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HOME
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
OF
MODERN KNOWLEDGE
_Editors_:
HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A., LL.D.
PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, D.LITT.,
LL.D., F.B.A.
PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A.,
LL.D.
PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.
(Columbia University, U.S.A.)
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY]
[Illustration:
THE ALPS
BY
ARNOLD LUNN
LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE]
_First printed July 1914_
PREFACE
For the early chapters of this book I have consulted, amongst other
authorities, the books mentioned in the bibliography on pp. 251-254.
It would, however, be ungracious if I failed to acknowledge my
indebtedness to that most readable of historians, Mr. Gribble, and to
his books, _The Early Mountaineers_ (Fisher Unwin) and _The Story of
Alpine Climbing_ (Nelson). Mr. Gribble and his publisher, Mr. Unwin,
have kindly allowed me to quote passages translated from the works
of the pioneers. Two friends, experts in the practice and history
of mountaineering, have read the proofs and helped me with numerous
suggestions.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE MEDIÆVAL ATTITUDE 9
II THE PIONEERS 22
III THE OPENING UP OF THE ALPS 44
IV THE STORY OF MONT BLANC 60
V MONTE ROSA AND THE BÜNDNER OBERLAND 82
VI TIROL AND THE OBERLAND 92
VII THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH 111
VIII THE STORY OF THE MATTERHORN 147
IX MODERN MOUNTAINEERING 185
X THE ALPS IN LITERATURE 208
BIBLIOGRAPHY 251
INDEX 254
_Volumes bearing upon the subject, already published in the library,
are_--
7. Modern Geography. By Dr. Marion Newbigin. (_Illustrated._)
36. Climate and Weather. By Prof. H. N. Dickson. (_Illustrated._)
88. The Growth of Europe. By Prof. Grenville Cole. (_Illustrated._)
THE ALPS
CHAPTER I
THE MEDIÆVAL ATTITUDE
Rousseau is usually credited with the discovery that mountains are not
intrinsically hideous. Long before his day, isolated men had loved
the mountains, but these men were eccentrics. They founded no school;
and Rousseau was certainly the first to popularise mountains and to
transform the cult of hill worship into a fashionable creed. None the
less, we must guard against the error of supposing that mountain love
was confined to the few men who have left behind them literary evidence
of their good taste. Mountains have changed very little since man
became articulate, and the retina of the human eye has changed even
less. The beauty of outline that stirs us to-day was implicit in the
hills “that shed their burial sheets about the march of Hannibal.” It
seems reasonable to suppose that a few men in every age have derived a
certain pleasure, if not from Alpine travel at least from the distant
view of the snows.
The literature of the Ancient World contains little that bears upon our
subject. The literature of the Jews is exceptional in this respect.
This is the more to their credit, as the mountains of Judæa, south
of the beautiful Lebanon range, are shapeless and uninteresting.
Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Job, and Isaiah contain mountain passages of
great beauty. The Old Testament is, however, far richer in mountain
praise than the New Testament. Christ retired more than once to the
mountains; but the authors of the four Gospels content themselves with
recording the bare fact that certain spiritual crises took place on
mountain-tops. There is not a single indication in all the gospels
that Nazareth is set on a hill overlooking one of the fairest mountain
prospects in all Judæa, not a single tribute to the beauty of Galilee
girdled by the outlying hills of Hermon.
The Greeks lived in a land of mountains far lovelier than Palestine’s
characterless heights. But the Jews showed genuine if spasmodic
appreciation for their native ranges, whereas the Greeks, if their
literature does them justice, cared little or nothing for their
mountains. The note of fear and dread, pleasantly rare in Jewish
literature, is never long absent from Greek references to the
mountains. Of course, the Greeks gave Olympus to their gods, but as Mr.
Norman Young remarks in a very able essay on _The Mountains in Greek
Poetry_, it was necessary that the gods should look down on mankind;
and, as they could not be strung up in mid-air, the obvious thing was
to put them on a mountain-top. Perhaps we may concede that the Greeks
paid a delicate compliment to Parnassus, the Home of the Muses; and
certainly they chose for their temples the high ground of their cities.
As one wanders through the olives and asphodels, one feels that the
Greeks chose for their dwellings and temples those rising grounds which
afforded the noblest prospect of the neighbouring hills. Only the cynic
would contend that they did this in order to escape the atmosphere of
the marshes.
The Romans were disgustingly practical. They regarded the Alps as
an inconvenient barrier to conquest and commerce. Virgil shows an
occasional trace of a deeper feeling, and Horace paused between
draughts of Falernian wine to admire the snows on Soracte, which lent
contrast to the comfort of a well-ordered life.
