THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH
Mountaineering, as a sport, is so often treated as an invention of
Englishmen, that the real facts of its origin are unconsciously
disguised. A commonplace error of the textbooks is to date sporting
mountaineering from Mr. Justice Wills’s famous ascent of the Wetterhorn
in 1854. The Wetterhorn has three peaks, and Mr. Justice Wills made the
ascent of the summit which is usually climbed from Grindelwald. This
peak, the Hasle Jungfrau, is the most difficult of the group but it is
not the highest. In those early days, first ascents were not recorded
with the punctuality and thoroughness that prevails to-day; and a large
circle of mountaineers gave Mr. Justice Wills the credit of making the
first ascent of the Hasle Jungfrau, or at least the first ascent from
Grindelwald. Curiously enough, the climb, which is supposed to herald
sporting mountaineering, was only the second ascent of the Grindelwald
route to the summit of a peak which had already been climbed four
times. The facts are as follows: Desor’s guides climbed the Hasle
Jungfrau in 1844, and Desor himself followed a few days after. Three
months before Wills’s ascent, the peak was twice climbed by an early
English pioneer, Mr. Blackwell. Blackwell’s first ascent was by the
Rosenlaui route, which Desor had followed, and his second, by the
Grindelwald route, chosen by Mr. Wills. On the last occasion, he was
beaten by a storm within about ten feet of the top, ten feet which he
had climbed on the previous occasion. He planted a flag just under the
final cornice; and we must give him the credit of the pioneer ascent
from Grindelwald. Mr. Wills never heard of these four ascents, and
believed that the peak was still virgin when he ascended it.
It would appear, then, that the so-called first sporting climb has
little claim to that distinction. What, precisely, is meant by
“sporting” in this connection? The distinction seems to be drawn
between those who climb a mountain for the sheer joy of adventure, and
those who were primarily concerned with the increase of scientific
knowledge. The distinction is important; but it is often forgotten
that scientists, like De Saussure, Forbes, Agassiz and Desor, were
none the less mountaineers because they had an intelligent interest in
the geological history of mountains. All these men were inspired by a
very genuine mountaineering enthusiasm. Moreover, before Mr. Wills’s
climb there had been a number of quite genuine sporting climbs. A few
Englishmen had been up Mont Blanc; and, though most of them had been
content with Mont Blanc, they could scarcely be accused of scientific
inspiration. They, however, belonged to the “One man, one mountain,
school,” and as such can scarcely claim to be considered as anything
but mountaineers by accident. Yet Englishmen like Hill, Blackwell,
and Forbes, had climbed mountains with some regularity long before
Mr. Wills made his great ascent; and foreign mountaineers had already
achieved a series of genuine sporting ascents. Bourrit was utterly
indifferent to science; and Bourrit was, perhaps, the first man who
made a regular practice of climbing a snow mountain every year. The
fact that he was not often successful must not be allowed to discount
his sincere enthusiasm. Before 1840, no Englishman had entered the
ranks of regular mountaineers; and by that date many of the great
Alpine monarchs had fallen. Mont Blanc, the outer fortresses of Monte
Rosa, the Finsteraarhorn, King of the Oberland, the Ortler, and the
Glockner, the great rivals of the Eastern Alps, had all been conquered.
The reigning oligarchies of the Alps had bowed their heads to man.
Let us concede what must be conceded; even so, we need not fear that
our share in Alpine history will be unduly diminished. Mr. Wills’s
ascent was none the less epoch-making because it was the fourth ascent
of a second-class peak. The real value of that climb is this: It
was one of the first climbs that were directly responsible for the
systematic and brilliant campaign which was in the main conducted by
Englishmen. Isolated foreign mountaineers had already done brilliant
work, but their example did not give the same direct impetus. It was
not till the English arrived that mountaineering became a fashionable
sport; and the wide group of English pioneers that carried off almost
all the great prizes of the Alps between 1854 and the conquest of the
Matterhorn in 1865 may fairly date their invasion from Mr. Justice
Wills’s ascent, a climb which, though not even a virgin ascent and
by no means the first great climb by an Englishman, was none the
less a landmark. Mr. Justice Wills’s vigorous example caught on as
no achievement had caught on. His book, which is full of spirited
writing, made many converts to the new sport.
There had, of course, been many enthusiasts who had preached the sport
before Mr. Justice Wills climbed the Wetterhorn. The earliest of all
Alpine Journals is the _Alpina_, which first expressed the impetus of
the great Alpine campaign. It appeared in 1806, and survived for four
years, though the name was later attached to a magazine which has still
a large circulation in Switzerland. It was edited by Ulysses von Salis;
and it contained articles on chamois-hunting, the ascent of the Ortler,
etc., besides reviews of the mountain literature of the period, such
books, for instance, as those of Bourrit and Ebel. “The Glockner and
the Ortler,” writes the editor, “may serve as striking instances of our
ignorance, until a few years ago, of the highest peaks in the Alpine
ranges. Excluding the Gotthard and Mont Blanc, and their surrounding
eminences, there still remain more than a few marvellous and colossal
peaks which are no less worthy of becoming better known.”
