George Leigh Mallory: A Memoir

by David Pye, Tristram Pye (Introduction), George Mallory II (Foreword)

When George Mallory was lost on Everest in 1924, his family, friends and fellow climbers contributed their personal reminiscences of the man who has since become a legend in the history of mountaineering. His close friend and climbing companion David Pye was persuaded to blend these many remembrances of Mallory into a memoir - a job which he undertook with considerable diffidence, as related in an introduction by his son to this facsimile of the 1927 edition.

Since his body was found on Everest in 1999, seventy-five years after his death, several more books have appeared about Mallory and the expedition which found him, including a reprint (also from the Orchid Press) of the biography by his son-in-law David Robertson which was first published in 1969. Most of these books, and many others about Everest, make frequent reference to this Memoir.

A bibliography with selected references to books about Mallory and Everest is also included.

--From the 2006 edition.

Genres: Biography

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1927

Reviews

[Sarah (Presto agitato) · Rating 5 out of 5]

George Mallory and his climbing partner Sandy Irvine disappeared on Mount Everest in 1924, igniting years of speculation as to what happened to the pair. Even the discovery of Mallory's body in 1999 left many unanswered questions, and some continue to wonder if Mallory and Irvine were in fact the first to summit Everest, twenty-nine years before Hillary and Norgay. While the mystery of Mallory's death made him famous, he was a fascinating character in life as well. He was one of the most talented mountain climbers of his day, but he was also an intellectual, a writer, and a teacher, as well as a close friend of many of the radical thinkers of the Bloomsbury group.

Following Mallory's death, his wife went to his friends to discuss who should write his biography. His long-time friend Lady Mary Anne O'Malley (née Cottie Sanders, the future novelist Ann Bridge) wrote a manuscript, but the climbing establishment didn't think a woman should be the one to write Mallory's biography. Mallory's friend David Pye eventually ended up publishing the biography in 1927, but he collaborated with O'Malley and used a large portion of her manuscript in his book.

Pye's biography is the only published biography written by a contemporary and friend. Unlike other biographies of Mallory, this one does not get much into the details of dates and places. Pye barely mentions Mallory's children, discusses his wife Ruth just a bit, and completely avoids any question of his homosexual experimentation while at Cambridge (for that, see Gillman's excellent biography The Wildest Dream: The Biography of George Mallory). This book focuses more on Mallory's personality, his interactions with his friends, and his thinking. In many ways it is more of a character sketch than a traditional biography, and reads like a novel.

[^ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poignantly dedicated to George Mallory’s devoted wife (Ruth) for their two daughters and son (Clare, Beridge and John); this is a book written so that the Mallory children might better know the esteemed father that dread fate had decreed they would not grow up with. “George Leigh Mallory: A Memoir” is a text of just seven chapters, from I. Introductory, through to VII. Everest: The Last Adventure; this edition being printed in London by Humphrey Milford on a satisfying thick North Wales (Holywell, Flintshire) watermarked ‘Abbey Mills Greenfield’ (above which a crown) laid paper [http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/Pape... [accessed 15-July 2013] ; the side and bottom margins of which are of a generous breadth such that the reader’s thumb and/or forefinger rest comfortably on the page without intruding upon (or marking) the printed type. With water rising from the source of St Winefrid’es (Winifred’s) Well. [see http://catholicismpure.wordpress.com/... and http://cadw.wales.gov.uk/daysout/stwi... [both accessed 15-July 2013], how oddly appropriate it seems that rain running off the mighty Welsh mountains should form part of the very making of this book!

