Showing 2 results

Letter from George to Ruth Mallory, from Hotel Mount Everest, Darjeeling [Letterhead].

Full Transcript

My dearest Ruth,

These have been full days since we came up here on Friday & tomorrow, Wednesday early, we start for Kalimpong - so that our stay has been short enough, & much taken up with packing & arrangements of one sort or another. Norton has got the whole organisation under his hand & we shall economise much time & money by dumping some of our boxes en route: all the stores for the high camps have practically been settled already. He is going to be an ideal 2nd to Bruce.

The party looks very very fit altogether. We had a very hot journey through India. The hot weather apparently came with a rush this year just before we landed & the temperature must have been up to 100 a good part of the time we were in the train, as it was supposed to be 99 in Calcutta; its a grimy dirty business & I was glad to get to the end of our train journeying. I was feeling a bit short of sleep otherwise very fit. The only doubts I have are whether the old ankle one way or another will cause me trouble.

Four of us walked up to Senschal Hill yesterday afternoon to see the magnolias. I was trying my new boots from Dewberry; they are going to be good but my right ankle didn’t feel too happy.

The magnolias were magnificent, a better show than last year - four different sorts white & deep cerise pink & two lighter pinks between - they so look startlingly bright on a dark hillside.

The country here is very dry at present & a haze of heat blown up from the plains hangs about. we haven’t seen the mountains until this morning when Kanchen has very timely made an appearance. Somervell & Odell besides the General, Geoffrey Bruce & Norton etc were here before us; it was very nice to see S. again & Odell is one of the best. Really it is an amazingly nice party altogether; one of the best is Hingston our M.O., an Irishman a quiet little man & a very keen naturalist. The only one I don’t yet know is Shebbeare, who belongs to the Forestry Department & is said to be a particularly nice man; he knows all about trees & shrubs which is a very good thing but nothing about flowers. So that we shall once more be without a real botanist.

We go to Kalimpong all together, as before, tomorrow and then separate in two parties; I shall be with the second, with Norton, Hingston, Irvine & Shebbeare I believe. Noel’s movements are independent; he is more than ever full of stunts; the latest in a Citroen tractor which some hour or another is to come into Tibet a pure ad of course (this may be a secret for the present).

The Everest Committee has now among us all a wonderful reputation for muddle and the latest is that after all they gave us the wrong address & the old one c/o Post Master, Darjeeling is correct. However I shall get your letters addressed to Yatung with little delay.

The English mail should have come in yesterday but the ship was 12 hrs late & we shan’t get it until today & consequently will have precious little time for answering.

I long to get your letter dear though it will only give me 3 days’ news.

How long is it since I left you? It will be four weeks on Friday. By now or very soon you will be leaving Cambridge for a time & won’t feel so lonely. I know you must have been feeling lonely some evenings; but you will have had Frances Wills part of the time & I hope you will have been out or had people to see you sometimes too. I expect the absence of me must make you feel less busy? Have you made a fresh start with china painting?

Dearest one, I often want you with me to enjoy things with & to talk over things & people quietly; and I want to take you in my arms & kiss your dear brown head. Here’s a great holiday time it seems & you not with me. But we’ll have a wonderful holiday together one of these days won’t we?

Later - The English mail has come in & I’ve had a letter from Mother but none from you. My dearest it is very disappointing. I hoped you would catch me at Darjeeling. Perhaps you directed to Yatung in which case I shall get your letter there in 7 days time.
I lunched with Her Excellency (what a title) Lady Lytton & her family today. Lady L. is really very nice but lord how folk can live with aides de camp hanging round! 2 here & presumably 2 more at Calcutta & one civilian one military secretary!

Much love to you dearest one & many kisses to the children.
Ever your loving
George.

Letter from George to Ruth Mallory from Rongli Chu.

Full Transcript

My dearest One,

This is the great day of valley-ease & warmth & languor & the delights of the lotus-eater, & I must write to you here with my feet in the splashing stream & heaven all about me as I look up. We started from Pedong this morning – sloped easily down the 2,000 ft to the stream where I bathed last time while Noel immortalised the event; there Irvine, Odell & I bathed, properly this time, even finding a pool to dive into, and at length. Thence on ponies up to Rheenok - you should be able to follow all this on one of my old maps of Sikhim [Sikkim] – where I made some attempts at photographing the remarkable houses, & thence, not up over the pass by Ari to get here by the shortest way, but contouring the hill until we could drop into this valley 6 miles below the bungalow. It is a very lovely valley, quite one of the best parts of Sikhim [Sikkim], & we had a good walk up, quite energetically carrying heavyish rucksacks. I was wearing my new boots for the first time for a whole march & found them pretty comfortable, my ankle & hip are all going quite well too, so that I quite expect by the time we reach Phari I shall have ceased to think about them.

