![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Why is it that every year or so I get sucked into Days Of Our Lives again? Every time I finally decide that it's gone rubbish, and that I'm giving it up, a few months later I'll find myself checking back to see what's happening, and getting hooked again. Well - nearly hooked. There's always some plotline going on that needs some serious fast-fowarding. At any rate, I am such a sap. One shiny new plotline for John Black and I'm back on the bandwagon, waiting to see what everybody's favourite super-powered eternal amnesiac is up to now. I need my head examining. But then so does he, so I guess we're well suited.
Back to the historical adventuring, then. Less ranting this time. This is partly because those involved manage to keep the rampant xenophobia under control, but also partly because I think I've found a new name to add to the favourite authors list. In 1894, Mary Kingsley - apparently just because she was bored - decided that rather than do Blackpool or the Alps with her contemporaries, she'd go to Africa instead. And not an easy bit, either. Nope. All on her lonesome, she upped and went to the mangrove swamps of West Africa, and toiled through jungles and up mountains, just to see if she could. Just her and some local guides, and quite a lot of tea leaves. Now bearing in mind that this was a time before women even had the vote, and when so very many of them had been carefully schooled to think that all they wanted out of life was a nice piece of embroidery and a not-too-disagreeable husband, that's not an achievement to dismiss too lightly. She wasn't alone - there were a lot more female adventurers back in those days than a lot of people seem to realise (there's two in my family alone). Nonetheless, it takes a special person of any age or gender to strike out across the globe, and spend a few months hacking through dense jungle, fording crocogator-infested rivers, and battling up largely unknown mountains in the days when there was no chance of contacting the outside world, very little chance of rescue if anything went wrong, and no effective medicine to treat the rampant swamp fever(s). The book that resulted from Mary Kingsley's merry jaunt, The Congo And The Cameroons, to add merriment to majesty as it were, is a comic romp filled with sarcasm, self-deprecation and witticisms of the kind that wouldn't go amiss in a modern work. Sadly she didn't write a great deal, as she died young not very many years later, perhaps inevitably of fever. A real shame. I've been reading around, and apparently the full-length version of her book has passages in it that have been cut from recent publications due to racist content. Not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, yes, the world has moved on. On the other... it's history, and you can't hide from history. Still, maybe it would be a shame to tarnish such a gloriously fun and funny adventure with nastiness. I don't know. Some day I shall have to get hold of a properly unedited version, and see for myself.
Rather less amusing, and no longer Victorian, is Ernest Shackleton's attempt to avoid death by extreme cold, not to mention various other hazards found in the Antarctic seas. In 1914 he famously attempted a voyage to the sort of very chilly places that it's best not to go to unless you really have to - only to get stuck there. Probably he could have done with a bit of global warming to lessen the hazards of ice. In Escape From The Antarctic he relates the story of how he got out, with just a few members of his crew, in order to get help for the rest of the ship's company left behind. This meant endless days tossed on freezing cold seas in a tiny boat ill-suited to the purpose; lots of tramping over glaciers, up glaciers, down glaciers and probably other glacial-related directions too, all of them chilly; and lots of attempts to avoid being covered in snow. It's not a warm book, basically. Shackleton doesn't attempt to romanticise things, either. It's a fairly dry account, though not without humanity. He doesn't build up his own part, he gives tremendous credit to others, and he displays a remarkable determination and resilience. It's easy to see why his crew were so ready to follow him, and had such faith in his ability to get them out. Also, there's something oddly endearing about tales of men sitting around munching on penguins' legs. I don't know quite why. Shackleton's no Kingsley. He doesn't joke about his predicament, and he doesn't look for humour in his surroundings, or mock his own folly. He's very much just about getting on with the job. Mind you, his book is a tale of pretty dire circumstances, and he had the lives of a lot of men resting on his success, so that's probably an unfair comparison. Mary Kingsley died fourteen years before the voyage that made Shackleton into such a household name, but I think they'd have got along rather well. She might have been funnier, but I think they'd have appreciated each other's desire to get out there and have an adventure. I know I do.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find out what EJ is getting up to with Nicole over in Salem. Don't ask...
Back to the historical adventuring, then. Less ranting this time. This is partly because those involved manage to keep the rampant xenophobia under control, but also partly because I think I've found a new name to add to the favourite authors list. In 1894, Mary Kingsley - apparently just because she was bored - decided that rather than do Blackpool or the Alps with her contemporaries, she'd go to Africa instead. And not an easy bit, either. Nope. All on her lonesome, she upped and went to the mangrove swamps of West Africa, and toiled through jungles and up mountains, just to see if she could. Just her and some local guides, and quite a lot of tea leaves. Now bearing in mind that this was a time before women even had the vote, and when so very many of them had been carefully schooled to think that all they wanted out of life was a nice piece of embroidery and a not-too-disagreeable husband, that's not an achievement to dismiss too lightly. She wasn't alone - there were a lot more female adventurers back in those days than a lot of people seem to realise (there's two in my family alone). Nonetheless, it takes a special person of any age or gender to strike out across the globe, and spend a few months hacking through dense jungle, fording crocogator-infested rivers, and battling up largely unknown mountains in the days when there was no chance of contacting the outside world, very little chance of rescue if anything went wrong, and no effective medicine to treat the rampant swamp fever(s). The book that resulted from Mary Kingsley's merry jaunt, The Congo And The Cameroons, to add merriment to majesty as it were, is a comic romp filled with sarcasm, self-deprecation and witticisms of the kind that wouldn't go amiss in a modern work. Sadly she didn't write a great deal, as she died young not very many years later, perhaps inevitably of fever. A real shame. I've been reading around, and apparently the full-length version of her book has passages in it that have been cut from recent publications due to racist content. Not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, yes, the world has moved on. On the other... it's history, and you can't hide from history. Still, maybe it would be a shame to tarnish such a gloriously fun and funny adventure with nastiness. I don't know. Some day I shall have to get hold of a properly unedited version, and see for myself.
Rather less amusing, and no longer Victorian, is Ernest Shackleton's attempt to avoid death by extreme cold, not to mention various other hazards found in the Antarctic seas. In 1914 he famously attempted a voyage to the sort of very chilly places that it's best not to go to unless you really have to - only to get stuck there. Probably he could have done with a bit of global warming to lessen the hazards of ice. In Escape From The Antarctic he relates the story of how he got out, with just a few members of his crew, in order to get help for the rest of the ship's company left behind. This meant endless days tossed on freezing cold seas in a tiny boat ill-suited to the purpose; lots of tramping over glaciers, up glaciers, down glaciers and probably other glacial-related directions too, all of them chilly; and lots of attempts to avoid being covered in snow. It's not a warm book, basically. Shackleton doesn't attempt to romanticise things, either. It's a fairly dry account, though not without humanity. He doesn't build up his own part, he gives tremendous credit to others, and he displays a remarkable determination and resilience. It's easy to see why his crew were so ready to follow him, and had such faith in his ability to get them out. Also, there's something oddly endearing about tales of men sitting around munching on penguins' legs. I don't know quite why. Shackleton's no Kingsley. He doesn't joke about his predicament, and he doesn't look for humour in his surroundings, or mock his own folly. He's very much just about getting on with the job. Mind you, his book is a tale of pretty dire circumstances, and he had the lives of a lot of men resting on his success, so that's probably an unfair comparison. Mary Kingsley died fourteen years before the voyage that made Shackleton into such a household name, but I think they'd have got along rather well. She might have been funnier, but I think they'd have appreciated each other's desire to get out there and have an adventure. I know I do.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find out what EJ is getting up to with Nicole over in Salem. Don't ask...