"I looked after the small things and they rather stifle the soul."

In the annals of polar exploration there are those who got there first, those who didn't get there but died in spectacular fashion and then there is Shackleton. He is, to many (me included) the truly great one. He is the explorer who turned back to save his men and the one who led the most epic polar rescue of all time. He is not the stuff of legend, he is legend. Consider this famous quote from Sir Raymond Priestly, explorer with both Shackleton and Robert Scott:



"Scott for scientific method, Amundsen for speed and efficiency but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton."

He will live forever in the annals of exploration history, without a doubt. But what Kari Herbert does in her upcoming book, POLAR WIVES is give equal measure to his wife, Emily (along with several other wives who I'll blog about later). What I found so interesting about Emily is that on the surface, as Herbert notes, she was seen as the "epitome of the long-suffering polar wife surrendering her ambitions for those of her husband on his great undertaking; bound to a brilliant but restless dreamer, who yearned for home when he was away but was often distant when he returned." She is not someone who seems to be worthy of a biography separate from her husband. And yet Herbert makes clear that Emily was much more than long-suffering and in fact was a force to be reckoned with. She believed not just in him and what he hoped to accomplish but she believed in a fulfilling life for herself as well. She did not want to live through him, she wanted the family happiness that it was entirely reasonable for her to expect. She worked very hard for this at holding everything together. She did, as the post quotes shows so clear, the "small things" the necessary things, the things that always need doing. She just didn't plan on having to do so much alone, because he was either gone exploring or celebrating his exploration, or finding solace in the company of others that he wasn't exploring yet again.

He loved her. She loved him. But that's never the point of the story, is it?

In the years after Ernest's death she made sure to see that he was not lost in the negative comments of others or the achievements of others, she stayed true to him in the way that his widow should. And yet, and yet....reading Herbert's chapters on Emily you wonder how the two of them would have excelled in a time where she could have had more power; where the strength of her personality would have not have had to be dimmer. He had to live then to be the great explorer he was but she would have been something in a different time.

Emily Shackleton is worthy of her own book, her own appreciation; we should count ourselves lucky that Kari Herbert shines the spotlight on her as much as she does here.

[Post pic from the James Caird Society. Quote from Emily Shackleton.]