The Last of the Old-Fashioned Heroes

One hundred years ago the world was reeling from WWI. Every value and belief once the foundation of civilization was called into question by the war.

But before the 'War to End All Wars' didn't end war, men were going on quests to conquer the unknown regions of ice. They faced gruesome suffering--loss of body parts that had frozen, physical exertion in extreme conditions, starvation, threats of crevasses that appeared out of nowhere and thin ice over frigid water.

For what? For glory.

The polar regions offered no gold or marketable flora or fauna, no open land for civilization to claim, no sunny beaches for tourism.

The men who raced to the poles or up the tallest mountains did it for fame and pride and for God and Country. They had something to prove and overwhelming ambition.

To The Edges of the Earth 1909, The Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration recounts the explorers of 1909: Peary's expedition to reach the North Pole, Shackleton's expedition to reach the South Magnetic Pole, and the Duke of Abruzzo's reach for the 'Third Pole' in the Himalayas-- the dangerous K2.

I have loved exciting, thrilling, and horrifying adventure narratives since girlhood. One of my first heroes was Robert Falcon Scott after I read The Great White South about his failed expedition to the South Pole. I have also read books about mountain climbing and K2. I haven't a thread of adventure myself, preferring a comfy chair and a cup of tea while reading about someone else risking their life.

Edward J. Larson's account strips away myths about these men. Peary especially, who may have falsely claimed to have reached the North Pole and whose treatment of Inuit, including his teenage concubine, was by our standards appalling and predatory. And the poor Inuit dogs that Peary 'borrowed,' worked to death, then fed to the other dogs (or his men, as needed.)

Shackleton was better, but there was grumbling over his leadership skills, and he did decide to take ponies to the South Pole as well as an early gasoline engine car, both quite useless.

The rich, handsome Italian Duke seems to come off the best, with few negative stories about him, and his later siding with the Allied forces during WWII.

The explorers needed to raise money to fund the trips. Money was given by rich Gilded Age barons and in exchange, they could have landmarks named after them. Their stories were sold to newspapers and magazines and printed in books. They went on the Lyceum lecture circuit with magic lantern photographs.

Peary brought back Inuit for scientific study; when they died their bones were put on display! And he stole three, huge meteorites which the natives used for iron making.

Oh, the frozen toes! The shards of frozen snow that sliced through good English Gabardine! The suffering described is horrifying. (And to think, I don't read horror stories, or at least that is what I had thought. Turns out--I do!)

Shackleton failed to reach the pole, but he was knighted anyway. Scott was already planning his expedition to the South Pole, as was Admunson, and in 1911 Scott perished while Amundsen reached the pole. Shackleton was old news but still returned in 1914-16 on the Endurance. By then WWI had consumed the world and no one had interest in men fooling around in icy realms. Shackleton died of a heart attack on his way to try one more time to reach the pole.

No one really knows if it was Cook or Peary, or Peary's companion Henson, who reached the North Pole. Or if either reached it. With no solid land, the ice over open water offered huge challenges. There were ongoing battles over their claims and bad feelings which sullied Peary's reputation.

"The time was when the search for the North Pole stood for the very acme of uncommercialized heroism," wrote Dean Shailer Mathews of the University of Chicago divinity school. Those were the days, indeed. Today, the opening of the Arctic waters brings dreams of drilling for oil and dollar signs.

The Icebergs by Frederick Church

The 19th c saw the rise of the romanticizing of the Arctic-- the barren, uncharted expanses of ice captivating the imagination. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein retreats to the North Pole, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins wrote the play The Frozen Deep, Frederick Church painted icebergs and Albert Bierstadt glaciers.

Could anyone then have imagined the aqua lung enabling men to view the ocean's bottom or an Endeavor that went into space? Or that the Arctic glaciers would be melting, the Arctic Ocean open and iceless?

