A feature of eighteenth-century Geneva was its extraordinary number of suicides. Citizens hung themselves, shot themselves, poisoned themselves and flung themselves into either the lake or its inflowing rivers with weary regularity. One inhabitant hesitantly put this down to the influence of the English, who flocked to Geneva as an orderly, non-Catholic centre of the Enlightenment; an Englishman declared that this view could be ‘summarily dismissed’,1 but did not offer an alternative diagnosis; and a Frenchman wondered whether it might not be caused by the oppressive landscape - a comment that the same Englishman thought preposterous.
Horace Bénédict de Saussure did not himself commit suicide -although several of his friends and relatives did - but he was undoubtedly influenced by the two supposedly disposing causes. Born in 1740, one year before Pococke and Windham entered Chamonix, he grew up in an English-style Genevan mansion built by his father in imitation of those he had seen on a visit to Yorkshire; he started his career in the then typically English fashion as a lawyer, hoping not to have anything to do with law but ‘to gain knowledge of affairs’; and when he abandoned law in favour of a career as a geologist, he met and corresponded with his English counterparts, many of whom were among Geneva’s regular visitors. A small, feisty state whose 1781 census counted some 25,000 inhabitants (of whom a staggering 6,000 were watchmakers), Geneva was one of the more prosperous members of the Swiss Confederation and prided itself on being the equal of any nation in every respect save pomp, cuisine and authoritarianism - the very virtues that eighteenth-century Englishmen considered to be the distinguishing features between themselves and their vainglorious French neighbours.
More than Englishness, however, Saussure was swayed by the other demon of self-destruction - the oppressive landscape. In general, Genevans had two things to look at: the lake and the mountains. For some this might have been depressing but Saussure found the sight invigorating. ‘From childhood, I have had an absolute passion for the mountains,’ he later wrote. ‘I still remember the sensation I experienced when, for the first time, my hands touched the rocks of the Salève [in nearby Savoy] and my eyes enjoyed its vistas.’2 His love of the mountains was more than a passion: it was an obsession. In 1760, while still a student at the Geneva Academy - in two years’ time he would be appointed its Professor of Natural History - he became frustrated with the smaller hills available to him. He wanted to expand his scope to include the giant peaks visible in the distance. As he described it, ‘I was desperately anxious to see at close quarters the great Alpine summits which look so majestic from the top of our mountains.’3 So, at the age of 20, he walked the 50 miles to Chamonix on the trail of Pococke and Windham.
Saussure had not only read Albrecht von Haller’s poem on the Alps but knew the old man personally. The ostensible purpose of his journey was to collect plants for Haller’s collection. He was not particularly successful in this regard, for which he blamed the lack of specimens to be found. In all likelihood he was not looking very hard. ‘I fear, eager as you are, that on your excursions you walk a little too quickly,’ Haller chided him. ‘One ought to go as slowly as possible, and above all on the alps to sit down from time to time, even to lie down, so as to get a close view of the growing plants.’4 Lie down? No thought could have been further from Saussure’s mind.
As a youth he had heard stories about the mountains surrounding Chamonix, the largest of which was Mont Blanc. Its icy slopes and those of its adjoining chain of peaks were said to have been placed there to punish the sinful folk who lived below. The moment he entered the valley of Chamonix, however, Saussure was entranced. ‘The fresh air one breathes … the good cultivation of the soil, the pretty hamlets met with at every step … give the impression of a new world, a sort of earthly paradise, enclosed by a kindly Deity in the circle of the mountains.’5 As for the ice, it was to him not a punishment but a gift. ‘These majestic glaciers, separated by great forests, and crowned by granite crags of astounding height cut in the form of great obelisks and mixed with snow and ice, present one of the noblest and most singular spectacles it is possible to imagine.’6
From the house of the local curé - the only decent lodging available - Saussure roamed his new-found paradise with enthusiasm. Where no plants were to be found he carried a gun and excused his expeditions on the ground of collecting Alpine birds. He climbed the Brévent, an 8,287-foot mountain opposite Mont Blanc. He crossed the Mer de Glace to visit a shepherd on one of the more distant and threadbare pastures and marvelled at the needles of rock which rose around him dizzyingly into the sky. When not exploring, he studied the locals. The women, he noted, did most of the agricultural work while the men busied themselves in the dangerous trades of chamois-hunting and crystal-gathering. (Rock crystal was a major component of eighteenth-century costume jewellery.) The Chamoniards were also renowned cheese-makers and in summer hired themselves out to other valleys, thereby diminishing the population considerably*. From those that remained, Saussure picked one, Pierre Simon, to help him through the wondrous but unknown landscape. ‘He is short of stature,’ wrote a contemporary, ‘his head buried in a large hat; small bright eyes, a short coat, heavy nailed shoes, and a spiked stick, a peculiar language as difficult to understand as to speak for everyone … he was experienced, prudent, courageous and faithful.’7 Little else is known about Pierre Simon, but he stands on record as one of the first Alpine guides, a breed whose knowledge and ice craft would later steer their employers through the glacial approaches to the summits themselves.
