• Herausgeber: The Collins Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2002

Beschreibung

On 17 March 1912, Lawrence 'Titus' Oates crawled bootless from a tent to his death in blizzard conditions of -40°C. Oates, always an outsider on Scott's Polar expedition, died on his 32nd birthday. His parting words were: 'I am just going outside and may be some time.' Oates was the epitome of the Victorian English gentleman: a public schoolboy who became a dashing cavalry officer and hero in the Boer War. Stationed in Ireland from 1902 to 1906, his passion became horse racing and he won numerous victories at racecourses throughout Ireland. Oates' austere and dominating mother blamed Scott for her son's death and was among the first to challenge the accepted version of events. She continued to control his memory long after his death, keeping his diary and letters hidden, even ordering their destruction from her deathbed. Oates always had difficulty forming lasting relationships with women. He died without realising that he was a father. The story of how Oates died, unaware of his daughter, has been a closely guarded secret until now. This is a compelling and heart-rending story of endurance, bravery and folly. From the author of TOM CREAN: AN UNSUNG HERO

Leseprobe

I Am Just Going Outside

Captain Oates – Antarctic Tragedy

Michael Smith

Michael Smith, a former journalist, is an established authority on Polar exploration. His other books are An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean, Antarctic Survivor (2001, 2009), Polar Crusader about Sir James Wordie (2004), Tom Crean – An Illustrated Life (2006, 2013), Captain Francis Crozier (2006, 2014), Great Endeavour – Ireland’s Antarctic Explorers (2010) and Shackleton – By Endurance We Conquer (2014). An Unsung Hero was shortlisted for the Banff Mountain Book Festival and Tom Crean – An Illustrated History was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards 2007. Michael contributes to TV and radio documentaries and lectures on polar history.www.micksmith.co.uk

Dedication

To Barbara, Daniel and Nathan

PRAISE FOR THE BEST-SELLING BIOGRAPHY,AN UNSUNG HERO: TOM CREAN, ANTARCTIC SURVIVOR

This book is a remarkable tribute to one of Ireland’s great polar explorers. Michael Smith’s excellent biography finally puts Tom Crean where he has long deserved to be – in the limelight amongst the other great figures of the Heroic Age of Exploration.

Jonathan Shackleton

Well-written and beautifully produced.

– The Times, London

This is a moving account of a genuine hero – modest, honest and powerful … timely in an age when we put down our heroes.

Frank Delaney

… compulsive reading. An inspiring and quite remarkable story …

– The Irish Times

This is a remarkable book about a remarkable man.

– Sunday Tribune

Michael Smith has made a great and welcomed addition to the history of Antarctic exploration. A man like Tom Crean who survives three Antarctic expeditions and returns to his Irish village to open a pub called ‘The South Pole Inn’ is a man worth knowing about and Smith tells the story well.

– Robert B. Stephenson, Coordinator, The Antarctic Circle

It’s a wonderful Kiplingesque yarn about a great Irishman who didn’t have to die to become a hero.

– Irish Independent

I’ve read all the books, repeated most of Shackleton’s boat routes as well as that of the Worst Journey, plus written a book of my own on polar exploration – but this old, bold tale, told well, is one I couldn’t put down.

–Galen Rowell, author of Poles Apart: Parallel Visions of the Arctic and the Antarctic

Michael Smith has written a splendid biography of Crean.

– The Nautical Magazine

… Creates a fascinating word picture of this astonishing man.

– Irish Examiner

Contents

Notes

Acknowledgements

Preface

1.  Deep roots

2.  Mother’s boy

3.  A place in the country

4.  Lord of the Manor

5.  A call to arms

6.  A blast of war

7.  No surrender

8.  The bells of St Mary’s

9.  A piece of flotsam

10.  The great escape

11.  Terra Incognita

12.  A fatal mistake

13.  A race for the Pole

14.  A load of crocks

15.  Footprints in the snow

16.  The seeds of destruction

17.  Friends and enemies

18.  ‘…there is no cause for anxiety…’

19.  To the last place on earth

20.  Wrong man, wrong place

21.  The abyss of defeat

22.  ‘God help us…’

23.  The ultimate sacrifice

24.  A very gallant gentleman

25.  Bitter memories

26.  A second tragedy

Chapter notes

Bibliography

Books

Archive sources and abbreviations

Newspapers, magazines, periodicals

Articles

Unpublished diaries, documents, interviews, letters

Films

Notes

Temperatures are generally given in the form used at the time, Fahrenheit. But conversions into the modern usage of Centigrade are provided. For example, water freezes at 32°F which is equal to –0°C, –20°F is –29°C and –40°F is –40°C. The body temperature of 98.4°F is 37°C.

Many of the distances of the age were measured in geographical or nautical miles, which is 1/60th of a degree of latitude or 6,080 feet (1.85 kilometres), the equivalent of 1.15 statute miles (1.60 km). Where appropriate, conversions are given.

Weights are listed in the Imperial form, the measure used at the time. For example, there are 2,240 lbs (1,016 kilograms) in a ton. Conversions into metric are given where considered helpful.