From 1840, the number of Englishmen taking part in high ascents
increases rapidly; and between 1854 and 1865 the great bulk of virgin
ascents stand to their credit, though it must always be remembered
that these ascents were led by Swiss, French and Italian guides, who
did not, however, do them till the English arrived. Before 1840 a few
Englishmen climbed Mont Blanc; Mrs. and Miss Campbell crossed the Col
de Géant, which had previously been reopened by Mr. Hill; and Mr.
Malkin crossed a few glacier passes. But J. D. Forbes was really the
first English mountaineer to carry out a series of systematic attacks
on the upper snows. Incidentally, his book, _Travels through the
Alps of Savoy_, published in 1843, was the first book in the English
language dealing with the High Alps. A few pamphlets had been published
by the adventurers of Mont Blanc, but no really serious work. Forbes
is, therefore, the true pioneer not only of British mountaineering,
but of the Alpine literature in our tongue. He was a worthy successor
to De Saussure, and his interest in the mountains was very largely
scientific. He investigated the theories of glacier motion, and visited
Agassiz at the “Hôtel des Neuchâtelois.” On that occasion, if Agassiz
is to be believed, the canny Scotsman managed to extract more than
he gave from the genial and expansive Switzer. When Forbes published
his theories, Agassiz accused him of stealing his ideas. Desor, whose
genius for a row was only excelled by the joy he took in getting up
his case, did not improve matters; and a bitter quarrel was the result.
Whatever may have been the rights of the matter, Forbes certainly
mastered the theory of glacier motion, and proved his thorough grasp of
the matter in a rather remarkable way. In 1820, a large party of guides
and amateurs were overwhelmed by an avalanche on the Grand Plateau,
and three of the guides disappeared into a crevasse. Their bodies were
not recovered. Dr. Hamel, who had organised the party, survived. He
knew something of glacier motion, and ventured a guess that the bodies
of the guides would reappear at the bottom of the glacier in about a
thousand years. He was just nine hundred and thirty-nine years wrong in
his calculation. Forbes, having ascertained by experiment the rate at
which the glacier moved, predicted that the bodies would reappear in
forty years. This forecast proved amazingly accurate. Various remains
reappeared near the lower end of the Glacier des Bossons in 1861, a
fragment of a human body, and a few relics came to light two years
later, and a skull, ropes, hat, etc., in 1865. Strangely enough, this
accident was repeated in almost all its details in the famous Arkwright
disaster of 1866.
Forbes carried through a number of fine expeditions. He climbed the
Jungfrau with Agassiz and Desor--before the little trouble referred to
above. He made the first passage by an amateur of the Col d’Hérens,
and the first ascents of the Stockhorn (11,796 feet) and the Wasenhorn
(10,661 feet). Besides his Alpine wanderings, he explored some of the
glaciers of Savoy. His most famous book, _The Tour of Mont Blanc_, is
well worth reading, and contains one fine passage, a simile between the
motion of a glacier and the life of man.
Forbes was the first British mountaineer; but John Ball played an even
more important part in directing the activity of the English climbers.
He was a Colonial Under-Secretary in Lord Palmerston’s administration;
but he gave up politics for the more exciting field of Alpine
adventure. His main interest in the Alps was, perhaps, botanical;
and his list of first ascents is not very striking, considering the
host of virgin peaks that awaited an enterprising pioneer. His great
achievement was the conquest of the first great dolomite peak that
yielded its secrets to man, the Pelmo. He also climbed the virgin
Cima Tosa in the Brenta dolomites, and made the first traverse of
the Schwartztor. He was the first to edit guidebooks for the use of
mountaineers, and his knowledge of the Alps was surprisingly thorough.
He played a great part in the formation of the Alpine Club, and in the
direction of their literary activity. He edited the classical series of
_Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers_, and a series of excellent Alpine guides.
But the event which above all others attracted the attention of
Englishmen to the Alps was Albert Smith’s ascent of Mont Blanc. Albert
Smith is the most picturesque of the British mountaineers. He was
something of a _blagueur_, but behind all his vulgarity lay a very deep
feeling for the Alps. His little book on Mont Blanc makes good reading.
The pictures are delightfully inaccurate in their presentation of the
terrors of Alpine climbing; and the thoroughly sincere fashion in which
the whole business of climbing is written up proves that the great
white mountain had not yet lost its prestige. But we can forgive Albert
Smith a great deal, for he felt the glamour of the Alps long before
he had seen a hill higher than St. Anne’s, near Chertsey. As a child,
he had been given _The Peasants of Chamouni_, a book which rivalled
_Pilgrim’s Progress_ in his affections. This mountain book fired him
to anticipate his subsequent success as a showman. “Finally, I got up
a small moving panorama of the horrors pertaining to Mont Blanc ...
and this I so painted up and exaggerated in my enthusiasm, that my
little sister--who was my only audience, but an admirable one, for she
cared not how often I exhibited--would become quite pale with fright.”
