by Wade Davis
On March 29 Percy Farrar wrote to Hinks: “Finch’s being thrown out at this late date upsets everything. I am the more surprised, as on Friday at Oxford I saw him for about 2 hours in the vacuum chamber with the Primus stoves at 30,000 ft. with oxygen supply. He was able to talk and take all his notes and act in the most natural manner. I left him there that night, and next day [at] Professor Georges Dreyer’s suggestion he spent about the same time in the vacuum chamber without oxygen at 21,000 ft, and with a load of about 35 lbs. on his back went through all sorts of evolutions. I shall have the full report later. This is the weakling whom we have flung out!”
As if further vindication were required, Finch, having been denied by the Everest Committee, spent the summer of 1921 in the Alps engaged in some truly ambitious efforts, such as the opening of the Eccles route on Mont Blanc from the Freney Glacier. In a letter of September 9, Percy Farrar took delight in reminding Hinks that “our invalid Finch took part in the biggest climb done in the Alps this summer.”
But there was more to the story. To be sure, Finch had his enemies, and as a climber he struggled with the values and biases of a British class society that was anything but inclusive. The RGS and the Alpine Club were hardly meritocracies. There was a well-known account of an aspiring applicant, Arnold Lunn, later Sir Arnold Lunn, who was excluded from the Alpine Club simply because his last name happened to be that of a popular tour company, even though he had nothing to do with the enterprise. In another notorious incident, Sydney Spencer, while speaking about the Finch case with Scott Russell, Finch’s son-in-law and biographer, glanced out the window at a street sweeper and mentioned casually that his Alpine Club would never admit such an individual, even if he were the best climber in the world.
Such petty prejudices notwithstanding, it is difficult to believe that Finch’s medical records would have been falsified simply to keep him from the team. Such a conspiracy would have had to involve Sandy Wollaston, who by all accounts was incapable of deceit. Mallory said as much in a letter to Young: “I can’t imagine him a party to that sort of thing, however much the idea of an examination may have been the hope of the party opposed to Finch.” In Wollaston’s letter to Hinks of March 22 he specifically noted that the two physicians, Larkins and Anderson, “knew nothing more of these two young men than their names at the time of examination.” If true, as almost certainly it was, then there could have been no deliberate attempt on anyone’s part to manipulate the medical results to exclude the candidate from the field. So what was going on?
The phrasing of both medical reports on Finch leaves little doubt that the examinations were superficial, even impressionistic. The two doctors use the same language: complexion sallow, nutrition poor, general appearance tired. There is no suggestion or diagnosis of any form of pathology or specific infirmity. All Larkins and Anderson were really suggesting was that at the time of their examinations, Finch had been eating poorly and looked like hell, exhausted, anemic, and sickly. As it turns out, Finch had good reason for appearing so drained on the particular day in question. Events in his personal life had taken a tangled turn that would have unnerved the strongest of men.
It all began at an officers’ dance in the late spring of 1915. Finch, a second lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery, had served at the front since the outbreak of hostilities, surviving the retreat from Mons and all the terrible battles of the first months of the war, and was temporarily stationed at Portsmouth, awaiting orders. Alicia Gladys “Betty” Fisher was a twenty-two-year-old aspiring actress, coquettish and dangerously pretty. They had little in common, save the moment, which was enough. Without notifying either of his parents, they married on June 16, 1915, with Finch registering his home address as “No Man’s Land.” Their plan was for Betty to wait out the war at Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth, while he returned to the fighting.
Finch’s orders finally came through in the fall of 1915, and he shipped out not for France but for Egypt, where, soon after arriving, in January 1916, he suffered a nearly lethal attack of cerebral malaria that left him severely incapacitated for several months. After partial recovery, he was attached to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and sent to the Salonika front in Macedonia, where he spent the rest of the war experimenting with ordnance, dismantling bombs, testing detonators, and inventing explosive devices. Among his innovations was an aerial bomb that could be sent aloft in a balloon and fired electronically from the ground; on its first trial Finch brought down a German plane. His most significant contribution came in July 1916, when it was discovered that virtually all of the artillery shells in the theater, the ammunition for every sixty-pound gun, 4.5-inch and 6-inch howitzer, and most of the bombs of the Royal Flying Corps, had been compromised by the heat, which had caused the amatol to ooze, rendering the fuses inoperative. With the supply lines back to Egypt precarious, it was essential that the shells be salvaged. Finch devised a method of doing so, using paraffin wax to fill the cavity after it had been cleaned out and the compromised fuses replaced. It was incredibly dangerous work—one explosion nearly cost Finch his life—but in the end some sixty thousand shells were defused and repaired. For his contribution Finch would be mentioned in despatches and highly decorated, ultimately receiving the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) at an investiture at Buckingham Palace in December 1919.
