Theodore Howard Somervell’s family recalls their modest father, an exceptional athlete and mountaineer and a successful painter and musician, who spent decades of his life in India as a missionary
The achievements of Theodore Howard Somervell, surgeon, artist and missionary, were many and varied – but even his family were amazed to discover that he had an Olympic medal.
“I didn’t know it existed until we went through his belongings after his death,” his son David Somervell says. “I remember thinking, ‘Gosh, what’s in this box?'” The medal is inscribed “Paris 1924” and on its rim three scratched initials can just be made out: THS.
It is one of 21 awarded to members of the first full expedition to Everest in 1922, in an era when mountaineering was included as an Olympic sport. Another medal, which belonged to medic Arthur Wakefield, is now at Everest base camp. Mountain guide Kenton Cool hopes to take that one to the summit this week, fulfilling a pledge made 88 years ago.
Somervell was a polymath of exceptional talents whose life echoes that of another Olympic gold medallist from 1924, the sprinter Eric Liddell, joint subject of the film Chariots of Fire. Like Liddell, Somervell was a committed Christian who joined the London Missionary Society. He worked as a surgeon at a hospital in Neyyoor in the modern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Unlike Liddell’s, Somervell’s Olympic triumph was completely forgotten.
David Somervell, now in his 80s, is a retired doctor who also worked as a missionary in India. “The trouble with my father,” he says, “was that he was a very good surgeon, a very good artist, a fine musician and also a very spiritual man. His saving grace was that he had a good sense of humour.”
Somervell’s work as a surgeon in the Royal Army Medical Corps during WW I turned him into a pacifist. In 1922 and then 1924, he was part of expeditions to climb Mt. Everest, an effort for which he won an Olympic gold later on.
Somervell could have stayed on in England and had a successful career as a consultant doctor and professional artist, but the loss of seven Sherpas on the expedition in 1924 changed his focus; his evangelical Christianity drew him to a more otherworldly career choice:
After Everest, Howard Somervell gave up the promise of a career in London at University College Hospital to work in India. “It’s extraordinary in a way,” David Somervell says, “but it’s very human. You see suffering and you want to do something about it. I think he thought that London already had plenty of doctors.”
Somervell annoyed fellow missionaries by dancing and playing cards on the boat out to India and he wasn’t interested in proselytising. The old ideas of medical missions as “a bait to catch the unwary”, he denounced as “un-Christian” and “wrong”. Yet he stayed 22 years, helping to transform the hospital, and later wrote – and illustrated – a textbook on abdominal surgery.”
In India, his memory is still kept alive in the many institutions he created and his innumerable students (including some of my family members) and colleagues, not least because his Christian witness was completely different from that of most missionaries:
Somervell (1890-1975) set up an X-ray unit in the Neyyoor hospital, introduced radium treatment for cancer, a first-of-its-kind in the country, performed hundreds of surgeries in a month, travelled to every village when cholera and malaria broke out in South Travancore.
He was also instrumental in setting up an exclusive hospital for the treatment of leprosy patients in Colachel in Kanyakumari district.
Tamil writer Jayamohan has written a short-story Olaisiluvai (The Palm Leaf Crucifix) based on the real-life incidents of Somervell. Malayalam poet Vyloppilli Sreedhara Menon has a poem on how the surgeon played the flute to give some soothing moments to a patient after a surgery.
The first portion of Olaisiluvai tells an incident about the missionary-surgeon converting the son of a palmyrah tapper to Christianity to deliver him from abject poverty, though Mr. Jayamohan ends the story with the surgeon handing over a portrait of Lord Guruvayurappan to a woman who had lost all her children to cholera.
“I wrote my story based on an incident narrated to me,” said Jayamohan. But, the autobiography of Dr. Somervell gives a different perspective, as he disapproved of conversion.
[Lila: As I do too, unless it is completely initiated by the one who converts.]
“The old idea of medical missions as a bait to catch the unwary and then proceed to proselytize him is obviously not merely out of date, but definitely wrong and unchristian,” he had argued in the book “After Everest: The Experiences of a Mountaineer and Medical Missionary.” Dr Somervell’s paintings of the Everest adorn the walls of the Royal Geographical Society’s House.
Francis Younghusband, a British Army Officer, in his foreword to the book, has recalled Dr Somervell as saying, “It is no part of our work as Christians to destroy Hinduism. Nor to go out to India with any feeling of racial and religious superiority, but to serve India in the spirit of Christ Himself – to be servants of Mankind.”
Dr. Somervell first came to Neyyoor in 1922, accepting an invitation from Dr Pugh, who was already working in the hospital, “in a tropical climate of continual damp heat, with a body which was far from physically fit.”
Later writing about his decision to work in Neyyoor, Dr. Somervell said: “Had I not then gone to India at the call of suffering, I could never have dared to look God in the face nor to say prayers to him again.”
Amid his back-breaking schedule, Dr. Somervell spent two hours a day learning Tamil so that he could communicate effectively with his patients.
He was fascinated by Indian music, describing Nagaswaram as “a very beautiful and striking instrument and mridangam, in skilled hands, a marvellous maker of rhythum”, but he regretted that the he could not succeed in his attempt to use these instruments at the church at Neyyoor.
After over two decades of service, he retired in 1945. He again came to Neyyoor in 1948. In 1949, he went to Vellore to pass on his surgical knowledge to Indian medical students and produce qualified Christian doctors. He worked again in Neyyoor (1950-51) and Vellore (1952-53). He also acknowledged the contribution of the Travancore Maharajas to his medical mission and also hailed a 1936 royal edict allowing all castes to enter Hindu temples.
A thorough-going English Christian, Dr. Somervell was critical of the caste system in India, regretting that “centuries of Hinduism, in spite of their great mystics, have never given untouchables a chance.”
He also said “caste is firmly embedded in the Indian mind, so much so that many Indian Christians take several generations to throw it off,” while narrating how his cook was not allowed to conduct his marriage in a church next door because he belonged to a different caste.
While arguing that Christianity gave the untouchables an opportunity for social uplift, he was not ready to blame Hinduism, saying, “It is not that Hinduism is bad in itself.”
“Some of the greatest sages of the world have been Hindus. Some of the stories of Hindu mythology are finer far than many of those in Old Testament. Rama is a finer character than Jacob and Sita and Savitiri have few peers in ancient Jewish literature,” he said.
However, for Dr. Somervell, all other religions are incomplete. “It is only in the New Testament that we find that part of our faith which satisfies and uplifts and gives us peace and power.”