Into The Silence

by Wade Davis

  Such convictions stunned and horrified many fellows of the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club, most especially desk-bound bureaucrats such as Hinks and those too old to have known the war firsthand. That the oxygen debate remained unresolved was yet another measure of this generational rift. Invoking outdated notions of fair play to challenge the use of oxygen recalled General Haig’s attachment to the horse and his refusal to acknowledge the utility and effectiveness of the machine gun on the Western Front. It was not as if gas lifted one to the summit. As Finch wrote, “Oxygen renders available [to the climber] more of his store of energy and hastens his steps, but it does not, alas! fit the wings of Mercury on his feet.”

  THAT THE Tibetan government had formally sanctioned a third expedition to Everest was announced on the evening of Monday, October 16, 1922, at a joint meeting of the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club at Central Hall, Westminster. The evening was a triumph for Hinks. Central Hall was as grand a venue as could be found in London, a great Edwardian monument to progress, built just before the war but in a baroque style evocative of the great works of the architect Christopher Wren. Above the theater hovered one of the largest domed ceilings ever constructed.

  Lord Ronaldshay, president of the RGS, opened the proceedings, moving to center stage to introduce General Bruce, who presented a brief overview of the 1922 expedition. Bruce ended his remarks by quoting a wandering holy man encountered on the road back to Darjeeling: “I hear you have climbed the Himal by means of thread,” said the sadhu, “no doubt the thread of life.” Mallory came next, and spoke in subdued terms of the challenges of wind and cold. “It is not impossible for men to reach the summit of Everest,” he said, “but unless the weather can mend the habit we observed this year, their chances of reaching it and getting down in safety are all too small.” Finch followed and recalled how he and Geoffrey Bruce had survived the night by using oxygen. To the amusement of all, he ended his brief remarks by quoting Geoffrey’s last vow to the mountain: “Just you wait, old thing, you’ll be for it soon.”

  Notably absent were the other members of the 1922 expedition. Morshead was convalescing in Darjeeling. Geoffrey Bruce had returned to his regiment on the North-West Frontier, as had Morris. John Noel remained in Tibet. Somervell was in southern India. Longstaff, sick with phlebitis, rested at his country house in the New Forest, while Wakefield had returned to his home in Cumberland without so much as stopping in London. Norton, who wanted no part of public spectacles, had happily returned to military life and a posting in Constantinople. That left available only Mallory and Finch, precisely as Hinks had hoped. Gerald Christy, the agent handling all lecture bookings, had insisted that only the two star climbers be asked to speak.

  On the morning of October 17, a notice in the Times announced that Mallory and Finch would be returning to Central Hall on Friday, three days hence, and again the following Wednesday, October 25. Mallory would speak at 3:00 p.m., Finch at 8:30. The order would be reversed at their second appearance, with Mallory delivering the evening performance, and Finch the matinee. Thus was set in motion a whirlwind of public engagements, fifty appearances alone by the end of December, that would keep both men away from their families for many weeks, and in the end tear apart the one climbing partnership that was the nation’s best hope for success on Everest.

  The problem began with money. On the first two expeditions, Longstaff, Wollaston, Strutt, and Howard-Bury had paid their own way to India; each was a wealthy man. Soldiers and survey officers such as Geoffrey Bruce, Morris, Norton, Wheeler, and Morshead took leave and after the expeditions returned to their regiments or, in the case of the surveyors, to their positions at the Survey of India. Guy Bullock by the spring of 1922 was secure in a diplomatic posting in Le Havre, soon to be transferred and promoted to Addis Ababa. Wakefield and Somervell were both highly trained and accomplished physicians and surgeons.

  Mallory, by contrast, the son of a vicar, returned from Everest unemployed, just one of 2.5 million Englishmen without work in 1922. With the help of his father-in-law, a prominent architect who provided an annual stipend of £750, he and Ruth maintained their home and social position. But he was not a man of means. Nor was his companion on the lecture circuit. Finch had an academic post at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, but the compensation was meager. He had no inheritance, a family of his own to support, and a number of other obligations, not the least being alimony payments of £100 a year to his second wife. The five months on Everest had cost him half a year’s salary, even as he spent £200 of his own money on film stock. As Hinks conceded, the two men singled out to bring the story of Everest to the public were those least able to shoulder the financial burden and sacrifice.

