Chapter Six - Wales 1911

Jack and I went up to Wales on December 28th to join Geoffrey Young’s party and George followed three days later. I was rather dismayed because Archer Thompson took me aside and warned me solemnly against the perils of climbing with him. And how needlessly I soon found out.

At Pen-y-Pass, one of the evening occupations in the common room of the hotel was dancing, mostly of a folk variety, but when there were girls enough we would try a waltz. Geoffrey was a wonderful dancer, in all varieties, even if it was a little awkward waltzing with him being so much taller than he. Our first evening there the dancing started off with a waltz or two. I danced with my brother Jack before Geoffrey came in, but he, seeing George watching by the fireplace with a strange expression danced me over that way and said, smiling,
‘I give you back your sweetheart, Galahad.’
George blushed a little and took up the challenge, eyeing me with irony, for he could not dance – there had been some disastrous attempts at Zermatt the last time we were there.
‘I’m not keen to make a fool of myself here as well,’ he admitted, looking a little desperate.
I laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I’m horrid at it as well, so no one will notice.’
‘Yes, but all you have to do is follow!’ With that he shook his hair from his eyes, and we set off, managing quite well this time, and only bumping into one another once or twice. We did not crash into the other dancers – young Len Slingsby and her brother Will, and Kathleen O’Brien, come over with her brother Connor from Dublin, and Traff Mallory.
I caught Len looking at us several times. She was about fifteen then, and a lovely girl with big china blue eyes. Later she would become an actress briefly before marrying Geoffrey at the end of the war. He was twenty years older than she and they had first met at the house of her father Cecil Slingsby when she was four years old. I had no idea that George and I made such in impression on her then, but she told me after he died that when she saw me at the Memorial the first thing she thought of was this night in Wales. ‘Two tall beautiful graceful people, in perfect sync with one another. It was like watching the gods come down from Olympus.’ This was very flattering, but at the time it didn’t feel true at all. I felt very conspicuous, that my very unmanaged feelings were on display for all to see.

When we passed Kathleen and Traff for the third time, she said,
‘What an extraordinarily plumed bird you are, George!’ He was wearing a chequered shirt of brilliant turquoise and acid green and looked like a Chagall painting. Nearby, my brother laughed out loud at this. George had then as always his own ideas about dress only they were much wilder in those days. I had to stand a good deal of firing at his clothes and general address. Even Jack urged me to get him to cut his hair rather shorter. George was not unaware of what people thought of his artistic dress, but he felt that here, among the other eccentrics of the little climbing world, he could be himself utterly and no such comments were intended as barbs. He laughed now.
‘Thank you, Kathleen,’ he grinned as we whirled past.
‘What shall we do tomorrow?’ he asked me. I could have melted away in the affection in his gaze. ‘I’d love to show you the lake! It is enchanting, and perfect for bathing, which we always like to do after climbs.’
I had heard of the lake, Glaslyn, which was a local version of the Lake of Avalon. The whole area of Snowdonia was supposed to be the place where much of the Grail legend took place. Arthur and his Knights were supposed to have fought their last battle on the saddle of Crib Gogh, and were laid to rest on their shields in a cave, but no one had ever discovered it. Excalibur was said to have risen magically from the centre of Glaslyn, a legend given moment when in 1856 when the lake was drained a little to make way for a miner’s track, a coracle was found. The magical boat of the Ladies of the Lake? Many thought so. Glaslyn stood at a little distance from the hotel by a footpath which was unmarked, one of several.

‘Yes, please!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’m perfectly willing to be enchanted.’
‘Silly,’ he smiled in pleasure. ‘Good girl…. And Snowdon? Are you ready for the magic mountain as well? You’re not too done in already?’ I had spent the last three days in some strenuous climbs on Crib Goch and the Gully on Craig yr Ysfa.
‘No.’
‘Good. Then we shall get ourselves to the holy of holies and revel in all the gods have to offer there.’ It was a promise, as sacred as a vow to us, uttered with such affection and intimacy that other more conventional words could not hope to match.

I had come to this position about mountains by myself as far back as 1907. Zermatt was to me a sort of holy of holies. I was a good deal dismayed to find the general attitude prevailing there was so different. Of course I was much too young and silly to see how much of what I felt was probably there underneath the topography and personalities and jokes. That in George I found the same sort of ideas about mountaineering as my own – and, more importantly, a much greater capacity to live up to them, on mountains and elsewhere, than I possessed. So naturally I wasn’t going to be worried by anything so inessential as how he dressed.

But in the morning I was very ill, running a fever, with chills and dizziness, so our first expedition was a ruinous failure. I had I discovered that morning also, strained my right side and left shoulder. I felt very unlike climbing anything, indeed, doing anything. At breakfast, I sat with George and Traff, Jack and Bishop Evans, drinking tea and pushing food around my plate, hoping that no one would notice how ill I was. I didn’t want to spoil everyone’s fun; we had planned so much for this time! But George was pretty keenly observant.

