#Magdalene College

[thepastisalreadywritten]

(CNN) — George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s — until the mountain claimed his life.

Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest, leading up to the last days before he disappeared while heading for its peak.

On 8 June 1924, Mallory and fellow climber Andrew Irvine departed from their expedition team in a push for the summit; they were never seen alive again.

Mallory’s words, however, are now available to read online in their entirety for the first time.

Magdalene College, Cambridge, where Mallory studied as an undergraduate from 1905 to 1908, recently digitized hundreds of pages of correspondence and other documents written and received by him.

Over the past 18 months, archivists scanned the documents in preparation for the centennial of Mallory’s disappearance.

The college will display a selection of Mallory’s letters and possessions in the exhibit “George Mallory: Magdalene to the Mountain,” opening June 20.

The Everest letters outline Mallory’s meticulous preparations and equipment tests, and his optimism about their prospects.

But the letters also show the darker side of mountaineering: bad weather, health issues, setbacks, and doubts.

Days before his disappearance, Mallory wrote that the odds were “50 to 1 against us” in the last letter to his wife Ruth dated 27 May 1924.

“This has been a bad time altogether,” Mallory wrote. “I look back on tremendous efforts & exhaustion & dismal looking out of a tent door and onto a world of snow & vanishing hopes.”

He went on to describe a harrowing brush with death during a recent climb, when the ground beneath his feet collapsed, leaving him suspended “half-blind & breathless.”

His weight supported only by his ice axe wedged across a crevasse as he dangled over “a very unpleasant black hole.”

Other letters Mallory exchanged with Ruth were written at the time of their courtship, while he was serving in Britain’s artillery regiment during World War I.

Throughout his travels, correspondence from Ruth provided him with much-needed stability during the most challenging times, said project lead Katy Green, a college archivist at Magdalene College.

“She was the ‘rock’ at home, he says himself in his letters,” Green said.

The archivist recounted one note in which Mallory told Ruth: “I’m so glad that you never wobble, because I would wobble without you.”

Yet while Mallory was clearly devoted to his wife, he nonetheless repeatedly returned to the Himalayas despite her mounting fears for his safety.

“There’s something in him that drove him,” Green said. “It might have been his wartime experience, or it might have just been the sort of person that he was.”

‘Documents of his character’

In total, the collection includes around 840 letters spanning from 1914 to 1924.

Ruth wrote about 440 of those to Mallory, offering an unprecedented and highly detailed view of daily life for women in the early 20th century, Green told CNN.

Together, the letters offer readers a rare glimpse of the man behind the legend, said Jochen Hemmleb, an author and alpinist who was part of the Everest expedition that found Mallory’s body in 1999.

“They are really personal. They are documents of his character. They provide unique insights into his life, and especially into the 1924 expedition — his state of mind, his accurate planning, his ambitions,” said Hemmleb, who was not involved in the scanning project.

“It’s such a treasure that these are now digitized and available for everyone to read.”

Frozen in place

Three of the digitized letters — written to Mallory by his brother, his sister and a family friend — were recovered from Mallory’s body by the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition, which ascended Everest seeking the remains of Mallory and Irvine.

On 1 May 1999, expedition member and mountaineer Conrad Anker found a frozen corpse at an altitude of around 26,700 feet (8,138 meters) and identified it as Mallory’s from a name tag that was sewn into his clothes.

Mallory’s body was interred where it lay at the family’s request, said Anker, who was not involved in the letter digitizing project.

“Having done body recoveries in other places, it’s very laborious, and it’s very dangerous at that altitude,” he told CNN.

“We collected some of his personal effects that went back to the Royal Geographical Society,” including the three letters that were later scanned at Magdalene College.

Mount Everest, the highest peak in the Himalayan mountain range, is also the tallest mountain on Earth, rising 29,035 feet (8,850 meters) above sea level on the border between Nepal and Tibet — an autonomous region in China.

Its Tibetan name is Chomolungma, meaning “Goddess Mother of the World,” and its Nepali name is Sagarmatha, meaning “Goddess of the Sky.”

However, these names were unknown to 19th-century British surveyors who mapped the region.

In 1865, the Royal Geographical Society named the peak Mount Everest after British surveyor Sir George Everest, a former surveyor general of India.

Mallory participated in all three of Britain’s first forays onto Everest’s slopes: in 1921, 1922 and 1924.

When he vanished in 1924, he was less than two weeks shy of his 38th birthday.

Many have speculated about whether Mallory and Irvine managed to reach Everest’s summit.

The climbers were last seen in the early afternoon of June 8 by expedition member and geologist Noel Odell, who was following behind and glimpsed them from a distance.

Odell later found some of their equipment at a campsite, but there was no trace of Mallory and Irvine.

