TH Somerville-front left with G Bruce right.1924 Everest Expedition. Photo, Bentley Beetham.
HE WAS already the grandest of old men when I met him in the
early summer of 1970. He was then 80 years old, rotund, rubicund and happy,
living in a house above Ambleside looking across at the Langdale fells — those
same fells on which he had started his climbing career at the turn of the
century. And now he is dead —Theodore Howard Somervell, a man of great stamina
and even greater ideals. We, in the mountaineering world, will remember him as
one of the two men who on June 2, 1924, reached a height of 28,000 feet on the
North face of Everest but in India he will be remembered as a surgeon who
devoted his life to healing the sick and teaching a new generation of surgeons
and physicians. He was born in Kendal in 1890, the son of W. H. Somervell who
was then the head of the boot and shoe manufacturers that still exist in that
town. Soon he was wandering alone in the Lakeland Fells and extending his
horizon to mild rock climbs.
And soon he graduated to the Alps where his father
offered to pay for some guides. 'I looked very carefully at what the guides
were doing and I saw that a guide isn't a magician — he's a man with experience
who knows what snow and ice means. Well, I already knew what rock climbing meant
so after that season in the Alps, I never had a guide and I did all the route
finding.' He was lucky to survive the war —his ship was delayed by submarines
on the way to the Dardanelles — and in 1921 he graduated from University
College Hospital as a doctor and surgeon. In 1922 General Bruce chose him for
that first assault on Everest. Howard Somervell himself was very modest about
the reasons for his selection. He talked about the many better climbers who had
been killed in the war and thought that he was chosen because of his stamina.
He told a story of being challenged by some friends to try
to beat the record for the Cuillin ridge in Skye which at that time stood at
just over 12 hours. He knocked some two and a half hours off that record. When
I talked to him he laughed at his own performance compared to the modern record
of four hours nine minutes set by Eric Beard. On that 1922 Everest expedition
he was involved in a terrible avalanche on the North Col: 'I was quite certain
that we were going to be carried over the ice cliff — so certain of it that I
don't remember being frightened. I think that one is only frightened if there
is some doubt about it but I thought that in five seconds I would see what
wonderful things happen after death.'
But his patch of snow stopped and he dug
himself out only to find that seven Sherpas were missing. 'We climbed down to
the bottom of the cliff and dug them out and all except one was dead. And that
was the end of the 1922 Expedition.' He was back in Darjeeling by August and
had to wait two months for his boat home so he spent his time travelling around
India: 'As a result of what I saw I decided that I must spend the rest of my
active life (he was 32 years old at the time) trying to help. There were so few
surgeons working in that immense country and there I stayed in a mission
hospital for 25 years and then I went on to teach the coming generation.
Original Somervell watercolour
We could have done so
much more if only we'd had more time. ‘Coming from a civilised country you
could hardly believe the things we saw every day.' But Everest was to call him
away again and in 1924, he and Norton were selected for the second push to the
summit after Mallory and Geoffrey Bruce had retreated. Their epic climb to well
over 28,000 feet is well documented but I shall always remember this gentle
giant sitting in front of a window overlooking the Lakeland fells and recalling
the descent: Norton with increasingly painful snowblindness and Somervell, with
a plug in his throat that was on the verge of stopping him breathing: 'We were
unroped and Norton was ahead and I couldn't breathe in or out so I sat down in
the snow and made violent efforts to cough. But I couldn't and I thought
"Oh well, this is the end. Cheerio everybody!
And then I remembered my
medical training — that most of our breathing is done with the diaphragm and so
I gave one huge cough and at the same time pressed hard with my hands into my
tummy. That did the trick. Up came a horrible black slough which I think was
the inside of my larynx. Intense pain —but complete relief. It hurt like hell
but it was air in sufficient quantity to keep me alive. If only it had happened
higher up, we might both have gone on very much further.' And now he is dead at
the age of 84 and I am proud that I met him: mountaineer, surgeon, musician and
artist but above all, a man who loved his fellow men, a man who enriched all
those diverse people who came into the Christian aura which surrounded his
life.
On what happened to
Mallory and Irvine I always think it is quite possible that they did get to
the top and then had an accident on the way down. We know that Norton and I
reached our highest point at about three in the afternoon whereas Mallory and
Irvine were seen on the Second Step at 12.30, I believe. So they were two and a
half hours in front of us and a couple of hundred feet higher. With oxygen and
going at least twice as fast as Norton and I, they could have got to the top
and back to Camp Six if they'd hurried a bit. Many accidents in climbing
history have been on the way down. I think it's probable that one of them
slipped while the other was not in a position to hold him. I've always thought
that the probable place was a snow and ice slope on the way down and that they
would have fallen down that terribly precipitous South-East Face.
On his personal
equipment for Everest I had a woollen vest, a flannel shirt and three
cardigans — not pullovers but cardigans with buttons so that you can take them
off easily — and then a short mackintosh coat with buttons up to the top. On my
legs I had long woollen underpants and some sort of loose riding breeches. My
boots were very light and made in Kendal but big enough to take four pairs of
socks. With four pairs of socks, the sweat from your feet settles on the
outside pair so that the inner pair stays dry and as long as that stays dry you
won't get frostbite. I never got frostbite on Everest or any other mountain on
my feet. I'm perfectly satisfied with that as a rational rig-out for climbing.
On danger I am
sure of this: that many adventures like Everest have certain dangers which have
to be faced and any adventure is not worth the name unless there is a certain
amount of risk attached to it.
On Mallory himself
One of the disasters of the First World War was the death of so many good
people who might have influenced our nation for the better. And I felt that
about Mallory — the tragedy of his death on Everest was not just a personal
one. He was an idealist who wanted our nation to be a leader in the world: not
in the sense of military power or the bossing of other nations but as an
example of what civilisation can do for a people to make them happy. He was not
exactly communistic but he did believe in an equal chance for everybody as far
as it can be given in a well organised society. I should think he would
probably have called himself a Fabian type of socialist.
Everest 1924: Irvine standing far left,Mallory next to him.Somerville-Sitting third right.
Chris Brasher : First Published in Mountain Life: Feb/March 1975
Photographs: The Bentley Beetham Collection-Durham University