Money is written into contemporary units of pounds, shillings and pence (£ s d), but has been converted into current day purchasing power to provide a clearer indication of the relative sums involved. The conversion formula is provided by the Bank of England and illustrates the amount of money required at March 1999 to purchase £1 of goods on the chosen date in history. For example, it would require £52.94 today to purchase the equivalent £1 of goods in 1900.

During the Heroic Age of Polar exploration, the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica was known as the Ross Barrier, the Great Ice Barrier or simply the Barrier and the contemporary name is used in this book.

The punctuation and spelling used in original correspondence and diaries, however erratic, have been faithfully repeated.

Acknowledgements

This book could not have been written without the valuable assistance of many considerate people, who willingly provided generous access to relevant information, gave valuable advice and offered friendly encouragement.

I am especially grateful to Jenny Streeter, Curator of the Gilbert White Museum-Oates Memorial Museum at Selborne, Hampshire who was endlessly patient and helpful over a very long period. Her independent guidance and encouragement were invaluable and freely given in the very best traditions of literary research.

Robert Headland at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, was a generous source of information and gave me access to the Institute’s exceptional archive material, for which I am especially grateful. William Mills and Shirley Sawtell, also at SPRI, were especially helpful with information held in the library and always patient with my enquiries.

Captain (Retd) W. Alan Henshall, Assistant Regimental Secretary of the Royal Dragoon Guards, was generous with his access to the Regiment’s archive material and has allowed me to quote freely.

I am particularly grateful to the following people and general staff at the other libraries, museums, research institutes and universities who gladly allowed me access to their archive material and were always considerate and helpful. Meredith Davies at Battersea District Library, London (BDL); British Colombia Archives, Victoria, Canada (BCA); Cambridge University Library, Cambridge (CUL); Dr Steven Blake at Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museums, Cheltenham (CAG); Essex County Archives, Essex Record Office, Chelmsford (ECA); Penny Hatfield at Eton College Archives, Eton (EC); the General Medical Council (GMC); Public Record Office, London (PRO): Dr Andrew Tatham and Huw Thomas at the Royal Geographical Society, London (RGS); Sharon McIntyre at The Shaftesbury Society, London (SS); Suffolk County Libraries & Heritage, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, (SCL); West Yorkshire Archives, Leeds (WYA).

Sue Limb and Major General Patrick Cordingley, earlier biographers of Lawrence Oates, were supportive and offered great encouragement and useful advice. Sue Limb also readily shared her personal memories of Violet Oates and was always endlessly patient with my questions. She also gave her generous approval for me to quote from her book, Captain Oates: Soldier and Explorer. Janet Crawford, the granddaughter of Louis Bernacchi, kindly gave me permission to quote from her grandfather’s book, the first biography of Oates, A Very Gallant Gentleman.

I must place on record my thanks to Lord Kennet who allowed me access to the Kennet family papers, particularly the diaries and correspondence of Lady Kennet (Kathleen Scott). The Hon Broke Evans, son of Edward R.G.R. ‘Teddy’ Evans (Lord Mountevans), offered encouragement and gladly shared his valuable understanding of Polar affairs. The Society of Authors, on behalf of the Bernard Shaw Estate, allowed me to quote from the letters of G.B. Shaw.

Angela Mathias kindly allowed me to quote from her husband’s book, The Worst Journey in the World. I am also grateful that Hermann Gran generously permitted me to extract references from The Norwegian With Scott: Tryggve Gran’s Antarctic Diaries 1910–13.

David Wilson allowed me to inspect documents relating to his great-uncle, Edward Wilson at Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum and to quote from his book, Cheltenham in Antarctica. A.G.E. Jones also offered useful wisdom on the affairs of Cecil Meares.

Klaus Marx, a former headmaster of Willington School and authority on Lawrence Oates’ period in Putney, kindly shared his knowledge and willingly gave me free access to much useful material about his early life. I am especially grateful for being allowed to listen to his original recording of Tryggve Gran’s speech on Oates delivered in 1972.

I want to record my grateful thanks to Tony Dagnall, Churchwarden at St Mary the Virgin, Gestingthorpe, who was enormously obliging and constructive with his advice and knowledge on the village so closely associated with the Oates family. Local people, Ashley Cooper, Cecil Pannell and Frances Teverson were also very helpful in providing me with their anecdotes and personal recollections of the Oates family at Gestingthorpe. Corinna Brown, a resident for many years, generously provided me with a guided tour of Gestingthorpe Hall, which added to my understanding of the subject. Vera Hodsoll of the Eastbourne Local History Society willingly shared her local knowledge.

Dr Charles R. Bentley, Professor Emeritus of Geophysics, Geophysical and Polar Research at the University of Wisconsin, US, graciously showed me the results of his research into glaciology and the probable locations of the bodies of Lawrence Oates and his four companions on the Southern Journey.

I also owe considerable thanks to Dr Evan Lloyd of The Western General Hospital, Edinburgh who provided me with invaluable professional guidance and insight into the effects of frostbite. Staff at the British Dyslexia Association were particularly helpful with advice and guidance into the mysteries of this particular affliction. I am very grateful.

Alison Delanty was a welcome source of knowledge and understanding about horses.