Time passed, and Albert Smith became a student in Paris. He discovered
that his enthusiasm for Mont Blanc was shared by a medical student;
and together they determined to visit the Mecca of their dreams. They
collected twelve pounds apiece, and vowed that it should last them for
five weeks. They carried it about with them entirely in five-franc
pieces, chiefly stuffed into a leathern belt round their waists. Buying
“two old soldiers’ knapsacks at three francs each, and two pairs of
hobnailed shoes at five francs and a half,” they started off on their
great adventure. Smith wisely adds that, “if there is anything more
delightful than travelling with plenty of money, it is certainly making
a journey of pleasure with very little.”
They made the journey to Geneva in seventy-eight hours by _diligence_.
At Melun they bought a brick of bread more than two feet long. “The
passengers paid three francs each for their _déjeuner_, ours did not
cost ten sous.” At night, they slept in the empty _diligence_. They
meant to make that twelve pounds apiece carry them some distance. From
Geneva they walked to Chamounix, helped by an occasional friendly lift.
Smith was delighted with the realisation of childish dreams. “Every
step was like a journey in fairyland.” In fact, the only disillusion
was the contrast between the Swiss peasant of romance and the reality.
“The Alpine maidens we encountered put us more in mind of poor law
unions than ballads; indeed, the Swiss villagers may be classed with
troubadours, minstrel pages, shepherdesses, and other fabulous pets of
small poets and vocalists.” After leaving Chamounix, Smith crossed the
St. Bernard, visited Milan, and returned with a small margin still left
out of the magic twelve pounds.
Albert Smith returned to London, took up practice as a surgeon, wrote
for _Punch_, and acquired a big reputation as an entertainer in _The
Overland Mail_, written by himself and founded on a journey to Egypt
and Constantinople. The songs and sketches made the piece popular, and
insured a long run. At the close of the season he went to Chamounix
again, fully determined to climb Mont Blanc. He was accompanied by
William Beverley, the artist, and was lucky to fall in with some
Oxford undergraduates with the same ambition as himself. They joined
forces, and a party of twenty, including guides, prepared for the
great expedition. Amongst other provisions, they took ninety-four
bottles of wine, four legs of mutton, four shoulders of mutton, and
forty-six fowls. Smith was out of training, and suffered terribly from
mountain sickness. He was horrified by the Mur de la Côte, which he
describes as “an all but perpendicular iceberg,” and adds that “every
step was gained from the chance of a horrible death.” As a matter of
fact, the Mur de la Côte is a very simple, if steep, snow slope. A
good ski-runner could, under normal conditions, descend it on ski. If
Smith had fallen, he would have rolled comfortably to the bottom, and
stopped in soft snow. “Should the foot or the baton slip,” he assures
us, “there is no chance for life. You would glide like lightning from
one frozen crag to another, and finally be dashed to pieces hundreds of
feet below.” It is pleasant to record that Smith reached the summit,
though not without considerable difficulty, and that his party drank
all the wine and devoured the forty-six fowls, etc., before their
successful return to Chamounix.
Smith wrote an account of the ascent which provoked a bitter attack in
_The Daily News_. Albert Smith was contrasted with De Saussure, greatly
to Smith’s disadvantage. The sober, practical Englishman of the period
could only forgive a mountain ascent if the climber brought back
with him from the heights, something more substantial than a vision
of remembered beauty. A few inaccurate readings of an untrustworthy
barometer could, perhaps, excuse a pointless exploit. “Saussure’s
observations,” said a writer in _The Daily News_, “live in his poetical
philosophy, those of Mr. Albert Smith will be most appropriately
recorded in a tissue of indifferent puns, and stale, fast witticisms
with an incessant straining after smartness. The aimless scramble of
the four pedestrians to the top of Mont Blanc will not go far to redeem
the somewhat equivocal reputation of the herd of English to risks in
Switzerland for a mindless, and rather vulgar, redundance of animal
spirits.” Albert Smith did not allow the subject to drop. He turned
Mont Blanc into an entertainment at the Egyptian Hall, an entertainment
which became very popular, and was patronised by the Queen.
Narrow-minded critics affect to believe that Albert Smith was nothing
more than a showman, and that Mont Blanc was for him nothing more than
a peg on which to hang a popular entertainment. This is not true. Mr.