Saussure visited Chamonix again and again. By 1778 he had been there eight times - twice in 1776 - and still he wondered at everything he met. Even the approach thrilled him. At Balmes, for example, a local guide took him aside and in hushed tones informed him that fairies and other supernatural beings had once ruled the land. Moreover, he could show him the proof. There were places, he said, where they had turned snakes, snails and a variety of indescribable creatures into stone. Hastening to the spot, Saussure found nothing but ammonites and other fossils. Interestingly, however, he did not discount his guide’s ‘fairies’ until he had seen the evidence for himself. Even to someone like Saussure, it seems, the existence of dragons and the like was not an impossibility. There was more to come. When the supernatural transmogrifications failed to convince his employer, the guide told Saussure of a palace the fairies had carved into the mountainside. It contained chambers lined with glittering columns and in the vastness of its main reception room lay a fathomless pit containing untold wealth. Saussure sallied forth to investigate. The Caverne de Balmes, as expected, was a lengthy grotto of stalactites and stalagmites. The only excitement for Saussure was walking on a layer of crystals that had formed on the surface of long since evaporated water to produce a shelf that was equidistant from floor and ceiling. Apart from this the cavern was unexceptional and Saussure recorded, disappointedly, that it did not even measure up to Pool’s Hole in Derbyshire.
But the pit, down which he could not go because exploration of its 600-foot depth required ropes made to special order, remained a tantalising mystery. People had thrown stones into it and had heard them bounce off metal. On descending to find the fairy gold they had been driven back by a black goat that rose up from the abyss to bite their legs. Saussure dismissed the tales when he interviewed a man who had actually gone to the bottom of the pit. He was the surviving member of a twelve-strong team that had descended, clothed in crucifixes and other charms, to bring up the fairy treasure. What they had found was two copper bracelets, a number of chamois skeletons and some broken skulls of unidentifiable origin.
Saussure very much wanted to investigate the pit, especially when his informant told him that a man-made tunnel, on the wall of which was carved the image of a violin, led off to yet another cave. But the ropes were not available and he had to content himself with throwing rocks to judge its depth. It was small consolation. In his precise fashion he wrote that he could not be certain how far the rocks had dropped because they bounced off the sides on their way down. Once again, however, he did not dismiss superstition out of hand: when he wrote of the black goat in his journal he did so in respectful capitals.
Chamonix and its approaches were fine. But what captured Saussure’s imagination more than anything else was Mont Blanc. Its presence had eluded Pococke and Windham - perhaps because from Chamonix it appears foreshortened and little more impressive than any of the adjacent peaks - but Saussure had seen it from Geneva and had recognised its importance. In his opinion it was the highest mountain in Europe, Africa or Asia and one that he must conquer. He was so besotted with Mont Blanc that he chose his auberges on the way to Chamonix not for their comfort but for the view they afforded of the peak. When he left Chamonix at the end of the summer of 1760 he had a notice posted in every parish of the valley. In it he offered a reward - the precise sum is not known - for the first person to climb Mont Blanc. In addition, he promised to recompense anybody for the time they spent on a failed attempt. On a second visit to Chamonix, in 1761, he repeated the offer. It was maybe a whim, a gesture by a well-meaning youngster with money to hand. But it was enough to set the Chamoniards thinking.
