Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine (10 page)

On leaving Shrewsbury in 1921, Sandy applied to study chemistry at Magdalen College, Oxford. He had been preceded to Oxford by Hugh, who was reading History at Magdalen, and Evelyn, who was reading Inorganic Chemistry under the auspices of the Recognized Society of Women Students, which later became St Anne’s College.  

Sandy’s academic record was found wanting, although he had succeeded in passing his Higher Certificate in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics.  Even in the days when academic qualifications were not the only requirement for securing a place at the university, the Master, Sir Herbert Warren, felt unable to offer him a place.  Sir Herbert later deeply regretted the decision but at the time Sandy was left wondering which college might accept him.  He knew full well that his rowing record would count greatly in his favour and he turned to his friend and former housemaster, C.J. Baker who himself had been at Merton College at the end of the nineteenth century.  Baker knew and liked Merton’s Warden, T. E. Dowman, and put in a good word for Sandy.  It was agreed that he would be offered a place at the college subject to his attending a crammer for the Michaelmas term of 1921 and passing Responsions, the examination formally required to qualify for entry as an undergraduate at Oxford University.

The crammer was run by A. Theodosius, another friend of Dowman, and was located in Merton Street, a mere throw from Sandy’s prospective college.  Once there Sandy made a great effort to get to grips with Latin, Greek and modern languages but it was a struggle.  At the time when he was sweating away at the crammer the selection process for the university boat crew was underway starting with the ‘Varsity Fours -   in which each college enters its very best crew, including Blues, then followed by  the Trial VIIIs held at Wallingford in early December.  One of his overriding reasons for wishing to get to Oxford was to continue his rowing career and in December 1921 it must have looked to him as if he would have to bide his time for a whole year before taking part in trials for the Boat Race.  This would have been an irritation to him, because, as usual, he had his sights set high on a place in the university crew.

But his work at the crammer paid off and by the end of December 1921 Willie Irvine had received two letters.  One was from Theodosius and the other from Dowman.  Theodosius had grown to like Sandy over the term and was prepared to recommend him to Merton although he could not help mentioning to Willie the ‘meagre knowledge of Latin and French he brought with him…  His French prose had some serious howlers.’  He concluded the letter: ‘The Boy is a bit overworked just now but I hope he will quickly pick up.  I have liked having him – he is persona grata with us all and I have found him reliable in every way.’   Dowman was prepared to look leniently on Sandy’s application, presumably in view of what Theodosius had said about him but also because he was doubtless keen to have someone of Sandy’s athletic brilliance, which would bring benefit to the college.  He wrote to Willie: ‘We are willing to admit your son into residence next term in spite of his not having passed the whole of Responsions.’  With some relief Willie relayed this good news to Sandy who took up his rooms in college on 20 January 1922, although he was made to re-sit his Responsions three times until he finally passed them all in the Autumn of 1922.

Merton College, despite its peaceful appearance, had a reputation for gaiety which extended back to the Civil War and for many years it was reputed to have the best kitchen in Oxford.  By the 1920s the college was in the capable, if at times controversial hands of H. W. Garrod, a tutor in Literature and Classics.  Although Sandy had little to do with Garrod academically he knew him well from the bowls’ games on the college lawns, a regular fixture that along with chess, allowed Garrod regular contact with the undergraduates.  Merton admitted about twenty new students each year, so that the total number of people in the college including the fellows and dons, numbered about 120.   Sandy was given an attic room overlooking one of the courtyards.  He shared a staircase and a ‘scout’ with an American called Alatan Tamchiboulac Wilder, known as ‘AT’ a fellow sportsman and subsequent close friend.  The scouts were man servants who attended to the needs of the undergraduates, lighting fires in their rooms and making them breakfast each morning.  The scouts were more than just mere servants and took great pride in their men and the antics they got involved in.  Sandy quickly established a good relationship with his scout, Owen Brown, and soon trusted him to look after his goods and affairs on his behalf.  Brown later described Sandy as a ‘kind friend’ to him.

