The Last of the Gentlemen Adventurers: Coming of Age in the Arctic
In 1930 a sixteen-year-old boy left England to become one of the last of the ‘gentlemen adventurers’ – the fur traders of the Hudson’s Bay Company. In the Arctic he found adventure, love and loss as he came to grips with Eskimo life. Beautifully written, inspiring and funny, this is a boy’s own story that captures a world that is lost forever.Please note that this edition does not include illustrations.Every boy dreams of adventures, but few have the courage or opportunity to make them a reality. When the Great Depression began to bite straitened finances forced the Maurice family to leave Britain. Edward was faced with a stark choice: to follow his mother and elder siblings to farm in New Zealand, or pursue an uncertain future as an apprentice fur trader among the Eskimos. Preferring to make his own destiny, he signed up for five years at the princely sum of fifty pence a week, packing up the two spoons that remained of his inheritance to become one of the last ever 'gentleman adventurers'.Life in Baffin Land was harsh: there was no telephone, no radio communication, only one annual visit from the supply ship to keep in contact with the outside world. But it was also one of tremendous excitement. Under the expert tutelage of his drunken boss, Geordie, Edward learnt to build igloos, hunt polar bears and survive the myriad difficulties of Northern existence. Despite Geordie’s warnings against becoming too involved with ‘the natives’ (and Geordie had taken one for a wife) the young boy became fascinated with the mythic Eskimo culture, learning the language and forming close friendships. After three years, he was sent to his own outpost, where, alone, he had to save the community from illness and starvation, as well as teach them English and contend with the amorous attentions of the local ladies.In charming, timeless prose ‘The Last of the Gentlemen Adventurers’ transports the reader to worlds that are now forever inaccessible. It is at once a vivid portrait of a unique society and the moving, often hilarious story of an unforgettable young man determined to triumph over every circumstance.
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Praise for The Last of the Gentlemen Adventurers:
‘This is a great book about life at remote bases in Canada’s far north as seen by a young English boy who went there by himself to see the world and got more than he could ever have bargained for. Beautifully written’ SIR RANULPH FIENNES
‘A beautifully unadorned, homespun tale, with a lack of self-consciousness rare in travel literature … Maurice recalls this faraway time without recourse to judgment of the alien world that embraced him, and no doubt his ease with, and openness to, the world were qualities that the Inuit were quick to discern in him … The book’s greatest asset … is [a] kind of purity. I was charmed’ BENEDICT ALLEN, Independent on Sunday
‘Maybe [Beauclerk Maurice] was exceptional, but the charm of his book lies in its modesty: he makes no claims for himself. His concern was to make a record of some amazing adventures and a vanishing way of life; these are woven into an eye-opening narrative that is suffused with kindliness and an attitude to growing up more restrained but more humane than that prevailing today. A gentleman adventurer, indeed’
Times Educational Supplement
‘Unlike many of its contemporaries, The Last of the Gentlemen Adventurers is not a tale of machismo by bearded explorers. In 392 pages of unadorned prose, it manages to live up to its title and simultaneously throw new light on the polar regions … [Maurice] writes sparsely, preferring to let the landscape and people speak for themselves. His story weaves Inuit history, culture and beliefs, while all the time aware of the impact of the white man on the surroundings … An important memoir of a time not so long ago, when the world was unexplored … One to keep on your shelf and dip into again and again’
Sunday Business Post
For a much-loved husband and father whose adventurous start to paid employment has inspired us all to take up life’s challenges.
The stories that follow have filled many happy family times together and we hope this book will ensure that others also can share in a young boy’s dream.
Pat, Jane, Sally and Victoria Maurice
WHITE ESKIMO
by Lawrence Millman
EDWARD BEAUCLERK MAURICE almost did not go to the Arctic. His Hudson’s Bay Company recruiter, George Binney, thought the seventeen-year-old boy’s dark looks suggested ‘Eastern blood’, and in his not necessarily unbiased opinion, recruits with even a smattering of Asian, Semitic or Indian blood (Binney was at least egalitarian in his prejudices) did not have the right stuff to be fur traders in the Canadian North. If Maurice’s headmaster hadn’t assured Binney that the boy’s brother was ‘conspicuously fair’, Edward probably would have emigrated to New Zealand with the rest of his family, and bookshelves would have been deprived of this remarkable memoir.
Yet if it wasn’t for Binney, Maurice wouldn’t even have been considered for employment with the Hudson’s Bay Company. For the HBC – to use its popular abbreviation – traditionally looked to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland for recruits. The Company’s thinking went something like this: a Scotsman, preferably a poor one, would be thrifty; he would be accustomed to uncomplaining servitude; he would be used to a rotten climate; and, as a Celt, he would be not unlike the primitive people with whom he’d be trading. But Binney felt the Company needed educated recruits, what today might be called managerial types, if it was to keep apace with modern times. So he turned his attention to England and to public schools like the one in Sussex that Maurice was attending.
A more unlikely candidate for the northern wilds would be difficult to imagine. Maurice was naïve even for his age, his childhood had been quite sheltered, and his experience of rotten climates seems to have been limited to the draughty corridors of his school. An HBC evaluation refers to him as being ‘inclined more to indoor rather than outdoor work’. But sometimes the least likely person turns out to be the most likely one. After all, Robert Peary was a mama’s boy and his North Pole adversary, Frederick Cook, worked as a milkman.
Maurice started out as an apprentice clerk at the Pangnirtung Post on Baffin Island. Nowadays Pang, as it’s called, is a mecca for Arctic tourists, with hotels, souvenir shops, and even an interpretive centre. But in 1930 it was hardly more than a huddle of clapboard houses surrounded by Eskimo (the then current name for the Inuit) tents. As befits such a high-latitude settlement, there were no trees other than those of the dwarf variety. A lad who’d arrived here from England’s green and pleasant land might reasonably feel that he’d fetched up very close to the bleak end of the world (the actual end of the world was the HBC’s Payne Bay Post, where it took trader Charles Duncan two years to receive a telegram notifying him that his father had died). But not Maurice: he was exhilarated.
According to the oft-repeated joke, the initials ‘HBC’ stand for ‘Here Before Christ’. But the Hudson’s Bay Company didn’t actually establish its first post in the Canadian Arctic until 1908 (the first non-Arctic post, Rupert House, dates from 1670). This relatively recent arrival in North America’s attic can be attributed to two factors: (1) the over-harvesting of fur-bearing animals, especially beavers, down south and (2) the new global demand for fur from a more northerly animal. The northerly animal in question was the white fox (
