28.

Lady Franklin Attains Westminster Abbey

By 1878, when Frederick Schwatka and Ebierbing sailed north to gather still more Inuit testimony, Jane Franklin had been dead for three years. Of her unprecedented travels, which she astutely downplayed, she had remained fiercely proud. And yet, after the vanishment of her sailor-husband, one passion gripped her more strongly even than the desire to travel the world, and that was her yearning to create, out of the tragic tale of Sir John Franklin, an Arctic legend.

Writing in the 1940s, Australian Kathleen Fitzpatrick suggested that even before Franklin disappeared, he “had become a legend in his own lifetime, both for courage and for sheer beauty of character.” Well, not quite. By the time he arrived home in England from Van Diemen’s Land, Franklin stood nearer to disgrace than to canonization, and only the fear of an enduring ignominy, exacerbated by the urgings of his importunate wife, drove him to undertake that final expedition.

In A History of Australia, C. M. H. Clark argues that, because she felt guilty over the ensuing disaster, Jane Franklin spent three decades recreating the reputation of a man “she had pushed beyond his strength.” Certainly, whether driven by guilt or ambition, Jane Franklin displayed exceptional perseverance in establishing the fate of her husband’s expedition. Having created a suitable narrative, she showed an equal enthusiasm for memorializing Sir John—seeing this latter quest as an extension of the former.

In seeking to turn her dead husband into an Arctic hero, Jane Franklin did not begin with promising material. On his first expedition, as a result of his poor decision-making, Franklin lost more than half his men; on his last, which culminated in disaster, he lost all his men and also his own life. Sir John can be credited with having charted more than 2,700 kilometres of previously unknown coastline—but only if we include the 1,600 kilometres contributed by John Richardson, his second-in-command.

Of significant geographical features, Franklin discovered none. In The Friendly Arctic, Vilhjalmur Stefansson would observe, “It is a commonplace in the history of polar exploration that the greatest advance in our knowledge of the region to the north of Canada resulted not from the life work of Sir John Franklin, but from his mysterious disappearance and the long series of expeditions that went out in search of him.”

Jane Franklin drove that endeavour. She not only brought pressure to bear on Parliament and the Admiralty, but financed and organized key expeditions and inspired the American Henry Grinnell to dispatch still others. But for her, the opening up of the Arctic would have required additional decades. In Victorian England, of course, that patriarchal bastion, nobody would dream of advancing such a claim. But, having identified herself with her husband, Jane Franklin could embark on a quest to create a legend, and to shape future understanding of Arctic history. Her husband had lost his life in the Arctic. She would portray him as having sacrificed that life not to escape disgrace, and much less in an effort to satisfy his insatiable wife, but in a quest far greater than himself—indeed, in a national cause.

The myth of Franklin as Arctic hero, initiated by Lady Franklin and supported by the British naval establishment, became central to the orthodox version of exploration history.

Nobody better understood the creative power of public memorials to shape historical perception than this adventure traveller who had spent so much of her life visiting historic sites. Jane Franklin grasped that monuments create history. So she had led the creation of statues in Waterloo Place, Lincolnshire and Tasmania. For most, these memorials would have sufficed. But her husband’s reputation was synonymous with her own, and Jane Franklin craved heroic status. She wanted Westminster Abbey—and, in the late 1860s and early 1870s, she set about getting it.

To the dean of Westminster, she offered to supply a suitable bust of Sir John, complete with an inscription by poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson, yet another relative. Initially the dean balked. He proposed a modest stained-glass window. Lady Franklin remained adamant, and with backing by friends in high places, she carried the day.

She hired Matthew Noble, sculptor of the Waterloo Place statue, to create a suitable bust. Then, feeling that a bust was insufficiently grand, she conceived of adding first a canopy and then a base, so transforming the bust into a full-blown, stand-alone monument, complete with bas-relief, that easily exceeds six feet in height. To create the canopy and base, she enlisted Sir George Gilbert Scott, a prominent architect. And then she kept close watch.

