Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine Read online

  By September 1998 I was back in Britain. I told my father of my burgeoning interest in Uncle Sandy and he unearthed, quite to my surprise, a bundle of papers and photographs. That Christmas saw a further development. John Irvine, son of Kenneth, another of Sandy’s brothers, sent my father twenty-five black and white photographs of Sandy dating from 1916 to 1924, including two – well-known - of him at Everest Base Camp working on the oxygen apparatus.

  Winter turned to spring. On 3 May 1999 I awoke, as usual, to the seven o’clock headlines on BBC Radio 4. I was annoyed that I had forgotten to switch the alarm off as it was a bank holiday and I had planned to have a lie-in. I listened, half asleep, to Charlotte Green reading the news. The third item brought me to life: ‘Climbers on the north face of Mount Everest have found the body of the veteran climber George Leigh Mallory…’ I sat bolt upright in bed, my heart pounding. Thoughts tumbled around my head as I tried to make sense of what I had just heard.

  I knew that the BBC had part-funded an expedition on Everest that spring to search for the camera that Howard Somervell, a 1924 expedition member, had lent to Mallory on his last climb towards the summit. Like the 1999 climbers, however, I had rather assumed that they would find the body of Sandy Irvine which, they believed, had been spotted by a Chinese climber at about 8200 metres in 1975. To have found Mallory, however, was of monumental significance to the climbing world, throwing new light on where the fatal accident may have happened, its timing and its possible cause.

  In the days and weeks that followed the find rumours and theories abounded in equal measure. It was only when the climbers of Expedition 8000, led by the respected American guide Eric Simonson, gave their press conference in Kathmandu that the full facts about the find were revealed. There had been no camera; the further search for Sandy Irvine had not been possible for a variety of reasons, including bad weather and heroic rescue efforts of stricken climbers from other expeditions on the part of Simonson’s team. The objects they had recovered from Mallory’s body, letters, a knife, a pair of goggles, a watch with a broken hand, a broken altimeter, a handkerchief, were all put on display for the first time.

  The media briefly buzzed, three books were written as a direct result of the expedition’s findings, and yet we still knew very little more about what happened to Mallory and Sandy. Questions remained unanswered and still the climbing community could not agree on whether or not the two men were the first to stand on the summit, twenty-nine years before Hillary and Tenzing. Hillary, ever the gentleman and in a typical show of generosity, said that he would not mind if his record had been broken, but he pointed out that to conquer a summit really you have to descend successfully. On balance, the majority in the climbing world concluded that they could not have succeeded. The factors of weather, clothing, oxygen and sheer height and distance would have proven too much for the two men in the daylight available.

  The discovery of Mallory’s body had caught the Mallory and Irvine families almost completely unawares. It seemed sensible now to assemble and document all the material relating to Sandy Irvine under one roof as speedily as possible. The family set up a trust to take care of the memorabilia, such as it existed, and to deal with queries, questions and requests. I was asked by the trustees, all grandchildren of Willie Irvine, to curate the collection of material and to set about finding out as much information as possible about their uncle.

  By the early autumn of 1999 I had collected over three hundred photographs, twenty-three original handwritten letters, articles, press cuttings and much other information besides. I wanted to share this amazing collection with all my Irvine relatives but there was no practical way to do so. Instead I decided to try and spread it more widely in the form of a book. Sandy’s brief life had been filled to the brim with energy, activity, humour and kindness and as the research progressed it became clear that there was far more to know about Sandy Irvine than anyone had hitherto guessed.

  This book is a personal quest to find out more about a young man who died in the flush of youth alongside one of mountaineering’s greatest legends. His name is inextricably linked with that of George Leigh Mallory yet very little has so far been written about his short but full life. It was Audrey Salkeld who gave me the confidence and impetus to go ahead and tackle the project. ‘Get inside his head, Julie, I want to know what he was thinking.’ A challenge I couldn’t refuse.

  When I started the research I carefully sifted what we had: letters, photographs, press cuttings, Sandy’s passport and a few other items of memorabilia, which over the years had been dispersed over several Irvine family members. It was wonderful material, but I felt convinced that evidence relating to the Everest expedition was missing. I asked various members of the family to check in their attics and desks, rack their brains and talk to their siblings. All of them assured me that I had what was available and that Willie Irvine would have destroyed anything else as he was so saddened by the death of his son. Rather grudgingly I accepted this version of events, and went on with my research into other areas of his life.

  What was missing, presumed destroyed, was all the correspondence leading up to his leaving for Everest in February 1924 and everything to do with the expedition subsequent to that date. It niggled away at me all through the winter. In April I spent an evening with my uncle Bill Summers who told me a number of stories about visiting Willie Irvine, his grandfather, in his Welsh home outside Corwen after the Second World War. He had just passed his driving test and loved any excuse to drive, so motoring to Grandfather once a week gave him an opportunity for a good long run in his car and convivial company at the end. Like all the grandchildren, he was extremely fond of his grandfather and one of his pleasures was to fetch and carry books for the old man from his library, which was distributed in bookshelves throughout the house. He was always struck by the fact that Willie knew where every book was to be found and by the extraordinary care he took over his research. Every archaeological find he ever made was meticulously catalogued, labelled and preserved in cases in the study.

