Chapter Twenty-One -David Pye 1924-1927

The members of the Alpine Club and Ladies Alpine Club, who were in the audience at the Albert Hall, as we were conveniently all together, afterwards filed in to one of the rehearsal rooms for a short joint meeting to clear up any outstanding matters of business. I walked with Eddie Marsh and David Pye, with Celia behind me with Edith Mudd. Geoffrey was far ahead with Younghusband, Len having taken Ruth home in their car. The rehearsal room seemed crowded, even though it was meant for an orchestra, for members of both branches of the club had come from as far away as New Zealand to attend the memorial and meeting. I sat down next to Celia at one of the two long tables, accepted a coffee from Eddie, who was on his way to a seat beside Geoffrey, and lit a cigarette. I was very nervous, for at some point I should have to stand up and declare that I was writing a book about George. Stand, because it would be the only way to be heard.

Charlie Bruce had no difficulty in being heard from the top of the room as he leant on the table with both hands, conducting the meeting. It was so easy to imagine him doing so in the Mess on Everest. Affable, with a big booming voice, he made the Alpine Club meetings cheery affairs, rather than the dull endurance feats they sometimes were. I have very little recollection of what he actually said, however, my mind being so totally consumed with the prospect of declaring myself. I practised in my mind over and over what I should say, and how to respond to possible questions afterward, and was so focused on what was rattling round my own head that I started when Celia tapped my arm.

‘My goodness!’ I exclaimed, and looked at her in alarm.
‘They’re asking for new business,’ she murmured in an undertone.
By now of course, I had to wait through a couple of other tabled items, and had nothing to do but twist my hands in my lap and pray for the several speakers to keep their nattering short. All I wanted was for this announcement to be over, for this meeting to be over. Why I should have been so nervous, I’m not certain, for I commonly was brazen enough about promoting my work. At last I was recognised by the Secretary and rose from my seat.

‘Thank you,’ I began. ‘I have been asked –’
‘Can you speak up please?’ Someone called out from the other side of the room. I looked but could not see the speaker. Beside me, Celia put her hand on mine, which was clenched on the table.
‘I’m sorry.’ I raised my voice. ‘I have been asked by Mrs. Mallory to write a biography, a memoir, of George, which I have already begun to do.’ I looked up at Charlie Bruce. ‘My purpose in bringing this up is that I should like the help and support of the Alpine Club, both officially and from any of its members who should like to contribute to this work –’ I broke off, for I was feeling a little breathless. ‘For any person who was here tonight, and certainly for any person who knew George, as many of us do, the importance of such a work at this time cannot be over-emphasised, and I ask the indulgence of the Alpine Club in lending the weight of its support to the project.’
Across the room, Charlie was beaming.
‘Thank you, Mary Anne,’ he said. ‘Well-spoken.’

The Secretary called for comments and questions, and I was dismayed at the sea of hands that arose all over the room, which struck me like a tidal wave. I had to sit down. The first comment taken was from Tom Longstaff, who rose from his seat as if he were an upright Tory defending tradition in the Commons and I was an impudent Liberal back-bencher.
‘I object, Mr. Secretary. A woman cannot write this book.’ He looked directly at me with what I can only describe as unveiled hostility. There was, bless them, a general cry of protest from the Ladies Alpine Club, several of whom were authors themselves.
‘Order please!’ the Secretary demanded, rapping on the table with his gavel.
‘And just why, Tom Longstaff,’ I challenged him from my seat, ‘can a woman not write this book? We climb. We know the same dangers. We take the same risks. I climbed with George, much more than you ever have, if I may say so.’
Celia shook my hand under the table, where I had clenched my fists to try to get some control of myself. ‘Good girl,’ she murmured.

‘We all know you climbed with him, Mary Anne,’ Tom said with contempt. ‘And much else besides.’ There were a few sniggers from the Old Boys about the room.
I was out of my chair. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘Order!’ called the Secretary.
Tom grinned in a leering, unpleasant way. ‘We all remember how you were jilted –’
‘Objection!’ called Geoffrey.
‘Dr. Longstaff will refrain from personal remarks,’ the Secretary said.
Tom made a little nod of assent, but was otherwise unfazed. ‘I mean, Mary Anne,’ he said, looking at me again, ‘that you are too close to the subject to be objective, and that I doubt that you or any other woman would have the analytical capacity to focus on the proper –’ there were cries of ‘Objection!’ from several of the ladies, over which Tom continued his diatribe –‘to focus on the proper aspects of Mallory’s life necessary to a biography.’
‘Say it plainly, Tom,’ I challenged.
Percy Farrar stood up. ‘He is afraid you will make it a romantic novella.’
‘Do you think that, Captain?’ I asked my old friend.
He looked at his buttons and said nothing.

There were several other questions, from the ladies, from Sir Francis, from Geoffrey, on the nature of the work and how far I had got, and what my intentions were for publication, through all of which, I think, I acquitted myself adequately. Finally the vote was taken. The show of hands round the room was very instructive, and in some cases, appalling. Those For included virtually all of the Ladies Club, Charlie Bruce, Younghusband, Teddy Norton, David Pye, Eddie Marsh, Claude Elliot, and Geoffrey Bruce. Those Against included Percy Farrar, Noel Odell, and, most hurtfully, Geoffrey Young. When I saw his hand down amongst the Fors, I met his eye and he coloured; when his hand was raised with those Against, he would not look at me. I was devastated. I could expect to be voted down by the strength of the mass of Old Boys, but not by Geoffrey!

I buttonholed him in the corridor after the meeting.
‘Geoffrey, how could you?’ I cried, on the verge of tears. ‘You who know him as well, who know us both so well! It is the deepest betrayal!’
He looked so very sad. ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ he murmured, digging out his handkerchief for me. ‘But when Tom said you were too close to the subject –‘ he faltered, the ‘subject’ being too near and too nearly lost to him also, ‘I knew that it was true.’
‘Then you write it!’ I retorted defiantly.
‘Oh dear Cottie,’ Geoffrey murmured, his voice breaking. ‘I couldn’t do it! I’m so sorry, my dear. I couldn’t do it myself either – for I am too close....’ he struggled for a moment for control. ‘Believe me, I should like to,’ he said at last. ‘But it would break my heart. For I loved him too, as you did.’
I felt bad for my anger at him, even though I was still upset. ‘I know, Geoffrey. I’m sorry.’
But that only broke through Geoffrey’s reserve, and tears sprang to his eyes. ‘Dear little Willi,’ he asked plaintively, ‘how shall we live without him?’
‘I don’t know,’ I murmured bleakly. I still wondered that myself. First my anxiety, then my anger, had sustained me, but now the emotion of the evening had all but drained me. ‘I don’t know...’

