Sir William Martin Conway

“ To perceive beauty in a scene implies a power of selection. There is beauty in every view if you know how to find it, but the eye has to sift it out. Open your eyes at random. They are saluted by an infinite multitude of details. You can pass from one to another, but you cannot see them all at once. Looking at a tree, you can see a few leaves and twigs surrounded by a green spludge, which experience has taught you is made up of leaves or twigs, but you do not see all the leaves at once; so with blades of grass, flowers in a field, strata edges on a cliff, or crevasses in a glacier. ”

“ The snow is hard and crisp beneath his feet. The ice-crystals merrily crepitate as they break up, when the bonds of frost are withdrawn. And now the patch of rocks, or other convenient resting place, where breakfast is to be taken, is soon attained. Packs are cast off. It is an hour of perfect delight. The heart of the upper regions has been reached. The fair world of snow opens on every side. The valleys and habitable places are all forgotten. The scenery is superb. At such a time and place who would exchange with folks below, be they never so prosperous? ”

“ Nothing in sight had aspect of solidity; we seemed to be in a world of gossamer and fairy webs. Presently there came an indescribable movement and flickering above us, as though our bright chaos were taking form. Vague and changeful shapes trembled into view and disappeared. Low, flowing light-bands striped the white floor. Wisps of mist danced and eddied around. A faint veil was all that remained, and through it we beheld with bewildered delight all the glory of the Mont Blanc range, from end to end and from base to summit, a vision of bridal beauty. ”

“ The sky is unwontedly clear and so definitely blue; the trees and grass so green; the snow so white. The early morning moments of such a day are precious indeed. Diamond rain-drops deck grass and pine-needles. There is radiance upon all the earth and freshness in the air. The discomforts of the past are forgotten. We are rested and eager for movement, and the world summons us forth. Nature, after all, knows best, and he is happiest who yields himself, whether in the mountains or elsewhere, to perfect sympathy with her many moods. ”

“ Gradually that enthusiasm passes and is replaced by a settled mood of calmer, but no less intense, satisfaction. But does the æsthetic delight in the beauty of the mountains remain through all these experiences undimmed? Not always. In the first view of them it is the beauty of the snowy peaks, of the great white walls, that appeals to the eye. Ignorant of the meaning of every detail, the details are almost unseen. It is the whole that is beheld in the glory of its whiteness. The wonder of the silver snow beyond the green and beneath the sky invades the mind of every new spectator. ”

“ It is not enough merely to see, it is necessary also to look, to examine, to remember, and to love. He that thus acquaints himself with the high places, will learn to know them as they can be known by no other. They will become to him a home, full of reminiscences, full of shared pleasures, full also of problems yet to be solved, and of hopes yet to be fulfilled. To such a mountain-lover weariness of mountains can never come. His climbing days may be ended, for whatever reason; he may cease to expect or even to desire to mount far aloft ”

“ Finally there comes an artist, who knows nothing about mountains or forests and cares nothing, but who loves above all else (let us say) colour. What he will see will be some colour effect, some special harmony of tints in sky and snow and forest, some unifying effect that will make white, blue, and green all qualities of a single glory. If he paint the view, that is the effect he will strive to render, and in so doing he will care little about forms and details, little about modellings of glacier drapery and rocky skeleton. ”

“ In the case of the Triftjoch, as you climb to it from Zermatt, the result is even more than usually impressive; for what bursts upon your vision, right opposite to you, on the far side of a splendid and vast circle of snow-field, is the whole pyramid of the Dent Blanche, from base to summit, with its finest side turned towards you. For the view thus to burst upon the traveller with overwhelming suddenness, the steepness of the wall of ascent must be continued to the very top. If it rounds off for the last few feet, as sometimes happens, the effect is spoiled. ”

“ His keenest desire is to be off once more into those same high regions—once more to feel the ice beneath his feet—once more to scramble up clean crags fresh from nature's sculpturing and undefiled by soil or vegetation. With each new ascent he becomes eager for more. The summers are all too short for his satisfaction. He goes home to read about other people's climbs, to study maps and guide-books, to lay out schemes for future seasons. Dauphiny, the Graians, the Engadine and Tirol—he must give a season or seasons to each. Thus is the climber fashioned out of an ordinary man. ”

“ What turns spring into summer for the eye is not easy to indicate. Shall we be far wrong if we say that, in the first instance, it is the flowers? The little venturesome plants of spring, that blossom at the very edge of the withdrawing snow, themselves withdraw when they have smiled upon the world. They are followed by the bright carpet of early summer—the June carpet, which few mountaineers ever behold. It is lovely everywhere—loveliest perhaps in the Maritime Alps, or along the sunny Italian face of the Alpine wall. ”