Mathews does him full justice when he says: “He was emphatically a
showman from his birth, but it is not true he ascended the mountain
for the purpose of making a show of it. His well-known entertainment
resulted from a lifelong interest which he had taken in the great
summit, of which he never failed to speak or write with reverence
and affection.” Mr. Mathews was by no means naturally prejudiced in
favour of anybody who tended to popularise the Alps, and his tribute is
all the more striking in consequence. Albert Smith fell in love with
Mont Blanc long before he had seen a mountain. Nobody can read the
story of his first journey with twelve pounds in his pocket, without
realising that Albert Smith, the showman, loved the mountains with
much the same passion as his more cultured successors. Mr. Mathews
adds: “It is but just to his memory to record that he, too, was a
pioneer. Mountaineering was not then a recognised sport for Englishmen.
Hitherto, any information about Mont Blanc had to be sought for in
isolated publications. Smith brought a more or less accurate knowledge
of it, as it were, to the hearths and homes of educated Englishmen....
Smith’s entertainment gave an undoubted impetus to mountaineering.”
While Smith was lecturing, a group of Englishmen were quietly carrying
through a series of attacks on the unconquered citadels of the Alps.
In 1854 Mr. Justice Wills made that ascent of the Wetterhorn which has
already been referred to. It is fully described in Mr. Justice Wills’s
interesting book, _Wanderings among the High Alps_, and, amongst other
things, it is famous as the first appearance in Alpine history of the
great guide, Christian Almer. Mr. Wills left Grindelwald with Ulrich
Lauener, a guide who was to play a great part in Alpine adventure,
Balmat and Simond. “The landlord wrung Balmat’s hand. ‘Try,’ said
he, ‘to return all of you alive.’” Lauener burdened himself with a
“flagge” to plant on the summit. This “flagge” resolved itself on
inspection into a very solid iron construction in the shape of a
banner, which Lauener carried to the summit on the following day. They
bivouacked on the Enge, and climbed next day without great difficulty,
to the gap between the two summits of the Wetterhorn, now known as
the Wettersattel. They made a short halt here; and, while they were
resting, they noticed with surprise two men working up the rocks they
had just climbed. Lauener at first supposed they were chamois hunters;
but a moment’s reflection convinced the party that no hunter would seek
his prey on such unlikely ground. Moreover, chamois hunters do not
usually carry on their backs “a young fir-tree, branches, leaves, and
all.” They lost sight of the party and continued their meal. They next
saw the two strangers on the snow slopes ahead, making all haste to be
the first on the summit. This provoked great wrath on the part of Mr.
Wills’s guides, who believed that the Wetterhorn was a virgin peak, a
view also shared by the two usurpers, who had heard of the intended
ascent and resolved to plant their fir-tree side by side with the iron
“flagge.” They had started very early that same morning, and hunted
their quarry down. A vigorous exchange of shouts and threats resulted
in a compromise. “Balmat’s anger was soon appeased when he found they
owned the reasonableness of his desire that they should not steal
from us the distinction of being the first to scale that awful peak;
and, instead of administering the fisticuffs he had talked about, he
declared they were _bons enfants_ after all, and presented them with a
cake of chocolate. Thus the pipe of peace was smoked, and tranquillity
reigned between the rival forces.”
From their resting-place they could see the final summit. From this
point a steep snow slope, about three to four hundred feet in height,
rises to the final crest, which is usually crowned by a cornice. The
little party made their way up the steep slope, till Lauener reached
the final cornice. It should, perhaps, be explained, that a cornice is
a projecting cave of wind-blown snow which is usually transformed by
sun and frost into ice. Lauener “stood close, not facing the parapet,
but turned half round, and struck out as far away from himself as
he could.... Suddenly, a startling cry of surprise and triumph rang
through the air. A great block of ice bounded from the top of the
parapet, and before it had well lighted on the glacier, Lauener
exclaimed ‘Ich schaue den Blauen Himmel’ (‘I see blue sky’). A thrill
of astonishment and delight ran through our frames. Our enterprise had
succeeded. We were almost upon the actual summit. That wave above us,
frozen, as it seemed, in the act of falling over, into a strange and
motionless magnificence, was the very peak itself. Lauener’s blows
flew with redoubled energy. In a few minutes a practicable breach was
made, through which he disappeared; and in a moment more the sound of
his axe was heard behind the battlement under whose cover we stood.
In his excitement he had forgotten us, and very soon the whole mass
would have come crashing down upon our heads. A loud shout of warning
from Sampson, who now occupied the gap, was echoed by five other
eager voices, and he turned his energies in a safer direction. It was
not long before Lauener and Sampson together had widened the opening;
and then at length we crept slowly on. As I took the last step Balmat
disappeared from my sight; my left shoulder grazed against the angle of
the icy embrasure, while on the right the glacier fell abruptly away
beneath me towards an unknown and awful abyss; a hand from an invisible
person grasped mine; I stepped across, and had passed the ridge of the
Wetterhorn.
“The instant before I had been face to face with a blank wall of ice.
