The Alps

by Arnold Lunn

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.