  As he had in 1921, Hinks offered each speaker a percentage of the lecture revenues, a third of the proceeds after expenses. Mallory, with a grueling schedule that kept him traveling throughout the fall, actually made out rather well, earning £75 in November, £225 in December, and an additional £100 in January, far more than he’d ever been paid as a schoolmaster at Charterhouse, where his annual salary was but £270. Finch, who by the spring of 1923 had delivered eighty-three lectures in Britain and abroad, remained dissatisfied. Unlike Mallory, he had already established himself as a professional lecturer before the Everest expedition and it had been his primary source of income. After suffering through a number of poorly attended events, he asked that the Everest Committee, in addition to covering travel expenses and offering a percentage of the net proceeds, guarantee a minimum fee of £25 a lecture. Hinks and Younghusband refused, setting in motion an inevitable confrontation.

  Every member of the Everest expeditions had been obliged to sign a confidentiality agreement, pledging loyalty to the chain of command in the field and agreeing to forgo any communication with the public or media, save contacts directly sanctioned by the Everest Committee. The contract further specified that any collections, photographs, or “observation” made by any of the climbers be “handed over” to the committee. The story, in other words, from start to finish belonged to no one climber but to the collective enterprise. In the short term, these provisions made sense. Aside from its legal obligations to specific news outlets—the exclusivity agreement with the Times being just one such arrangement—controlling the message was clearly in the interests of the Everest Committee. It was consistent with everything John Buchan had mastered as a propagandist during the war, and it gave Hinks the formal authority to secure and monopolize to the greatest extent possible every conceivable revenue stream. None of the climbers had been keen on the document, but they had no choice in the matter if they wanted to go to Everest.

  George Finch had reluctantly signed the agreement, but in a letter to Hinks on December 21, 1921, he had qualified his position: “I take it that I am not to be the official photographer of the expedition and that any snap shots I take, or sketches and paintings I make, remain my property subject to the control of the Committee as before.” Finch’s caveat was as imprecise and ambiguous as Hinks’s response. In a return letter the following day, the secretary split hairs by agreeing that any images taken for private use ultimately belonged to the photographer, even as he insisted that as long as the Everest Committee wished to retain rights to such photographs they could not be used privately. So the matter rested as Finch made his preparations for Everest.

  The situation came to a head in the fall of 1922, prompted by a casual request from Mallory to borrow a number of Finch’s glass negatives to augment his lecture. Both Hinks and Mallory were taken aback when Finch refused. His position was firm. At considerable personal expense he had secured arguably the best portfolio in 1922, altogether some two thousand images worth printing, and he was not about to relinquish control or allow Mallory to benefit from his efforts. In similar circumstances at the end of the 1921 reconnaissance, Guy Bullock had declined to lend Mallory his diary. Clearly there was tension. When Howard-Bury, at a meeting of the RGS, twice referred to Mal
lory as “the most distinguished climber” on the 1922 expedition, Finch took personal offense and complained in writing to Hinks. As far as lending his images, he stood his ground, writing to Mallory on October 5, “I have carefully considered this question and hold the opinion that it would not be in the interests of the Everest Committee, but also contrary in the extreme to my own interests for slides of my photographs to be shown in the public other than by myself. My style of lecturing is, as you perhaps know, essentially different from yours and is, amongst other things, chosen to set off my slides to their best advantage. Any other than my own lecturing methods would not only fail to let them be seen to proper advantage but would plagiarize them in the eyes of the public; that I cannot permit, as I wish to use these slides later when free to lecture on my own behalf.”

  Mallory almost certainly shared the contents of this letter with Hinks. The final line was the red flag. Finch would honor his obligations through the weeks and months following his debut at Central Hall, but as his note to Mallory indicated, he had every intention of returning to his private speaking career as soon as possible. As far as Finch was concerned, his commitment to the Everest Committee was limited to one lecture season following the return of the 1922 expedition. Hinks, by contrast, considered the agreement binding until the mountain was successfully climbed. Finch viewed this as preposterous, given that the summit of Everest might never be achieved. Still, he kept his side of the bargain, lecturing under the auspices of the Everest Committee through the spring of 1923, even as he contributed, without compensation, three chapters for the official account, The Assault on Mount Everest, which also featured many of his photographs.

