by Wade Davis
For John Noel’s correspondence with the Everest Committee, see: RGS Box 18, File 3 and Box 31, File 4. For his account of his 1913 journey, the paper read on March 10, 1919, at Aeolian Hall, see: John B. Noel, “A Journey in Southern Tibet and the Eastern Approaches to Mount Everest,” Geographical Journal, vol. 53, no. 5 (May 1919), pp. 289–308. Accompanying this article are two photographs, captioned “North-East Glacier Flowing from Mount Everest” and “Mountains North of Makalu (27790) to Snout of North-East Mount Everest Glacier.” The credit reads, “From photographs lent by Dr. A. M. Kellas.” Kellas clearly did not take the photographs; he had been in the mountains beyond Kangchenjunga, but never as far west as Noel reached in 1913. Noel came within forty-five miles of Everest; these images of the Rabkar Glacier were taken within ten miles of the Kangshung Face. Kellas must have trained one of his local native companions and dispatched him with a camera to reconnoiter the eastern approaches to the mountain. For a splendid collection of Noel’s photographs, edited by his daughter, see: Sandra Noel, Everest Pioneer: The Photographs of Captain John Noel (Thrupp: Sutton, 2003). For biographical material, see Noel’s Through Tibet to Everest, 1989, and Reuben Ellis, Vertical Margins: Mountaineering and the Landscape of NeoImperialism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001).
3: The Plan of Attack
The January 1912 article in the Badminton Magazine (vol. 34, no. 198, pp. 14–26) was written by George D. Abraham, brother of Ashley, both pioneering figures in British rock climbing. Thomas Holdich was president of the RGS from 1917 to 1919. See: T. H. Holdich, Tibet the Mysterious (New York: Frederick Stokes, 1906).
Many important documents concerning the diplomatic efforts to secure permission from both the Tibetans and the government of India are found in the India Office Records (IOR) Mount Everest File, India Office Library (British Library) Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections (formerly Oriental and India Office Library). The file is in four parts, with one devoted exclusively to maps and charts. Part 1 (IOR L/PS/10/777) covers the years up to 1923; Parts 3 and 4 (IOR L/PS/10/778) treat 1924 and beyond. For the minutes of the June 23, 1920, meeting between the RGS delegation and Lord Sinha, undersecretary of state for India, see Part 1 (IOR L/PS/10/777). Also of great interest in this file are various exchanges referring to Howard-Bury’s initial mission, including Bell’s objections and Viceroy Lord Chelmsford’s concurrence that no expedition be authorized until the dispute over the sale of arms was resolved. For correspondence concerning preliminary plans for the expeditions, see also: RGS Box 1, Files 1–7 and 20.
In the aftermath of the attack at Loos on September 25, 1915, “The Roll of Honour” in the Times filled four full columns, a litany of the dead. During the battle Robert Graves was ordered to assault a machine gun nest in bright sunlight. His platoon ran twenty yards and, to a man, fell to the ground. He whistled the advance, but nobody stirred. He jumped from a shell hole and cursed them as cowards. “Not cowards, sir,” his platoon sergeant shouted over the din and the pain of a shattered shoulder, “willing enough. But they’re all fucking dead.”
Roland Leighton had graduated from Uppingham on a radiant day in July 1914, a month before the outbreak of the war, a cadet officer dressed in khaki, a star athlete, and the winner of seven of the school’s top academic prizes. The headmaster, in his farewell address, invoked patriotic duty and stated that if a man could not be useful to his country, he would be better off dead. Of the sixty-six boys who entered school with Roland, seventeen would, in fact, die in the trenches. Everyone who “goes out there,” he wrote to his fiancée, Vera Brittain, returns irrevocably changed after two or three months. He added, “Horror piled on horror till one feels that the world can scarcely go on any longer.”
Vera Brittain wrote the most poignant of all the war memoirs, Testament of Youth (London: Victor Gollancz, 1934). See also: Alan Bishop, ed., Chronicle of Youth: Vera Brittain’s War Diary, 1913–1917 (New York: William Morrow, 1982); Alan Bishop and Mark Bostridge, eds., Letters from a Lost Generation (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998); and Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge, Vera Brittain: A Life (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002).
Robert Bridge’s The Spirit of Man (London: Longmans, Green, 1916) went through six editions before 1919. For the actual poetry of the war, see: Tonie and Valmai Holt, Violets from Overseas: Poets of the First World War (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 1996); Jon Silkin, ed., First World War Poetry (London: Penguin, 1996); and Jon Stallworthy, ed., The Oxford Book of War Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). As late as 1936, William Butler Yeats, then seventy-one and editor of the Oxford Book of Modern Verse, excluded from the anthology the work of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Ivor Gurney, Herbert Read, and Isaac Rosenberg. Yeats maintained that the passive suffering of war, however nobly expressed, lacked the moral vision essential to poetry. Such a conceit denied both what these men had achieved in their verse and what they had endured in a conflict that had made a mockery of the very notion of morality. Though Sassoon lived until 1967, he would never write of anything that occurred after 1920. His six volumes of autobiography are the stories of a life that died with the war.