As Celia and I were waiting for a taxi downstairs, for I had refused a ride from Geoffrey and Claude Elliot, David Pye came up to us on the pavement and touched my arm.
‘Mary Anne, if it is any comfort to you, I believe in you, and the work you’ve done, and will do.’
I smiled at him wanly. Dear David. He was very like George in so many ways, even looking somewhat like him, only he was quieter, without that vibrant spark that lit up a room. But just at the moment, I appreciated his quiet kindness.
‘Thank you, David. That’s very sweet. I saw your vote amongst those for it.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I just wanted you to know from me.’
‘Not that your vote mattered to the Club, in the end,’ I continued darkly. ’But it did matter to me. You’re a good friend.’
He looked startled. ‘You’re not going to finish your book?’
‘Why?’ I raised my arm, indicating all the Old Boys. ‘They won’t support it.’
‘Oh, but surely that’s no reason not to go on!’ David exclaimed.
The taxi pulled up just then, and Celia opened the door.
I shrugged at the idea of ‘going on’ – I felt so very beaten at that moment. Nothing mattered very much.
‘Oh, you mustn’t give in, Mary Anne!’ David was saying. Celia was making urgent motions from the car.
‘Thank you David! I have to go – will you come?’
‘No, I’m staying just up the way,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk. Look, please don’t give up! It would be a terrible mistake.’
‘Thank you. I’ll think about it,’ I told him. I got in the car and closed the door, leaning back in the seat heavily.

‘Oh my God!’ I exclaimed, and dully began searching through my pocketbook for my cigarette case. I opened my mouth say more, but was too exhausted to speak. Celia was eyeing me, but I lit a cigarette and stared out of the window at the passing streets.
Celia looked at me askance. ‘I agree with David, Mary Anne. Don’t give in, not to them.’
‘Oh please! Don’t you start too, or I shall go mad!’ I cried. ‘I feel buffeted. I need a hot bath and a long drink.’
‘That at least I can provide,’ Celia smiled. She patted me. ‘For what it’s worth I thought Tom Longstaff was bloody.’
‘Thank you. So do I,’ I blew out smoke. ‘The consummate nerve of the man!’ I could feel myself getting wound up again.
‘There’s only one thing to do, you know,’ Celia said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Prove him wrong.’

Her words hung in the air, a challenge on behalf of the women to every stultifying attitude of the Old Boys, who still regarded us, after half a century, as someone to make the tea. Baroness Bertha von Suttner had won the Nobel Peace Prize; Constance Lytton, daughter of the Viceroy of India, had gone to prison while fighting for women’s general suffrage and published a scathing indictment of the prison system; Adrienne Bolland had flown over the Andes; Marie Stopes – a eugenicist like my sister Cora – had established a birth control clinic in London – but not I nor any woman had the analytical capacity to focus on the proper aspects of life necessary to a biography. It was a challenge I ought to have been disposed to take up, but just then I still felt fairly kicked about. The best I could do, as I told David, was to think about it.

About a week later I went down to Westbrook to help Ruth sort out George’s things. It was a long and painful job for both of us, to be surrounded by clothes and books and letters and climbing gear, all in heaps and piles in the great workroom at Westbrook, where they had been stored since August, when Ruth returned from Cambridge. It took nearly a week, and there were lots of tears and reminiscences along with the tea and sorting into different piles as the great mass was slowly sifted through and got into order.

After helping with the clothes – oh how extremely painful that was! I could hardly bear to touch anything in front of Ruth, for every piece was redolent, and especially those old things he had kept from our courting days – I did cry then, sobbing uncontrollably over moth-eaten jumpers or ruined climbing breeches worn on the Moine Ridge of the Aiguille Verte or the Col Du Géant or on the Central Buttress of Tryfan; ruined, tatty, half-unravelled, unfit even for climbing in, but he had kept them all. Common sense would say this was because he never threw anything away, but there was also the persuasive feeling that he had kept these shattered relics because they were tactile reminders of happy days; otherwise, why not give them over to Ruth to turn into rags or patchwork?

Poor Ruth was very patient with my emotionalism over a reminder of part of George’s life that she did not share. I was vaguely aware of her watching me with a pensive expression as we sat there on the floor; a look not unkind, but acute, prescient. She put her hand on my shoulder, and patted it tolerantly, saying nothing until I was rather more in control of myself.
‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured at last, still a little unsteady.
‘You loved him very much, didn’t you?’ she asked quietly, without weight or emphasis.
I started and raised my eyes to meet hers. They were full of a great pity.
‘I know,’ she said musingly. ‘I’ve always known it... he loved you too,’ she said faintly, then she paused and looked over the collection of George’s belongings. ‘I’m sorry, Mary Anne. Perhaps it was wrong of me to ask you to help me do this.’
‘No!’ I stammered. I most certainly did not want to be sent away. As hard as it was, there was nothing I’d rather do. ‘It needs to be done, and you need the help. Please Ruth – it’s not too hard, it helps, as I know it does you.’

‘Yes,’ she admitted wistfully. She looked out over the piles again, and her hand fell to the button of an old coat in her lap. ‘I miss him very much,’ she said, ‘and it does help,’ tears dropped on her hand. ‘It does help to do this – and to have you here...’
Her stoic grief was an agony to watch, and I hugged her impulsively, more for my own sake than hers. ‘Oh don’t be brave Ruth, dear Ruth! I won’t ever tell.’ She did cry then, properly. But it was the first and only time I saw her do so.

Anyway, after this, I was given charge of all his papers and books ‘because they will be useful to you for your work’ as Ruth said; everything except their private letters, which I couldn’t have borne anyway. Everything was there: from letters from his mother when he was at West Kirby, to his journals to teaching notes for Charterhouse, old draughts of climbing articles, to his own History Tripos from Cambridge, every term of every year. And, in a box, batches of letters and postcards from me; these, whatever I decided to do about writing the book, would stay with me, my treasure.

A day or two after this, David came by to help me sort the books and decide which should go to friends and which donated to libraries. Ruth and Marby were in and out of the room during this process, methodically taking away the clothing items to be cleaned, pressed, and given to friends and charitable societies. The books of poetry, in French or English, we left for her, and the Shakespeare as well, but when he left in the evening David took as many volumes away with him to Cambridge as he could manage in his car. It was all so sad to me, dismantling a person’s life – George’s life – in this way. We had done it with my father, but in my parents’ peripatetic rambles since the financial crash, there was very little to dispose of. This seemed obscene, somehow, though I knew it was the practical thing to do, an erasure of all that he was.

In the afternoon, needing to stretch our legs and get some air, David and I walked up to Hindhead Hill – so familiar from our old Sunday walking parties! – to sit in the windy heath above the Devil’s Punchbowl and Hindhead Common. John Tyndall had been responsible for bringing hill-walkers to this area, including some of the Arts and Crafts set, as well as writers –George Bernard Shaw and Conan Doyle among them. So George and I had continued this tradition, I mused as we sat down in that familiar place for a rest. It was good to be outdoors, in the wind and sunshine. It was chilly, but certainly not unpleasant. We smoked cigarettes but were otherwise companionably silent.