I should like also to record my thanks to Sara Wheeler for her thoughtful contributions.

I owe a special debt to Gillian Ward, who was courteous and patient with my inquiries about her mother and the relationship with Lawrence Oates. The investigation into Oates’ child was undertaken entirely at my instigation and she never sought any personal gain from her knowledge. But her generous assistance was invaluable in shedding light on this episode and I am very grateful. Angela Wilson was immensely helpful in providing considerable information, correspondence and memories of her friend, Kathleen Gray.

Joan Keen of the Glasgow & West of Scotland Family History Society, Ian McKendrick and Margaret McKendrick were particularly thoughtful in supplying useful support and genealogical details about Henrietta Learmont McKendrick.

My agent, Anne Dewe, also deserves my gratitude for her support.

It should be recorded that most of the present day Oates family was evidently opposed to publication of this book about their most famous ancestor and was deliberately obstructive and unhelpful towards my research. An honourable character like Oates would not be impressed.

The one exception was Laurie G. Oates, the great-nephew of Lawrence Oates, who was very considerate and offered some useful guidance on the family. I am grateful to him.

I have made every reasonable effort to trace copyright holders of documents and photographs in the course of my researches, which has proven difficult in some cases after such a long passage of time. Accreditation has been given where it can be properly established. I hope I will be forgiven if there are any unintentional omissions.

On a personal note, I must thank my wife, Barbara, who has been considerate, thoroughly supportive and ceaselessly patient. My sons, Daniel and Nathan, were also important during the writing of this book and lent their own enthusiastic support.

Michael SmithLondon August 2002

Preface

‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’

Most people will know that these simple words, so famous and so often repeated over the past decades, were uttered by Captain Lawrence Oates who according to legend gallantly gave his life to help save his comrades in an Antarctica blizzard during Captain Scott’s tragic last expedition. There are few phrases in the English language that are so instantly recognisable or so enduring, or that capture the imagination to such an extent. From the moment that his tragic words and the circumstances of his death arrived in the public domain in 1913, Oates became a symbol of gallantry and heroism and a national icon.

Oates was at centre stage of the Scott disaster and the expedition’s most unfortunate victim. It was a tragedy which left such an impression on the national psyche that 100,000 British soldiers, who themselves were staring death in the face from the trenches of the First World War, were shown pictures of Oates and his comrades as an example of how to die nobly. One senior military chaplain wrote from the Front that the tragedy was ‘… just the thing to cheer and encourage us out here…’ Oates was the finest example of how, if nothing else, Britons knew how to die.

With hindsight, it is easy to understand how the country sought to draw strength from Oates. The Old Order was changing and war had accelerated the change. The reforms of the Edwardian age had left many Britons bewildered and uncertain, the Empire was under intense strain in places like Ireland and India, and the map of Europe was being re-drawn by the war.

Oates was a symbol of Britishness at a time when the country was under most pressure and people drew strength from his heroism. It was a time for heroes, unlike the modern day preoccupation with villains.

However, the man behind the memorable words, Lawrence Edward Grace Oates, remains something of an enigma. He is a mysterious, largely unknown character, whose fame arises chiefly from his short valedictory remark and miserable death in the most inhospitable and remote place on earth.

However, there was far more to Lawrence Oates than a distinguished death.

Oates was undoubtedly a hero, a cool-headed man of tremendous courage. He might have won the Victoria Cross during a distinguished army career.

But he was a reluctant hero, a quiet man who was uncomfortable in the limelight and hated convention and what he called ‘fuss’. He would have been utterly repelled by the attention and hero worship which has followed him since his death in 1912.

On the surface, Oates was just another member of the Landed Gentry, who emerged from one of England’s oldest families at the end of the Victorian age to an enviable position of inherited wealth and social position. The trappings of privilege took him from the family’s country estate to Eton and onto a commission in an élite cavalry regiment. It also gave him a lazy, self-indulgent life hunting, playing polo and attending an endless merry-go-round of parties and social functions for the idle rich.

Beneath the surface the Oates story is different. He was always something of an outsider, a man who disliked the strict conventions of the Victorian era into which he was born and yet struggled to come to terms with the reforms of Edwardian Britain. He was a contradiction, a person who epitomised the English country squire but was no dandy. He rejected the rigid social customs, ignored class distinction and deliberately wore shabby clothes to emphasise his abhorrence of social status. He was informal in an age of formality.

The other side of Oates was that he was dominated by his austere and over-powering mother, a formidable woman who exercised a powerful control over his life from the stuffy drawing room of the grand manorial home and who could never come to terms with his death. It was a control she continued to exercise long afterwards. Her obsessive love for her son also meant that she was among the first to raise uncomfortable questions about the official version of Scott’s ill-fated expedition, which killed her son.

Oates played a prominent role in the key events which shaped the Scott tragedy and was the only one of the five men who perished on the terrible Polar journey to offer an alternative perspective on the unfolding catastrophe. Contemporary scraps of diaries and letters reveal a different picture from the conventional story of gallant failure by the harmonious and unlucky British explorers. Oates did not suffer fools gladly and his writings are a typical piece of iconoclasm offering a sardonic and alternative outlook on the disaster.

