It was this ability to tell stories, to captivate increasingly large crowds with his deep, clear voice so mesmerising in its resonant timbre, that soon launched Shackleton on to a new career path. In November, he intoxicated audiences in Dundee and Aberdeen while lecturing for the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. While in Scotland he learned that the secretary of the RSGS had recently retired, leaving available a paid post. The salary was roughly the same as the Royal Magazine, but the prestige was much greater and, he hoped, it might lead more quickly to the grand success it had become apparent would come only too gradually in Fleet Street.
With the support of Markham, Huggins and, most avidly, Hugh Robert Mill, in early December Shackleton began his single-minded pursuit of the position. There were, of course, other candidates, but Dr J.G. Bartholomew, a noted cartographer who was honorary secretary of the Society, strongly supported Shackleton, and in early January 1904 the twenty-nine-year-old former sailor was unanimously elected secretary and treasurer.
It was once noted by a great story-teller that the moments of life that are most enjoyable to spend do not normally make interesting tales, while incidents that are difficult, unpleasant or even gruesome become gripping stories. So it was now for Shackleton, who in the ensuing months experienced success and happiness on every front. He went through the conservative Society like a whirlwind, modernising its methods of functioning, increasing its membership and financing, and broadening its geographical horizons, which had traditionally emphasised Africa because Scottish missionaries, explorers and consuls had participated in its exploration. From his very first moments in Edinburgh he brought a breath of fresh air, shocking the formal, black-suited officers by wearing a light tweed suit his first day, when he entered with a cigarette and a joke.
But bringing him greater excitement and joy was furnishing the small house on the edge of the city, where he intended to settle with his new bride. Even Shackleton's energies and organising abilities must have been pushed to the limit by the constant stream of details that he oversaw there in addition to a job that was more than full-time and that included travel throughout the country.
Shackleton's letters to Emily during this period tell of his boundless stamina as well as his deep devotion to her and an ambition drawn in part from his wish to create a life worthy of her. 'My darling Sweeteyes' many of them begin, using a loving name that lasted throughout their lives together, before continuing to tell her both of his busy schedule and his anticipation of their life together: 'we shall soon have a meeting that will have no parting, dear one.' The letters show a tenderness and sensitivity that would perhaps not be expected from a man of action who had spent so much of his manhood in the rough company of others of his sex. Many are signed either 'Micky' - which she usually called him - or with a pet nickname, such as Mikeberry, Mikleham or, far the most frequent, 'Your boy, Emiky', a clever combination of 'Micky' and 'Emily'.
'I am missing you so much dearest one my whole heart and life is crying out for the loved one whom I shall see on Friday,' he wrote in a typical letter at the end of March 1904, continuing:
I am coming my own my sweet to you and all I can say to you is small and feeble to the great love that I feel which is welling up to overflowing dearest heart. The best of me is miserably poor to give you my Queen and yet my love is so strong that it will redeem the poverty of the rest of me. Money I have none but Child o'mine all my heart cries out for you. In the spring we are to be married and it will be spring always in our lives . . . for our love will be always spring and so we will go on and on till the twilight . . . we have long long years before us of joy and love . . . and you will ever feel my arm there to protect and keep to guide your feet and smooth the path for you the fairest and dearest of women.
That Shackleton was becoming more emotionally charged was not surprising, as he was due to be married ten days later. After seven years of waiting, the day he had so longed for finally arrived on 9 April 1904, when, at Christ Church, Westminster, he and Emily were married. Even then - his daughter Cecily commented fifty years later - he remained concerned that his financial status would not have pleased Emily's late father. 'With all my worldly goods I thee endow', he whispered with irony under his breath to Emily as the vicar pronounced them man and wife.
