3 - The Golden Age of Mountaineering
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2021
Summary
Abstract
Key figures such as Albert Smith, Leslie Stephen, and Edward Whymper are considered key protagonists of the so-called Golden Age of mountaineering. While alpinists may have conducted themselves to fashion a ‘Golden-Age’ imagination, it was the institutional framework of London's Alpine Club that promoted it, both in terms of the nationalist bombast it sanctioned and the individual style of masculine performance it required from its members. Embodied perception and recourse to action are illustrated here as important features of the Golden Age mentality, features which also played a role in the formation of a sportive matrix of topographic memory to be enacted in the process of inventing the Dolomites.
Keywords: Alpine sensationalism, Alpine Club, Leslie Stephen, Albert Smith
I admit that mountaineering, in my sense of the word, is a sport. It is a sport which, like fishing or shooting, brings one into contact with the sublimest aspects of nature […] Still it is strictly a sport – as strictly as cricket, or rowing, or knurr and spell – and I have no wish to place it on a different footing.
− Leslie StephenThe remarkable series of published accounts on British mountaineering is still allegiant to the interplay between manliness, competitiveness, character building, and imperialistic drive. A cursory look at their titles suffices alone to rehearse that argument: Mountaineers: Great Tales of Bravery and Conquest (Douglas et al., 2011); ‘Blazing the Way for Others Who Aspire’: Western Mountaineering Clubs and Whiteness, 1890-1955 (LaRocque, 2009); Imperial Ascent: Mountaineering, Masculinity, and Empire (Bayers, 2003); Mapping Adventurous Men: Masculinity in Representations of War, Mountaineering, and Science (Buescher, 2003); Vertical Margins: Mountaineering and the Landscapes of Neoimperialism (Ellis, 2001); Killing Dragons: The Conquest of the Alps (Fleming, 2001); Mountain Men: A History of the Remarkable Climbers and Determined Eccentrics Who First Scaled the World's Most Famous Peaks (Conefrey & Jordan, 2002; see also Taylor, 2006).
This editorial choice, possibly influenced by the publishing market, overshadows the equally relevant mysterious, ecstatic, and obsessive components that coloured the encounter with mountain scenery, aptly evoked in titles such as When the Alps Cast Their Spell: Mountaineers of the Alpine Golden Age (Braham, 2004); Victorians in the Mountains: Sinking the Sublime (Colley, 2010); Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination (Macfarlane, 2003); Mystery, Beauty, and Danger: The Literature of the Mountains and Mountain Climbing Published in English Before 1946 (Bates, 2000).
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- Topographic Memory and Victorian Travellers in the Dolomite MountainsPeaks of Venice, pp. 77 - 100Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020