Mad, magnificent Englishmen (Part Three: Epilogue*)

Not all mad Englishmen sailed to conquer Antarctica; some set off to climb Everest, “because it’s there”. George Mallory made such an attempt on June 8, 1924.

He was last seen by his teammates along with his climbing buddy Andrew Irvine, making good time some 200 meters below the top. Then they disappeared. Did he summit? Was he the first man on Everest, 27 years ahead of Edmund Hillary? We will never know.

He had made a couple of attempts before, one in 1921 where the only guy in his expedition who could tell which mountain was Everest died along the way; it was left to Mallory to find the “roof of the world” and a way up via the North Face.

Expedition of 1921, Mallory is top row, far right

Today it is almost impossible to imagine the hardship and the challenges of high altitude climbing in those days.

Nowadays any person, reasonably fit, ideally under 55 years old and with between 40k y 120k to spend -depending on the level of comfort they seek- gets to the top even if it means they have to carry him/her piggyback all the way.

Mallory’s body was found face down, 500 meters below the summit, his skull crushed and both tibia and femur fractured, his mummified skin polished to a high gloss alabaster. He was immediately identified by the label embroidered with his name and sown unto his sweater; the traditional way boy’s clothes are marked for boarding school. Two things were never found. His wife’s picture which he carried in his pocket and promised to leave at the summit and his camera which could hold proof he did.

Mallory was a man of his time. He went to Cambridge and studied under Maynard Keynes; Robert Graves was later one of his students. Close to the Bloombery Set of which Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey were prominent members, this last was enthralled with him and described tall, muscular Mallory “as a Paxiteles”.

In letters auctioned not long ago, Mallory refers to him affectionately as “an old naughty sodomite”. None of this stopped Mallory from marrying and fathering 3 children and the painter Dora Carrington from falling head over heels in love with Lytton, so much she committed suicide when he died.

The English are different from you and me.

Letters form Mallory to Lytton Strachey

By the late Twenties the era of Heroic Exploration was coming to an end, but the men who keep on fascinating us are not those who reached their goals but those who died trying. Scott was not the first to reach the South Pole. He perished on the way back, during “The Worst Journey in the World”, becoming a legend. Shackleton did not succeed in crossing the Pole but he directed the most daring, inconceivably dangerous and ultimately hugely successful rescue operation ever and is buried below the 50th parallel. We will never know if Mallory conquered Everest: the mountain kept both him and his secret.

Our world has changed so much it is hard to understand what motivated these men. Their limits were defined by courage; they practiced integrity in order to attain leadership, they took care of their men. Today we are terrified of almost everything and surrounded by a myriad of rules that paralyze us while failing to make us safe.

Examples of integrity abound, none more telling and poignant than the death of “Titus” Oates, a member of Scott’s expedition. Having lost part of his heel to frostbite and gangrene, Oates knows he is slowing them down on their desperate race to reach the next deposit. He opens the tent and tells Scott: “I am going out. I may be awhile”, and disappears into the blizzard.

*They went looking for glory and trouble, and found both. Glory first.