Conway, later Lord Conway, was particularly active in naming peaks: ‘The secret of getting a name accepted is to put it about among the guides...as long as no one knows where a name originated no one will object.’9
With the trend towards harder routes and guideless climbing, the death toll inevitably began to rise, and the more senior members of the Alpine Club became increasingly concerned about what they regarded as the ‘unjustifiable risks’ taken by the younger generation. After three serious accidents in 1882, Queen Victoria’s private secretary wrote to Gladstone, the prime minister: ‘The Queen commands me to ask you if you think she can say anything to mark her disapproval of the dangerous Alpine excursions which this year have occasioned so much loss of life.’10 Gladstone wisely counselled against it. Swiss Alpine Club records show that during the period 1859–85 there were on average just five fatalities from climbing accidents each year, whereas during the six years from 1886 to 1891 there were 214 deaths.11 Partly this reflected the increasing numbers of people climbing, but even by the end of the century, there were probably only a thousand or so active climbers. Apart from the British, German students were the other large group that were active in the Alps in the last decades of the nineteenth century, although they tended to confine their activities to the Eastern Alps, which most British climbers regarded as too small to be of interest. In 1887 the Alpine Club had 475 members, not all of whom were active, whereas the Austrian and German Alpine Club (which merged into one in 1874) had 18,020, the French 5,321, the Italian 3,669 and the Swiss 2,607. However the continental clubs were organised along very different lines from the Alpine Club. Deliberately set up as inclusive national clubs, they provided cheap accommodation and their membership included large numbers of mountain walkers. The number of members actively involved in true alpinism remained very small until after the Second World War.
The British climbing establishment was also concerned that in their quest for ever harder technical difficulties the aesthetic aspects of the sport were being ignored. Walter Larden criticised the heroic instincts of rock climbers: ‘There are those amongst them who climb for the excitement only; who would sooner spend their day climbing in a gully that affords exciting “pitches”, but makes no demand on endurance or mountaineering knowledge...than in gaining the sublime heights of Monte Rosa or in traversing the magnificent Col d’Argentière. Let such recognise frankly that they don’t care for the mountains.’12 The conflict between ‘gymnasts’ and ‘mountaineers’, with the latter doubting the ability of the former to appreciate the beauty and spiritual aspects of the mountain landscape, continued until well into the 1930s. Writing in 1904, Cecil Slingsby noted that ‘all who are worthy of being termed mountaineers, in contradistinction to climbing acrobats, find that year by year their love of mountains increases, and so too does their respect and veneration’,13 and even in 1935 R. L. G. Irving, the romantic and reactionary mountain historian, still felt obliged to note that rock climbers are ‘good cragsmen and indifferent mountaineers, with a somewhat limited and unimaginative way of regarding mountains’.14 The younger climbers suspected, probably correctly, that their elders used their increasing veneration of the landscape to disguise their declining physical powers.
The Pendlebury brothers, Richard and William, were typical of the second generation of alpinists that began to emerge at the end of the Golden Age. In 1870 they traversed the Wildspitze (3,768m/12,362ft) via the Mittelberg Joch, creating what is now one of the most popular climbs in the Eastern Alps. In 1872 they shocked the climbing world by making the first ascent of the huge East Face of the Monte Rosa from Macugnaga (D+) with the Rev. Charles Taylor and their guide Ferdinand Imseng. The East Face is a steep wall with rocky ribs and couloirs filled with snow and ice. As the sun rises and melts the ice, the couloirs form a natural funnel for rock and icefall. The climb therefore involves a far greater degree of ‘objective risk’ (risk that is beyond the control of the climber) than would have been acceptable in the early years of alpinism, and both the climbers and their guide were thought by many to have displayed courage bordering on recklessness. The climb was also Imseng’s first as chief guide, though he had previously been employed as a porter, an illustration of a recurring theme of major breakthroughs being made by people outside the mainstream of the sport. Nine years later Imseng died in an avalanche attempting to make the third ascent of the same route with his client Marinelli. The Pendlebury brothers went on to make several other first ascents, including the Schreckhorn from the Lauteraarsattel (D+, 1873), which was a remarkable achievement for the time. Richard Pendlebury, who was Senior Wrangler at Cambridge in 1870 and a Fellow of St John’s College, was also one of the founders of British rock climbing, ascending Jake’s Rake on Pavey Ark and making the Pendlebury Traverse (M, 1872) on Pillar Rock in the Lake District.
