the climbers

PERSONALITIES AND BACKGROUND

GEORGE MALLORY

Like his mom, George Mallory flirted w the unorthodox – was emotionally volatile – concerned about money and so absentminded that he would drive his colleagues on Everest to distraction.

He was a mischievous boy, doted on by his 2 sisters Avie and Mary, lionized by his younger bro Trafford.

George Mallory was already given to adventure by the time he could walk.  Avie said “he had a knack of making things exciting and rather dangerous.  He climbed everything it was at all possible to climb. I learnt v early that it was fatal to tell him that a tree was impossible for him to get up. ‘Impossible’ was a word that acted as a challenge for him. When he once told me that it would be quite easy to lie between the railway lines and let the train go over him, I kept very quiet, as if I thought it would be quite an ordinary thing to do; otherwise, I was afraid he would do it.”

Mallory had many close male friends when in school – many of whom were in love with him.  Mallory said ” my experiences of friendship are w my own sex… To confess the truth I don’t much understand women and they make me feel like a mouse”

Mallory explored his sexuality in college – “James and George now stroke one another’s faces in public”.  Finally copulated with James.

Mallory disdained formalities

This exercise is important in understanding Mallory’s personality and values as a climber: Finch(with Wakefield) and Mallory(with Somervell) were competitive but then in 1922 expedition, on one exercise to climb to a summit 7000ft above camp (which would take them about 20490ft elevation at summit) Finch beat Mallory in choosing the route that Bruce favored then he beat Mallory to the first camp. But then on the way to the summit he got sick and vomited and turned back to base camp. Then Somervell was w Mallory and struggled w dysentery. Mallory could have left him to make it to the summit but stopped 500ft short of the summit and turned back with Somervell to help him on the descent. This is important insight into Mallory’s character as a mountaineer, particularly in regard to the fateful events on June 8 1924 the day he and sandy were last seen alive on Everest. However powerful the allure of a summit. Nothing, according to Howard Somervell would induce Mallory to abandon a weaker climber on a mountain.

GEORGE MALLORY IN LOVE (WITH RUTH):

It was more than love at first sight. For Mallory it was as if a dam had burst and impounded emotions of a young lifetime had found immediate release. He was positively giddy. The loops in his handwriting he told her in one of his first love letters “are all kisses and the tall strokes and the tails are all arms to embrace you. Shall I go through my letter and make them longer?”

Ruth replied: life w you is going to be very perfect.

Mallory said they would need to create a new vocabulary of love words.

They were engaged in May married at end of July 1914. Ruth’s father offered dowry of 750 pounds a year – and a new house, the Holt, valued at 1600 – which he gifted in perpetuity to Ruth – financially they were set.

Honeymoon was in Swiss Alps – but they were detained on suspicion of being German spies.

Ruth was open-minded and progressive:  Ruth wrote to her husband on 10th August 1915: “I wonder dear how much we shall keep up with the times and be able to be proper companions for our children. Lets try and remember that they must educate us as well as we educating them then I think we may not go so far wrong, we mustn’t hate every new thing that comes along until its got old.”

GEORGE FINCH

The Australian George finch:  His mother married an old rancher – but on a visit to Paris refused to leave and took a lover and delved into the world of mysticism. George Finch never forgave his mother for what she did to his father who returned home heart broken but continued to support his family. Finch despised the metaphysical nonsense and moved closer to all things rational. Studied in Ecole de Medecin in Paris then Swiss fed institute of tech in Zurich then chemistry in Geneva – award for top student in school – which he sold immediately to finance a climbing expedition. He designed a lightweight windproof anorak, unprecedented in its utility (Brit climbers wore same Norfolk tweed jacket they would for walks). For Everest he would invent the first down coat.

Finch dismissed days before expedition due to poor health – a real blow to Finch and the team.  It was completely unfounded.  But still, he was loyal to the expedition went to Oxford to work w prof P.J.H. Unna to improve performance at altitude of the primus stove. Percy Farar had arranged for him to enter a low-pressure chamber designed during the war to prepare pilots for high altitude flying. Prof Dreyer who pioneered the use of bottled O2 the RAF submitted finch to the tests saying “slightly underweight but w excellent physique… That he should be able to stand great exertion at high altitudes better than most persons.”. In fact finch’s “unusual powers of resistance to the effects of high altitude were so remarkable that Dreyer described him as the most fit of the  thousand young men examined to date by the facility. “We have not come across a single case where the subject possessed the resisting power to such high capacity 40percent greater than the average, blood pressure slightly below avg. all signs of superb physical fitness.

