In The Mountains HERE are three first-class books, to be
enjoyed not only by the mountaineer but by everyone who enjoys reading of mountains and of strenuous adventure. Mountains with a Difference is a
treasure4muse, -eight essays packed full of rich and varied jewels. Geoffrey Young's mountains range from Ireland to Mount Ida ; his friends include the legendary giants of the Gully Epoch and the restless Blondins of the Piton Age. His scene-painting, in prose and verse, is full of bright and individual colour. Who else could write of snow as " elastic and silken " ?
First, there is " my party " at Pen y Pass, a little too precious and intellectual, we used to think, those of us who were not of the elect. But now we are glad of these glimpses of Mummery and
Herford and Hugh Pope. Then, between Celtic mists and Trojan sunshine, come two tremendous adventures in Scotland with Lord Mackay. Two Italian essays, of war on the Isonzo with the heroic Friends' Ambulance, are 'hard to follow without a map, and lack the rich personal note. Unknown Italian soldier-companions have not the magic that lives with names like Raeliiirn and Collie. But I would not have missed that surprising last glissade, just before the crippling thigh-wound.
At Cambridge, after the first war, the host of " my party " tends to become the guest, but still the inspiration, of a much larger com- pany. He learns to climb with a " peg " and meets the- new men, Smythe, Shipton, Kirkus, and, wonderfully portrayed, the• " Eliza- bethan " Gino Watkins. And so, miraculouslk, with Knubel and Lochmatter and English friends back to the high peaks. There is the conquest of Monte Rosa with Claude. Elliott and the wise retreat before the Weisshorn ; the Matterhorn encourages other limbless soldiers ; the Grepon is climbed for the sheer joy of renewing an old friendship. " I have not lost the magic of long days," he writes. Nowhere is his magic so marvellously imparted to others as in this account of the Grepon. The Rothorn, with Marcus Heywood, finishes the story. "My party" no longer meets of Pen y Pass, but I can see, as I write, Outward Bound's schooner in Cardigan Bay, one small unit in the vast brotherhood into which that party is fast expanding.
Mr. Walker, in an admirable appendix, describes himself as an " unpretentious pedestrian." He is in fact a superb photographer, very adequate map-maker, thrilling lecturer ; and his Alpine experi- ence is probably unrivalled. Lists of huts, time-tables and distances ; a " walker's circuit " and a ".climber's circuit " attached. to each section—these suggest a guide book. But they are merely appen- dices to eight great mountain studies. Here the unpretentious author quotes from Freshfield or Irving or Tuckett, when he wants a purple passage, so that the book has something of a mountain anthology by way of incidental music. But he cannot conceal his own keen powers of observation, his delight in rock and glacier, his knowledge of their structure and of their movement. An effortless style, reminiscent sometimes of R. L. S., enables him to produce a fascinating narrative. Poverty and increasing years have scared many from revisiting Switzerland in summer. Thanks to Mr. Walker I am already planning a " circuit " for 1952.
Colonel Chapman's book is a reissue of two earlier,works, both out of print, Helvellyn to Himalaya and Lhasa : the Holy- City. The new title is misleading, for less than half the book is concerned with mountains, and, in addition to memoirs, there is some day-by- day journal. It might well have been called Himalaya and Beyond. The author is above all a man of action and observation. He delights in dangerous enterprise, and has time to record the birds and plants that line his route. He is also one of the most fortunate of mountaineers. To traverse La Meije with Jack Longland, before learning to use an ice axe, and to survive his fall from the summit ridge of Chomolhari—these are but two of Fortune's gifts. But his readers will not grudge him them, for he often had to pay in full : his five-day nightmare, descending with delirious Pasang, would have killed any but the most resolute of men, however fortune- favoured.
'This terrific adventure and the previous attack on Simvu with Marco Paths are his' high lights. After them there is a compara- tively comfortable contrast in the routine life of the mission to Tibet Prayer. wheels and politics, ceremonial and cinema shows seem refreshingly unexciting. And it says much for the author that his narrative is always eminently readable, whether he writes of Chaplin or Chomolhari. The reader is mercifully spared psychological intro- spection and high falutin' aesthetics. But there is no lack of shrewd or humorous comment, as for example the reasons for having a career besides exploration and the component qualities of the pale delphinium Aconitum Barmaidiae. For bedside reading and re-reading, give me Geoffrey Young. To rescue me when dangling from an iced overhang, send me Spencer Chapman. But for a holiday in the Alps I should like to meet Mr.
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