Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine

by Julie Summers

  Willie and Evelyn attended matins at St Mark’s in Birkenhead, which was full to capacity with people shocked and grieved by the news of the loss of two Birkenhead men. Many of them knew the family well and had known Sandy since he was a little boy. The Mayor of Birkenhead ordered the flag on the Town Hall to be flown half-mast from Saturday at 1pm and all day Sunday. That afternoon they were joined by Dick Summers who had read of the tragedy in the newspaper in his hotel room in London. He was due to take part in time trials that day, but he cancelled and drove straight to Birkenhead to be with Evelyn.

  As the news of the Everest disaster broke, the press went crazy. They had only the telegram sent by Norton to the Mount Everest Committee and Norton’s earlier dispatches on which to base their articles. The lack of information led to wild speculation and dramatic headlines: ‘The Battle with Everest: The Mountain’s Heavy Toll, ‘Victors of Everest, ‘Triumph Frustrated by Death: Two Lives Lost, ‘Did Everest Climbers Reach the Top?’ In newspaper terms it was a marvellous story and the press certainly made the most of it. Everyone who had an opinion expressed it, the papers full of arguments for and against their having achieved the summit. Had the oxygen given out? Did you in fact need oxygen to climb Everest? Did they fall, were they benighted?

  Then there were the eulogies. People wrote of Sandy’s courage, his strength, his rowing prowess, his work with the oxygen apparatus and, above all, of his cheerful disposition. They spoke of his youth and of what might have become of him had he lived. A Times journalist concluded: ‘In accepting the offer to go to Tibet he, too, knew that he was facing inevitable risks, and for those who knew and loved him his untimely death, at so early and age, is a peculiarly tragic ending to the great adventure in which he engaged.’

  On 5 July the Times published Norton’s dispatch containing the details of the last climb which he had sent on 11 June 1924. It had been composed while he was still snowblind at Camp III on 8 June, dictated to Geoffrey Bruce, detailing the story of his and Somervell’s climb. Once he had arrived in Base Camp he penned a footnote to his dispatch which started: ‘With the deepest regret I add these few lines continuing the above dispatch. Mallory and Irvine perished on the mountain beyond all doubt.’ He described briefly the facts of the disappearance as he understood them, but had not at this point met up with Odell who was still on his way down from Camp III. He described the two men as having been seen ‘going strong for the top’ by Odell at about 11 a.m. This was the first concrete evidence about the accident and was only revised when Odell wrote up his own story three days later.

  Norton continued to send home dispatches to the Times in which he was able to deal in much greater detail with individual aspects of the expedition. In one article he dealt solely with the difficulties of climbing at altitude, writing eloquently of the great effort required at high altitude merely putting on his boots or making a cup of tea. In another he considered the possibility that Everest would one day be climbed, concluding, ‘The conquest of Everest is almost certainly assured. Sooner or later some climber as brave and skilful as the men of the Third Expedition, and with fortune better than theirs, will penetrate the last fastnessess of the highest mountain on earth, and gaze from its utmost peak on the wondrous world beneath him.’ And in a third piece Geoffrey Bruce assessed the contribution made by the porters. As these appeared, further articles flowed from the pens of Longstaff, General Bruce and Younghusband, amongst many others, paying tribute not only to Sandy and Mallory, but to the other members of the expedition. Longstaff described the expedition of 1922 as a picnic in comparison to 1924.

  It was Odell’s story, however, that really captured people’s imagination. His account of the last sighting appeared in the Times on 10 July and what he wrote has fascinated climbers for over seventy-five years:

  At 12:50, just after I had emerged in a state of jubilation at finding the first definite fossils on Everest, there was a sudden clearing of the atmosphere, and the entire summit ridge, and the final peak of Everest became unveiled. My eyes became fixed on one tiny black spot silhouetted on a small snowcrest beneath a rock-step in the ridge, and the black spot moved. Another black spot became apparent and moved up the snow to join the other on the crest. The first then approached the great rock-step and shortly emerged at the top; the second did likewise. Then the whole fascinating vision vanished, enveloped in cloud once more. There was but one explanation. It was Mallory and his companion moving, as I could see even at that great distance, with considerable alacrity, realizing doubtless that they had none too many hours of daylight to reach the summit from their present position and return to Camp VI, at night fall. The place on the ridge mentioned is a prominent rock-step at a very short distance from the base of the final pyramid, and it was remarkable that they were so late in reaching this place.

