Fireside Reading
At the age of sixteen, Edward Maurice signed on with the Hudson Bay Company and found himself living among the Inuit people at a company trading post in the Canadian Arctic. The Last Gentleman Adventurer is a beautifully written memoir of life in the far north during the years between the world wars. It is a story of isolation, courage, and adventure. But above all, it is the story of the Inuit, and a way of life that is now lost.
"A flight of ducks rose suddenly from the lake below me to swing along the river bed, over the tiny white buildings of our post, then out across the bay towards the beckoning hills on the far shore, green and inviting now that the clouds had slipped away from the sun. I watched the birds disappear into the distance on their way southward to the mainland and thought of my family's wish for me to join them in far-off New Zealand. But a warning from one of President Roosevelt's winter fireside chats came into my mind. Our generation, he had said, had a rendezvous with destiny. Already the distant roll of drums was sounding the first faint call to arms. What better place to await the horror of war than here in this harsh but honest place?
"I hurried back down the hill towards the jetty were the Eskimos were laughing and shouting as they unloaded our supplies for the coming season."
The Last Gentleman Adventurer by Edward Beauclerk Maurice, Houghton Mifflin, 2004
Read an excellent review here.
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