CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘As the strokes of midnight were clanging from the Campanile at Sondrio, a carriage rolled heavily into the courtyard of the Hotel della Maddelena.’1 With these evocative words, Edward Shirley Kennedy opened his account of the first ascent of Monte della Disgrazia in August 1862. It was not an exceptionally high mountain nor an outstandingly difficult one to climb. But the account of its conquest was memorable because it was written with such style and because it was the first article in the first edition of the Alpine Journal. The direct successor of Peaks, Passes and Glaciers, the Alpine Journal was the truest yardstick to date of how popular the Alps had become. The first number was published in 1864 and positively fizzed with energy. Like its predecessor it gave accounts of new climbs; but it also contained a plethora of fascinating minutiae. Readers wrote in to ask whether such-and-such a man had climbed such-and-such a mountain, and whether anybody knew if the mountain even existed. They recommended Swiss inns, warned about incompetent guides, inveighed against banditry, and discussed boots, ropes and alpenstocks. Extraordinary images filled its pages: one man told how on Mont Blanc, just before dawn, he had cast a shadow that was completely green; another described phosphorescent snow sparkling from his companion’s boots with each step that he took; a third related how his hair stood on end - as did his companions’ crêpe veils - and how his upraised hands sang like a kettle in the electrical discharge of a thunderstorm. And booming from page to page came the echoes of Kennedy’s declaration on the peak of Monte della Disgrazia: ‘I am therefore justified in claiming for Alpine climbing the first rank among athletic sports, as the nourisher of those varied elements that go to form all that is commendable in the constitution of the Anglo-Saxon character.’2

The excitement was overwhelming - reminiscent, in a way, of that felt by citizens of a newly founded republic. Here was a group of men, unfettered by any rules save those they laid down, in thrall to no sovereign or governmental body, who were charged with opening a new world in a manner of their own choosing. Best of all, theirs was a republic without political or territorial responsibility, one that ignored boundaries (could one say that a precipice was intrinsically French, Italian or Swiss?), whose message was supranational (the Swiss and Italian Alpine Clubs were founded in 1863, the German and Austrian in 1869, the French in 1874 and the American soon after; a Carpathian Club sprang up in Poland) and whose scope was limitless - in the first number of the Alpine Journal a man described a climb in Sinai; soon reports would pour in from Norway, Greenland, Spitsbergen, Turkey, the Andes, the Rockies, the Caucasus, the Himalayas, anywhere, in fact, where there was a mountain. Theirs was a republic of the mind and the body. What did a man think of when he reached the top? Kennedy asked himself on Monte della Disgrazia. Was it ‘How do I get down?’ or ‘Where’s the wine?’ or ‘What a view!’ or ‘Give me my barometer!’ No, he said, what men thought of was ‘the exhilarating consciousness of difficulty overcome, and of success obtained by perseverance’.³ He described the headiness of his return in words that had readers scrabbling for their boots: ‘We had thus made a day of twenty-four hours, but whether it was the same day, or the next day, or the day after that day, or the same week, or the next week, that that day ended, is one of those things that a fellow never could tell.’⁴

Kennedy was the Alpine Club’s prime propagandist. He told members what they wanted to hear, in tones that combined drama with confidentiality. When he clattered into the courtyard of the Hotel della Maddelena he had every intention of elucidating ‘matters of antiquarian and geological interest’ on the slopes of Disgrazia. But, as he added with a nod and a wink, ‘another and a mightier attraction existed; we had an unascended peak in contemplation, and what mountaineer can resist the charms which such an object presents?’5 Unascended peaks drew people like a magnet. There were still plenty of them: by 1862 barely half the peaks of the main Alpine range surrounding Mont Blanc, Grindelwald and Zermatt had been climbed, and there were scores of others in other areas. Even if a hill had been climbed there was the prospect of finding new, more testing routes up it. Members responded avidly.