There is no doubt that in the first months after his marriage Shackleton was truly content. He threw himself into his work and even delayed their honeymoon to continue with his programme at the RSGS. But always Shackleton was driven by the need to test his personal abilities and to emerge the victor in competition. Throughout his career, he had gone from challenge to challenge, whether it be earning his master's certificate, wanning the heart of Emily, attaining a farthest south, or being hired by the Geographical Society. It was not long, therefore, before the restlessness that marked his life in between such summons to action began to reappear. Certainly his job brought moments of interest, as when in July he organised the welcome home of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition under William Spiers Bruce, or in September he participated in the official return of Discovery to London. But, in retrospect, it can be seen that his position in the Society held little long-term challenge, and therefore that his relationship with it had no serious future.
'With life before me, and strength and hope, all these things which time will whittle down,' Shackleton wrote, 'I may achieve something before the period at which life grows stale and strength wanes and hope flies, or if it does not fly, assumes the dignified attitude of resignation.' It was late November 1904 and Shackleton was attempting to justify himself to Mill, who had been critical of the younger man's actions. More importantly, Mills' views were not solely his own; they were shared by a number of the members of the Council of the RSGS.
The cause for this dissatisfaction had originated the previous month. On 15 October, while on a business trip to London, Shackleton had written in a letter to Emily, 'I went to the . . . Liberal Unionist Council and had a long talk with Boraston, he is going to wake them up in Dundee.' It was to herald a most unexpected divergence, for the sailor-explorer-administrator was suddenly considering standing for Parliament. There is no evidence that Shackleton had ever taken any particular interest in politics, but, as was so often the case in his life, he had seen a path that he thought had potential to lead to great success and had immediately taken it.
Not long after that trip, Shackleton travelled to Dundee to meet with the city's Liberal Unionist committee, and he was adopted as that party's candidate for the next general election, which, it was widely assumed, would shortly be called by the trouble-plagued Tory government. However, the committee then made a faux pas of considerable significance with the announcement that it had adopted a 'noted naval officer to contest seat'. This not only created problems with the party's General Committee, which had not approved Shackleton, but sprang the situation on the shocked members of the Council of the RSGS before he could raise it himself. Although the party soon approved his selection, certain members of the Society were less enchanted by his actions. Bartholomew, who approved of Shackleton's modernisation, argued that there was no conflict with standing for Parliament if he could also perform his duties to the Society, but others disagreed, believing that no officer of a learned society should take a political stance.
Unhappy with such an ambiguous situation, in January 1905 Shackleton tendered his resignation. It was not, however, immediately accepted, and during the following months the Council continued to avoid any concrete action, until in July his resignation was formally approved. In the meantime, Shackleton had more than just professional considerations: in February, his first son, Raymond, was born, the loving father instantly exclaiming, 'Good fists for fighting!'
In Dundee, meanwhile, Shackleton had propelled himself into a tougher fight than he undoubtedly imagined. Indeed, it could well be argued that in this case his ambition had overwhelmed his common sense. Most of those knowledgeable about politics realised that Dundee, a two-member constituency, w
as unlikely to replace either of its two Gladstonian Liberals unless an individual standing for the new Labour Representation Committee - an organisation, but not a true party - could sneak in.
Shackleton did not represent either of these. The Liberal Unionists had come into being in 1886, following Prime Minister Gladstone's conversion to the concept of Home Rule, the establishment of an Irish parliament and executive in Dublin, which would have powers over Irish decisions. This was anathema not only to Tories but to a number of Liberals, who saw it as the first step towards independence and the break-up of the British Empire. In April 1886 Gladstone introduced his Home Rule Bill to the House of Commons, leading to the tearing asunder of the Liberal Party when the leaders of its opposite wings Lord Hartington of the Whigs and Joseph Chamberlain of the Radicals - guided a revolt of their followers against it. The bill was defeated, Gladstone dissolved Parliament and, in the subsequent elections, the Liberals were thrown from power, with Salisbury's Tories gaining a decisive victory that would keep them in the ascendancy for sixteen of the next nineteen years. Within a decade, Chamberlain's Liberal Unionists had entered an official alliance with the Tories, and Chamberlain had joined Salisbury's Cabinet.