While Saussure was tinkling his purse at the locals, another man, Marc-Théodore Bourrit, was igniting the world with his visions of Mont Blanc. Bourrit, the Precentor of Geneva Cathedral, was an extraordinary man. Artist, singer, womaniser, snob and interminable raconteur, he was an endearing coward with a genius for self-promotion. One traveller portrayed him as ‘long and thin, his complexion as dark as a negro’s, his eyes burning and full of genius and life; his mouth marked by a touch of mobility and good nature which inspires confidence’.8 Physically, this description fitted the bill. It omitted, however, Bourrit’s various other attributes - such as his vocal chords, of which he was immodestly proud. ‘I have been told in Paris that my voice can compete with the finest in Europe,’ he said. ‘I daresay that when my passion for music gets the better of me, I may feel tempted to make myself known to the world.’9 He could paint, too - although not particularly well - and made a small name for himself as an Alpine artist, selling his watercolours to a gratifyingly important clientele that included the royalty of France, Russia, Sardinia and Prussia. And he could talk, squeezing from the smallest opportunity a lengthy torrent of words accompanied by gesticulations and, frequently, tears. But here his genius ended and a tetchy insecurity took over. He was touchy, and when crossed did not hesitate to use libel, slander and poison-pen letters against his perceived enemies.
Bourrit’s one redeeming trait was his fascination with the Alps. He painted them, wrote about them and spoke about them. He travelled through them extensively. He dubbed himself the ‘Historian of the Alps’ and the ‘Indefatigable Bourrit’, and did all he could to make people - preferably wealthy, well-connected people - acquainted with their beauty. The one thing he could not do with the Alps was to climb them. He tried again and again - between 1869 and 1819 he made several attempts each year - but was thwarted by three debilitations: he dreaded cold, he disliked rain and he suffered from vertigo. He was the despair of his companions. He would wear impractical fur-lined shoes that had no grip; he would walk through pastures of cattle wearing a red cloak and carrying a large red umbrella; on slopes beyond a certain gradient he would lean so heavily on his guides that they almost collapsed. He would arrange a climb, delay it and then cancel it if the weather was not right. Even when painting he displayed a regrettable lack of surety. Approaching a glacier, he dithered at its edge, then decided the cold was too extreme for inspiration. On one rare occasion when he did climb a hill he planted his easel on the summit and took out his watercolours; after a while he noticed that he had sunk waist-deep in snow, and had to be dug out. He had no scientific accomplishments whatsoever: ‘It may be wished he had explained himself with more precision,’ complained a translator, having struggled to make sense of Bourrit’s borrowed theories concerning glaciers. ‘[It is] a point in which he leaves the mind not fully satisfied.’10 Instead, he was happier pottering over the foothills, exploring undiscovered valleys - which he did with some success -and telling female tourists how things should be done.
Bourrit did, however, have an undeniable feel for the Alps. Whereas Rousseau and the like were content to describe the hills from below, Bourrit did his best to tell people how they looked from above. On encountering his first glacier he was smitten.
A new universe came into view; what words can I use to describe a spectacle which struck us dumb?… The richness and variety of colours added to the beauty of the shapes. Gold, silver, crimson, and azure were shining everywhere, and what impressed me with a sense of even greater strangeness were the arches supporting snow-bridges over the crevasses, the apparent strength of which encouraged us to walk cross. We were even courageous enough to stop in the middle and gaze down into the abyss.11
Of the surrounding peaks that he could not reach he remarked only that they ‘were serrated in innumerable ways’. When in 1775 he eventually managed to climb one of the smaller hills, Le Buet (it took him two years simply to locate it), he burst into such an extravagance of speech and song that a large boulder was named ‘La Table au Chantre’ in his honour.
His fellow countrymen mocked him, his fellow climbers abhorred him and the authorities noted crossly his continued absence from the cathedral. Yet his presence was inescapable, his knowledge seemingly endless and his enthusiasm so patent that people were drawn to the Alps if only to meet their most fanatical publicist. One such pilgrim was Prince Henry of Prussia, who paid a visit to Bourrit’s studio, an episode that Bourrit never tired of relating. ‘M. Bourrit pointed out to us his little staircase, which, in fact, is very narrow,’ wrote an English visitor. ‘He said that while going down it Prince Henry had said to his suite, “How many great staircases there are for little men! I am delighted to have found at last a great man with a little staircase.” I hope for M. Bourrit’s sake that there is a real disproportion between his staircase and himself, and that the prince’s antithesis is sound … On looking at him I saw that his sleeve had a hole in it.’12 Come nightfall, Bourrit camped in his courtyard on a little iron bedstead to prepare himself for conditions higher up. For all his faults it was hard to despise him.
