The Moth and the Mountain

by Ed Caesar

  In late January, this unlikely gang bonded at a Tibetan-style horse race that took place at the Singla Bazaar near Darjeeling. The festival was similar, Wilson wrote, to an English country fair. Wilson had by now definitely ended his fast. He drank local beer from a bamboo cask with a straw with the “lads.” He was also smoking cigarettes again.

  Over the next few weeks, Wilson made Tewang his sirdar, or first officer. He and Tewang gathered maps of Sikkim and Tibet. The two men plotted their journey. Wilson also bought a Sikkimese pony for the trek. The three porters started to assemble Wilson’s disguise, as a Tibetan priest. Wilson paid in advance for his lodgings, to throw the authorities off his scent. Then he set a time and a date for his departure from Darjeeling: midnight on March 20, 1934. He chose the date not only because he believed it would get him to Everest at the perfect time to climb the mountain, but because the clairvoyant had told him he must start nothing between the twenty-first and the twenty-seventh of the month.

  On the day before he left in disguise for Everest, he wrote a farewell letter to Enid, from Darjeeling. Above the date and address was a note, underlined: “When I get back successful—will wire you. Keep smiling, Good luck. If otherwise—NO luck. But please do not tell a soul outside 101, until you hear from me by mail. IMPORTANT.”

  The letter then began in earnest.

  My dear Enid,

  Just a line to wish you cheerio; shall be doing a bit of traveling around during the next few weeks, so cannot give you any definite address; no doubt shall be back again here before leaving for England and as I am still pally with the folks at Minto Villa, you would be able to drop me a line there if you wished at any time after the next ten weeks. May be having a birthday when I return here so that if you can spring the price of a wire, when you hear from me again, shall be glad to put it in the British Museum.

  I am exceedingly fit and never felt happier in my life. I can walk like a Rolls car and never feel either tired, thirsty or hungry, which is just as things should be according to the standards which I have evolved.

  A London girl was up here a few days ago and I took her on a day trip, had dinner, did a Talkie and a game of bridge at my landlord’s. She promised to give you a ring, but unfortunately did not see her to give your number, the day she went away. About 28 and fond of the open air life but a little bit dreamy and no come-back in conversation. Didn’t get a kick, nor even out of the American tabbie you mentioned in your last. Funny if I hit something hard one day and went a million; wouldn’t you get a laugh out of it? I can hear you throwing your head back already.

  Keep smiling and lots of love to you both.

  All the best, MAURICE xxx

  Over the page, in a long and wonderful postscript, Wilson described his priest’s disguise: the golden waistcoat, the sash, the hat with flaps, the sunglasses, and the umbrella. Then the letter finished, for good:

  Think if—Just for luck, though poor Len!—you were around I might let you kiss me, even in spite of my sirdar’s instructions that I mustn’t have a bath today and I’m without a shave.

  But isn’t life funny.

  CHAPTER TEN ALL PRETTY

  • April 1934 •

  Three weeks later, in April 1934, Wilson was at the foot of the great mountain with his three Bhutia helpers. You will recall the details of Wilson’s journey from Darjeeling: how he changed into his magnificent costume, fooled a policeman, camped in the daylight, marveled at the waterfalls, crossed into Tibet, completed marathon walks on the high plains, shed his costume, waded through freezing rivers, and reveled in the sheer audacity of his mission. You left him, in sight of Everest, thinking of his war.

  Only the final barrier now remained. Wilson had seen Everest up close, and if he was scared, he did not admit it. The mountain looked to him as it had always seemed in his imagination. It was a big hill to be climbed by a man with a big heart.

  Wilson’s party entered the Rongbuk Valley on April 14, 1934. They stopped at the Rongbuk Monastery, a collection of flat-roofed dwellings organized around a modest stupa, or dome, where hundreds of monks lived and worshipped in sight of Chomolungma.

  A year earlier, Hugh Ruttledge had been impressed by the scene he encountered here:

  Rongbuk must be one of the highest permanently inhabited places in the world. It stands at well over 16,000 feet and is occupied, summer and winter, by more than 300 monks, whose maintenance must seriously tax the resources of the surrounding country. Still farther up the valley, along the steep-sided moraine shelves from which the place obtains its name, are a nunnery and some primitive cells where hermits pass a life of meditation in circumstances of hardship which baffle the imagination. It is sacred ground, and tradition has it that animals and birds have found sanctuary here for centuries past.