  This account was written before Odell had left Base Camp. He maintained that Sandy and Mallory had probably been benighted on the mountain and would have died of exposure. As to whether they made it to the top or not he wrote: ‘in my opinion, from the position in which they were last seen, they should have reached the summit at 4 pm at latest, unless some unforeseen and particularly difficult obstacle presented itself on the final pyramid’.

  He was the only member of the 1924 expedition who held fast to the belief that Sandy and Mallory had summitted successfully. Norton convinced himself and the others that it was unlikely, given the lateness of the hour, and he maintained that there had been a simple mountaineering accident in which they had both died. It was this version of events that, ultimately, became most widely accepted but the debate raged on with a few notable dissenters remaining convinced that Everest had been conquered.

  Mallory and Sandy became common property and the nation swallowed it up. So great was the interest that the King’s telegram to the families was published in the Times under the headline ‘Everest Disaster. The King’s Message ‘Two Gallant Explorers’. It read:

  The King is greatly distressed to hear the sad news of the death of Mr. Mallory and Mr. Irvine, who lost their lives in making a final attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest. His Majesty asks whether you [Younghusband] will be good enough to convey to the families of these two gallant explorers, as well as to the Mount Everest Committee, an expression of his sincere sympathy. They will ever be remembered as fine examples of mountaineers, ready to risk their lives for their companions and to face dangers on behalf of science and discovery.’

  Another announcement appeared in the Times a day or so later: ‘The dance at the Speaker’s House on July 11, for which Mrs. Whitley had sent out invitations, is cancelled, owing to the death on Mount Everest of Mr. A. C. Irvine, who was a close personal friend of a large number of the guests invited.’

  Memorial services for Sandy and Mallory were held all over the country, at their old schools and universities and in their home town of Birkenhead.

  In the mean time Willie and Evelyn were busy fielding the hundreds of letters and cards of condolence which came flooding in from everyone who had known or claimed to have known Sandy. So great was the volume of correspondence that Evelyn called Aunt Ankie to come over to Birkenhead to help out with the task. Every letter was read, listed and replied to by one of the three of them. The list runs to over 500 and contained amongst it a beautiful letter from Ruth Mallory, a moving tribute from General Bruce’s wife, letters from Unna, Longstaff, Noel, from his school masters and university tutors and a simple but extraordinary letter from Peter Lunn, Sandy’s runner-up in the Strang-Watkin Challenge Cup in Mürren in January 1924. Peter was nine and his father, Arnold, told Lilian that the letter was written entirely without input from himself or his wife.

  ‘Dear Mrs Irvine,

  I am so sorry that Mr Irvine was killed on Mt Everest. I think that it is much worse for you than for Mr Irvine. For it is quite likely he died a painless death and now he is quite happy in heaven with Mr Mallory and other great explorers like himself. Besides, perhaps he has the honour in Heaven of h
aving climbed Mt. Everest. He was constantly admired at Mürren, especially by me.

  I admired and loved him for that great gift, which many who are as great as he cannot control, that gift of modesty.

  At Mürren in the skiing he was always so cheery. He took bad luck and misfortunes in the skiing line so quietly. He kept away from all praise if he could and he would not let anybody get into any skiing book the fact he was going on Everest.

  At the Palace he and I were next door, so he explained to me all about compasses, barometers, oxygen etc. without showing any sign of getting bored of my questions. I especially loved that side of his modesty that enabled him to speak to me as though I were a grown up.

  I am very sorry for you at having lost your son, for having a mother, I know what it would be like.

