Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine (16 page)

In September 1900 he won a scholarship to Winchester College where he turned out to be a good pupil, an able athlete and a talented gymnast.  His academic forte was in mathematics but he took up History with a view to obtaining a scholarship to Cambridge.  His judgement was sound and in 1905 he was awarded an Exhibition to Magdalene College Cambridge. 

His school days at Winchester brought him into contact with Graham Irving, his housemaster and one of the first men to adopt guideless climbing in the Alps.  In 1904 Irving invited Mallory and his friend Harry Gibson to join him at his summer home in the Alps.  Mallory was eighteen.  He had no climbing experience at all and had not shown the least interest at Winchester in matters to do with mountaineering, but after two exciting climbs with Irving including a traverse of Mont Blanc, he was enthused and converted to the cause.  From that moment climbing became one of the dominating forces in his life.  It gave him release in times of strain, a challenge when one was lacking in his working life and, in the end, the avalanchine passion that cost him his life.  The following summer he was again invited to join Irving, this time in Arolla, with two other schoolboys, one of whom was Guy Bullock.

After that summer Mallory went up to Cambridge and it was a few years before he was able to go back to the Alps.  At Cambridge he developed his ideals as an aesthete and became involved in debating and political discussions which he relished.  He had a glittering circle of friends, many of whom had connections with the Bloomsbury set.  In addition to his academic and political interest, Mallory continued with sport at Cambridge, rowing in the Magdalene College boat in the Easter terms.

In 1909 he was introduced by a mutual acquaintance to Geoffrey Winthrop Young, ten years Mallory’s senior and at that time at the peak of his Alpine career.  Not only was Young regarded as the foremost Alpine mountaineer of his generation, he was also credited with being responsible for encouraging British rock climbing and held regular ‘meets’ in North Wales when he would invite prospective and seasoned climbers to join him.  They would stay in the Pen-y-Pas hotel in Snowdonia and spend long days on the cliffs while the evenings were devoted to socializing and impromptu theatricals.  Mallory was quickly included in Young’s inner circle although he was not apparently at ease with the sociability as Young.  What he shared with the older man, however, was a deep love and understanding of the mountains.  This perhaps is one of the clues to Mallory’s personality.  He climbed with feeling, above all.

He joined Young in the Alps in the Summer of 1909 where the two of them did several training climbs before setting off with Donald Robertson for a traverse of the Finsteraarhorn by the difficult southerly arête.  There were several anxious moments during the climb including an instance when Mallory, accidentally forgetting to attach the rope to himself and delicately perched on a tiny foothold, was surprised by a clatter of rocks when Robertson slipped as he was attempting to reattach the rope.  Mallory turned round to see what was happening and Young closed his eyes, sure that the next thing he would hear was Mallory tumbling down the 5000-foot glacier.  Mallory, however, had supreme balance, and remained safely on the rock face, apparently completely unconcerned by the incident.  Young wrote later ‘he was as sure-footed and as agile in recovery as the proverbial chamois’. The security of the rope meant little to him.  The fact that he forgot to tie on when making that climb is an example of his absent-mindedness, something he was noted for even on the Mount Everest expeditions.  In one of the last notes he sent down from the high camp on 6 June 1924 he wrote that he had left his compass in the tent at Camp IV.  Such forgetfulness may be an endearing trait on the one hand but in the context of mountaineering it can be dangerous in the extreme. 

On leaving Cambridge he worked in various temporary jobs and spent a few months in the South of France perfecting his French.  Eventually he settled down and accepted a post at Charterhouse School as an assistant master.  He believed in the ‘civilizing force of education’ and encouraged the boys in independent thought.  He promoted extramural activities and taught about world affairs and literature, all of which were considered extracurricular, but to which he attached great importance.  All this time he was climbing regularly in Wales and in the Alps.  In 1911 he made an ascent of Mont Blanc which was, for him, as much of an emotional experience as it was a feat of mountaineering.  He wrote a long article in 1914 entitled ‘The Mountaineer as Artist’ which was published in the
Climbers Club Journal
.  In this article he distinguished between two types of climber: ‘those who take a high line about climbing and those who take no particular line at all’.  He described the importance of climbing to the former type, of which he regarded himself as a member, that it is more than just an athletic pursuit: ‘…Every mountain adventure is emotionally complete.  The spirit goes on a journey just as does the body, and this journey has a beginning and an end, and is concerned with all that happens between these extremities.’

