Coolidge wrote numerous books and articles, including the Conway and Coolidge Climbers’ Guides to the Alps (1881–1910), co-authored with Martin Conway, which were the first practical alpine guidebooks. Coolidge contributed long, pedantic, heavily annotated volumes, while Conway smoothed out the ferocious rows that took place between Coolidge and the publisher. In keeping with Conway’s exploratory instincts, the guides were originally conceived as a means of ensuring that pioneering parties avoided routes that had previously been climbed. Of course, they were overwhelmingly used for exactly the opposite purpose. The slim volumes gave descriptions of the routes and also named the first ascensionists. Conway noted that even those members of the Alpine Club who abhorred competition and self-advertisement in others were quick to correct any omissions with respect to their own achievements. From 1880 to 1889 Coolidge was also editor of the Alpine Journal, a position that brought him into bitter conflict with most of the leading climbers of the day. Famous for his stubbornness, Coolidge ‘could do anything with a hatchet but bury it’,16 according to Arnold Lunn, one of his many victims. He resigned from the Alpine Club in 1899, was re-elected as an honorary member in 1904, resigned again in 1910 and was re-elected again in 1923. He is the only member ever to have resigned an honorary membership.
Coolidge’s arguments with Whymper, over ‘Almer’s leap’, an illustration in Scrambles Amongst the Alps showing Christian Almer apparently making a daring leap during the descent of the Barre des Écrins, were legendary, but towards the end of Whymper’s life the two men were reconciled. Coolidge was, in many respects, quite similar to Whymper. Both were fired by single-minded ambition, both had an apparent indifference to the opinion of others, and both appeared completely immune to the beauty of the mountain landscape. Coolidge often regretted that he had not been born earlier so that he might have taken part, with Whymper, in the Golden Age of alpine exploration. His obituary in The Times talked of his ‘adeptness at the gentle art of making enemies’,17 but without his scholarship much early alpine history would have been lost. Furthermore, Coolidge was a balanced judge of climbing ability. He argued with Fred Mummery, as he did with everyone else, but was appalled when Mummery was blackballed by the Alpine Club in 1880, despite being proposed by Dent and Freshfield. When Mummery finally allowed himself to be put forward for membership again in 1888, Coolidge surreptitiously slipped some of the ‘noes’ in the ballot box into the ‘ayes’ to ensure that he was elected.
Fred Mummery was born in Dover in 1855, the son of a tannery owner. He was a sickly child with a deformed back, which prevented him from carrying heavy loads, and was amongst the first in a long line of climbers whose tolerance of huge exposure was attributed to his acute short-sightedness. He spent the first part of his career climbing with Alexander Burgener, and then went on to revolutionise the sport by putting up hard new routes without the use of guides. Even when accompanied by guides, he impressed upon them that his requirement was for another man on the rope, not a leader. Burgener stated that Mummery ‘climbs even better than I do’,18 which was high praise from a proud man.
Mummery was a charismatic individual who made many staunch friends in the climbing community, including Norman Collie, Cecil Slingsby, Geoffrey Hastings and Henri Pasteur, as well as some enemies, including Whymper and Edward Davidson. ‘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