The Alpine Club swelled in stature and numbers, gathering a hectic selection of madmen as it did so. There was, for example, Francis Fox Tuckett, who fled from mountain top to mountain top in an almost unblemished record of near disasters. (In 1863 he escaped by a hair’s breadth one of the most monstrous avalanches ever known on the Eiger.) There was Lucy Walker - not a man and therefore not a member of the male-only Alpine Club, but nevertheless part of the circle - whose normal pastimes were needlework and polite conversation until shown an Alp, whereupon she would don a sturdy dress and spring to its summit. And what was one to make of a man like James Benjamin Redford Bulwer, who was simultaneously a barrister, musician, artist, actor, cricketer, skater, soldier, Conservative MP and a Master of Lunacy? Then there was Leslie Stephen.

Stephen, who had been Kennedy’s partner on Monte della Disgrazia, protruded like a rock of sanity amid the torrent of Alpine enthusiasm. He was a man of letters, best remembered today as the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and as the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. There was something of the Tyndall in him, in that he had been unhealthy and shy as a child, had overcome his weaknesses by exercise and had grown into a long, thin, bearded adult with a keen mind, an abhorrence of idleness and a capacity for overwork. He walked long distances at a steady four miles an hour and once covered the 50 miles between Cambridge and London in twelve hours to attend an Alpine Club dinner. He had taken holy orders but had renounced Christianity to follow the same vaguely agnostic path as Tyndall. He lacked Tyndall’s temper but had a knack of making people dislike him. This stemmed not from any particular unpleasantness in his character, but from an overwhelming desire to be left alone. ‘I am the most easily bored of men,’6 he once said. If a visitor outstayed his welcome, Stephen became visibly agitated, twisting his hair and finally muttering, to himself but quite audibly, ‘Why can’t he go? Why can’t he go?’⁷ His avowed opinion was that ‘Life would be more tolerable if it were not for our fellow-creatures. They come about us like bees, and, as we cannot well destroy them, we are driven to some safe asylum. The Alps, as yet, remain.’⁸ To the Alps, therefore, he went.

Year after year he stalked across Switzerland like a pair of dividers over a map, clad in a long tweed coat that became his hallmark. Virginia Woolf remembered how he wore it proudly in London, its waist stained yellow from ropes. He liked the companionship of other mountaineers, in whose company ‘little adventures might be congenial to more intellectual intercourse and help the formation of permanent friendship,’⁹ but he generally preferred a long, slow, meditative slog accompanied only by guides. His meditations gave him no greater belief in the Almighty, but they led, as in the case of almost every mountaineer - including Tyndall - to a sense of wonderment. On top of the Schreckhorn he said, ‘One felt as if some immortal being, with no particular duties on his hands, might be calmly sitting upon these desolate rocks and watching the little shadowy wrinkles of the plain, that were real mountain ranges, rise and fall through slow geological epochs.’¹⁰

For Stephen the Alps were the only worthwhile place on the globe. ‘You poor Yankees,’ he wrote to an American friend, ‘are to be pitied in many things, but for nothing as much as your distance from Switzerland.’¹¹ In another letter: ‘Poor son of a degraded race, thinking I dare say of a trip to the White Mountains or some such second-rate substitute for the genuine article, don’t you envy me?’¹² He loped on voraciously, as happy to climb old peaks as he was to tread new, finding beauty wherever he went. Of one sunset from Mont Blanc he wrote:

The snow, at our feet was glowing with rich light, and the shadows in our footsteps a vivid green by the contrast. Beneath us was a vast horizontal floor of thin level mists suspended in mid air, spread like canopy over the whole boundless landscape, and tinged with every hue of sunset. Through its rents and gaps we could see the lower mountains, the distant plains, and a fragment of the Lake of Geneva lying in a more sombre purple. Above us rose the solemn mass of Mont Blanc in the richest glow of an Alpine sunset. The sense of lonely sublimity was almost oppressive.13

Stephen did not give a hoot for those who wanted to climb an Alp simply because it was higher than another, and sided somewhat with Ruskin in his condemnation of mountaineering excess: ‘The mere dry statement that a mountain is so many feet in vertical height above the sea, and contains so many tons of granite, is nothing. Mont Blanc is about three miles high. What of that? Three miles is an hour’s walk for a lady - an eightpenny cab fare - the distance from Hyde Park Corner to the Bank - an express train could do it in three minutes, or a racehorse in five.’¹⁴ Contrarily, however, he recognised (and shared) the urge of his fellow club members not only to climb but to climb as high as was possible. ‘I am a fanatic,’ he wrote. I believe that the ascent of mountains forms an essential chapter in the complete duty of man, and that it is wrong to leave any district without setting foot on its highest peak.’¹⁵