Saussure was the very opposite of Bourrit. At the age of 24 he was, according to one acquaintance, ‘already - without knowing it - a great savant, witty with a particular touch of naivete which could not fail to please, and though he was not easily embarassed, he almost invariably blushed when spoken to by a girl or young woman’.13 Unlike Bourrit, who cut a dashing figure, Saussure had a pinched, prim look that reflected his methodical, scientific approach to the mountains. He wrote of his excursions that he ‘made all these journeys with a miner’s hammer in hand, merely for the purpose of studying natural history, climbing all accessible summits which seemed to promise interesting observations, and always carrying off specimens from the mines and mountains, especially those which threw any light on physical theories’.14 He made it a rule to take notes on the spot and then transcribe them that evening in a journal that he would later rewrite for publication. He was painstakingly exact, at times overly so. ‘[He] instructs you frigidly, and sometimes sends you to sleep,’15 complained one German writer.
Bourrit, in contrast, liked to pounce on unsuspecting victims and bore them to death. On one occasion he encountered an unsuspecting group of English tourists at Chamonix and waxed lyrical to their guides. ‘Put yourself in the place of the strangers,’ he began, ‘who come from the most distant lands to admire the marvels of Nature in these wild and savage aspects, and justify the confidence they place in you …’16 He carried on in similar vein, flanked by a visiting princess and the local chief of police, shedding the occasional tear as his fervour mounted. His audience goggled in bewilderment. In 1787 Baron de Frenilly happened to meet Bourrit - ‘a man of volcanic imagination’ - in an Alpine hospice. Bourrit began to describe a mountain sunrise. ‘I believe that I listened to Bourrit for half an hour without falling asleep,’ wrote the Baron. ‘But at last, fatigue got the better of me, and I know not if he succeeded in getting the sun to rise.’17
Bourrit and Saussure, albeit at opposite ends of the spectrum, were in the vanguard of Alpine exploration. Initially, however, their efforts were fruitless. Saussure’s bounty on Mont Blanc resulted in two desultory failures by Pierre Simon and for a while thereafter not much else. And for all Bourrit’s raving and painting - he travelled throughout Europe trying to sell his pictures - he could not tempt tourists from the safety of their literary excursions. It was left to two Genevan brothers, Jean-André and Guillaume-Antoine De Luc, to make the first serious investigation of a mountain.
Born in 1717 and 1729 respectively, Jean-André and Guillaume-Antoine were amateur scientists of some renown. They were also admirers of Rousseau and in 1754 had rowed him and his mistress around Lake Geneva. Rousseau did not think much of the brothers, finding them rather boring, but this did not stop him pumping them for Alpine information that later found its way, unacknowledged, into La Nouvelle Héloïse. Whether or not this upset the brothers is unknown. At any rate, they joined their love of science with their love of the hills and decided to make some experiments at high altitudes. They had two aims: to determine by means of a barometer the differences in air pressure at the top of a mountain and at its base -thereby, they hoped, being able to calculate its height; and to measure how long it took a kettle of water to boil at various heights above sea level. The importance they attached to these simple goals speaks volumes of their lack of information regarding the Alps. They chose Le Buet, an impressive but untaxing mountain of 10,167 feet, as a suitable site for their experiments.
The De Lucs’ first expedition, in 1765, was a failure. Acting on the advice of peasants who were acquainted only with Le Buet’s grazing, they climbed a long slope of grass and found themselves thwarted by precipices. It was useless to continue and anyway their thermometer had broken. In August 1770 they had another go, taking with them a local guide who was both cheese-maker and ‘apprentice to a hunter’18 - he liked to load his gun twice down the same barrel, he explained, so that he could get in a second shot if necessary. After a number of wrong turns they found themselves once again at a dead end. To salvage something from the day Jean-André set up his kettle and began to boil water. Their guide burst into laughter and took the opportunity to have a rest. He sat down heavily on Jean-André’s foot, spraining his employer’s ankle. Then, suddenly remembering that his cows had not been milked, he left the De Lucs to their own devices and went down the mountain. Guillaume-Antoine helped his crippled brother as best he could - which was not much according to Jean-André; he described with feeling the sensation of sliding on his back ‘down 1,500 perpendicular feet’19 - but they were unable to reach shelter and had to spend a night in the open. Their only blanket was the cloth in which they had bundled their provisions and which, when spread out, barely covered their legs. They slept badly and were so stiff and cramped on waking that it was some time before they could hobble to safety. Jean-André later explained, with forbearance, that the guide ‘was not the expert we required’.20
Undeterred, they made a third attempt in September 1770, and this time they secured a man who knew the way if not to the peak then at least to the point from which it could be attained. They climbed ever higher, ‘enjoying a multitude of agreeable sensations’, until they reached the snowline. Here they felt slightly nervous. ‘We were not shod for such an enterprise,’ Jean-André explained. ‘But our guide, with his thick, hobnailed boots, kicked the snow sideways as he ascended. In this way, he made little steps in the crust of snow which supported him, and by means of these we climbed up after him, supporting ourselves with our poles [until] we discovered the immense chain of the Alps, stretching for a distance of more than fifty leagues.’21
At once, Jean-André lit a fire and put the kettle on. While waiting, thermometer in hand, for the water to boil, he had time to admire the stupendous view. And as he did so he became aware of an uncomfortable fact: he was conducting his experiment on a cornice, a perilous, wind-blown coif of snow that projected from the summit without any support save that of its binding molecules. Five hundred feet of vertical space separated him from the rocks below. Nowadays, cornices are known to be inherently unstable, likely to break at any given moment. In his innocence, Jean-André took a different view. The weight of ice and snow was already so great, he reasoned, that a mere human and his kettle could not possibly affect matters. Teetering on the brink of disaster he boiled away, alternately consulting his watch and dipping his thermometer into the water. At his leisure he also took barometric readings. Then he packed his equipment and ambled back to the security of the summit.
