External links
- Thomas Woodbine Hinchliff at onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu
- Over the Sea and Far Away (1876), text online
Thomas Woodbine Hinchliff (5 December 1825 – 8 May 1882) was an English mountaineer, traveller, and author, from 1875 to 1877 the seventh President of the Alpine Club.
After qualifying as a barrister, Hinchliff abandoned the law and took to a life of travelling and writing. His books include Summer Months among the Alps (1857), South American Sketches (1863), and Over the Sea and Far Away (1876).
Born at Southwark, Hinchliffe was the son of Chamberlain Hinchliff (1780–1856), of Croom's Hill, Greenwich, and Lee, both then in Kent, by his marriage in 1824 to Sarah Parish, a daughter of Woodbine Parish of Bawburgh in Norfolk, [1] the sister of Sir Woodbine Parish (1796–1882), a traveller and diplomat. Hinchliff was educated at the West Ham Grammar School, Blackheath Proprietary School, and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating BA in 1849, when he became a member of Lincoln's Inn. Three years later he proceeded MA at Cambridge and was called to the bar, but did not pursue a career as a barrister. [2]
In 1856, his father died. [1]
Hinchliff was a minor figure of the golden age of alpinism, between Wills's ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854 and Whymper's conquest of the Matterhorn in 1865. In 1857 he was a founding member of the Alpine Club, [3] the club meeting in his Lincoln's Inn chambers before it leased rooms of its own at 8 St Martin's Place, Trafalgar Square in 1859. [4] John Ball was elected the club's first President, with E. S. Kennedy as Vice-President and Hinchliff as Secretary. [5] In 1857 Hinchliffe published Summer Months Among the Alps: With the Ascent of Monte Rosa, a work which some twenty years later Mark Twain referred to as "Hinchliffe's book". [6] In his A Tramp Abroad (1880), Twain's narrator advises his friend Harris to read this book to learn about mountain climbing, and a description in it of a fall influences the course of Twain's story. [7]
With Leslie Stephen and the guide Melchior Anderegg, Hinchliff made an early ascent of the Wildstrubel on 11 September 1858 and the first ascent of the Alphubel on 9 August 1860. [3]
In 1861, Hinchliff visited South America, staying with his cousin Frank Parish, the British Consul in Buenos Aires. [8] He spent some months on extensive travels in Brazil and Argentina, with expeditions into the Serra dos Órgãos, Teresópolis, Petrópolis, and Juiz de Fora, and these were recounted in his South American Sketches of 1863. In 1873 he set off to travel around the world with a friend named William Henry Rawson, and in two years they crossed some 35,000 miles of ocean while spending a further six months on land. Shortly after his return to England in 1875, Hinchliff was elected President of the Alpine Club, and in 1876 he published Over the Sea and Far Away, an account of his journey around the world. [3] Describing his sad thoughts on the view of Tupungato and Aconcagua from Santiago, Hinchliff reflected that
... endless successions of men must in all probability be forever debarred from their lofty crests... those who, like Major Godwin Austen, have had all the advantages of experience and acclimatization to aid them in attacks upon the higher Himalayas, agree that 21,000 ft is near the limit at which man ceases to be capable of the slightest further exertion. [9]
Hinchliff died suddenly at Aix-les-Bains, France, on 8 May 1882. A monument to him stands on the northwest side of the Riffelalp resort in Switzerland. [10] [11] His obituary in the Alpine Journal said he had had "a kind of genius for friendship", [12] while the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society noted that "the Society loses a member who, if not an explorer, was an indefatigable traveller". [13] In 1910, a climbing anthology called him "one of the first to penetrate the higher solitudes of the world of ice and snow". [14]
The Bernese Alps are a mountain range of the Alps, located in western Switzerland. Although the name suggests that they are located in the Berner Oberland region of the canton of Bern, portions of the Bernese Alps are in the adjacent cantons of Valais, Fribourg and Vaud, the latter being usually named Fribourg Alps and Vaud Alps respectively. The highest mountain in the range, the Finsteraarhorn, is also the highest point in the canton of Bern.