‘You’ve eaten nothing, what’s wrong? You look pale.’
‘I wrenched my side yesterday on Crib Goch and I feel rather fluish,’ I admitted.
‘Well, a day in the open air will set you to rights.’
‘I don’t know if I can.’
‘Oh come!’ George cried. ‘Nothing strenuous, I promise.’
I was not enthusiastic. ‘Well.’
‘Please! We’ll put off Snowdon until tomorrow and have a nice hill-walk with Geoffrey. Come! I’ll fix it.’ How could I say no to such an entreaty? Rather feebly, I consented.
‘Good!’ George cried. ‘I’ll talk with Geoffrey!’ He looked so happy I could not bear to say that all I wanted was to go to bed.

I assented to walk up to Lliwedd with Geoffrey and George to see them start. I had a clear experience that day of a certain relentlessness in George if he thought one ought to climb. And Geoffrey was worse! We got up to the base of the mountain, after a slog up to it that seemed endless to me, though it was only half an hour at most. I felt awful, dizzy and sweaty and distinctly out of balance. My ears were ringing and the landscape looked surreal. Geoffrey peered up at the massive cliff that was Lliwedd.
‘The rocks look bone dry today, Mallory,’ he said with extraordinary cheer.
‘I think we ought to have a very pleasant day, Miss Sanders, if you feel inspired to when you get there.’
But I didn’t, and how much I didn’t! ‘No,’ I said, striving for a moderate tone over the panic I felt at the thought of being out there, possibly following an ‘interesting’ new route one of them was inventing as they went. ‘I’ll just watch you climb and sit in the sun if you don’t mind.’ It was no use. They were full of considerations.
‘But you must climb something, Miss Sanders,’ Geoffrey argued.
‘Something quite short, of course,’ George put in smoothly to mollify me. He could tell by my wary expression, I suppose, that I didn’t trust them not to take me up the Slab Climb.
‘I really don’t feel up to it,’ I offered lamely.
Geoffrey was cajoling. ‘Seriously, it isn’t any particular pleasure to either of us to do one of these things together again.’
George persisted in gentling the horse to the bridle with enticements of sweets, ‘We’ll do something with you – we don’t mind a slack day, really.’ I looked at him quite searchingly. ‘Please,’ he murmured. How could I refuse him anything?
‘Very well,’ I said. I bent to check my bootlaces and we started off, with me wondering how I would manage to get up anything when the mere walk had left me spent and shivering.

The slack day resolved itself when we were halfway up the Far East Buttress. I was bitterly cold and feeling very ill and now completely off climbing. In fact I was frightened out of my wits at being on rocks at all in that state. ‘Stop, please,’ I begged.
We stopped, and George and Geoffrey thinking me merely winded, discussed the next part of the route. They agreed, to my dismay, to the Girdle Traverse, which was a day long expedition, so called because it circled Lliwedd by arduous means about halfway up. Archer Thompson had invented it in 1907. On a good day I would have been very keen on it, but today that was too much.
‘I can’t go all the way round!’ I protested. ‘I can barely stand up as it is! Please, just take me to the top by the quickest route!’

It was a terrible admission and terrible request, but in that moment I understood Maria Paradis’ imploring her guides on Mont Blanc to just throw her into a crevasse and put her out of her misery. When heaven becomes hell all one wants to do is escape. But there is no escape. There certainly was none for me that day. I was taken to the top, but by devious routes, and with a certain strained, disapproving silence in front and behind.
George and Geoffrey had their lunch on top, but I could only be persuaded to take some Bovril which the kitchen had kindly put up for me in a thermos. This met with Geoffrey’s derision.

‘A heartening beverage for our invalid. You’d do better to take some whisky, my dear. It would warm you up, and then get moving!’
‘Oh Geoffrey, I’m so sorry to be feeling rotten and ruin your day.’ I felt miserable and resentful all at once. I had told them I was not feeling up to any of this.
‘Not at all,’ Geoffrey sniffed. He lit his pipe. ‘In a bit I shall go up Snowdon, if you two don’t mind, and George you can take our consumptive home and see she’s put to bed with a hot brick and flannel.’ He meant it as a joke, but it was everything I could do not to burst into tears. I felt very ill-used. The gorgeous view – thrilling on an ordinary day – was a hateful cold blur before me. I looked out at it stonily, unable to take in any of its healing magic. Why could they not understand that I was simply unwell, that it was not cowardice?

George took me home in sad disgrace, leading me down carefully and slowly. When we came to the long walk home, he was beside me, hands in pockets, his axe tucked into the trap of his rucksack. He was kind, but a little mocking, saying now we were in a place we could talk,
‘No more interesting bits for our invalid today, just an easy walk. You’ll tell me if you need a hand.’
He had been so kind and solicitous on our downclimb of the Buttress, that his teasing was unbearable.
‘Oh don’t, please!’ I begged, on the verge of tears.