‘How is your book coming along?’ David asked after a very long time, startling me out of my musings. He sat with his arms round his knees, squinting into the lowering sun.
‘Eh! It’s not,’ I put out my cigarette on a stone. ‘And I don’t know that I will take it up again.’
‘Whyever not?’ he paused. ‘You’re not afraid of Longstaff and that ilk are you? I shouldn’t mind them and their rubbish.’
I sighed. ‘Not afraid... But it’s not rubbish either. David, what if no-one will talk to me? I can’t write a whole book about George with just my own recollections alone. Anything I could write that way I’ve done and it’s only 200 pages.’
He looked surprised. ‘I should think that’s sufficient!’
‘But it’s longhand, not typed. I need more.’
‘Well, I’ll talk to you,’ he smiled. ‘I am talking to you!’
I clasped his hand gratefully. ‘David you’re a peach, an old darling, but I shall need more than that.’

He frowned a little. ‘I could ask Benson, and Elliot –’
I laughed. ‘A fine interview that would be! Benson hates me.’
David regarded me in mild alarm. ‘I say, that’s a little rough!’
‘Well, maybe that’s too strong,’ I conceded. ‘But in any event he used to call me provoking – and I dare say I was!’
‘I doubt that.’
‘You saw what happened at the meeting,’ I reminded him.
‘That was hardly your fault. I’d say it was Longstaff who stirred things up.’ He looked into the wind. ‘Dashed unfair of him, I think, laying into you like that.’
‘Thank you.’ David had always looked to me as if he were a little prim, but the remark was positively gallant.

We sat in silence again for a little while. I stole glances at him at intervals, while an idea was growing slowly in my mind. He was deeply quiet, but not in an awkward or uneasy way. Perhaps prim wasn’t the word for him exactly. He had a good mind, David – he was a lecturer in Engineering at Trinity – but he wasn’t a romantic and had, so far as I could see, none of the mystical or romantic relationship to vistas or mountains or paintings or literature that George or Geoffrey had, and yet he was not without feeling for subtleties. Not that Tom Longstaff had been especially subtle! But David seemed to understand what it meant that there be a biography done of George.... Everyone liked him. He knew almost everyone. If David wrote a biography of George, it would be accepted by the Alpine Club, the work facilitated by those who were unwilling to talk to me.

But oh! It was such a painful idea, when Ruth had asked me, of anyone who could have done it – Geoffrey would have been an obvious choice, having published not only poetry but also Mountain Craft. She had asked me, trusting me, knowing full well how I felt, because I ‘knew him better than anybody.’ How could I give that up? Oh, but if I didn’t... the lack of support from the Alpine Club, and thus Arnold & Co. or Allen & Unwin, would mean it would be very difficult to get the book published. And what was truly more important: that it was done or that I did it? I had been pondering this for a fortnight, since the meeting. As I sat looking out over the heath, in that dear familiar place, I sought the one person who could help me in my dilemma.

George, I prayed, please help me. If you want this book written, even if not by me, please help me.

His everyday presence about the corners of my vision had ceased before the Memorial and the meeting. I thought of him of course, nearly every moment, and the vibrancy of his life was always with me, but the visits, as I must call them, were no more. Now, sitting there, in the windy heath, waiting, waiting, for some kind of sign or word, a raven streaked across the sky in the direction of the Holt. A shudder went through me; messengers of the dead, a species of them was even on Everest. Was this my sign?

We are only ever truly dead if we are forgotten. There was that warm and smiling presence I knew so well. I felt him, rather than saw. So you can hear! He was smiling, teasing. George....
Did he want the book written by me?
We have our life, dear, we have our memories. Nothing can take that away. Of course I would wish it written by you. But if it is not to be, then let another do it.
But is David the right one?
Why do you think I brought you up here? He was smiling again.

‘Are you all right?’ David asked. ‘You’re not cold?’
‘No, not cold,’ I mused. Then I turned to him. ‘David, would you write the book?’
‘Hullo!’ He started. ‘What’s this? Me?’
I smiled at him. Squinting that way, with the wind blowing his dark hair about he looked ever so much like George. ‘Yes, you!’
‘But, Mary Anne, I’m not a writer! I don’t know the first thing –’ he protested.
‘But you’ve written papers –’
‘Scientific ones!’
‘And you knew him. It will be fun.’
‘I’d be at sea,’ he protested further.


An idea bloomed. ‘I’ll help you! You can have everything I’ve done thus far and I’ll help you every step of the way.’
He shook his hair from his eyes. ‘Do you mean like ghost-writing?’
I laughed. ‘There would be more than one ghost in this venture!’
‘What?’
I smiled, not wanting to divulge that secret. ‘Nothing.’

‘But why should I write it, when I know nothing of writing? Why can’t you write it and put my name to it? I could do that.’
It was a gallant offer. But, ‘the AC will know. Besides,’ I continued, ‘there are people who need to be interviewed who won’t talk to me now if they know I’m involved, after that meeting! If you did it, there would be no problem.’
He frowned. ‘But why should I do it, when there are so many better choices? What about Young?’
I lit a cigarette. ‘I asked him,’ I said shortly. ‘He won’t. He said he’s too near the subject.’ I blew out smoke. ‘David, please. You’d enjoy it.’
‘I’d like to see that!’ he scoffed warily. ‘How?’
‘Because....’ I searched for the right words. ‘Because it would be... psychologically interesting. There! Is that scientific enough?’ I smiled. ‘No ordinary person knows what makes mountaineers climb, certainly not what made George climb, made George determined to go out the last time –’ I stopped, remembering too well the nightmares, the Sunday telephone calls, the visit to Hilt and Katherine....

‘I say,’ David exclaimed, ‘are you well? You look awfully pale suddenly.’
I drew a shuddering breath, hastening away from that darting pain, the persistent feeling that I should have done more to persuade him not to go. ‘Yes, yes’ I hastened weakly, not well at all; at least, not on an even keel. I felt sick and dizzy.
‘Steady on!’ I heard David dimly. He threw an arm about my shoulder and caught me before I ever realised that I had swayed. Not being given to fainting, I was rather bewildered when I came back to my senses to find myself in his arms.

‘What –’ I felt sluggish and could hardly speak.
He was smiling slightly now, in relief. ‘You fainted, silly thing. But it’s all right now.’
It was something George would have said. Once again, there was that acute pain in the chest. Was this, I wondered vaguely, what was meant by heartache? If it was, it was very real indeed.
‘Oh!’ I looked at him through a blur of tears.
‘Hey,’ David said gently, misunderstanding. ‘Hey, oh Mary Anne, don’t cry. I’m terribly sorry; it was only a little joke. Oh damnation!’ He touched my face. That too, was so very like George, which only made me more miserable.
‘Ah!’ I shook my head a little, in such a muddle. ‘No, David, it’s not you. I –’ He was so very near, so very tender and kind, really kind, and in that moment, so much like our George that my impulses got the better of me, and I kissed him.

