Longstaff Charmian

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Biografie:
Charmian Longstaff (1907-1993)
'Professional painter' was Charmian's description of herself on her application to join the LAC in 1939. She had won a scholarship to the Slade School, where she was a contemporary of William Coldstream and Claud Rogers, and highly regarded by Tonks, the Principal. She met Tom Longstaff through a Slade contemporary who had married Tom's brother. Immediately attracted to each other, in due course they married, and for all the 32 years difference in age, it was a most happy marriage. Tom used to say that Charmian, born in 1907, was his reward for his exertions on Trisul, climbed that year.
Charmian had enjoyed hill-walking and mild scrambling on family holidays on Deeside, but her serious climbing began with Tom. Before the war they had three seasons camping and climbing in the Carinthian and Julian Alps; in 1937 with the Courmayeur guide Adolph Rey they climbed the Grandes Jorasses and the Matterhorn, up and down the Italian side.
When Tom was discharged from the army in 1941, after the authorities, according to him, had discovered his real age (in 1939 he had cheated his way in), they retired to Achiltibuie, where they rented Badentarbat Lodge from the Cromartie estate. There they welcomed friends on leave from wartime duties, 'escaping to that heavenly spot and to the wonderful welcome they gave us' Peter Lloyd remembers. In those days Charmian was indefatigable - following Peter Bicknell and Tom Brocklebank across the trackless waste to Suilven, biking back to cook a huge dinner on a paraffin stove. After the war (and the welcome advent of calor gas and electricity) their hospitality to climbers, and to the children of climbers, made Badentarbat seem like an outpost of the AC and LAC.
In 1951 the Longstaffs visited his daughter Sylvia in Jordan, where her husband John Branford served in the Arab Legion. They all camped in the Wadi Rumm; and, though lacking boots or rope, Sylvia and Charmian decided to climb Jebel Rumm. Scrabbling in gym-shoes up screes and gullies and along fearsome ledges, they followed Sheikh Hamdam up to the white domes of the summit. 'I suppose it was very easy climbing,' Charmian wrote in the LAC Journal, 'but it was very exposed. This made us feel tremendously clever and accomplished.'
Back at Achiltibuie Charmian produced many paintings based on sketches made on the trip; she also painted their own hills, shores and islands, and portraits of her neighbours. Her portrait of Tom, painted for his daughter Jo Sancha, was given to the Alpine Club by Jo and hangs in the Committee Room. Charmian also drew the maps for Tom's This My Voyage.
After Tom died in 1964, in his ninetieth year, Charmian went on living at Badentarbat, entertaining family and friends in the spring and summer, making winter visits to the South to paint portraits, see her friends, renew her wardrobe and enjoy the opera. One of her last visits was in November 1990 when - Tom having been a member of the 1922 expedition - she was an honoured guest at 'The Everest Adventure' evening at the Royal Geographical Society.
They had been able to buy Badentarbat in 1957, in Charmian's name. So she became the laird, and took her duties seriously - she had to deal with planning permissions, fishing rights, the complications of the crofting laws. On Rent Days her crofter-tenants were offered hospitality which must have made a dent in the modest sums she received. After she died in a nursing home in Inverness in June 1993, a great contingent from AchiItibuie came over to the funeral; and for those who couldn't come to Inverness, there was a memorial service in September in the kirk at Achiltibuie. Her ashes were scattered on the hillside above Badentarbat, where she had scattered Tom's.
Janet Adam Smith
(Janet Carleton)
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 99, 1994, Seite 329-330


Geboren am:
1907
Gestorben am:
1993