He squinted down the way and ran a hand through his hair. ‘All right, I’m sorry. Look, can you tell me why you were frightened up there? It’s nowhere near to the level of climbing I’ve seen you do and that I know you’ve done.’ It clearly was something he had no experience of whatsoever.
I could barely speak, but managed haltingly after a while, ‘Have you never been so mountain sick that you lost all your balance and strength and ability to keep going from one hold to the next?’ I knew he had, on his first expedition with Graham Irving. ‘It’s nothing to do with desire, but actual ability in the moment.’ I paused. ‘The slope above us to the Girdle Traverse was convex and all I could think of was Donald, falling headlong into the gully! I didn’t want that to be me!’ He took my hand at this.

‘My god, you’re burning up!’ he exclaimed, seeing at last that I really was quite ill.
‘I had no business out on a mountain today,’ I said miserably. ’I only did it for you.’
George winced. ‘My poor dear. I’m so awfully sorry. I didn’t realise how serious this was. I’m sorry.’ He tucked my hand into the crook of his arm. ‘Look, we shall get you a proper tea and put you to rights. You need drink, and you’ve eaten nothing today.’
‘Thank you!’
At the hotel, he saw to it that I got a huge tea, which he patiently sat through, making sure I got enough to drink, but eating most of it himself. Afterward, as I was feeling less shaky, he offered to take me up to the lake and I agreed, but halfway there the hike left me so spent and emotional that I stopped and, as on Lliwedd, asked him to wait. Here it was again. He was trying so hard and I was ruining his every attempt to make things right by just having a nice quiet time. I was feeling almost hysterical with nerves and despair at ruining everything.

‘What’s the matter?’
He looked so perfect, with the cold sun shining on his hair, full of vitality and solicitude and good cheer, that I couldn’t bear it.
‘Please,’ I took in gulps of air, leaning on his axe weakly. ‘Go on back, won’t you? I can find my way from here.’
‘What? Don’t you want to see it with me?’ He looked quite bewildered.
‘Yes, but… oh, please! George, I feel so dreadful, please understand. I just need to be alone for a while.’
He came to me and took my hands. ‘You’re very overwrought, my poor dear, and I don’t like the idea of leaving you out here all alone.’ I protested weakly. ‘But as you insist, I will stay here. You go on up for a little, and if you’re not back here in an hour I’ll come and fetch you. All right?’
It was just the respite I needed.
‘Yes! Thank you!’
He smiled now. ‘Good girl. Just follow the path there and you’ll be there in no time. But, if you have any bother, just call out and I will come.’
‘Thank you!’

He sent me off with a kiss on the forehead and I stumbled up the path. Once out of sight – I was within sight of the lake – I let the tears flow that had needed to do since the morning, all that awful long ghastly day. By the time I reached the lake, I lay on the shore in a little nest of dry ryegrass and had some peace for the first time that day. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew there was a tickling under my chin and there was George, looking a little concerned and curious, but smiling gently.

‘Awake, fair lady, from your enchanted sleep, for I have come from afar and battled much to rescue you from your life in the lake. Hello, sweetheart,’ he smiled fully now at my bewildered glance. ‘Any better now?’
I struggled up. To my surprise, I was better. My ears had stopped ringing and I no longer felt in a cold fog. I told him so.
‘I told you it was an enchanted lake.’ He sat down next to me, with his arms about his knees. ‘I was worried about you, you know. You were not yourself at all.’
‘No. I know. I’m sorry.’
‘Not at all,’ he insisted. ‘We – I! – should have looked out after you better.’ He looked out across the black, ice-rimed lake. ‘We’ll come up here again later, but we should get you in because it will be dark soon. Can you stand and walk?’
‘I think so.’

We made it back before dinner to find that Geoffrey was in a funk, which I supposed to have resulted from his day out having been blasted by my cowardice. A frightful evening followed. He spoke to no one, and if addressed he barely answered in monosyllables or with a disarming stare. He swept in and out of the smoking room like a thunderstorm, collecting books and papers; to what end none of us could discover. Blodig followed him into the common room and then upstairs, where he was throwing the books and papers into a case, but he could get nothing out of him. Nor could Charles Trevelyan, who came down with a very puzzled expression.

‘Well?’ Archer Thompson asked from the depth of his Morris chair beside the window.
‘He said the unity of the party had been compromised,’ Charlie said quizzically.
‘What the bloody hell does that mean?’ Eckenstein asked from the mantle.
‘He didn’t say,’ Charlie responded. He looked round the room. ‘Who was with him today?’
I looked guiltily at George who held up a finger in caution. He tossed his hair out of his eyes, and said, ‘I was, for part of the day. We went up Lliwedd, and then I came down with Miss Sanders who wasn’t feeling well. Geoffrey went on up to Snowdon, and I saw no more of him until dinner.’
‘So he was alone on Snowdon?’ This from Archer, who smoked his pipe thoughtfully.
‘I assume so.’ George leaned over to me and whispered furiously in my ear, ‘It was not your fault!’
‘Something must have happened elsewhere,’ Archer concluded peacefully. Eckenstein harrumphed. A silence fell on the group like a pall.