  In the early summer of 1923 Finch, who had grown up on the Continent and spoke fluent German, was asked by friends to deliver a series of lectures in Switzerland. Demand for him as a speaker had fallen off in Britain and, as always, he needed money. Precisely what transpired remains unclear. Finch’s son-in-law and biographer, Scott Russell, maintains that permission was sought from Hinks, who categorically refused, even though Finch offered to share the proceeds with the committee. Other Everest historians suggest that Finch accepted the assignment on his own initiative, only to refuse a subsequent demand from Hinks for a share of the revenues. Whatever the truth, the conflict provoked Finch to seek legal counsel. Not surprisingly, given the ambiguous language of the original document, his solicitors advised that the agreement was in no way legally binding, a conclusion that Finch conveyed to Hinks in a letter of June 28, 1923. With Hinks away from London, the letter was forwarded to the joint secretary, Sydney Spencer at the Alpine Club, who immediately passed it on to General Bruce, who shared the contents with Younghusband. They consulted their own lawyer, J. J. Withers, a member of the Alpine Club, who essentially agreed with Finch’s legal position. This did nothing to quell their outrage. Finch’s transgression was not a matter of law; it was a violation of social convention.

  A threat of legal action in 1923 was a most serious matter. Gentlemen did not go to court; men of character did not expose their colleagues to such humiliation and shame. General Bruce viewed Finch’s letter as a form of blackmail. Finch surely knew, Bruce surmised, that the Everest Committee could never allow such a scandal to surface in a courtroom, in full view of the public and the press. All the key players—Bruce and Hinks, Younghusband, Spencer, even Percy Farrar, Finch’s most loyal supporter—not to mention the climbers, from Howard-Bury to Mallory, essentially viewed the document in question as an agreement among peers to be interpreted, as Hinks maintained, “in the broadest grounds of honourable understanding and certainly not by process of law.” To exploit a legal loophole for personal gain, as Finch appeared to be doing, was “prideful vulgarity,” the action of a “barrack room lawyer” intended only to sully the glory of the entire endeavor.

  As early as October 1922 it had been decided that General Bruce would lead the third expedition, which would indeed be put off until the spring of 1924. Colonel Norton would serve as second-in-command and climbing leader. On March 1, 1923, the general wrote Sydney Spencer with a preliminary list of suggested climbers: “Somervell, Mallory, Norton, Finch (I am sorry to say) and Bruce.” It was a less than ringing endorsement of the man who had set the height record the previous year. In a follow-up letter of March 16, the roster had changed and Finch was not mentioned.

  Three weeks later the Everest Committee announced the formation of a selection panel, which included among others General Bruce, Spencer, Collie, and Farrar of the Alpine Club; Everest veterans Strutt, Longstaff, and Mallory; as well as Noel Odell, a geologist with considerable expeditionary experience in the Arctic. The final climbing team would not be determined until late 1923, and it is unclear up to what point Finch remained in the running. He may well have been eliminated from consideration as early as March. Certainly Farrar’s resignation from the Everest Committee at the end of May, ostensibly due to work pressures, was driven by the committee’s attitude toward Finch, whom Farrar considered the finest climber in Britain. Finch’s fate was most assuredly sealed the moment the contents of his June 28 letter became known. Even Farrar was appalled. He immediately urged Finch to withdraw the letter, which he did, but to no avail. The die was cast. In London, General Bruce wrote to Spencer on June 30, saying, “Well at any rate he’s torn it now. There are compensations for everything and I think this action on his part definitely rules him out of the next expedition. What an absolute swine the man is.”

  That summer, acting on the advice of his lawyers, Finch defied Hinks and delivered the lectures in Switzerland as an independent scholar and mountaineer. In three months he earned £225. His agent pocketed £33. A belated letter to Finch from the Everest Committee requesting 50 percent of the profits went unanswered. By that point, the rupture was complete.

  In a final exchange of letters in September 1923, Finch confirmed his independence, even as he closed the door on Everest. He wrote to Hinks from Zurich, “If I am to understand that the 3rd paragraph of page 2 of your letter in reply sets me free of any further obligation to the Committee I am content. I understand indirectly that for reasons doubtless sufficient to the Committee I am not to be asked to join the next expedition, notwithstanding the relative success gained by my own party, and my subsequent very willing services in connection with the improvements of the oxygen apparatus.”

