Douglas William Freshfield (April 27, 1845 – February 9, 1934) was a British lawyer, mountaineer and author, who edited the
Alpine JournalThe Alpine Journal is the yearly publication of the Alpine Club of London.-History:The journal was first published on 2 March 1863 by the publishing house of Longmans in London, with Hereford Brooke George as its first editor...
from 1872 to 1880. He was an active member of the
Royal Geographical SocietyThe Royal Geographical Society is a British learned society founded in 1830 with the name Geographical Society of London for the advancement of geographical sciences, under the patronage of King William IV...
and the
Alpine ClubThe Alpine Club was founded in London in 1857 and was probably the world's first mountaineering club. It is UK mountaineering's acknowledged 'senior club'.-History:...
and served as President of both organizations.
Early life and education
Born in
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
, Freshfield was the only son of
Henry Ray FreshfieldHenry Ray Freshfield was an English lawyer and conservationist.Freshfield was the fourth and youngest son of James William Freshfield and his wife Mary Blacket and was born at Lothbury. His father was a lawyer who established the firm of Freshfields...
and his wife Jane Quinton Crawford. His father was a notable
lawyerA lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person licensed to practice law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain stability, and deliver...
and member of the family firm of Freshfields and his mother was the daughter of
William CrawfordWiliam Crawford was a British Liberal politician who represented the City of London in the 19th century.Crawford was born in London the son of Andrew Crawford, formerly of Dunfermline, and his wife Mary Spink. He spent his early life with the Honourable East India Company and made a fortune in India...
MP for the City of London (1833-1841), who had made a fortune in the
East India CompanyThe East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
. In an interview with Adolfo Hess, Freshfield recalls that his family loved to take long holidays in the summer of up to five weeks. He recalls that when he was 6, they visited
Lodore FallsLodore Falls is a waterfall in Cumbria, England, close to Derwent Water and downstream from Watendlath. The falls are located on the beck that flows from Watendlath Tarn, and tumble more than over a steep cascade into the Borrowdale Valley...
in the Lake District where he was disappointed that the waterfall was slowed due to a sandbank. The following year they travelled to Scotland. In 1854, they travelled to the
Swiss AlpsThe Swiss Alps are the portion of the Alps mountain range that lies within Switzerland. Because of their central position with the entire Alpine range, they are also known as the Central Alps....
, going from Basel to Chamonix. His father attached great importance to preserving open spaces for public enjoyment and was active in campaigns to save
Hampstead HeathHampstead Heath is London's largest ancient parkland, covering . This grassy public space sits astride a sandy ridge, one of the highest points in London, running from Hampstead to Highgate, which rests on a band of London clay The Heath is rambling and hilly, embracing ponds, recent and ancient...
and
Ashdown ForestAshdown Forest in the county of East Sussex, in South East England, is an open area of of heathland together with pine, birch and oak woodland in the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is famous as the setting for the "Winnie the Pooh" stories written by A. A. Milne. There has been...
.
Freshfield was educated at
Eton CollegeEton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent boarding school for boys aged approx. 13 to 19. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
, and
University College, OxfordUniversity College , is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...
, where he obtained a degree in
civil lawCivil law is a legal system inspired by Roman law, the primary feature of which is that laws are written into a collection, codified, and not determined, as in common law, by judges. The principle of civil law is to provide all citizens with an accessible and written collection of the laws which...
and
historyHistory is the study of the human past, with special attention to the written record. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it often attempts to investigate objectively the patterns...
. He was called to the bar in 1870.
Mountaineering
Freshfield was a keen traveller and mountaineer. From his childhood acquired a deep love of the mountains and was particularly fond of the Alps. Hovever by his twenties, he was already venturing further afield. In 1868 he made an attempt on Elbrus with his Balkarian guide Akhia Sottaev, and although they failed to reach the higher Western summit, Freshfield was the first foreigner to reach the Eastern Summit.
