13 January 1911. Scott didn't bother to make a journal entry - the first such omission since he and the crew first "docked" the Terra Nova on the Ross Sea pack-ice almost two weeks prior.
If the day passed with so little activity that it didn't merit mention in his journal, then it is fair to assume that Scott had time to let his thoughts drift to the world he'd left behind. Surely, in such a moment, he would have thought of his wife Kathleen Bruce Scott. Described in every account as disarmingly independent, Kathleen came to be a renowned sculptor. Only three years earlier Scott wrote Kathleen a swooning letter: "God in heaven, what a gem you are. Little wonderful girl, do you really and truly belong to me? I can scarcely believe it possible!" (Reginald Pound, Scott of the Antarctic, p. 152, Coward-McCann [1966]). Perhaps their marriage took that well-worn path to fading romance, replaced by comfortable routine? Scott's correspondence and journal entries show little of this earlier passion for Kathleen. That is, until the last entries he put down as death was stealing over him with its icy fog. But that - and the sentiments he expressed towards Kathleen - await us many months ahead.
Photo: "Youth" by Kathleen Scott (1920); Cambridge, UK.
