I first came across the name Bentley Beetham not long after
I had started climbing. It was on a wet visit to Borrowdale in the English Lake
District and the name kept cropping up in the guidebook we were using. Classic
easy routes like Little Chamonix and Corvus featured of course, but other
routes within Borrowdale’s verdant maw, peppered the guide. The earliest being,
Woden’s Face route in 1921 running through to what appears a swansong climb,
Calf Close Buttress in 1952; an obscure five pitch ‘Diff’ described as ‘A
useful ascent on to Glaramara’.
At the time I imagined Beetham to be another
Millican Dalton. ( See Terry Gifford’s- Millican Dalton-Professor of Adventure) I had a picture of a tweedy eccentric
risking life and limb to climb vegetated horrors on every virgin piece of rock
in the valley. Although there was an element of truth in that perception, the
real Bently Beetham, was, as is inevitably the case, a far more complex and
rounded mountaineering figure than I could ever have imagined.
Bentley Beetham and charge on unnamed Lake District crag:Photo Bentley Beetham Collection
It came as a complete surprise when I discovered that
Beetham had been an accomplished and experienced mountaineer, ornithologist and
photographer who was a regular visitor to the Alps and Greater Ranges, and had
in fact, been a member of the legendary ‘Mallory/Irvine’ 1924 Everest expedition. An expedition where with Mallory, he was
considered one of the strongest and fittest members of the team and as such,
was very much in the frame for a summit
bid.
In Vertebrate Publishing’s The Lure of the Mountains...The
life of Bentley Beetham- the 1924 Everest Expedition Mountaineer, author-the
late Michael D Lowes- has brought to life this fascinating figure through what
was obviously a labour of love. Beetham was a pupil and later, a master at the Barnard Castle public school in
County Durham, and Michael Lowes was a pupil at the school under Beetham. Like
so many Barnard Castle pupils over the years, the author was inspired by the
subjects enthusiasm and love of the mountains and his passion culminated in
later life, with his stewardship of ‘The
Beetham Collection’. The subject’s vast selection of glass plate and film
photographs kept at the school. And of course, the authorship of this fine
little book.
Within, this modest 150+ page work, Michael Lowes has
managed to capture the true essence of a man who was part adventurer and part a
real life ‘Mr Chips’. A tweedy confirmed bachelor whose life-man and boy-
remained within the Barnard Castle school orbit. Beetham’s roots were as you would imagine, typically middle class.
A late Victorian son of a bank manager who died when Beetham was four, the young
Bentley was sent off by his mother Frances to boarding school where, amongst the Northumbrian countryside, he
developed a love of the natural world.
Particularly the subject of ornithology,
an area where his life long love of photography was shaped. Indeed, it was
while scrambling around searching for birds nests that Beetham developed his
early climbing skills. It was these skills and his expertise in this area that
persuaded the explorer, J Foster Stackhouse to select the 25 year old for an
expedition to the remote Jan Mayen Islands. An expedition where Beetham would
be the team ornithologist and photographer. In the event, the author describes
an expedition where everything that could go wrong did go wrong! In fact, the
author’s dry wit shines through in ‘The Expedition that Never was’ and I defy
anyone to read this chapter without a smile on their face. What a great Ealing
comedy this would have made.
Photo:Bentley Beetham Collection
Not surprisingly, Beetham’s
Everest trip and his preliminary expeditions take up a substantial
section of the book but even within the tragic context of that fateful trip,
the author lightens the tone with selective quotes from Beetham which are often
highly droll. For example, describing the appalling poverty and unhygienic
conditions they encountered in one Tibetan village, Beetham observes...
If one has not seen
Phari,it must be difficult to believe that something like 8000 people can
continue to live together in such an appalling state of filth and insanitation
as there exists. One would have expected them to have been blotted out long ago
by some infectious malady; their persistent existence is a flaunting insult to
hygiene.
After the high point of Everest, Lowes describes Beetham’s climbing career as not so much
winding down, but with the subject now more content to explore the Lake District an unearth new routes within these less challenging climes. However, he continued to venture abroad and in particular, became an
early explorer and enthusiast for Moroccan exploration. Regularly visiting the
High Atlas mountains during his extended school breaks. Usually, on his own and
using local guides.
Beetham’s often unorthodox approach to his academic
responsibilities are touched on by the author. An approach that at one stage
looked as if it would cost him his career at the Barnard Castle school. However, his popularity with the majority of pupils saw him home and he
continued in his role of tweedy schoolmaster until he retired in 1949.
After
retirement, he continued to climb in the Lakes-As a long term member of the
Fell & Rock Club he regularly used the club’s local huts to base his new routing explorations. In 1953,at
the age of 66, he went along with another expedition to explore the unknown
Himalayan Api Range. Sadly, ill health forced his return and what might have been a remarkable final flourishing in the greater ranges was not to be.
Beetham died after a stroke in 1963. The archetypical
Kipling-esque Victorian school master and mountaineer had managed to reach his
twilight passage in an era where man had orbited the moon and the first
stirrings of Beatlemania had rattled the cage of drab, post war cultural conservatism.
Author Michael D Lowes died suddenly in 2009 after
completing Lure of the Mountains. Another former Barnard Castle pupil,
Graham Ratcliffe-current chair of the Bentley Beetham Trust-took on the task of
seeing Michael’s work through to publication and it is to the credit of all
concerned that the book is now out there in the public domain. An invaluable work
on a unique figure in the world of mountaineering whose story had to be told. In keeping with
the subject, Vertebrate have published the work in a charmingly old fashioned
cloth hardback cover which evokes Beetham's bygone age.
Available direct from the
publisher..... Lure of the Mountains
John Appleby