In a moment Geoffrey came back in and went to the dwindling pile of his books and papers on the table beside Archer.
‘Eh, old man,’ Archer murmured. Geoffrey did not answer him. The only person he looked at was Len. The atmosphere was very heavy. Then, a pair of young friends of the Trevelyans, James and Charles Trayes, who were twins Len’s age, came tumbling in from the common room on their way upstairs. George, quite to everyone’s surprise, leapt up and landed before them in a wrestler’s stance.
‘All right, boys, who’s first?’
With delight, the boys fell on him and they struggled briefly, laughing all the while. It was George at his best with his Sixth Formers, and it worked: Geoffrey, standing beside the table, broke out laughing in delight at the good-natured camaraderie.
“Bless you, Galahad,’ he chuckled. He looked round the room, then back at George and the boys on the floor. ‘Bless you all!’

George had by this time got some very views as to the obligations of sociability and the importance of a certain kind of good manners – not necessarily conventional. If people were assembled together, he considered that it was laid on everyone to pull their weight and preserve the amenities, or, when necessary pull a little more. He was really disgusted by any failure in good manners.

Another instance of a breach of the camaraderie of Pen-y-Pass was the row George found himself involved in with Page Dickinson, Geoffrey’s cousin, who had befriended Connor O’Brien. He was probably the cause of the difficulty on Tryfan, which had so outraged and despaired Geoffrey. He was later a renowned literary critic, and was a masterful climber. But Page was very full of himself, and talked far too much about himself in a way that was not in the least friendly. George rubbed his head a good deal about how he was to be amended.

‘I can’t take him to task myself,’ he said, as we sat at the table the next morning. He grinned. ‘I’m much too impatient with him. I can’t trust myself to show him up reasonably. I’m much too likely to resort to Cambridge tactics.’
Jack hooted with laughter. ‘You? Ha! Never!’
George grinned. ’Well then maybe you should do it, Jack.’
Jack stopped buttering his bread. ‘Me? Why me?’
‘Yes you, with your slow, drawn-out ironies.’ I laughed at this, for Jack could be as sharp as a rapier when he wanted to and George knew it. But he continued, ‘You’ll put him out of his Munster wits.’
‘Not me,’ said Jack into his teacup. ‘He’d eat me alive. I’ve seen him wrestling.’
‘Well then,’ George said slowly, turning to me with great irony, ‘I suppose it will have to be you. Just put on your best lady of the manor and snub his overtures in your direction.’
I found myself colouring.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I replied, rather unconvincingly. Even Jack laughed at this.
‘Oh Cottie, you’re hopeless! He’s had his eye on you since he arrived and you let him.’
‘A cat can look at a king,’ I said primly. I was horribly embarrassed at being caught out flirting, in front of George. This only made things worse, they both shouted with laughter.
‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ George smiled. ‘But, something must be done! And I will see to it!’

It would take two more parties for the matter to resolve, and in the end it was Geoffrey’s graceful sarcasms, the weapon finally employed, that took effect. And then George was delighted; an intolerable offence had been removed. It had a great salutary result, for not only was to concord of the Pen-y-Pass brotherhood restored, but that between Page and Geoffrey as well; no wonder Geoffrey was upset! A family row in front of everyone, and with one of his beloved mother’s Irish relations besides. Geoffrey had adored his time as a child spent with his mother’s people in the summers, and whenever he came back from such trips now, it was always with a touch of the rolling speech of his Anglo-Irish relations.

What had happened up on Tryfan, I discovered much afterward, is that true to form Oscar Eckenstein, though he was quite senior as a climber, completely refused to lead up the critical pitch, and Dickinson, who considered himself the better climber, took the opportunity to call him a coward outright. Eckenstein wouldn’t stand for that and the little contretemps devolved to blows, which nearly toppled Page off. In any case, it destroyed the morale of the entire party, who felt they could trust neither of them. Geoffrey heard about it outside the Gorphwysfa before he came inside for dinner. Archer Thompson and Charles Trevelyan, with great concern, were waiting for him up the path.

But George was not himself yet, was not very good yet at putting his own social theories into practise. He was robust enough to keep independent of a general atmosphere and could, as we have seen, throw himself into a breach in an emergency. But he was still shy and the very definiteness and abundance of his theories hindered their successful application. One cannot make conversation on a system, and he lacked practise outside the Cambridge or Fabian milieu, which was quite different to that of ordinary society. He thought too much, and wasn’t therefore quick enough or spontaneous enough. I felt his talk rather laboured until he got really into the flow of it. All this of course applies to general conversation in a largish company; he was much better with one or two – and best of all when climbing or walking, for then his thoughts were otherwise occupied and he said what came into his head. Little quick bursts of appreciation of what he saw, ejaculations of pleasure, or comments called out before he thought on some person in sight and measured the words according to his anxiety.