Freshfield led an exploration of the
CaucasusThe Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region between at the border of Europe and Asia. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, including Europe's highest mountain ....
and was the first man, officially, to conquer Kazbek with guides from the village Gergeti. He described the denuded territories of
AbkhaziaAbkhazia is a disputed region on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Since its declaration of independence from Georgia in 1991 during the Georgian–Abkhaz conflict, it is governed as the partially-recognized Republic of Abkhazia.Georgia considers Abkhazia part of its territory and has designated...
in a moving chapter on 'The Solitude of Abkhazia', in
The Exploration of the Caucasus published in 1892.
In 1899 Douglas Freshfield travelled to Green Lakes accompanied by the Italian photographer
Vittorio SellaVittorio Sella was an Italian photographer and mountaineer, who took photographs of mountains which are regarded as some of the finest ever made....
. He conducted expeditions around
KangchenjungaKangchenjunga is the third highest mountain in the world , with an elevation of 8,586 metres...
(Khangchendzonga) and set out with his party to trek in a circle around Kangchenjunga from the North. When he arrived safely in at Dzongri, he lit a big bonfire, which could be seen from
DarjeelingDarjeeling is a town in the Indian state of West Bengal.It was part of Nepal. When India was ruled by British a treaty was signed to keep all three countries involved safe Sugauli Treaty was signed, in which many parts of Nepal were made Indian...
and the
Governor of BengalFrom 1690, a governor represented the British East India Company in Bengal, which had been granted the right to establish a trading post by the local rulers, the nawabs of Murshidabad, who were nominal vassals of the Mughal emperor in Delhi....
ordered a Gun Salute to be fired in his honour. He also become the first mountaineer to examine the western face of Kangchenjunga, which rises from the Kanchenjunga Glacier. Freshfield described
SiniolchuSiniolchu is one of the tallest mountains of the Indian state of Sikkim. The 6888 m mountain is considered to be a particularly beautiful mountain, having been described by Douglas Freshfield as "the most superb triumph of mountain architecture and the most beautiful snow mountain in the world"...
as “The Most Superb Triumph of Mountain Architecture and The Most Beautiful Snow Mountain in the World”.
In 1905 he attempted to climb Rwenzori Abruzzi in
UgandaThe Republic of Uganda is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by Tanzania...
but failed due to bad weather. However the Freshfield Pass on the mountain was named after him.
Alpine Club and RGS
Freshfield wrote extensively about travel and the Alps, editing the
Alpine JournalThe Alpine Journal is the yearly publication of the Alpine Club of London.-History:The journal was first published on 2 March 1863 by the publishing house of Longmans in London, with Hereford Brooke George as its first editor...
from 1872 to 1880. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and became its Joint Secretary in 1881. At that time he was living at Stanhope Gardens, and by 1891 at Camden Hill, Hampstead. He was president of the
Alpine ClubThe Alpine Club was founded in London in 1857 and was probably the world's first mountaineering club. It is UK mountaineering's acknowledged 'senior club'.-History:...
from 1893 to 1895, Chairman of the
Society of AuthorsThe Society of Authors is a trade union for professional writers that was founded in 1884 to protect the rights of writers and fight to retain those rights .It has counted amongst its members and presidents numerous notable writers and poets including Tennyson The Society of Authors (UK) is a...
from 1908 to 1909, and President of the Association of Geographical Teachers from 1897 to 1910.
In 1904, he was President of the Geographical Section of the British Association. He was awarded the Founder's Gold Medal of the
Royal Geographical SocietyThe Royal Geographical Society is a British learned society founded in 1830 with the name Geographical Society of London for the advancement of geographical sciences, under the patronage of King William IV...
in 1903, became a Vice-President of the Society in 1906 and its President from 1914 until 1917. He became a Trustee of the RGS in 1924.
University College, OxfordUniversity College , is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...
made him an Honorary Fellow, and he was awarded Honorary degrees of Doctor of Civil Laws at the
University of OxfordThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
and the
University of GenevaThe University of Geneva is a university in Geneva, Switzerland.Founded by John Calvin in 1559 as a theological seminary that also taught law, it remained focused on theology until the 17th century, when it became a center for Enlightenment scholarship. In 1873 it dropped its religious...
