Far, Far The Mountain Peak Read online

  Yours aye, Peter

  PS.--I had sealed up this letter when the post office chuprassi brought your telegram. I am sorry for your sake, Gerry, and can only hope that you will not take it harder than is--well, true. Your father had really been dead for a long time, as far as you are concerned, the way mine died for me when I learned as a child that he had disappeared. Please give my sympathy to Peggy. I sent off a letter to her a couple of days ago.

  October 15th, 1907

  SETTLEMENT OFFICER’S CAMP

  RUDWAL DISTRICT

  PUNJAB

  Dear Gerry,

  You and Walsh seem to have had a wonderful time in Peru, except for that fall. You need me with you.

  This resettlement job is nearly finished now, and Philipson has promised to do his best to get me the Rudwal District when he retires--or dies--one of which is bound to happen within the next two years. He seemed surprised that I wanted it so badly, because he had thought I would prefer the secretariat.

  I see in the A.J. that Barnwell and Ingram failed to make the north-east wall of the Weisshorn. They say the weather turned against them late in the morning, but I can’t help wondering whether a determined go, then, might not have done the trick. You remember we had a good look at it in ‘03, and we decided then that really weather and skill would be much less important than nerve--guts, to be frank. We’ll mark it up as another first for the team of Savage and Manningford--sorry, Savage and Wilcot.

  The existence of Meru has not been officially revealed, and will not be till ‘09, I hear, but it does exist, and its height is 27,141.1 spent a month at Harkamu and beyond, working out details of supply and transport for an expedition that could at least make a full reconnaissance of it. Another good thing is that the only approaches to it are through Rudwal, and since Tibetan bandits shot a traveller in the Northern Tehsils ten years ago, the D.C. Rudwal has to be applied to before any journeys can be made north of the Lakho La.

  You ask what I think about the proposal that you go into politics. It might be a fine idea, provided you had some definite purpose. When I made the remark about your becoming the Viceroy, you had not succeeded to the title. Now you have, and the idea is much more than a castle in the air. It is perfectly feasible, though it would take time. Curzon was thirty-nine when he took over, and that was very young, but it still leaves you thirteen years in hand. On the other hand, the three Presidency governorships--Bengal, Madras, Bombay--are also reserved for the likes of you, and though it would not be easy for me to transfer to any of them, it could be done. Together in one of those provinces we could make such a mark that you would be certain of the Viceroyalty in due course. In the meantime you would have to study India and its problems, and speak from time to time in the Lords about them. I could give you a lot of ‘inside’ information and advice and you could make a visit out here every year.

  I do not think personally that your suggestion about aiming for the prime ministership or some other cabinet office is feasible, or would suit you. You don’t think so yourself, I am sure, or you would not have phrased it in that jocular fashion. It is no good thinking of one’s purpose in life in jocular terms, Gerry, and you did so because you know that you would have to dirty your hands in home politics, and get down and fight like an alley tough with all kinds of dirty demagogues, for any post in the cabinet. But the Viceroyalty is within your reach. The choice for it is limited to rich noblemen, and you’re one. Not many such want it--but for you, well, you could do something for India. Remember telling me you never imagined that people could live in conditions like this?--and asking, what can be done about it? We are doing what we can, but you could do more, a great deal more. Very few rich noblemen have your love of people, Gerry. I suppose that’s what has always made me like and admire you so much, though I can’t be the same. I try, but it doesn’t work.

  I think we’ve reached an age when we must really decide what we want to do with our lives, what is worth while doing. I have chosen India as my field, and for Adam Khan there was really no alternative. I must get to the top, to get things done, and now I am sure that with you and Adam and some patience I can get there. We can all get there together. Then we can set to work to change the face of India. We will abolish disease and poverty, and make a new India where every Indian is the partner of every Englishman. We three, or whoever will join us, will decide what must be done. You will explain it to England, Adam to India, and I will build and run the machine that does it.