The higher region of the Alps were long left to the exclusive attention of the inhabitants of the adjoining valleys, even when Alpine travellers began to visit these valleys. It is reckoned that about 20 glacier passes were certainly known before 1600, about 25 more before 1700, and yet another 20 before 1800. Even though the attempt of P.A. Arnod, an official of the duchy of Aosta, in 1689 to "re-open" the Col du Ceant may be counted as having been made by a non-native, historical records do not show any further such activities until the last quarter of the 18th century. Nor did it fare much better with the high peaks, though the two earliest recorded ascents were due to non-natives, that of the Rocciamelone in 1358 having been undertaken in fulfilment of a vow, and that of the Mont Aiguille in 1492 by order of Charles VIII of France, in order to destroy its immense reputation for inaccessibility – in 1555 Conrad Gesner did not climb Pilatus proper, but only the grassy mound of the Gnepfstein, the lowest and the most westerly of the seven summits.
Sir Leslie Stephen was an English author, critic, historian, biographer, mountaineer, and an early humanist activist. He was also the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.
John Ball was an Irish politician, naturalist and Alpine traveller.
John George Wood, or Reverend J. G. Wood,, was an English writer who popularised natural history with his writings. His son Theodore Wood (1863-1923) was also a canon and naturalist.
The Alpine Club was founded in London on 22 December 1857 and is the world's first mountaineering club. The primary focus of the club is to support mountaineers who climb in the Alps and the Greater Ranges of the world's mountains.
William Mathews (1828–1901) was an English mountaineer, botanist, land agent and surveyor, who first proposed the formation of the Alpine Club of London in 1857.
The golden age of alpinism was the decade in mountaineering between Alfred Wills's ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854 and Edward Whymper's ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865, during which many major peaks in the Alps saw their first ascents.
William Spotswood Green was an Irish naturalist, who specialised in marine biology.
Clinton Thomas Dent FRCS was an English surgeon, author and mountaineer.
Edward Shirley Kennedy (1817–1898) was an English mountaineer and author, and a founding member of the Alpine Club.
Florence Crauford Grove was an English mountaineer and author, sometimes known as F. Crauford Grove. He led the first expedition to ascend the higher summit of Mount Elbrus and was at one time president of the Alpine Club.
George Forrest Browne was an English bishop, the first Anglican Bishop of Stepney from 1895 until 1897 when he was appointed Bishop of Bristol.
Francis Fox Tuckett FRGS was an English mountaineer. He was vice-president of the Alpine Club from 1866 to 1868, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
James Eccles FGS was an English mountaineer and geologist who is noted for making a number of first ascents in the Alps during the silver age of alpinism.
Thomas Middlemore was an English mountaineer who made multiple first ascents during the silver age of alpinism. His audacity earned him a reputation as the enfant terrible within the Alpine Club. He was also the head of the Middlemores Saddles leather goods company in Birmingham, England, after the retirement of his father, William Middlemore, in 1881. Thomas Middlemore had taken over the management of the company in 1868 and established a bicycle saddle factory in Coventry.
Henri Cordier or Henry Cordier was a French mountaineer. In his short two-year career, he became the first Frenchman to reach the level of the English members of the Alpine Club, in the silver age of alpinism in the second half of the 19th century, which was dominated by the development of mountaineering in the Alps. With some of the Alpine Club's mountain guides and mountaineers, he led significant first ascents in the Mont Blanc massif and in the Dauphiné Alps.
Sir John Oakley Maund was an English banker, stockbroker, entrepreneur, hunter and mountaineer during the silver age of alpinism.
Charles Edward Mathews was an English mountaineer, a leading member of the Alpine Club and writer on mountaineering. In his professional career as solicitor he was active in public affairs in Birmingham.
John Llewelyn Davies was an English preacher and theologian, an outspoken foe of poverty and inequality, and was active in Christian socialist groups. He was an original member of the Alpine Club and the first ascendant of the Dom. His daughter was suffragist Margaret Llewelyn Davies. His son Arthur Llewelyn Davies was the father of the boys who were the inspiration for the stories of Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. His sister Emily Davies was one of the founders of Girton College.
