George Herbert Leigh Mallory (1886–1924)

by Duncan Grant, 1912

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Mallory, George Herbert Leigh (1886–1924), mountaineer, was born on 18 June 1886 at Mobberley, Cheshire, the eldest son of Herbert Leigh Mallory (1856–1943), rector of Mobberley and later vicar of St John's, Birkenhead, and his wife, Annie Beridge Jebb. He had an elder and a younger sister and a brother, Sir Trafford Leigh Leigh-Mallory. His father changed his surname to Leigh-Mallory in 1914. Mallory was educated at West Kirby, at Glengorse preparatory school, Eastbourne (1897–1900), and at Winchester College (1900–05). Active as a gymnast, Mallory was taken climbing in the Alps with other students by R.L.G. Irving, a Winchester schoolmaster. In 1905 he entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he joined the Fabian Society and the Marlowe Dramatic Club, and captained his college boat. He came under the influence of Arthur Benson, his history tutor, and Charles Sayle, a university librarian who hosted a salon for the bright and beautiful.

Contemporaries admired Mallory more for his beauty than his brain. In 1909 Lytton Strachey wrote:

Mon dieu!—George Mallory! … He's six foot high, with the body of an athlete by Praxiteles, and a face—oh incredible—the mystery of Botticelli, the refinement and delicacy of a Chinese print, the youth and piquancy of an unimaginable English boy.

Holroyd, 205–6

After taking a second-class degree in history, Mallory stayed in Cambridge for a year to write an essay which he later published as Boswell the Biographer (1912). During 1909–1910 he lived for five months at Roquebrune in the Alpes Maritimes to improve his French in preparation for a teaching career. His circle of Cambridge and Bloomsbury friends fostered many same-sex romances, and there has been some question about his sexual preference in this period. In 1909 he confessed his (unrequited) love to James Strachey (G. Mallory to Strachey, 20 Dec 1909, BL, Add. MS 60679, fol. 18).

Mallory's main passion was mountaineering in the Alps, the Lakes, and north Wales. In their memoirs Geoffrey Winthrop Young, Geoffrey Keynes, and Cottie Sanders (the novelist Ann Bridge) recall climbing with him. Mallory himself wrote little about his climbing. In 'The mountaineer as artist' he compared mountaineering to music as an aesthetic experience (Climbers' Club Journal, 1, 1914, 28–40). As a rock-climber he was renowned for his grace and sense of balance, but he also had a reputation for impetuosity, imprudence, and absent-mindedness. He was often argumentative, and his vigorous defence of his ideals earned him the nickname ‘Sir Galahad’.

In 1910 Mallory became an assistant master at Charterhouse, Godalming, Surrey, where he taught English, history, and French, and introduced students, including Robert Graves, to mountain climbing. In 1912–13 Duncan Grant painted several nude studies of Mallory. On 29 July 1914 Mallory married (Christiana) Ruth, daughter of Hugh Thackeray Turner, an architect of Godalming. They had two daughters and a son. He was required to remain at Charterhouse when war came, and wrote a pamphlet, War Work for Boys and Girls (1915), to promote international understanding. He was later commissioned in the Royal Garrison Artillery as 2nd lieutenant in December 1915, and assigned to the 40th siege battery, where he participated in the shelling of the Somme.

Transferred to a staff position, he served as a liaison officer with the French and was promoted 1st lieutenant before being invalided home. After the war he became increasingly dissatisfied with schoolteaching and drafted an unpublished public school novel.

Geoffrey Young persuaded Mallory to join the first Everest expedition in 1921 because it would make his name and enhance his career as an educator or writer. In 1921 he explored the Tibetan side of Everest and reached the north col with Guy Henry Bullock (1887–1956) of the diplomatic service, who was a school-friend of Mallory's at Winchester, and several porters. Earlier they had glimpsed a valley on the Nepali side of Everest that Mallory named the Western Cwm. In 1922 he returned to Everest and reached 8200 metres without supplemental oxygen, saving the lives of three companions when they slipped on the descent. After George Finch's party went even higher with oxygen, Mallory led an ill-advised attempt to reach the north col after a heavy snowstorm that resulted in the deaths of seven porters in an avalanche.

