[Transcriber’s Note:
Bold text delimited with equal signs, italic text delimited with
underscores.]
OXFORD
MOUNTAINEERING ESSAYS
TO
G. WINTHROP YOUNG
OXFORD
MOUNTAINEERING
ESSAYS
EDITED BY
ARNOLD H. M. LUNN
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1912
[_All rights reserved_]
PREFACE
Oxford, they tell us, is the home of movements; Cambridge the home of
men. Certainly the miniature movement that took shape in this little
book was inspired by a Cambridge man. It was at an Oxford tea-party,
where the talk had been unashamedly of mountains and their metaphysic,
that Mr. G. Winthrop Young gave the first impulse to the scheme that
ultimately produced this collection of essays. To Mr. Young the editor
and contributors have been indebted for constant help and advice. He
has heartened the despondent, and has inked cold daylight into more
than one ‘sunset’ passage.
At Oxford there are a number of Alpine clubs. The oldest and most
sedate meets once a year in New College Hall. A less dignified
association meets at irregular intervals _on_ New College Hall and
other hospitable roofs. Lastly, there is a genial little society
which owed its beginnings to some twenty undergraduates who agreed
they could spare an occasional arduous evening to the revival of
their Alpine memories. One confiding member bought a lantern, and has
since endeavoured--with indifferent success--to recoup himself out of
spasmodic subscriptions. We shall none of us forget the first meeting.
In our innocence we had hoped that a scientist might know something
of electricity, and Mr. Bourdillon was in consequence entrusted with
the lantern. After much hissing on the part of the machine, and of the
audience, a faint glow appeared on the sheet, and enveloped in a halo
of restless hues we dimly discerned the dome of Mont Blanc. A pathetic
voice from behind the lantern sadly inquired whether we would ‘prefer
Mont Blanc green and spluttering or yellow and steady.’ The chairman
then proceeded to read a paper illustrated or rather misrepresented
by lantern slides, and at the conclusion proposed a very hearty vote
of thanks to himself for his interesting and entertaining lecture.
The House then divided, and the motion was lost by an overwhelming
majority. The minutes also record that a member moved to inhibit the
secretary of the Church Union from issuing a printed prayer for ‘faith
to remove mountains.’ This motion was lost, as Mr. Tyndale ably pointed
out the value of a publication that might facilitate the transfer of
some superfluous mountains from the Alps to the monotonous surroundings
of Oxford.
The members of this learned society furnished the majority of our
contributors. ‘Conscious as we are of one another’s deficiencies,’
we view with misgiving the publication of these essays. We have no
virgin ascents, no climbs of desperate difficulty, to record. Our
justification must rest on other grounds.
In a paper memorable for the circumstances of its delivery, and the
dramatic irony of its concluding words, Donald Robertson pleaded for a
simpler treatment of our mountain worship, and claimed that there was
‘still room for a man to tell freely and without false shame the simple
story of a day among the mountains.’ And this is what some of us have
attempted.
And further, although there scarce remains a great Alpine ridge
untrodden by man, though the magic words--‘No information’--are rapidly
vanishing from the pages of the _Climber’s Guides_, yet as subjects for
literary, artistic, and philosophic inquiry, the mountains are far from
exhausted. The basic emotions of the hills, at once bold and subtle,
remain an almost untouched field, and many a curious by-path in the
psychology of mountaineering has yet to be explored.
Those of us who have ventured to approach our theme in such subjective
fashion, who have tried to give something more than a plain record of
a climb, who may even have attempted to interpret the secrets of the
hills, have probably only courted failure and earned ridicule. But at
least we have started on a stirring venture, and we shall consider it
successful if only a word here or there serves to recall some forgotten
picture, some early romantic impression, to any reader for whom
mountains, nature, or wandering have perhaps lost their first halo of
romance.
It may be said that greater and more modest mountaineers have waited
the experience of years before embodying their reflections in the
written word. This reproof leaves us unmoved, for we are only concerned
with the message the hills hold for Youth, a message which Youth
therefore may be pardoned for attempting to explain. Each age hears
different accents in the mountain voices. To the old mountaineer the
riven lines of cliff may speak of failing strength or inevitable decay.
For the child the white far gates may hide an unknown kingdom of magic.
But active Youth need fear no comparison of strength, need draw no
moral from decay. For him the gates that childhood could not pass have
opened, and disclosed a wonderland ‘more real than childhood’s fairy
trove,’ a country of difficult romance, and of perpetual challenge to
the undying instincts of knight errantry and young adventure.