Sally Irwin White: The Life of a Mountaineer: Freda Du Faur

Crane Press

$39.90


Reviewed by Richard Thomson*

Freda du Fair is one of those people famous for one thing. In 1910 she became the first woman to climb Mt Cook, but the rest of her life was eventful enough to justify a full-length biography.

Du Faur was a romantic, rather undirected, soul. For her, says Sally Irwin White, mountaineers were "like the true poets," but the mountains were too perfect to find lasting happiness in them.

Although climbing Mt Cook was the high point of Du Faur's life, from the first lyric description of early summer in the Southern Alps it's clear this story will be a tragedy.

Born into an upper-class Sydney family slowly losing its attachment to the European nobility, Du Faur escaped the social constraints of her privileged background for a time, to become a mountaineer and to embrace her lesbian sexuality. Neither offered a sustainable means to independence.

Convention battled her stubborn pride, conspired against her climbing ambitions, cost her her closest love and, it is strongly implied, caused her premature death.

Lesbianism, mountain climbing and deep sleep therapy, set against a background of well-off Edwardian suburbia, offer every opportunity for melodrama, but a good deal of the author's success with this book lies in her low-key narrative style.

Irwin White immerses her chapters in fascinating detail. Initially she gives detailed accounts of Sydney, the tourist scene at the Hermitage, and the difficulties of climbing in the harsh conditions of the Mt Cook district.

In the book's second half she builds a rich background of suffragism, theories of physical fitness, spiritualism, war and attitudes to sexual difference, with an almost Kafkaesque plot of coming and going, hopes frustrated, and darkly misdirected social benevolence and intolerance.

It is not a stylishly written book, and in this respect Irwin could have been served much better by her publisher. But as a psychological portrait, Between Heaven and Earth succeeds brilliantly.

Irwin White displays a warmth and admiration for her subject, and empathises deeply with Du Faur's inner thoughts in extended imaginative passages. Perhaps it's because Du Faur did not need to work, and spent a large amount of time wondering what to do with her life that Irwin has licence to speculate.

It's honestly done, but I would have also liked to see the historical skeleton of the story more clearly displayed, especially in the latter part of the book.

Between Heaven and Earth is a superb addition to our knowledge of the 20th-century struggles of women for independence, but it also tells a human, individual story, and it is a powerful reminder of how much things change, and how little we do.

*Richard Thomson is a journalist and former editor of New Zealand Climber magazine.