“ Gladly would some of us be able to shed our knowledge of detail, if it were but for a moment, and once again behold the great wall of white as ignorantly as we first beheld it—a thing, vast, majestic, and above all mysterious—unapproachable as the clouds—a region not for men but fairies—the rose-clad tops of the mountains where dance the spirits of the dawn. Fairest of all is ever the first vision, not completest. ”

“ A mountain-lover may be compelled to live in some city of the plains, but, if he could, and in so far as mountains are his chief delight, he would live amongst them, not merely in one season but in all. No man, however, is or can be entirely single-minded. We cannot confine our affections to a single category of natural beauty, nor even to Nature alone. We are folk of many interests. Even the most enthusiastic lover of mountains is something more, and fails from the ideal. Mountains must take their share with other interests in the life of any one who cares for them at all. ”

“ It is a commonplace to proclaim the exhaustless prodigality of Nature's inventions, which every field of grass sufficiently proves, and yet it always seems to me that these great faces specially exemplify it. How easy, one might imagine, to invent detail for a precipice of ice and rock—but take a blank sheet of paper and try; you will find the task almost hopeless. Then turn to any view of Monte Rosa from Macugnaga and observe how it has been done, and how much, indeed how entirely, the effect of the view depends upon the structure and variety of the wall. ”

“ They join together, neighbour to neighbour, and every moment they grow more dense and climb higher. To left and right, one sees them, behind also and before. The moments now are precious. We take a last view of our surroundings, note the direction we should follow, and try to fix details in our memories, for sight will soon be impossible. Then the clouds themselves are upon us—a puff of mist first, followed by the dense fog. A crepitating sound arises around us; it is the pattering of hard particles of snow on the ground. ”

“ Nor must we forget to catalogue amongst the greater glories of Alpine winter the snow-laden forests. One day the trees will be burdened down by loads of snow. Another, every sprig and pine-needle will be frosted over by the most delicate incrustation of tiny ice-crystals—a natural lacework of surpassing fascination. When the early sun first shines upon such a scene, which night has prepared to be a revelation to the day, so magnificent a vision is provided that even the dullest perceive something of its beauty, and for a moment forget the trifles of their life. ”

“ Yet who shall attempt to draw them forth for another, or write down even a faint suggestion of their beauty for those by whom they have never been beheld? Surely at no time are the great snows endowed with more dignity, more of the impressiveness of visible size, more aspect of aloofness, of belonging to another and a nobler world, than when the full moon shines perfectly upon them. And then, too, how the snow-fields glisten over all their wide expanse, yet with a pale effulgence that does not paralyse the eye! ”

“ We gaze afar over ridge beyond ridge, it may be to some wide-stretching plain or ultimate crest of remotest ranges. All swims in light, and we triumph in its very exuberance.
Then follows the afternoon of our descent. We plunge into ever-thickening air as we go down. It is penetrated with the dust and flurry of the day. As the hours advance it sheds an ever mellower tone upon the views. Fatigue seems to invade the earth itself as it does our own limbs. We gain the grassy places once more, as the sun begins to lose its towering eminence of place. ”

“ Yet even then it is not well to approach them too closely, unless you would have the sense of their beauty supplanted by a different kind of emotion. The nearer you approach a snow-mountain, such as Mont Blanc, and the more intimately you penetrate its white recesses, and acquaint yourself with its details of crevasse and sérac, the more conscious are you of the perfection of its finish and the loveliness of its details. It is not so with a volcano at any time of its career. ”

“ Great crevasses marvellously coloured in their depths yawn all about. You wind your way amongst them, creeping over snow-bridges and under impending walls and pinnacles of ice, all decked with sparkling icicles. Finally, you emerge on to some gentler-sloping, wide-expanding field of spotless snow, that only a gentle undulation diversifies with the most delicately displayed modelling. All around are steep slopes of snow or ice, cliffs of newly-riven rock, avalanche tracks and heaps of ruin. The details of the high peaks can be distinguished, their overhanging cornices, their furrowed sides. ”

“ It is of the essence of such a pass as the Lysjoch that it leads you from the foot of a great glacier, up through its whole length to its head, and then from the head of another glacier down to its foot. It thus traces a definite and natural succession of the features of a glacier. It is like following the course of a river from mouth to source, or passing through the progress of the seasons of a year. From step to step there is a succession of related features, each being another stage of the one before and of the one next to follow. Thus there is a growth of interest. ”

“ Little idea can they give him of the splendour of their birth and the white curdled beauty of their surface when they first come to rest. In the nature of things they travel far and fall low, well into the tree-belt, and even down to the chestnut-level on the Italian side. It is a strange sight to see these vast, new-fallen masses lying in their accustomed beds, but surrounded by trees all freshly verdant with the gifts of spring. Yearly each one falls in the same place, falls harmlessly and duly expected. ”