As Chairman, Vice-President and then President (and as Editor of the Alpine Journal), Stephen was the Alpine Club’s intellectual mentor. He criticised guideless climbing, stating famously - and incorrectly and to many people’s annoyance - that the best amateur was no match for even a third-rate guide. He was also a stickler for safety. And he was dismissive of scientists, declaring that ‘true Alpine travellers loved the mountains for their own sake, and considered scientific intruders with their barometers and their theorising to be a simple nuisance’.16 This last view was fair enough, given that the age of Alpine scientific exploration was fading fast, but he was unwise to state it so openly when there remained some climbers for whom science was all. As he later put it, ‘My first contact with Tyndall was not altogether satisfactory …’¹⁷

Tyndall had never enjoyed an easy relationship with the Alpine Club. Mathews had invited him to become a member shortly after the club’s inauguration but he had turned the offer down. Why he did so is uncertain, as Mathews seemed willing to disregard the 13,000-foot qualification. (Tyndall had not yet reached that height.) Perhaps it was pressure of work; perhaps it was pique that he had not been included in the list of founding members; perhaps it was annoyance that the club should not have science as its foremost object. At any rate, he joined in 1858 when the 13,000-foot entry had been discarded, and with the offer of the presidency dangled as a bait. But when John Ball resigned in 1860, Tyndall was embroiled in his glacier argument with Forbes. Ball did not care either way about the debate - ‘be hanged to it,’¹⁸ he wrote - but he feared that Tyndall’s appointment ‘might interfere with the thorough cordiality’¹⁹ of proceedings. Kennedy was considered a safer choice for, as Ball explained to Tyndall, he ‘does not care, so long as he has glaciers and peaks to climb, whether the ice moves up hill or down’.²⁰ Tyndall promptly offered his resignation, noting privately in his journal that Ball was ‘amiable and cultivated, but without distinct purpose and direction’.²¹ Ball responded with mild asperity: ‘I quite understand that the Alpine Club and its affairs are of infinitesimal importance to you, but… I still think it a pity that you should separate from it… If you are fixed on so doing, let me suggest that it would be a graceful thing for you - if not too inconvenient - to come to the dinner on the 13th and propose Kennedy’s health. If you can do so I think it would be well whether you remain or leave the club especially in the latter case.’²² Once again a future presidency was hinted at. Tyndall withdrew his resignation and on 7 November 1861 it was voted that a second Vice-President might be desirable, and that Tyndall was the man for the job. He accepted, and took his place at the winter dinner that December with some pride.

Unfortunately, Stephen was one of the speakers. In his address, which described an ascent of the Rothorn, he made mock of scientists: ‘“And what philosophical observations did you make?” will be the enquiry of one of those fanatics who, by a reasoning process to me utterly inscrutable, have somehow associated alpine travelling with science. To them I answer, that the temperature was approximately (I had no thermometer) 212 [Fahrenheit] below freezing point. As for ozone, if any existed in the atmosphere, it was a greater fool than I take it for.’23 Once again Tyndall resigned, this time for good. ‘It is utterly impossible for me to attend your meetings or to do anything which could practicably promote the interests of your body,’ he told the Honorary Secretary. ‘Do not therefore ask me to correspond further on this matter.’²⁴

Tyndall’s response was curious. He was still a scientist but he had long since forsaken measurements on the Alps. As early as 1859 he was complaining that he had to attend a Royal Society meeting to hear ‘a tedious paper on the tedious subject of ice’.²⁵ A year later, he wrote to Ball that if one more person queried his observations - one man had apparently done so - ‘I shall be inclined … to damn the whole Alps if they get me into many more of these botherations’.²⁶ What may have been the problem was that the Matterhorn was on his mind and there was a new member of the club who wanted to climb it as badly as did he. Moreover, he was the very type who might succeed. His name was Edward Whymper and Tyndall did not like him at all. For once Tyndall was not being quarrelsome: Whymper was, indeed, an exceptionally unlikeable man.