I received a free e-book from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

To the Edges of the Earth
by Edward J. Larson
William Morrow
$29.99 hardcover
ISBN: 9780062564474

For more books on Polar expeditions:

Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2017/03/ice-ghosts-200-years-searching-for-lost.html

Marooned in the Arctic: Ada Blackwell's Extraordinary Life
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/03/marooned-in-arctic-ada-blackjacks.html

White Eskimo: Knud Rasmussen's Fearless Journey into the Heart of the Arctic
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/11/an-explorer-of-people-knud-rasmussens.html

The Great White South by Herbert Ponting

Fiction about the Arctic and Antarctica:

My Last Continent by Midge Raymond
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/06/my-last-continent-by-midge-raymond.html

The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-birthday-boys-by-beryl-bainbridge.html

To the Bright Edge of the World
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/09/to-bright-edge-of-world-by-eowyn-ivey.html

The Terror by Dan Simmons

A 1911 Boy's Handkerchief, Polar Exploration, and Walrus Hunting

I love this handkerchief I bought from eBay many years ago. A card shows it was from Howard White, and a on a paper is written, "Howard from Uncle Eddie, Dec. 25, 1911."

In 1911 polar exploration was romantic and dangerous. Polar Explorers were the Astronauts of the 19th c. It was only two years before, in 1909 that Robert Peary reached the North Pole after years of failure.What child's imagination would not have thrilled to the portrayed polar walrus hunt, the men surrounded by icebergs?

Although the walrus on the handkerchief are Arctic animals it was the South Pole that was in the news in 1911. British Robert Falcon Scott was trudging across Antarctica in a race to the South Pole, arriving on January 17, 1912 only to discover that Norwegian Roald Amundsen had reached the pole first, on Dec. 14, 1911. Only 11 days before Eddie was given this handkerchief.

Scott never made it back. As a girl I read and reread about Scott's expedition in dad's book The Great White South by Herbert Ponting. He was my ultimate tragic hero.

An Antarctic Mystery by Jules Verne

No doubt the following narrative will be received with entire incredulity, but I think it well that the public should be put in possession of the facts narrated in “An Antarctic Mystery.” The public is free to believe them or not, at its good pleasure.

Thus begins Jeorling's narrative of An Antarctic Mystery.

I follow Garrison Keiler's A Writers Almanac and learned that Sunday, February 8,  was the birthday of Jules Verne. I had read Verne as a kid but have not read him since I was perhaps 13. It was about time to revisit Verne.

I checked around for free e-books and came across An Antarctic Mystery. Being a sucker for polar exploration stories I settled on reading it.


I was happily surprised to learn that it was based on Edgar Allen Poe's 1837 novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, using the story and characters in a kind of 1897 version of fan fiction.

Pym was inspired by a news story of a ship that sank. The subtitle is tells it all: Comprising the Details of Mutiny and Atrocious Butchery on Board the America Brig Grampus, on Her Way to the South Seas, in the Month of June, 1827. With an Account of the Recapture of the Vessel by the Survivors; Their Shipwreck and Subsequent Horrible Sufferings from Famine; Their Deliverance by Means of the British Schooner Jane Guy; the Brief Cruise of this Latter Vessel in the Atlantic Ocean; her Capture, and the Massacre of Her Crew Among a Group o Islands in the Eight-Fourth Parallel of Southern Latitude; Together with the Incredible Adventures and Discoveries Still Father South to Which that Distressing Calamity Gave Rise.

Verne imagines the captain of the Grampus has a brother who searches for him, and several characters whose deaths were erroneously reported. It would help to read Poe's novel first, but if you don't (I had not read Pym since I was in junior high) Verne offers enough information for the reader to understand the story.

Captain Guy's ship has come into port. American Jeorling is weary of the Desolation Islands and wants to board with the Grampus to get out of town. Guy won't agree to taking him on until he learns that Jeorling is from Connecticut and was familiar with Pym's narrative. Jeorling believes Poe's novel is fiction, although Poe in the novel refers to the story as a history. Guy argues it is fact.