Geoffrey left the next day and George took Norman Young, Geoffrey’s cousin, myself and my brother Jack up the disputed Central Buttress of Tryfan, which had caused so much bother to Eckenstein’s party. This was our first climb under George’s sole guidance. It was a cold and disagreeable day, and we had started rather late, owing to a late night before, and were chilly and discouraged when we tackled our climb after lunch. The first fifty feet took up forty minutes – we chose the hard way, certainly, and the rope was too short for comfort.

‘My god, George,’ I muttered as we stood on the nick of a ledge before the other two came up, ‘we shall never finish in daylight at this rate!’
‘Nonsense!’ he grunted, hauling in rope. He wasn’t about to have any such talk, or any more failures. He was magnificent in those terrible conditions. I can see him now, moving about over rocks like a great black cat, scolding, exhorting, and encouraging us. It was very defeating to my morale to see him scampering up and down places where we could only proceed with the utmost deliberation. But we held on our way and by half-way up he had got me at any rate into the right frame of mind, by which he was so much encouraged that he unroped from the front and let me lead. In these circumstances, I was occasionally allowed to take the easier of two ways, though never without a regretful protest on George’s part.

Perhaps fifty feet above the slab, however, there comes a bit where there is no easy way. The rock pushes you out a little, and though the holds are good, you need them and you must use your balance. I tackled it, while George watched from above in obvious anxiety. But he let me alone, let me struggle with it myself, and did not bother me with advice. When I got it just right, using the sequences of holds that made it safe and not too hard, how great was his pride and satisfaction! To compel someone else to climb a pitch well was like a personal triumph to him. He lamented dreadfully, however, that I failed on the final chimney. My shoulder was still painful and by working that excuse for all it was worth I did get let off in the end.

We hurried to the top. The space between the Shepherd and Shepherdess where one is wont to smoke and idle was, as Jack said, like the business end of a pair of bellows, so we went lower and crouched under a rock for food and tobacco, then ran down to Ogwen. There was a quantity of ice everywhere. It was a winter of bitter frost. It was dark, as expected, when we reached the Bwlch, so the descent was rather painful.

After a brisk tea, we huddled together in the wagonette, and beguiled the drive home with poetry, at George’s suggestion. Norman Young had an astonishing memory and poured out Keats and Homer, Horace and Theocritus. George contributed Shelley, and by a great concerted effort on the part of Jack, Norman and myself, the whole of Fitzgerald’s ‘Omar’ was given from end to end. George was very depressed on this occasion by his incapacity to remember and repeat long passages of poetry to any great extent. His memory for it was not very good then, and I don’t think it ever became really first rate.

We had a good climb on Lliwedd next day, doing Route I on the East Buttress with H. O. Jones, Dr. Noon, and Mr. Toddhunter on two ropes. George led the second rope, on which I was the last man and I was able to get some idea of his strength and skill and security as I watched him going up the steep rib below the Bwced Recess and dealing with the later obstacles. He did not go in for the minute precisions of style at all: on the contrary, he seemed to move with a sort of large casual ease which was very deceptive.

The following day saw another characteristic adventure. We ended up out on Snowdon all night. We wanted a lazy day and settled on the Parson’s Nose, which was well known to all of us as something short. George, my brother and I wandered over into Upper Cwm Glas and lunched dilatorily beside a frozen stream, whose surface we smashed with George’s axe when we wanted water. Then we climbed the Parson’s Nose proper.

The rocks were iced and gave us some trouble though it was an easy place. We got very cold waiting while George sought for a way and murmured our protests like the denizens of Purgatory. We were rather feeble creatures, and his patience with us on the whole was extraordinary. Down he would come, abandoning the position he had gained, with a mixture of solicitude and impatience.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Surely you’re all right there!’
‘Shift your foot!’
‘Now,’ this while he secured the rope on the nub of a belay, ‘can you wait a bit?’

Then he was off again.

When we reached the curious gap which separates the Nose from the Buttress we had an argument. It was clearly easy to get down the couloir below the gap to the scree. On the other hand, scratches of bootnails continued up the Buttress, indicating that it could be climbed by this route. Jack, looking about at the falling dusk, protested.
‘If we go up the Buttress we shan’t be off the mountain before full dark.’
‘That’s not a bother. I’ve been out here at night before.’ George said.
‘But there isn’t a moon tonight,’ Jack retorted. ‘I think we should descend. It’s very icy and I don’t want to be caught out here.’
‘What do you think?’ George asked me.
I looked up the Buttress. ‘Is this part of the climb proper?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked up at the route. ‘But if it is, I don’t want to leave it half-finished.’

Not having been there before we none of us knew how easy it was. At last, we solved the problem by unroping and lowering Jack down the couloir, whence he proceeded home. Meanwhile I climbed up on the buttress to save time and George joined me, and we finished the climb at a run, laughing in the shockingly cold air. But when we had finished it, we sat talking, thinking to walk straight up to the top and down the zig-zag. We paid little attention to the fading light and very suddenly the mist enveloped us and it was thick dark at once.