One step, and the eye took in a boundless expanse of crag and glacier,
peak and precipice, mountain and valley, lake and plain. The whole
world seemed to lie at my feet. The next moment, I was almost appalled
by the awfulness of our position. The side we had come up was steep;
but it was a gentle slope compared with that which now fell away from
where I stood. A few yards of glittering ice at our feet, and then
nothing between us and the green slopes of Grindelwald nine thousand
feet beneath.”
The “iron flagge” and fir-tree were planted side by side, and attracted
great attention in Grindelwald. The “flagge” they could understand,
but the fir-tree greatly puzzled them.
Christian Almer, the hero of the fir-tree, was destined to be one of
the great Alpine guides. His first ascents form a formidable list, and
include the Eiger, Mönch, Fiescherhorn in the Oberland (besides the
first ascent of the Jungfrau direct from the Wengern Alp), the Ecrins,
monarch of the Dauphiny, the Grand Jorasses, Col Dolent, Aiguille
Verte in the Mont Blanc range, the Ruinette, and Morning Pass in the
Pennines. But Almer’s most affectionate recollections always centred
round the Wetterhorn. The present writer remembers meeting him on
his way to celebrate his golden wedding, on the summit of his first
love. Almer also deserves to be remembered as a pioneer of winter
mountaineering. He made with Mr. Coolidge the first winter ascents of
the Jungfrau and Wetterhorn. It was on a winter ascent of the former
peak that he incurred frostbite, that resulted in the amputation of his
toes, and the sudden termination of his active career. Some years later
he died peaceably in his bed.
A year after Mr. Wills’s famous climb, a party of Englishmen, headed
by the brothers Smyth, conquered the highest point of Monte Rosa. The
Alpine campaign was fairly opened. Hudson made a new route up Mont
Blanc without guides, the first great guideless climb by Englishmen.
Hinchcliffe, the Mathews, E. S. Kennedy, and others, had already done
valuable work.
The Alpine Club was the natural result of the desire on the part of
these climbers to meet together in London and compare notes. The idea
was first mooted in a letter from Mr. William Mathews to the Rev. J. A.
Hort.[3] The first meeting was held on December 22, 1857. The office
of President was left open till it was deservedly filled by John Ball;
E. S. Kennedy became Vice-President, and Mr. Hinchcliffe, Honorary
Secretary. It is pleasant to record that Albert Smith, the showman, was
an original member. The English pioneers prided themselves, not without
some show of justification, on the fact that their sport attracted men
of great intellectual powers. Forbes, Tyndall, and Leslie Stephen, are
great names in the record of Science and Literature. The present Master
of Trinity was one of the early members, his qualification being an
ascent of Monte Rosa, Sinai, and Parnassus.
There were some remarkable men in this early group of English
mountaineers. Of John Ball and Albert Smith, we have already spoken.
Perhaps the most distinguished mountaineer from the standpoint of the
outside world was John Tyndall. Tyndall was not only a great scientist,
and one of the foremost investigators of the theory of glacier motion,
he was also a fine mountaineer. His finest achievement was the first
ascent of the Weishorn; and he also played a great part in the long
struggle for the blue ribbon of the Alps--the Matterhorn. His book,
_Hours of Exercise in the Alps_, makes good reading when once one has
resigned oneself to the use of somewhat pedantic terms for quite simple
operations. Somewhere or other--I quote from memory--a guide’s legs are
referred to as monstrous levers that projected his body through space
with enormous velocity! Tyndall, by the way, chose to take offence at
some light-hearted banter which Leslie Stephen aimed at the scientific
mountaineers. The passage occurs in Stephen’s chapter on the Rothhorn.
“‘And what philosophic observations did you make?’ will be the inquiry
of one of those fanatics who by a process of reasoning to me utterly
inscrutable have somehow irrevocably associated Alpine travelling with
science. To them, I answer, that the temperature was approximately (I
had no thermometer) 212 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing point. As for
ozone, if any existed in the atmosphere, it was a greater fool than I
take it for.” This flippancy caused a temporary breach between Stephen
and Tyndall which was, however, eventually healed.
Leslie Stephen is, perhaps, best known as a writer on ethics, though
his numerous works of literary criticism contain much that is brilliant
and little that is unsound. It has been said that the popularity of the
word “Agnostic” is due less to Huxley, who invented it, than to Leslie
Stephen who popularised it in his well known _Agnostic’s Apology_, an
important landmark in the history of English Rationalism. The present
writer has read almost every line that Stephen wrote, and yet feels
that it is only in _The Playground of Europe_ that he really let
himself go. Though Stephen had a brilliant record as a mountaineer,
it is this book that is his best claim to the gratitude and honour of
climbers. Stephen was a fine mountaineer, as well as a distinguished
writer. He was the first to climb the Shreckhorn, Zinal Rothhorn,
Bietschhorn, Blüemlisalp, Rimphischorn, Disgrazia, and Mont Malet.