Mr. Freshfield has shown that the Chinese had a more genuine feeling
for mountains; and Mr. Weston has explained the ancient cult of high
places among the Japanese, perhaps the most consistent mountain
worshippers in the world. The Japanese pilgrims, clad in white, make
the ascent to the shrines which are built on the summits of their
sacred mountains, and then withdraw to a secluded spot for further
worship. For centuries, they have paid official tribute to the
inspiration of high places.
But what of the Alps? Did the men who lived within sight of the Swiss
mountains regard them with indifference and contempt? This was,
perhaps, the general attitude, but there is some evidence that a love
for mountains was not quite so uncommon in the Middle Ages as is
usually supposed.
Before attempting to summarise this evidence, let us try to realise
the Alps as they presented themselves to the first explorers. The
difficulties of Alpine exploration, as that term is now understood,
would have proved quite as formidable as those which now confront the
Himalayan explorer. In spite of this, glacier passes were crossed in
the earliest times, and even the Romans seemed to have ventured across
the Théodule, judging by the coins which have been found on the top of
that great glacier highway. In addition to the physical difficulties of
Alpine travel, we must recognise the mental handicap of our ancestors.
Danger no longer haunts the highways and road-passes of the Alps. Wild
beasts and robber bands no longer threaten the visitor to Grindelwald.
Of the numerous “inconveniences of travel” cited by an early visitor to
the Alps, we need now only fear “the wonderful cunning of Innkeepers.”
Stilled are the voices that were once supposed to speak in the thunder
and the avalanche. The dragons that used to wing their way across
the ravines of the central chain have joined the Dodo and “the men
that eat the flesh of serpents and hiss as serpents do.” Danger, a
luxury to the modern, formed part of the routine of mediæval life. Our
ancestors had no need to play at peril; and, lest we lightly assume
that the modern mountaineer is a braver man than those who shuddered
on the St. Bernard, let us remember that our ancestors accepted with
grave composure a daily portion of inevitable risks. Modern life is so
secure that we are forced to the Alps in search of contrast. When our
ancestors needed contrast, they joined a monastery.
Must we assume that danger blinded them to the beauty of the Alps? The
mountains themselves have not changed. The modern mountaineer sees,
from the windows of the Berne express, a picture whose colours have not
faded in the march of Time. The bar of silver that thrusts itself above
the distant foothills, as the train swings out of the wooded fortress
of the Jura, casts the same challenge across the long shadows of the
uplands. The peaks are a little older, but the vision that lights the
world for us shone with the same steadfast radiance across the plains
of long ago. Must we believe that our adventurous forefathers could
find nothing but fear in the snows of the great divide? Dangers which
have not yet vanished menaced their journey, but the white gleam of
the distant snows was no less beautiful in the days when it shone as a
beacon light to guide the adventurous through the great barrier down
the warmth of Italian lowlands. An age which could face the great
adventure of the Crusades for an idea, or more often for the sheer
lust of romantic wandering, was not an age easily daunted by peril and
discomfort. May we not hope that many a mute, inglorious mountain-lover
lifted his eyes across the fields and rivers near Basle or Constance,
and found some hint of elusive beauty in the vision that still remains
a mystery, even for those who have explored the once trackless snows?
Those who have tried to discover the mediæval attitude have too often
merely generalised from detached expressions of horror. Passages of
praise have been treated as exceptional. The Monk Bremble and the
Bishop Berkeley have had their say, unchallenged by equally good
evidence for the defence. Let us remember that plenty of modern
travellers might show an equally pronounced distaste for mountains.
For the defence, we might quote the words of an old traveller borrowed
in Coryat’s _Crudities_, a book which appeared in 1611: “What, I pray
you, is more pleasant, more delectable, and more acceptable unto a man
than to behold the height of hilles, as it were the very Atlantes of
heauen? to admire Hercules his pillers? to see the mountaines Taurus
and Caucasus? to view the hill Olympus, the seat of Jupiter? to pass
over the Alpes that were broken by Annibals Vinegar? to climb up the
Apennine promontory of Italy? from the hill Ida to behold the rising of
the Sunne before the Sunne appears? to visit Parnassus and Helicon, the
most celebrated seates of the Muses? Neither indeed is there any hill
or hillocke, which doth not containe in it the most sweete memory of
worthy matters.”
There is the genuine ring about this. It is the modern spirit without
the modern affectations. Nor is this case exceptional. In the following
chapter we shall sketch the story of the early Alpine explorers, and we
shall quote many passages instinct with the real love for the hills.
Are we not entitled to believe that Gesner, Marti, and Petrarch are
characteristic of one phase of mediæval sentiment, just as Bremble is
characteristic of another? There is abundant evidence to show that the
habit of visiting and admiring mountain scenery had become fashionable
before the close of the sixteenth century. Simler tells us that
foreigners came from all lands to marvel at the mountains, and excuses
a certain lack of interest among his compatriots on the ground that
they are surfeited with a too close knowledge of the Alps. Marti, of
whom we shall speak at greater length, tells us that he found on the
summit of the Stockhorn the Greek inscription cut in a stone which may
be rendered: “The love of mountains is best.” And then there is the
evidence of art. Conventional criticism of mountain art often revolves
in a circle: “The mediæval man detested mountains, and when he painted
a mountain he did so by way of contrast to set off the beauty of the
plains.” Or again: “Mediæval man only painted mountains as types
of all that is terrible in Nature. Therefore, mediæval man detested
mountains.”