Well, he didn’t refuse, which shocked me a little – he was so mild and quiet, one hardly would have suspected him of passion – and when he didn’t I simply relaxed into what was in fact a quite nice kiss.
‘Well now,’ he said, when it was done.
I smiled at him. ‘You’re not embarrassed?’
He gave me an ironic look. ‘Well, you are married.’
‘In name only!’ I struggled up to my elbows from where I lay in the heath, and looked out over the Punchbowl.
‘Hullo!’ His face was full of concern.
I shook my head impatiently. ‘It’s been this way for ever,’ I said shortly.
He leaned back and regarded me seriously. ‘You’re unhappy? You’ve always been unhappy?’
‘Yes,’ I said flatly.
‘Oh my poor dear girl.’ He held my hand and looked at me enquiringly. His sweet kindness brought tears to my eyes again.
‘Oh, David, please don’t! You’re too kind!’ I exclaimed. ‘It hurts too much when people are kind.’
‘Oh dear,’ he fretted, looking over my face. ‘But dear Mary Anne, you should know I’ve always admired you.’

That brought me up. ‘Admired!’
He nodded. ‘Oh yes! Since I met you at Cambridge. But you were George’s girl, and then you were married, and it wasn’t right to say – do you mean you really didn’t know?’
It would have been unkind to admit that no such thought of him had ever crossed my mind. But it was sweet to think that he had ‘admired’ me all that while. Ha! Fancied. He was too much the gentleman even to say it outright. It was very dear, and flattering, and salving.
‘No.’ I looked at him wistfully. ‘Oh, David you are such a darling. Any woman would be mad for you.’
He shook his head, very seriously. ‘It hasn’t been the case. I – I suppose I’m too shy, or been too busy, or –’
‘Surely, you don’t want to end up like Benson?’ I teased, because the loneliness in his voice was so poignant. To my relief, he laughed.
‘No, not like Benson.’ He sighed and looked out over the Wey valley. ‘Oh dear,’ He said slowly.

‘Hmm?’
‘What are we to do now?’ He looked at me.
‘Need we do anything?’ I smiled. ‘I’m not so Victorian as that, David.’ I thought of Bloomsbury, but as George had done with Ruth, the less said of that the better, here. It would not be understood.
‘But –’ He faltered, and I realised that I had hurt his feelings, realised that under his quiet exterior was a deeply sensitive man. I knew about that from meeting George.
‘Oh, darling, that’s not what I meant!’ I hastened. ‘Poor David. You mustn’t mind my little jokes. It’s not that I don’t like you.’
‘Do you?’ He asked it in such an ingenuous, delighted way that I was ashamed of having noticed so little of his interest over the years. How could I see anyone but George? But George – oh! George was dead and life would go on so very long and would be so lonely...
‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘I do.’ He looked so happy that it was painful to see. But would George understand this? To hell with Owen understanding it – that mattered not a jot.

Why do you think I brought you up here? A gust of wind brought that voice in my ear, and I could almost hear him chuckling. But that permission, if such it was, was painful too. It seemed too much like letting go.... and yet, when I looked into David’s eyes, there was something of George there, the same essential decency, the same kindness, and concern – and he knew... oh he knew all that history. One heard of widows marrying their husband’s best friend often enough, doubtless for the same reason. But... I wasn’t sure if I wanted to have an affair with anyone, even David, now or ever.

‘It would be an affair, I realise,’ he said, echoing my thoughts. He looked up at me. ‘And that might be difficult.’
‘No, it happened once before,’ I blurted thoughtlessly, before I could stop the words.
David started. ‘It did!’
I felt myself colouring. ‘It really was only literally once,’ I hastened. ‘And—‘ I could barely speak. My throat closed and I felt hot and prickly. It would be a bad show to faint twice in one day. I shook my head violently.
‘Was it awful?’
I was surprised at the question. He really was interested in psychology! That was not off the mark.
‘No. On the contrary.’
‘Who was it?’ he asked, curious now. ‘Do you mind my asking?’
I shook my head vigorously again and looked at him. I couldn’t say it. But perhaps something in the raw misery of my expression gave me away, for he drew in a breath and nodded a little.
‘Oh.’ His gaze fell, thoughtfully, to the heath, and after a moment, he said quietly. ‘Poor Mary Anne. Your heart never changed, did it?’
It was an unbearable question. I could not speak, but only shake my head. David stopped picking at the heath and looked up.
‘Is it changed now?’
This too was an aching question, but for him, not for me. There was something so vulnerable in his expression; the question underneath the asked one so plain and echoey that I felt ashamed. Truth was the only recourse.

‘I don’t know that it ever can be,’ I admitted. I reached for his hand. ‘But David, life goes on, and we are alive, and it would be morbid to think that one must be immolated, haunted forever by a ghost, refusing life, refusing love where it is offered.’ But there would forever be Grania. Now, however, was not the time for that. ‘I feel very muddled, just now,’ I admitted. ‘Very kicked about, stunned. I can’t deny how I felt for him – and I – I probably always shall feel. But,’ I looked into his lovely blue eyes and meant no words more sincerely, ‘what I felt just now with you was real too. Can you live with that?’
The echo of those words was so affecting to me. I knew now how it felt to be on the other side of them. They brought tears to my eyes. I wished that I could have been so worthy of the response that David gave me:
‘I can, dear Mary Anne, because I loved him too.’

The wind came up and the clouds began to lower, and we made our way back down the hill then, for it was along walk back to Westbrook. Before we reached the road, I swung his hand in mine and looked at him sidelong.
‘So, have we a book to write?’ I entreated with a smile.
His look was so fond and happy. ‘Yes, dear girl, do let’s.’

All through the autumn and the spring, whenever he had a moment, David would go and interview our friends and the old masters at Cambridge. I sent him what I had of the manuscript and when we were together we worked on it, he asking me questions and more details. There were some parts which only he could write in any case – climbs they had made in the Alps and in Wales – and he added much to what I had written of Cambridge days, knowing it better than I could myself. I went down to see him once a week or so, staying in the town but visiting his rooms at Trinity. We had to be very circumspect, but at least as far as Owen and the climbing world were concerned the meetings were utterly legitimate. Word got round of course that he had ‘decided’ to write a book, but as no one had seen my manuscript, we were safe incorporating whatever he wanted from it – and to his everlasting credit he used most of it.

Then there was the personal side of things, much more difficult for me than I ever thought possible, and easier for him than I thought it would be. Because I was avowedly unhappy and living a separate life from Owen, David had little compunction about our affair – he knew that Owen had had many. But I – it seemed disloyal somehow to George to be so happy with David, and I was happy. I felt worse than I did in 1913, when George was so devastated that I had consented to marry Owen – for at least then George had the capacity to defend himself. In quiet hours, I questioned my own capacity for loyalty. I had sworn eternal love, and here I was, leaping at the first evidence of interest from someone else when he was dead. But, when I was with David, I was happy, and grateful to be so. I really don’t know even now if this was because of our own compatibility alone or how much the persistent chat about the book and stories about George, the time we spent psychologising him, figured in. It and he were certainly not the sole topics of discussion, but they were ever-present, if not prominent.

