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An Interview with Sandra Noel
11:23 a.m. EDT Aug 12, 2003
In late September 2003, Sutton Publishing will release EVEREST PIONEER: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF CAPTAIN JOHN NOEL, a new book written by Sandra Noel about her father.
Captain Noel served as the photographer for the 1922 and 1924 British Expeditions to Mount Everest. It was he to whom George Mallory sent his last letter, directing where Noel should be on the lookout with his camera as Mallory and Irvine they made their summit attempt.
BACKGROUND
EW: Welcome, Sandra. Please tell us a bit about your father’s background.
SN:. My father was born on February 26,1890, the third and youngest son of an army officer and his wife. He often accompanied his parents on overseas postings, and thus never had a formal education. His mother was an artist -- she drew and painted Alpine scenes – and, while his father was researching material on military campaigns in Italy, he stayed with his mother in Switzerland, where he combined his two great interests – photography and mountains.
After Sandhurst Military Academy, he was posted to northern India for 5 years, where he had time, during rest periods in the searing heats of the plains, to study maps of Tibet and learn the language. In 1913, he entered the forbidden country, [Tibet] and reached to within 40 miles of Mount Everest, a feat he was later to describe in a paper read to the Royal Geographical Society in 1919.
During the First World War, my father had realised the failure of the British army in small arms, so was invited to become one of the first Instructors at the Small Arms School in Hythe, Kent, from which he was unable to obtain leave to join the expedition to Everest in 1921. Undeterred, he resigned his commission, and went in both 1922 and 1924 as official photographer.
My father married and bought two derelict houses in the Weald of Kent, which he later lovingly restored. During the Second World War, he was employed in photographic intelligence based in Oxford.
In later years, he continued to restore houses in Kent, and always took a keen interest in the latest gadgets and technological innovations, all the time hoping to write a book on what he described as Combat – the challenges of the greatest army in the world, and the highest mountain in the world. But he never managed to assemble his ideas on paper, sadly.
Although slightly disabled by arthritis, he was mentally fit until the end, and he died peacefully on March 12,1989, aged 99.
EW: And your mother?
SN: My father’s first wife had died young, and he met my mother, Mary, whilst on a lecture tour in Glasgow. She was Irish, and very different in character. My father was a very quiet, reserved person, while my mother was gregarious and very outgoing – absolute opposites. He occasionally lectured on Mount Everest, (my mother operating the beautifully crafted lantern which he used to show the hand-painted glass plates) and the other subjects which he had photographed during his travels. Although much younger, my mother predeceased him.
EW: What was it like to grow up as the daughter of such an adventurer? What are your fondest memories?
SN: My childhood was idyllic – my father was a keen naturalist, and I learned the names of plants and birds; I was allowed total freedom, and encouraged to be adventurous, even fearless. I remember my father as an unassuming person of great warmth and immense humanity. Both my parents had a marvelous sense of humour, and, despite a constant lack of money, the household was lively and full of fun.
”EVEREST PIONEER: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF CAPTAIN JOHN NOEL"
EW: What is your book primarily about? Is it a biography that spans Noel’s entire life? Are there any “new” or previously “untold” details about the early expeditions?
SN: The book is largely centred on Noel’s Everest photography. In addition to referring to material from his book (published 1927, entitled ‘Through Tibet to Everest’ or ‘The Story of Everest’ American version), I also relied upon manuscripts, entitled ‘Among the Himalayas’ and ‘Tibet and Nepal’, unpublished accounts of his early travels, which concentrate on the people, customs, nature and countryside of the mountain regions of northern India.
Most of the images have not been previously published. Obviously I have included many anecdotes which I remember him telling.
EW: A few years ago, you came across a great number of your father’s previously unpublished photographs. (Many others were lost by flood damage.) Are these some of the photographs we will see in the new book?
SN: After my father’s death, I discovered hundreds of photographs which had not been converted from negatives to positives, were still in celluloid form and without captions. Unfortunately, while waiting for an opportunity to catalogue these, some were destroyed by flood water in my house.
It was a great surprise to find so many photographs, but it must be stressed that these were not all connected with the Everest expeditions.
In late summer and autumn of 1924, he went to Kashmir and spent a considerable time on a houseboat, editing the film material of Everest, and developing many of the photographs; while there, he took hundreds of photographs of Kashmir, which form the basis of another lecture subject entitled ‘Kashmir and the Taj Mahal.’
I also came across several slides that he’d taken in 1933 at the Canonization of Bernadette Soubirous, attended by Pope Pius XI.
Thus, he had a collection of images on a number of different topics. I still have most of these hand-painted slides
EW: And about how many new photographs of the Everest expedition did you find?
SN: It’s difficult to say, as I have not yet been able to catalogue them. Probably about one hundred.