Scott’s doomed expedition has been the subject of wholesale revision in the past few years, with many seeing it as the symbolic passing of an age. It is equally fitting to reassess the enterprise’s most unfortunate figure, Lawrence Oates.

A new biography is long overdue. The first, written in the 1930s, was severely hampered by Oates’ mother and the author was unable to penetrate too deeply into his life. The second was effectively compiled 35 years ago in a different historical climate and eventually published twenty years ago.

Since then considerable new material has emerged, including significant family documents and public files, which were kept secret for 75 years and have since been opened. There are also important new details about his private life.

This new information, coupled with the fresher perspective on Polar history provided by the newer generation of writing and the unrelenting interest in the Heroic Age of exploration, makes a compelling case for a fresh look at Lawrence Oates.

1

Deep roots

Lawrence Oates sprang from deeply rooted English stock. The Oates family can proudly claim to be among the oldest in the country, and thanks to an ancient preoccupation with its own lineage, can trace the line back with considerable accuracy for almost 1,000 years.

The name Oates is thought to derive from the Christian name, Odo, which became Ode. Later it developed to Ode-son, or Ote-son and eventually Otes, before the present form of Oates. The earliest traces of the family can be found in Essex, although during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the name was more generally associated with Yorkshire.

An Otes or Oates was on the battle roll at Hastings in 1066 and an Otes owned the Manor of Gestingthorpe, Essex, at the time of the Domesday Book shortly afterwards. William Fitz Otto had been Sheriff of Essex and Hartford from 1181 to 1191 and John Otes held the manor of Little Laver, Essex, during the fourteenth century.

The Yorkshire connection first emerges in the fifteenth century when William Otes of Southowram built a large house, Shibden Hall, near Halifax. Successive generations of the Otes family were members of the area’s rising merchant classes in Tudor and Elizabethan England, mainly woollen cloth traders and prominent landowners who built up considerable wealth. They included Thomas Otes of Thornhill Lees, near Dewsbury, born in 1554 and educated at Oxford, and a little later, Lawrence Otes, who owned a large amount of land at Woolley, near Barnsley, during the seventeenth century.

The military connection also stretches back through the centuries. George Oates of Low Hall, near Leeds, commanded a company of the Trained Bands militia pitched against Bonnie Prince Charlie during the Stuart Rebellion of 1745. As a member of the flourishing mercantile classes, he turned his commercial wealth into property and became a sizeable landowner in the area.

His son George Oates was born in 1717 and put down further Yorkshire roots in 1765 when he bought Carr House with about 50 acres and a share of the manor and lordship of Chapel Allerton, Leeds. The site formed part of the old-established Meanwood estate to the north-west of Leeds. The transaction began an association between the Oates family and Meanwood which lasted for almost 150 years and provided a direct link to Lawrence Oates in the early twentieth century.

Meanwood passed to George Oates’ son, Joseph, who further extended the family’s interest in the area by purchasing another portion of the estate and establishing Westwood Hall. Joseph raised six children, including the youngest son, Edward, who was born in 1792. Edward Oates enjoyed a good deal of his earlier life living on the Mediterranean island of Malta before returning to Yorkshire in middle age. He finally came home in 1836 to marry Susan Grace, the only surviving child of Edward Grace, another established cloth merchant and magistrate from nearby Burley, in Leeds. He needed a home for his family and turned to another slice of the Meanwood estate, which had falled into appalling disrepair. Edward Oates knocked down some farm buildings on the estate in 1838 and built a new family home, which he called Meanwoodside. Susan Oates further extended the property by demolishing the remaining farmhouses after Edward’s death. The handsome manorial home, with an unusual green slate roof, would eventually pass into the hands of Lawrence Oates.1

Edward was 44 years old when he married Susan. The union produced five children in the following eight years. Edward Grace and Emily died in childhood and the youngest, Charles, went to Cambridge and built a successful career as a barrister in London’s Inner Temple.

But to his two other sons, Edward Oates had passed the fondness of travel and adventure. Francis Grace, widely known as Frank, was born in 1840 and William Edward a year later. William’s arrival into the world was recorded in Edward Oates’ diary with a casual entry: ‘Little boy born about 4 am.’

Both young men, who were born at Meanwoodside, grew to become inveterate travellers, naturalists and sportsmen, establishing their reputations as classic gentlemen explorers and big-game hunters of the mid-Victorian age. They were both tall and handsome, William’s strong good looks topped off by a fashionable flowing moustache. However, Frank had to combat poor health in his early adult life, suffering long periods of illness as a young man before setting off on his travels. He went to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1861 but did not take a degree because of illness.

Frank Oates. Laurie’s Uncle Frank was the archetypal Victorian gentleman-explorer, whose travels took him into the vast unexplored regions of Africa. He died of malaria in 1875 on a long trek to the Victoria Falls. (White Oates Museum)

Both were Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society and Frank and William Oates occasionally followed in the pioneering footsteps of Doctor David Livingstone on their trips to Africa. When their father died in 1865, he left the two adventurous brothers a sizeable inheritance and private income, which gave them greater freedom further to indulge their passions.

