Status Updates From Scott's Last Expedition: Th...

even a week in was horror wth

I’m at the part where they are about to find out that Amundsen has beaten them to the pole by about a month 😭 that must have been so disheartening and to have taken their own final portraits wow…

Oh it gets me every time. It’s so haunting.

These journals were not edited by Scott (but by later publishers who all had their own agenda) but it’s hard not to see a hand of Fate editing them, leading to this horrific conclusion. A Fate that, in some ways, could be predicted but also…could not.

‘Indefatigable little Bowers’ gets me every time

Bowers and the Christmas tree 🥲

Every now and then, in the midst of matter of fact diary entries, you get a banger of a description:

‘The long mild twilight which like a silver clasp unites today with yesterday; when morning and evening sit together hand in hand beneath the starless sky of midnight.’

Scott’s kind of placid narrative is occasionally broken by quotes he wrote into his diaries as ephemera so every now and then, you get *sledge diary, comments on ice, science* then something like *it is fitting to die for your country*, and it’s like a ghost foreshadowing it all.

Scott calling every man ‘a treasure’ 🫡🥹🙏

Every time a new diary entry starts, Scott is like ‘oh it’s a DISASTER!’ then ‘oh okay we fixed it.’ Then ‘oh I’m so depressed with it all’. Then back to ‘It’s okay again’. He’s such a diva, I love him.