He had the true mountaineering instinct, which is always stirred by
the sight of an uncrossed pass; and that great wall of rock and ice
that shadows the Wengern Alp always suggests Stephen, for it falls
in two places to depressions which he was the first to cross, passes
immortalised in the chapters dealing with “The Jungfraujoch” and “The
Eigerjoch.”
It is not easy to stop if one begins to catalogue the distinguished
men who helped to build up the triumphs of this period. Professor
Bonney, an early president, was a widely travelled mountaineer, and a
scientist of world-wide reputation. His recent work on the geology of
the Alps, is perhaps the best book of the kind in existence. The Rev.
Fenton Hort had, as we have seen, a great deal to do with the formation
of the Alpine Club. His life has been written by his son, Sir Arthur
Hort. Of John Ball and Mr. Justice Wills, we have already spoken. Of
Whymper we shall have enough to say when we summarise the great romance
of the Matterhorn. He was a remarkable man, with iron determination and
great intellectual gifts. His classic _Scrambles in the Alps_ did more
than any other book to make new mountaineers. He was one of the first
draughtsmen who combined a mountaineer’s knowledge of rock and ice
with the necessary technical ability to reproduce the grandeur of the
Alps in black and white. One should compare the delightful woodcuts
from his sketches with the crude, shapeless engravings that decorate
_Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers_. His great book deserved its success.
Whymper himself was a strong personality. He had many good qualities
and some that laid him open to criticism. He made enemies without much
difficulty. But he did a great work, and no man has a finer monument to
keep alive the memory of his most enduring triumphs.
Another name which must be mentioned is that of Mr. C. E. Mathews, a
distinguished pioneer whose book on Mont Blanc has been quoted in an
earlier chapter. He was a most devoted lover of the great mountain,
and climbed it no less than sixteen times. He was a rigid conservative
in matters Alpine; and there is something rather engaging in his
contempt for the humbler visitors to the Alps. “It is a scandal to the
Republic,” he writes, “that a line should have been permitted between
Grindelwald and Interlaken. Alas for those who hailed with delight
the extension of the Rhone Valley line from Sion to Visp!” It would
have been interesting to hear his comments on the Jungfrau railway.
The modern mountaineer would not easily forego the convenience of the
trains to Zermatt that save him many hours of tiresome, if romantic,
driving.
Then there is Thomas Hinchcliffe, whose _Summer Months in the Alps_
gave a decided impetus to the new movement. He belongs to a slightly
earlier period than A. W. Moore, one of the most distinguished of the
early group. Moore attained a high and honourable position in the Home
Office. His book _The Alps in 1864_, which has recently been reprinted,
is one of the sincerest tributes to the romance of mountaineering in
the English language. Moore took part in a long list of first ascents.
He was a member of the party that achieved the first ascent of the
Ecrins which Whymper has immortalised, and he had numerous other virgin
ascents to his credit. His most remarkable feat was the first ascent
of Mont Blanc by the Brenva ridge, the finest ice expedition of the
period. Mr. Mason has immortalised the Brenva in his popular novel,
_Running Water_.
And so the list might be indefinitely extended, if only space
permitted. There was Sir George Young, who took part in the first
ascent of the Jungfrau from the Wengern Alp and who was one of the
first to attempt guideless climbing. There was Hardy, who made the
first English ascent of the Finsteraarhorn, and Davies who climbed
the two loftiest Swiss peaks, Dom and Täschhorn.[4] “What I don’t
understand,” he said to a friend of the present writer, “is why you
modern mountaineers always climb on a rope. Surely your pace must be
that of the slowest member of the party?” One has a picture of Davies
striding impatiently ahead, devouring the ground in great hungry
strides, while the weaker members dwindled into small black spots on
the face of the glacier. And then there is Tuckett, who died in 1913.
Of Tuckett, Leslie Stephen wrote: “In the heroic cycle of Alpine
adventure the irrepressible Tuckett will occupy a place similar to
Ulysses. In one valley the peasant will point to some vast breach in
the everlasting rocks hewn, as his fancy will declare, by the sweep of
the mighty ice-axe of the hero.... The broken masses of a descending
glacier will fairly represent the staircase which he built in order to
scale a previously inaccessible height.... Critics will be disposed
to trace in him one more example of the universal solar myth....
Tuckett, it will be announced, is no other than the sun which appears
at earliest dawn above the tops of the loftiest mountains, gilds the
summits of the most inaccessible peaks, penetrates remote valleys, and
passes in an incredibly short time from one extremity of the Alpine
chain to another.”
The period which closes with the ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 has
been called the Golden Age of Mountaineering; and the mountaineers whom
we have mentioned were responsible for the greater portion of this
glorious harvest. By 1865 the Matterhorn was the only remaining Zermat
giant that still defied the invaders; and beyond Zermat only one great
group of mountains, the Dolomites, still remained almost unconquered.