The De Lucs’ climb was an achievement. This was not because Le Buet was a particularly high or challenging hill to climb. According to one authority, ‘the mountain is nothing but a long grind up meadows, steep scree slopes and a small, almost level glacier. The going is never difficult but extremely tedious.’22 Even Bourrit later managed to climb it. Their ascent, however, was important in that it was the first time Le Buet had been climbed, and the first time that the vogue for scientific inquiry had penetrated above the lower slopes.
The De Lucs would make other water-boiling expeditions from which they returned - if their thermometers and barometers did not break, as often happened - with data that were original if not particularly useful. But they never climbed a really high peak. That privilege was left to the Abbé Murith, a priest of the Great St Bernard hospice. Murith was an amateur botanist and natural scientist who determined in 1779 to climb the Vélan, at 12,353 feet the highest mountain in his locality. Setting out on 31 August with two Chamois hunters, he successfully reached his goal. The hunters proved spineless guides, complaining of heat, tiredness and homesickness. That the party reached the summit intact was due only to Murith’s browbeating; once, the Abbé had to personally hack steps in a steep ice slope and drag his companions after him. Along the way he dutifully took measurements with his barometer and his thermometer. He also listed the number and species of plants to be found at various altitudes. But what truly amazed him was the view from the top.
Had he been with him, he wrote to Saussure, ‘You would have enjoyed the most splendid spectacle of mountains and glaciers you can imagine; you would have been able to gaze on a wide circle of peaks of different heights, from Turin to the Little St Bernard, from the St Bernard to the Lake of Geneva, from Vevey to the St Gotthard, from the St Gotthard to Turin.’23 He expounded further in a letter to Bourrit. While admitting for the touchy Precentor’s sake that the view from Le Buet was extremely fine, he avowed there was nothing to match that from the Vélan: ‘you would have seen the universe under your feet, the points and needles of the highest hills looking like a tumultuous sea’.24 By his calculations the summit was ‘hardly less than 100 toises [650 feet] lower than the highest point of Mont Blanc … I believe I ascended one of the first great peaks ever climbed in Europe.’25
Officially, of course, the view Murith enjoyed and the height he attained were less important than his contributions to science. Nevertheless, he took a wry pleasure in underlining his achievement to Saussure. ‘I cannot promise I will help you enjoy so ravishing a view,’ he wrote. ‘In spite of my own intrepidity, I had too much trouble in gaining the summit of this wintry giant.’26 It was, he said, without going into details, ‘a terrible climb’.
Steadily, the men of science were inching their way towards something important. They paid lip service to tales of dragons and demons and stories of witches who danced on glaciers, but what concerned them most were hard facts: the measurements of thermometers and barometers; the extent of electrical activity; the speed at which sound travelled; the quality and composition of rocks; the diversity of flora and fauna; the formation of glaciers; and the effects altitude had on the human frame. Yet even the sternest hearts experienced a near superstitious awe when considering the world they had set out to conquer.
‘The high summits,’ wrote Guillaume-Antoine De Luc after one expedition, ‘could be descried, all white with fresh snow, through the gaps between the clouds; they appeared as many giants of an enormous size, as old as the world, who were at their windows looking down upon us poor little creeping creatures.’27