Then in May of 1925 after the Lent bumps we were in the sitting room of his house listening to music. He sat in the chair and I was lying on the rug near his feet before the empty grate. The room was cosy, with the soft light of shaded lamps, and the happy clutter of an academic. The music on the gramophone, I remember, was Mussorgsky – the bydlo from Pictures at an Exposition. How exquisite it was to lie on the floor on my stocking feet and feel that sad, grand gothic music echoing through the floorboards, reverberating through my body. It was terribly evocative and moved me to tears. Lovely, so lovely! I had asked to listen to it again for this experience, for I had been sitting on the sofa before, and David was smilingly indulgent.

When I opened my eyes at the end of the piece, I found him watching me with a still, pensive expression. He put down his pipe.
‘You are so very sensitive, aren’t you, darling?’ he mused. ‘One wouldn’t think it to see you in the High street,’ he smiled. ‘You look so proud and gay then! As if all the slings of the world that fell other mortals simply bounce off.’ He leaned down and touched my hair, which was spread out on the floor. ‘But this, mere music, can so move you. It’s very compelling, you realise.’
I opened my mouth, to make a witty remark about not having seen me at the opera, but something in his expression stopped me. My heart started pounding, and I should not have been surprised at his next words:
‘Mary Anne, would you marry me?’

I could not contain a gasp, and sat up quickly to face him, miserable and elated at once. To be really wanted – but the hurdles were immense... and there was George.
‘Oh, David.’
‘And before you say you are already married,’ he murmured with a gleam of irony in his eye, ‘let me remind you there are ways round that.’
‘Divorce.’ The word was a talisman, so rife with conflicting responses that I could scarcely breathe.
‘Yes,’ he said evenly.
A divorcée. The idea had a stunning impact. I knew what it meant, for me. I closed my eyes against it. Everything would come out, in the courts. Even Grania. But, at least, I should be left with Grania. Owen certainly wouldn’t want her. The thought of my dear little ‘fairy woman’ brought a pang. God, oh God, if George had asked me – I’d have gone in a heartbeat. But would I, could I go here? It was such a lot to ask, and such a lot to stand by one through, and David was no fool, and he was asking.

‘It is a lot to ask,’ he said, taking my hands. I looked at him through tears. ‘And I know what it means,’ he continued, echoing all my thoughts. ‘But we can withstand it. Please darling, Mary Anne. I love you so.’ That quiet, simple heart-felt honesty, so full of earnest dignity, was nearly irresistible.
‘Oh, David,’ I managed through my aching throat. ‘I do love you too! But what of your position? What –’
‘I’ll get a new one,’ he said, with equal sureness. ‘I have an offer from the Air Ministry anyway.’
He kissed me. ‘Please darling, don’t be afraid of him,’ meaning Owen, ‘please say yes.’

But it wasn’t Owen I was afraid of. I was afraid that how it still felt for George – would probably always feel for George – would interfere. And yet – I looked at David’s sweet handsome face, and I could not deny that I did love him. It was not the same, nowhere near the great intensity I had felt for George, but it was love, and it was real. Oh! David deserved to be happy. I deserved to be happy. But would this come between us, in time? He knew about Grania. Would he resent her, as Owen did? I would die before I let that happen, for she was my joy, my treasure – all those lovely old Gaelic endearments sprang to mind. Yes, I loved the child for its father’s sake, but for her own too.

‘What is that trouble I see in your eyes?’ David coaxed.
I smiled at him a little, apologetically. ‘Oh, dear. I want to say yes. I do! But – It’s not Owen, David,’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t deny that will be ugly. But it’s not him.’
‘Come here,’ he murmured, pulling me up into his lap. ‘Come now and tell me what it is then, sweetheart.’ His everlasting kindness under every circumstance was so attractive, and so distressing; I really didn’t feel that I deserved it, and yet I wanted it so badly.
‘I’m afraid you will resent Grania,’ I said, after a little, whispering the awful, portentous truth against his neck. Speaking the words brought a flood of tears I could not hold back.
‘Ah, what’s this, then?’ David said, patting me. ‘No, sweetheart how could I?’
I struggled up to look at him, disbelievingly. ‘You know what she is, who she is.’
‘Yes I do,’ he replied, very seriously. ‘And should I resent one of my best friends, let alone the child, because he loved you? I think I can understand that a little bit.’ He smiled. ‘Dry your eyes, darling,’ he said, wiping the tears off my cheeks. ‘You’ve nothing to fear that way from me.’

I kissed him gratefully. ‘You’re a saint, my dear. Owen has resented her every day of her life.’
‘Ah, so this is about Owen.’
His psychologising made me smile. ‘Yes I suppose it is, rather... But you’re really not bothered about her?’
‘No, why should I be?’
‘Well she does set rather a precedent,’ I said frankly. ‘Most people would be suspicious that the crime would be more easily committed once carried out.’
He cocked his head, laughing. ‘It that what this is? I don’t think so.’ He leant his head against my shoulder. ‘I’m not as insecure as that,’ he said. ‘That’s all such people are.’ He raised his head again.
‘So, will you say yes?’
In his own tranquil way, David had such charm. I smiled happily. ‘Yes. I do.’

It took me until August to screw up my courage to confront Owen. David was very understanding, but by this time he naturally was puzzled why I was so slow in doing what must be inevitably done. Truth to tell, I was afraid of Owen, which David had always maintained though I denied it, and from the beginning of June I tried to bring up the subject, but we saw so little of one another it was not as easy as I at first imagined, and when we did the children were usually present – Dianna being very sharp we could not have even a coded conversation without her figuring it out, and Owen was not likely to be civil when I broached the subject. Oh! It was clear to me by the end of June when we were at Denton, where we had much more contact, that I was simply a coward, but every time I opened my mouth to speak of it, I was swamped with fear and unable to continue. So my anxiety about it grew worse and worse, and it was only in the middle of August, when David was in the Alps, that I was able to force myself to the task. David had written to me that ‘the truth of your situation should be evident to you in the difficulty you are having, and all the more reason to have the conversation.’ He was right, and so I did it at last. I made an enquiry to our solicitor by post, and the next morning made the step I had been dreading.

Perhaps I waylaid Owen rather, but I decided that the best moment would be in the morning while he was watering the broody hens, so I went out at six in the morning and met him at the brooding shed. On the cement floor of the shed were set five bowls of water, five heaps of maize, and five piles of cabbage or lettuce-leaves, because the hens would not share their means with the other birds, but each had to have her own. Owen would, every day, open the five coops, and then perched on a wooden box, with a long willow-rod in his hand, like a ring-master at a circus, somehow coax his idiotic charges out and keep them apart while they ate and drank, and then with the rod, guide each back to her own coop. He never moved until all five were back on their eggs again, fluffing out their feathers. Then he shut the coops and let out the next five birds. It was in the middle of the first batch that I caught him, and he nearly toppled over the box.

‘Owen,’ I began nervously, from the door of the shed.
He started, teetering on his perch, which sent the birds flapping and squawking. This was against all the rules of broody-shed conduct, and he rounded on me.
‘Damnation, Mary Anne! What do you want!’ It was not a question, rather an expression of irritation, as he set about trying to herd the birds towards their breakfast once more. Into this ridiculous scene, I managed to inject, over the noise and chaos:
‘I want a divorce, Owen.’
He stopped dead in his tracks and turned, willow in hand, his face white.
‘What did you say?’
‘You heard me,’ I said quietly, trying to maintain some dignity in the midst of this absurd unpleasantness. I was shaking, but now I had to see this through. I began to regret my choice of rendezvous. Owen, for his part, looked like a child that had just been told it would not be going to the circus after all, with no explanation.

