‘Wherein lay his great superiority is a difficult question to answer’, wrote Pasteur. ‘He was a clumsy walker and no one who had not seen him at work would credit him with his outstanding powers as a climber and a leader. He was a man of will-power and energy tempered with a marvellous patience.’19
His first ascents included both unclimbed ridges on the highest mountains and hard rock climbs on the lesser peaks. With Burgener he ascended the Zmutt Ridge (D) on the Matterhorn in 1879. A race developed with William Penhall, a medical student, and the daring guide Ferdinand Imseng. Penhall and Imseng traversed onto the West Face of the mountain, crossing the dangerous Penhall Couloir, and completed a route that has seldom been repeated. Penhall died three years later on the Wetterhorn. Meanwhile, Mummery attempted the fourth unclimbed ridge of the Matterhorn, the Furggengrat (D+/TD), in 1880 but was forced to traverse across the east face to the Hörnli Ridge. The Furggen Ridge was finally climbed in its entirety in 1911. In the Mont Blanc massif, Mummery climbed the Charpoua Face of the Aiguille Verte (D, 1881) and the Grépon (D, 1881). His guideless climbing commenced in 1889 and included the first traverse of the Grépon with Hastings, Collie and Pasteur in 1892; the Dent du Requin (D) and an attempt on the Aiguille du Plan with Slingsby, Collie and Hastings in 1893; and the first guideless ascent of the Brenva Route on Mont Blanc with Collie and Hastings in 1894. The Dent du Requin (the ‘Shark’s Tooth’) was named by Martin Conway and the route was devised by Slingsby, possibly because Mummery could not see it. Nevertheless on this and other ascents, it was Mummery who led the difficult pitches on rock and particularly on ice, where he was probably the best amateur climber of his generation.
Mummery was unusual for his time in that he also climbed with women. He ascended the Täschhorn (4,490m/14,731ft) via the Teufelsgrat (D) with his wife Mary and Burgener in 1887. During the descent, Burgener encouraged Mrs Mummery to lead the way down the steep slope with the words, ‘Go ahead; I could hold a cow here!’20 Mary later wrote that Burgener held ‘many strange opinions; he believes in ghosts, he believes also that women can climb’.21 Mummery also climbed with Miss Lily Bristow (until he was apparently forbidden to do so by his wife). His traverse of the Grépon with Slingsby and Miss Bristow in 1893 gave rise to the observation that all mountains are doomed to pass through three phases: an inaccessible peak; the most difficult climb in the Alps; an easy day for a lady (a phrase invented by Leslie Stephen). Lily Bristow wrote to her parents describing the route as a ‘succession of problems, each one of which was a ripping good climb in itself’.22
Mummery climbed in the Caucasus in 1888, making the first ascent of Dychtau (5,204m/17,073ft), and was invited by Martin Conway to go to the Karakoram in 1892, but after a visit to the Alps together Mummery declined because it was clear that Conway’s priority was exploration whereas his was climbing. Nevertheless, the two remained friends, with Conway describing Mummery as ‘the greatest climber of this or any other generation’, although he observed that ‘he loved danger for its own sake’.23 Mummery died in 1895 attempting to climb Nanga Parbat in the Himalaya, the first attempt on an 8,000m peak.