  Meantime I am going to stay in Rudwal, putting some theories to the test, and awaiting the Hour. I don’t know how long we’ll have to wait. None of us does. The signal might be your getting the governorship, it might be something quite different--a famine, rebellion, even a big war--but I think I’ll recognize it when it comes. It won’t be dull, because my grandfather’s experience is always in my mind. He was just feeling bogged down in the routine of army life here when, out of nowhere, came the Mutiny. I think of the Mutiny as a hurricane of wind blowing over India, that separated the chaff from the straw, but who knows what our hurricane will be, or when it might come? Grandfather told me he never found life dull after the Mutiny, although it probably was, because he took nothing for granted and was always ready for anything. He never counted on the sun rising tomorrow, so when it did he was thrilled.

  Then there is our mountaineering. It will be of great help to us in our plans if we become known as really great climbers, a team, especially if our greatest feats are done here in the Himalaya. Later we shall be too old and too involved to do anything big, so we must go all out in these next ten or fifteen years. Mountaineering is far more than a hobby to us. It’s a way of thinking, of training ourselves. We know where we’re going--to the top. We’re going to get there. We have a purpose, all the time.

  Sorry to be so serious. Just pretend we are back in my rooms at King’s, settling the fate of the universe over mugs of porter! It’s sad to think that in a few years we’ll all be respectably married men and there won’t be any more of those long bachelor sessions such as we had at Cambridge and here, beside the Maghra. Still, it won’t be for some time in my case, as I can’t afford the luxury of a wife just yet, and I’m not sure that I’m ready for the responsibilities when there is so much else to do here and in the mountains. Perhaps I’ll reconsider the situation when I get home on long leave--1909 is now indicated as the year.

  Yours aye, Peter

  June 4th, 1908

  CITY MAGISTRATE’S HOUSE

  KOLHAPUR, PUNJAB

  Dear Gerry,

  Jolly Boating Weather, what? Not here, though. This place has more flies than any other place in India, and it is today 124° in the shade. The incumbent has gone to England on long leave and I sit in his seat and hope there won’t be a riot--not very hard, though, as a suitable riot might start the full striking of the Hour!

  Adam Khan is having trouble with his C.G.G. in Rudwal. They are such a mixed crowd, some ignorant and honest, some intellectual and fuzzy, some crooked and sharp; some concerned with getting rich, some with the preservation of the ideals of Islam under our Christian yoke. He has visited me once here since I came to Kolhapur in March. He came in secrecy, which must sound strange to you, but is caused by the circumstances of what we are trying to do. His group are not anti-British, like some of the other similar groups that have sprung up around the country since the Morley-Minto reforms were published, but neither are they willing to hear what we have to tell them, salaam, and then go away to do it. This is fine in itself, but it does mean that Adam Khan has to pretend to be more remote from me than he actually is. I am not sure how much stamina he (Adam) is going to show in this business, and am tentatively looking round in Rudwal for someone who would be able to keep the thing going if Adam somehow failed us. He looks increasingly harassed, and confesses that he is finding it more and more difficult to keep the control--rather the moral dominance--over the C.G.G. that is essential for our purpose. Then, affairs at his home are going from bad to worse,
and the Old Captain has to all intents taken the care of the child, Baber, out of Adam’s hands. So Adam has put his father and his son out of his mind, and identified himself more strongly with his C.G.G.--and in the process has become too involved with all their problems and weaknesses, and of course is very unhappy about his son.

  It is definite that I am coming home on leave next year, and just about definite that I shall get Rudwal when I return here. Philipson is going to stick it out till then, though the doctors tell him he ought to go now.

  I have found out a little more about Meru from one of the surveyors who went into Parasia, a P.M. havildar whose home is in Rudwal. He says it is a more or less triangular mountain, with long ridges leading up from south and east to a tremendous summit cone of about 3,000 feet. The ice cliffs on the west face he estimated as 7,000 feet almost sheer.