Edward Whymper was born in 1840. His father ran a wood-engraving business in Southwark and when he was a teenager Edward Whymper joined the family firm as an apprentice. During his apprenticeship he wrote a diary that was admittedly adolescent but which revealed nevertheless the development of a strange mind. He was a conventional moralist. He could carve competently but had little interest in the trade except to worry about finance. He spent his spare time watching fires - whenever there was a major conflagration he would be there - and scouring the newspapers for murder stories. He played cricket but had few friends, none at least that he mentioned, preferring of an evening to go for long walks or to note the times at which garrotters frequented the parks. He was ambitious, solitary, sour and unforgiving. What he really wanted was to be an Arctic explorer - which would have suited him down to the ground -but this was impossible so he made do instead with wood engraving, a dead-end trade which would soon be superseded by modern printing methods and which he plied with increasing disinterest. When the Whymper household moved briefly to Haslemere, he escaped drudgery by walking, sometimes covering forty-five miles in a day. He was a well-educated, striking youth with fair hair, glaring eyes and a precise mind. He was destined for something greater than printing, but he did not know what that something was or how it was to be found.

His break came in 1860. In that year, while Whymper was recovering from a broken romance, Longman, one of the firm’s last customers, sent him to make preliminary drawings for a series of woodcuts to illustrate a book on the Alps. As soon as he arrived, Whymper discovered his true vocation. There stood the mountains, fierce, white, unapproachable and largely undiscovered - just like the Arctic. His immediate instinct was to climb them. Almost uniquely among Alpinists, however, he felt little sense of awe, either spiritual or physical. Where other visitors exuded sentiment by the libraryful, Whymper remained cold, indifferent and judgemental. His diary for August and September 1860 reads as a litany of disappointment.

At Zermatt: ‘Saw of course the Matterhorn repeatedly; what precious stuff Ruskin has written about this, as well as many other things. When one has a fair view of the mountain, as I had, it may be compared to a sugar loaf set up on a table; the sugar loaf should have its head knocked on one side. Grand it is, but beautiful I think it is not.’27

Of the Mischabel range: ‘I do not believe in the pretty views in which Switzerland is represented in the conventional manner. Everything here is fine, but I have not seen any pretty views.’

At the Giessbach Falls: ‘I had the misery of hearing that horrid noise the ranz de vache squalled by a couple of mealy-faced girls. There is a precious piece of humbug in relation to this in Murray.’

At Lauterbrunnen: ‘there are some echoes which are exhibited by idiots blowing on horns.’

At Thun: ‘I am put here into the most absurd bedroom I have ever been in, which I expect I shall have to pay for heavily.’

At Martigny: ‘Martigny by daylight looks worse than Martigny by moonlight.’

Climbing the St Bernard Pass: ‘I have not had any day so devoid of interest and barren of incident, neither have I walked over so uninteresting a road.’

Descending the St Bernard Pass: ‘The scenery is very commonplace, and the people on the whole very stupid and somewhat uncivil.’

At Chamonix: ‘The place is mad, yes, perfectly insane! Today at a quarter-past ten the Emperor of the French (called here simply Napoleon) made his entry with the Empress. The weather was still bad but what did that matter? The mud, which was filthy, was perfectly hidden by the crowds of people who flocked in from every part. Rows of young fir-trees had been inserted in the ground to give the idea that the place was flourishing, and I was amused to see that a number of small ones had been placed in front of some pig-stys.’

At the Colo de Viso: ‘The rant about the awful grandeur and sublimity etc., is to one who has crossed it perfectly absurd.’

At the Dauphiné: ‘Let no one stop [here], the uncivility of the people combined with the bad fare was an almost unique specimen to me.’