The Oates brothers were renowned hunters but not merely trophy hunters. In later life William was an energetic member of a special committee established by the Royal Geographical Society to conserve rare species of African wildlife. The RGS remembered William as an ‘active and useful member’ of the conservation committee which, among other things, was ahead of its time in demanding government grants to establish special hunting-free areas to protect and preserve animals threatened with extinction.2

Frank and William Oates set off from Southampton in March 1873 at the start of a prolonged trip of exploration and research to the largely unknown Zambesi. The brothers started from Durban and plunged deep into northern Transvaal, where hostile local tribes frequently halted their progress. After a lengthy journey together, Frank Oates decided to press on alone into more remote areas of Matabeleland, in the west of what is today Zimbabwe. He reached the Zambesi River and on New Year’s Day 1875 Frank Oates became only the fifth Westerner to see the magnificent Victoria Falls, discovered twenty years earlier by Livingstone.

But disaster struck on the return journey when the gentleman-explorer was attacked by malaria near the village of Makalaka, about 80 miles north of the Tati River. After a twelve-day struggle, he died on 5 February 1875 surrounded by his prized assortment of rare animal skins, birds and reptiles. Dr Bradshaw, a local English surgeon in the area, pronounced that Frank Oates, at only 35, had died of ‘Zambesi fever’.

The results of Frank’s findings were edited by his younger brother, Charles, and published posthumously in a weighty tome entitled Matabele Land and the Victoria Falls, which received solid critical acclaim.

William Oates continued to make further trips into the African hinterland, frequently using his gun to increase his sizeable collection of valuable wildlife specimens and employing his natural artistic skills to record the sights with a series of attractive watercolours. Contemporary reports record that he ‘bagged’ a large number of waterbuck, blue wildebeest, zebra and white rhinoceros, plus many species of birds. It was described as ‘a private collection of almost unique interest’ and some of the rare trophies adorned his home, while others were eventually presented to the British Museum.

William’s appetite for travel and adventure was not dulled by Frank’s untimely death. He went as far as India and America and on one summer yachting trip William ventured as far north as Spitzbergen above the Arctic Circle.

William’s voyaging – like that of his father – came to a temporary halt in September 1877 when he married Caroline Annie Buckton, the 23-year-old second daughter of Joshua Buckton, also from the Meanwood area of Leeds. Indeed, the families had closer ties since Caroline was William’s second cousin.

Four children were born during the first six years of their marriage. The first child, Lillian Mary, was born precisely nine months after their wedding in June 1878. Another daughter, Violet Emily, arrived in 1881 and the youngest son, Bryan William Grace was born in 1883. The eldest son was born at 6.20 am on 17 March 1880 and named Lawrence Edward Grace Oates. The middle names were chosen out of respect for William’s parents. But to almost everyone, he was known as Laurie, despite the ‘w’ in his full name.

It was a happy, comfortable marriage for the well-off couple, whose inherited wealth provided a substantial income and ensured there was no need for William to work. Apart from odd trips, William’s main activity was painting and he would regularly take his colours out to the local common and other beauty spots where he found real peace. His financial independence was further emphasised on Laurie’s birth certificate, where William simply described his job as ‘gentleman’.

William Oates was a millionaire by today’s standards, who made his money as an absentee landlord and private shareholder. He generated a substantial income from rents on numerous properties, including well-appointed office premises at South Parade in the centre of Leeds and cottages and workshops elsewhere in the city. He also owned a sizeable portfolio of shares and was particularly fond of fashionable Victorian railway stocks.

However, the demands of family life presented William Oates with a problem. By the age of 42, he was the father of four children under the age of six and the newly-acquired responsibilities necessitated that the Oates family find a permanent home. It was time for the traveller to lay down some foundations.

This was a radical departure, since during the early years of marriage, William and Caroline were constantly on the move, both in England and abroad. The itinerant family lived in a variety of temporary homes, in places like Leeds, London and assorted English seaside resorts such as Whitby and Hastings. Interspersed were occasional visits overseas as William continued to travel as parental circumstances allowed.

The transitory nature of their existence was reflected by each of the four children having a different birthplace over the six-year period. Only the youngest, Bryan, was born in the Oates family home at Meanwood. The eldest, Lillian, was born in the German city of Dusseldorf and Violet at Ewe Cote, a small hamlet outside Whitby which became a regular retreat in the 1880s.

Laurie Oates was born at 3 Acacia Villas, Putney, south-west London, in a comfortable, unpretentious boarding house specially rented for the purpose of Caroline Oates’ confinement in the spring of 1880. Less than a year later, the boarding house and street were reclassified by the local council as 93 Upper Richmond Road, Putney. In 1904 the house was again renumbered to 111 Upper Richmond Road on what is today the busy, congested London thoroughfare called the South Circular Road.3

The first photograph of Lawrence Oates, cradled by his doting mother Caroline. She called him ‘Baby Boy’ long into childhood. To everyone else he was known as Laurie.

The obvious choice of a permanent family home was the Meanwood estate in Leeds, William’s birthplace. But the property was still occupied by his mother, Susan, and after her death in 1889 it would pass to his younger brother Charles. It was not the ideal home for which the Oates family longed and they continued to look away from Yorkshire for their new home. William, the eldest in the Oates family, was lord of the manor without a manorial home.