  I’m glad you found my note on the land-tenure system useful. Don’t forget that what I wrote only applies to this part of the Punjab. In a week or two I hope to send you a detailed note on the problems of the provincial police forces. I should be chary of using it for anything except to gather information--I mean, don’t make a speech based on it in the Lords--as there are widely differing views on the proper solution, and you don’t want to get committed to any particular one just yet.

  Yours aye, Peter

  January 4th, 1909

  18, CIVIL LINES

  LAHORE, PUNJAB

  Dear Gerry,

  Sir Louis has dragged me in here as assistant bottle-washer until I go on leave--May 23rd, on the Ravi from Bombay. I’ll go overland from Marseilles and spend a few days with Grandfather in London, calling on the Sec. of State, etc., before coming to Zermatt. If you go out about the middle of June you can have all the arrangements made by the time I arrive, and we won’t waste a day. I am working out a really big eight-week tour of all the big peaks in the Valais, the Bernese Oberland, and the Hautes Alpes, and will send details of it to you as soon as it is ready. I want to combine a wide variety of experience with the maximum amount of climbing--and let us pray for good weather.

  In a way it is a good thing that the Fentons can’t get away till August, as it leaves us free to get the really serious work done before Emily and Peggy arrive. Mrs Fenton has invited me to spend a week-end at Llyn Gared as soon as I arrive in England, but I fear I shall have to refuse.

  Rudwal is definite, and in writing! I go direct there on my return from leave. The C. & M. had an account of your maiden speech in the Lords, on the Morley-Minto reforms. It was good stuff, and was well received here too, though H.E. expressed some rather unflattering surprise. If I were you, I would be less diffident with my statements. Say such and such a thing is so, and let the other fellows disprove it if they can.

  I have decided that the first things to be done when I take over Rudwal are to establish a co-operative stud farm for the improvement of the cattle, combined with some kind of practical farm school on a small scale; an irrigation scheme to use the Maghra properly; and the establishment of a hospital in Rudwal, with a nurses’ school attached to it. The women are going to be very important to us. It will need money and pressure, but I think I can find both.

  I am already beginning to get shivers up and down my back at the prospect of seeing the Matterhorn again. We’ll go up the first day after I reach Zermatt. I am exercising hard, especially to get my arms stronger. One’s legs and wind are in pretty good shape anyway, with the kind of life we lead.

  Yours aye, Peter

  March 12th, 1909

  18, CIVIL LINES

  LAHORE, PUNJAB

  Dear Gerry,

  Many thanks for your letter in reply to my last, and for the suggestions about the route we ought to take on our Swiss expedition.

  The only way I can answer your letter is to say what I think we are trying to do during this summer. Well, first we’re going to spend a week in Zermatt acclimatizing and getting used to each other’s climbing styles all over again. Then we’re going to set off on this eight-week tour of the major peaks, and finish up back in Zermatt, by which time, about August 15th, the Fentons and Peggy should have arrived.

  Your letter seems to assume that the chief purposes of the trip are to get me into the Alpine Club, and to improve our climbing technique. I understand that to be eligible for the A.C. I will have to have made about twenty first-rate expeditions spread over at least three seasons.

  Now, I want to become a member of the Alpine Club, make no mistake about it. It will make our future climbs easier to arrange and to publicize, through the Journal--but it is not essential, and it is really vital not to allow the winning of this ‘honour’ to interfere with our real purpose. Election to the A.C. (with apologies to one Noble Member) is like being certificated as a good chap by a lot of other good chaps; but good chaps often don’t get to the top.

  The improvement of our technique is more important but not as important as you seem to think. If we are going to make new conquests, go higher and farther than anyone has ever gone, it must be in the Himalaya. These last years have convinced me that in the Himalaya technique must take third place behind stamina and something which might be called will-power, or just ‘will,’ in both senses. In the Alps there are few peaks that cannot be climbed in a day and a half, including the return. In the Himalaya, this isn’t so. I went over 20,000 feet climbing out of Harkamu and as I told you, height itself showed signs of becoming a major difficulty--and it can’t be conquered by ice- axe or rope, however skilfully used. In the Alps we choose difficult routes to test our skill; in the Himalaya a leader must always choose the easiest route, and though there will occasionally be real technical difficulties, the easiest will be hard enough, because of its sheer size.