‘Why, after all this time? What’s happened? You’ve met someone – It’s that friend of yours isn’t it, the professor! Damn it, Mary Anne you promised me no scandal –’ He was babbling a thousand shocked responses without pause, and in truth I felt a little sorry for him – until he said, ‘after all I’ve put up with from you, how can you be so ungrateful, so cruel –’ It knocked the breath out of me.
‘Put up with from me?’ I echoed in disbelief. ‘I’ve been cruel? Good God, Owen, you must be mad!’
That set him off. ‘Don’t you ever say that to me! Don’t you ever say that to me! If you want a fight about this Mary Anne, I’ll give you one! I’ll drag this through the courts, drag you and that climber – it’s always a climber isn’t it! – through the mud. You won’t have it! I’ll see that you won’t have it! You won’t leave! And your paramour will be ruined.’ Then hens were now in an uproar, flapping and squawking and hurtling about, hither-thither. I had to shout to be heard:
‘Don’t be an idiot Owen, it will ruin you too!’

Again he stood stock-still with that peculiar wounded expression. Somehow, this was touching on childhood scenes, so painful and so buried that he had never spoken of them to me. The only hints were in his responses to certain words or phrases, or tones of voice. He looked angry but defeated, like a child who is powerless against the greater will of the adults in his world. He pushed back his disordered hair, and said in a childishly defiant way,
‘You wouldn’t do that to me.’

It took everything I had not to crumble at that moment, for I really didn’t want to ruin him; I just wanted out.
‘I’ve had enough. It’s over,’ I said as calmly as I could manage. ‘I just want out. I don’t want a public scandal, any more than you do. Please, Owen. Please let me go and let us all have some peace.’
He regarded me murderously. ‘Over my dead body,’ he retorted, and stalked out, pushing past me into the yard, where he stopped and looked about, rather distractedly, and then hurried off towards the house as if being chased, leaving me to cope with the hens, and the ruin. I didn’t see him again until late in the evening, well after dinner. Between whiles, I had written to David,
Well, it’s done, although not very well, I admit. He knows, anyway. We shall see what comes of it.

What came of it was a visit to our solicitor in London, at his request, not merely in response to my note, but also to a frantic and distraught visit from Owen.
‘He’s fully prepared to make this as public a hue and cry as possible,’ he cautioned me.
‘I know,’ I replied. I’m afraid I sounded rather truculent. ‘I don’t care. You know from my letter something of what has been going on these last twelve years.’
Poor man, he readjusted his spectacles and harrumphed. ‘Yes, and Mrs. O’Malley I also know what your husband said to me. I’m afraid the courts will look very unkindly on all this, but will come down hardest on you.’
‘I realise that.’
‘You certainly shall lose your children.’
‘I know,’ I wondered, in some irritation, why he was telling me the obvious.
‘All of your children.’
That brought a chill. Such a possibility had not occurred to me, although it should have done, that the court, not Owen, would be the final arbiter in that matter. ‘Even my youngest?’
‘Yes,’ he said, not unkindly.
‘But –’
He folded his hands. ‘Mrs. O’Malley, the courts will consider only the fitness of the mother – and they are in any case generally disposed in favour of the paterfamilias – they have no concern for actual paternity. I’m sorry.’
It was a terrible, and a terrifying blow.

I went to see David at the weekend and wept all over him.
‘I can’t do it! I’m so sorry! I just can’t do it! Bad enough Pat and Diana, I could bear that if necessary, but not my baby!’ We sat in the sunny parlour in his house, he in the chair, and I on the floor with my head on his knees.

Poor David. He was prepared to sacrifice so much for me, but when it came to this one thing I must sacrifice for him, I couldn’t do it. It was terrible, because I came face to face with the fact that Grania mattered more to me, as a link – my only link – with George. I had to face the terrible truth that I loved them more than David – that I was willing to endure a lifetime of wretchedness with Owen to have her, to have that one link with George, than be happy with David. I knew it in the solicitor’s office, and it was so horrible, so morbid and unfair to David, that I couldn’t bring myself to admit it to him.
‘I’ve put you through so much, and all for naught!’ I stammered at last, barely able to speak now, hiccoughing and breathless from too many tears. ‘You’d give up so much! I don’t deserve you, David.’



He put his hand on my head, and I looked up at him. Poor dear man, he was miserable.
‘Don’t say that,’ he murmured softly. ‘Don’t even think it. Oh, dear girl,’ he leaned forward and wrapped his arms about me. He was shaking, and the low misery of those three words went through me like a knife. Was I cursed to bring nothing but suffering to any man I loved? But he did not reproach me, only rocked back and forth with me in wordless desolation.
‘I don’t want to lose you,’ he whispered into my hair after a long time. ‘There must be a way. There must be –’
‘I don’t know the way!’ I cried. ‘Always, always, every means of escape is blocked! I raised my head and looked at him. ‘I ought never have got you into this, David. I’m so sorry!’
‘Hush,’ he said fiercely. ‘Hush! I love you and I’m not sorry, but oh! This is such a great deal to bear! After all this time, I thought, at last! The sort of happiness which is commonplace to other men.’ He was thirty-nine now, and never married. A drew in a breath, but he shook his head. ‘I don’t mean that to chasten you, dear Mary Anne, I truly don’t. But, oh my love, this is so hard.’
He kissed my face and went back to that wretched rocking, full of such unbearable grief. I had done this to him – and I felt the brunt of responsibility keenly.

To his everlasting credit, David did not refuse to see me again. On the contrary, we continued as before, working on the book in person and by post, meeting at the weekends mostly, or whenever could be managed. He never changed in his affectionate demeanour, nor in all that beautifully gentle courtesy which defined him. We could wait for my situation to change, for Owen to be got round. Something would come up.


In November, something did: Owen was selected by the Foreign Office to be sent as Counsellor to Peking. After the end of the 1914-18 war, the Secretary of State had been given certain discretionary powers to shift men from one part of the Service to the other, but it remained an understood thing that these powers should not be used at all ruthlessly, and that the views of individuals should be fully taken into account. Of course, for Owen, it was a promotion, and a splendid opening, and all that. Owen’s father, Uncle Edward, was all for it, beaming with pride that his youngest should have been chosen for such a post. Owen wasn’t at all sure he wanted the post – for he was rather stolid when it came to the routines of everyday life, and he would have to leave his mistress. I, on the other hand, havered over the idea of what it should mean to have him gone – it would be a bad show to instigate divorce proceedings while he was posted abroad. Unfortunately for me, and David, Owen had already thought of that, and I received a letter from our solicitor on his behalf that should I enact such an undertaking, I would forfeit my marriage portion as well as lose the children; the amount was not huge, but it was enough to start out on. Now I should be penniless.

