RANDOM RECOLLECTIONS

TREVOR BRAHAM

EARLY IN MAY 1947 I was invited by the Swiss to join their first post-war expedition to Garhwal. They had got together a strong party of five members which included Andre Roch of Geneva and Alexander Graven of Zermatt, both among the top guides of the day. Tensing Bhutia, as he was known before he became Tensing of Everest, headed our group of eight Sherpas. It was those three months which I spent in the Himalaya that cast a spell which burnished brightly for two and a half decades. A few months after my return from Garhwal I found myself living in London, not far from Kensington Church Street where Geoffrey Winthrop Young lived. I had been reading his book Mountain Craft first published in 1920. It was, he wrote, 'a book for mountaineers... a reminder of the beauty, the mystery, and the strangeness of the mountain world into which the study of mountain craft purposes to enable us to penetrate.' The book was considered essential reading for those who hoped to acquire basic mountaineering skills. Geoffrey Young had written two well-known books about his Alpine climbs which highlighted the effects of the aesthetic and human aspects of mountaineering upon his life. A son of Sir George Young, who had climbed with the pioneers of the Alpine Golden Age, Geoffrey Young at the age of 72 was an éminence grise amongst the few members of his generation who were still around. I, as a callow 25 year old on the eve of my first Alpine season, was understandably eager to meet someone with his exceptional experience of the Alps. I entered his den with trepidation. I recall a sombre room, bookshelves, a table scattered with mountain magazines in several languages, and a distinguished-looking white-haired man seated in an armchair with a stick at his side — he had lost his left leg during World War I. He invited me to sit down. I gave him a few details about my summer experiences in Garhwal, and asked for his advice about suitable climbs in the Alps. He approved of my guide, young Arthur Lochmatter of St. Niklaus, and his advice was characteristically bold. 'Whatever you do, don't climb the ordinary Swiss route on the Matterhorn. The Z'mutt ridge is much more interesting.' Since the great guide Alexander Burgener told A. F. Mummery in 1889 that it would be an 'utter stupidity' to attempt such a climb with someone he did not know (the two made the first ascent of the Z'mutt ridge shortly after) this piece of advice rather alarmed me. I met Geoffrey Winthrop Young again 3 years later when, as a diffident new member of the Alpine Club, I attended a meeting at the elegant hall in South Audley Street. Geoffrey Young died aged 82 in 1958, before the era when major new developments in mountaineering were beginning to take shape. I find myself wondering what he would have felt about them — he, whose mountaineering heyday half-a- century earlier was dominated by a pure love of mountains, and who expressed in poetic terms in his writings his deep appreciation of them.

If age be a state of mind, not measurable in years, Tom Longstaff never grew old; his mind and spirit remained perennially young. He celebrated the Alpine Club's Golden Jubilee in 1907 by climbing Trisul, and he was still active in 1957 when the Club celebrated its Centenary; he had been made an Honorary member the year before, and had been the Club's President in 1947-49. It was at the Club that I first met him. His mountain experiences, which included 20 Alpine and 6 Himalayan visits, apart from journeys to several other ranges, have been fascinatingly described in his book This my Voyage. I regarded him as a living legend when, in the absence of the President, he chaired an evening meeting at which I made my maiden appearance as a speaker in September 1956. I was reporting on our Spiti adventures of 1955, with Peter Holmes, freshly back from a second visit to Spiti, helping out with the slide-projector. From his comments at the end I felt that Tom Longstaff probably approved of the spirit of our journey, and the style in which it had been conducted. Commenting upon the many river-fordings we had to make in the Spiti of those days, I remember his wittily recording his own experiences, when he would test the force of the waters by dropping a boulder into the centre: if it produced a deep boum danger lurked there. The advice that Longstaff constantly gave to aspiring explorers was 'qualify yourself' — as his own knowledge of languages, natural science, and medicine, had qualified him for his pioneering journeys. After the end of World War II Tom Longstaff and his wife bought a property in the extreme northwest corner of Rossshire in the depths of the Scottish Highlands, facing the stormy waters of the Minch and the Outer Hebrides. Their house, a solitary symbol of strength in a wild stretch of moorland, commanded a magnificent landscape of seemingly untouched mountains. 'So I have come back there to live', he wrote, about his fascination with the region. He invited me to visit him, which I did a few weeks later. Arriving by car in deepening twilight, Peter Fleming and I were led into a brightly-lit room where, fussed over by him and his charming wife, we were bidden to a long table laden with the most delicious homemade cakes and other delicacies. I shall not forget the spontaneity and warmth of the welcome, nor the infectious humour with which our hosts put us at our ease. After high tea, Tom Longstaff led us to the drawing room where, gathered around a blazing fire, we listened to him for hour after hour until almost midnight, whilst a blustery rain lashed the windows, and the wind wailed through every crack and threshold. He excelled as a talker, holding one's interest riveted with his inexhaustible store of experiences, and his lively sense of fun. In September 1956 the Cold War was very much alive, and Britain was facing a crisis over its military action in Suez; fresh developments were broadcast over the radio at frequent intervals. In the half-light of dawn the following morning Tom Longstaff, in a flowing dressing-gown, burst into our room — we were hardly out of bed — to announce, 'what do you think the Russians have suggested now, a link-up with the Americans to oppose us! 'This was typical of the enthusiasm and vigour of his mind in his 81st year. Staying under his roof for one night was a privilege I would never have missed.