"Captain! Why, that story is due to the powerful imagination of our great poet. It is a pure invention.”
“So, then, you don’t believe it, Mr. Jeorling?” said the captain, shrugging his shoulders three times.
“Neither I nor any other person believes it, Captain Guy, and you are the first I have heard maintain that it was anything but a mere romance.”
“Listen to me, then, Mr. Jeorling, for although this ‘romance’—as you call it—appeared only last year, it is none the less a reality. Although eleven years have elapsed since the facts occurred, they are none the less true, and we still await the ‘word’ of an enigma which will perhaps never be solved.”

It takes a while for Jeorling to change his mind, but he becomes as ardently monomaniacal about finding Pym and Len Guy as the captain. That way lies...shipwreck, mutiny, death, and lurid discoveries. I won't give away the story.

So then it was all true? Edgar Poe’s work was that of an historian, not a writer of romance?

I had great fun reading this book. I remembered my love of Verne's Journey To The Center of The Earth as a kid. The science is inaccurate, sure. The South Pole was not reached until 1911, so Verne in 1897 could imagine a polar world where summer reached 34 degrees and open water ran trough the continent of Antarctica. There is a dramatic rescue of a man overboard. No one would actually jump into the Antarctic sea, or could survive it. Critters and birds abound.


There is racial prejudice typical of Verne's time. The mysterious and heroic 'half-bred' from Indiana is very strange in physic and seemingly impervious to the elements. He has super sharp vision and a gruesome secret. The black cook's teeth shine white, and he is not very intelligent--typical of his race. (Poe's racism is also evident in Pym.)

I sped through the book in two sittings and enjoyed it very much. I loved the idea of Verne's writing a sequel to Poe's book.

To read about Poe's story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Narrative_of_Arthur_Gordon_Pym_of_Nantucket
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2149/2149-h/2149-h.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/24/arthur-gordon-pym-nantucket-edgar-allan-poe-100-novels

To read about Verne's story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Antarctic_Mystery
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10339/10339-h/10339-h.htm

Some of My Favorite Hankys from My Collection

In 1993 I saw an ad for the book Handkerchief Quilts by Sharon Newman. That photo on the cover of a handkerchief quilt was all it took--I started collecting handkerchiefs immediately! I did make a quilt like on the cover, and then several more patterns from the book. But I did not know where to stop, and have ended up with about 800 or so handkerchiefs in my collection! Some are for keeps, some are to use for quilts. Here are some of my favorite 'for keeps' handkerchiefs in my collection.

1) Boy's Arctic Walrus Hunters Handkerchief
This on eBay find is so cool!. It is a child's handkerchief in its original box, with its originally glued on tag and the gift tag. In 1911 Howard White received this Christmas gift from his Uncle Eddie.

The handkerchief is not politically correct by today's standards by any means! No way would anyone today give a child an illustration of  men clubbing walruses! But in 1911, Arctic and Antarctic exploration has all the romantic appeal and excitement that space exploration had in the 1960s.

In November, 1911 Robert Falcon Scott began his race to reach the south pole before Roald Amundsen.. Before submitting to the elements in early 1912, Scott left a last entry in his diary: "I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write any more." Roald Amundsen successfully  reached the pole. Previous polar explorers included voyages by Peary and Cook, and in the 1840s the lost Franklin expedition captured British attention as expeditions to find Franklin were sent out one after another. The Arctic and Antarctica explorations caused huge national and international excitement.   

What little boy would not have been thrilled with this handkerchief!

2) Herbert Hoover Campaign Handkerchief

This silk handkerchief was described on eBay as a circus elephant. Well, I did not believe for a minute it was a circus elephant. It was obviously a Republican political hanky. I bid on it-- and then did research. The blanket on the elephant's back has a prominent "H" and a smaller "C". That lead me to look at Herbert Hoover.