In addition to this, I had a visit from Don Gregory, Owen’s head in the Northern Department, who decided to apply pressure personally to see that Owen took the position. He drove down one Sunday and firmly took me for a stroll up Watery Lane, that wet rutted track shadowed by Lombardy poplars, which ran past the paddock and up to the Portsmouth Road. There Don rubbed it in that it would be downright wicked not to take this chance:
‘Owen will be the youngest Counsellor in the Service,’ he said. ‘It will make him a marked man. It could even lead to his becoming, in time, head of the Office.’
He said the same thing to Owen, and I, thinking that perhaps if Owen were really happy he would lessen his iron grip on me, encouraged him to take it also. So it was decided. We were going to China, to depart the week before Christmas. Bridge End was let, by a great stroke of luck almost at once, and for three years, then the normal duration of a post abroad, and we set about making our preparations.

When I told David he was naturally unhappy, but was very decent about it. I had to go up to Cambridge at the end of the month for some research, but he was to be in London then as he wrote me from his club:
I forgot, after all, to give this to Gillian yesterday. I’m afraid threepence are a nuisance, but it’s the best I can do. I do hope Cambridge won’t be too hideously cold, and that you will be happy there.

No point in saying what I feel about you going away – you know that – but I look forward more than before to the time when you will be back again – It’s an intolerable big gap though. Write as soon as you get out there and have an address – but you’ll be sending some kisses I hope.

I write as if I wasn’t going to see you again before you go. – but I hope I shall – Dec 10th to 18th you said you’d be in town I think, but I don’t remember that you said where – perhaps you will send a p.c. or ring up here say. Ever yours affectionately, David.

There was ever such a lot to do before our departure! Everyone impressed on me that I should no longer have time to give Diana all her lessons, and Patrick, now seven, would have to be taught regularly too – so a nursery governess had to be sought, at short notice, and one who was willing to go to the far side of the world for three whole years – moreover someone whom we felt we could bear for so long. How we found Bumpy, as she came to be called, I have forgotten; but after she had been down to see me and the children I had no hesitations, and nor had she. I remember Grania’s comment, after the interview. She was just four, and had a rather keen, if eccentric feeling for words and their associations, and asked, ‘Why’s she called Bumpstead? Did she fall off the bedstead?’ Lovely.

I did nevertheless go to Cambridge to talk to Elliot and others for David, who was stuck in London, and had a letter from him,
Here is a copy of Hope which you asked for – I have a horrid idea you asked me to send you something else which I have forgotten. If so I apologise. You will send this back, won’t you, before you go, it’s the only copy I have.

My only complaint about the +4’s which I was wearing yesterday is that they are now so clean and brilliant that the coat and waistcoat cry out for similar treatment!
I hope Cambridge has been a success – what divine days! Ever yours affectionately, David.

I needed a lady’s maid for China, and at once thought of Cissy Wellford, who lived up the road, but her family were against her going.
‘You see, M’m.’ Mrs. Wellford said apologetically, when she came to bring me these gloomy tidings, ‘it isn’t as though it were anywhere handy.’ And I had to agree that Peking could not possibly be described as ‘handy’. Thankfully, my godmother, Tiny as she was known, produced a rabbit from a hat in the person of the waiting maid of a young friend of hers who was getting married. Baker was at least forty, thoroughly experienced, a splendid needlewoman. Liked foreign travel, to which she was accustomed, etc. I arranged to meet her in the ladies sitting room in the old Haymarket Stores.

Unfortunately, when leaving to go to the station the old Triumph at first wouldn’t start; the gardener was nearly as stupid about motorcycles as I was, and as I roared up the slope at Horseley Station I saw my train moving out. I was more than an hour late. But I found Baker, entirely untroubled, reading a women’s magazine. She said cheerfully that anyone could miss a train, and we proceeded to settle her monthly wage, for I hired her on the spot. In Peking Picnic Laura Leroy’s redoubtable maid Hubbard is Baker through and through. Patrick and Diana, for some reason, took a dislike to her, and called her ‘Baker the Bread-maker’ in derisive hostility.

With all the hurley-burley, I managed to get everything done, and get myself and the children to London on 10 December, according to schedule. David spent the afternoon with us, going over the manuscript. It was very difficult, knowing we had only a few days before I should go away. But it was Grania who expressed the tension we all felt, by throwing a mournful fit on the train. Poor little thing, when she realised that we really were going away from her home, never to be seen again – Ursula waving to us from the station platform – she burst into a scald of tears and would not be comforted, crying until she made herself sick. This was very unlike her, and not, I’m afraid, a very good introduction for Bumpy, but it broke my heart, because I knew too well the pain of leaving a beloved home, leaving Ridgemead as I did so reluctantly for London when I was twelve. David wrote in the evening after he had gone back to his club,
Thank you for the MS – I had wondered where it was but hadn’t so far got into a panic, having so many places where it might be I felt certain it was at one of them. But I’d quite forgotten it had been left with you!
Your story of Grania nearly makes me cry too! You poor dears – it is the very devil –

About the 15th, I think I’d really prefer to stay at home than to go out. I should in any case, but more especially because I shall have had a difficult day at Farnborough and also am presently feeling rather rotten with a cold. But this I hope will have cleared up by a bit by then. My love to you, David.
P.S. As I don’t quite know when I’ll get up from Farnborough – perhaps unless you hear further I’d better come round to 15 Holland Street having had something to eat – say as soon after 8.30 as may be. Would that suit?

It would, it did. I was sorry for the lack of time with him in London –Oh! How very sorry! My poor dear David, he was so brave through it all! At last the parting came, in my sister Jenny’s hall, where we were staying, very early on the 16th, and it was so valiant and sad.
‘You are coming back,’ David assured, himself as much as me.
‘Yes! If I’m good, perhaps they’ll send me back early with time off for good behaviour,’ the joke fell rather flat.
‘I won’t forget anything,’ he said, looking me over.
‘You’d better not! We have a book to finish.’ It was painful to play the scene wittily, but couldn’t bear it otherwise. If David kept on with eternal remembrances, I should not be able to carry on.
He smiled now. ‘I haven’t forgotten.’ But the smile faltered in an anguished look. ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t want you to go! Tell me this is a dream, that I shall wake in the morning and you will only have come down to London to visit your sister for Christmas.’
‘It is a dream,’ I promised him. ‘It is a dream and I am not far away – Oh David!’ I shook my head, unable to go on.
‘Hush, darling,’ he murmured. ‘It won’t be long....’
‘It will be forever!’ I protested. I was no better than my little Grania. ‘Every day is forever.’
‘I wish it could have been otherwise,’ David said.
‘Ah! Perhaps it will! Let us pray that it yet will!’ I exclaimed.
‘It’s a good prayer,’ he murmured. And then we had no more words, only an embrace, which if it could have lasted forever would have sustained me.