The search was further complicated by the fact that Caroline Oates had taken to the London area and she had become the driving influence in the family. To emphasise the fondness for London, the family took lodgings in Chepstow Village, Notting Hill, and Caroline personally set about the task of finding a home in the capital, inspecting numerous properties in smart places like Hampstead, Swiss Cottage and Kensington. After a lengthy search, they finally found something suitable in April 1885.

Their choice was a solid three-storey detached property at 263 Upper Richmond Road, Putney, only a short distance from where Laurie was born.4 A cousin, Dr Robert Oates, lived nearby. For the first time the family was able to begin building a permanent home among the quiet open spaces of a leafy London suburb. The detached red-brick home, which had a small crescent-shaped driveway and a large walled garden at the rear, suited their purpose.

Putney at the time was a prosperous, growing area with busy market gardens and a scattering of large family houses, including the London mansion of the American millionaire financier and industrialist, John Pierpont Morgan. Open fields surrounded the ribbon development of substantial Victorian villas which were springing up along the main arteries like Upper Richmond Road and Putney High Street. Arnold Bennett once observed that the existence of Putney ‘seemed to approach the Utopian, it breathed the romance of common sense, kindliness and simplicity’.

William Oates, the wealthy, carefree wanderer, was easily dominated by Caroline, a strong-minded matriarch who epitomised the strict Victorian mother figure. She was a stern, severe-looking woman who was entirely comfortable with the strict disciplines and rigid social conventions of the age, a natural Victorian.

Her one indulgence was the church, which she embraced with a suitably restrained passion. She was fully at home in solemn surroundings and, wherever the Oates family travelled, Caroline would always seek out the nearest place of worship. From good Anglican stock, she devoted a considerable amount of time and money to supporting the church and found true contentment in her strong religious beliefs.

‘Baby Boy’. Laurie Oates aged about one year, complete with fashionable curls. (White Oates Museum)

Caroline Oates. The buttoned-up personification of Victorian motherhood became obsessively devoted to her eldest son, Laurie.

As the rock of the family she represented permanence and stability for the four children. Her potent mixture of traditional Yorkshire bluntness and the English landed gentry’s unshakeable belief in their own superiority gave Caroline Oates a powerful, almost regal presence. She called her husband Willie and those closest called her Carrie, but she was not someone who encouraged familiarity. She was a devoted, generous mother, though with assistance of willing nannies, governesses and maids this was not as demanding as for the vast majority of Victorian women with four young children. Nonetheless, Caroline Oates was a caring, considerate woman who undoubtedly loved her children.

But from a very early age, her four youngsters were split into two distinct cliques. In one group was Lillian, Violet and Bryan, in the other, Laurie.

2

Mother’s boy

Laurie Oates was mother’s boy. She indulged him and lavished affection on him, frequently at the expense of the other three children. His younger sister, Violet, said that her strict mother would often get irate with the others for some minor misdemeanour, but she never got angry with Laurie. Laurie was always ‘Baby Boy’ to Caroline Oates, a term of affection which lingered long after her youngest, Bryan, was born. In fact, he remained ‘Baby Boy’ for an unhealthily long period of his life. Very little of his activities and habits escaped her attention as Caroline fussed and fretted over the child. Her simple motherly love grew into deep devotion and before long was bordering on obsession.

Aside from obsessive love, Caroline also extended her devotion to Laurie in more tangible ways. She always ensured that Laurie was given far more money and other gifts than his brother and sisters. The differences were so pronounced that, even as a child, Laurie regularly received more than the combined allowances of Lillian, Bryan and Violet.1 It was a fiscal favouritism which would last deep into adulthood.

Caroline Oates, despite her frosty exterior, was a woman of considerable generosity, who always supported charities and causes, particularly those linked to the church. Her allowances to the children were equally generous and frequently topped up with additional gifts and presents. In later life, she supplemented their annual allowances with more substantial gifts of stocks and shares and later gave Bryan the money to buy a farm. But whatever she gave, Laurie always received more than Lillian, Violet and Bryan. She made no attempt to disguise her favouritism.

She was a meticulous person who kept detailed household accounts recording every penny spent, right down to trivial items like the cost of postage stamps or the precise sum dropped into the weekly church collection. Or in the case of her children, how the scales were weighted heavily in favour of ‘Baby Boy’.

Quartet. The four children of William and Caroline Oates, pictured in the late 1880s at their home in Putney, London. They are (left to right) the eldest Lillian, Laurie, Violet and the youngest, Bryan.

It is not entirely clear why Caroline Oates singled out Laurie for the special attention. The first-born son often holds a particular place in a mother’s affections and there is little doubt that Caroline was overjoyed at the birth of Laurie. But her diary gives few clues as to why she would later develop her excessive devotion to the youngster. ‘Baby is so bonny, dear little thing,’ she wrote.