On the way home: ‘Had a most uncomfortable and tedious journey of 18 1/2 hours and got to Paris to find that it was not possible to leave by the Brighton route before six o’clock in the evening.’28

Everything seemed to revolt or anger him. The hotels were ‘stinking’, the chalets ‘wretched’, the villages ‘miserable and squalid’, the guides ‘abominable’. When he found nothing to carp about, as on the ‘admirable’ road to Briangon, he made do with a discourse on the deficiencies of England’s Eastern Counties Railway. Luckily, Briançon turned up trumps: I went to the diligence office and to my intense disgust found that all the places were taken so, as there remained nothing for me but to walk to Grenoble, I set about it at once … passing several rather wretched villages on the way [and spending] the last half-hour in nasty rain.’29 The only occasions on which he expressed the slightest satisfaction with the Swiss was when he found a bargain - as, for instance, when he was given a meal of bread and cheese at a chalet above Val Tournanche; ‘the cheese was uncommonly like paste beginning to turn bad. Unto what shall I liken the bread?’³⁰ But it cost only one franc and he therefore declared the people very hospitable.

What could have persuaded such a person to return to the Alps? The answer was that Whymper saw them as a challenge; he must climb them, strip them of their mystery and tread them underfoot. During that introductory season his enthusiasm was stoked by several members of the Alpine Club. Hinchliff offered to coach him on the Riffelberg; Horace Walker (Lucy Walker’s father) took him on the Trift Glacier; he went over the Eggishorn Pass with a party that included Leslie Stephen and wrote admiringly that ‘our pace was much too slow to suit Mr. Stephen who bolted away and got to the hotel an hour before us’.³¹ He was delighted by the constant passage of big names. On 12 August he wrote: ‘Just after dinner, Stephen, Hinchliff and another came into the salon as wet as water-dogs, having just come from the Riffel for a walk. They did it in 35 minutes. Rather a contrast with my four hours of last night. I hear that Professor Tyndall is at the Eggishorn with Mr. Hawkins, having just accomplished some wonderful climbs at Lauterbrunnen. Professor Hall of King’s College is here to-day and a fresh batch of Alpine men have arrived, so the table talk is continually interesting.’³² At home, Whymper was a humble wood engraver who spoke with a a London accent and tended to drop his aitches. He would have doffed his cap to people like Stephen, Tyndall, Hall and Hinchliff. Here, however, he could watch them in action, eat meals with them, talk shop and share their wine. It was heady.

Whymper was soon acting the sage. Of an unsuccessful attempt on the Weisshorn he wrote that it was bound to fail because of the amount of snow and that ‘I should think it will not be done this year, in spite of several A.C.s somewhat boastfully asserting at the commencement of the season that they were going out to do it.’33 He wrote those words on 13 August, having never seen a mountain until he arrived in the Alps five days before. On 16 August, he made his first Alpine expedition, taking two English tourists and one guide across the Grimsel Pass. It was something that had been done a hundred times before, but Whymper thought it impressive, and his diary entry is worth recording because it reveals the essence of his character.

About 3 p.m. we started. We had hired a man to show us the way and carry our packs, but the said man found carrying the two knapsacks quite enough, so I carried mine the whole way. He, of course, after the manner of the people of this country, had an umbrella, we had none, and although hired to show the way he evidently did not care to take the lead, so we did. There is about 2,600 feet of ascent from Obergestelen to the summit of the pass, and by the time we had got half-way we came to one of the formidable torrents that we had heard of. It did not present any difficulty at all, that was supposing we did not object to wetting ourselves at once completely; this, however, we did, and after a few minutes of looking for the best place to cross jumped two-thirds across with our batons; a splash, and the formidable torrent was crossed. Our dismal guide, however, assured us that the next one was something like a torrent, the first being a mere bagatelle. On we went, still raining; presently looking back I saw that the valley of the Rhone was fast getting under water and floating down I saw some black specks in the torrent which were doubtless beams of a bridge or chalet. Still higher up it began to rain very hard, accompanied with very strong lightning and thunder, and just before the summit was reached the heaviest storm of hail that I have ever seen fall. This completed our guide’s discomfiture. He rushed behind a piece of rock, crouched down and beckoned us to do the same. We waited a few seconds but what was the use, we were thoroughly wet. So by and by we again went on and, after crossing at different places a great deal of snow, we came to the torrent that was to shut us up entirely. We, however, had no more difficulty with this than with the other. After having accomplished this, the man pulled up to demand more than had been agreed, alleging, which I think was true, that he had agreed to go to the summit only. Again we went on, plunging through pools of water and patches of snow, with hail blown on to our faces and hands, feeling as if we were being whipped with knotted small cords. At last the guide could stand it no longer and went behind a piece of rock and refused to move. He looked the picture of woe, with two knapsacks on his back, an umbrella it was impossible to hold up, water streaming down his face and all over him, and he was gasping and making the most extraordinary indiarubber-like faces that I have ever seen. I believe this time the money-element of his character again turned up, and if he had been promised an extra franc he would have come on at once. However, we rightly imagined if we moved on, he would be sure to follow; so he did. Presently coming in sight of the hospice, the hail laving off and the wind moderating, he got again in the front and tried to make himself look smart and go into the place cocky. I was after him, and putting on a spurt got in first, leaving him in the rear with his umbrella turned inside out.34