  Wilson arrived at Rongbuk exhausted, grumpy, and in an unsentimental mood. His diary entry was much more straightforward than Ruttledge’s:

  Here we are at Rongbuk. Monastery is quite interesting sight, but the people in it are filthy, men and women and children too. Everest looks magnificent, and am longing to get the job over after a couple of days lay up. [Tsering] been to see if any food left by [1933] expedition, but no luck.… Shall be dressed like European tomorrow, see the Lama, we are all going.… Am exceptionally fit, no fat, all muscle. Light in lantern very small, owing to altitude 17500 ft, only another 11502 ft to go, and over the top. Having a darned good bath and rub down tomorrow before getting into my clean kit.

  The British expedition reaches the Rongbuk Monastery in 1933. Everest looms in the background.

  Wilson spent the night in a large Meade tent left by the Ruttledge expedition, which was much more spacious and better protected than his own smaller Meade tent—bought at Fortnum & Mason. He also snagged an extra Tommy cooker from the remains of the 1933 supplies, which he planned to take up the mountain.

  The following morning, a Sunday, Wilson awoke to a bright, clear day. His maudlin mood was replaced by a feeling of giddiness and spiritual realignment. “Isn’t she a darling?” he writes. “She’s magnificent—not you—the ruddy mountain I mean… just feel part of the scheme and that I should be here by every right.”

  On that Sunday, Wilson bid farewell to “Rinzi,” who was traveling to a nearby bazaar to buy supplies. Wilson planned to be up the mountain when Rinzing returned in four days. Wilson was fond of all the Bhutias—“They’ve been wonderful throughout,” he wrote—but he appeared to have a particularly soft spot for Rinzing, a hard man with dandyish tendencies. Wilson liked to tease Rinzing when he strutted about with his hair done up “all pretty.” As Wilson and Rinzing parted, the Englishman shook the Bhutia by the hand and thanked him for his loyalty.

  * * *

  All pretty.

  There have long been rumors in the climbing community and beyond that Maurice Wilson was a private transvestite, that he carried with him items of women’s clothing to Everest, and that he wrote a secret, second diary, detailing many kinds of niche sexual predilections. You want to know what to do with such stories. His tale is remarkable however he was clad. But it’s also worth taking the time to analyze the rumors. If there is any truth in them, they might explain a great deal about Wilson’s motivation in climbing Everest. In the 1930s, homosexuality was illegal in Britain. Even though Wilson was certainly attracted to women, males who dressed up as females would have been considered part of a suspicious homosexual subculture. If Wilson’s ideas about his gender were more fluid than convention demanded, he would have found it difficult to live a conventional life.

  The evidence is spotty. A Chinese expedition of 1960 found a women’s shoe on the lower slopes of Everest: a strange thing to find at altitude. When the discovery was made, other climbers immediately thought of Wilson. That they did so reveals something in itself. But the story has a specific genesis. In 1935, the year after Wilson began his climb on Everest, an English expedition led by Eric Shipton found some of Wilson’s abandoned belongings. Although none of the members
of that expedition ever wrote about finding women’s clothing or footwear, apparently some of them spoke about it to their friends. In his obituary of Charles Warren, a doctor and climber on that 1935 expedition, the mountaineering writer Ed Douglas wrote that Shipton’s party had found a woman’s shoe in a tent abandoned by Wilson. Douglas knew Warren well and had checked his facts. (In other reports, Warren was said to have disavowed the women’s clothing story; Shipton was also known as a practical joker, who was prone to telling fanciful stories.) Even if such a thing was found, it might not mean Wilson was a transvestite. He could have taken a memento of Enid with him. It would have been an odd thing to do, but Wilson could be an odd man.