For John Noel’s record in the opening weeks of the war, see the war diary for 2/KOYLI (the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry; TNA: PRO WO 95/1558). His regiment was attached to the 13th Brigade (TNA: PRO WO 95/1548), 5th Division (TNA: PRO WO 95/1510). For documents detailing Noel’s two diagnoses of shell shock, see the medical board reports for September 14, 1914; May 3, 1915; August 3, 1915; November 6, 1915; and March 9, 1917. These are referenced in the National Archives (TNA PRO WO 338/14) but housed with Ministry of Defence records in Glasgow (MOD Glasgow P/123705/1).
Howard-Bury served with 9th Battalion KRRC (King’s Royal Rifle Corps) until December 10, 1916 (TNA: PRO WO 95/1900). He was then transferred to 7th Battalion KRRC (TNA: PRO WO 95/1897). On May 26, 1917, promoted to lieutenant colonel, he returned to 9th Battalion, where he served as commanding officer until captured on March 21, 1918, during the German Spring Offensive. See also the war diaries of the 42nd Brigade (TNA: PRO WO 95/1897) and the 14th Division (TNA: PRO WO 95/1874), as well as the King’s Royal Rifle Corps Chronicle, on deposit at the Imperial War Museum.
Howard-Bury’s personal papers are found at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). Of particular interest is his POW diary, which includes an account of his dramatic escape attempt (TCD MS 10823). Also on deposit at Trinity are two wartime diaries—one handwritten, from May 29 to September 8, 1916 (TCD MS 10821), and a second, typed as a manuscript, covering November 1, 1916 to September 25, 1917 (TCD MS 10822). Another important collection of Howard-Bury papers and photographs is found at the West Meath County Library at Mullingar, close to his family estate at Belvedere. Marian Keaney, a former librarian at West Meath, has produced two fine books from Howard-Bury’s diaries. For his 1920 journey to Tibet to confer with Charles Bell and his literary contribution to the official account of the 1921 expedition, see: Charles Howard-Bury and George Leigh-Mallory, Everest Reconnaissance, edited by Marian Keaney (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991). For an account of his 1913 explorations of central Asia, see: Charles Howard-Bury, Mountains of Heaven: Travel in the Tian Shan Mountains, edited by Marian Keaney (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990). For unpublished manuscripts, again edited by Keaney from prewar diaries, see: Charles Howard-Bury, “Rajahs, Rewals and Tigers: Travels in India 1906–1912,” and Charles Howard-Bury, “Jubbulpore to England, 1909–1910,” as well as Marian Keaney, “Lt. Col. Charles Howard-Bury: A Biographical Introduction.” See also the Howard-Bury papers on deposit at the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London, and his correspondence with the Everest Committee, RGS Box 13, File 1.
Maurice Wilson has been widely ridiculed for attempting Everest on his own, unprepared and poorly equipped. It was indeed an act of folly, but in a way no more crazy than what the climbers on the official expeditions were attempting to do. His war scars just ran deeper. See: Dennis Roberts, I�
�ll Climb Mount Everest Alone: The Story of Maurice Wilson (London: Robert Hale, 1957), and Ruth Hanson, Maurice Wilson: A Yorkshireman on Everest (Kirkby Stephen: Hayloft, 2008).
For more on the transition to peace, see: Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (London: Pan Books, 2002); David Cannadine, The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), and The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New York: Vintage, 1999); Hugh Cecil and Peter Liddle, eds., At the Eleventh Hour: Reflections, Hopes and Anxieties at the Closing of the Great War, 1918 (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 1998); C. F. G. Masterman, England After the War (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1923); Brian Moynahan, The British Century (New York: Random House, 1997); Charles Mowat, Britain Between the Wars, 1918–1940 (London: Methuen, 1955); Alan Palmer, Victory 1918 (New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1998); and Stanley Weintraub, A Stillness Heard Round The World: The End of the Great War (New York: Dutton, 1985). The Great War and Modern Memory, by Paul Fussell, is an essential source; see also his Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
For Younghusband’s May 31, 1920, address to the RGS fellows, see: Francis Younghusband, “Natural Beauty and Geographical Science,” Geographical Journal, vol. 56, no. 1 (July 1920), pp. 1–13. For Howard-Bury’s correspondence from India on his first journey, see: IOR Part 1 (L/PS/10/777) and RGS Box 1, File 8. Howard-Bury and Charles Bell first met at Yatung at the home of David Macdonald, a quaint shingled bungalow of seven rooms with a glassed-in veranda; it was surrounded by lawns and beautiful terraced gardens, which Howard-Bury much admired.