“(Mallory) risked a lot despite the fact that he had a family back home and three small children,” Hemmleb said.

“We don’t know whether it was really irresponsible to make that final attempt, because we don’t really know what happened. It could be that in the end, he simply had bad luck.”

So close, yet so far

Decades after Mallory’s death, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and New Zealand mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary became the first to reach Everest’s peak, summiting on 29 May 1953.

In the years that followed, thousands attempted to climb Everest, with nearly 4,000 people reaching its summit.

More than 330 climbers have died trying since modern records were kept, according to the Himalayan Database, which compiles records of all expeditions in the Himalayas.

Some of those bodies remain on the mountain, frozen where they fell and visible to climbers who pass them by.

“If you’re out in this environment, you make peace with your own mortality and the deaths of others,” Anker said.

“You’re above 8,000 meters, and when there are weather changes or your own systems cease to function due to the lack of oxygen, it gets serious really quickly.”

When mountaineers are close to a mountain’s summit, they sometimes proceed even under dangerous conditions due to so-called summit fever, a compulsion to reach the peak even at the cost of their own safety.

It’s unknown whether Mallory was in the grip of summit fever when he died, but he might have thought that his reputation depended on summiting.

“That was going to be the defining moment in his life,” Anker said.

By comparison, Mallory’s team member Edward Norton had attempted to summit four days earlier but turned back at roughly the same altitude where Mallory and Irvine were seen for the last time.

“I had a conversation with one of Edward Norton’s sons a couple of years ago,” Hemmleb said.

“When I asked him, do you think it was mere luck that your father survived and Mallory died?"

He said, ‘No, I think there was one difference: My father, Edward Norton, didn’t need the mountain.’”

As a climber himself, Hemmleb took that message to heart.

“That is something I personally learned from Mallory,” he said. “You need to be very careful not to make yourself dependent on that summit success.”

A century has elapsed since Mallory’s death, but the digitizing of these letters assures that his story will keep being told, Hemmleb said.

“This will continue beyond my own lifetime, I’m certain of that,” he added. “In a sense, it’s the expedition that never ends.”

George Herbert Leigh-Mallory (18 June 1886 – 8 or 9 June 1924) was an English mountaineer who participated in the first three British Mount Everest expeditions from the early to mid-1920s.

[immaculatasknight]

Spy vs Spy by the book

[mereinkling]

Inklings, Libraries & Architecture

Inklings, Libraries & Architecture

If you were to embark on a university education today, which sort of campus would you prefer? (1) A university featuring “vaulted ceilings that draw the eye upwards and outwards . . . the frivolous artistic detail that announces the importance of the unimportant [or] the interplay of light and shade that marks the great Gothic masterpieces, the brilliant proportions of the best classical…

[tigerfush]

Looks so lovely to study in!Looks vaguely Tudor-like

[magicaloxford]

I love going to the Old Library at Magdalen College, where C.S. Lewis interspersed his literary studies with meditations on the magical world of Narnia. 🌟📚 The Library has such an air of old Oxford, with its rows of ancient bookcases and windows looking out onto a timeless quad *:･ﾟ✧

[coruscatingdust]

My daily life at Oxford: drinking a cup of tea in English common rooms, dining at the dining hall in Magdalen, Christ church, and St.John’s, and attending evensongs in the chapels

[foxscarf]

15.11.23

I think we've finally cracked the lab problem! And I had a chill work day. :) I'm keen to have myself a nice fun evening now! I've been watching Rick & Morty!

(trying to fit the fun around my remaining tasks of:

Duolingo

Cook food and pack lunch for tomorrow

Start drafting project summary for supervisor

Maybe a load of laundry)

Every now and again I feel like autumn may be starting to turn into winter? And yet I need to gear up into ready-to-be-festive mode because it's closer to Christmas and Yule than it feels, I think because of the (horrible) weird warm start of autumn! 🍂✨

28/100 days of productivity

[rambleonwithrosie]

Omg I knew there was a reason Eden was my fav Chosen lady. Lara Silva is doing the little hand thing that I do, that all my college friends and I used to do together. I have no idea what it's called but it was a definite Thing for millennial college girls and I still do it.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

“Bottled, was he?" Said Colonel Bantry, with an Englishman's sympathy for alcoholic excess. "Oh, well, can't judge a fellow by what he does when he's drunk? When I was at Cambridge, I remember I put a certain utensil - well - well, nevermind.”

- Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library   

Contrary to popular perception of drinks with Dons in their SCR after a High Table dinner, weighty intellectual conversations go down as well as lead balloons. The free flowing of the sherry or the port tends to lubricate the palate and loosen tongues towards more convival conversations such as departmental intrigue, academic conference junkets on the continent, bemoaning the lack of government research investment, the England Test cricket score, college politics, and Donnish infidelities.