One plausible explanation is that the boy’s uncertain health gave her grounds for concern and it may be that she was simply being over-protective of the child. He caught measles at the vulnerable age of fifteen weeks and from the outset, Laurie was more susceptible than most to everyday minor chills and coughs. She described him as a ‘pathetic little boy’. The slightest cold went to his chest, he was occasionally short of breath and his little hands often turned blue. She responded by devoting even more attention, frequently sitting up through the night keeping a watchful eye on the weak child. Caroline conceded that Laurie had been ‘extremely delicate’ as a child and only recovered through ‘much loving care and attention’.2

A visit to the Wimpole Street surgery of Dr Gunn in London showed that Laurie’s illness was inflammation of the left lung, which was probably a touch of tuberculosis. Caroline Oates sought a second opinion and was advised to give the youngster some fresh sea air and even a warmer climate overseas. Initially, she took the familiar Victorian remedy of regular trips to the seaside. There were frequent outings to Sidmouth, Devon and back to Whitby where, for the first time, Laurie was given his own donkey to ride. It was the start of his love affair with horses.

As winter approached Caroline finally decided to take him abroad. This left the problem of what to do with the other three children. Christmas was near and all the children were under eight years of age. For Caroline there was little to consider. She left them behind.

A week before Christmas 1885, Mr and Mrs Oates waved goodbye to seven-year-old Lillian, Violet, aged four, and Bryan, who had just reached his second birthday, and set off for the sunshine of South Africa with Laurie. Caroline was a bad sailor and dreaded the long sea trip. But Laurie always came first.

By early January 1886 the damp chill of a London winter had been gratefully swapped for the warm summer breeze at a friend’s house outside Cape Town. Later they moved 80 miles inland to stay with cousins at Caledon, south-east of Cape Town. It was a largely enjoyable spell, particularly for the young Laurie, who had the undivided attention of his parents and basked in the balmy climate and his mother’s love.

Although Caroline inevitably felt some guilt about leaving her other three children 6,000 miles away, her priorities were clear and it was a good opportunity for William to introduce the pleasures of travel to his son. It had been little more than a decade since the adventurer had travelled on the same African Continent with his brother. Together they fished, walked the hills and enjoyed the pleasant fresh air. All the while Caroline stood guard over her son, watching and fretting. ‘Baby Boy’ was never far from her side.

After three months the Oates family felt it was safe to return to England, where they were reunited with the three children for a family holiday at Sidmouth. However, the long break from the English winter had not cured the young boy’s ills and a year later, William Oates again took Laurie to South Africa for the winter. This time, Caroline remained in London with her other three children, though not without some anxiety. The parting from Laurie was purgatory and she set aside her own worries with seasickness to sail to Madeira alone to meet him on the return journey in March 1887. Once again, the other three children were left behind with assorted relatives and nannies.

Father and son. Laurie, aged six, en route to South Africa in 1886 with his father, William. Laurie was taken to the warmth of South Africa on several occasions to help his constant battle against ill health.

Despite his occasional bursts of illness, Laurie was a typically energetic lad, happiest with outdoor games and the adventurous pursuits of little boys. His health did not prevent him developing a passion for sports of all kinds and a particular keenness for horses.

Not long after coming back to England in 1886, Caroline Oates turned her attention to Laurie’s education. She supported the Victorian belief that boys should be groomed for gentlemanly pursuits in later life, such as the Church, the law, the civil service or the army. Laurie was earmarked for the best education that money could buy and the adult life of a gentleman.

Initially he was given some rudimentary private tuition at home, though the results were disappointing. A little later young Laurie shared a governess at the home of neighbour, Patty Parker, and was groomed for his first proper school.

In late 1886, Laurie was enrolled at the private Dame School in Dealtry Road, within earshot of his Putney home. Shortly after, Dame School moved to Willington House, even closer to the Oates family home at 267 Upper Richmond Road, and became Willington School.3

Willington had been founded three years earlier by two resourceful Scottish spinsters, Annie and Ada Hale, who had turned their Putney home into a small school for well-to-do families in the area. The select handful of fee-paying pupils received firm but attentive instruction from the sisters and their lone assistant. It was a strict environment and the women set high standards, although one distinguished former pupil remembered that the sisters managed to make instruction a pleasure. Unusually for the Victorian period, he also recalled that there were rewards, but no punishments.4

Ada Hale, the younger of the two women, was a classical scholar who gave the pupils their early lessons in Greek and Latin, the bedrock of the Victorian public school syllabus. Improbably enough, she also doubled as cricket coach and part-time bowler as the school sought to widen the curriculum to accommodate the more active tastes of young boys.5

Annie Hale was the resolute headmistress who also taught English and the Scriptures. One old pupil remembered how she provided the school with an aura of ‘benevolent austerity… (by the) skilful manipulation of her pince-nez’.6 Violet Oates recalled the two women as ‘daunting figures, wearing starched collars and with hair piled high’.7

William Oates had reservations about sending his eldest son to a school run by two women. He doubted whether it would be masculine or virile enough for Laurie. However, the far-sighted Hale women had clearly anticipated this potential problem and engaged the services of a retired army sergeant, who gave the pupils a daily Swedish military drill in the school garden. It was a timely move and the school’s historian records that William Oates duly approved Laurie’s enrolment after ‘… hearing the stentorian tones of the drill sergeant coming from the garden …’8

Laurie’s three years of private tuition at Willington was the first clear-cut indication that he found school a major problem. He struggled to cope, especially with maths and the classics. In a private education system which deemed vocational training as unnecessary for future generations of generals, clerics or diplomats, there was precious little else for Laurie to learn and he soon fell behind the others.