We started on again over the easy slopes at the top of the buttress. The snow was thick here, hard enough to kick steps into. George had forgotten his axe at the gap, so we just had to walk up as carefully as we could. We both imagined that when we joined the ridge coming up from the Saddle we should be at the top of Crib y Ddysgl, and have a quick run down the zig-zags. Five minutes at most. But we took a wrong turn, right instead of left, and ended up on the slopes of Yr Wyddfa; the final pyramid of Snowdon. When we began to go upwards we knew we were in the wrong place, but weren’t sure exactly where we were on the mountain. Then it began to snow, and we had no choice but to keep going upwards, to the hut at the top. We couldn’t afford to be caught out. We roped up for whatever lay ahead. But George was a comfortable companion in misadventure, unperturbed and full of optimism.
‘I daresay,’ he said, ‘that we shall manage to spend a very comfortable night if we do have to.’ Turning then, we climbed inexorably upward in the blinding snow, unable to see two feet in front of us.

It took us four hours, by my watch, to reach the hut, and by the time we did we were both frozen. I couldn’t feel my nose, and told George so when he asked for a report on my extremities at the door of the hut.
‘Ah,’ he said, and turned round. I was very puzzled, then outraged when he came back and plastered my face with snow, rubbing it in vigorously until I was spitting and gasping with anger and astonishment.
‘What the hell did you do that for?’ I demanded.
He laughed and prodded me inside the hut.
‘It will bring the circulation back,’ he said. ‘We can’t have your nose falling off like a pox victim.’
‘Well you might have warned me!’ I exclaimed, stumbling over the doorjamb.
‘No time,’ George said nonchalantly. ‘Mountain remedy.’ He smiled at me. ‘You’re obviously in the quarrelsome stage of mountain sickness, so I’m going to ignore any protests from you. Now, get those boots off and we’ll get ourselves warmed up again.’ He pulled off his jacket and hat and looked around. ‘Where the hell are the matches?’
The hut was a ten by ten foot wooden room, plastered outside but bare walls inside. It did, however, have blankets, a stove and minimal equipment for cooking. But no matches.

He searched for a bit, in tins and boxes and came up empty while I sat unlacing my boots. My feet were purple with white and very red patches. Oh dear. I was conscious of George swearing, and as he came in from collecting some wood from the pile outside the door, I remembered that I had waterproofed matches in my rucksack – for cigarettes. I dug through my sack and found them and he looked very relieved.
‘Why didn’t you hand them over earlier?’ he teased.
‘Too stupid,’ I returned. ‘Mountain sick.’
He smiled at this evidence of humour and got the fire started in the primitive miner’s stove.

We found some tea and Bovril in tins, but only one saucepan, so we had to make a choice between the two. We chose tea, because it would keep us alert, and George hated Bovril. This bit of domesticity accomplished, he sat before me after covering me with a blanket and rubbed my feet back to feeling. He had taken off his wet boots and outerwear, putting his feet into a wadded blanket and made a sort of plaid out of another of the blankets, wrapping the top around himself in a manner I had only seen in old Highland shepherds who wore the arsaid. I wondered where he had learnt it.
‘I didn’t,’ he said shortly. ‘… except maybe from reading Boswell! I thought I made it up. Necessity.’ He looked up at me, his eyes dark in the dimness, for there was only one small oil lamp to augment the glow from the stove. ‘How are you?’ the question was perfunctory and practical.
‘Better,’ I drank some of the tea.
‘Good,’ he said in the same tone.

So I didn’t know quite what to think when he reached over and pulled the blanket off from round my shoulders and rolled us up in it. The suddenness left me breathless and his cold nearness bewildered as he wrapped his arms about me.
‘What are you doing?’ I squeaked in alarm.
‘Keeping us warm,’ he said smoothly. ‘It’s not so bad is it? Stop struggling now and put your legs around mine, you’re warmer than I am.’ When I balked he lifted his head back a little and said with some irony, ‘Look, if I were trying to seduce you, don’t you think I’d make a better job of it than this?’
That got me laughing. ‘Probably!’
He kissed my temple. ‘Good girl.’