By 1904, when Shackleton joined the Liberal Unionist effort, Home Rule was still a significant political issue, but it no longer topped the agenda. It had been replaced by a debate over tariff reform. Once again the key figure in the dialectic was Chamberlain. Shortly after the close of the South African War, he became convinced that, in an effort to strengthen imperial unity, Britain should eliminate its long-standing economic policy of free trade and establish protective tariffs for its agricultural and manufacturing products. This, he argued, would draw the mother country together with her colonies in a powerful economic unit, would stimulate trade within the Empire, and would serve as fiscal retaliation for foreign tariffs. In September 1903 he resigned from the cabinet to take his argument directly to the people in a campaign throughout the country.
Chamberlain's move gave him a unique place in parliamentary history, for it helped him hopelessly split and ultimately wreck the dominant Unionist alliance, as previously he had done with the all-powerful Liberals; he had managed, from the inside in both cases, to blight both major political parties. Conservative unity began to disappear, as Chamberlain's call for protectionism was favoured by manufacturers and businessmen, but was rejected utterly by the ma jority of the people, who had grown up with a fundamental belief in the principles of laissez-faire and with deep-rooted fears of tariffs and a return to the hated Corn Laws. At the same time, Liberal Party differences were overcome in defence of free trade.
Tariff reform was not the only policy over which the government was struggling. The most emotive issue of the moment concerned the import of Chinese labourers into the Transvaal to work the mines, which, after the war, could not find enough African labour. In a remarkably shortsighted move, Sir Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner for South Africa, allowed the mining companies to hire tens of thousands of Chinese. These came not as free men but as indentured workers required to toil in terrible conditions and to be confined, even during nonworking hours, in compounds where they were refused many basic liberties. This was a direct slap in the face of British labour. The Chinese labour scheme was approved ultimately by Balfour's Cabinet, a clear message that the government and small privileged class to which many of its leaders belonged regarded labour as a mere commodity rather than a human workforce. It turned out to be political suicide on a grand scale.
There were also other issues over which segments of the population had lost confidence in Balfour's ministry. But much of the public had simply tired, after most of two decades, of a government that reflected the aristocratic values of Salisbury, who believed in preserving the privileges of the propertied classes and who never attempted to conceal his disdain of the masses, 'not excluding the House of Commons'.
It was on to this politically disintegrating stage that Shackleton now trod, attempting to follow in the footsteps of fellow explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who had been elected MP for North Lambeth as a Liberal Unionist in 189 5. But how frustrating it must have been for such a man to do nothing but wait, because the government did not, as was expected, call for an election. Rather it lumbered on like a drunkard, bumping into everything and accomplishing no serious forward movement. It was not until December 1905 that Balfour finally made his move, and even then he did the unexpected, refusing to dissolve Parliament but rather, following Gladstone's tactics in 1873 a nd 1885, resigning. He hoped that when put in power without a majority, the Liberals would be destroyed by in-fighting, allowing the Unionists to regain the momentum by the time of the election. Unfortunately for Balfour, the new Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, led a smooth political transition.
When finally held, the election was spread over a period of two weeks, the date in Dundee being 16 January 1906, which gave Shackleton only six weeks in which to campaign. Day after day he impressed the voters with his quick wit, straight talking, and enthusiasm. He spoke in shabby halls, the courthouse square, local foundries and seedy sections of the wharf, sometimes addressing thousands in a day at half a dozen different sites. His cause was not helped, however, when his party decided to have him share the platform at meetings with the Conservative candidate, a dull Dundee solicitor by the now all-too-familiar Tory surname of Duncan Smith.
