Other interests
Scouting apart, Baden-Powell excelled at fishing, and favoured polo and big game hunting. He was also a very good black & white and watercolour artist and took an interest in cine-photography and sculpture.
A Baden-Powell watercolour
In 1907, he exhibited a bust of John Smith, the colonial pioneer, at the Royal Academy. Click here to see a selection of Baden-Powell's artwork. Baden-Powell wrote no less than 32 books, the earnings from which helped to pay for his Scouting travels. As with all his successors, he received no salary as Chief Scout. He received honorary degrees from Edinburgh, Toronto, Montreal, Oxford, Liverpool and Cambridge Universities. He also received Freedoms of the cities of London, Guildford, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Bangor, Cardiff, Hawick, Kingston-on-Thames, Poole, Blandford, Canterbury and Pontefract, as well as other cities around the world. In addition, 28 Foreign Orders and decorations and 19 Foreign Scout Awards were bestowed upon him. Every minute of his life was 'sixty seconds worth of distance run'. Each new adventure was the subject for a book. Every happy incident or thought, every fine landscape might be the subject for a sketch.
Later life
In 1938, suffering ill-health, Baden-Powell returned to Africa, which had meant so much in his life, to live in semi-retirement in Nyeri, Kenya. Even here he found it difficult to curb his energies - he still produced many books and sketches.
Baden-Powell in Kenya with his pet hyrax
On January 8, 1941, Lord Robert Baden-Powell died at the age of 83. He is buried in a simple grave at Nyeri within sight of Mount Kenya. On his headstone are the words, 'Robert Baden-Powell, Chief Scout of the World' mounted by the Boy Scout and Girl Guide Badges. His memory remains eternally in the hearts of millions of men and women, boys and girls. It is up to those who are, or have been, Scouts or Guides to see the two Movements he so firmly established continue for all time as living memorials to their Founder.
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