He mused a little, then, to my surprise, quoted from Tennyson, very nearly perfectly,
‘How sweet are the looks that ladies bend on whom their favours fall! For them I battle til the end, to save from shame and thrall: But my heart is all drawn above, my knees are bow’d in crypt and shrine: I never felt the kiss of love, nor maiden’s hand in mine.’
Galahad. But there was irony in it, and, as he would say, ‘something else’. He looked at me for a long moment, and I kissed him impulsively. I was awkward, but he was not, and this first real kiss left us both shaken.
‘Oh my god,’ he murmured. But he did not move away, rather drew himself closer if that were possible. I was not afraid. Perhaps it was madness, but in all that happened to us afterward, I cannot regret that night. It sustained me through so much else.
‘Go on,’ I whispered. He did, catching every nuance,
‘A maiden knight – to me is given such hope, I know not fear; I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven that often meet me here. I muse on joy that will not cease, pure spaces clothed in living beams, pure lilies of eternal peace, whose odours haunt my dreams; and, stricken by an angel’s hand, this mortal armour that I wear, this weight and size, this heart and eyes are touch’d, and turn’d to finest air.’
It was warmer now, in the little room and between us. We were no longer shivering, and there was no sound but the hiss of the stove and the white murmur of snow falling outside.
‘And what do you hope?’ Every word we spoke was hushed and intimate, and there was between us a perfect understanding.
‘Ah,’ he said. Then ‘Thy gentle words are sweeter even than freedom long desired and long delayed…’ It was Keats. Prometheus Unbound. And it set my heart thudding. ‘Henceforth, we will not part. There is a cave… a simple dwelling which shall be our own. And if ye sigh, then I will smile, and thou Ione, shall chant fragments of sea-music until I weep, when ye shall smile away…’
‘Shall I sing, Giorgio?’
He melted at this. ‘Oh Cottie, how you tempt me.’ His answer was kisses. ‘Not now, not now, but later.’ He raised himself up a little with a gaze full of affection and desire. ‘I see no fear in your eyes, sweet one. Do we take this path? Or is it wrong turning?’
I smiled at him, feeling ever so safe and warm. ‘Never wrong when an upward turning, for that way is divine.’
‘I make no promises, Cottie.’
‘I need none. I want none.’ It was a lie, later, but not then. Then I was swept away. ‘Let us like lutes touched by the skill of the enamoured wind weave harmonies divine from difference sweet where discord cannot be.’ It was rash, how rash of me, but I was folded in such trust and concord. It was as life giving as the hut and fire and the tea.
‘You outdistance me,’ George admitted.
‘So catch up,’ I offered. ‘Overtake.’
‘God, woman!’ He complained. And that was all of word games.

It was awkward, but dear and funny for that, and we had no regrets, but huddled together in snug ease and affection until the fire in the stove went out and the room was once more blazingly cold. George swore, good naturedly, and struggled out of the tangle to the stove and shoved in another split log. Then he got up and went to look outside.
‘It’s stopped snowing,’ He said, looking up into the sky cautiously. ‘And it’s cleared rather.’ He looked back at me. ‘What time is it?’ He ruffled his hair.
I squinted at my watch. ‘One.’
‘Shall we go, do you think? Or stay and scandalise the world?’ He was smiling, now, with irony.
I ached in every muscle, and wished for a proper bed, rather than the purgatorial straw tick the hut provided.
‘Let’s go!’ I exclaimed. We knew the way down from Snowdon, at least. This, anyway, is what I thought.
‘Right!’ He said.

We piled on all our clothes, which were mostly dry, and laced up boots without hurry. Snatching up a few hard morsels of bara ceirch we found in a tin, we ventured outside. There was still no moon and the sky was pitch black above an undifferentiated world of white. Our earlier tracks were entirely covered, and it was only by using George’s compass that we were able to plot a course downward from memory.

We were down to the ridge where we had taken our wrong turning in about in hour. We thought we should be able to run down the zig-zags quickly, as we had earlier intended.
But when we reached this point we saw to our utter dismay a narrow and pinnacled ridge stretching up and away into the mist. The ridge was of iron-hard snow, the pinnacle iced and feathered with hoar-frost. So much for our run! We put on the rope after a few yards, and in ever-increasing care made what haste we could along it. It took up some time and seemed interminable, but at last the rocks ended, the ridge grew broadening and we reached a rounded summit and began to descend. Here we could run, and did. But how much difficulty confronted us, to find the top of the zig zags. Between mist and darkness we couldn’t see two yards and more than once George nearly walked over the incipient cornice that crowned the ridge on the Llydaw side.

At last there was a gap in the cornice and in the gap a line of snow steps – such as you may see on Mont Blanc or the Jungfrau, plunging sideways down a snow slope which disappeared steeply into darkness. Was it the track, or was it not? I took off my rucksack and dug for the matches, which I thankfully had not left behind in the hut, and lit one after another while we regarded the ground before us. We finally determined that it
led downwards and homewards, so I stepped gingerly over the edge, with George following.

Later, in 1913, we went up there again and laughed in delight when we walked down these steps again in that snowless year. To think how twice that night we had belayed one another, but with ice under the steps here and there, no axe, no light to see where you were putting your feet – it was not a joke at the time. We were in almost painful anxiety lest we should be again on the wrong track altogether – it seemed impossible that this perilous place should be the easy comfortable zig-zags. Besides, the tracks didn’t zag! Then to our joy the tracks turned suddenly to the right and the snow showed unmistakeably the outline of a black patch far below. Glaslyn! We were immensely relieved. Nothing mattered now that we were in the right track.