Farar wrote to Hinks “this is the weakling whom we flung out”

Finch’s relationship trouble:  He married aspiring actress Alicia Gladys “betty” fisher 22 yrs old. “Little in common but the moment”. Married June 16 1915.  Finch noted his home as “no mans land”.

Almost immediately after he was shipped out to Egypt – Alicia Gladys said she would stay faithful – but on Finch’s return she was pregnant with another man’s child.  Divorced but Finch accepted the child and gave it his own last name.

Finch then he had affair with another woman, Gladys May – she got pregnant so he married her – but then fell out of love with her while away at war and she begged him to return.  She went to court and judge filed a petition accusing Finch of desertion and ordering him to return home to his wife within fourteen days and “render to her conjugal rights.”  He was also obliged to pay the costs of the legal proceedings.

Two weeks later he deliberately set out to create a situation that would lead inevitably to the dissolution of his second marriage.  As planned, further court documents revealed that on the nights of March 15-17 Finch was guilty of committing adultery with an unknown party in room 477 of the Strand Hotel.  Such a flagrant act of infidelity was a standard practice at the time employed by gentlemen seeking a quick and easy divorce.  Choice between public humiliation and granting finch his freedom – Gladys May chose to grant Finch his freedom through a divorce.

Within two weeks Finch would marry yet again, this time to the love of his life, Agnes Isobel “Bubbles” Johnston, who would bear him three children and remain by his side for the rest of his years.  He would never tell anyone, not even his beloved Bubbles, that Peter was not his biological son.  Peter Finch went on to become famous actor.

HOWARD SOMERVELL

Howard Somervell – brilliant surgeon and painter of exquisite watercolors and classical musician. As climber had infinite reserves of energy and could not resist a pitch of rock. Like Mallory.  Somervell sketched along expedition

JOHN NOEL

John Noel -photographer and raconteur – his stories kept all entertained.

General Bruce praised Noel as a member of the expedition. He described the filmmaker as “the ever present Noel… There is no more thorough member of the expedition than he” this reputation came from moment such as this one. For four days and three nights Noel had maintained his vigil at camp 4 – scouring the upper slopes of the mountain w his distant lens tracking the men’s movements. He knew that climbers without food or support had never spent 2 nights essentially in bivouac at such heights. That Finch and Bruce jr elected to go on, despite the ordeal had astonished him even as it filled him w dread. He feared the worst when they were overdue. As clouds swept over the northeast shoulder he had burned at intervals, piles of unexposed film as signal flares. When finally they stumbled onto the flat of the col he had hot spaghetti and flasks of steaming tea ready for them.

John Noel had been attached to the king’s own Yorkshire light infantry which he’d joined in Dublin on august 13 1914 the day before the battalion embarked for France. Within a week he was at Mons in defensive positions on the south bank of the canal.  He was reported missing, believed killed. But had been taken prisoner. He escaped and made his way back to Brit forces. No map no compass and ate food from dead men’s pockets. Took bearings from star Arcturus. He suffered from shell shock. Back out after 2 months. Then again hospitalized after a shell nearly killed him. He was out for 3 months before back in. He would never speak of his condition.

ANDREW “SANDY” IRVINE

Irvine kept himself busy despite feeling the effects of altitude. Drills, taps and hacksaw blades snapped in the cold. He was nauseous from solder fumes in enclosed area but managed to retrofit 6 complete sets of O2 apparatus in 2 days. He also worked on Beetham’s camera and repaired the expedition’s forty-pound roarer cooker, which he then used as a forge to shorten the spikes on both of Mallory’s crampons by two inches. He spiked on hand and badly scorched the other in 2 places.

But hemoglobin tests revealed Irvine had highest percentage of red blood cells. “Hope this is a good sign” he wrote.

Irvine on Mallory: “a devil must have got into Mallory… For he ran down all the little bits of downhill and paced all out up the moraine. It was as bad as a boat race trying to keep up with him.”

Built 2 room shelters w stone walls that could be covered w a tent fly. He worked for 3 hrs moving heavy boulders “trying to set an example to the coolies” until blood began to flow freely from his nose.

Irvine got so fed up w one porter he offered to carry his load but Mallory wouldn’t allow it and they cut the porter from the rope cursing him w threats of ice devils and demons.