In the 1920s passengers to the Far East by the P. & O. had the choice between joining their ship at Tilbury or at Southampton; for us, living only twenty miles from London, Tilbury was our obvious choice. How deep an impression the gloom and ugliness first of Fenchurch Street Station, and then Tilbury Docks, made on me may be gathered from Chapter Two of The Ginger Griffin; years later, it made a perfect background to the distress of my little heroine Amber Harrison. We sailed on 18 December, 1925, in the S.S. Karmala. By the time I came back, early because the children had been very ill, in 1927, David had married Virginia Kennedy, one of Len Young’s friends and a member of the Pen-y-Pass parties.

But, before this, we did have a book to write. David wrote from his house in Limpsfield in Surrey at the beginning of February that he had started a fortnight’s leave – which I am spending here simply watching at the windows. I have got on a bit, but oh dear, what a lot of work there is when one begins to go into it! I have treated the first two Everest Expeditions - I see how it is to be done now, and it is interesting I trust – meaning it ought to be if one could put it in an interesting way. Treating the whole Everest show as it affected George. I have started by his being rather disturbed with Charterhouse and ready for adventure – then the first two expeditions following immediately one on another. The first with his little party of 2, next the huge organisation with reserves, oxygen attempt next. Finishing with the accident and what he felt about that.

Next chapter G as chief showman – a very little about America, Cambridge, New York and then the suggestion of going on the last expedition. The story of this in much detail from letters – and after that a few pages about his growth in recent years – itself or a result of the Everest shows and finis. If only I had two months instead of two weeks to work it out! But perhaps I shall thus more easily be able to go on with the evenings in hand after seeing his pan of it more clearly.

I have at present left a blank between the end of the Charterhouse Chapter and the beginning of the Everest – which I hope with your blessed help to be able to fill in with something adequate about his international enthusiasm and the was as bringing about this crisis.... There’s a letter with well, a word about your repair – Every time I look in the papers, I’m afraid of feeling sorely worse about Peking. I do pray you don’t cave in for any hearty there. My love and all to heavenly family –ever yours, David.


I was unlikely to ‘cave in for any hearty’ – in Peking, or anywhere, but the teasing was certainly nice, and a reassurance of his feeling. In April, I was able to send him more writings, and he received this in May, writing in return,
Your letter with the MSS has just come. It horrifies me to think of what a time you must have been having, but I pray that by the time you get this all that will be over and you will have nothing worse than wars and bomb raid to contend with.

It is wonderful of you to have got anything done for me and I am truly grateful. I will get this typed as you suggested and let Ruth have a copy.
I send you a few of my photographs taken in Wales. They are enlargements from a little V.P.K. which I had first got for the purpose of climbing, and I think it has justified itself, don’t you? There are one or two rather good ones of myself taken by other people on the same days, which I’ll send you sometime if I can get copies. But meanwhile I want to put this at once to send my love and thanks and prayers for your restoration from these horrible alarums and trials – to have one’s children ill – and such children – It makes me almost dizzy to think of it. Ever yours affectionately, David.

Through all the summer, Pat and Grania were ill with scarlet fever, which was then complicated by diphtheria, quite badly. Patrick nearly died of the latter, and were this dreadful episode not bad enough, we all soon came down with dysentery, except Diana, (who by now had decided hat she preferred to be called Jane.) We went out to the Western Hills to spend four lovely weeks recovering in an old temple in the Imperial Hunting Park. I learned quite a bit about Chinese life and husbandry during that calm, unsocial spell, in lovely long chats with the peasant women over their hoeing and apricot-picking. In that time, I received a letter from David, saying he had only got a batch of mine –some from February! – after my last with the manuscript bits; he cursed the Foreign Office roundly.

Your last letter fills me with great hopes, he wrote. (I had said that it was very likely that we should come home soon.) I am very grateful to the scarlet fever I must say. I’ve less compunction about this, too for evidently a period of isolation has its compensations for Mary Anne. I thought the detail of Chinese life, as it really is, would be good material for a book. And on the subject of books, he had news of the biography:

Meanwhile, a month ago, I had a talk with Howard of Jonathan Cope and left the MSS with him to be read – at first Howard was rather in favour of partial printing by subscription. I hope however that when he has read the stuff he may feel that it’s a thing Cope might take on as a spec. Of course, if it had come out two years earlier they would have, but even so, I think there might be a fair number of readers – And for the sake of mountaineering and the spreading of the gospel I should like Cope’s to feel they want to give it a wide circulation, in which they will have no interest if it were printed by subscription.

... You ask what GLK said of this memoir – well, he thought it was good, quite definitely interesting and true, though he objected to certain bits, among them the opening (as being like a novelette) and the part about Ruth and the house (as not being sufficiently restrained.) There’s something in each criticism, and though I shall not cut these parts as drastically as he wanted, I may be able to improve them from his point of view.

I have made a beginning on Chap V and even if you don’t manage to produce anything I think I shall be able to put together something adequate to fill the space – though I know quite certainly it will be a poor thing compared to what it might be with your help.

I was rather cross with Geoffrey for his remarks, but of course he didn’t know that the work came from me, though he must obviously have known that the ‘friend’ who met George and Geoffrey Young outside the Monte Rosa was myself – everyone knew that. As for the chapter about Ruth and the house being ‘unrestrained’, well, my goodness! No one in the public knew Ruth at all, or what she was like, and certainly not the Holt and its unique decorations, which were not simply decorative arts but a true reflection of George’s mind. But I could hardly complain to him, as it was not meant to be known that so much of the work was mine.

David was very busy looking for a flat in town, which he eventually found in Duchess Street, and the next letter I had from him was the Argentiere in July. He had by then spoken further with Howard at Cope’s, and it looked as if they would do the book. Great news! His next letter, in August, from Valais, was full of climbing news, and more good news regarding the book in regard to Cope – they were really keen on it – but there was something missing from the letter, which was illuminated in October: the something was that old romantic affection. Since I had been gone, the effusions and expression of emotion had become fewer, more centred on the children than myself, and in the middle of October he wrote that he and Virginia were to be married, saying that he feared others had got the news to me first (the climbing world still being as full of gossips as ever), and that I showed more perspicacity than you realised when you complained to Virginia of her telling you about everyone at P.Y.P but me, and added that you would have thought we should hit it off so well together – we did! ... Her not mentioning me in her letter to you may now perhaps assume a new significance!

It had become increasingly plain from soon after you left in Dec that what I had thus for years been hoping for was never going to happen – and then at Easter, what I had till then not dreamed of as possible began – It didn’t assume any real shape until July, and even then I had, as you may well understand, the greatest doubts on many accounts, for among other things I couldn’t forget my 40 years! Now, since the end of Sept when things happened – it has become a continuous ascendo....

Dear Mary Anne, I can’t completely wilt the eloquences of the above, but I know that you know that V and I are ________
He broke off here and continued the next day – they had been rushing out for the evening, The blank, he said, expresses things fairly well... I think I’ll send this off as it is so that you mayn’t wonder any more at not hearing from us. I wish you’d all come back soon and see us. Love from David.

In June of 1927, David’s Memoir of George was published, not by Cope, but by Humphrey Milford and the Oxford University Press. The children and I returned from China – by way of Canada – just in time to see its first reviews.