It was the age of the guided climber. The pioneers did excellent work
in giving the chamois hunter the opportunity to become a guide. And
many of these amateurs were really the moral leaders of their parties.
It was sometimes, though not often, the amateur who planned the line
of ascent, and decided when the attack should be pressed and when it
should be abandoned. It was only when the guide had made repeated
ascents of fashionable peaks that the part played by the amateur became
less and less important. Mountaineering in the ’fifties and ’sixties
was in many ways far more arduous than it is to-day. Club-huts are now
scattered through the Alps. It is no longer necessary to carry firewood
and sleeping-bags to some lonely bivouac beside the banks of great
glaciers. A sudden gust of bad weather at night no longer means that
the climber starts at dawn with drenched clothes. The excellent series
of _Climbers’ Guides_ give minute instructions describing every step
in the ascent. The maps are reliable. In those days, guide-books had
still to be written, the maps were romantic and misleading, and the
discoverer of a new pass had not only to get to the top, he had also
to get down the other side. What precisely lay beyond the pass, he did
not know. It might be an impassable glacier, or a rock face that could
not be descended. Almost every new pass involved the possibility of a
forced bivouac.
None the less, it must be admitted that the art of mountaineering has
advanced more since 1865 than it did in the preceding half century.
There is a greater difference between the ascent of the Grepon by the
Mer de Glace Face, or the Brouillard Ridge of Mont Blanc, than between
the Matterhorn and the Gross Glockner, or between the Weishorn and Mont
Blanc.
The art of mountaineering is half physical and half mental. He who can
justly claim the name of mountaineer must possess the power to _lead_
up rocks and snow, and to cut steps in ice. This is the physical side
of the business. It is important; but the charm of mountaineering is
largely intellectual. The mental equipment of the mountaineer involves
an exhaustive knowledge of one of the most ruthless aspects of Nature.
The mountaineer must know the hills in all their changing moods and
tenses. He must possess the power to make instant use of trivial clues,
a power which the uninitiated mistake for an instinctive sense of
direction. Such a sense is undoubtedly possessed by a small minority,
but path-finding is often usually only the subconscious analysis of
small clues. The mountaineer must understand the secrets of snow, rock,
and ice. He must be able to tell at a glance whether a snow slope is
dangerous, or a snow-bridge likely to collapse. He must be able to move
with certainty and safety on a rock face, whether it is composed of
reliable, or brittle and dangerous rock. All this involves knowledge
which is born of experience and the power to apply experience. Every
new peak is a problem for the intellect. Mountaineering, however,
differs radically in one respect from many other sports. Most men can
get up a mountain somehow, and thereby share at least one experience of
the expert. Of every hundred boys that are dragooned into compulsory
cricket at school, only ten could ever by any possible chance qualify
to play in first-class cricket. Almost all of them could reach the
summit of a first class peak if properly guided.
But this is not mountaineering. You cannot pay a professional to take
your place at Lords’ and then claim the benefit of the century he
knocks up. But some men with great Alpine reputations owe everything to
the professional they have hired. They have good wind and strong legs.
With a stout rope above, they could follow a good leader up any peak in
the Alps. The guide was not only paid to lead up the rocks and assist
them from above. He was paid to do all the thinking that was necessary.
He was the brain as well as the muscle of the expedition. He solved all
the problems that Nature sets the climber, and mountaineering for his
client was only a very safe form of exercise in agreeable surroundings.
Leslie Stephen admitted this, and he had less cause to admit it than
most. “I utterly repudiate the doctrine that Alpine travellers are, or
ought to be, the heroes of Alpine adventure. The true way, at least, to
describe all my Alpine adventures is to say that Michael Anderegg, or
Lauener, succeeded in performing a feat requiring skill, strength, and
courage, the difficulty of which was much increased by the difficulty
of taking with him his knapsack and his employer.” Now, this does less
than justice to Leslie Stephen, and to many of the early mountaineers.
Often they supplied the brain of the party, and the directing energy.
They were pioneers. Yet mountaineering as a fine art owes almost as
much to the men who first dispensed with professional assistance. A
man who climbs habitually with guides may be, and often is, a fine
mountaineer. He _need_ be nothing more than a good walker, with a
steady head, to achieve a desperate reputation among laymen.
Many of the early pioneers were by no means great athletes, though
their mountaineering achievements deceived the public into crediting
them with superhuman nerve and strength. Many of them were middle-aged
gentlemen, who could have taken no part in active sports which demand
a swift alliance of nerve and muscle; but who were quite capable of
plugging up the average mixture of easy rock and snow that one meets on
the average first-class Alpine peak. They had average endurance, and
more than average pluck, for the prestige of the unvanquished peaks
still daunted all but the courageous.
