Staying with Marjory at the Jules Hotel, Jermyn Street

11th February 1924

Sandy and Marjory in the rose garden at Cornist Hall, Summer 1923.

The days in London were not just a time of exciting preparation for Everest and of sweet time with Marjory. Potentially, they could also be the time of the first encounter between Sandy and George Leigh Mallory. As highlighted by Julie Summers, the question of the first encounter of the two has vexed many for a very long time. Usually, it is considered to have happened in Liverpool, just before they boarded the California. Once on the ship, Sandy would write of Mallory that he was 'far too energetic for so early in the voyage'.

According to Summers, it is unlikely that he would have written a comment like that to his mother if he had not already at least made Mallory’s acquaintance and talked of him to her. However, Summers could not find anything that would indicate they had ever seen each other before the dinner at the Wayfarer’s Club. Nevertheless, when she was looking through Sandy’s correspondence with Unna she came across a reference in which it was suggested that Mallory and Hazard should visit the Royal Geographical Society to see the oxygen apparatus. Although there is no proof, Summers then suggested that Sandy met Mallory on one of his visits to London which coincided with the meeting Unna was keen to set up.

Summers’ research was also revealing in the way it explored Sandy’s love life as had never been done before. Prior to this, much of the debate had focused on Irvine and Mallory’s potential attraction, and the attention was primarily on whether Mallory had chosen Irvine for the summit bid because of this. Irvine himself was not framed as an active subject in the conversation. 

Fearless on Everest goes in a different direction, as Summers provides evidence that Sandy had an affair with Marjory Summers, stepmother of his close friend Dick, whom he had met while at Shrewsbury. Dick’s father was Harry Summers, a steel magnate, who had married Marjory Agnes Standish Thomson in 1917. This was to be his second marriage. He was fifty-two and she was nineteen, and therefore much closer in age to Harry’s son Dick—and to his friend Sandy. Marjory and Sandy probably met as Dick often invited his friend to join him to Cornist Hall, the Summers’ family home in North Wales. By 1923, Summers tells us, their flirting had become an affair. They were not very discreet: for instance, Marjory would spend time with Sandy in London and appear in public with him, and she also accompanied him for the first part of the journey to Spitsbergen. This would have consequences: Marjory and Harry divorced in 1924.