In 1929 Herbert Hoover was elected President of the United States, with Charles Curtis as his Vice President. Today we mostly hear about Hoovervilles and Hoover's failed policies regarding the stock market crash and the ensuing economic disaster we call The Great Depression. What we forget to tell our school children is that Hoover was a compassionate man who organized humanitarian aid to Europe during and after the great World Wars, feeding friend and foe alike. Curtis was a supporter of the five-day work week with no reduction in wages, enabling job sharing, as a solution to the lack of jobs during the Depression. Some day I will donate this to the Hoover Historical Center, as they had not seen it before. It gave me great satisfaction to know I recognized an important bit of textile history!

3) Korean Mission Handkerchief

There are literally millions of these embroidered hankies of two pig-tailed girls playing on a teeter totter. They are found everywhere. I had one in my collection but thought nothing of it until this collection appeared on eBay. The letter and booklet with the handkerchief told the story of am amazing mission in Korea called Operation Hanky.

"Father Al" Schwartz was a Roman Catholic priest assigned to Busan, Korea in 1957.  In 1963 he initiated Operation Hanky Self-Help Embroidery Program, employing 3,000 impoverished women. The women were given cloth and embroidery thread, and the work was done in their own homes.  His early experience as a Fuller Brush Salesman led him to develop a letter campaign with a hanky as a premium. The appeal had a one out of three success rate of response, compared to a 7% response before adding the handkerchief. In 1964 there were one million mailings!

Father Schwartz used the proceeds from Operation Hanky to build a hospital, two dispensaries, and orphanage  and old-age home, a school, a day care center, an irrigation project, and a cooperative farm program! In addition he granted funds to hospitals, leper colonies, orphanages, schools and charities across Korea.

Is it any wonder that Father Al is being vetted for sainthood?

4) Declaration of Independence Handkerchief by Tammis Keefe

Tammis Keefe is one of the best known and most collected textile designers. In the recent past her rarer handkerchiefs have sold for between $50 and $100! When I started collecting her handkerchiefs, they could be found at flea markets and garage sales for a quarter or a dollar. Find out more about Keefe  at http://www.tammiskeefe.com/ . Keefe designed souvenir handkerchiefs for many cities and tourist attractions, including Philadelphia. 

We moved from the Midwest to Philly just before the Bicentennial, and it was amazing place to be during those years! We wore "Ask Me" pin-back buttons as we spent our Saturdays visiting the many museums and events, proud (although new) residents. I don't recall many tourists actually asking us anything. As a girl I was interested in Colonial and Early American history. Being in Philly we had the chance to visit the historical sites we had read about.

So this hanky reminds me of those great days in Philadelphia.

5) "Meet Me At the Eagle: Handkerchief

Another Tammis Keefe favorite of mine, which I have in four color ways, is this Meet Me At the Eagle! 

We used to ride the subway, trolley, or el to downtown Philly for shopping. In those days, Lit Brothers, Strawbridge & Clothier, Gimbel Brothers, and John Wanamaker had massive stores a few blocks from each other. http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/department-stores/ has a great history of these stores. There is nothing like shopping in one of these old department stores. They are beautiful. They have whole floors dedicated to whatever you are looking for. They had women's lounges to rest your weary feet. 

Wanamaker's can be seen in the movies "Mannequin", where the hero saves the store owner as she leaves the store and in  "Blow Out" with John Travalta crashing into a display window. You can read more about Wanamakers  at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanamaker's

After moving to Philly we soon learned what "Meet me at the Eagle" meant. Wanamaker's Grand Court was  amazing! It was built for the Centennial Exposition to lure in tourists from across the world. it includes one of the world's largest pipe organs. And it included a massive bronze eagle that came from the St Louis World's Fair. Soon people were arranging to "meet at the eagle". Wanamakers is now Macy's, but the eagle is still there. 

I think I will do a few more posts on some of my favorite handkerchiefs. This has been so much fun!