A Pebble on the Beach

It is said that George Mallory and Andrew Irvine went missing on the 8th June 1924, and either died on that day, or the day after. If it was the 9th of June; then today would mark the 100th anniversary of the deaths of the two mountaineers, who were last sighted only a few hours, and a couple of hundred meters short of the summit. The poem ‘A Scapeshifter,’ which this site is about, celebrates the genius of T S Elliot’s poem ‘The Wasteland,’ first published in October 1922, and connects to events, and to art (the signature of man) which came to fruition in that year. One such notable occurrence, was a second expedition by George Mallory, and the first ever attempt in modern times, of an assent on Mount Everest; which did not make the peak, but achieved a world altitude record of 27,300 feet.

Lines 13 and 14, and 19 and 20; in ‘A Scapeshifter,’ are concerned with the Great War of 1914 to 1918, which cost many lives, and by 1922 in its aftermath, had given rise to the term “Lost generation” as a verbal label; the phrase said to have been coined by Gertrude Stein: it was subsequently used by Ernest Hemmingway in the epigraph for his novel ‘The Sun Also Rises.’ George Mallory had fought at the Battle of the Somme, as had many of his party on the expedition of 1924; his second and fatal final attempt. Because of the hundred year anniversary of the deaths of Mallory and Irvine, and the connection to 1922, I decided to look into it a little, and listened to an interview on a you tube channel called ‘Everest Mystery.’ The channel seems to be the creation of Thom Pollard, whom I think was, and is, a high altitude camera man, who was with a team looking to discover the bodies of the two missing climbers; discovering them on the 1st May in 1999. On the face of it; Thom Pollard appeared to be a decent, and interesting man, who was interviewing a writer and anthropologist called Wade Davis. Mr Davis was talking about a book he had written called ‘Into the Silence:’ The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest, for which he said he had required more than a decade for research, before writing the book, which included reading 600 books, and 57 archives. I have not read this book yet, but I will do so now after hearing Wade Davis speak. George Mallory became well known for his answer to a question; “why climb Everest?” to which he is said to have answered; “Because it’s there:” and as Neville Cardus said; “whether he said it or not, doesn’t matter; it needed to be said.” But that famous catch phrase doesn’t capture the essence of the interview: better perhaps to use a line which Wade Davis had written about these high rise explorers, many of whom had lived through the horrors of action in the first world war. He said of them; “life mattered less than the moments of living.” An excellent written line, fit for a verbal tradition, to transfer a truth. Because this site is about a poem and poetry: I’ll stop here as I think an anthropologist has written a telling poetic line. I’ll repeat what I can’t help but take for poetry; “life mattered less than the moments of living.” All that now remains for me concerning the interview is to perhaps watch it again and read the book, and to suggest that the just over half hour interview on the Thom Pollard you tube channel; ‘Everest Mystery’ called George Mallory’s Obsession & Struggle for Redemption on Everest | Wade Davis: is well worth a watch and a listen.