Page 62 - BBC Knowledge - October 2017 IN

history
Alpine Disaster

This engraving by Edward
Whymper, showing his
party tackling a tricky
Alpine descent, illustrates
his book Scrambles
Amongst the Alps

firmly to absorb the jerk of the rope: “We ascent of the Matterhorn as “utterly Comparisons to imperial exploration
held; but the rope broke midway between incomprehensible”, and asked what right shifted opinion about the Matterhorn
Taugwalder and Lord Francis Douglas.” mountaineers had to throw away the gift accident in favour of the climbers.
From the moment the rope broke, of life: “Is it duty? Is it common sense? The Illustrated London News likened
it was impossible to save those below. Is it allowable? Is it not wrong?” the victims to English explorers who had
Whymper examined the rope and found it Charles Dickens lambasted the climbers died in the Australian outback. Climbing
to be the weakest cord they had brought, as foolhardy braggarts. Mountaineers were mountains trained Englishmen to follow
not intended to be used for protection not heroic, he said, nor to be compared to the call of duty, its editors argued,
while climbing. those who braved cholera, visited typhus and contributed to military prowess,
Whymper and the two Taugwalders patients or fought in the Crimean War. commercial prosperity, and scientific
made the sorrowful descent to Zermatt, “We shall be told that ‘mountaineering’ knowledge. “There would be small
from where rescuers left to search for is a manly exercise,” he wrote. “It is so, philosophy – nay, small knowledge
survivors. They found bloodstains, inasmuch as it is not womanly. But it of the world shown in discouraging
fragments of clothes and shattered human is not noblemanly when it is selfish.” adventure. It has given us the empire.”
remains. Croz, Hadow and Hudson were Mountaineering, according to Dickens, Such celebrations of manliness,
identified from shreds of clothing and was no more manly than gambling and exploration and empire persuaded
tufts of beard. Scraps of Lord Francis indicated “contempt for and waste of some critics to reassess their dim view
Douglas’s clothing were found, but there human life – a gift too holy to be played of mountaineering. While awaiting
was no sign of his body – except, perhaps, with like a toy, under false pretences, Whymper’s account of the accident,
for the birds of prey circling the cliffs by bragging vanity”. The Times conceded: “Perhaps it is
above the debris field. Visitors to Zermatt’s But novelist Anthony Trollope compared necessary that there should be an order
Alpine Museum can today see relics mountaineers to soldiers, sportsmen and of men to attempt what no one else will
including the frayed end of the rope. explorers. Death on a mountain was the attempt, to show what can be done, and
same as death in battle or on an African the feats which human courage and
AFTERMATH OF THE expedition. He saw all these as blood shed endurance can perform.”
ACCIDENT for the honour of the country. He hoped Even John Ruskin, who had censured
An inquest in Switzerland found that that the “accident on the Matterhorn may mountaineers for treating the Alps like
Hadow was responsible for the accident, not repress the adventurous spirit of “soaped poles in a bear-garden,” was TOPFOTO/MARY EVANS
clearing Whymper of wrongdoing, but this a single English mountain-climber”, moved to temper his criticism. “No blame
did little to quell a heated debate about the and looked forward to hearing of new ought to attach to the Alpine tourist for
accident in Britain. The Times viewed the ascents in Asia or South America. incurring danger,” Ruskin wrote shortly
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