**The Senior Common Room (SCR) after Formal Hall in Magdalene college, Cambridge

[derkabobhall]

Colleges. (Oxford 2024)

[theladyragnell]

If it's too similar no worries, but you've got me curious -- top 5 French songs to vibe to? Always up for more French music recs!

Here's a scattering! I'd also love your (or anyone's!) recs, it's been a bit since I listened to much French music but it's always fun to try to keep my language skills a bit alive. Most of what I've got, one teacher or another used as a lesson!

Belle // Notre Dame de Paris (but truly, listen to the whole soundtrack, it's all great)

Attila Marcel // Beatrice Bonifassi

Parce qu'on vient de loin // Corneille

La Boheme // Charles Aznavour

Je l'aime a mourir // Francis Cabrel

[magicaloxford]

Magdalen College, where the famous occultist, Simon Forman, studied 🌠 After a long practice as a medical magician, Forman died suddenly while in a boat crossing the Thames – on the date he had predicted for his death.

[lilaccatholic]

Sometimes I feel like I'll never be free of the worst time in my life, but y'know what I just realized? That's what the devil wants me to think. He wants me to think everyone still sees me as broken and frozen and sad. He wants me to live in fear and not take care of myself and despair. He wants everything that will drag me away from Jesus and of COURSE when something good happens he's going to try to weasel his way in. Of COURSE he's going to tell me people secretly hate me or pity me or even that it's somehow my fault that they believe these things if they even are true. Of COURSE.

But I've learned something.

I've learned that love is stronger than fear. I've learned that you don't have to be perfect to love God but indeed that you can't be good or holy WITHOUT Him. I've learned that anything that causes despair has no place in my life because despair is never, ever given by God.

I'm a mess. A broken, sad mess. Without God I'm quite pathetic.

So it's a good thing I was never designed to be without God, isn't it?

Because if faith can move mountains and if God is who He says He is--and I KNOW He is--then what reason have I to believe that I will always be anything?! If the God who parts the Red Sea, the God who makes dry bones rise, the God who died and rose and makes Himself present on the altar every single day at every single Mass decides that He wants to do something with me then I need to do one thing and it is NOT to fear!

It is not to cower like a dog during thunder!

It is not to scrounge around in the dark, holding onto a material mirage of what happiness is like Gollum!

It is not to lose faith when I am walking on the sea towards Him!

It is to stand up straight, look into His eyes, see His love, and charge forward regardless of the cost!

Because true love? HIS love? That is where I find my true identity. Not in my shame, not in my sin, not in my fear, but in His love, His wounds, His eyes. In His outstretched nail-scarred palms. In the voice of the Word who calls me "daughter", who calls me "His".

May I (may we all) never settle for anything less.

[pers-books]

[ID Magdalen College, May Morning. Photographer: Romanempire]

I meant to post this earlier, but it slipped my mind. The annual May Morning at Magdalen College is a big thing and has been for about five centuries. At 6am the choristers of Magdalen College gather atop the Tower to greet the morning by singing the Hymnus Eucharisticus. The choir traditionally also sings a madrigal, Now Is the Month of Maying, following prayers for the city led by the Dean of Divinity. 

I went along a couple of times when I was a student here in the late ‘80s. You have to get up very early to be in with a chance of getting a good spot to stand on Magdalen Bridge, which leads up to the College and from which, traditionally, students who’re probably drunk and have been up all night at the traditional May Balls the night before, leap into the river below. However the river’s sometimes  quite shallow, which has on occasion caused serious injury, notably in 1997 when one person was left paralyzed, and again in 2005 when ten people were hospitalised. There was a time when the city authorities closed the bridge to prevent jumpers.

After the choir has sung there’s Morris dancing in Radcliffe and many of the restaurants and coffee shops open early to provide breakfast for the revellers.

[ijustdontlikepeople]

hello hello! 3, 20, 21, 23, and 30 for the music asks if you'd like! -hazel

Hi hi @allsassnoclass 💜 I would definitely like!! Thank u for asking!!

3: A song that reminds you of summertime

Disconnected will always be a sunset in summer to me, particularly next to the water.

20: A song that has many meanings to you

I feel like this question might be hinting towards something a bit more complex, but this song has a lot of happy meanings to me. It reminds me of college, it makes me want to travel, it meanings friendship and love.

21: A favorite song with a person’s name in the title

Not to be like “me, me, me” but I kinda love this song lol

23: A song that you think everybody should listen to

This guy’s song writing has a habit of shooting straight through my chest. I think this song has masterful lyrics, interesting production, and beautiful vocals. It manages to create the emotion it discusses and I think that’s something so extraordinary everybody should experience it.

30: A song that reminds you of yourself

Don’t go out much because there are too many bugs :/

Music Asks