We had been corresponding for several years before I met Professor Kenneth Mason in 1956. His knowledge of the Himalaya was deep and authoritative, and I would frequently turn to him for an unequivocal answer to some abstruse question about its geography or history. I regarded him with some awe as a pioneer of the early Indian border surveys, and as one of the two or three men who had founded the Himalayan Club. He had gone to India in 1909 as a 22-year old officer in the Royal Engineers, and he left India in 1932 with the rank of Lieut-Colonel having spent almost the whole of his army career in the Survey of India. In 1932 he was elected as a Fellow of Hertford College Oxford and to the newly created Chair of Geography. He did not relinquish his editorship of the Himalayan Journal which began with Volume I in 1929, continuing to edit 8 further Volumes from Oxford — something of an achievement on top of his work at the university. Retiring from his professorship in 1953, he continued to live in Oxford where he began to work on his book Abode of Snow which appeared in 1955. In the following year, on a visit to my sister and her family in Oxford — her husband Harry Jefferies had worked with Kenneth Mason for a number of years — I arranged to meet him at his large, rambling house in Belbroughton Road. He looked fit, and seemed very active, surrounded by books, and still keeping abreast of events in the Himalaya. We discussed the height of Shilla relative to that of Guan Nelda, (now known as Chau Chau Kang Nilda) following my visit to Spiti the year before. Since he had been partly responsible for proclaiming the height record of the Survey of India khalasi who had climbed to Shilla's summit in 1860, he showed some disappointment over its possible demotion from a mountain of 23,000 feet to one of 21,000 feet, which was later confirmed by the Survey of India. He was eager to hear about the activities and health of the Himalayan Club, offering any assistance that he might still be able to give — an offer of which I was happy to take advantage when I took on the editorship of the Himalayan Journal two years later. From then on letters flowed between us regularly, and I visited him twice at the smaller house into which he had moved at Haywards Heath. His handwriting in his 88th year, the year before he died, was as firm and neat as it had been 20 years earlier. I have a letter dated 27 May 1975 in which he wrote, 'I am the last survivor of my Army batch of 1905 — fourteen are now dead — 5 in WWI - 4 were senior Generals in the second ... I am too old now to follow (the events of) the HC. We set out in the early days to bring together the mountain brotherhood of all nations ... and to love the mountains. Personally I thought there was little success unless everyone enjoyed their part and felt their contribution was an important part in it. My boast is that in my mountain wanderings I never lost the life of any man, and I had their complete trust.' I acknowledge a personal debt to Kenneth Mason for much assistance, willingly given, during the days when I held various offices for the Himalayan Club; and for his valuable suggestions and comments when I was struggling through my first book.