The weather is perfectly fine but very hazy owing to the great number of fires in the valleys. It is the custom of the country to burn a good deal of undergrowth in the forests & dead leaves in order to get better new grass in the spring – but I can’t remember anything like so much haze as this last year. Consequently we have had nothing at all of a view all the way from Darjeeling & the country is looking more dry & dead than last year; it has in fact been very dry; I hear there has been exceptionally little snow in Tibet & the plains are already beginning to look green – but this is hardly credible. Incidentally, there are sights of a change of weather this afternoon but then we had a thunderstorm in Kalimpong which made absolutely no difference!

It has apart from views been a pleasant journey so far. We started in motors for 6 miles from Darjeeling & half way down the hill Norton, Hingston, Somervell & self had breakfast with a tea planter called Lister – it is a famous tea garden I believe & he certainly gave us to drink Orange Pekoe of the most delicious flavour (a series of violent slashes at this point). After that pleasant interval we took all the short cuts hurrying down to Tista Bridge, where we arrived dripping & found our ponies; my pony which is to carry me to Phari is quite a good beast – the best I have had at this stage & my saddle is comfortable & I feel very well off altogether -; we went straight up the hill on our ponies & were in Kalimpong at 1.30 for tiffin.

At Kalimpong next day last times performances were repeated – a “tamasha” for boy scouts & girl guides & a wonderful little ceremony in the big school room with all of us on the platform singing the metrical version of Psalm 121 to the tune of Old Hundredth, & prayers, & speech making divine/mixed. Old Dr Graham is really a wonder, & if one were going to be a missionary one couldn’t do better. He has between 6 & 700 children, mostly by bastards or children of ne’er-do-well parents & does them well all round. When the old Scot is short of money he goes down to Calcutta & collects a few batches of rupees from the big businessmen who all know & believe in him & his institutions flourish.

I think I told you the names of the 2nd party, but omitted Odell. Shebbeare the forest officer is an excellent fellow; we went a little walk into the forest above Pedong last evening & we saw quite close a very fine jungle cat, about as high as Raven but with the propositions of Agapanthus or rather perhaps of the other Westbrook cat, which it does resembled in colour – S. didn’t get a very good view of it & couldn’t tell me what it was; but it is extraordinary how it makes the whole forest seem alive to see a beast like that. We couldn’t be a nicer party – at least I hope the others would say the same; we go along our untravelled way in happiest fashion.
Since I began writing the air has become unbearably stuffy & a thunderstorm is brewing. The one crab about this place is that there is no water supply which is at all likely to unpolluted – & so one drinks tea, but our tiffin tea has left me very thirsty & I long for a long lemon squash or whisky & soda. You see how completely a physical animal one has become.

I’m spending a certain amount of time & effort as we come along learning Hindustani; it is very unsatisfactory because the coolies themselves are so bad at it; but I do find already that I get on with them more easily. We shall be very short of men who can speak to porters higher up. Irvine, Odell & Beetham, none of them know a word yet.

Dearest I’m really enjoying myself now with a good holiday feeling. If I were not I should be still feeling grieved with the world because no letter has yet reached me from you. Anyway after four marches I will receive a mail. Tomorrow’s march is all up hill to Sedongchen & the next, still up to Gnatong (12,500), is the great rhododendron march, but only the very lowest will be in flower. I have in mind another little detour, by the way of variety, from Kupup, diverging to the Natu La instead of Jelap La as before.

Dear girl I think of you often & often with ever so much love & wish for your company. Would there were some way of bringing you nearer. I think the nearness depends very much upon the state of ones imagination. When it boils up as it does sometimes at night, under the stars I could almost whisper in you ear; and even now dear I do feel near you, though my state is loggish & I come very near to kissing you.

My love to Clare & Berry & John & best of all to yourself.
Ever your loving, George.