“ The sharp definition and marble-like permanence of the mountain forms an admirable offset to the softness and inconstancy of the cloud, which is not merely ever varying the form of its outlines, but is throughout in constant and often swift motion under the dominion of a furious gale. The sense of violent agitation high aloft thus impressed upon the eye, well associates itself with an idea of rugged resistance proper to high peaks and splintered ridges. The slenderer the pyramid and the sharper its arêtes, so much the better does it serve as flagstaff for a flying cloud. ”

“ How pleasant it is, when resting at some fine noontide hour on the summit of a lofty peak, to look abroad over the peopled Italian plain, or down into some deep valley, dotted with farms and villages, with here and there a white church standing in the midst of châlets. It is only the works of modern man, his huge caravanserais, his railway stations, and his accurately engineered roads, that are wholly hateful—blots on the landscape defiling and degrading it. ”

“ Each little fragment of ice has a separate glitter of its own, so that the whole surface sparkles with a frosted radiance. It is not the same at dawn after a cold night, for then there is no water between the fragments, but all is hard and solid. No sooner, however, does the sun shine upon them, than the bonds are released and the ice-crystals begin to break up with a gentle tinkling sound and little flashes of light reflected from tiny wet mirror-surfaces. One can spend hours watching these small phenomena as happily as gazing upon the great mountains themselves. Size is a relative term. ”

“ You cannot tell at first whether they are tiny objects near at hand or remote masses. Under such circumstances I have mistaken a little fragment of paper drifting along the snow for a polar bear! Presently avenues of clearness open up to close again. Finally, the mist grows thin and glittering, the sunshine penetrates it, there is a moment of scorching heat, and lo! all is clear, and the great world around is perfectly revealed.
PALLANZA—SUNSET
What beauty there is in the great snow-fields that wearied waders through their soft envelope are in no condition to appreciate! ”

“ The crest of some passes of this sort, notably of the Weissthor, is a point of vantage for enfilading a great mountain face. Usually one looks up or down such faces, or, being actually upon them, can only look a short distance to right or left. But from the crest of a suitable pass you may see the great curtain of ice and rocks edgewise, and the view has an impressiveness of its own. Those who have seen Niagara, or any wide waterfall of considerable height, will remember how fine it is to stand and look along the edge of it. ”

“ But in fine summer weather the avalanches have all fallen. The surrounding walls are like a defensive fortress, towering so high and steeply, and excluding the world and all its vicissitudes and violences. It is only a seeming, for nowhere, in fact, do storms eddy and surge with more violence than in these theatres of the mountains. But seeming is the very substance of beauty, and all the fine-weather aspect of these places is suggestive of peace. The further you advance the more completely are you enclosed. ”

“ The thunder of great guns is used, by common consent, to express the salutations of a people. What is true of sound is also true of light. Great views are ennobled by the splendour of full sunshine. There is an indescribable charm about desert sunrises and sunsets, but the glory of the desert is greatest at noon when the sunshine seems to swallow up the world and almost to hide it in excess of brightness. As with the deserts so is it with the snow-fields. ”

“ A week ago he was perhaps laughing at the tattered-faced climbers he met, as mad fools, going up to mountain-tops just to come down again and say they had been there. Of such folly he at any rate will never be guilty. Climbing has no fascinations for him; he is merely going to have a look at the white world, so that he may know what it is that he hears people talking about—their corridors and their couloirs, crevasses, snow-bridges, séracs, and bergschrunds. ”

“ An occasional run down-hill is the by-reward of the skilful, but his main prize is the sights he is privileged to behold. He can enter the heart of forests or ascend large slopes without the toil of sinking into the soft snow, to whose presence they owe the quality of their winter charm. Ski, moreover, grant access with relative comfort to the higher regions, and enable them to be crossed in suitable places at a time when the crevasses of the glaciers are deeply buried or soundly bridged, and when the snowy world sweeps in larger and simpler surfaces away. ”

“ The paths are worn deeply into the ground. The Raja's castle, dominating his little capital, has a venerable aspect, and if not actually old, incorporates an ancient type. There are little ruins by the roadside and carvings upon the rocks. Where-ever you look, the marks of long frequentation are to be traced. Moreover, the people themselves bear the imprint of surrounding nature upon them. Their action in movement, their way of life, their adaptation to their environment—all imply old habit and deep-rooted tradition. The valley in which they are enclosed is the world to them. ”

“ We conceive it as belonging not to an age but to all time. Were it mathematically four-square, and its faces true planes of even slope, that would be its chief effect, that and the sense of mass and grandeur inseparable from an object of such visibly huge dimensions. But Nature has fashioned it subtly and endowed its faces and ridges with curves most delicate and refined. To its appearance of mass and endurance it adds a grace so exquisite, an uplift so imposing, that these qualities almost take the first place in the impression produced upon the beholder. ”