ODELL

Odell’s performance had been nothing less than heroic.  He offered great support during Mallory’s last and final attempt.  Odell had climbed from the base of the North Col to Camp 4, at 23,000ft three times.  From Camp 4 he had gone once to camp 5 (25,300ft) and from camp 4 to camp 6 (26800) twice over four consecutive days.  In 12 days he had slept only one night below 23000ft.  For nearly a fortnight he had thus lived at elevations higher than science had believed possible.  His reward, as Norton would write in a final dispatch, was to have been the last to see their friends, “going strong for the top.”

HENRY MORSHEAD

Morshead – surveying – was in his element when in 1911 he spend 4 months ascending the Lohit – living on rice dog meat and beetles – threatened by tigers and elephants – and humid climates like a Turkish bath. In 1913 he had mapped out the whole area and w help of Tibetans had ended the long standing question of the tsangpo flowing east from Kailash and Brahmaputra coming out of the mountains 12000ft lower in forests of Assam -that they were one in the same – but nobody believed him.  He and his men were arrested as Chinese spies by the Tibetans who had never seen a European before.

Bailey describing Morshead. “I had noted another characteristic of Morshead which rather alarmed me. No one can avoid picking up leeches and one cannot stop to remove them while one is on the march. On one occasion I found at a halt that I had 150 leeches on me. Morshead appeared indifferent to them. I thought at the beginning that his indifference might be the residue of his fever; but later I found that this was not the case. When his temperature was indubitably normal, he would stand there covered in leeches and w blood oozing out of his boots, as oblivious as a small child whose face is smeared w jam.”. He just didn’t notice impediments of any kind.

Edward Norton

Major Edward Felix “Teddy” Norton – had been convalescing in a Calcutta hospital w sever case of piles after reaching finals of the Kadir cup. Pain of thrombotic hemorrhoids intense and debilitating in the extreme (common affliction in the Himalaya). Graduate of royal military academy Woolwich.

Teddy Norton, 38 was a man of extraordinary qualities of leadership, integrity and grit.  Commissioned as a graduate of the Royal Military Academy Woolwich in 1902, he had been a soldier since boyhood.  Posted to the Royal Horse Artillery at Meerut at 23, he had served throughout India, eventually becoming aide-de-camp to the viceroy before sailing with his regiment to France in the late summer of 1914.  That he survived the war was a statistical miracle because he fought in virtually every campaign from the very first British attacks at Aisne and the Marne, through Ypres, Loos, and the Somme, and Arras and the German Spring Offensive of 1918.  He was awarded the Military Cross, appointed DSO, and honored with every medal for gallantry and combat, save the Victoria Cross.  He emerged from the war with a certain quality of being, a serenity, confidence and uncanny presence that caused men almost reflexively to follow his lead.

Mallory describes Norton:  “Norton is one of the best…extraordinarily keen and active and full of interest and gentle and charming withal.  He is to be my stable companion I understand and I don’t doubt that I shall like him in that capacity as well as anyone.”

Another climber marveled at how Norton, as commander, would make up his mind about a decision, then call in the entire expedition to confer, and “invariably they would after discussion come to his view.”

GENERAL (CHARLES) BRUCE

Charles Bruce – born privileged – he was a rascal brat – couldn’t get into school because he could pass in his exam papers on time. He ended up in the militia stationed in york -instead – as he said “minimum work and maximum sports” -where he was called MMM – mad mountain maniac.

Warfare suited Bruce – known as bruiser or burra sahib. Loved to booze play sports – and the rumor was that he slept with the wives of all the enlisted men.

FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND

Soldier-philosopher-mystic visionary and spy – Francis Younghusband… Born 1863 in foothills of the Himalaya – schooled in Britain at Clifton – attended royal military college at Sandhurt. Returned to India 1882 as an officer in the kings dragoon guards.

Carried out reconnaissance work along Indus and afghan frontier.

Then Younghusband made captain and returned to Karakorum escorted by 5th gurkhas commanded by Charles Bruce. Their relationship forged in the great game would be driving force for what drew Brits to mountains.

In 1891 Younghusband was taken captive by Cossack patrol and ordered back to India – the confrontation prompted major diplomatic incident and seared in Younghusband a deep and lasting impression of the seriousness of the Russian menace – a conviction he shared w Curzon.