  Bill recalled very clearly seeing an ice axe hanging in the gun room at Bryn Llwyn and asked Willie what it was. ‘That was Sandy’s,’ he replied, in a voice which did not invite further questioning. ‘It came back from Everest without him.’ There was a similar story with Sandy’s binoculars, with a boat he had made after a family holiday in 1917, and with his gun. In other words, Willie Irvine had kept a lot of memorabilia from Sandy’s life and although no one was allowed to touch the objects, nor to talk to him about Sandy, they existed and were safely stored. This set me thinking again. Willie Irvine was an archaeologist and historian by leaning, although he had been a businessman all his working life. He followed these former interests with enthusiasm in his retirement and it suddenly didn’t make any sense to me at all that he would have destroyed anything to do with Sandy.

  I knew, from my research at Merton College, Oxford, home of Sandy’s diaries and a few letters since Willie’s death, that his sister-in-law, Agnes Davies-Colley, had been involved after Sandy’s death in fielding some of the correspondence. The story had always been explained to me that Sandy’s mother, Lilian, was so distraught by the loss of her son that she could not face the letters of condolence or contact with the other members of the 1924 expedition. Agnes, or Aunt Ankie as she was known to the family, had lived her last years at Bryn Llwyn with Willie and Lilian and had died in the house at the end of the Second World War. A meticulous hoarder, she left precise instructions as to how her worldly goods should be distributed at her death. Would she have thrown the material away? Possibly. But my hunch was not.

  As I got more involved in the story I was able to make a fairly accurate list of what I believed would have existed immediately after Sandy’s death. I was so certain that if the material was there it would all be found together that I began to nag members of the family about it. My cousin at the Davies-Colley home, Newbold, turned over attics galore, making huge bonfires of mouldy mattresses and general rubbish a
ccumulated over several generations. But there was nothing on Sandy Irvine. Finally, I persuaded another of my cousins to go through the attic at Bryn Llwyn, and locate any likely boxes which we could go through to be absolutely sure. Jenny and Julia Irvine, who have been so supportive throughout this whole research period, agreed to have a final trawl. On one of her visits up north at the beginning of May 2000 Julia collected three trunks that had belonged to Sandy’s elder brother Hugh and which had been at Bryn Llwyn since the death of his son in the 1970s. Once the boxes were in her London house she set about going through them. There was a mountain of material referring to Hugh’s life but little else. We spoke at the beginning of the second week in May when she found a very poignant letter from Lilian Irvine in June 1926 (two years after Sandy’s death) describing how she had put red roses below the Mallory and Irvine Memorial Window in the cloisters of Chester Cathedral.

  Then, on Saturday 13 May she telephoned again. She had found everything! ‘What do you mean, everything?’ I asked, flabbergasted. ‘Well, everything you said would be there is there.’ We talked for about twenty minutes and it became abundantly clear that not only had she found what I believed would exist, but more material besides.

  I soon saw that Willie and Lilian had kept all the letters Sandy had written to them from the boat, the trek and the mountain – eleven long letters in total. Then there were the most fascinating photographs from the trek, which he had sent back to his sister Evelyn. These snapshots, albeit very high quality snapshots taken on a plate camera, had been developed for him by Benthley Beetham, another expedition member and keen photographer, and Sandy had carefully wrapped each photograph and negative in paper on which he had written a description. I knew exactly what these were as he had mentioned the fact that he had sent them to Evelyn in his diary entry of 11 May 1924, but it was nevertheless a tremendous surprise to find them in amongst the papers. Then there was a roll with a piece of paper wrapped round it and on it, in blue crayon, were the words ‘Plans for Oxygen Apparatus ACI [Andrew Comyn Irvine] 1923’. I honestly held my breath as I unwrapped this bundle, and with good reason. Here was the most professional set of diagrams in perfect condition, indicating Sandy’s suggestions for modifications to the 1922 oxygen apparatus. These were sent to the manufacturers Siebe Gorman in the autumn of 1923 with long notes showing in the greatest detail, his modifications for the valves, flowmeters, cylinders, carriers, everything. But they were totally ignored. I am no scientist, but I could appreciate from the meticulous notes and exquisite drawings that Sandy had clearly spent the whole of his last term at Oxford working on the oxygen apparatus, to the considerable detriment I suspect of his own studies.

  The trunk contained other treasures too. An address book, two wallets with press cuttings about his rowing career and his brief but exciting motorbike stunts in North Wales, a leather patch from his Everest rucksack. And on the expedition newspaper clippings galore. Willie Irvine not only had kept everything, but had actively added to the archive by getting a press agency to make a collection of every cutting they could find about Sandy. The great value in this collection is that it comprises over two dozen articles from the local Birkenhead, Liverpool and Manchester papers that I had never seen.

  Last but not least I found the letters of condolence. Over seventy of them had been kept out of the 500 written to the family after Sandy’s death. Every letter was marked ‘answ’ in blue pencil and an accompanying list confirmed that Willie, Aunt Ankie or Evelyn had replied to every letter they had received.