The frequent interruptions caused by ill-health and the remedial trips abroad also made it difficult for the youngster. Laurie spent three successive winters in South Africa, where he learned more about the outdoor life than anything which could be found in books. Although his father was a willing amateur tutor, He was not an adequate replacement for the real thing. On his return to Willington, Laurie inevitably struggled and fell even further behind.

The school did its best to help him catch up. Willington’s records show that one teacher, Mr Wolf, gave Laurie Oates ‘special coaching’ in subjects like Latin, algebra and geometry ‘before he could reach the standard which the other boys had derived from the teaching of Miss Ada Hale’.9 But the problem was not the lessons or the teaching.

What was not detected by anyone was that the child had some form of learning difficulty. It seems probable that Laurie was born with a form of dyslexia, which badly impaired his school progress and made it difficult for him to pass examinations. It also helped to shape his character.

Although somewhat fractured, young Laurie Oates enjoyed an especially privileged education for the period, which included three private schools, several years at a specialist ‘crammer’ and frequent and prolonged periods of one-to-one tuition. It is difficult to conceive a better education. However, even the most exclusive education of the Victorian age could not overcome his dyslexia.

Learning difficulties are more common than is generally appreciated and research has shown that up to one in ten people is affected by some form of dyslexia. Oates was in good company since some of the world’s great figures have also had to battle against the same disability, including Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill. They also shared the distinction that their disability was largely undetected.

Dyslexia was barely recognised in the late Victorian era and nothing was done in schools to combat the disability. In ignorance, children who were slow learners were frequently written off as simply dim or, at best, a pupil with a reading difficulty might be labelled ‘word-blind’.10

A well-known modern writer glanced at some of Oates’ letters in the 1980s and correctly observed that Oates wrote ‘so ungrammatically and spelt so abominably as to be half illiterate’, which was accurate. But it missed the point. Laurie Oates certainly possessed sound basic intelligence and solid good sense, as he would demonstrate in later life. He was not dim. But he struggled badly with words and numbers and had a frustrating time with formal examinations. His record was so unrelentingly abysmal that throughout his life he very rarely succeeded in passing any exam.

His obvious difficulty with the classics, which he first confronted at Willington, suggests he was suffering from one of the more common and highly frustrating symptoms of dyslexia – memory loss and lack of concentration. Many dyslexics find it extremely difficult to remember words and numbers on a page which they were reading only seconds earlier and this inevitably poses severe problems during examinations. Facts and figures can easily be lost in the brief moment between formulating the thought in the mind and writing it down on paper.

The repeated failure to cope with exams is not due solely to the inability to master the subject. But those with learning difficulties invariably take far longer to complete the exam papers and they frequently run out of time to complete the particular task. Failure was inevitable.

Short-term memory loss and lack of concentration will merely exacerbate the predicament and, of course, examiners at the time did not make allowance for weaknesses like poor handwriting or eccentric grammar. The struggle to cope merely adds to the stress and anxiety, making the task ever more difficult.

An interesting clue to his learning difficulties arose many years later in remarks made by Captain Robert Scott, who had asked Oates to tackle a fairly straightforward mathematical task, to log the feeding arrangements for the ponies on the South Pole expedition. Oates was a highly experienced manager of horseflesh and well capable of tending the needs of a few ponies. But columns of figures presented an unfathomable maze and Oates was simply unable to cope. Scott was puzzled at his fumbling attempt to handle the straightforward chore and after watching Oates struggling he wrote in his diary:

‘I had intended Oates to superintend the forage arrangements but rows of figures, however simply configured, are too much for him…’11

Oates’ inability to master columns of figures must have been starkly evident because, at this time, Scott was deeply embroiled in the final stages of detailed planning for his assault on the Pole. He was totally preoccupied with the logistics of transporting, feeding and sheltering sixteen men, ponies and dogs on a complex five-month journey across the most inhospitable terrain in the world. Amidst all this activity and preparation, it was the glaring failure of Oates to cope with simple sums which stood out and demanded comment from Scott.

Another member of Scott’s last expedition, the biologist Dennis Lillie, recalled that Oates had a ‘deliberate’ way of writing, implying that he laboured over the task of putting pen to paper. Surviving copies of letters written by Oates show someone whose handwriting style was rather adolescent and elementary, while the grammar was often eccentric and the spelling erratic.

The privileged schooling did nothing to address his weakness. The spell at Willington was followed by a three-year period at the Remenham Place preparatory school, Henley-on-Thames, which merely confirmed his learning difficulties. His headmaster recalled that Master Oates was good at games, but a ‘plodding kind of scholar’.

Dyslexics typically make up for their learning problems by focusing on other activities, such as arts or sport, where they invariably feel more comfortable. Laurie’s likeness for sport was entirely predictable. He particularly enjoyed ball games like football and cricket, but had also developed a natural talent for boxing and as he approached his teens, was also beginning to indulge in his passion for horse riding.