The ascent of the Col des Grandes Jorasses in 1874 by Thomas Middlemore, a Birmingham leather merchant, created a similar controversy, particularly regarding the morality of taking professional guides into areas with significant objective risk. Middlemore confessed to being black and blue with bruises caused by falling rocks. Climbing with Henri Cordier, a Parisian student who died in a climbing accident at the age of 21, and John Oakley Maund, a quick-tempered London stockbroker, Middlemore made first ascents of the Aiguille Verte from the Argentière Glacier (D+/TD-), Les Courtes (AD, 3,856m/12,651ft) and Les Droites (AD, 4,000m/13,123ft) all within the space of a week. The Cordier Couloir on the Aiguille Verte once again involved climbing a route that was obviously exposed to frequent rockfall and was not repeated for nearly 50 years. With Cordier, Middlemore also made the first ascent of the beautiful snow and ice arête of the Biancograt on the Piz Bernina (AD, 4,049m/13,284ft), one of the great alpine ridges which, while relatively free from objective risk, is technically more difficult and exposed than many traditional routes. In later life Middlemore bought the Melsetter estate in Orkney which comprised a number of islands including Hoy, whose famous sea stack was to become the setting for a television climbing spectacular in the 1960s.
Middlemore also climbed with James Eccles, who made numerous first ascents on the Mont Blanc massif with the outstanding guide Michel Payot, including the Aiguille de Rochefort (AD, 4,001m/13,127ft) in 1873, the Dôme de Rochefort (AD, 4,015m/13,173ft) in 1881 and, most famously, the upper section of the Peuterey Ridge in 1877, where he camped at the side of the Brouillard Glacier beneath what is now called Pic Eccles and next day crossed the Col Eccles, reached the Frêney Glacier and ascended the ridge. The Peuterey Ridge, which in its entirety still merits a grade of D+, was repeated just twice before the Second World War.
Charles and Lawrence Pilkington, of the glass-making and colliery-owning family, were also active climbers at this time. With their cousin, Frederick Gardiner, a Liverpool ship-owner, and George Hulton, a Manchester businessman, they pioneered guideless climbing in the Alps. They made the first guideless ascents of the Barre des Écrins (PD, 1878), La Meije (AD, 1879) – the last and one of the hardest of the major alpine peaks to be climbed – the Jungfrau from Wengern Alp (PD, 1881) and the Finsteraarhorn (PD, 1881). All four were also active climbers in Britain. The Pilkington brothers climbed Pillar Rock in 1869 when Lawrence was just 14 and were amongst the first to climb on Skye, which at that time was harder to reach than the Alps, making the first ascent of the Inaccessible Pinnacle (M, 1880) on Sgurr Dearg, the only major Scottish peak that requires rock climbing to reach the summit.
One area that remained almost unexplored in the 1870s was the French Dauphiné Alps, and for that reason it attracted the attention of William Coolidge and his formidable aunt Meta Brevoort. Born in 1850 near New York, and brought up by his aunt, Coolidge left the United States at the age of 14 and lived first in France, then England, and finally Switzerland. Since it was possible in those days to travel anywhere in Europe, except Russia and the Balkans, without a passport, Coolidge never obtained one, and at the outbreak of the First World War he found that he was stateless, having lost his US citizenship. Coolidge was introduced to climbing at the age of 15 by Miss Brevoort, a spirited explorer who climbed over 70 major peaks and did not hesitate to beat some mule drivers whom she saw mistreating their animals. They were frequently accompanied by their pet bitch Tschingel – described by a Swiss gentleman who was obliged to share a hut with her as a ‘formloser, watscheliger fettklumpen’ (‘a shapeless, waddling fat lump’) – who nevertheless succeeded in climbing 66 major peaks. Coolidge too did not possess an athletic physique – a contemporary at Magdalen College where he became a Fellow in 1875 remembered him as a ‘tubby,