In pondering upon the story of St Winefride/Winifred, a pure and gifted soul who was willing to sacrifice everything, even mortal life itself, for the love of God alone; I mulled over the similarities of character which came to mind upon reading David Pye’s description of the young George Mallory’s pronounced love for literature and appreciation of the arts coming but second to his lively interest in his fellow human beings, and his consummate charm and natural social skills in the art of friendship (p.17). To Mallory, mountaineering was but an extension of that higher love for mankind. Pye expresses the sentiment with precision and eloquence, “… on a rock climb the body and brain go out hand in hand to an adventure. … in no other pursuit are alertness and firmness of muscle so united under the control of intelligence. On difficult rocks there is hardly a faculty which is not called upon for the solution of the problem ahead: quickness of eye and a sensitive touch in the hands and feet, every muscle of the body performing its part in the maintenance of a balanced poise, and, most important of all, intelligent judgement served by quick observation and past experience.”(p.41).

In youth, Mallory’s future career path was anything but clear. He did not excel in academic subjects, yet he was sufficiently wise to recognise that the life of a country parson did not lie within his nature when he observed: “They’re excessively good, most of them, much better than I can ever hope to be, but their sense of goodness seems sometimes to displace their reason.”(p.57). In 1914 engagement, marriage, and a schoolmaster’s position at Charterhouse might have been expected to have turned George Mallory’s mind to the more practical concerns of domestic life and social obligations. It did not. Fortunately he had married his perfect soul mate, and one who took a positive satisfaction in promptly and efficiently dealing with practical and domestic matters.

Much of this book is firmly grounded on private letters written by Mallory. These give a unique insight into the character, honour, and remarkable inborn mountaineering abilities of the man. The pages passed quickly. Too quickly. The descriptions of Mallory’s Alpine climbs are exquisite; in several places I caught my breath; forgetting where I was.

Of the First World War Mallory speaks of the experience of cold detachment on seeing a corpse; though the scent of putrefaction, if present, immediately overrides that protective mechanism. Pye tells us how the final lessons of the War brought home to Mallory the vital importance of ideas, and development of those ideas through shared clear thinking, to produce solutions that could be implemented and personally owned by as many people as possible. Utopian perhaps, or merely the natural product of a man who always found and brought out the very best in those around him; as we would say today, a true team-player. In 1920, concerned about the Irish Question, he took himself off to that country to find out and see for himself! How many of us would have sat at home, taking no further action than reading the newspapers and listening to the radio (or nowadays tweeting an ill- or uninformed opinion)?

As the pages turned, my sense deepened that here really was a most self-effacing man who both spiritually and physically just happened / through the grace of God (depending on the views of the reader) had been made the perfect climber. No wonder on demobilisation in 1919 he had been drawn back to the Alps, now for the first time climbing without guides, reliant upon his own knowledge, guidance and expertise. That, with his wife’s full support, the Himalayas should next draw his thoughts now seemed entirely natural. Here the style of writing caught and held me oblivious to the world outside.

I hadn’t before methodically and seriously thought through how one even begins to assess whether or not there may be a viable route up the highest mountain in the world, complicated by the remoteness of that mountain and the difficulty of the surrounding terrain. Pye gives perfect form to this problematic task, describing it as being “… like asking an ant to make a plan of a cathedral: each obstacle surmounted reveals a new embarrassment of colossal proportions, and birds-eye views, except in a very limited degree, are unobtainable”.(p.113).

Great thought had to be exercised. Much great thought. In 1924 Mallory wrote to his sister (in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka) to ask her to write to him every five days, telling him the state of the weather in Ceylon. The aim was to then wire to him news of the first certain rain of the monsoon there. The Everest expedition could then calculate when to expect the monsoon. How lazy satellite weather forecasting makes us today! Yet another sharp reminder of times past lies within a letter dated April 7th, in which Mallory describes his tent. Canvas and wooden poles would be considered glamping today, let alone an oil-burning glass hurricane lamp for reading by, set on a three-ply bedside table.

I felt the loss of Mallory and Irvine more acutely in this book than in any other of the few I have read. Reading from Mallory’s letters, and the views and contributions of those who knew, loved and admired the man conjures up both a heartfelt pain for their loss, and a refreshing immediacy that those of us writing more distantly in time can never achieve

6 b/w photographs.