Personal
Freshfield married Augusta Charlotte Ritchie (1847-1911) on the 27th November 1869. She was the daughter of the Hon W Ritchie Advocate General of Calcutta and the sister of
Sir Richmond RitchieSir Richmond Ritchie was an Indian-born British civil servant who spent most of his working life at the India Office, reaching the post of Permanent Under-Secretary of State for India....
They had four daughters and a son Henry Douglas Freshfield who died aged fourteen in 1891. The tragic family loss was turned into a memorial gift for the people of
Forest RowForest Row is a village and relatively large civil parish in the Wealden District of East Sussex, England. The village is located three miles south-east of East Grinstead.-History:...
in the form of a building to be used as a parochial hall and institute. The first Freshfield Hall was very short-lived, for it was burnt down on 14 February 1895, the day after the funeral of Henry Freshfield. Douglas Freshfield and his mother wasted no time in having it rebuilt and it reopened on the 17th November 1895. At the reopening Freshfield expressed the wishes of his mother and himself when he hoped the hall would be used by all classes of parishioners, and that it would keep alive the memory of its original founder.
Freshfield became a friend of
Violet NeedhamViolet Needham was the author of 19 popular children's books.She came to writing late in life, publishing her first book The Black Rider in 1939, at the age of 63. She was born in England to a privileged but chaotic family. Her father was a gambler and their finances fluctuated considerably...
a near neighbour at Forest Row. Cultivated and cultured as well as adventurous, Freshfield and Charles Needham have been seen in many Violet Needham heroes.
Freshfield died at Wych Cross Place, Forest Row,
SussexSussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is a historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
.
Writing
Freshfield's mother considered it important to educate her son in the appreciation of nature and the arts. From an early age his parents took him on journeys which included the English Lake District and Scotland. When he was eight his father started taking the family on holiday in
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
, particularly the
AlpsThe Alps are one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east; through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany; to France in the west....
. The ten years of summer holidays in the Swiss and Italian Alps greatly impressed the child. He said, sixty years later, in an interview with Adolf Hess:
I think 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 RosaThe Monte Rosa Massif is a mountain massif located in the eastern part of the Pennine Alps. It is located between Switzerland and Italy...
and the BerninaBernina can refer to:*the Bernina Range, a mountain range in the Alps.*Piz Bernina, the highest peak of the Bernina Range.*the Bernina Pass in the Bernina Range.*the Bernina Express, a scenic train route through the Bernina Range....
; we went to ArollaArolla is a village in the municipality of Evolène in the canton of Valais in Switzerland.It is situated at the end of the Val d'Hérens south of Sion at 1998m altitude in the Pennine Alps...
, to EvoleneEvolène is a municipality in the district of Hérens in the canton of Valais in Switzerland.It is located south of Sion in the Pennine Alps. It is one of the last strongholds of the Franco-Provençal language....
, to CogneCogne is a town in Aosta Valley, northern Italy with 1469 inhabitants, as of 2005.Cogne is located in the valley with the same name, leading to the Gran Paradiso massif Ibex, wild goat, marmots, royal eagles are easy to see...
, in Val Formazza, in the GlarusThe Canton of Glarus is a canton in east central Switzerland. The capital is Glarus. There are 25 municipalities in the canton . The population is German speaking and typically either Protestant or Catholic. There are 38,237 people living in the canton of which 7,314 are foreigners.-History:The...
Alps, to DavosDavos is a municipality in the district of Prättigau/Davos in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland.It is located on the Landwasser River, in the Swiss Alps, between the Plessur and Albula Range...
, to LivignoLivigno is a town in the province of Sondrio, in the region of Lombardy, Italy, located in the Italian Alps.- Geography :...
and in the Vorderrhein. Some maps I drew still show our yearly itineraries. We climbed Mount Titlis, the Jazzi Peak, the MittelhornThe Mittelhorn is a mountain in the Swiss Alps close to the village of Grindelwald. It is the highest of the three peaks composing the Wetterhorn massif.- External links :****...
