George Mallory did something better than lend me books, and that was to take me climbing on Snowdon in the school vacations. I knew Snowdon very well from a distance, from my bedroom window at Harlech. In the spring its snow cap was the sentimental glory of the landscape. The first time I went with George to Snowdon we stayed at the Snowdon Ranger Hotel at Quellyn Lake. It was January and the mountain was covered with snow. We did little rock-climbing, but went up some good snow slopes with rope and ice-axe. I remember one climb the objective of which was the summit; we found the hotel there with its roof blown off in the blizzard of the previous night. We sat by the cairn and ate Carlsbad plums and liver-sausage sandwiches. Geoffrey Keynes, the editor of the _Nonesuch Blake_, was there; he and George, who used to go drunk with excitement at the end of his climbs, picked stones off the cairn and shied them at the chimney stack of the hotel until they had sent it where the roof was. George was one of the three or four best climbers in climbing history. His first season in the Alps had been spectacular; nobody had expected him to survive it. He never lost his almost foolhardy daring; yet he knew all that there was to be known about climbing technique. One always felt absolutely safe with him on the rope. George went through the war as a lieutenant in the artillery, but his nerves were apparently unaffected—on his leaves he went rock-climbing. When the war ended he was more in love with the mountains than ever. His death on Mount Everest came five years later. No one knows whether he and Irvine actually made the last five hundred yards of the climb or whether they turned back or what happened; but anyone who had climbed with George felt convinced that he did get to the summit, that he rejoiced in his accustomed way and had not sufficient reserve of strength left for the descent. I do not think that it was ever mentioned in the newspaper account of his death that George originally took to climbing when he was a scholar at Winchester as a corrective to his weak heart.