Sandy’s closest friend at Oxford, though, was a man called Geoffrey Milling, who had come up to Merton the previous year from Radley.  Milling came from the Isle of Wight and shared with Sandy a distinguished school rowing career.  They met in their first week when Sandy was offered a place in the Oxford Boat and Milling was rowing at 7.  They had a lot in common, apart from their passion for rowing, and Milling was instrumental in ensuring that Sandy was quickly immersed in College life.

Much has been made of the hedonistic atmosphere that pervaded Oxford in the 1920s and the image of the cultivated, fun-loving student from an upper-class background for whom university was nothing but a ‘sort of passionate party all the time’.  Louis MacNeice, a contemporary of Sandy’s at Merton, wrote in his autobiography: ‘I had not gone to Oxford to study; that was what grammar-school boys did.  We products of the English public schools went to Oxford either for sport and beer-drinking, in which case we filled in time deriding the intellectuals, or for the aesthetic life and cocktails, in which case we filled in time deriding the athletes.’  That is not however the whole picture and Sandy, anyway, did not belong to the group of aesthetes on whom this rather idyllic image is based. During the 1920s there was a growing number of students who were silly of a set purpose, which confused the dons who could not understand why such young men blessed with a keen logic should occupy themselves so much with idiosyncrasies of manners and dress.

For Sandy the change from public school to Merton appeared never to be a problem.  First, the regime at Shrewsbury had been somewhat more enlightened and relaxed than in other public schools and, secondly, there can be no doubt that coming into Merton with an outstanding rowing career behind him he was quickly included in the elite of the college.  He became something of an instantaneous celebrity when he was offered, in his first week, a place in the university boat – a singular honour and distinction for a freshman and a mark of his strength as an oarsman.  The decision taken by 1922 President of the Oxford University Boat Club (OUBC), D. T. Raikes, to include Sandy in his crew was a bold one.  What led to its being taken is not recorded but he clearly felt confident in requisitioning the untried freshman, who had missed the Trial VIIIs in December by not yet being a member of the university.  By all accounts he was not disappointed. Sandy was singled out by the local press who, whilst observing the training in February, deemed him to be a decided acquisition.  Training for the Boat Race was neither as scientific nor as arduous then as it is now, nevertheless it was a punishing schedule and the crew had only two and a half months to prepare before they were to race Cambridge on 1 April.  During that time the crew were relieved of their studies and trained first in Oxford and then Henley, where they stayed in the Leander Club, before moving down to the tideway at Putney at the beginning of March for the final days of training.

The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race predates the Henley Royal Regatta by ten years.  It has been rowed on the tidal Thames in London since 1830 and from Putney to Mortlake, a distance of 4 miles 374 yards in a time of about 20 minutes since 1845.  In the nature of all such events, the Boat Race is a private challenge match between the two universities concerned and as such has only its own rules.  The formal challenge is made annually and the conditions of the race do not change except by mutual agreement. The popularity of the Boat Race was ascribed by Gully Nickalls, President of the OUBC in 1923, to the Englishman’s innate respect and affection for routine, at any rate as regards his sporting fixtures.  The fact that it is rowed in March, a month when the country can expect anything from bright sunshine to a blizzard, may too have something to do with its popularity. ‘The sight of sixteen young men rowing up the river in the minimum of clothing’, Nickalls wrote, ‘is a hopeful and encouraging sign; a harbinger of the warm days of summer which, ever optimistic, we believe are waiting for us in a few weeks’ time.’   From the point of view of the oarsmen, past and present, it was and is a singular honour to be asked to take part in the Race and to be a member of a winning crew is a matter of lifetime pride.  This was very much the case in the 1920s, when Sandy was rowing, all the more so because Oxford had not won the Race since 1913 and it was becoming something of a concern to the OUBC that they were consistently outperformed by their rivals. 

The OUBC in 1922 was able to draw on the expertise of three immensely experienced coaches, Dr Gilbert Bourne, E. D. Horsfall and Harcourt Gold, who worked hard and uniformly together.  They succeeded in impressing the rowing journalists who reckoned the 1922 crew were almost up to the standard of the 1912 crew, the last but one to beat Cambridge.  In the Race Oxford did not live up to their early promise and were beaten by Cambridge in a fast time by four and a half lengths.  The critics held that the Oxford crew lacked experience and that the younger men would have to be worked hard if their form was to improve.  Of Sandy, one testy correspondent wrote: ‘Irvine is quite promising, and he will finish more firmly when he has more experience.’ 