The final chapter of his book My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus, which was written shortly before his death, is entitled ‘The Pleasures and Penalties of Mountaineering’. It was highly influential in the development of the sport, particularly in France and Germany. He was perhaps the first climber fully to recognise the risks of climbing and to judge those risks worth taking. ‘He gains a knowledge of himself, a love of all that is most beautiful in nature, and an outlet such as no other sport affords for the stirring energies of youth; gains for which no price is, perhaps, too high. It is true that great ridges sometimes demand their sacrifice, but the mountaineer would hardly forego his worship though he knew himself to be the destined victim.’24 This attitude to climbing and to risk was new and revolutionary, and probably accounted for some of the opposition to his membership of the Alpine Club. However, his equally radical views on politics and economics – he was co-author of Physiology of Industry (1889) with John Hobson, the left-wing economist whose later critique of imperialism influenced Lenin and Trotsky – and his social background in ‘trade’ may also have counted against him with some of the more conservative members. His belief that ‘the essence of the sport lies, not in ascending a peak, but in struggling with and overcoming difficulties’25 resonated with continental climbers but did not reflect the mainstream of British climbing until the 1950s. However, in his attitude to the use of artificial aid, he firmly upheld the British approach: ‘Someone...mooted the point whether [wooden] wedges were not a sort of bending the knee to Baal, and might not be the first step on those paths of ruin where the art of mountaineering becomes lost in that of the steeplejack. Whereupon we unanimously declared that the Charmoz should be desecrated by no fixed wedges.’26
Martin Conway observed that Mummery was ‘intellectually rather than aesthetically well endowed’,27 but Mummery always defended himself against the accusation that adventure and aesthetic appreciation are incompatible. ‘To the (self-dubbed) mountaineers, the right way up a peak is the easiest way, and all other ways are wrong ways. Thus...if a man goes up the Matterhorn to enjoy the scenery, he will go up the Hörnli route; if he goes by the Zmutt ridge it is, they allege, merely the difficulties of the climb that attract him...To say that this route, with its continuously gorgeous scenery is, from the aesthetic point of view, the wrong way, while the Hörnli route, which is marred by...its paper-besprinkled slopes, is the right, involves total insensibility to the true mountain feeling.’28 From his writing it is clear that Mummery appreciated both the heroic and the aesthetic aspects of the sport: ‘Above, in the clear air and searching sunlight, we are afoot with the quiet gods, and men can know each other and themselves for what they are.’29
As well as playing a supporting role to Mummery, his companions Slingsby, Collie and Hastings were outstanding mountaineers in their own right. Cecil Slingsby was a textile manufacturer from an old landed family. Born in 1849, he was ‘a thorough Yorkshire dalesman, stalwart, broad-shouldered, full-bearded, with a classic profile, a fine complexion even in age, and shrewd, laughing grey eyes’,30 according to Geoffrey Winthrop Young, who married his daughter Eleanor. As well as climbing in the Alps, Slingsby made 15 visits to Norway from 1872 onwards and was known in both England and Norway as the father of Norwegian mountaineering. During the first ascent in 1876 of the impressive Skagastølstind (2,340m/7,677ft), the third highest mountain in the country, he climbed the final 150m/500ft alone after his companions refused to go any further. He was possibly the first Englishman to learn to ski, helped to establish the sport of ski-mountaineering, and was regarded as an incomparable route-finder across unmapped and difficult terrain. He was also passionate about British rock climbing and potholing and put up numerous new routes, including Slingsby’s Chimney on Scafell Pinnacle (VD, 1888), climbed with Hastings, Hopkinson and Haskett Smith, which involved a pitch of 33m/110ft – a very long run-out in the days when there was no protection for the leader.
Norman Collie was born in Alderley Edge in Cheshire. His family had been the largest cotton importers in Britain, but trade was disrupted by the American Civil War (1861–65) and the family firm went bankrupt while Collie was still at school. He therefore had to work for a living. After studying chemistry at Bristol University and Queen’s University, Belfast, he was awarded a doctorate at the University of Würzburg in Germany before taking up a teaching post at Cheltenham Ladies College. His niece recalled that ‘he was far from being a ladies’ man and probably found that schoolgirls in bulk were rather more than he could stomach’.31 Collie never married, and after four years at Cheltenham he moved to University College London, where he later became Professor of Organic Chemistry. Collie was involved in the discovery of the noble gases, invented the neon light and took the first x-ray photographs used for medical purposes. He is also credited with inventing the ‘Grey Man of Ben Macdui’, a ghostly apparition that walked with him to the summit in 1920 and has been seen several times since. An acknowledged aesthete and expert on oriental art, wine, food and cigars, Collie was a distinguished figure in many different fields. When he visited Norway, ‘crowds flocked to see him under the impression that he was Sherlock Holmes’,32 but many who knew him well found him cold and disdainful. Geoffrey Winthrop