  The “second diary” claim, meanwhile, seems thin. Dennis Roberts, the author of I’ll Climb Mount Everest Alone, once wrote to another alpine historian to say, definitively, that there was no second diary found. You wonder about the provenance of that story. There might be a simple explanation. We know from a letter Wilson wrote to a friend that among his effects as he traveled to the mountain was Hans Licht’s Sexual Life in Ancient Greece—a strangely dry, academic treatise on the relationship between the sexes in the classical period, with a short chapter about transvestism. Licht’s book was, to be sure, another strange item to take to Everest. But it wasn’t Wilson’s private journal.

  The more you think about the transvestism rumors, the more you think about Wilson’s great-nephew, and the secret he promised to take to his grave. When he said those words to you, he appended them with a caveat: “But he weren’t queer.” So the great-nephew had a secret about Maurice Wilson. He wasn’t gay, but… And you think to yourself, what else could it be?

  As you think about the unspeakable secret, you recall that Wilson had a string of relationships with dress designers, or people who worked in fashion. It wasn’t just Mary Garden. Kathleen Dicks, his companion on the trip to South Africa, was a dress designer; Lucy Pitman, with whom he crossed the American border, was a fashion buyer. If Wilson was a transvestite, he knew how to source a wardrobe. And then you think about his trips to Fortnum & Mason with Enid, and you wonder which departments they visited. You think about his affection for Enid’s dressing room at 101 Biddulph Mansions, and the strange calmness with which Len Evans appears to have regarded his wife and Wilson’s relationship. You also recall that Wilson notes in his diary that he wore “short, open-meshed undies” as the weather was warm on the trek—a peculiar detail. Was this, you wonder, women’s underwear?

  Finally, you think about that riotous last letter Wilson sent to Enid from Darjeeling, detailing his priest’s outfit. “Want some romance?” Wilson had written. “Then see over, duckie.” The “romance” Wilson promised was simply a description of his getting into disguise. Wilson wasn’t putting on women’s clothing, but his delight in dress-up is evident:

  And oh, sister, did daddy look sweet? Chinese brocaded waistcoat in gold, done up with cold [sic] buttons at the side, after the style of a circus trainer. Slacks of cheap dark blue cotton without either buttons or place for belt; shall just have to depend on the tightness of the sash to guard against the penalties of infrequent disclosure, and shall have to undress completely to execute the more frequent calls of nature. The worst of it is that I have to hide the lovely waistcoast under a huge mantle, about 6 inches longer than mother’s nightie. Next comes about four yards of bright red silk girdle; wondered when the ’ell he was going to finish wrapping me round it; then the mantle is hitched up making a useful pouch at the waist; and the same time giving me a better chance to see my feet. After that I was a bit better pleased as he showed me how to walk with one arm out of the mantle, disclosing the brilliant plumage of the waistcoat underneath; then came the Bhutia hat; furlined and with large earflaps; was a bit lucky that it fitted. Dark glasses to hide my honest blue eyes but was distracted when I had to spoil that “I’m Jackey” feeling with a pair of oversize hobnail boots.

  And folks, Do you want a good laugh? Poppa’s taking an umbrella.

  The evidence is not conclusive, and in any case you are not trying Wilson for a crime. But you think of how happy he was, dressed as someone else, and you wonder whether his whole story—the broken relationships, the spiritual mania, the purging fasts, the demented mission to Everest—was born out of an unsettled sense of his true self.

  “I am a fool,” wrote Reinhold Messner in The Crystal Horizon, “who with his longing for love and tenderness runs up cold mountains.”

  * * *

  On Sunday, April 15, Wilson was introduced to the head lama of Rongbuk, an old monk named Zatul Rinpoche, who started the community at Rongbuk in the early years of the century and built a community in the hallowed place. Wilson told the lama a miniature story of his life. He also noted his intention to signal to Rongbuk from the mountain using the reflection from a concave mirror, which he had brought with him from home. During this exchange, Wilson’s fellow feeling swelled:

