Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine (5 page)

Willie had always had a very strong affinity with the countryside in North Wales and the majority of the family holidays before the First World War were spent either on the North Wales Coast or in the Lake District, another of his favourite destinations. He and Lilian would rent a cottage or house, Lilian spending three or four weeks there with the children and maids while Willie visited them for perhaps a fortnight during their stay.   It was a major undertaking to organise these holidays for the family still had no motor car.  They would all travel by train from Birkenhead and be met by a coach and horse at the other end.  The amount of luggage was astonishing and in one photograph from the summer of 1902 Sandy’s huge black pram is strapped to the top of the coach, which is already piled high with trunks, suitcases and hat boxes.  All the children wore hats with huge brims to keep the sun off their fair skin and Lilian clothed them all in dresses until they were four or five, when the boys graduated to shorts and sailor tops.

Willie teaching Sandy to fish at Capel Curig, 1907

Willie enjoyed spending time with the children on their family holidays and it was always he who introduced them to new activities.  In 1907 he taught Hugh, Evelyn and Sandy to fish in the river at Capel Curig and photographs show him explaining patiently to Sandy the ins and outs of using a home-made fishing rod.  At that age, Sandy was stocky, very blonde and had a solemn, thoughtful air about him.  In the photographs of him from the pre-War period he is always looking preoccupied and even slightly whimsical. I rather suspect he and Evelyn cultivated this air for the benefit of their mother who was the chief photographer.  Frivolity and high spirits were not acceptable.  If Lilian were going to give the children a treat, such as a biscuit, she would make them all line up in front of her with one hand behind their backs and the other outstretched, clean palms upwards, like a little row of supplicants.  She was a great believer in the benefit of long walks and from a very early age they were taken either by a nanny or Lilian herself into the hills.  These walks were not to be taken lightly, they were to be appreciated.  When one Irvine cousin spent part of a walk around the southern shores of Ullswater telling Evelyn a story about some historical romance she had been reading, Lilian rounded on the poor child, accusing her of being a proper little Philistine by chattering away a lot of nonsense and distracting Evelyn’s attention from some of the most beautiful scenery in England

As soon as the children learned to ride bicycles they were accorded a greater degree of freedom and were allowed to go off into the hills and the villages on their own.   At nine Sandy was already a keen cyclist and proud of the fact that he had a cyclometer on his bike which Evelyn did not.  They explored around Capel Curig and chased down the narrow lanes, each daring the other to ride ever faster and not to use their brakes until the very last minute.  Evelyn also loved cycling and wrote of one of their rides when they were about ten and eleven: ‘In the afternoon we went for a bicycle ride; it did not seem a bit long but Andrew told us by his cyclometer that we had gone almost 11 miles, just 10 7/8 miles.  There were some lovely spins down the hills which were very steep and I went down them without any brakes on.’  It was at about this time that Sandy’s love of adventure began to grow and he relished the freedom that his bike gave him.   Sandy was an enthusiastic cyclist but throughout his life he suffered a series of calamities with them through riding them too hard.  By the autumn of 1923 he had solved the problem of bicycles – he switched to a tricycle.