George decided that this was the sort of occasion when one would really enjoy a pipe. We stopped to light it. While we were stopped, the mist suddenly parted for a moment and showed us, behind us and above, the huge snowy black and white bulk of Yr Wyddfa. In the mist and darkness, it was dim and gigantic and strange, as huge in appearance as any peak in the Alps. George saluted it with rapture almost, as a vision vouchsafed ‘just when we needed it.’
‘We’re safe now, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I could find my way from here blindfolded.’

He had such an inveterate appetite for beauty, and his response to it was extraordinary. It seemed to penetrate right through his outer defences into the very centre of his being and liberate at once, in a person then rather open to the accusation of affectation, a perfectly simple and spontaneous delight. He was conscious all through his life of this defencelessness in the matter of beauty. In one of his notebooks years later there is an isolated entry: ‘I sometimes wish people were not so beautiful – it is a hindrance to conversation.’ But he was much more comforted than disturbed by it.

We made our way down the Miner’s track to the Pyg track and when we reached it, we heard voices far off, and, presently, a light appeared in the mist, to be followed a moment later by Archer and my brother, bundled up to the eyeballs.
‘Thank God!’ Jack cried, rushing over to us. Then, ‘Where the hell have you been? We thought you were dead!’ In relief he embraced us both and said to George,
‘Don’t you ever, ever do this to me again, Galahad!’ He was really very angry. More than I had ever seen him since we were children and I used to torment him.
George smiled. ‘Dear boy, we were perfectly safe. We went up to the Snowdon hut.’ Behind him, Archer set up a call that echoed over the mountain that we had been found.
‘Eh?’ Jack said, looking at me. ‘The Snowdon hut? That was good thinking.’
‘It was entirely by accident,’ I said.
‘How do you find Yr Wyddfa by accident?’ Archer asked with an undertone of laughter.
‘Well, we did.’

‘Come, come,’ said Archer hastily, ‘we shouldn’t leave you standing in the cold, let us all get down. Jack, where’s that flask?”
Gratefully, we drained the flask of brandy Thompson provided and listened to their scolding tale of how they had waited for us after Jack had returned, expecting us before dinner, after dinner, after drinks, after the singing, but when we did not appear by ten o’clock, everyone organised into search parties all over the mountains. They were on the point of sending for the police when Archer thought he saw us above the lake in the clearing of the mist.

So a mountain adventure came to a happy conclusion this time. We had been so very lucky in all ways, and except for George leaving his axe, which he retrieved later, no harm was done. For the mountain folk, still labouring under the burden of memory of Donald Robertson’s fall, it was a tremendous relief.

I remember very clearly George’s hour-long delight on our last day in Wales. He, Dr. Noon, my brother, and I went over to look at Creigiau Gleision, above the Bethesda Dolly, where some new climbs had been discovered the previous Easter by Archer Thompson and H. O. Jones. It was a day of brilliant sunshine and velvet hoar-frost. Near and far the hills were thickly silvered over their tops of willow or tawny brown. Our way lay over the top of the Glyders, where all the bogs were frozen, so that we slid across them. Every stream we passed ran clear between borders of ice flowers – ice half an inch thick round every stem and blade of grass, shining, tinkling, bending over the stream of fairy-like and surpassing loveliness. George was enchanted. We could hardly get him past them. The sun, still fairly low, streamed through the snowy pinnacles on Crib y Ddysgl, which had so nearly benighted George and myself shortly before, tracing one side of them with a silver pencil and here and there lighting the whole side of one into a great silver flame. To see them was happiness for George.

At the end of the day, when our explorations were over, and rather disappointing explorations they were, we sat long on the top of Creigiau Gleision, feeling the hour was too perfect to leave. Behind us was a Corot sunset, so George said, tiny rose-flushed flakes of clouds in a blue and gold sky, and the beautiful long line of a green hill standing out against it. The new moon was setting over the crags of the Glyders, and down the Capel Valley, behind Tryfan, were shadows of the most intense and acquaeous blue. Sounds of the day easily rose from the farms in the valley, and from Crib Goch a tinkle of streams. We knew that we ought to be going, if we were not to be caught in darkness – again! – before we reached the Llanberis Road, but we sat on and on, in complete peace of body and spirit. I have never seen George more happy. He sat quiet, absorbing with a sort of effortless concentration the beauty about us. This until Dr. Noon, whose conscience was active, insisted that we start.

We raced down the long green tongue of turf, stumbled into Old Llanberis in the dark, and after a tea, for which we couldn’t pay, at the Temperance Hotel, tramped up the road to Pen-y-Pass, in the teeth of a great wind, still saturated through with content.

We left the next day, and he stayed on to meet Graham Irving in Ogwen. I sent him a pair of climbing breeches that I had got for him in Jermyn Street, along with a note, thanking him for all the lovely days on end. I had a letter from him several days later, protesting that no thanks were due him for all his leading, and apologising for having been in ‘such a stupid and gloomy state’ himself for part of the while. He had been clouded and depressed in the beginning of the week, which made his remarkable happiness on Snowdon and especially on our last lovely day very noticeable – to everyone.