Mallory lectured on Everest in Britain in 1922 and in America in 1923. The New York Times (18 March 1923) reported that when asked why climb Everest, Mallory replied, 'Because it's there.' This comment has been interpreted as a heroic manifesto, an exasperated evasion, or an editorial invention. Mallory's lecture notes and other news reports suggest that the phrase accurately reflects his ambiguous, sometimes mystical, view of mountaineering (Robertson, 215–20; Holzel and Salkeld, 295–8). In May 1923, he became a lecturer and assistant secretary in the Cambridge University board of extra-mural studies.

In 1924 Mallory was promoted to climbing leader on Everest when Colonel E. F. Norton unexpectedly replaced General C. G. Bruce, who had fallen ill, as overall leader. Despite a prevailing prejudice, which he had shared, against oxygen, Mallory wanted to use it after seeing the benefits in 1922, and as he became increasingly obsessed with conquering the mountain. He developed a plan to give himself the best shot at the top by using oxygen with Andrew Irvine [see below]. He told his wife: 'It is almost unthinkable with this plan that I shan't get to the top: I can't see myself coming down defeated' (to Ruth Mallory, 24 April 1924, Malory MSS). After two unsuccessful attempts without oxygen, he put his plan into action. Mallory and Irvine left their camp on the north-east ridge on 8 June 1924, and were seen momentarily through a break in the clouds by Noel Odell (1890–1987), who said they were probably on a rock outcrop known as the Second Step, below the final summit pyramid. Their location during this sighting has been the subject of debate. After they failed to return, a memorial cairn was erected at the foot of Everest, and memorial services were held at Magdalene College, Cambridge, at Merton College, Oxford, at St John's, Birkenhead, and on 17 October 1924 at St Paul's Cathedral, London. Mallory was posthumously lionized as a gallant knight and romantic hero in works ranging from schoolboy pulp to W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood's Ascent of F6 (1936).

Mallory's friends wanted to believe that he reached the summit, though this remains unproven, and it is usually assumed that he did not. In 1933 Percy Wyn Harris found an ice axe on bare slabs of rock below the First Step with markings that matched those on Irvine's walking sticks. In 1975 Wang Hung-bao (d. 1979), a Chinese climber, found the body of an 'English dead' in old-fashioned clothing on a ledge at about 26,600 feet, also below the First Step. In 1999 an expedition dedicated to searching for Mallory and Irvine found Mallory's frozen body on a snow terrace at 27,000 feet. The body was identified by a name tag sewn into Mallory's clothing. After a brief ceremony, Mallory's body was reburied in the snow on 1 May 1999.

Andrew Comyn Irvine (1902–1924), mountaineer, was born at 56 Park Road South, Birkenhead, Cheshire, on 8 April 1902, the second son and third of six children of William Fergusson Irvine (1869–1962), a merchant trading with Africa and a distinguished Cheshire antiquary, and his wife, Lilian Davies-Colley (d. 1950), daughter of Thomas Charles Davies-Colley, a Manchester solicitor. He had four brothers and a sister. He was educated at Birkenhead preparatory school, Shrewsbury School, and Merton College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 24 January 1922 to study engineering. He was tall and stout, with a muscular physique, and was nicknamed Sandy because of his blonde hair and fair complexion. He was known as a powerful oarsman at Shrewsbury and Oxford, and gained his blue as a freshman in 1922, when he rowed no. 2 against Cambridge. He was taught to ski by Arnold Lunn and he won several slalom races in the Alps. In 1923 he joined a sledging party to Spitsbergen with Noel Odell, who recommended him for Everest in 1924. Despite Irvine's inexperience as a climber, Mallory appears to have chosen him as his partner on Everest because he valued his mechanical ability with the unreliable oxygen apparatus, admired his strength and stamina, and may have seen him as a protégé. A memorial to him, by Eric Gill, was placed in Merton College grove. Irvine's Everest diaries were published in 1979.