An extract from 'Behind Everest – Ruth Mallory's Story – First British Expeditions' by Kate Nicholson. Ruth Mallory was a founder member of the Pinnacle Club and the wife of English mountaineer George Mallory, who died on Everest in 1924.
Chapter One - Falling
'[… during the Christmas holidays after their marriage … we three [Ruth and George Mallory and David Pye] spent a fortnight at the Pen-y-Gwryd hotel in North Wales. It was a most severe initiation; a time of gales and snowstorms, enough to daunt any but the stoutest hearted novice. I remember one occasion when we had climbed the 'Parson's Nose' and thought to go on over Crib-y-Ddysgil to the summit of Snowdon. On the ridge the gale was of hurricane strength, screaming and whirling the snow in all directions … We were roped, Mallory in front, then his wife, myself last. When the wind at length became so fierce as to make breathing difficult and steady walking impossible Mallory decided that we must get down on to the sheltered side of the ridge … I saw him point down the horribly steep looking slope and urge her in pantomime to take the plunge. From this, lacking our knowledge that it was in fact perfectly safe, she very naturally recoiled. And then there was enacted the most perfectly staged scene of mountaineering melodrama. Taking his wife by the shoulders, Mallory simply pushed her forcibly over the edge!'
David Pye, pp.74–75, George Leigh Mallory: A Memoir, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1927
© Ruth Mallory
… The vertical vignette quoted above, is written up by David Pye in his slippers with his fire crackling in the grate of his bachelor rooms at Trinity College Cambridge. By then David also has access to Mountain Craft by Geoffrey Winthrop Young, published by Methuen & Co. Ltd. in 1920. Geoffrey is George's climbing mentor. On page 25, Geoffrey advises leaders like George about what to do if they encounter what he calls 'hysterical obstinacy' in their climbing party.
The hysteria takes the form of a refusal to move up or down, and, without any violent symptoms, remains impervious to reason or direct remonstrance ... I have seen a guide use a startling slap on the cheek, in an extreme, case with good effect; or a jerk on the rope that forces the victim to scramble to recover his own footing, [which] may break the spell.
Was Ruth being 'hysterically obstinate' in refusing to dive off Bwlch Glas or just sensible? Was she scared or was she dumbfounded that George would suggest jumping when they could climb down with control?
For George danger held a deadly glamour. He told Ruth that climbing would lose its allure without the 'spice of danger'. But, for me, this particular scene, where George pushes Ruth off a mountain, addresses different kinds of risk, different species of danger. To start with, there is the gamble of who we choose to spend our lives with.
This story migrated from David's write-up into two pages of the biography he would write of George in 1927. In that biography, Ruth is, as Robert MacFarlane states, almost inaudible. David never quotes her directly. The nearest he gets is to say that 'she told me':
'She had always, she told me, been one of those who could never be at the foot of a hill without longing to be at the top.'
This gives us an insight into how Ruth later saw Everest. On some level, she must have empathised with George's 'longing to be at the top'. But David never tells us what 'she told me' about being pushed off that mountain in Wales by her husband of five months. Instead he sticks to Ruth-the-rock-climber. He explains that Ruth was 'a first rate and devoted rock-climber' with 'the spirit of the mountaineer'. What exactly happened after George pushed Ruth off that mountain? Whatever happened it must have happened within a few seconds.
Firstly, David watches George take Ruth by the shoulders. Does George push her shoulders from behind? Does she fall face forwards so that she is able to put her hands out to have some control over the landing? Or is George facing her? Does he push her over backwards so that she has to flail her arms to turn in the direction of the fall? David doesn't say, but he is obviously shocked. Later when he fixes this scene for posterity, he uses an exclamation mark. 'Taking his wife by the shoulders, Mallory simply pushed her forcibly over the edge!'
Why does David use the word 'forcibly'? Forcibly does not sound like a gentle push. Nor does it sound as if Ruth was compliant. In the next sentence David says, 'I meanwhile, guessing what he was up to, stood down on the windward side to hold her rope.' David is obliged to guess. So when David sees George take Ruth by the shoulders, he moves upwind and braces himself to take the strain on the rope.
David knows that it will only be the counterweight of his body against hers that could stop her falling as he does not have time to secure himself with a piton or other climbing gear. Ruth is about 5 foot and 6 inches, and slim. She must only have been airborne for a moment. But Ruth is wary of ropes.
In a decade from this scene, George will select a light weight 9 millimetre cotton rope with a red tracer thread to take on his final push to the summit of Everest. The tracer has a lower stretch capability than the rope itself. If that thread is broken the rope has been under too much stress and should be discarded. It is a risk reducing measure. Geoffrey might almost be talking about Ruth when on page 75 of Mountain Craft he states:
'Even when a rope shows no appreciable wear, it may have been subjected to some sudden severe strain which has robbed it of its virtue. The virtue of a rope lies in its resilience, its spring and give, not in its toughness or thickness.'