In 1912 the three older children spent Easter without their parents in Ross-on-Wye with relatives and it was from this holiday that I chanced upon two diaries, one written by Evelyn, then eleven, and one by Sandy, aged ten.  Sandy’s diary is brief and factual.  The first entry reads ‘Arrived 5:25pm.  No soap in bath, did without.’  The following day, the entry reads ‘That night had soap in bath.’ Order restored.  Such an oversight never would have occurred at Park Road South.  On the third day he wrote that he had been made to sit down to write his journal.  This was never his favourite occupation, but some of the entries are funny and they clearly had a very enjoyable holiday, punctuated as it was, by many church services, sometimes as many as three in one day.  Sandy always struggled with writing, even into adulthood.  His spelling was poor and his grasp of grammar meagre but he had a wonderfully expressive way of conveying excitement, especially in the form of letters.  His best letters tended to be written when he was bubbling over with enthusiasm or anger, whereas his later diary entries are generally somewhat more considered and have led people to conclude that he was wooden and inarticulate.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Hugh was very much the grown-up boy on this holiday and he saw to it that the two younger children did what they were told and behaved in a seemly manner.  Frequently he was allowed to ride with Aunt Edith into Ross-on-Wye while Evelyn and Sandy were obliged to stay at the house and play in the garden with the other cousins.  This never bothered them.  On the contrary it meant they were left to their own games, with Evelyn joining in all the more ‘boyish’ activities.  She was rather snooty about her girl cousins and their lack of knowledge of boys’ sports, complaining that in a football match between the boys (Cambridge) and the girls (Oxford) ‘of course the boys won because most of the girls knew nothing about football hardly’.  She was always keen to be involved in everything the boys did and once prevented from joining the boys - when Hugh was riding in the donkey cart and Sandy pedalling beside them – she remained up a tree and sulked.

Three extra children was a a burden for Aunt Edith, especially as the Irvine children appeared to have boundless energy.  Clearly at a loss one afternoon as to what to do with them, she invited them to collect dandelion heads for her, offering them one penny (about 50 pence in today’s money allowing for inflation) for every 100 dandelions.  After Sandy and Evelyn had both earned 3d she put the rate up to 1d for every 500 dandelions.  Evelyn collected dandelions all afternoon and Sandy noted with some awe, that she had collected 20,000 heads.  Evelyn put it at a rather more conservative figure of 2300.

The hero of the holiday for Sandy was cousin Jack who, at about fifteen, was considered to be very grown-up and experienced.  He allowed Sandy to use his powerful telescope and explained to him what was happening during an eclipse that they witnessed during their stay.  He treated Sandy with a degree of respect that he wasn’t used to and Sandy responded well, showing genuine interest and enthusiasm for everything he was shown – from dead rats to hatching chickens. Jack also played the organ and one day while he was practising in the church he allowed Sandy and Evelyn to sit either side of him and operate the stops, pulling them out and pushing them in as instructed.  I imagine that the workings of the organ were of far more interest to Sandy than the music Jack was playing.

The following summer Willie decided to take the whole family to stay in Peel on the Isle of Man.  It was a great success and they had planned a further visit to Peel in 1914 but were unable to go because of the outbreak of the First World War.  The highlight of the holiday for Sandy were the trips they made on a racing yacht called the
Genista
.  He was so impressed by this boat that on his return to Birkenhead he made a scale model of it, enlisting the help of one of the maid’s friends. This was carvel-built, the stakes being the wooden slats from old-fashioned venetian blinds, with riggings and sails.  It was an accurate copy and he gave it the same name as the yacht. The model
Genista
outlived Sandy by many years.  It was kept in the study at Bryn Llwyn and no one was allowed to play with it.  Years later Alec observed one of my cousins looking at it and said, ‘It’s not bad for a boy of eleven I suppose, but what that boat really deserves is a Viking funeral.’ I am sure Sandy would have heartily approved of the sentiment.  He would never have liked to think that the family had put him or anything he made on a pedestal.  In the recent find the model was discovered, somewhat altered but essentially in good condition, although without its rigging.  Alec was right – it wasn’t bad for a boy of eleven.

Sandy had persuaded Willie to let him have a workshop in the back yard at Park Road South and it was here that he made his models and carried out his scientific experiments.   Willie was not particularly practical but he could see that Sandy had a real flair for engineering and science.  Sandy guarded this room fiercely and possessively, not allowing anyone to enter it without his permission. He wrote anxiously to his mother on one occasion, ‘tell Mrs Killen not to let anyone into my room because she knows where the key is’.