Shackleton's campaign closely followed Chamberlain's programme of fiscal protection in the form of tariffs, opposition to Home Rule, the use of Chinese labour in South Africa, and a closer relationship between the peoples of the Empire. Whether he sincerely believed in everything the Liberal Unionists stood for is uncertain, but he eloquently argued their cause, even to the point of misrepresenting his own background, stating that he had come over from Ireland at the age of sixteen (when he was actually ten). He certainly gained support by being not just a typical politician, but a man able to take a situation in hand and deal with the unexpected. Four days before the election he and Duncan Smith were unable to gain access to the Jamaica Street Hall, where they were supposed to speak, because it was packed to capacity, and there were hundreds more waiting outside. Shackleton hired a carriage, drove it to the front of the hall, and from the top of it shouted, 'I'll tell you what it is, men; I'll address you from the cab.' His strong, full voice was heard all over the street, and people poured out of the hall to listen.
One would assume that Shackleton raised eyebrows by shamelessly emphasising his Irish background while speaking against Home Rule. 'As an Irishman myself, in sympathy with the Irish people,' he once claimed, 'I am convinced that my country has been gradually emerging from sad and bitter times to a more peaceful and brighter era; and that this has been accomplished by the wise measures, considerate administration and great pecuniary assistance due to the Unionist Government.'
But although, according to The Courier and Argus, 'the lieutenant's breezy personality and his attractive manner have gained him much popularity', and despite his convenient protestations of being a working man, it was hard reaping a field that had been sown for so long by the Liberals and was also being ploughed by the new labour movement, which, perhaps surprisingly by today's standards, was both truly new and truly labour. It was not yet a single party but consisted of a number of organisations, particularly the Labour Representation Committee, which represented the working man, and a variety of unions. 'Come on our side, boy,' an elderly working man supposedly shouted at one meeting, 'and we'll put you in at the top of the poll.' Had he listened, and followed the example of one sitting MP who, foreseeing the future, had ignored the jeers and crossed over from the Tories to the Liberals, he might well have been elected. It is intriguing to wonder if Shackleton would have been as successful as that other young man - Winston Churchill.
Early in the morning of 17 January 1906, Shackleton learned with certainty that his future would not be in politics. Of the five candidates, he finished a distant fourth, ahead
of only Duncan Smith. 'I got all the applause,' he commented later, 'and the other fellows got all the votes.' Edmund Robertson, the incumbent Liberal candidate, and Alexander Wilkie, the labour representative, gained the places in Parliament. It was to be so throughout the country. In a staggering turnabout, the former ruling coalition, which had gone into the election with a majority of 161, saved a mere 157 seats, only 25 by Liberal Unionists. The Liberals obtained 377, while candidates from various labour organisations gained 53. Shackleton was at least in good company; even Arthur Balfour had been unseated.
Balfour, however, was soon back in Parliament as leader of the opposition. Shackleton had no such fall-back position. He now tried his hand at successive business ventures, each of which he hoped would make his fortune. None did. Late in 1904 he had formed a company named Tabard Cigarettes. It existed for a number of years, but at no point brought him significant financial success. In late 1905 he became involved in promoting Potentia, a news agency that would never leave the drawing board. And following the election he helped organise a plan to bring Russian soldiers back from Vladivostok, where they were stranded after their humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. Again, the scheme fell through.
What came to Shackleton's rescue was an offer that had been on the table for a year. While waiting for the RSGS to make a decision, he had engaged in discussions with William Beardmore, a former Dulwich boy who had amassed a fortune in armour plating for ships and then in shipbuilding on the Clyde before diversifying his financial interests at his massive Glasgow plant of Parkhead. Like so many others, Beardmore was quickly won over by Shackleton's charm, wit and drive. 'He tells me definitely that there are four separate things I can go into and showed me the lines on which I am to work if I go to Parkhead,' Shackleton wrote to Emily in April 1905. 'He tells me I can only begin at £300 but that the beginning is nothing if I do what he wishes and show that I can work then I am sure to get on.'
Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition Page 13