  Your affectionate Peter Northcote Lunn’

  This letter, more than any of the other seventy-odd which Willie chose to keep, catches me out every time I read it. I found it in May 2000 and sought Peter’s permission to publish it. He had no recollection of writing the letter but his memories of Sandy are still very strong and he feels sure that it accurately reflects the admiration and sadness he felt when he learned of Sandy’s death. It seems to say everything about Sandy and to say it so bluntly and honestly that I really feel there is nothing in any of the other letters, some of which are deeply compassionate and moving, that can add to Peter’s sentiments.

  The first memorial service for Sandy was held in Merton College Chapel on 26 June 1924. The immediate family was represented by Sandy’s younger brother Kenneth, who was already in Oxford. He wrote to his mother the following day: ‘People at Oxford were very nice to me indeed. I stayed up for the service but it was too much for me – I don’t think I can face the Shrewsbury Service next Sunday evening after it.’ He listed all the people who were at the Merton Service including several Irvine aunts and uncles and a whole host of Sandy’s friends including Milling, Ian Bruce, George Binney and A. T. Wilder. Kenneth concluded: ‘If there is anything that I can do to help in any way, and in any fraction to strive to fill the gap, do let me know.’

  Willie and Lilian were not at the Merton service as they had chosen to go with Evelyn to a local one, one which for them was probably the most deeply moving of any of the services dedicated to the memory of Sandy and Mallory. It was held in St John’s Church, Birkenhead on the same day. It opened with the hymn ‘For Ever with Thee Lord!’ and the lesson was taken from Revelation 7, verses 9 to the end, which concludes ‘For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’ Mallory’s father, the Revd Herbert Leigh-Mallory, took the service. ‘How much braver can you be,’ Evelyn once asked my father with her back turned in typical Irvine fashion, ‘than to take the memorial service for your own son?’

  When Odell returned from Everest on 13 September 1924 he spent two days in London with Mona and his son Alasdair before leaving for Birkenhead to see Willie and Lilian. His visit was a great comfort to them and he was able to answer many of the questions they had about Sandy. He spoke to them about his final view of them climbing towards the summit and about his own search during the following days. Odell was deeply impressed by Willie and Lilian’s calm acceptance of the facts. They held no grudge and were unwilling to attribute responsibility for his death to anyone. If Odell had been at all worried on that count, for it was indeed he who had encouraged Sandy to go to Everest, he was reassured on that occasion. His loyalty to the Irvines and to Sandy’s memory has been something which the whole family has felt deeply humbled by. I cannot be sure but I would hazard a guess that Odell was the only person that Willie would ever discuss Sandy with. If anyone else attempted to draw him on the subject he would politely divert the conversation, but Odell visited him regularly until the end of Willie’s life and was always a very welcome guest in Birkenhead and later Bryn Llwyn. But his friendship did not stop there. Over the years he visited Kenneth, Alec, Evelyn, and many of my older cousins and uncles have memories of meeting Odell at one or another of the Irvine houses. The last time my father met him was at his parents’ house in the late 1950s when he joined them for dinner. Odell wrote to Bill Summers in 1986 after a letter Bill had written to the Times had caught his attention. He was by then in his ninety-sixth year.

  Norton had offered to meet Willie on his return to England to answer any questions he might have about the expedition. The rendezvous took place in Coniston in October 1924, just before the meeting of the Alpine Club and Royal Geographical Society in London at which papers on the expedition were published. No record of this meeting exists other than the brief entry in Willie’s diary, but Norton was held in very high esteem by the whole family so I can only suppose that they had found much in common on that occasion.