  George Finch was the finest ice and snow climber in Britain and the world’s leading scientific authority on the use of oxygen in mountaineering. As late as June 16, 1923, the members of the Everest Committee had invited him to brief them on the latest developments, even as they chose to deny him a place on the expedition because of concerns about his personal character. With no rest for two nights and a day, no food and little drink, cursed by the worst weather encountered to that date on the mountain, Finch had reached far higher and closer to the top of Everest than any climber alive. He may well have conquered the mountain, had he not instead chosen the very path of decency and humanity to save the life of his climbing companion. This may well have been lost on General Bruce during the deliberations in London in the spring of 1923, but his nephew Geoffrey never forgot. Geoffrey wrote to Finch on May 31, “I can never thank you enough for electing to take me with you on that climb, or for the perfectly astonishing way you pulled me through it all. It was wonderful.”

  GEORGE MALLORY would go to Everest in 1924 convinced that Finch had been treated unjustly. On the eve of his departure he would arrange for Ruth to invite Finch and his wife for an overnight visit on the first weekend after his return. It was a generous gesture, for if the climbers came home triumphant, Finch would not be forgotten. But in the months leading up to Finch’s dismissal, Mallory kept his distance from the entire affair. “La question Finch m’ennuie,” he wrote to Hinks on November 2, 1922, calling the Finch question boring. “It may interest you,” he added, “to hear that a cheque of his drawn to me for a sum of 2 pounds was returned through my bank with the ominous letters R.D. However, he has s
ince made good by postal orders … But this explains part of his conduct.”

  Hinks no doubt relished this bit of gossip. To bounce a check was not trivial in their social circle, and it was commonly known that Finch had taken considerable time to repay a small loan from General Bruce. Hinks’s conflict with Finch had become personal. The experience of 1922 made it almost certain that the party destined to reach the summit of Everest would do so with oxygen. Even Longstaff had come around to accept the inevitable. Finch was the strongest advocate of oxygen, and the climber with the greatest experience with the apparatus. This gave him a considerable advantage. Hinks might tolerate the use of oxygen, but he could not bear the thought of Finch becoming the first man to reach the summit of the world. Under the guise of defending the integrity of the Everest Committee, he was prepared to compromise the strength of the climbing team, and thus its safety and chances of success.

  Mallory, by contrast, felt no malice toward Finch, nor any particular affection. If he remained disengaged, neither coming to Finch’s defense nor joining the chorus of critics, it was simply because he was caught in his own whirlwind of obligations. In eight years of marriage he and Ruth had been apart as much as they had been together. His oldest daughter, Clare, was only six, yet she had watched her father go away for months at a time on five occasions in her short life. Following his return from Everest in 1922, the painful pattern continued. He had but six weeks at home before beginning a lecture swing that took him from London to Leeds, Birmingham to Bristol, Chester to Cambridge, a different city every two days for seven weeks. After little more than a fortnight at home over Christmas, he embarked alone for a three-month tour of the United States and Canada, countries he had never visited.

  It all began with great promise. Hinks booked passage on the Olympic, a luxury liner of the White Star fleet, the sister ship of the Titanic. The American agent arranged for a posh landing, reserving rooms in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria. On the way over, Mallory tried his best to prepare himself for the challenge. He struggled to understand his dinner companions—returning American tourists for the most part, many from the Midwest. Their table manners appalled him. One man, he wrote to Ruth, was so vulgar that he “often forks things off his wife’s plate.” Uncertain what awaited him, he spent hours alone in his stateroom practicing an American accent, thinking that it might help with servants and railroad porters. When the ship docked, on January 17, 1923, he got his first look at modern skyscrapers, which he described to Ruth as “immense silhouettes against the sky … all playing a part in a grotesque world of toy giants.” The city seemed unreal: great canyons of towering buildings above cross streets narrow and blackened by rain, the broad avenues with their trolley lines and rivers of cars. “New York gives the impression,” he wrote on his third day in America, “of a splendid gesture against a background of emptiness.”