Ruth only stops falling when the rope between her and David holds. The rope between her and George should never have had to take the strain because they were roped at regular intervals and George was nearer to Ruth than David. 'Next he [George] jumped down beside her.' Does George wait until she has secured herself on the slope or is she still scrabbling for purchase on the steep snow? At some point David joins them. The ridge shields them from gale-force wind screaming over their heads – 'and soon we were all gasping in comparative peace while the wind still roared.'
Can you hear Ruth's reaction or are her words whipped away? Instead of telling us what Ruth said, did or felt afterwards, without breaking paragraph, David immediately gives us another anecdote. It seems that the incident was just one of many in the Christmas holiday fortnight at the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel, where George was testing Ruth. Immediately after pushing his wife off a mountain, George tells David to lead, to go in front of Ruth on the rope so that George can keep his wife, 'his pupil under his corrective eye'.
© George Mallory
Later, roped as a three with David in front and George behind, Ruth suddenly jumps forward. Perhaps she is jumping between two rocks, two footholds? The rope from her waist to George tightens. George is obviously shocked. It nearly pulls him out of his steps. It nearly pulls him off the mountain. 'Damn you, dear,' says George, 'you mustn't do that'.
When George pushes Ruth her reaction is not recorded. When Ruth pulls George his reaction is. David is writing George's biography not Ruth's, but David's verbatim quote is interesting. Rather like converting the worth of money into 'today's money', a century ago 'damn' was as strong as it got in front of a lady. That 'damn' was a more powerful swear word by 100 years-fold.
Did Ruth swear when George pushed her? 'I did say a lusty damn' she will admit to him in the future, on 28 May 1916. If Ruth swore back in 1914, David would have edited it out of the official record as inappropriately unladylike. Perhaps her reaction was less coherent or less distilled than a single 'damn'; more like a scream or a cartoon speech ballooned 'arggg'.
The more I try to unravel this scene and its 'damn' follow up, the more Ruth eludes me. But there are somethings that we do know. Ruth was human. When humans are pushed off mountains, when humans fall, there is a flash of adrenaline through the body. When humans are brought up short by a rope around their waists, the rope presses into the soft tissue, it makes itself felt. Sometimes when it tightens from above, when the person on the other end is above the person falling, it squeezes the ribs and pushes the air up out of the lungs. Winded lungs, a cold sweat, the heart pistoning, the brain racing so that the moment seems to slow down.
This moment will have a direct parallel on Everest in a decade's time, on 8 June 1924. The 9 millimetre rope around George's corpse, found on Everest in 1999, has a frayed end. Unlike the rope tied around Ruth's waist in Snowdonia in 1914, the one around George's waist broke. Before it broke, it tightened suddenly from above; inflicting significant bruising and damaging his ribs. For bruising like the marks found around George's torso to form, the body must have been alive for at least twenty minutes to one hour after the injury occurred. This becomes important, perhaps even central, to the story ahead. But for now, George is found on a slope of about the same incline as that down which he pushed Ruth. From barometric readings at the 1924 Everest expedition's Camp I, it is highly likely that George fell in a snow storm 'of hurricane strength'. The circumstances are strangely similar, but for the small matter of Snowdon having a height of 3,560 feet and Everest, well.
But this is not yet about Everest. This is not about George. This is about Ruth. It is about a specific moment in Snowdonia, which David describes as 'pure mountain melodrama'. 'Melodrama' rather than tragedy. The lines between the genre are blurred. Edward Whymper's Scrambles Amongst the Alps, published by John Murray in 1871, is a foundation text for George, and sets the theme for the first part of their marriage. It is George's 'bible', but I want Ruth to introduce it, to see the story not from the top of the triangle, but from her angle. For now, all we need to understand is that in this 'bible' there are etchings of the climbers in mid-air. Whymper, the author, illustrator and expedition leader has captured the moment that his teammates leave the security of the rock face, the moment their rope breaks. At the time Whymper is having nightmares. Every night he dreams that his four friends are sliding across his bedroom floor, arms outstretched, bodies intact, a surprised expression on their faces. By etching it, he can rewind to before the rope breaks, and play it forward to the moment they disappear. But in the 'bible' he has etched the very moment that they hang suspended in mid-air. He was trying to understand, to explain to the court and the court of public opinion but mostly perhaps to himself.
By slowing the melodramatic moment that Ruth is pushed off Bwlch Glas right down, by etching it, by cross hatching it in words, we might catch her expression, imagine what she feels, hear her reaction. If we can catch her mid- air, perhaps we can finally begin to understand Ruth.
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