  Never in my wildest dreams had I ever considered that such a priceless collection of memorabilia would exist. I had been writing the book for four months and now I suddenly had the material to write the story of Sandy Irvine’s Mount Everest expedition experience from his completely fresh, valid and, most importantly, personal standpoint.

  I am busy turning up the cuffs of a new suit for Sandy. At last he has finished out your old garden suit. He has not done badly at all in clothes though he is such a smut.

  Lilian Irvine to Hugh, 2 December 1914

  Sandy Irvine was born to be brave. From early childhood he stood out as a boy without fear, who would dare almost anything and, for the most part, got away with pranks that others might have been roundly punished for. Trees and ladders were there to be climbed and bicycles to be ridden as fast as possible with brakes used only at the very last minute. A strong rebellious streak and a lust for adventure were curbed only by extraordinary self-discipline, imbued in him at an early age. His early years were dominated by the strict regime in which the children were brought up, rules substituted for overt love and affection.

  Both parents had been brought up in deeply religious families, an ethos they sought to pass on to their children from the outset. They instilled in them a respect for discipline, a strong sense of duty and a feeling that childhood was at times to be endured rather than enjoyed. If some tribulation befell them, it was considered character forming.

  Sandy was born on 8 April 1902 at 56 Park Road South, Birkenhead, the third child of Willie and Lilian Irvine and was christened Andrew Comyn after an Irvine relative who could trace his ancestry to the time of Robert the Bruce. His elder brother Hugh was born in 1899 and his sister Evelyn in 1901. Then in 1906 Kenneth was born, followed in 1911 by Alec and in 1913 by Thurstan, who was always known as Tur. Until he went away to school, Sandy’s social life revolved almost exclusively around the family, with most holidays taken in North Wales or the Lakes, in the company of uncles, aunts and cousins from both sides of the family. Often there would be upwards of twenty children and thirty adults.

  Sandy’s father William Fergusson Irvine was my great-grandfather. He was known to his friends and family all his life as Willie. Physically he was splendid. At five feet eleven and a half inches he was appreciably taller than his father James. He always remained slim and his bearing, like his manner, was upright and dignified. In old age he had a ring of bright white hair around his bald head and a white moustache which lay thick on his deep upper lip. As a young man he had waxed the ends of his moustache into points but it never looked as kempt as some of the splendid specimens sported by his peers.

  All his life Willie preferred one-to-one company, but for all that he was sociable and the home in Birkenhead and later at Corwen, in North Wales, was frequently full of visitors, usually extended family and friends of the children. Eight or ten at the dinner table was very much the norm. His digestion gave him trouble throughout his life, a problem that Sandy inherited, and once he found a formula which kept him fit and well, he stuck to it rigorously until the day he died. To the end of his life he ate stewed apple and baked egg custard for pudding at lunch and dinner, and had beside him at his place at the head of the table a whisky decanter and a soda syphon. He poured a good measure of whisky into a tall tumbler and filled it to the brim with soda water. This he drank during the meal, both at lunch and dinner. As far as anyone can remember it was the only alcohol he ever drank. After lunch and dinner he would smoke an oval Egyptian cigarette with his coffee. My cousin recalled recently that early in the Second World War his daughter Evelyn bought for him 15,000 of these cigarettes in vacuum-sealed tins. At least two of these tins still survive, so he had a lifetime’s supply from the early 1940s. His routine was never varied and it clearly suited his delicate digestive system as he lived until he was ninety-three. He finally gave up changing for dinner during his eighty-eighth year.

  Willie Irvine was the second son of James Irvine and Edith Hickson. He was born in 1869 in Claughton, Birkenhead. Two sisters followed in 1870 and 1871, and a third son in 1873. Edith died in 1880 and James remarried Kathleen Emma Strong in 1884. Two further children were born. In keeping with the Scottish Presbyterian household where religious observance was dominant, Willie was brought up never to show his feelings and always to put duty before pleasure. When his mother was dying he sought permission from his father to go to her bedside and read aloud to her the twenty-third Psalm. He was eleven ye
ars old. He was a deeply sensitive person but he had been brought up to suppress his feelings at all costs, something which he passed on to his children: giving in to emotions was, he believed, a sign of weakness. He was careful, dutiful and logical, always anxious to keep to the rules yet he was in many ways a man ahead of his time. His sense of duty was coupled with a strong belief that his children should be allowed to follow their desires and inclinations as they grew older.

  Willie was educated at Birkenhead School until sixteen when he went into business with his father. He was at heart an academic, contemplative rather than competitive, and although he worked in business until he was fifty-five, he followed his academic interests and ultimately career until he was over ninety. On his retirement from business in 1927 he bought a house called Bryn Llwyn near Corwen in North Wales. His love of the countryside was coupled with his interest in the archaeological sites he discovered on the land near Bala, which he purchased in 1934. He told people he had been influenced in his decision to move to North Wales by his sons’ love of the mountains and their desire to be close to the excellent climbing in Snowdonia.