The year before I became Honorary Secretary of the Himalayan Club, I had an opportunity to meet Frank Smythe, who arrived in Calcutta in May 1949 on what turned out to be his last visit to India. He was staying at the United Services Club in Calcutta before going on to Darjeeling to recruit a couple of Sherpas for a journey in Garhwal planned to last about 3 months. His lengthy sojourn in the Bhyundar valley prior to World War II had left him with indelible memories, and I think that he was hoping to re-capture some of his earlier experiences, although he did not seem to have any clear-cut plans. Nor did he have a companion. He struck me as having only a very general idea about what he hoped to do, but he did mention his fascination with a 'lovely unclimbed mountain' which he had seen from the top of Kamet in 1931, and which had never been attempted. He was referring to the unnamed peak of 23,760 feet situated about 4 miles south of Kamet, marked on later Survey on India maps as Mukut Parbat. He also talked about the Panch Chuli group, another untouched area. With tongue in cheek, I asked whether he would agree to my joining him for about 3-4 weeks. Whilst still awaiting travel permission he was indecisive, but suggested that I should keep in touch with him. He appeared very relaxed, sipping a pre-dinner sherry in which he asked me to join him; then he rallied forth into a discourse on wines, about which he professed to be something of a connoisseur. At Darjeeling he fell ill suddenly; Jack and Jill Henderson, on whose tea estate he stayed initially, told me later that he showed unusual symptoms which doctors at the local hospital were unable to diagnose. His wife, who had hastened out from England, flew him back home; but he never recovered, and he was only 49 when he died a few months later. Despite his wide experience in the Alps and elsewhere, the Himalaya were his great passion, dominating his thoughts to the end. He was one of the first British mountaineers to set about earning a living by writing about, and photographing, the mountains he loved. When H. E. Riddiford was making plans for the first postwar Himalayan expedition from New Zealand, he wrote to the Himalayan Club requesting suggestions for a suitable objective. I wrote back that they might like to try Mukut Parbat, with Nilkantha as a second choice. The party, which comprised F. M. Cotter, George Lowe, and Ed Hillary, climbed Mukut Parbat on11 July 1951, following that with a reconnaissance of Nilkantha, a rather more difficult mountain which resisted several attempts before it was finally climbed.

Long before I had an opportunity to meet H. W. Tilman in Calcutta in 1950, he had written six of his seven books about mountaineering and travel in the Himalaya and Central Asia, all of which I had read with intense interest. His unique style, which revealed his strength of character and his frugal approach, overflowed with witticisms, and was enriched by quotations drawn from an astonishingly wide background. Initially I found his manner taciturn, but there were frequent flashes of humour, and whatever he said commanded one's interest. He had an exceptional capacity in his speech, as in his books, to illustrate the comic side of adversity. He was visiting Calcutta before moving to Kathmandu for his second expedition to Nepal, being one of the first outsiders permitted to go there after the opening of Nepal's borders the year before. The Himalayan Club, of which I was the new Honorary Secretary, had provided minor assistance, and he came over to see me. At the age of 52, he complained that he was getting too old for mountaineering, and that he had begun to adopt a golden rule when walking which was to 'start slowly, and slow down as the day wore on.' He looked fit and seemed remarkably tough, as he must have been to spend the final 22 years of his life sailing under spartan conditions to isolated corners of the world's oceans pursuing his second, no less strenuous, career of 'amphibious mountaineering.' Understandably, it was often difficult for him to find crews able to match his personal standards of toughness. His method of recruiting them was often by advertisements in the personal column of The Times, one of which read, 'Hands wanted for long voyage in small boat; no pay, no prospects, not much pleasure.' It is that inimitable style which typifies the charm combined with austerity of his 7 seafaring books. I have a letter from him dated 20 July 1962 written on his yacht Mischief off the West coast of Greenland, 'We have only just returned from 3 weeks climbing in some fjords about 100 m north of this. Lovely scenery, very good weather, & lots of fine peaks. They are between 6000 ft & 7000 ft high. Quite high enough for me & are like real Alpine peaks.' He was lost in 1978, with a crew of six, in Antarctic waters at the age of eighty. In 1950, I possessed an old Hillman car in which I drove Tilman from my house to his hotel. The car had an unpredictable engine; with Tilman standing alongside, infinitely patient, uttering occasional witticisms, I tried to persuade it to start. We corresponded, and had a few meetings in London. He was good enough to propose me for the Alpine Club in 1951, when he remarked that my 'Alpine experience was a bit thin, but (my) Himalayan experience should see (me) through.' The last time I saw him was at an evening meeting at 74 South Audley Street in October 1976, when I stood with him and Eric Shipton, the three of us sipping our beers, whilst I listened to them exchanging Himalayan reminiscences. Tilman was a man I greatly admired. He lived his belief that 'the simple life is the gateway to higher things.'