Back at Oxford after the Easter holidays Sandy got on with the real business of being at university.  He had chosen to study chemistry although his natural bent was towards engineering, not an Oxford subject at the time.  His tutor, Bertram Lambert was intrigued and exasperated by him in equal measure.  While he showed real passion for laboratory work and a fascination for experiments, much of Sandy’s work at Oxford had little to do with the set curriculum.  He was too busy chasing ideas that appealed to his inventive side and would pursue them at the expense of his degree subjects.  They came to an amicable agreement on his academic studies and he passed Parts I and II of his chemistry exams and, eventually, Responsions.  The science subjects had a fuller timetable than the humanities and Sandy had to attend ten lectures and tutorials a week, including three on Fridays and one on Saturday morning.  With this, his rowing and the inevitable socializing in college, his time at Oxford was filled to overflowing.  As in everything else he did, he put his heart into university life.

Evelyn was embarked on her own university career and living in North Oxford, in a boarding house on the Woodstock Road.  She and Sandy were often seen together.  He was useful as a chaperone to theatres, to the occasional dance and to the Merton Commemoration Ball two years running. At entertainments, such as dinner parties, women were in the minority.  She was a great asset: not only was she very beautiful, but she was also intelligent and independent, able to keep up a conversation with anyone.  Sandy thought the world of her and regaled her with all his latest exploits which she would then in turn relate to the girls in the boarding house.  They were always delighted to hear what he had been up to and thought Evelyn immensely sophisticated as she had an entrée into the world of the university whereas they, as one of her friends wrote to me, practically needed written permission to talk to a man.  In the end Sandy’s friends, who admired Evelyn a great deal, were able to help her after his death by protecting her from the newspapers in a most extraordinary and dashing way.

Each college had a dining club which had a distinctive character of its own.  The Myrmidon Club at Merton attracted the ‘hearties’ who ‘were wealthy and well connected, but also dissolute and daring, in the habit of breaking college windows and college rules’.  This description refers to one episode when a letter was received by the club’s President reminding him of the curfew hour for guests and pointing out that he was sure that members of the club had no intention of breaking either rules or windows. It is hardly surprising that the club had a reputation for scarcely contained revelry. One of the key members of the Myrmidon Club was George Binney, a year or two older than Sandy and a very active undergraduate.  He was the chief organizer of the Oxford University Arctic expeditions of 1921 and 1923. Milling was also a member of the Myrmidon Club and he invited Sandy to join them at one of their dinners.  Sandy fitted the bill and was elected a member in June 1922.  The members met twice a term in college and dined out at least once, usually at the Gridiron Club, returning to one or other of their rooms for dessert, drinks and a game of chance.  College rules dictated that all guests must depart by 11 p.m. but there were several occasions when guests stayed beyond this hour and had to be surreptitiously ‘removed’ in cloak and dagger operations.  An episode recorded in the club minutes referred to ‘one guest who remained in college until well after twelve and had to be let out by devious ways under the supervision of the President and Mr Irvine.’  In 1924 Sandy was elected, in absentia, Honorary Secretary of the Myrmidon Club but unfortunately never returned to take up the post.

Dick Hodges, an old Salopian and member of the Myrmidon Club in the early 1920s, recalled on his honeymoon an episode concerning Sandy.  He and his new wife were dining at the Lygon Arms Hotel at Broadway in the Cotswolds, gazing into the magnificent Jacobean fireplace when Dick suddenly said, ‘Whenever I’m in this room I’m reminded of Sandy Irvine!’  ‘Oh yes,’ replied his wife with some trepidation.  ‘We’d come over for dinner,’ Dick explained, ‘and Sandy disappeared.  We had given up searching and were about to return to Oxford when Sandy shouted at us from the rooftops.  He’d climbed that chimney.’  This is so typical of Sandy.  He didn’t climb the chimney as a dare, he didn’t even tell anyone he was going to do it, he just set himself a private challenge and got on with it.