Across the Country from Thonon to Trent. Rambles and Scrambles In Switzerland and the Tyrol

144 Pages·2007·9.704 MB·English

by  Douglas Freshfield

First published in 1865 by Spottiswoode & Co, London
This edition published in January 2010 by
an imprint of
Neil Wilson Publishing Ltd
www.nwp.co.uk
Foreword © Neil Wilson, 2011
Print edition ISBN: 978-1-906476-12-0
Ebook edition ISBN: 978-1-906476-17-5
FOREWORD
DOUGLAS WILLIAM FRESHFIELDwas born on Sunday, 27 April 1845
in London and was the only son of Henry Ray Freshfield and Jane Quinton
Crawford. After being educated at Eton College and University College,
Oxford, he followed his father into the legal profession and was called to
the bar in 1870.
One of the features of his privileged childhood was the opportunity to
travel with his parents and enjoy long summer holidays abroad. At the age
of eight he had his first experience of the Swiss Alps undertaking a jour-
ney from Basel to Chamonix. He was to recall later in life:
Ithink that, without any interruption, for the following ten years, I went
each August to the Alps with my parents, and I experienced not only the
easy trips, but also many less usual destinations. We toured the Monte
Bianco, the Monte Rosa and the Bernina; we went to Arolla, to Evolene, to
Cogne, in Val Formazza, in the Glarus Alps, to Davos, to Livigno and in
the Vorderrhein. Some maps I drew still show our yearly itineraries. We
climbed Mount Titlis, the Jazzi Peak, the Mittelhorn, and some other peaks
of moderate height. But as those didn't satisfy my ambition, in 1863 I
decided to try alone the Gran Paradiso, where the unforgiving weather
stopped me. I was able, anyway, to pass through the Dent du Géant, and
to climb the Monte Bianco.
The following year I was ready to begin my excursions with two of my
schoolmates, and I made the march recorded in Across Country from
Thonon to Trent.
That journey was made in the summer of 1863 and this volume, which he
arranged to have printed privately in 1865 before he had reached his major-
ity, was his first work of mountain literature and also his rarest. It is not
listed in any of Freshfield’s published bibliographies. I am indebted to
Tony Astill for his help and to Nick Clinch who kindly loaned his own
original copy so that a full digital copy could be created.
Freshfield did not limit his endeavours to the Alps, however. In 1868 he
became the first foreigner to climb the eastern summit (5,621m) of Mount
FOREWORD
Elbrus in the western Caucasus of Russia, having failed narrowly to reach
the western summit (5,642m) with his guide Akhia Sottaev. He was to
explore the Caucasus further, and wrote extensively about the region in
Travels in the Central Caucasus and Bashanwhich was published in 1869.
In November of that year he married Augusta Charlotte Ritchie, a member
of an old Anglo-Indian family and settled in London. They were to have
four daughters and a son who died aged 14 in 1891.
From 1872 to 1880 he edited the Alpine Journal and became the Joint
Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society in 1881; he was a prolific con-
tributor to the society’s meetings and his articles featured in many issues of
the society’sproceedings. He became President of the Alpine Club in 1893
and Chairman of the Society of Authors from 1908 to 1909 while also hold-
ing the presidency of the Association of Geographical Teachers from 1897
to 1910. His body of work had by this time extended to Italian Alps:
Sketches in the Mountains of Ticino, Lombardy, the Trentino and Venetia
(1875), The Exploration of the Caucasus (1896), and Round
Kangchenjunga: ANarrative of Mountain Travel and Exploration(1903).
In 1904 he became President of the Geographical Section of the British
Association having been awarded the Founder’s Gold Medal of the RGS
the previous year. By 1906 he was a Vice-President of the RGSand its
President from 1914 until 1917. In the first year of his term of office as
president he published Hannibal Once Morefollowed in 1920 by The Life
of Horace Benedict de Saussure, a biography of the 18th-century Swiss
botanist considered by many to be the founder of Alpinism. Below the
Snow Linefollowed in 1923 and in 1924 he was made a trustee of the RGS.
He was then recognised academically and awarded an Honorary
Fellowship of University College, Oxford while honorary degrees were
bestowed on him from the universities of Oxford and Geneva.
Quite how Douglas Freshfield managed to attain all this as well as main-
taining his legal career, bringing up his family, undertaking his travels,
writing and arranging the publication of his works and ensuring his com-
mittment to the RGS never wavered is astonishing to the mind of the mod-
ern-day observer.Hewasclearly a remarkable mountain man and in this,
the first of his published works, we see the beginnings of the narrative style
and observational genius that was to serve him well over the course of the
rest of his writing.
Freshfield died aged 88 on Friday, 9 February 1934 in Forest Row,
Sussex.
Neil Wilson, Glasgow,2011