Howard-Bury Charles Kenneth

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Biografie:
Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury (1883 – 1963)
As leader of the first of all Everest expeditions, in 1921, Lt.-Colonel Howard-Bury has a secure niche in mountaineering history, though he was never a notable mountaineer in the technical sense. He was a member of the Alpine Club from 1922 to 1939.
He was born on August 15, 1883, and came of the family of Howard, Earls of Suffolk. Educated at Eton and Sandhurst, he joined the 60th Rifles in 1904 and served throughout the First World War, winning the D.S.O. and being mentioned in despatches seven times. He was captured by the Germans in 1918. Entering Parliament after the War, for Waiverhampton (Bilston Division), he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for War from 1922 to 1924, and later was M.P. for the Chelmsford Division of Essex from 1926-31. Much of his later life was spent at Mullin gar in Ireland. He died on September 20 last-year.
His family owned an estate in the Austrian Tyrol (it was destroyed in the First War) and he had spent many holidays there climbing among the Dolomite peaks, and chamois hunting. If, therefore, he was not a mountaineer in the strict sense, he had the feel of the mountains in him from an early age. In 190 5, when stationed in India with his regiment, he obtained leave to go on a shooting trip to the Tien Shan mountains. Having time on his hands before he was due to set off, he thought he would like to visit Tibet, his imagination having been fired by the Younghusband expedition to Lhasa the year before. He omitted such tiresome formalities as trying to get from the Government of India permission to go (which he almost certainly would not have received), but set off through Kumaon and over the Untadhura Pass, almost up to Kailas. Naturally, he fell foul of the Government on his return to India and had much the worst of exchanges with the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, who punished him by cancelling his leave to the Tien Shan. However, he was able to fulfil this trip in 1913, April to October, and he lectured on his journey to the Central Asian Society in 1914 *. He had also spent leaves in Kashmir and the Karakoram (1909).
He had, therefore, considerable experience of travel in Asia as a background for leading the 1921 Everest party. Both in 1919 and 1920 he visited India on behalf of the Joint Himalayan Committee of the Royal Geographical Society and Alpine Club, at his own expense (and in 1921, also, he paid the bulk of his expenses), and secured the backing of the Viceroy (Lord Chelmsford), of Lord Ronaldshay (Governor of Bengal) and of Lord Rawlinson (Commander-in-Chief), as well as paying a visit to Sir Charles Bell at Yatung. Already preparations had been set on foot in London, so that when Bell's letter, recording the Dalai Lama's assent to the expedition, was received (January 20, 1921) it was possible, though a little late, to send out the party to reconnoitre the approaches to Everest, the whole area to the north of the mountain being then virtually unknown.
No leader of a major expedition could have set out in less promising circumstances than did Howard-Bury. Of the four climbing members of the party (the Survey of India and the Geological Survey financed their own parties, though attaching them to Bury for general administration and they were to prove extremely co-operative), one, Finch, never started, being declared medically unfit only about two weeks before the sailing date, a great blow to the climbing strength of the expedition, to say nothing of it meaning that all oxygen tests had to be abandoned. Another (Kellas) died shortly after entering Tibet, and a third (Raeburn) had to be invalided back to India, an operation that deprived Howard-Bury for a while of his doctor, Wollaston, though the latter made a rapid return to Everest.
It was fortunate that Howard-Bury proved to be·a leader who could decentralise control, whilst still keeping himself in touch with all aspects of the expedition. Porterage, foodstuffs, all such matters were in a much more elementary condition in 1921 than on later expeditions, whilst the various Jongpens, Abbots and others along the route, who had to be made friendly, had, for the most part, never seen a European before. Inevitably, much had to be left to Mallory and Bullock (the latter had replaced Finch at very short notice), whilst Wheeler and Morshead were engaged on Survey, and Heron wandered far afield on his geological trips. Howard-Bury, whilst visiting all areas, paid particular attention himself to the Kama and Kharta valleys and the regions leading up to the Nepal frontier to the east of Makalu and Chomo Lanzo. On the final attempt on Everest, which landed a party on the North Col, Howard-Bury reached some 22,ooo ft. on the Lhakpa La.
All later expeditions on the northern side of Everest built on the foundations laid in 1921, and Howard-Bury's services were recognized by his receiving the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, and a gold medal of the French Geographical Society. The only outward recognition from the climbing world was a gold medal presented by the Club Alpin Francais. In retrospect, it seems surprising that the Alpine Club did not see their way to offering him some tribute, such as Honorary Membership, before he retired from the Club.
Howard-Bury, however, never lost his interest in Everest. Up to some few years ago he retained a flat in North Audley Street and would occasionally look in on the Alpine Club; I recall particularly his coming in in 1953, just after Hunt's party had left for Everest. Apart from wishing general success, he expressed two special hopes, one to be fulfilled and one not: (i) that whoever reached the summit would find that Mallory had got there first and (ii) that the ascent would coincide with the date of the Coronation. Some years later, he wrote to me that the climbing of Everest had proved a good omen to him; he bred race horses in Ireland and one that was born near to May 29, 1953 was promptly named by him 'Everest', and it subsequently won him several races.
He was very gratified, I think, at being invited to be one of the principal guests at the Club's Centenary Dinner in 1957. I always found him an interesting man to talk to and his death certainly removes a noteworthy figure in the history of Himalayan exploration during this century.
T . S. Blakeney
Professor N. E. Odell writes:
I first met Howard-Bury at the time of the Everest reconnaissance of 1921, when Captain J.P. Farrar had asked me to stand as a candidate for the party then being recruited. This, however, I had most reluctantly to decline owing to student studies as well as newly assumed marriage responsibilities. For many years afterwards I was out of touch with H.-B., until as recently as 1957, when I was engaged in some mining geological work in Connemara. Hearing that my wife and sister and I would be driving west from Dublin, he invited us to lunch at his delightful place, Belvedere House, at Mullingar in Co. West Meath. He was the essence of kindly hospitality, and he all-too-modestly regaled us with accounts of his extensive foreign travels. He took us round his fine garden, and with considerable pride showed us his lovely Chumbi roses, then in full bloom, derived from those he had collected in the Chumbi valley in 1921.
It was later, in 1957, on the occasion of the Centenary dinner of the Club, that I had the privilege of sitting next to H.-B. at the top table. He was then seventy-four, but alert and keenly interested in the proceedings and the speeches on that notable occasion.
It is sad to contemplate the blank, both in Ireland and elsewhere, that is left by his passing. In Eire his prestige as an Englishman was as high as it was reassuring, a fact that was well brought out in Sir William Teeling's appreciation in The Times (24.9.63).
* Journal of C.A.S., 1914, ii, pp. 12- 27.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 69, 1964, Seite 171-174


Geboren am:
15.08.1883
Gestorben am:
1963