Charles Granville Bruce
Charles Granville Bruce | |
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Member of the Royal Victorian Order | |
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Background and early life
Charles Granville Bruce was the youngest of the fourteen children of Henry Bruce, 1st Baron Aberdare (1815–1895) and Norah Napier (1827–1897). His mother was the youngest daughter of General Sir William Francis Patrick Napier.
Bruce was educated at Harrow and Repton. His early life alternated between of Queen's Gate, London, the family home in Aberdare, and a Scottish estate.
In Wales, his mentor was a local farmer and inn-keeper, who in his youth had worked as a hunter in California and British Columbia. He taught the young Bruce how to hunt, find his way around the local hills, and drink. One of Bruce's most notable achievements was running down a "rough crew" of local poachers. Half a century later he was proud to list their names in his memoirs; "Bill the Butcher, Shoni Kick-O-Top, Billie Blaen Llechau, Dick Shon Edwards & Dai Brass-Knocker". Bruce and the local game-keepers chased one poacher to the narrow alleyways and courts of Georgetown. The poacher was only caught when a furious husband found him snoring in his wife's bed and threw him out on the street. The gang were duly punished, but gained revenge by returning to Bruce's house and stealing all the weapons from his father's gun-room.
After leaving school, Bruce entered military college. He had huge physical strength, was an enthusiastic boxer and 300-yard runner, and in the 1880s represented England against France in an international running meeting.
In 1894 he married Finetta Madelina Julia Campbell, daughter of Sir Edward Campbell, 2nd Baronet
Career
In 1888, Bruce joined the
Bruce took a special interest in his Gurkha soldiers and became fluent in Nepali. He introduced hill racing to his Gurkha regiment and in 1891 took his champion runner Pabir Thapa to Zermatt, in Switzerland, to learn ice-climbing. On the way there, the two stayed at Aberdare, where Thapa enjoyed "running down" poachers. Despite his poor English, he was very popular with the locals. He disappeared for the last three days of his visit and was found living it up with some coal miners in Tonypandy. Bruce went on to train the Gurkhas in mountain-warfare. In 1897 he equipped his troops on the Northern Frontier with shorts, and is widely credited with their introduction to the British Army.
Bruce's climbing experience was impressive. He spent ten climbing seasons in the European Alps and took part in three of the earliest climbing expeditions to the
It is impossible to enumerate all the peaks seen, but when I state that in a country no greater than Carmarthenshire and Glamorgan, there are some 80 peaks all in the neighbourhood of 20,000 ft… it will give an idea… of that mighty range.
In 1915, Bruce went to
He had perpetual good humour, enthusiasm, and love of alcohol, coupled with competence and shrewdness. He was a superb raconteur, and a fount of bawdy stories. Younghusband described him as "an extraordinary mixture of man and boy..... you never know which of them you are talking to".
Between 1923 and 1925 Bruce was president of the
Bruce was appointed leader of the next effort to summit Everest, the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition. Several stories of him survive the trip. On the trek to Tibet, two of his muleteers got drunk and bit a local Tibetan woman. As punishment he fined them, and made them carry the 36-kilogram (80 lb) "treasury" (double the normal load carried) on a three-day march. Arthur Hinks, the rather mean-spirited secretary of the expedition committee seated in London, was exasperated by the official correspondence reaching London from the Himalayas.
Captain Noel will be arriving in Darjeeling with a box forty foot long and I am currently scouring the country for an adequate mule.
Please note that I am doing my best for this expedition. I have interviewed the Viceroy, I have preached to Boy Scouts, and I have emptied the poes in a Dak Bungalow. This is the meaning of the term General. They are cheap at home, they are more expensive out here. Hurry up with that thousand [pounds] please.
Bruce contracted malaria while tiger shooting in India before the expedition, and had to be stretchered out of Tibet.
Bruce did not return to Everest. Between 1931 and 1936 he was Honorary Colonel of the 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles of the Indian Army. He died of a stroke in 1939.
Expeditions
- 1892: William Martin Conway
- 1895: Nanga Parbat, with Albert F. Mummery
- 1907: Tom George Longstaff
- 1922: 1922 British Mount Everest expedition, with Edward Lisle Strutt
- 1924: 1924 British Mount Everest expedition
Works by Bruce
- Twenty Years in the Himalaya. London: Edward Arnold, 1910
- Kulu and Lahoul. An account of my latest climbing journeys in the Himalaya. London: Edward Arnold, 1914
- The Assault on Mount Everest 1922. London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1922
- Himalayan Wanderer. London: Alexander Maclehose & Co, 1934
- Bruce, C.G. (16 October 1922). JSTOR 1781075. . The Geographical Journal. 60 (6): 385–394.
See also
- Timeline of climbing Mount Everest
References
- ^ Younghusband, Epic of Mount Everest, 1926
- ^ Blakeney, T.S. (1973). "In Memoriam: John Geoffrey Bruce 1896-1972" (PDF). Alpine Journal: 283.
- Summers, J., Fearless on Everest (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000)
- Younghusband, F., The Epic of Mount Everest (London: Arnold, 1926)
External links
- Works by Charles Granville Bruce at Project Gutenberg
- Works by Charles Granville Bruce at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Kenneth Mason, 'Bruce, Charles Granville (1866–1939)', rev. Peter H. Hansen, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
- Rees, Ioan Bowen. "Bruce, Charles Granville". Welsh Biography Online. The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion. Retrieved 11 July 2014.