Rungneet tea plantation in
Darjeeling: Photo Streather Family Collection
Over
the years, in expedition accounts from the 1940s and 50s, I’ve come
across frequent references to the Rungneet tea plantation in
Darjeeling and the couple who owned it, Jack and Jill Henderson. They
hosted several major expedition in the early 1950s and Jill Henderson
played a small but intriguing role in Himalayan history. I have never
seen any photographs of her until I found this transparency in the
late Tony Streather’s collection a few months ago. It’s an image
taken at Rungneet on the day that Tony and the other members of
Charles Evans’s expedition set off for Kangchenjunga in 1955.
Foreground right there are cars and lorries loaded with porters and
Sherpas, foreground left in the light blue twin-set there’s Jill
Henderson. Her husband may be the man in the background in the linen
jacket but I’m not quite sure?
Jill
Henderson was the Honorary Secretary of the Himalayan Club between
1951- 1955, and in this role she organised the Sherpa teams for
several expeditions. The club had been set up in 1928 as a kind of
Indian version of the Alpine Club. Initially it arranged
talks and events and maintained a library and a journal but as
Himalayan climbing developed, the club took on another role, helping
to organise Sherpas and porters. Its officers liaised with foreign
and local expeditions, agreed rates of pay and organised logbooks for
Sherpas to record their expeditions and their achievements.
It
is unclear why she got involved in the Himalayan club but Jill
Henderson, née Enid Newman, was born in Essex in 1905; her husband
Jack was born in China, nine years earlier. When they married, Enid
became known as Jill. By the late forties they were well established
at the Rungneet plantation. After the first expeditions to
Kangchenjunga and the Tibetan side of Everest, Darjeeling had become
the jumping off point for Himalayan expeditions and it remained so
for anyone heading for the Eastern Himalayas. In 1949 the Hendersons
hosted Frank Smythe on his final trip to India which ended in his
death from suspected cerebral malaria. They looked after John Kempe’s
Kangchenjunga reconnaissance team in 1954, and in the following year
hosted Evans’ team at the beginning and end of the expedition.
While they were on the hill, the Hendersons organised their mail and
sent them bottles of Veuve Cliquot to celebrate their success. At the
end they came out to greet them with crates of beer and sandwiches
and organised a party with the French Makalu team.
It
wasn't just a question of being a generous host. Jill Henderson also
played a small but crucial part in the 1953 Everest expedition,
persuading Tenzing Norgay that he should join the British team. In
the spring of 1952, he had taken part in the first of two Swiss
expeditions to Everest and had formed a very strong bond with the
Swiss team and Raymond Lambert in particular. When in early
September, Jill invited him to join the British 1953 team, initially
under Eric Shipton’s leadership, he told her that he was unlikely
to say yes because “he feels that he will have had enough of
Everest for a time”.
Frank Smythe
Later
that autumn Tenzing took part in a second Swiss Everest expedition.
It was unsuccessful and Tenzing returned to Darjeeling exhausted and
ill and 16 lbs lighter. He had however enjoyed himself tremendously
and told friends that he enjoyed working with the Swiss more than the
British and hoped to return with them in 1955 for a third crack at
Everest. When Jill Henderson approached him for a second time in
January 1953, he repeated his reservations and his wife Ang Lhamu
added that she did not want him to go anywhere before he had fully
recovered. As Jill Henderson wrote to John Hunt:
He
is looking extremely pulled down at the moment. He is ready to go as
far as Camp 3, this means that he will arrange porterage, logs for
bridging etc but not to climb
Eventually,
after plying him with sweet words, milk and Ovaltine for several
weeks, Tenzing was persuaded to sign up and to help recruit a strong
party of Sherpas, but only as he insisted if he could also be made a
full member of the climbing team. The rest as they say is history.
When on May 29th he
and Ed Hillary reached the summit, Tenzing was wearing a jumper given
to him by Jill Henderson. On his triumphant return to Darjeeling, he
in turn presented her with a Lhasa Apso, probably the dog in the
picture, which she later entered into Crufts.
By
the mid-fifties, the Himalayan climbing scene was changing as the
centre of gravity moved from Darjeeling to Kathmandu. All or almost
all of the high altitude Sherpas in the photo above were recruited by
Dawa Tenzing in the the Solu Khumbu, though the general porters did
come from Darjeeling and its vicinity. More and more
expeditions started off from Nepal rather than India and Darjeeling’s
climbing Sherpa community gradually contracted. The Himalayan
Mountaineering Institute, where Tenzing once taught, remains magnet
for Indian climbers and there is still a small Sherpa community at
Tungsung Basti on the edge of Darjeeling, but today most of the
Sherpa owned trekking and climbing business are based in Kathmandu.
Jill
Henderson left India in 1958 for Africa and later America. She died
in Stanger in South Africa in 1991 and is buried there. In 2002
Rungneet was renamed ‘The Kanchaan View Tea Estate’ and taken
over by a much larger company. As for the Himalayan Club, it remains
a vibrant hub for mountain culture but its focus is now on publishing
the Himalayan Journal and hosting events, not on recruiting Sherpas.
Mick Conefrey: 2020
Details of Mick's latest book, 'The Last Great Mountain' can be found on his website Mick Conefrey
Details of Mick's latest book, 'The Last Great Mountain' can be found on his website Mick Conefrey