EW: You were born 19 years after your father’s return from Mount Everest, and said you wished you’d asked your father many more questions about his adventures while he was still alive. What materials did you use to write the book?
SN: How I wish I had shown a more active interest when he was recounting his experiences, and that I had written down the stories. He recited facts with ease – his memory never seemed to fail him – and I have now sometimes been obliged to hunt down details which I know I could have learned from him.
He did not keep diaries, and was not particularly good at keeping in touch with his contemporaries; also, it is important to remember that he travelled extensively and led a very peripatetic life, and that he did not have the modern technological aids of today, such as computers to store information.
It was moderately easy to glean information on his family history and his army career, and he had read papers to the Royal Geographical Society on his attempt to reach Mount Everest in 1913, and an expedition to the Caspian Sea to map the area for the British Government, so I was able to use these sources.
I have letters from other members of the expedition, although my father was not a great letter-writer, in the true Victorian sense. There are masses of sources of formal data, but I did not want the account to be too technical.
EW: Captain Noel was one of the pioneers of high altitude photography and also seemed to be a wise businessman. He bought the rights to the photography and film he took of the 1924 Everest expedition, the money of which was used to fund the expedition. You still hold those rights, correct?
SN: Actually Noel was a poor businessman, but he was an entrepreneur, and his inventive mind and foresight spurred him to raise money to enable the expedition to set forth. There is a written agreement between Noel and the Mount Everest Committee regarding copyright on the photographic material, but these were all men with high Victorian values, and a handshake was enough for a binding commitment, so I have inherited the copyright on all the photographic material relating to 1924 – film and stills.
EW: What about the photographs taken by the other Expedition members that year?
SN: I maintain that all images relating to the expedition and climb, as opposed to those for the family album, belong to the John Noel Photographic Collection.
EW: What can you tell us about your father’s film equipment and techniques he used on Everest?
SN: Noel had long admired the work of Herbert Ponting, (1870-1935) the photographer of the ill-fated expedition to the South Pole with Scott in 1910-1911, and used the same designer for the cine camera, learning from Ponting’s experiences in very low temperatures – Ponting had been concentrating, and steadied himself by putting his cheek against the camera, which promptly stuck to the metal!
Noel asked the designer, Arthur Newman, to provide a rubber sleeve for the camera, so avoiding such an incident. It was built of Duralumin, and weighed less than 20 lbs, and was capable of taking 400 feet of film. It was specially equipped to withstand the static of loading, and also incorporated features which could combat the effects on the operator of severe cold and wind, and lack of oxygen at high altitude.
In 1922, Noel decided to develop the film on the mountain, to be sure that he was using the right technique; to have discovered months or even weeks later that he needed more exposure, or a different method of reducing friction, would have been too late. He had a special tent designed, and used yak-dung to dry many thousands of feet of 35mm film.
In 1924, he engaged a team to work in Darjeeling in a laboratory built on land he purchased expressly for the expedition, and the film was sent down by runners. Initially, the Mount Everest Committee had not been in favour of anything which smacked of publicity, and Noel had to be very careful not to antagonise the other members by taking snaps of them, thus there are few portraits, and not many images of the climbers at close quarters.
EW: And do you still have his equipment, or is it on display somewhere?
SN: Noel donated his cine camera to the Science Museum in London, [where it was displayed side by side the camera Ponting used on the Scott expedition], but it has since been relocated at the Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford.
Tomorrow - Part II: The Everest Expeditions.
ExplorersWeb readers from the U.S. and UK may purchase "Everest Pioneer: The Photographs of Captain John Noel" via a special pre-publication offer through Sutton Publishing.
For UK Residents, the special price is £20.00 + Free P&P
For US Residents, the special price is £20.00 + £6.00 S&H
Payment accepted in pounds sterling only (via credit card, a sterling postal order, or a sterling bank check available at most banks.)
Book will be ready to ship on 26th Sept and will take 5-7 days (possibly longer for US residents.)
This special pre-publication offer is good only until September 26th, 2003.
TO ORDER:
US Call - 011 (44) 1963 442030
UK Call - 00 (44) 1963 442030
Or e-mail - helenholness@haynes-sutton.co.uk who will forward request to customer service.
Sandra Noel was born in 1943 as John Noel’s only child. She is a part-time lecturer in Travel and Tourism at Canterbury College and freelance Blue Badge Guide in South East England. She lives in a small town, Wye, with her partner and cat.
Sandra will present a lecture and slides from her new book at the Canterbury Festival on October 23, 2003 at 5:30 p.m. (See link to left.)
IMAGES
1. Previously unpublished photograph. Four figures in the snow.
2. Capt. John Noel in military uniform.
3. Capt. John Noel with his camera on Mount Everest.
4. Author Sandra Noel
All images courtesy of John Noel Photographic Collection
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