Whymper hoped that his description was amusing. Perhaps it was by the standards of the time. But to the modern eye it portrays an immature, inexperienced man making the most of an easy pass by sneering at a guide who in all likelihood never pretended to be more than a porter. Climb, conquer, leave weaklings to their fate: that was Whymper’s mountaineering philosophy. Alas, it served him well.

In 1860 he had been shown the as yet unclimbed Mont Pelvoux, in the Dauphiné. In 1861 he came back and went up it. This gave him admission to the prestigious Alpine Club and from that date he ground his way around the Alps for weeks on end. He had little time for mountains that had been previously climbed, and saw every other mountaineer as a competitor. His record of new climbs was impressive and his stamina without parallel. Now and then he broke out in moments of genuine passion but, on the whole, his attitude was severe. Again and again he berated porters and guides: they could not keep up with him or they had cheated him in some fashion. The entire Alpine climbing community had tales to tell of untrustworthy porters and unsatisfactory inns. Whymper told how he made the porters suffer and how he bent innkeepers to his will. On one occasion, when a porter had eaten all the party’s provisons save for a small crust, Whymper force-marched the man until he was almost dead. He was impressive but implacable. As Stephen later wrote, ‘To Mr. Whymper belongs the credit of having had no weak spot at all.’35

Whymper did, however, have one weak spot: the Matterhorn. In 1861, following his success on Mont Pelvoux, he turned to the Matterhorn, reaching Breuil shortly after Tyndall’s departure. He at once tried to do what Bennen had declared impracticable: to climb as far as possible with a guide, bivouac on the rocks and make for the summit the following day. He failed. The tent threatened to blow away and had to be dismantled, leaving Whymper and his guide to sleep in the open. Whymper made no complaint, but his guide ‘passed the remainder of the night in a state of shudder, ejaculating “terrible” and other adjectives’.³⁶ On reaching the chimney up which Bennen had rolled so effortlessly, Whymper managed to climb it but the guide refused to follow, unroped himself and said he was going home. A ludicrous exchange ensued, Whymper blustering from above and the guide replying happily from below. Eventually, Whymper lost his temper. Go, he told the man, go back to Breuil and tell everyone how he had left his ‘monsieur’ on the mountain. The guide picked up his knapsack and prepared to do as he was told, at which point Whymper realised that, unlike Bennen, he could not get down the chimney without help from below. So, with enormous loss of face, he recalled the guide, begged his aid and followed him thunderously back to Breuil.

Whymper was enraged. His first season’s climbing had been ruined. No matter how many peaks he climbed in succeeding years -and there were many - the Matterhorn taunted him with its inaccessibility. It was no longer a sugar loaf whose head needed knocking off. It was something bigger and more terrible, something that might well harbour dragons. As he explained, ‘There seemed to be a cordon drawn around it, up to which one might go, but no farther. Within that invisible line gins and effreets were supposed to exist - the Wandering Jew and the spirits of the damned. The superstitious natives … spoke of a ruined city on its summit wherein the spirits dwelt; and if you laughed, they gravely shook their heads; told you to look yourself to see the castles and the walls, and warned one against rash approach, lest the infuriated demons from their impregnable heights might hurl down vengeance for one’s derision.’

Whymper could not sleep while the Matterhorn stood inviolate. He had to attack it ‘until one or the other was vanquished’.37