  Saw the dear old Lama this p.m. he’s 68 and always laughing. Made a hit by all accounts, and am invited to eat with him on return from Everest. Had a great chat for ½ hour and he was delighted when I told him I had travelled the world and never felt as happy in anybodies company before. Some kind of fir bush was being burnt as offering, whilst conversation in progress. [Tsering] gave him some kind of openwork scarf.… I didn’t know it was the Lama’s gift and had used it to clean my knife en route. Everyone very optimistic about show, and even Lama says I shall come back O.K. All the other lamas clustered round and enjoyed the conversation as it was translated. What a good natured crowd. Lama gave us huge dish of meal, and half a dried goat as return present. The colour and decorative effects of the place are very charming, and I only hope movie turns out O.K. Gorgeous sunset on Everest tonight, and feel it heralds success. Coolie carrying my kit as far as basecamp tomorrow, then shall say goodbye to world for 6 or 7 days. All Lamas will be on lookout for my signals, day and night, so that progress will be known. I shall try and make camp 2 or 3 tomorrow, weather permitting. Excuse scrawl, but am propped on my writing elbow and doing it by candle light. And where shall I spend tomorrow night?

  So, with the head lama’s blessing, a meal and butterflies in his stomach, and thoughts of home, Wilson slept fitfully in the Meade tent outside the Rongbuk Monastery, for what he believed would be the final time before his victory on Everest. He shivered as he slept. It was the night before the show.

  Wilson began his climb on Everest at dawn on April 16—a clear, windless day—heading south along the path of the Rongbuk Glacier. The summit of the mountain towered at the end of the valley. Wilson would follow this vast furrow until the valley forked. Then he would turn to the left and trek up the subsidiary East Rongbuk Glacier until Camp III. This camp sat at a little under twenty-two thousand feet, at the foot of the North Col—a fearsome wall of snow and ice, and a serious test of climbing strategy, where avalanches and crevasses could prove deadly. This approach to the mountain followed the Everest expeditions of 1922 and 1924, and the Ruttledge expedition of 1933. Wilson would be walking in the footsteps of Mallory.

  Wilson’s load was prodigious. He packed forty-five pounds of gear and food. It felt like ninety pounds in the thin atmosphere. One of the Bhutias helped him to base camp, a short walk from the monastery, but from there, Wilson was on his own. He loaded the bag onto his back, then began to trudge up the rising scree and moraine of the Rongbuk Glacier.

  Wilson was tired. He had barely slept the previous night. But he was also sinewy and strong, and as fit as he’d ever been. On that first day, he walked around eight miles as a hot sun blazed. At 3:00 p.m. he approached the fork to the East Rongbuk Glacier. He was about three-quarters of a mile from Ruttledge’s Camp I of the previous year. It was a good place to stop and pitch his tent. He hoped to sleep early. The altimeter showed 19,200 feet.

  “Only 10,000 feet to go,” Wilson wrote in his diary.

  Wilson was, in fact, no higher than 17,500 feet that night. It now seems clear that his altimeter
was defective. The machine continually gave elevations that were much too high—a fault that Wilson, in his headlong enthusiasm, failed to recognize. He had spent three weeks on the trek to Everest, dreaming of being on the summit of the mountain on his birthday, April 21—or, at the least, close enough to April 21 to be under his sign of the zodiac. Wilson wanted everything to align, even the planets. Now, making good progress in perfect weather, he believed he would reach the top exactly on schedule. It was the night of April 16. He calculated that he would reach Camp III, at the foot of the North Col, by the afternoon of April 17. He then estimated he could reach the top of the North Col, or Camp IV, by the end of the next day—April 18. From there, he would make two camps high on the mountain on April 19 (Camp V) and April 20 (Camp VI). From the highest camp, he would strike out for the summit on his birthday.

  Such thinking was madness. Even if Wilson had been the finest climber of his generation—George Mallory or Frank Smythe—this would have been an impossible schedule. And Wilson was no climber. He had no technical expertise to count on, and no well of experience from which to draw. He was also utterly alone. The sheer effort needed to carry his massive load above twenty-one thousand feet, to the foot of the North Col, would require heroic fortitude. Porters carried Mallory’s bags, pitched his tents, brewed his tea. Wilson needed to do everything himself. At this altitude, the simple act of erecting a tent became a test of endurance. Even if he was somehow able to make progress up the mountain, the route to the summit had baffled and killed the best men of the previous expeditions. Wilson would be lost, in the death zone, without a clue. By any rational measure, he had not the tiniest chance of reaching the summit. Everesters from any of the previous four expeditions to the mountain would have laughed or wept at Wilson’s extraordinary bravado until their crampons rattled.