Joyce James Barclay

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Biografie:
James Barclay Joyce 1910-1988
James Joyce - Jim, as he was always known - had a distinguished career as a climber and as a pioneer obstetrician and gynaecologist in West Cumbria. He was elected to the Alpine Club in 1942.
The eldest son of Leonard Joyce, also a well-known surgeon, he was educated at Shrewsbury, where he was co-winner of the Ladies' Plate at Henley, and at Pembroke College, Cambridge where he did some night-climbing and also became for a time a keen racing motor-cyclist, until overtaken by a greater, life-long enthusiasm - mountains.
He seems to have stumbled almost accidentally upon the climbing scene when, with a friend in 1934, he ascended the Needle Ridge - 'unroped, in shoes, with mackintosh, carrying a 3 1/4 X 2 1/4 reflex camera', as his diary informs us. Thereafter, with DrJohn Ryle as his first tutor, he rapidly developed his natural aptitude for rock-climbing until as a medical student at Barts he became, with Charles Warren, the prevailing force in the Hospital Alpine Club. That was when I first met and climbed with him, coming under the spell of his remarkable gift for encouraging the less expert, with whom he took endless pains to instil confidence and safe technique. In addition to Hospital meets in the Lake District and at Helyg there were also several new routes made at night on the Medical Block, then in course of construction, and on the tower above the Casualty Department in Giltspur Street!
Just before the war, on holiday at the Riffelalp, he met a beautiful girl to whom he was introduced by Michael Harmer, a close friend and fellow climber. She was Hedy Seiler, granddaughter of Alexander Seiler who built the Monte Rosa hotel and was the first to encounter Edward Whymper on his return from the Matterhorn in 1865. Jim and Hedy were married soon afterwards.
During the Second World War his. service record in the RAMC included Dunkirk, Sicily and North Africa where he became a Lieutenant-Colonel in command of a Field Ambulance and, later, Medical Officer and Instructor at the Army School of Mountain Warfare in Italy. The war over, he took up obstetrics and gynaecology, became a member of the Royal College in that speciality and was then appointed to set up a new department based on the West Cumberland Hospitals at Workington and Whitehaven, where previously all consultant work had had to be transferred to Carlisle. The family moved into Bank Farm at Eaglesfield, between Cockermouth and Buttermere - an old rambling house with a marvellous view of the fells, where they have lived ever since and where Jim died on 13 October 1988 at the age of 78.
Jim's climbing diary - a heavy, black, leather-bound tome, treasured from the beginning with loving care - tells the story of his earlier adventures with much wise, pithy but always kindly comment. His companions on Welsh and Lakeland rocks, in the Dolomites and in the Alps are too numerous to name in full, but members of the Club and others recorded include Charles Warren, Arnold Lunn, Colin Kirkus, John Barford, Ashley Greenwood, Rusty Westmorland, Claude Elliott, David Cox and Jack Longland. Michael Harmer, Jim's frequent climbing companion before the war, to whom I am much indebted for kind personal help with this memoir, tells of the many visits they made together to Gatesgarth, Buttermere, then the home of Professor Pigou of King's College, Cambridge, and later of Claude Elliott.
Jim did not take his diary to the war and left hardly any record of the days at the Mountain Warfare School; however, serving with him as a fellowinstructor was another member of the AC - Tom Peacocke, who has kindly offered to fill in this part of the story. Shortly after the war a distinguished paper was read to the Alpine Club with the title: 'In the Dolomites with an Orientalist' (AJ 55,362-373,1945-46). In this discourseJim ranged far and wide over the implications for the future of mountaineering of developments during the war: the dangers of competition based on nationalist ambitions, and the grading of climbs. It was in several ways a prophetic message worth re-reading with the knowledge of all that has happened since.
A few brief extracts from the diary help to give some idea of his character and philosophy: 'There is no doubt boots teach a better standard of climbing than rubbers'; 'Borrowdale "difficults" are not at all the same as Scawfell "difficults".' After finishing 'Longlands', led by Kirkus: 'a life's desire satisfied and a new one takes its place - to lead Longlands' Climb'. On Army climbing: 'X (a fellow officer) does not understand mountains. They are not for assessing physical differences between individuals, but rather something to compete against. The whole party climbs as a whole, the weakest member as important as the strongest.' Of another friend (S H Badrock): 'Sandy has not yet quite got the idea of party climbing, with everyone looking after themselves and one other.' And of a severe climb on Tryfan, the Terrace Wall Variant: 'At every difficult pitch B (the leader) resorted to the bottle.' Sadly, his diary entries, though not his climbing, ceased altogether with the onset of a serious illness in 1955·
One other fellow-climber, and a tragic one, deserves special mention. Before the war, and also in 1940 and 1941 before being posted abroad, Jim did many climbs, including a number of new routes, with Menlove Edwards. The standard was nearly always VS or higher, so that inevitably a close-knit partnership lasting several years was forged between the two. Jim always insisted that no hint, or shadow of a hint, of the perversities attributed to Menlove by later writers ever entered or even crossed his mind in all their times together on and off the mountains. In fact he thoroughly distrusted and strongly deplored these aspersions - some by writers born long after Menlove's deathupon a superb climber and former friend, later to suffer the double calamity of mental breakdown and premature death.
As a companion in the hills Jim Joyce was unsurpassed, combining strength, confidence and graceful movement with an outstanding degree of patience, serenity and consideration for others on the rope. He was also humorous and the characteristic twinkle in his eye, familiar to all who knew him, was one of his most endearing features. In addition he was no mean mountain artist, proficient in both oils and water-colour. Especially he loved to paint the country near his home - the Buttermere, Crummock and Borrowdale fells, whose every ridge and wrinkle he knew so intimately that he might have said with Matthew Arnold 'I know these hills- Who knows them if not I?' Since his death some 300 of his pictures have been listed and catalogued by his family; one is already in the Club's collection, and there may be more to come.
He was on every count a true gentleman of the mountains. The Club and all of us who knew him mourn his loss and extend our deep sympathy to Hedy, to their son Tony, himself a mountaineer, and to their two daughters Tessa and Anna.
Edward Smyth