In the last days of 1916 word reached Finch that his wife was seriously ill. Securing compassionate leave, Finch arrived in London toward the end of January 1917 and was at first delighted and then horrified to learn that Betty was both perfectly healthy and the mother of a young boy, Peter, who had been born on September 28, 1916, fully ten months after he had shipped out. Though Betty had vowed to remain faithful, her fidelity had lasted scarcely a month. When Finch had left for Egypt she had been joined at Woodleigh, their home on Palmerston Road in Southsea, by a Mrs. Powys Sketchley, whose own husband was away fighting in Gallipoli. In January 1916, as Finch lay struggling for his life with cerebral malaria, Powys Sketchley’s brother, a Captain Wentworth Edward Dallas “Bertie” Campbell, of the Poona Horse, returned from France on ten days’ leave and, while visiting his sister, seduced Finch’s wife. To his credit, Finch took pity on the infant Peter and gave him his name, registering his birth on February 5, 1917. With the remainder of his leave, Finch went to France and tracked down his rival. He later recalled, “I found him, thrashed him into unconsciousness but unfortunately did not kill him.”
Narrowly avoiding a court-martial, and having exacted new promises from his wife, Finch returned to his command, reaching the Salonika front by the end of February. Regular letters from home reassured him for some three months, but as the correspondence slackened, his suspicions were again aroused and he arranged to have Betty watched. His worst fears were confirmed.
In the meantime Finch himself had met and fallen for another woman, Gladys May, a nurse with the Voluntary Aid Detachment in Salonika. On October 10, 1918, he wrote to Gladys May to tell her of his first wife; in a letter of November 16 he promised her that his past would not haunt their future, saying, “In all fairness to you, and the dream boy we are going to have, you and yours must come first. Peter will not live with us, for my mother, who knows nothing of the truth about him, is going to bring him up in the company of my younger brother, Antoine, who is fourteen.”
As soon as he was able to secure leave, Finch returned to London and sought to sever his legal ties to Betty. The petition of divorce noted that she had committed adultery with William [Wentworth Edward] Dallas Campbell on April 4–12, 1918, at the Moorlands Hotel in Hindhead, and on May 2–3, 1918, at the South Western Hotel, Southampton.
Finch’s divorce came through on September 29, 1920. Five weeks later, on November 6, 1920, he married Gladys May. On April 10, 1921, she gave birth to a son, Bryan Robert, a child that had been conceived in the summer of 1920, when Finch was still legally wed to his Betty. Given subsequent events, it is clear that when Finch learned that Gladys May was pregnant, he electe
d to do the honorable thing and marry her as soon as his divorce from Betty was finalized. By then, however, his feelings for Gladys May had faded, leaving her five months pregnant and heartbroken. On December 5, 1920, Gladys May wrote to him from the Gables, Witney, Oxon:
My dearest Geoff: I am heartbroken at the way you have treated me and the letter you wrote after you went away last week has crushed me and means more to me than you can possibly realize. I entreat you to return to me and live with me as your wife, letting all that has passed be forgotten. Whatever you have done I am only too willing to forget if you will only come back. Ever your loving wife, G.
In a note postmarked the following day and written from 30 Sussex Place in London, Finch responded coldly:
My dear Gladys, I have received your letter of the 5th inst. When I left you I also wrote explaining my reasons for going. I regret to say that nothing you may say or do would cause me to deviate in any way whatsoever from the course I have taken. I am sorry for having caused you pain. I shall continue your allowance at the rate of 100 pounds a year. Geo I Finch.
The following spring, with Gladys May due to give birth within the month, the situation came to a head. On March 2, 1921, a 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.
Finch was not about to yield. Two weeks later he deliberately set out to create a situation that would lead inevitably to the dissolution of his second marriage. Further court documents reveal 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. As intended, it left Gladys May with a choice between enduring public humiliation and granting Finch his freedom; his second divorce was finalized on December 12, 1921.
Within two weeks Finch would marry yet again, this time to the love of his life, Agnes Isobel “Bubbles” Johnston, a kindly woman 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. Even after Peter Finch went on to become a famous British actor, George Finch never mentioned his name. As for his second wife, Gladys May, her existence was expunged from memory. In Scott Russell’s comprehensive biographical essay written as the introduction to the reissue of Finch’s classic book The Making of a Mountaineer, there is no mention of a second marriage, and her name does not appear.
The extent to which members of the Everest Committee were cognizant of Finch’s entanglements is uncertain. Clearly Younghusband had concerns, and when it came time to assemble the team for the 1922 climbing expedition he wrote to Professor Collie. In his response on November 26, 1921, Collie offered a grudging endorsement of Finch: “Of course I know that as a climber he is as good a man as we can get. I have never heard anything about Finch’s matrimonial arrangements. If I hear anything I will let you know.”