Let us try to approach the work of these early craftsmen with no
preconceived notions as to their sentiments. The canvases still remain
as they were painted. What do they teach us? It is not difficult to
discriminate between those who used mountains to point a contrast, and
those who lingered with devotion on the beauty of the hills. When we
find a man painting mountains loosely and carelessly, we may assume
that he was not over fond of his subject. Jan von Scorel’s grotesque
rocks show nothing but equally grotesque fear. Hans Altdorfer’s
elaborate and careful work proves that he was at least interested in
mountains, and had cleared his mind of conventional terror. Roughly,
we may say that, where the foreground shows good and the mountain
background shows bad workmanship, the artist cared nothing for hills,
and only threw them in by way of gloomy contrast. But such pictures are
not the general rule.
Let us take a very early mountain painting that dates from 1444. It
is something of a shock to find the Salève and Mont Blanc as the
background to a New Testament scene. How is the background used? Konrad
Witz, the painter, has chosen for his theme the miraculous draught of
fishes. If he had borrowed a mountain background for the Temptation,
the Betrayal, the Agony, or the Crucifixion, we might contend that
the mountains were introduced to accentuate the gloom. But there is
no suggestion of fear or sorrow in the peaceful calm that followed
the storm of Calvary. The mountains in the distance are the hills as
we know them. There is no reason to think that they are intended as a
contrast to the restful foreground. Rather, they seem to complete and
round off the happy serenity of the picture.
Let us consider the mountain work of a greater man than Witz. We may be
thankful that Providence created this barrier of hills between the deep
earnestness of the North and the tolerance of Italy, for to this we owe
some of the best mountain-scapes of the Middle Ages. There is romance
in the thought of Albrecht Dürer crossing the Brenner on his way to the
Venetian lagoons that he loved so well. Did Dürer regard this journey
with loathing? Were the great Alps no more than an obstacle on the
road to the coast where the Adriatic breaks “in a warm bay ’mid green
Illyrian hills.” Did he echo the pious cry of that old Monk who could
only pray to be delivered from “this place of torment,” or did he
rather linger with loving memory on the wealth of inspiring suggestion
gathered in those adventurous journeys? Contrast is the essence of Art,
and Dürer was too great a man to miss the rugged appeal of untamed
cliffs, because he could fathom so easily the gentler charm of German
fields and Italian waters. You will find in these mountain woodcuts
the whole essence of the lovable German romance, that peculiar note of
“snugness” due to the contrast of frowning rock and some “gemütlich”
Black Forest châlet. Hans Andersen, though a Dane, caught this note;
and in Dürer’s work there is the same appealing romance that makes
the “Ice Maiden” the most lovable of Alpine stories. One can almost
see Rudy marching gallantly up the long road in Dürer’s “Das Grosse
Glück,” or returning with the eaglets stolen from their perilous nest
in the cliffs that shadow the “Heimsuch.” Those who pretend that
Dürer introduced mountains as a background of gloom have no sense for
atmosphere nor for anything else. For Dürer, the mountains were the
home of old romance.
Turn from Dürer to Da Vinci, and you will find another note. Da Vinci
was, as we shall see, a climber, and this gives the dominant note to
his great study of storm and thunder among the peaks, to be seen at
Windsor Castle. His mountain rambles have given him that feeling
of worship, tempered by awe, which even the Climbers’ Guides have
not banished. But this book is not a treatise on mountain Art--a
fascinating subject; and we must content ourselves with the statement
that painters of all ages have found in the mountains the love which is
more powerful than fear. Those who doubt this may examine at leisure
the mountain work of Brueghel, Titian, or Mantegna. There are many
other witnesses. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Hans Leu
had looked upon the hills and found them good, and Altdorfer had shown
not only a passionate enthusiasm for mountains, but a knowledge of
their anatomy far ahead of his age. Wolf Huber, ten years his junior,
carried on the torch, and passed it to Lautensack, who recaptured the
peculiar note of German romance of which Dürer is the first and the
greatest apostle. It would be easy to trace the apostolic succession
to Segantini, and to prove that he is the heir to a tradition nearly
six hundred years old. But enough has been said. We have adduced a few
instances which bear upon the contention that, just as the mountains of
the Middle Ages were much the same as the mountains of to-day, so also
among the men of those times, as among the men of to-day, there were
those who hated and those who loved the heights. No doubt the lovers of
mountain scenery were in the minority; but they existed in far larger
numbers than is sometimes supposed.