the mountains, they were in himself: ‘We exult over the scenes brought before our eyes...but we value more highly the development of manliness, and the evolution, under combat with difficulties, of those noble qualities of human nature – courage, patience, endurance and fortitude.’36
Not surprisingly, opinions on such a figure are divided. Chris Bonington is an admirer: ‘His single-minded competitiveness and drive, whilst being very understandable to later generations, was suspect not only to Victorian mountaineers, but to the majority of the British climbing establishment until very recently.’37 Geoffrey Winthrop Young, the early twentieth-century poet mountaineer, was enthusiastic about Whymper’s book Scrambles Amongst the Alps but dismissive of its author: ‘Whymper founded no school. No one has succeeded in imitating anything but his egoism.’38 Part of the contemporary antipathy undoubtedly arose because Whymper was amongst the first to commercialise the sport of mountaineering, earning a living as a mountain illustrator, lecturer and writer. But he was also a supremely selfish man. In the preface to Fred Mummery’s book My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus, published soon after his disappearance while attempting to climb Nanga Parbat in 1895, Douglas Freshfield wrote that Mummery’s death was a grievous loss to the Alpine Club. In the margin of his copy of the book, Whymper wrote: ‘I do not agree.’39 Joe Simpson lamented the decline of climbing ethics in the 1990s in his book Dark Shadows Falling (1997) and berated two Japanese climbers who in 1996 failed to assist three dying Indian climbers that they passed on their way to the summit of Everest. Simpson asked the rhetorical question: ‘Would Whymper or Mummery have behaved like this?’ In the case of Mummery there can be little question that he would not. But with Whymper it is harder to be so categorical. In the close-knit community of British climbing in the 1860s, peer group pressure was just sufficient to keep his ambition and selfishness in check, but in the large, impersonal climbing world of the 1990s perhaps Whymper would have sympathised with one of the Japanese climbers who allegedly said ‘above eight thousand metres is not a place where people can afford morality’.40
In 1867 Whymper achieved his original ambition of visiting the Arctic when he organised an expedition to Greenland which made some advances in exploration by sledge. In 1880 he travelled to South America, climbed Chimborazo (6,267m/20,561ft), once thought to be the highest mountain in the world, and spent a night on the summit of Cotapaxi (5,897m/19,347ft). He planned the expedition with his usual meticulous attention to detail and made a systematic study of altitude sickness. His account served as a blueprint for future expeditions to remote mountain areas. Mount Whymper in the Canadian Rockies marks a visit to the region in the 1900s, but by then his best climbing days were over. At the age of 66 he married Edith Lewin, aged 21. Women had played no previous part in his life and the marriage was an unhappy one. It broke up four years later. In 1911, feeling unwell during a visit to the Alps, he returned to his hotel and locked the door, refusing any medical help. He died some days later at the age of 71.
Unaware of events unfolding in Zermatt, the day after the Matterhorn tragedy Frank and Horace Walker, George Mathews, Adolphus Moore and their guides Melchior and Jakob Anderegg made an ascent of the Brenva Spur on the Italian side of Mont Blanc which was well ahead of its time. The climb is still graded AD+/D and was the only route up the daunting Brenva Face for the next 62 years. Frank Walker was a prosperous lead merchant from Liverpool who took up climbing at the age of 50 and was 57 at the time of the ascent of the Brenva Face. He climbed the Matterhorn with his daughter Lucy in 1871 at the age of 63, but died the following year. His son Horace Walker climbed his first mountain, Mont Velan, at the age of 16 and his last, Pollux, 51 years later in 1905. He made numerous first ascents in the Alps, with Whymper and others, including reaching Pointe Walker in 1868, the highest point of the Grandes Jorasses, made famous by the magnificent rocky spur to the north. He also climbed Elbrus (5,642m/18,510ft) in the Caucasus in 1874 and was an enthusiastic British rock climber, making the second ascent of North Climb (S, 1892) on Pillar Rock in the Lakes.
Lucy Walker first visited the Alps in 1859 at the age of 28. She climbed only with her family, guided by the Anderegg cousins, but had many notable achievements including climbing the Balmhorn (3,698m/12,133ft) in 1864, the first time that a woman had taken part in the first ascent of a major peak. She was also the first woman to climb the Matterhorn, three days after ascending the Weisshorn. Punch celebrated her triumph in verse:
No glacier could baffle, no precipice balk her,
No peak rise above her, however sublime.
Give three times three cheers for intrepid Miss Walker,
I say, my boys, doesn’t she know how to climb!
Inclined to plumpness, whilst she was in the mountains she relied on a diet of sponge cake and champagne and, apart from climbing, her only other sporting interest was croquet. The entire Walker family enjoyed a particularly close relationship with their guide Melchior Anderegg, who called Frank Walker ‘Papa’ and was a life-long companion of Lucy, who never married. As she said, ‘I love mountains and Melchior, and Melchior already has a wife’.41 Lucy Walker became the second president of the Ladies’ Alpine Club in 1912 at the age of 76.
Adolphus Moore, who accompanied Frank and Horace Walker on the Brenva Route, was another great Victorian mountaineer with many alpine first ascents to his credit. He went on to visit the Caucasus in 1867 and 1869, climbing Kazbek (5,047m/16,558ft) and the East Summit of Elbrus. A senior official at the India Office and private secretary to Lord Randolph Churchill, Moore died from exhaustion brought on by overwork at the age of 46.
George Mathews, the final British member of the team, was one of three brothers who played a major role in the development of British climbing. William, Charles and George Mathews took part in many pioneering climbs during the Golden Age, including first ascents of Grande Casse (3,855m/12,648ft) and Monte Viso (3,841m/12,602ft). The decision to form the Alpine Club was taken at their uncle’s home, following a discussion during an ascent of the Finsteraarhorn (4,274m/14,022ft) in the summer of 1857. William subsequently became president in 1869–71 and Charles in 1878–80. Charles went on to play a particularly influential role in the development of Welsh climbing.
The ascent of the Brenva Spur was a great climbing achievement, but it was completely overshadowed by the Matterhorn accident. The news was greeted by the British public with a combination of rage and incomprehension. The Editor of The Times wrote: ‘What right has [the mountaineer] to throw away the gift of life and ten thousand golden opportunities in an emulation which he only shares with skylarks, apes and squirrels?’42 The reaction was very different from that which greeted the equally famous loss of Mallory and Irvine on Everest some 60 years later. During the intervening period, increasing coverage of the sport in books and the press had gradually created an understanding of both the risks and rewards of climbing, and Mallory and Irvine were treated as heroes. In 1865, however, the public was totally unprepared for the loss of four young lives, including a lord. The public outcry may at first seem surprising, given that the mid-Victorian generation was so accustomed to premature death. In the mid-1860s there were extremely high levels of child mortality, over six per cent of soldiers sent to imperial outposts died each year from disease alone and the charge of the Light Brigade had taken place just 10 years earlier. Even in sport, members of the middle and upper classes regularly killed or injured themselves in hunting accidents, but hunting was regarded as a worthy occupation because it was a good preparation for military service (even the Indian Civil Service entrance exam included a rigorous riding test). The thing that the public found so shocking about the Matterhorn accident was that three Englishmen should have died undertaking such a useless activity. In the decades that followed, the public gradually became accustomed to the idea that men might choose to take such risks, but 130 years after the Matterhorn accident, in 1995, some of the same shock and incomprehension resurfaced in the mass media when Alison Hargreaves, a talented climber who was also the mother of two young children, died on K2.
Since those first four fatalities in 1865, over 500 climbers have lost their lives on the Matterhorn, the majority quite