  Lilian had been out of the picture as the news of Sandy’s death was announced, taken up as she was with caring for and comforting the younger children. Life had to carry on for them and in August she and Willie took them on holiday to Whitby, where Willie taught Alec to row. At the beginning of October Hugh announced his engagement to Kit Paterson which provided for Lilian a very welcome diversion. She wrote a letter of congratulations in which she expressed her hope that God who had been her guide and friend all her life would protect her children. She added that when Sandy had asked for permission to go up Everest she and Willie had prayed earnestly and that thus ‘I have never had any regrets or questioning about the right or wrong of letting Sandy go up Everest – it does not stop the hole in our hearts however.’ The fact that Lilian kept out of the public eye over Sandy’s death has led people to conclude that she was unable to accept it. Great though her sadness must have been, she sought and found great strength in her belief and the main focus of her life were the other children who needed protecting and reassuring at what was a very difficult time.

  On 17 October a memorial service for both men was held in St Paul’s Cathedral. The families were seated in the choir sheltered from the view of the great body of the congregation. The address given by the Bishop of Chester spoke of their courage and their achievement and of Odell’s last sighting of them so close to the top. ‘That is the last you see of them, and the question as to their reaching the summit is still unanswered; it will be solved some day. The merciless mountain gives no reply! But that last ascent, with the beautiful mystery of its great enigma, stands for more than an heroic effort to climb a mountain, even though it be the highest in the world.’ The service was attended by representatives of the King, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, the Duke of Connaught and Prince Arthur of Connaught in addition to the members of the expedition, the entire Mount Everest Committee, members of the Irvine and Mallory families and a great number of friends of both men. No other climbers had ever been so honoured. Willie, who was no lover of big occasions, attended the service out of duty and respect for his son, but it was for him and also for Lilian nothing like as personal an occasion as the service taken by Mallory’s father in Birkenhead in June.

  After the service there was a joint meeting of the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club at the Royal Albert Hall where reports from the expedition were presented by General Bruce, Norton, Geoffrey Bruce and Odell. The talks were illustrated with slides from the expedition and it was here, for the first time, that Willie and Lilian saw photographs of Sandy in Tibet. This was a great moment for them all when they really had a chance to understand what life had been like for him over the last few months before his death. Lilian was particularly impressed by the photograph of the rope ladder taken by Somervell and asked Willie to arrange for a copy to be given to the family.

  One person from the Mount Everest world who turned out to be extraordinarily kind and sympathetic, rather against expectation from what else I have ever read of him, was Arthur Hinks. He was in constant touch with Willie from June onwards and made every attempt to communicate any new information received as quick
ly as possible. He also ensured that copies of all the official letters and telegrams were forwarded to Birkenhead and as soon as Sandy’s personal effects arrived in England he arranged for them to be sent straight to the family. Hinks was instrumental in getting for the family as many photographs of Sandy as were known to exist and it was he who fulfilled Lilian’s request for a picture of the rope ladder Sandy had made. Hinks saw that copies were sent to her and an enlargement of it hung in the study at Bryn Llwyn until Willie’s death. Hinks was also concerned to retrieve the disassembled 1922 oxygen apparatus that Sandy had taken from the RGS in November 1923. In an amusing exchange of letters he and Willie discussed whether the bits and pieces that were returned actually constituted a whole apparatus, so completely had Sandy dismantled it. In the summer of 1925 Hinks wrote again to Willie enclosing a copy of the photograph taken by Odell of Sandy and Mallory leaving Camp IV that had only then come to light.

  Over the next months and years memorials to the two men sprang up all over the country. Sandy was commemorated at Merton College by a sculpture of an eternal flame on a plinth with the lettering carved by the artist Eric Gill and at Shrewsbury by a relief plaque on the chapel wall. Birkenhead named two new streets after their famous sons and a joint memorial window was unveiled in early 1925 in the cloisters of Chester Cathedral. It depicts St Bernard with his dog standing in front of a huge mountain with the inscription below: ‘To remember two valiant men of Cheshire. George Leigh-Mallory and Andrew Comyn Irvine who among the snows of Mount Everest adventured their lives even unto death. “Ascensiones incorde suo disposuit” Ps LXXXIV’. It was the family’s local memorial and every anniversary of Sandy and Mallory’s death Willie would drive to Chester, often with Lilian, to place flowers beneath the window. Lilian once told Hugh that they were very conscientious and would return a few days later to remove the flowers.