, and some other peaks of moderate height. But as those didn't satisfy my ambition, in 1863 I decided to try alone the Gran ParadisoThe Gran Paradiso is a mountain group between the Aosta Valley and Piedmont regions of north-west Italy. The peak, the 7th highest mountain in the Graian Alps with an elevation of 4,061 m, is close to Mont Blanc on the nearby border with France, but lies entirely within Italian territory...
, where the unforgiving weather stopped me. I was able, anyway, to pass through the Dent du GéantThe Dent du Géant is a mountain in the Mont Blanc massif in France and Italy.The mountain has two summits, eighty-eight feet apart and separated by a small col :
[ Graham, W...]
, 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 (printed privately)
Mrs Freshfield was an authoress herself and her publications included "Alpine Byways" and "A Tour of the Grisons". Valeria Azzolini wrote about her in
I resoconti di viaggio di Freshfield ("Freshfield's Travel Journals"):
Lover of the mountain in the youngest and truest sense, hurry was unknown to her because it wasn't really reaching the top which insterested her, but the captivation of the landscapes she encountered on the path, and thus the hours she spent in that enjoyment.
Apart from the members of the family, there was another protagonist in Mrs Freshfield's narrations: the guideMountain guides are specially trained and experienced mountaineers and professionals who are generally certified by an association. They are considered experts in mountaineering.-Skills:Their skills usually include climbing, skiing and hiking...
, Michel Alphonse Couttet. And it was surely in those years that the young Freshfield understood the importance, in every mountain action, of the presence of a good guide.
Freshfield believed in good companionship more than the physical exercise when climbing. When he had almost reached the end of his career, he stated:
My highest ambition has never been to spend my days in strenuous exercises to develop my muscles. No other mountaineering moment was instead more appreciated by me than that in which I could enjoy the landscape, while the others had to open a path.
In his first work,
The Italian Alps (1875), he abandoned himself to enjoying the mountains, writing with an elegant descriptive ability. He repeatedly refined his drafts about his excursions and mountaineering, like an
ante litteram correspondent. This made him one of the best prepared and finest 19th century linguists in the UK to write about exploring Italy. As an instinctive and inspired narrator, he reported ecstatically on all the mysterious wonders of the Alps. He wanted to ahare these with the rest of
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
and described the characteristics of the Alps with unrivalled sharpness. His descriptions were from all angles -
poeticPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
,
ethnographicEthnography is a branch of anthropology. It is a methodological strategy used to provide descriptions of human societies, which as a methodology does not prescribe any particular method , but instead prescribes the nature of the study Ethnography (Greek ethnos = folk/people and graphein =...
, and
scientificScience is in its broadest sense to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome...
. Letting the reader into the atmosphere of the
Giudicarie AlpsThe Giudicárie line is a major geologic faultzone in the Italian Alps, named for the Giudicarie valleys area. It runs from Meran in the northeast as a more or less straight line along the lower part of the Val di Sole, along the Val Rendena and then along the Chiese valley to the Lago d'Idro .The...
he noted:
The low elevation of the valleys, their sunny exposure, and the gentle slope of their hillsides, give the scenery an air of richness rarely found at the base of great snow-mountains. The frequent and gay-looking villages, the woods of chestnuts, the knots of walnut-trees, the great fields of yellow-podded maize, the luxuriant vines and orchards, have the charm which the spontaneous bounty and colour of southern nature always exercise on the native of the more reserved and sober North. No contrast could be at once more sudden and more welcome than that offered by these softer landscapes to the eye fresh from the rugged granite of the Adamello chain.
Nobody who had entered the Giudicarie valleys previously had revealed so much in spite of the humble
dolomiticThe Dolomites are a section of the Alps. They are located for the most part in the province of Belluno, the rest in the provinces of Bolzano-Bozen and Trento . Conventionally they extend from the Adige river in the west to the Piave valley in the east...
reality. He dedicated further pages to the familiar
Val RendenaVal Rendena is a valley conduit of the Sarca river in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol of northern Italy.Main towns include Madonna di Campiglio, Pinzolo and Tione di Trento....
