things that would previously have been unthinkable.
The early mountaineers were more akin in spirit to the Hudson Bay fur trappers, the Indian nabobs and the other merchant adventurers who built the Empire than they were to the colonial administrators and army officers who later ran it. There was an unconventional, ambitious, romantic fearlessness about the pioneers. Trollope wrote his six ‘Barchester’ novels between 1855 and 1867, coinciding almost exactly with the Golden Age of mountaineering. The novels describe the lives of clerics, professionals and gentry – exactly the social class from which the early mountaineers emerged – and their popularity stemmed partly from the fact that the main characters were instantly recognisable ‘types’ to contemporary readers. Trollope describes a society preoccupied with money, property, marriage and status. The idea of climbing the highest peaks in the Alps for pleasure must have seemed far more unconventional to contemporaries of the pioneers than the most outrageous behaviour of modern climbers. The British mountaineering establishment, like the British Empire itself after the Indian Mutiny of 1857, may have become increasingly hidebound, conceited and arrogant, but during the Golden Age it had a spontaneous, joyous heedlessness that must have provided an extraordinary contrast to ‘civilised’ society and an almost Jekyll and Hyde existence for its adherents. More than any other, it was an age when climbers really did ‘escape’ from the strictures and conventions of contemporary society.
From the late eighteenth century until the mid-nineteenth century several remarkable ascents of alpine peaks were made by monks, priests, scientists and others living in the alpine countries, some of whom no doubt climbed purely for pleasure and enjoyment. Prior to 1854, nine major alpine peaks had been climbed: Mont Blanc (1786); the Grossglockner (1800); Monte Rosa (whose various peaks were climbed from 1801 onwards, although the highest point of this mountain range was not reached until 1855); the Ortler (1804); Jungfrau (1811); Finsteraarhorn (1829); Wetterhorn (1844); Mont Pelvoux (1848); and Piz Bernina (1850).1 The British played almost no part in these early developments, but the activities of these adventurous individuals did not coalesce into a recognisable sport, and alpine climbing failed to gain the momentum of a new movement. All of that changed with the arrival of the British in the mid-1850s. During the decade that followed, almost every major mountain in the Alps was climbed in an orgy of peak-bagging that gave birth to the sport of mountaineering. Of the 39 major peaks ascended for the first time during this period, 31 were climbed by British parties.
It was a remarkable achievement. There were no maps of the glacier regions, few paths above the alpine meadows and forests, no experienced guides and no mountain huts. Access to the foothills of the Alps was possible by rail, but from the railhead it was necessary to travel by public stage coach and then walk long distances to reach the highest peaks. The early climbers slept out in all weathers and climbed well above the snowline in clothes designed for the English countryside. All of them joked about the fleas that they invariably picked up in their lodgings in the valleys. With no sun-block and inadequate sunglasses, severe sunburn and snow blindness were common. Many climbers wore veils to protect themselves, but when Ruskin wrote of climbers being ‘red with cutaneous eruptions’ he undoubtedly spoke the truth. Oscar Brown, a schoolmaster at Eton, confessed that ‘one became tired of living upon a knapsack, and never being absolutely clean, of seldom sleeping in a decent room or enjoying wholesome food, and when September arrived I began to long for the fleshpots of civilisation’.2 Offsetting these hardships, labour was cheap and porters carried blankets, fire wood and provisions up to bivouac sites at the foot of the highest peaks. As a consequence, climbs were often noisy, boisterous affairs with large quantities of food and wine consumed before, during and after the ascent.
The ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854 by Alfred Wills and his four guides signalled the start of the ‘Golden Age’ of British alpine exploration. The Wetterhorn is clearly visible from Grindelwald, which had already become a popular tourist destination because of its marvellous views of the Bernese Alps and easy access to two glaciers. Although it was probably the fifth or sixth ascent, the decision by a young Englishman, on his honeymoon, to climb the 3,692m/12,137ft snow-covered mountain, wearing elastic-sided boots and cricket flannels, is traditionally taken to mark the beginning of the sport of mountaineering. His account of the climb in Wanderings Amongst the High Alps (1856) makes passing reference to botany and geology, but it is clear that Wills’ primary motive was physical exercise and self-improvement, and there is a strong suggestion that it is the duty of any self-respecting Englishman to undertake such endeavours. The choice of Wills’ 1854 ascent to mark the start of the Golden Age was in many ways quite arbitrary. Albert Smith’s ascent of Mont Blanc in 1851 has at least an equal claim, but the mid-Victorian historians of the Alpine Club gave Wills the honour, probably because Smith was never quite regarded as respectable.
Alfred Wills epitomised the urban, middle-class, professional background of the climbers who dominated the sport until the First World War. His father was a lawyer and he too went into the law, becoming a high court judge when his predecessor died of a heart attack in a brothel. In 1895 he presided over the trial of Oscar Wilde and sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment for gross indecency. Wills visited the Alps almost every year from 1846 to 1896. His son William was an active climber in the 1880s and 1890s, and his grandson Major Edward Norton was leader of the 1924 Everest expedition. A founding member of the Alpine Club when it was formed in 1857, Wills became president in 1864. After The Times described members of the Club as men who ‘seem to have a special fondness for regions which are suitable only as dwelling-places for eagles’, he named his chalet in Sixt ‘The Eagle’s Nest’.
Where There’s a Will There’s a Way by Charles Hudson and Edward Kennedy was published in the same year as Wanderings and describes the first guideless ascent of Mont Blanc in 1855. Kennedy inherited a fortune at the age of 16 but lost most of it during the course of his life as a result of a series of bad investments. He became something of an expert on the underworld of his day, living for a time with thieves and other low-life in Liverpool and London. For a mid-Victorian gentleman, a journey into the East End of London was probably as great an adventure, with a similar threat of physical harm, as a climb in the Alps, but Kennedy was also a deep thinker, famous for persistently asking the question ‘Is it right?’ and the author of Thoughts on Being, suggested by Meditation upon the Infinite, the Immaterial, and the Eternal (1850). In climbing, he found a purpose in life that satisfied both his thirst for adventure and his quest for meaning, and he set about persuading others to follow. He was a prime mover in the formation of the Alpine Club and its president from 1860–62.
Charles Hudson, the co-author of Where There’s a Will There’s a Way, was an Anglican chaplain during the Crimean War and subsequently became a vicar in Lincolnshire. For him, the mountains offered a reassuring reminder of the mystery and beauty of God’s creation. He was ‘as simple and noble a character as ever carried out the precepts of muscular Christianity without talking its cant’,3 according to Leslie Stephen. Relaxed, handsome and self-effacing, Hudson was a man of extraordinary stamina and almost reckless courage. At the age of 17, he averaged 43km/27 miles per day on a tour of the Lake District and once walked from Saint-Gervais, near Chamonix, to Geneva and back in a day (a distance of 138km/86 miles). His first ascents in 1855 included the Breithorn (grade F, 4,164m/13,661ft), without guides, and the Dufourspitze (PD, 4,634m/15,203ft), the highest point of the Monte Rosa, with James and Christopher Smyth, who were also parsons, John Birkbeck, a Yorkshire banker, and Edward Stevenson. A fortnight later he climbed Mont Blanc with Edward Kennedy and made the first ascent (solo) of Mont Blanc du Tacul (PD, 4,248m/13,937ft). Hudson continued to climb throughout the Golden Age, making the first ascent of the Moine Ridge on the Aiguille Verte (AD, 4,122m/13,524ft) with Thomas Kennedy (no relation to Edward) in 1865. Thomas Kennedy once rode the Nile cataracts on a log for fun and was also a noted polo player and huntsman: ‘No man has ever ridden straighter or harder’,4 Lord Harrington noted approvingly in his obituary.
Several of the pioneers were accomplished sportsmen in other fields, including Charles Barrington who won the Irish Grand National on his horse Sir Robert Peel. During his first and only holiday in the Alps in 1858, Barrington climbed the Jungfrau and then asked some members of the Alpine Club