Eric Shipton's early career as a mountaineer followed conventional lines, and he did a good many classic climbs in the Alps up to the age of 21 before going out to Kenya in 1928 to become a coffee planter. After his ascent of Kamet in 1931 as a member of Frank Smythe's party (to join which he sacrificed a partnership as a gold prospector in Tanganyika) he developed the instincts which dominated the next 45 years of his life, having grown fascinated by travel in unknown mountain lands. By the mid-1970s he had become the grand old man of mountain exploration who seemed to go on forever. Never a seeker himself after spectacular deeds or fame, he expressed openness and tolerance towards modern developments in mountaineering which, by the 1960s, had begun to revolutionise the sport. During his presidency of the Alpine Club in 1966 he said, 'We often hear the present generation of young climbers criticised for being competitive and for running unjustifiable risks (what a chord of memory this strikes!) Though I believe that the Alpine Club should maintain its traditional standards in these and other matters we must be careful to see that they are based upon positive and liberal thinking and not on mere prejudice and blind opposition to change.' It was during his Presidency that I met Eric Shipton in 1967, an opportunity to which I had much looked forward as a reader of his books. The Alpine Club was in the process of a minor revolution with proposals for admission of lady members and merger with the Ladies Alpine Club. We met one morning in the reading room of the Royal Geographical Society when he asked me for my comments; he then proceeded to state his reasons for having given his strong backing to the merger. The decision to go ahead with it, which was fairly unanimous, turned out to be among the highlights of his final year of office. I met Shipton again a few weeks later for tea at the RGS. It had not been easy to fix an appointment because he was then visiting London infrequently, having buried himself at his home in Shropshire to work on his autobiography. He said that he was finding it difficult to give an intimate portrait of himself which, he realised, was an essential element in a good biography. I had sought his advice about an expedition which I was trying to plan for 1968, having at the time not fixed upon a region, nor indeed having yet gathered a party. I sensed a sparkle of interest in his eye: the possibility, after an interval of several years, of going back to a little-known Himalayan region, and the simplicity of travel in a small party with flexible plans, for him then could only be a dream. His enthusiasm was infectious, and it provided me with the spark that I needed to push ahead with my plans, taking advantage of my opportunities whilst I still had the power to do so. Although an entertaining and stimulating talker, Eric Shipton was not easy to get to know well. I met him for the last time in October 1976 at the Alpine Club. He was then 69, and had returned a few days earlier from a cruise to the Galapagos Islands acting as a guide-lecturer. Exploration of the southern areas of the South American continent had kept him actively occupied since 1958, and encompassed almost the whole of the second phase of his career as an explorer of mountain country. He complained that evening about feeling slightly unwell, more so than he normally did after returning from an overseas journey. This appears to have been an early symptom of the illness from which he died five months later.

It was Basil Goodfellow to whom I shall always be grateful for encouraging me to join the Alpine Club, of which he was then Honorary Secretary. He invited me to meet him at the Club, where one afternoon in 1951 I found myself seated between him and Fred Spencer Chapman, whilst they exchanged experiences about the Japanese war, discussing Spencer Chapman's recently-published book The Jungle is Neutral. In subsequent years there were innumerable occasions on which Basil and I met, usually for lunch or dinner in London; and he sometimes included me in gatherings with others, where I was able to meet many of the great and the good, enabling me to begin to feel more at home in the Alpine fraternity. I remember visiting his house in Esher, where I met Michael Ward, recently released from the Army, and the prime mover of the 1951 Everest Reconnaissance expedition. He had come to discuss with Basil the question of inviting Eric Shipton, just back from his post as Consul in Kunming after an adventurous journey out of China, to lead the expedition. After Basil retired as a director of I.C.I. in the late 1950s he took on other business appointments which kept him occupied on a part-time basis, and he moved to an attractive period house in Suffolk, where I once spent a weekend. He drove me from the railway station to the house in his 'E' type Jaguar; he was a skilled motorist, and enjoyed handling fast cars. After lunch we went into the orchard where Basil, standing at the foot of a tall ladder, gathered into a basket the plums which I picked from above out of a tree laden with ripe fruit. Basil Goodfellow was a very keen and highly accomplished amateur photographer, possessing an almost unique collection of black & white and colour pictures covering his long mountaineering career in the Alps and other parts of the world. During that weekend we had an absolute feast of photography — he did much of his own processing and enlarging. I could only marvel, with a tinge of envy, at his superb efficiency, and at the meticulous arrangement and classification of his vast collection of mountain photographs. He advised me, as he had done, to use a Leica camera. A few months later I was able to acquire one at a duty-free shop; and I have never regretted having heeded his advice.

SUMMARY

Recollections of meetings with Geoffrey Winthrop Young, Tom Longstaff, Kenneth Mason, Frank Smythe, H.W. Tilman, Eric Shipton and Basil Goodfellow.

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