Charles Bell wrote the first books on Tibet that were scholarly in a modern academic sense. See: Charles Bell, Tibet: Past and Present (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924); The People of Tibet (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928); The Religion of Tibet (Oxford: Clarendon, 1931); and Portrait of a Dalai Lama: The Life and Times of the Great Thirteenth (London: Collins, 1946). See also Charles Bell, “A Year in Lhasa,” Geographical Journal, vol. 63, no. 2 (February 1924), pp. 89–105 (read before the RGS on December 3, 1923), as well as his introduction to F. Spencer Chapman, Lhasa: The Holy City (London: Readers Union, 1940). The contrast with the bombastic style of Claude White is telling. See: J. Claude White, Sikhim and Bhutan: Twenty-one Years on the North-East Frontier, 1887–1908 (London: Edward Arnold, 1909). For another perspective on the Chumbi Valley, see: Lawrence John Lumley Dundas, Marquis of Zetland, Lands of the Thunderbolt: Sikhim, Chumbi and Bhutan (London: Constable, 1923).
At the outbreak of the war, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama sent a message to the British authorities through an emissary, Lonchen Sholkhang: “Tibet is willing to send one thousand Tibetan troops to India, to the support of your Empire, because we realize that the existence of Tibet depends on the continuance of Great Britain’s Empire.” The Dalai Lama then entered religious retreat to contemplate Yamantaka, the wrathful form of Manjushri, destroyer of death. He would not emerge until October 1919, close to a year after the cessation of hostilities in France.
4: Hinks’s Watch
The Alpine Club Archives has a comprehensive collection of press clippings covering the Everest expeditions from 1921 through 1924. Among the headlines on January 11, 1921: “Where White Man Has Never Trod!,” “Mile Higher Than Man Has Ever Been!,” and “After Mt. Everest What?” Complete press coverage of the era is found at the Colindale Newspaper Library, an affiliate of the British Library. George Abraham’s remarks appeared in the Daily Mail on January 14, 1921. To grasp the extent of Arthur Hinks’s contribution, one need only peruse the Mount Everest Committee papers at the RGS Archives. His hand is present in virtually each of the 230 files that fill the 41 boxes of documents. For the applicants seeking to join the 1921 reconnaissance, see: RGS Box 5, Files 1–4. The more amusing letters are found in Boxes 14 and 15. For Hinks on photography, publicity, and the sale of magazine rights, see: Box 6, Files 1–6. For photographic equipment, see: Box 7, Files 1–3. Box 9, Files 1–4, contains correspondence related to botanical collecting and the sale of rare seeds. Box 8, Files 1–3, includes an exhaustive inventory of stores and equipment for the 1921 and 1922 expeditions.
On January 10, 1921, Younghusband addressed a meeting of the RGS and formally announced plans for a reconnaissance expedition. He also named the members of the newly formed Everest Committee. At a subsequent meeting on January 24, he named Howard-Bury expedition leader and Harold Raeburn leader of the climbing party. See: “The Mount Everest Expedition,” Geographical Journal, vol. 57, no. 2 (February 1921), pp. 1–3. Four important preliminary papers appeared in short order: J. N. Collie, “A Short Summary of Mountaineering in the Himalaya, with a Note on the Approaches to Everest,” Alpine Journal, vol. 33, no. 222 (March 1921), pp. 295–303; C. Howard-Bury, “Some Observations on the Approaches to Mount Everest,” Geographical Journal, vol. 57, no. 2 (February 1921), pp. 121–24; “Dr. Kellas’ Expedition to Kamet, Including His Report to the Oxygen Research Committee,” Geographical Journal, vol. 57, no. 2 (February 1921), pp. 124–30; and H. T. Morshead, “Report on the Expedition to Kamet, 1920,” Geographical Journal, vol. 57, no. 3 (March 1921), pp. 213–19. For Harold Raeburn’s correspondence with the Everest Committee, see: RGS Box 2, File 1. See also the Geoffrey Winthrop Young Collection, Alpine Club Archives. For Raeburn’s book, see: Mountaineering Art (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1920).
