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The Last Gentleman Adventurer: Coming of Age in the Arctic
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Product Description
"As spare, gleaming, and exhilarating as the Arctic wastes and the gentle, stoic Eskimos who had mastery of this realm . . . The book evokes the frozen seas, whale hunts, snow plains and storms that intimidated those rash enough to brave this world, and the traditions, myths, and hunting skills that contoured a bygone way of life . . . His translucent prose is a sparkling and moving record." -- Times (London)
At sixteen, Edward Beauclerk Maurice impulsively signed up with the Hudson's Bay Company -- the Company of Gentleman Adventurers -- and was sent to an isolated trading post in the Canadian Arctic, where there was no telephone or radio and only one ship arrived each year. But the Inuit people who traded there taught him how to track polar bears, build igloos, and survive expeditions in ferocious winter storms. He learned their language and became so immersed in their culture and way of life that children thought he was Inuit himself. When an epidemic struck, Maurice treated the sick using a simple first aid kit, and after a number of the hunters died, he had to start hunting himself, often with women, who soon began to compete for his affections. The young man who in England had never been alone with a woman other than his mother and sisters had come of age in the Arctic.
In The Last Gentleman Adventurer Edward Beauclerk Maurice transports the reader to a time and a way of life now lost forever.
After serving in the New Zealand navy during World War II, Edward Beauclerk Maurice became a bookseller in an English village and rarely traveled again. He died in 2003 as this, his only book, was being readied for publication.
"If you like reality, The Last Gentleman Adventurer will be your cup of tea: a delicious quaff of it. Savor it!" -- Edward Hoagland
"Maurice's memoir supplies a fascinating elegy to a vanishing world." -- Telegraph
"One of those rare writers who will be remembered for turning out one great memoir/travel book . . . He relates these events in a beautiful prose that is quaintly elegant in tone but never archly so . . . Not only a gentleman but a wonderful writer who limited his output to one book, and perhaps that is why it reads so beautifully." -- Sunday Tribune (Dublin)
"Maybe he 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
"A deceptively simple account of how he grew to manhood, shaped on one hand by the brutal elements of the Arctic, on the other by the compassionate communities of Inuit who understood them . . . This is a beautifully unadorned, homespun tale with a lack of self-consciousness rare in travel literature . . . I was charmed." -- Benedict Allen, Independent on Sunday
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #595952 in Books
- Published on: 2005-11-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 416 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Maurice was a 16-year-old boy from a struggling British family when a missionary from the Canadian Arctic paid a visit to his boarding school in 1930. Impressed by an accompanying film about life in the frozen territories, Maurice immediately sought employment as an apprentice with the Hudson's Bay Company and was sent to a remote trading post, where news from the outside world was often limited to a short weekly radio broadcast. He was so young, the local Inuit tribe nicknamed him "The Boy," but, as revealed over the course of this charming memoir, he was gradually able to win their trust and admiration. Eventually placed in charge of his own post, Maurice—having already learned the Inuit language—became increasingly involved in the daily lives of the local tribe members. His accounts of their dramatic romantic entanglements are understatedly amusing, as is the dry observation that he himself has been selected by one of the women as a suitable mate. Maurice, who died in 2003, recounts his youthful adventures in a graceful style reminiscent of the great 20th-century explorers. Though his tale is somewhat more subdued than their exploits, it proves just as engrossing.
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Review
"Maurice evokes his Arctic in vivid detail." Boston Globe
"An unrivaled portrait of Unuit life." -- National Geographic Adventurer
"Effortlessly entertaining." The Washington Post
"A fascinating often funny chronicle of his early years among the Inuit." Entertainment Weekly
About the Author
Customer Reviews
A truly fine book about life in the Arctic
The author may well deserve the distinction of his title: "The Last Gentleman Adventurer." When 16 years old in 1930, Maurice joined the Hudson's Bay Company and journeyed off to a remote post on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. White population: 7. Over the next five years the author learned the Innuit language and the skills of the north, including seal and caribou hunting, dog sledding, trapping, and survival in the long, sub-zero winters. This was no vacation sojurn as are so many "adventure" tales. Maurice was as far away from civilization as one could be, save for a radio that worked sporadically and a supply boat that called once a year.
Maurice had a genuine affection and admiration for the Eskimos (Innuit) who were both his customers and his companions. He writes as a naive boy slowly growing in maturity and comprehension rather than as a Great White Father presiding over a flock of primitive people. We are treated to discussions of how the Innuit build snow houses and keep the runners of their sleds from icing as well as amusing tales of making home brew and celebrating Christmas among his tiny community in the Arctic. He writes sadly of the epidemic that raged among the Innuit and his attempt to save them with little more than cough syrup. And, eventually, after a noble Victorian struggle against lust, he takes himself a temporary wife among the uninhibited Innuit.
Maurice writes in a deceptively simple manner. This is his only book and he wrote it in his old age and died at nearly age 90 before it was published. That perhaps accounts for the abrupt ending to the book with his departure on furlough after five years in the Arctic, although he was to return for a second stay. "The Last Gentleman Adventurer" is among the best books ever written about the Arctic and the Innuit.
Smallchief
Coming of Age in the Arctic
"The Last Gentleman Adventurer" is a delightful, even beautiful account by Edward Maurice of his time as a young clerk for the Hudson's Bay Company in the Canadian Arctic of the 1930's. Maurice was working literally at the intersection of the Inuit and European worlds. We are most fortunate as readers that the author was unjaded, exceptionally observant, and open to the possibilities of life in that time and place.
Maurice's job was to run a trading post, swapping rifles, ammunition, and other finished trade goods for furs trapped by the local Inuit. His status as a company employee with a high school education often placed him in a position of responsibility in the local community. In addition, Maurice made the effort to learn the language and local customs, and through trial and error, the survival skills of his neighbors.
Maurice's account captures in often touching detail the way of life of the Inuit in a rugged land that provided only a thin living and little margin for error. The Inuit are portrayed as tough, resilient and generous people who live very much in the moment in a land where death from disease, accident, or starvation is never far away. Maurice's gradual acceptance of the Inuit, and their acceptance of him, form the core of the narrative. His efforts to care for his neighbors during an outbreak of disease and his organization of successful hunts to stave off starvation earn their trust to the extent that at least two women will consider him a very desirable catch as a husband according to the Inuit fashion. This acceptance makes his parting all the harder at the end of the story.
This book is highly recommended to those interested in life in the Arctic and to those looking for an excellent account of life in a different culture.
Delightful Tale of Coming of Age in 1930's Remote Canada
A surprisingly good book about a lost time.
In 1930, sixteen year old Edward Maurice was assigned to the Hudson Bay Company (aka as HBC which some say really stood for 'Here Before Christ') fur trading post at Pangnirtung on Baffin Island, just west of Greenland. He was to stay in the arctic for nine years.
This is a book of love for the people, then called Eskimos; love for the arctic; love for adventure. It is a tale of coming of age as he leaves childhood at a boarding school in England for life in a much less inhibited part of the world. It is missing much of the bravado that is seen in the books published by older men who are more generally the leaders rather than the lowly apprentice.
It is also a tale of the impact that the diseases man brought to the area. Common diseases like flu and mumps, were deadly to the local natives. And there was little or no medicine to treat the ill. Many died.
This is a wonderfully written book, reading almost as easy as a novel. Mr. Maurice wrote it in his later years when he was a bookseller in rural England, but he had clearly left his heart in Canada.