When Curzon was viceroy he tapped Younghusband for service in Tibet in 1903 where they were convinced Agvan Dorzhiev  a Russian spy was living as a monk.  Dorzhiev was in fact a monk from the buriat region of Mongolia, formally a Russian citizen and an attendant to His Holiness the 13th Dalai Lama. Known to the Tibetans as Tsenshab Ngawang Lobzang, Dorzhiev was one of the 7 revered instructors or tsenshabs to his holiness – regarded as a master of dialects. But the Brits were convinced Dorzhiev was dealing arms and engaged in treaty negotiations on behalf of the czar.

Younghusband became youngest fellow of RGS recipient of founders medal for explorations in Pamirs and Karakorum.

1903 – Tibet began as a mess – cold and clash of cultures. Tensions building on nothing… Finally in November an excuse for war came when a small group of Tibetan soldier attacked Nepalese yaks.

In December Younghusband and 5000 soldiers – gurkhas and Sikhs – military police artillery machine gun units of Brit army-military police-cooks+medical staff diplomats and journalists gathered in Darjeeling and w 10000 porters 20000 yaks and 40000 lbs of food they eventually reached Darjeeling from Lhasa. Freezing weather – kept on to Chumbi valley – met no resistance. After 3 weeks there they pushed on to tuna where some turned back but Younghusband elected to stay for winter. His personal kit was that of a Brit dressing for each occasion… 67 shirts dozen suits and 12 overcoats – 18 pairs of boots and shoes. 88 porters died of exhaustion from carrying luggage.

Tuna winter was 3 months of fruitless negotiations. Climaxed w encounter of march 3 1904 – when Tibetans insisted that Dirzhiev was nothing more than a simple buriat monk and Russia and Tibet had no diplomatic engagement let alone an alliance. But the Brits were too committed to mission at this point – Younghusband and his troops marched in machine guns against crude Tibetan weapons – they got face to face and all was calm. The Brits demanded that the Tibetans disarm. Language was lost – tension shattered as a Sikh grabbed the bridle of a Tibetan general’s horse. In outrage thee general drew his pistol and shot the Indian in the face. There was a moment of stunned silence followed by the crack of a single rifle bullet – then all hell broke loose. Tibetans barely had time to draw their swords before the Maxim machine guns opened up.  The Tibetans didn’t surrender they turned and walked away. One officer wrote to his mother “it was an awful sight…and I hope I shall never again have to shoot down men who are walking away.”

Brit correspondent Henry Savage Landor wrote: “butchering of thousand helpless and defenseless natives in a manner most repulsive to any man who is man”

The Tibetans retreated Brits marched on. Dalai lama fled toward exile in Mongolia 4 days before Brits arrived – stayed there for 5 years. In absence Brits tried to appoint some authority to negotiate w – didn’t work. Later negotiating w maharaja of Bhutan they wrote up terms on Sept 7 1904 that gave Brits control of Chumbi valley for 75 years – free access and trade and Tibet couldn’t deal w any foreign powers other than Brits.

There was no evidence of Russian influence in Lhasa and Dorzhiev seemed to be nothing more than a monk.

Brits left Lhasa disenchanted “it was impossible to avoid certain regret for the drawing back of the curtain which had meant so much to the imagination of mankind. With the unveiling of Lhasa fell the last stronghold of the older romance.

Younghusband left elated but had to defend himself at home. He was changed though. He would later found the world congress of faiths – devoting his life to shattering barriers between great religious traditions of the world.

Younghusband had seen Everest – “the first streaks of dawn gilding the snowy summits of mountain Everest poised high in heaven as the spotless pinnacle of the world”

ARTHUR ROBERT HINKS

Arthur Robert Hinks, CBE, FRS (26 May 1873 – 14 April 1945) was a British astronomer and geographer.

As an astronomer, he is best known for his work in determining the distance from the Sun to the Earth (the astronomical unit) from 1900–1909: for this achievement, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. His later professional career was in surveying and cartography, an extension of his astronomical interests.

Hinks later became secretary of RGS.  He was a difficult man. Brilliant mathematician but he was an old codger and had a disdain for modernity especially the telephone. He was disagreeable, intolerant, sarcastic, utterly lacking in tact or discretion, he was parsimonious and priggish, enamored of his own genius and convinced always of the infallible wisdom of his opinions. But he was ferociously hardworking, meticulous and orchestrated virtually every aspect of the expedition: raising funds, recruitment of personnel, purchasing supplies, proper brand of chocolate, high altitude stoves, etc.  He also took charge of booking lectures, press releases, raising funds, bringing in sponsor, etc.