In 1914, when taking part in some amateur dramatic production in Godalming, he encountered the Turner sisters, whom he had previously met at a dinner party.  Their father, Thackeray Turner, was a local architect and had built a beautiful home in the style of Lutyens in Godalming.  Mallory became a regular visitor to the house and enjoyed not only the company of the three girls, Marjorie, Ruth and Mildred, but also that of Turner himself.  They would have long discussions about art history, a subject that interested him deeply since his meeting and subsequent friendship with the English impressionist painter Duncan Grant.  When the Turners invited him to join them in Venice for the Easter holiday he leapt at the chance.  Venice was glorious, but Ruth Turner had captured his heart and within a week of returning to England he proposed to her.  They were desperately in love and married in the July, only a few weeks before the outbreak of the First World War, spending their honeymoon in Cornwall.  Ruth’s beauty, Mallory claimed, was Botticellian: she had a rounded, tranquil face with large blue eyes and wore her hair in a style which reminded him of the Pre-Raphaelites.  As a personality she was honest and completely lacking in guile.  His friends were as enthusiastic as he was and agreed they made a good-looking, ideal couple.  They settled down to life in Godalming and Mallory continued with his teaching.  Ruth herself was a gifted rock climber but the birth of their children prevented her from joining Mallory other than very infrequently, so that his climbing was essentially his private pursuit, although he did not exclude her from his thoughts and decisions about it.

Teaching was a reserved occupation and it was not until 1916 that the headmaster of Charterhouse permitted Mallory leave to go to the front where he served as a gunner in the Royal Garrison Artillery.  Although he enjoyed the campaigning and organizational aspects of the army and was relieved that he was not fainthearted about the horrors he beheld, he was nevertheless sickened by much that he saw.  He came back to Britain to have an operation on an old ankle injury, sustained in a climbing accident at Thurstastan quarry in 1909 after which he had not sought proper treatment.  Following his recovery he returned to France for the last few months of the war, when he found he had more time to write, think and read than he had had before.  In the meantime two of their three children, Clare and Beridge, had been born and Ruth had her hands full caring for the girls and organizing their new house in Holt. 

After the war Mallory returned to teaching but was never as content as he had been before.  He continued with his climbing, which was a form of release, but the discontent grew and he knew that he would have to seek a greater challenge.  In the spring of 1920 he was climbing in North Wales with Geoffrey Winthrop Young, who was trying to learn how to climb again, having lost a leg in the war.  Young had heard that there was a planned expedition to Everest and even contemplated going himself but then realized that the proposal was wholly unrealistic.  He talked to Mallory about the expedition and encouraged him to consider the possibility of leading the climbing party.  The seeds of an idea were sown although his initial reaction to the invitation from the Mount Everest Committee was to refuse out of concern for Ruth.  On receiving word of Mallory’s refusal, Young visited them in Holt and after twenty minutes of talking up the possibilities that would follow if he reached the summit Mallory and Ruth were convinced, and Ruth told him to go to Everest.

It was not until 1852 that the mountain recorded simply as Peak XV was even known to be the highest mountain in the world.  The British Survey in India was occupied in the nineteenth century with surveying and mapping India and the Himalaya.  As successive peaks were measured there was growing interest in which mountain might prove to be the highest.  The story, founded no doubt on fact but which has taken on a somewhat mythical status, is as follows.  The Bengali chief computer, a man rather than a machine in those days, rushed into the office of his superior, Sir Andrew Waugh, exclaiming: ‘Sir! Sir! I’ve discovered the highest mountain in the world.’  After a series of lengthy analyses of the computations by means of a series of triangulations, Sir Andrew Waugh felt confident enough to announce, in 1856, that the Survey could confirm it had established that Peak XV was ‘probably the highest mountain in the world’, standing 29,002 feet above sea level. Its closest rival in the Karakoram, K2, had been assessed at 28,156 feet.

This important revelation brought with it the desire to give the mountain a suitable name.  Ignoring the generally accepted tradition of adopting local names for geographical places, Sir Andrew suggested that the mountain should be named after his illustrious predecessor, Sir George Everest.  Sir George, during his tenure at the Survey of India, had instigated most of the work of establishing the Great Arc of the Meridian.  Ironically Sir George was against the idea of the naming of Peak XV after himself, but nevertheless the mountain soon became known as Mount Everest.  Its Tibetan name, Chomolungma, which is variously translated as ‘Goddess Mother of the Earth’ or, ‘the peak at the end of the vallery’ was ignored. 