Collie may have been unaware of Finch’s situation, but it is difficult to believe that in the rarefied realm of London society, the scent of scandal had not reached members of the RGS and the Alpine Club. What is certain is that on March 17, 1921, the day he was examined by the Harley Street doctors Larkins and Anderson, George Finch had a number of things on his mind. Two weeks previously he had been ordered by a judge to return to the bed of a wife he disdained who was in the ninth month of pregnancy and about to give birth to his child. Out of another disastrous relationship he had inherited responsibility for a four-year-old boy who bore his name but was not of his blood. In an attempt to rid himself of his second wife, he had taken on the obligation of providing her indefinitely with an annual indemnity of £100, a not inconsiderable sum in 1921, especially for a man whose only source of income was his work as a lecturer. All of his family money, invested in stock of the Trans-Siberian Railway, had evaporated with the Russian Revolution. And, on the very day of the medical examination, he was scheduled to commit adultery at the Strand Hotel, in a contrived situation intended to free him at last to marry the woman of his dreams. It is no wonder that he had lost his appetite and that his complexion was “sallow, his general appearance tired, his condition poor.”
THE LOSS OF FINCH was a stunning setback for the expedition. His own humiliation was intense and public, as his name had already been published as a member of the expedition in the February issue of the Geographical Journal. Percy Farrar was not only livid but also deeply concerned about the implications for the climbing team. On March 4 he had cautioned Younghusband, “If for any reason either of the men, Finch or Mallory, were to fall out, I am bound to say that I know nobody who would be capable enough to take their place, and I speak with probably an unrivalled knowledge of the capacity of every English climber, and a good many foreign climbers of the day.”
Mallory, too, was angry, especially after learning that Harold Raeburn had promoted as a replacement for Finch his old friend and climbing partner William Ling, president of the Scottish Mountaineering Club and a man of forty-eight. Ling, after some consideration, turned down the offer. Other names were floated, including Howard Somervell and Noel Odell, fine climbers who would make their marks on the 1922 and 1924 expeditions. Odell, recently married, declined; Somervell was inexplicably passed over entirely. Wakefield, also considered, proved impossible to reach. As Farrar wrote in a letter to Geoffrey Young on February 25, 1921, he was “away in Canada. I am informed his wife will not let him go.” In truth, in the shadow of the war Wakefield had retreated to a remote region of Canada, in the dark forests of New Brunswick, with the hope of regenerating a life. “I regret Wakefield,” wrote Mallory, “in a way more than Finch.”
In a letter to Young on March 24, the day Finch was publicly dropped from the team, Farrar went so far as to suggest that the mountaineering component of the 1921 expedition be eliminated in favor of a purely geographical reconnaissance. Finch, he suggested, “had as wide a knowledge of the conditions of winter and summer snow as any man, not even excluding Raeburn himself, and, if there is an insufficient knowledge in the party of such conditions, there is going to be an accident. Moreover, he is the only skier [sic] in the party. I am half inclined to think that unless the mountaineering party this year is really strong, it would be better to let the RGS revert to their original plan of exploration only this year and then form a really strong party next year. But next year does not always come.”
George Mallory already had his doubts about the strength and cohesion of the team. On March 9, a month before his scheduled departure for India, he wrote to Young complaining that Raeburn had yet to secure high-altitude tents or make provisions for the intense cold anticipated at the heights of Everest. Raeburn, he concluded, “is quite incompetent. He even advised us not to take pith helmets, an omission which is pronounced to be mere madness by such men as Meade and Longstaff.”
Mallory was more impressed by other members of the Everest endeavor. “I very much like the look of Wollaston and Howard-Bury seems like a nice gay person though I don’t accept him yet without reserves. Finch and I have been getting on well enough and I’m pleased by the feeling that he is competent; his scientific knowledge will be useful and has already borne fruit in discussing equipment. Younghusband amuses and delights me more than anything—grim old apostle of beauty and adventure! The Everest expedition has become a sort of religious pilgrimage in his eyes. I expect I shall end by sitting at his feet, hearing tales of Lhasa and Chitral.”
Mallory wanted Finch with him on the mountain and was quite prepared to forfeit the expedition were his concerns not addressed. On March 27 he wrote to Hinks: “Since receiving your letter telling me that Finch is not coming with the expedition to Mount Everest I have been thinking very seriously of my own position. We ought to have another man who should be chosen not so much for his expert skill but s
imply for his power of endurance. I have all along regarded the party as barely strong enough for a venture of this kind with the enormous demand it is certain to make on both nerve and physique. I wanted to have Finch because we shouldn’t be strong enough without him. You will understand that I must look after myself in this matter. I’m a married man, and I can’t go into it bald-headed.”
In response Hinks reminded Mallory that Henry Morshead, who had been with Kellas on Kamet, had been seconded to the expedition from the Survey of India. He went on:
I don’t think you need feel any anxiety about your own position, because you will be under the orders of very experienced mountaineers who will take care not to call upon you for jobs that can’t be done. The fact that you have been in close touch with Farrar all along has no doubt made you imbibe his view which is hardly that of anyone else, that the first object of the expedition is to get to the top of Mount Everest this year. Raeburn has been given full liberty to get as high as possible consistent with the complete reconnaissance of the mountain, and it is left at that. As for Morshead after all, he has been more than half as high again as you have been, and he did this at rather short notice. I suspect you will find him a hard man to keep up with when he has been in the field for several months on his survey work, which is I should imagine the best possible training.