Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine by Julie Summers

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. 
    Sandy’s exploits were never malicious and he was not given to boasting; they were just the result of his irrepressible high spirits and his constant need to push himself.  He despised pretension and was extremely impatient with anyone who was prone to boasting.  Once, when a friend of Hugh’s turned up to see them at home in a new car, Sandy became infuriated by the endless bragging of the car’s owner and determined to teach him a lesson.  He disappeared from the room and when it came time for the young man to leave he discovered that his precious car had been put up on blocks by Sandy, upon the pedestal he had metaphorically placed the car himself.  The man was big-headed and needed taking down a peg or two in Sandy’s opinion.
    When Sandy returned to Oxford for the Michaelmas term in 1922 his mind was once again focused on rowing.  This year he was able to go through the proper procedure, as he saw it, first rowing in the ‘Varsity Fours for Merton and then the University Trial VIIIs.  He wrote to Dick Summers:
I’m so sorry I didn’t write to let you know about altering the date of our visit to Town, but I have been for the last week in a Nursing Home with rather bad blood poisoning.  I only came out yesterday.  It was darn bad luck getting it.  It started three days before the 1 st round of the ’Varsity IVs.  So I didn’t dare to see a doctor as I knew he would stop me.  I felt like death when we had to row & we lost to B.N.C [Brasenose College] by 1/5 sec.  No average person could judge a timed race with signals to 1/5 sec.  Still it was just