By the 1890s there were serious discussions amongst British mountaineers and explorers about the problems climbing Mount Everest might pose.  Prior to that it was not known whether man could climb so high or whether indeed human life was sustainable above 25,000 feet.  It seemed clear to the main parties involved in this speculation, amongst them Capt. Charles Bruce and Francis Younghusband, that any attempt to climb the mountain would have to be preceded by a reconnaissance mission to map and chart the immediate environs of Everest and to plot a possible route to the summit.  Relations with Tibet and Nepal were particularly fragile prior to the Great War and the then secretary of State for India, John Morley vetoed a proposal put forward by Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, to seek permission to mount an expedition to approach the mountain. 

By now the seeds of interest had been sown and several people were occupied with contemplating seriously the possibility of climbing Mount Everest.  In 1913 Capt. John Noel took leave from his Indian regiment to make an illicit reconnaissance of the mountain by means of a route through Tibet.  He was able to get within forty or fifty miles of the mountain before he was turned back by armed guards, and was very nearly court-martialled for entering a foreign country without permission.  Fortunately his service was required in the First World War and the court martial was dropped.  Noel’s plan was to make the foray and report back his findings to Col. Rawling who planned an expedition to the mountain the following year.  This expedition had the blessing of the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society, but it was stopped by the events of the Great War.

After the war, relations between Britain and Tibet were not improved, but the desire to take an expedition to the mountain had reached new heights.  In 1919 Francis Younghusband was appointed President of the Royal Geographical Society.  He later wrote of the ‘spark which set flame to the train’.  There was a meeting in London that year of the Royal Geographical Society.  Captain Noel was asked to deliver a lecture on his reconnaissance trip of 1913.  ‘He made no reference to anything more than approaching the mountain: he made no suggestion of attempting to reach the summit.’ The lecture was followed by a discussion in which Capt. Percy Farrar, then President of the Alpine Club, announced that the Club ‘viewed with the keenest interest the proposal to attempt the ascent of Mount Everest’.  It was the impetus that was required to reassess Britain’s relations with Tibet and to put forward the proposal of a serious reconnaissance expedition to Mount Everest.  The Alpine Club, Farrar proposed, would not only make available what financial aid it could but would be prepared to suggest the names of two or three young mountaineers who, he felt, would be qualified to deal with any ‘purely mountaineering difficulties that were likely to be met with’.

Younghusband, who was sitting next to Farrar at the meeting, got to his feet.  He reminded the meeting that he and Charles Bruce, then Captain, now General Bruce, had considered twenty-six years previously the proposition of ‘going up’ Mount Everest.  He vowed that during his presidency of the Royal Geographical Society, he would make ‘this Everest venture’ the main feature of his three-year term.  He felt that his indepth knowledge of both the Tibetan government and the government of India would put him in a particularly good position for initiating such a project.  He also felt the combined strengths of the RGS and the Alpine Club would be able to draw on the greatest expertise that was available at the time. 

Action followed quickly.  The Mount Everest Committee was formed, taking members from both the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society.  Younghusband had on more than one occasion to defend his position as Chairman of the Mount Everest Committee.  Purists regretted that the formation of such a committee was required and felt that it would have been altogether more sporting for the mountain to be climbed by an individual on a personal mission. R. G. Irving, the schoolmaster from Winchester, who had first introduced Mallory to climbing, was a particularly stern critic.  His objection was that the climbers on the Mount Everest expeditions were selected by a panel.  ‘The Everest expeditions are not the result of individual enterprise.  The selection of the climbers and the payment of the cost are the responsibility of men of whom few have taken part in the actual climbing of the mountain.’ Written as this objection was, after the death of Mallory and Sandy, it is possible that some of his misgivings stem from the belief that the climbers felt a pressure on them to succeed.  Had they initiated the venture themselves, they would have only had to make mountaineering decisions and not concern themselves with the possibility that they might be letting the expedition down.  He went on to regret the publicity that was now surrounding mountaineering, comparing it with the spotlight shone on the cricketers and footballers of the time.  ‘By all means let us encourage men to go on their own responsibility to climb the Himalaya and any other mountain, but do not let us set the ring for them as we have begun to do.  Our great footballers, our great cricketers have become public entertainers, and we must accept the fact.  Mountaineering is altogether unfitted to follow such a trend.’