If you want an example of courage try Henley. Or Stevenson.
I could tell you some stories abut these two, but they would not
be dull enough for a rectorial address. For courage, again,
take Meredith, whose laugh was 'as broad as a thousand beeves at
pasture.' Take, as I think, the greatest figure literature has
still left us, to be added to-day to the roll of St. Andrews'
alumni, though it must be in absence. The pomp and circumstance
of war will pass, and all others now alive may fade from the scene,
but I think the quiet figure of Hardy will live on.
I seem to be taking all my examples from the calling I was lately
pretending to despise. I should like to read you some passages of a
letter from a man of another calling, which I think will hearten you.
I have the little filmy sheets here. I thought you might like to see
the actual letter; it has been a long journey; it has been to the
South Pole. It is a letter to me from Captain Scott of the
Antarctic, and was written in the tent you know of, where it was
found long afterwards with his body and those of some other very
gallant gentlemen, his comrades. The writing is in pencil, still
quite clear, though toward the end some of the words trail away
as into the great silence that was waiting for them. It begins:
'We are pegging out in a very comfortless spot.
Hoping this letter may be found and sent to you, I write
you a word of farewell. I want you to think well of me
and my end.' (After aome private instructions too
intimate to read, he goes on): 'Goodbye--I am not at
all afraid of the end, but sad to miss many a simple
pleasure which I had planned for the future in our long
marches. . . . We are in a desperate state--feet
frozen, etc., no fuel, and a long way from food, but it
would do your heart good to be in our tent, to hear our
songs and our cheery conversation. . . . Later--(it
is here that the words become difficult)--We are very
near the end. . . . We did intend to finish ourselves
when things proved like this, but we have decided to die
naturally without.'
I think it may uplift you all to stand for a moment by that tent and
listen, as he says, to their songs and cheery conversation. When I
think of Scott I remember the strange Alpine story of the youth who
fell down a glacier and was lost, and of how a scientific companion,
one of several who accompanied him, all young, computed that the
body would again appear at a certain date and place many years
afterwards. When that time came round some of the survivors returned
to the glacier to see if the prediction would be fulfilled; all old
men now; and the body reappeared as young as on the day he left them.
So Scott and his comrades emerge out of the white immensities always
young.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account