They were lucky in that the great bulk of Alpine peaks were
unconquered, and were only too ready to be conquered by the first
climber who could hire two trusty Swiss guides to cut the steps, carry
the knapsack, and lead up the rocks. It is usually said of these men:
“They could not, perhaps, have tackled the pretty rock problems in
which the modern cragsman delights. They were something better than
gymnasts. They were all-round mountaineers.” This seems rather special
pleading. Some one said that mountaineering seemed to be walking up
easy snow mountains between guides, and mere cragsmanship consisted
in leading up difficult rock-peaks without guides. It does not follow
that a man who can lead up the Chamounix aiguilles knows less of the
broader principles of mountaineering than the gentleman who is piloted
up Mont Blanc by sturdy Swiss peasants. The issue is not between those
who confine their energies to gymnastic feats on Welsh crags and the
wider school who understand snow and ice as well as rock. The issue
is between those who can take their proper share in a rock-climb like
the Grepon, or a difficult ice expedition like the Brenva Mont Blanc,
and those who would be completely at a loss if their guides broke
down on an easy peak like the Wetterhorn. The pioneers did not owe
everything to their guides. A few did, but most of them were good
mountaineers whose opinion was often asked by the professionals, and
sometimes taken. Yet the guided climber, then and now, missed the real
inwardness of the sport. Mountaineering, in the modern sense, is a
sport unrivalled in its appeal to mind and body. The man who can lead
on a series of really first-class climbs must possess great nerve, and
a specialised knowledge of mountains that is almost a sixth sense.
Mountaineering between guides need not involve anything more than a
good wind and a steady head. Anybody can get up a first-class peak.
Only one amateur in ten can complete ascent and descent with safety if
called on to lead.
In trying to form a just estimate of our debt to the early English
pioneers, we have to avoid two extremes. We must remember the parable
of the dwarf standing on the giant’s shoulders. It ill becomes those
who owe Climbers’ Guides, and to some extent good maps, to the labours
of the pioneers to discount their achievements. But the other extreme
is also a danger. We need not pretend that every man who climbed a
virgin peak in the days when nearly every big peak was virgin was
necessarily a fine mountaineer. All praise is due to the earliest
explorers, men like Balmat, Joseph Beck, Bourrit, De Saussure, and the
Meyers, for in those days the country above the snow-line was not only
unknown, it was full of imagined terrors. These men did a magnificent
work in robbing the High Alps of their chief defence--superstition. But
in the late ’fifties and early ’sixties this atmosphere had largely
vanished. Mr. X came to the A valley, and discovered that the B, C, or
D horn had not been climbed. The B, C, and D horn were average peaks
with a certain amount of straightforward snow and ice work, and a
certain amount of straightforward rock work. Mr. X enjoys a fortnight
of good weather, and the services of two good guides. He does what any
man with like opportunities would accomplish, what an undergraduate
fresh to the Alps could accomplish to-day if these peaks had been
obligingly left virgin for his disposal. Many of the pioneers with a
long list of virgin peaks to their credit would have made a poor show
if they had been asked to lead one of the easy buttresses of Tryfan.
Rock-climbing as a fine art was really undreamt of till long after the
Matterhorn had been conquered. The layman is apt to conceive all Alpine
climbs as a succession of dizzy precipices. To a man brought up on
Alpine classics, there are few things more disappointing than the ease
of his first big peak. The rock work on the average Oberland or Zermat
peaks by the ordinary route is simple, straightforward scrambling up
slopes whose average inclination is nearer thirty than sixty degrees.
It is the sort of thing that the ordinary man can do by the light of
Nature. Rock-climbing, in the sense in which the Dolomite or lake
climber uses the term, is an art which calls for high qualities of
nerve and physique. Such rock climbing was almost unknown till some
time after the close of this period. No modern cragsman would consider
the Matterhorn, even if robbed of its fixed ropes, as anything but a
straightforward piece of interesting rock work, unless he was unlucky
enough to find it in bad condition. All this we may frankly admit.
Mountaineering as an art was only in its infancy when the Matterhorn
was climbed. And yet the Englishmen whom we have mentioned in this
chapter did more for mountaineering than any of their successors or
predecessors. Bourrit, De Saussure, Beck, Placidus à Spescha, and the
other pioneers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century,
deserve the greatest credit. But their spirited example gave no general
impetus to the sport. They were single-handed mountaineers; and somehow
they never managed to fire the world with their own enthusiasm. The
Englishmen arrived late on the scene. The great giants of more than
one district had been climbed. And yet mountaineering was still the
pursuit of a few isolated men who knew little or nothing of their
brother climbers, who came and struggled and passed away uncheered by
the inspiring freemasonry of a band of workers aiming at the same end.
It was left to the English to transform mountaineering into a popular
sport. Judged even by modern standards some of these men were fine
mountaineers, none the less independent because the fashion of the day
decreed that guides should be taken on difficult expeditions. But even
those who owed the greater part of their success to their guides were
inspired by the same enthusiasm which, unlike the lonely watchfires of
the earlier pioneers, kindled a general conflagration.