.
The road, winding at first high on a woody hillside, commands a charming view of the upper valley as far as PinzoloPinzolo is a small town situated in Val Rendena in the northern Italian Alps at an altitude of 800 m, within the autonomous Province of Trento.It is mainly known as a ski resort during the winter months.-External links:...
. Orchards and cornfields separate the rapidly succeeding hamlets, each of which resmbles its neighbour. The method of construction in this country is peculiar. The lower stories only, containing the living-rooms, are built of stone; from the top of their walls rise large upright beams supporting an immensely broad roof. The spaces between the beams are not filled up, and the whole edifice has the air of having been begun on too large a scale, and temporarily completed, and roofed in.
The great upstairs barn is used as for the storage of wood, hay, corn, and all sorts of inflammable dry goods. The roof being also of wood, the lightning finds it easy enough to set the whole mass in a blaze, and fires arising from this cause are of common occurrence.
These lines recollect a Rendena which no longer exists, but they can still teach those who are passionate about mountains to discover and preserve whatever remains that is still untouched by time or the hand of man.
Below us lay the smooth level of the Val d'Algone; on one side rose the bare, torn and fretted face of a great dolomite, surrounded by lower ridges scarcely less precipitous, but clothed in green wherever trees or herbage could take root. Towards the south the distant hills beyond the SarcaThe Sarca is a river springing from the Adamello-Presanella mountains and flowing into Lake Garda. As an emissary of the lake it becomes known as the Mincio....
waved in gradations of purple and blue through the shimmer of the Italian sunshine. A short zigzag through thick copses took us down to the meadows. The large solitary building in their midst is a glass manufactory. At this point a good car-road begins, which branching lower down leads either to TioneTione di Trento is a comune in the province of Trento in the Italian region Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, located about 30 km west of Trento...
or StenicoStenico is a comune in the province of Trento in the Italian region Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, located about 20 km west of Trento...
.
The loftier dolomites were soon lost to view behind a bend in the valley, and the road plunged down a deep and narrow glen between banks of nodding cyclamenCyclamen is a genus of 23 species of flowering plants, traditionally classified in the family Primulaceae, but in recent years reclassified in the family Myrsinaceae...
s, bold crags, and the greenest of green hillsides.
After his expeditions around
KangchenjungaKangchenjunga is the third highest mountain in the world , with an elevation of 8,586 metres...
Freshfield wrote of Dzongri:
Suddenly you are in the presence of the Snow mountain unless they are indeed as they seem, in the first awestruck moment of beholding, embodied spirits of overwhelming power and malignity. Below you is the Prague Chu Valley; before you on the other side, long line of mountains-a succession of terrible granite spires, running down, one and all so steep and jagged that it seems as if no snow could ever cling to their sides. They have been fearfully searched by winds that mark the course in sweep of the wrinkled drifts and all the scars and lines run downwards giving the mountains an infinitely cheerless and depreciating expression like a sad, worn face.
Works
- Travels in the Central Caucasus and Bashan including Visits to Ararat and Tabreez and Ascents of Kazbek and Elbruz, London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1869
- Italian Alps: Sketches in the Mountains of Ticino, Lombardy, the Trentino, and Venetia, 1875, new ed. 1937
- The Exploration of the Caucasus, London, Edward Arnold, 1896
- 'Round Kangchinjinga (Kangchenjunga)', Alpine Journal, Vol. XX, no. 149, August 1900
- Round Kangchenjunga: A Narrative of Mountain Travel and Exploration, London, Edward Arnold, 1903. Dedicated to Joseph Dalton Hooker
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM, GCSI, CB, MD, FRS was one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19th century. Hooker was one of the founders of geographical botany, and Charles Darwin's closest friend...
- Hannibal Once More (1914)
- The Life of Horace Benedict de Saussure (with the collaboration of F. Montagnier), London, Edward Arnold, 1920
- Below the Snow Line, London, Constable and Co., 1923