Ashley Greenwood writes:
I climbed regularly with Jim in the years immediately before the Second World War, and I also ski'd with him. In both sports Jim was the most fanatical enthusiast whom I ever met, and the quickest to improve his standards. He seemed oblivious of time and weather and, in skiing, even to injury. If it was a fine summer day in North Wales, he would climb till dark before eating and starting for home in his open GM, bivouacking by the roadside or in a barn and arriving in London at breakfast time on Monday ready to begin his week's work at the hospital. In a very short time he had progressed to leading routes of almost the greatest difficulty then climbed. If he thought a route beyond him he would enlist the aid of a top climber, as when he got Colin Kirkus to lead our party of 10 up Longlands. Incidentally, the tenth member had still not taken off when Colin had finished, descended to the. bottom and was occupying himself soloing the Curving Crack. On his first skiing holiday in Grindelwald in 1938 Jim broke his leg, but the feats he performed on a luge with his leg in plaster became a legend among his friends. Except for a few days in 1939, I did not ski with him again till 1944 at Terminillo and on the Gran Sasso. By then Jim was an accomplished and graceful skier and, typically, he would persuade one with an engaging smile - to prolong the day, however exhausted one was, until one could hardly see one's skis, let alone the slope.
We lost touch for a number of years while I was abroad after the war, but a chance encounter on the way home from the Alps in the late 1960s resulted in many happy visits to Bank Farm, and when heart trouble put an end to his own climbing he would use his fabulous knowledge of the Lake District to recommend climbs, scrambles and walks for others, and would listen to their accounts of their days with as much zest as if he had been with them himself. He took to his increasing disability without complaint and with his usual good humour, even when, as on the last time I saw him, he could only hobble a few steps without resting.

Tom Peacocke writes:
I first met James Joyce at the Mountain School, Terminillo in the winter of 1945-46. His enthusiasm for mountaineering knew no bounds and he was a great addition to our party. In January 1946 Iwas involved in an avalanche with seven soldiers. Luckily James was on some exercise nearby and he speedily came to the rescue, evacuating one casualty who had a broken leg. Then he tried artificial respiration on four others who had been buried deeply, but unfortunately to no effect; their lungs had been crushed by the weight of snow. I was somewhat shocked after being buried, and he kept me in bed for three days. He was a very careful doctor.
We were together in an ascent of the Corno Grande on which, owing to my impetuosity, we were overtaken by night and caught in a winter blizzard, being forced to make snow bivouacs. Towards the end of March 1946 we had a very fine climb together, doing the traverse of the three peaks of the Corno Grande with the ascent of the Camino lannetta, a severe rock and ice chimney which James led with great skill.
When the Mountain School broke up we went our several ways, but I used to meet James regularly at AC dinners. He was a very good friend.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 94, 1989-90, Seite 316-319


Geboren am:
1910
Gestorben am:
1988