‘Had We Lived’ has at its centre, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the leader of the dog team that took supplies for the returning Polar party. The blurb about this book on Amazon has some sentences that merit comment.
Three quotes are given in order of appearance!!
1) He died in 1959, still regretting having abandoned the men he admired and loved most in the world.
‘Abandon’ implies that Cherry-Garrard knew the returning party was alive, a fact that, however much he might have wished it, he could not have known. Cherry-Garrard, inexperienced in both navigation and dog driving, was sent to One Ton with Dimitri Gerof because the only other man who could have gone, Silas Wright, was needed for scientific work. Cherry’s orders from Dr Atkinson were to take dog food and food for the men to One Ton Camp. He was informed that Scott was not dependent on the dogs for his return. Also, that the dogs were not to be risked but saved for the following year. At One Ton the dog food was low, the weather was bad, to push further South over the featureless plain would have been pointless and Cherry would have felt this, but, devoted as he was to the Polar Party, particularly to Wilson and Bowers, he might have done so if it were not for his orders. He obeyed these.
2) Cherry’s childhood and young manhood in Lamer, their stately home in Surrey.
Lamer is in Hertfordshire. Part of it still remains. Cherry inherited from his father, General Cherry who had inherited the estate from his father-in-law on condition the family assumed the name of Garrard. So they became Cherry-Garrard in 1892. When Cherry wrote the ‘Worst Journey’, he consulted with his friend George Bernard Shaw, a well-km=known Hertfordshire resident, who lived near by.
3) The second part of the novel leaps forward to 1958. Cherry is now old and suffering from physical and psychological damage caused by guilt and regret, feelings which have haunted him since the failure of Scott’s expedition.
This may well be true but there may be genetic factors that caused depression also. Cherry’s cousin Reginald Smith 1857 -1916 (of the publishing company Smith Elder) committed suicide in 1916 having suffered from depression for years. He was known to have suicidal tendencies. Thus, there may have been a familial tendency to depression in the family.
Isobel Williams – Author, Cruise Speaker and Lecturer 