He used the workshop all his life, designing bits for the family cars, fixing household tools and making models.  When he sailed for Everest in February 1924, he left behind him a disassembled 1922 oxygen apparatus on which he had been working avidly at Oxford and then at home for nearly four months.  When Willie returned it to the Royal Geographical Society in 1924, he wrote to the Secretary, Arthur Hinks, that Sandy had been working on it right up until the day he sailed for India.  He added that he wasn’t sure all the bits were there, so completely had Sandy dismantled it.

In July 1914, the house was full of Irvine cousins from Aberdeen who had come to share a holiday at Peel.  During dinner – always a very formal occasion – Willie returned from the telephone, in those days a new and awesome invention. Still clutching his spotless napkin, he went slowly upstairs to the schoolroom where the assembled children were playing after supper.  Such a visit was almost unprecedented. He looked grim: ‘We shan’t be going to the Isle of Man, children,’ he said.  ‘England is at war with Germany.’

The five older children, Hugh, Evelyn, Sandy and their two cousins Edward and Lyn, were dispatched to stay at the Davies-Colley family home, Newbold, outside Chester.  The house was owned by Lilian’s bachelor brother Tom who had inherited it from his uncle and was supposed to be haunted.  The house is a large brick mansion with a turreted tower at the front and a further, slightly lower octagonal tower at the back overlooking the gardens.  The house was built in the sixteenth century but has so many nineteenth-century additions that it is difficult to form a view of what it might once have looked like.

When the children arrived at Newbold they found that Uncle Tom was away all week in Manchester, returning only at the weekends. They were given a free rein to roam in the extensive grounds, being looked after mainly by the housekeeper and the groom.  The housekeeper they never saw but the groom took full charge and planned many outings in the trap.  Hugh had a shotgun and they all had fishing rods, so their days were filled with outdoor activities and there was never a moment to be bored. Hugh and Sandy climbed up to the top of the tower and threw home-made spears into the gardens and filled Uncle Tom’s salute cannon with black powder and gravel which they fired hopefully at the rabbits that cropped the short grass between the formal yew hedges. They discovered to their joy that nobody very much cared when they went to bed so after supper they played steps on the lawn until it was too dark to see.  Such freedom was new to Sandy and Evelyn and they greatly relished it.

There were no newspapers at the house and all of them apart from Hugh were completely oblivious of the war until Uncle Tom took them to Beeston Castle, a medieval fort perched high on a hill some ten miles from Newbold.  On the way they saw cars with flags on them and heard talk of fierce battles being fought in France.  It seemed a world away from their own idyllic existence and none of them, with the exception of Hugh and possibly Edward, had really any idea what it all meant.  Within four years two of them would have fought in France, one dead and one wounded.

Newbold held great attraction for the children but there were frightening things about the house which deeply impressed them.  Half-way up the stairs was a large painted cut-out of a woman peeling apples into a bowl, two-dimensional but highly coloured. Newbold had no electricity, being lit by oil lamps, so when it was time for the children to go upstairs they had to collect a candle.  These were lined up on a table at the bottom of the stairs with a candlestick for each child and a box of matches.  Evelyn said she remembered that she and Sandy always dashed breathlessly up the stairs because as they passed the Apple Woman with their flickering candles the light danced on the image and it gave the impression that she was moving.

The greatest attraction for Sandy at Newbold was the room containing all Uncle Jack’s Crimean uniforms including his sword, his folding candle lantern, and his tent that really captured his imagination.  Sandy had a photograph of the room in his album and it was a place where he loved to spend time alone.  In addition to the war regalia, there were also telescopes and microscopes, gyroscopes and all sorts of other unidentifiable things with wires, wheels and whirring parts.  This room he found irresistible and there was no one at Newbold to tell him to keep out.  Whenever the other children noticed he was missing they would be certain to find him there, studying the workings of this or that machine, poring over diagrams in the dusty books which lined the walls.  The hours he spent in the room reinforced his already great interest in adventure and invention.