For Bruce’s November 8, 1920, address to the RGS, see: C. G. Bruce, “Mount Everest,” Geographical Journal, vol. 57, no. 1 (January 1921), pp. 1–21. For his military service up to May 1914, see: History of the 5th Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force), 1858–1928 (London: Naval and Military Press/Imperial War Museum, 2006). For his subsequent service, see: G. C. Strahan, Historical Record of the 6th Gurkha Rifles, vol. 1, 1817–1919 (Aldershot: Gale and Polden, 1925). For an account of operations leading up to the assault on June 30, 1915, see: the war diary of the 29th Indian Brigade, May 15, 1915, to July 1, 1915 (TNA: PRO WO 95/4272), and the war diaries of the 29th Divisional HQ (TNA: PRO WO 95/4304, 95/4305). See also: Ian Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, vol. 1 (London: Edward Arnold, 1920). Bruce’s personal file (TNA: PRO WO 374/10207) contains the “Proceedings of a Medical Board,” September 1, 1915, with a description of his wounds suffered that day. Also of interest is a letter from the India Office dated August 5, 1920, permitting Bruce to retire with the honorary rank of brigadier general, effective July 1, 1920. For Bruce’s correspondence with the Everest Committee, see: RGS Box 18, File 1; Box 22, Files 1 and 2; and Box 36, File 2. For Winston Churchill’s remarks, see: Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1991), p. 362.
For Wollaston’s early life, see: Nicholas Wollaston, My Father, Sandy (London: Short Books, 2003). For Wollaston’s two travel books, see: A. F. R. Wollaston, From Ruwenzori to the Congo (New York: Dutton, 1908), and Pygmies and Papuans (London: Smith, Elder, 1912). For other perspectives on these expeditions, see: Mirella Tenderino and Michael Shandrick, The Duke of Abruzzi: An Explorer’s Life (Seattle: Mountaineers, 1997), and Charles G. Rawling, The Land of the New Guinea Pygmies (Philadephia: J. P. Lippincott, 1913). On June 3, 1930, Wollaston was murdered in his chambers at Cambridge by an undergraduate. After his death, his wife compiled a collection of his personal papers; Mary Wollaston, ed., Letters and Diaries of A. F. R. Wollaston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933). For Wollaston’s extensive correspondence with the Everest Committee, see: RGS Box 3, File 1. Additional correspondence is found at the King’s College Archives, Cambridge, and in the Geoffrey Young Collection, Alpine Club Archives.
Wollaston described his African experiences in letters to Douglas Freshfield. On the eve of his final assault across the glaciers to the summit of the Ruwenzori, word reached him that natives had attacked his base camp, killing one man and wounding five. Abandoning the climb, Wollaston ordered a retreat that became a rout, a series of deadly encounters fought over three days. “It was impossible to take photographs,” he wrote, “for we were dodging spears and arrows all the time. It was
rather disconcerting to see one gentleman, not a dozen yards from me, take aim with bow and arrow.” The two friends fell out when Freshfield published these letters without permission (Times, October 5, 1906). The rift became so complete that Freshfield tried to have Wollaston denied a place on the 1921 reconnaissance. Charles Rothschild, Wollaston’s companion and patron, committed suicide in 1923. For Wollaston’s naval service, see the Admiralty Archives (ADM171/88, ADM171/81).
For the early family life of George Finch, see: Elaine Dundy, Finch, Bloody Finch: A Life of Peter Finch (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980). Also of great interest is a long biographical essay written by Finch’s son-in-law as an introduction to the reissue of Finch’s classic memoir. See: Scott Russell, “George Finch—the Mountaineer” in G. E. Finch, The Making of a Mountaineer (Bristol: J. W Arrowsmith, 1988), pp. 1–116. For Finch’s correspondence with the Everest Committee, see: RGS Box 3, File 3. For additional correspondence, see: Geoffrey Winthrop Young Collection, Alpine Club Archives. For a fascinating correspondence between Scott Russell and Tom Blakeney of the Alpine Club concerning the Finch controversy, see: Ref: P 10 “Correspondence on G.I.’s Obituary and Between TSB and Scott Russell,” a folder on deposit along with all of Blakeney’s papers at the British Library. See also: J. B. West, “George I. Finch and His Pioneering Use of Oxygen for Climbing at Extreme Altitudes,” Journal of Applied Physiology, vol. 94, no. 5 (May 1, 2003), pp. 1702–13.
For Finch’s army file, including a fitness report, see TNA: PRO WO 339/18080. For his record in Salonika, see: war diary, Director of Ordnance Salonica (TNA: PRO WO95/4787 and TNA: PRO WO 95/4952). Finch’s complicated personal life is also on record. The relevant papers are found in Divorce and Matrimonial Causes files, Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes and Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court Justice (TNA: PRO J77/1740, TNA: PRO J77/1768, TNA: PRO J77/1410). He married Betty Fisher in June 1915 and remained married at the time of his demobilization in May 1919. A search of the divorce papers index for 1915–21 reveals one divorce for George Ingle-Finch (file no. 3328–1918) and one for George Finch (file no. 04194–1920). These papers include evidence of his marriage to Gladys May on November 6, 1920, and copies of their correspondence from but a month later (December 5) in which she beseeched him to return to her side and he refused.