  So, although we must of course try to improve our skills, that is not the main object of the tour. That object, I am sure, must be to test and improve our stamina, our powers of physical endurance, and--above all--our mental stamina, our will.

  I want us to put ourselves in the way of hard and dangerous decisions. In each case I want to take the hardest, the most dangerous among all the even faintly feasible possibilities. By taking the hard way, hour after hour, day after day, we will so train our wills that when we reach the Himalaya--specifically Meru--with a party, we will be quite clearly the most determined members of it.

  But Gerry, this training of the will is not only for the purpose of climbing. You’ve started on a course which should in due time bring you out to India, first as Governor of a Presidency and then as the Most Honourable the Earl of Wilcot, G.M.S.I., G.M.I.E., G.C.M.G., etc., Viceroy and Governor-General of India. To get to the end of this road--the top, if you like--whatever the conditions, we have to develop our wills--and, especially, you. You usually seem to think you are no better than anyone else, and therefore have no right to force your will on them. But you have to, and there will be occasions when we cannot work as a team; when you, as the chief, will have to overcome opposition on your own. So on this trip you’ve got to make the decisions, the deliberately unpleasant ones, just as much as I have.

  Well, the immediate purpose of enlarging our will-power is to give us something most climbers don’t have. To them climbing is a sort of game, like cricket, only played on steep mountains instead of levelled meadows--in which one displays skill, sportsmanship, and good manners, and does or does not get to the top as circumstances permit. But every now and then, even in cricket, someone comes along who does not really think of it as a game--at least, not once he gets out there with the ball in his hand. He wants to win, and because of that he usually does.

  We must want to get to the top. But, and this is very important, we must live the whole of ‘wanting to get to the top,’ not just half of it. Getting to the top is worthless if you don’t want to; wanting to is worthless if you don’t achieve it. The ‘wanting’ is damned important in terms of life because no one can know what ‘the top’ will be like. When mountaineering, we climb on because we have faith that the summit will be
there, roughly as expected, when we reach it. In life, I am not so sure. I cannot help suspecting that while we are engaged in our desperate assaults on the lower cliffs God may change the landscape, so that when we arrive everything is quite different, so much so that we may not even know we have arrived. I told you about Grandfather, and the Mutiny giving him a permanent sense of pleasure in the expected, if it happened. There was another effect, that, when he awoke, his ambition had been turned upside down. Instead of trying to rule, he found himself trying to heal.

  So--we are hoping to do something great for India and the world. We see ourselves organizing, administering, directing the flow of energy. But we’ve got to remember that our particular summits, when we get there, may turn out to be something quite different--moments perhaps in which one of us is killed saving the other; or when we are thrown to the wolves by the blindness of those we are trying to help; or when we father sons who will do what we have been prevented from doing. This untrustworthiness of the Deity must not prevent us from going on towards the top as we see it, because the journey itself must also be our desire--as it is in climbing.

  Why do we climb? Because we want to, and to get to the top. And, in my case, because it is easier not to.

  The pinnacles of Chapel, the shape of the Matterhorn, the pyramid of Meru--which we haven’t even seen--tower up in front of everybody. They are there for everybody. The mass of men say that one should stay at the bottom, looking up--admiringly, perhaps; and it is clearly more comfortable there. Therefore, I say, I will go up. An usher at school used to call this attitude of mine ‘contrariness.’ It wasn’t, and isn’t, that at all. It is a fixed policy I decided on as long ago as I can remember, to take that course among alternatives which would keep in my own hands my own mastery over myself, other people, and, if you like, fate. They’re all alike--fate, people, your own untempered inclination--in exerting a steady, permanent, downward pressure. They’re like gravity. It’s easier to fall than to climb, easier to lie than to stand. They’re like mud, holding us still so that we never move outside the one tiny corner of our total capacity for living where we happen to find ourselves if we accept what fate, people, or our own laziness seem to decree.