Late in December 1874, as the memorial neared completion, Jane Franklin realized with a shock that, in the bas-relief at the front of the base, the sculptor had placed a flag at half-mast. This contradicted the revised myth she was elaborating—that Franklin had discovered the Northwest Passage and knew it before he died. At Jane’s urgent command, Sophy “went to Mr. Noble and explained that the placing of the flag at half mast would be inconsistent with the circumstances intended to be set forth, namely, the Discovery of the North West Passage, my uncle’s death having as we judge by the date, followed the return of [Lieutenant] Graham Gore’s party which would undoubtedly ascertain the fact of the continuous channel to the coast.”

Having realized that Franklin’s ships had got trapped on the wrong side of King William Island, Lady Franklin had made one final amendment to the official version of his supposed discovery. She now asserted, without a shred of evidence, that Franklin’s men had found the final link in the Passage—in fact, the channel John Rae discovered in 1854. Jane Franklin tacitly admitted that Rae Strait was indeed the key to the Passage. Sculptor Matthew Noble deferred and raised the flag.

There remained a few small problems. Skeptics wondered if a geographical discovery that nobody survived to report could rightly be designated a discovery? Lady Franklin asserted that, yes, it most certainly could. And if anybody thought otherwise, she would demand that a parliamentary committee be raised to investigate the matter. Could anybody doubt what such a committee would conclude?

In June 1875, British newspapers reported that, at age eighty-three, Lady Franklin was sinking. The Prince and Princess of Wales enquired after her health. Churches throughout the English-speaking world began offering up prayers. The invalid rallied but lasted only three more weeks. On July 18, 1875, with Sophy Cracroft at her side, Jane Franklin passed away.

The following day, the Times published a two-column obituary that situated her as “among the gifted woman of her time.” It went on to observe that, “remarkable as her life had been in many respects, she is chiefly known in having taken a prominent and distinguished part in the cause of Arctic discovery. A generation has elapsed since her gallant husband, with a small band, the flower of the British navy, under his command, sailed as the leader of a great expedition, sent to accomplish the North-West Passage.”

On July 29, 1875, the funeral procession included ten mourning coaches and almost that many private carriages. Numerous prominent Victorians attended, and dignitaries, knights and admirals served as pallbearers. Two days later, the faithful Sophy Cracroft organized an event at Westminster Abbey. In the crowded chapel of St. John the Evangelist, immediately to the left as one enters the world-famous shrine, friends and relations gathered to witness the unveiling of Jane Franklin’s final testament. Sir George Back, Franklin’s old rival, stepped forward and, according to a family eyewitness, silently “drew off the white cloth that had covered the monument to reveal a most beautifully represented Bust in bas-relief.”

Those who had known Franklin could not help remarking discrepancies—the marble chin looked far too strong—and George Back spoke for all when he declared it “a fine Historic Bust but not a perfect likeness.” Soon after the unveiling, the Dean of Westminster added an inscription hailing Franklin for “completing the discovery of the North-West Passage,” and noting, “This monument is erected by Jane, his widow, who, after long waiting and sending many in search of him, herself departed to find him in the realms of Life, July 18th, 1875, aged 83 years.”

Yet even then, Lady Franklin was not finished. Decades after her death, asserting her formidable will through Sophy Cracroft, Jane Franklin made one final gesture. At Westminster Abbey, acting as if from beyond the grave—and just in case anyone should advance an unconscionable claim on behalf of John Rae—she provided through Sophy for the addition to the monument of one last inscription: “Here also is commemorated Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock, 1819–1907, discoverer of the fate of Franklin in 1859.”

With the help of her niece, Jane Franklin had put the finishing touches on an exploration legend, a fanciful narrative that would endure as “historical truth” through the twentieth century. Only now, in the twenty-first century, does the woman shine forth as a peerless mythologizer. Only now does her elaborate fable stand revealed as wishful thinking writ large.