James Bryce

 Politician, diplomat, jurist, political scientist, historian and mountaineer, James Bryce was a man of many parts. 

           

Born in a small terraced house in Arthur Street, Belfast, on 10th May 1838. He spent the first eight years of his life at his grandfather's residence on the shores of Belfast Lough.  At age eleven he climbed Trostan from Cushendall and claimed it was the birth and growth of his 'lifelong passion for mountain climbing'.   His schooling and academic career were extensive (see here for details).  He was widely honoured, receiving the order of merit (1907) and honorary degrees from thirty-one universities, and was president of the British Academy (1913–17). 

Bryce became a great mountain walker and climber, and his love of both activities was closely related to his interest in the natural world. In his early youth he spent much of his time in the mountains of Ireland and Scotland.   Bryce’s notable experiences of mountain landscape combined with a particular environmentalist sensibility and political liberalism to shape his pioneering ideas about landscape preservation. His mountaineering was important to his personal identity and to his practice as an historian. Bryce’s ideas about history were influenced by an environmentalist perspective on the world, gained through on-foot experience of it.

A slim, wiry man of medium height with a crisp purposeful walk and piercing deep-set eyes, Bryce exuded a sense of energy, liveliness, and movement; his pursuit of knowledge was incessant, his interests ranging over geology, botany, history, politics, law, and philosophy. He carried his great learning lightly and was happy with life's simple pleasures: smoking his pipe, reading, a good walk, or a brisk swim.

N Face Mt Bryce. Wikipedia

From 1862, when he spent a semester in Heidelberg University, he climbed the classics of Switzerland and Italy including Monte Rossa, Streckhorn Monte Pelmo and Marmolata. In 1866, with Leslie Stephen, he climbed in the Carpathians (Monte Csalho).  In 1872 he was in Iceland but seems not to have been impressed by the mountains there - 'in Switzerland....the difficulty is getting to the top of your peak. In Iceland it is getting to its bottom', requiring long , tedious journeys.  In 1873 he was in the Pyrenees, climbed with Henry Russell, and climbed Maladetta, Vignemale, Pic de Nethou and Canigou.  In 1876 he was the first European to climb Mount Ararat in Turkey.  In 1878 he was in Tatras in Carpathia and climbed a number of summits.  Elected to membership of the Alpine Club in 1879 and its president from 1899 to 1901 (in John Ball's footsteps).  In 1889 he was instrumental in the formation of the Cairngorm Club, the oldest and one of the largest hillwalking and climbing clubs in Scotland.

Mt Bryce. Wikipedia

As a politician, he was involved in many of the issues of the day - Irish Home Rule, education questions, trade unionism, and was regarded as 'the most accomplished man in the commons'. 1884 saw the introduction of his Access to Mountains (Scotland) Bill - to allow people to walk freely over uncultivated ground. In 1905 he became Chief Secretary for Ireland, introduced a number of commissions of enquiry. Even got himself out on the Irish hills 'leading his panting subordinates up the steep sides of Croagh Patrick or Craughan' (Douglas Freshfield).  He resigned in 1907, disappointed that his proposals had been rejected by Nationalists and took up position as British Ambassador to the USA.  He had been there earlier (1883) when he climbed Mt Rainier and visited Hawaii, ascending Mauna Loa (4,168m) and Kilauea (1,189m).  He used this opportunity to travel widely, visiting South America, Cook Islands, Australia and New Zealand.

He was the author of numerous books and articles on a variety of subjects; politics, law, history, education and travel.  Some of his climbing exploits feature in his travel writing but he published nothing that related solely to his mountaineering.

For details of his travels and climbs see:  Alpine Club Register  (Vol 3, p39) and  Frank Nugent's In search of Peaks, Passes and Glaciers for more details.

Bryce Canyon in Utah is not named in his honour, but for Ebenezer Bryce.

Mount Bryce in the Canadian Rockies was named in his honour by J Norman Collie in 1898 - the 15th highest peak in British Columbia.

Irish in the Himalayas

 The British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947 and the term conceals numbers of Irish people. Patrick O’Leary in his ‘Servants of the Empire, the Irish in the Punjab 1881-1921’, details the contribution made by many Irish in that region of India. 

     The influence on Indian history of Irish-born administrators and soldiers was quite remarkable. In the mid-eighteenth century, French influence ended  in a battle in which both sides were led by Irish generals (the French side included elements of the Irish Brigade). During the 1890s seven of the eight  Indian provinces were ruled by Irish pro-consuls while at about this time three Commanders-in-Chief  in    India were Irish-born and another claimed to be. Tipperary-man Michael O’Dwyer was the administrator ultimately responsible for the infamous Amritsar Massacre. The many Irish doctors in the Indian Medical Service had a profound effect on research into the treatment of tropical diseases. ( Dr. P.O'Leary)

It is likely that some of these administrators spent their leave by travelling or venturing from various parts of India into the high regions of the Himalayas as mountaineers. From the state of Himachal Pradesh (formerly part of Punjab) this certainly happened. 

Bruce. Wikipedia

R.I Bruce (from Co Cork), on leave from the NW Frontier trekked in the mid 1870s over Hampta Pass, Parang La (5,578m) and Rohtang Pass.

 Arthur Banon (from Offaly) left his regiment, the Munster Fusiliers, to settle in Kullu and his descendants were facilitators to a modern generation of Irish mountaineers.

 Louis Dane (family from Co Fermanagh), made the first crossing of the Pin Parbati Pass (5,400m).

See: To wander at will and free of charge. The Irish in Himachal Pradesh. Journal of the Irish Mountaineering and Exploration Historical Society. Vol 3. Dublin 2012 (P.O' Leary) 

Kelly. Wikipedia

Colonel James Kelly and Lieutenant Cosmo Stewert took a regiment of Punjab Pioneers over the Shandur Pass (3,700m) in 1895 in the relief of Chitral; a military operation but a feat of mountain travel.

[Keay, John. The Gilgit Game. 1979 London pp 253]. 

This whole area of the Irish in British India offers further scope for detailed investigation.

Frederica Plunket

Frederica Louisa Edith Plunket was born at Kilsaran, near Castlebellingham in County Louth (1838-1886). Her father Thomas Plunket, 2nd Baron Plunket (1792–1866), was a junior Church of Ireland clergyman and later became the Bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry where he gained some notoriety for his behaviour during the Great Famine era.

 Her mother Louise Jane Foster (married in 1819) was the daughter of John William Foster of Fanevalley, County Louth, Member of Parliament for Dunleer. Her eldest sister Katherine Plunket was known as Ireland's oldest person at 111 years and 327 days.

Plunket travelled Europe with her sister Katherine Plunket and they made many sketches of flowers in France, Italy, Spain and Germany, and Ireland. These were bound in a volume, Wild Flowers from Nature, which was presented in 1903 to the Royal College of Science, and was later transferred to the Museum of Science and Art in the National Museum of Ireland. In 1970 it was part of the collections which were transferred to the Irish National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin.  (Wikipedia)

At present there is little information available about her early life and career and it is not clear what inspired her to undertake mountaineering but in 1875, with her sister, she climbed the Eiger and Mt Blanc. The following year they climbed Monte Rosa and the Strahlhorn (with guide Peter Egger).

'Here and there among the Alps' (1875) is her account of some of her climbing activities and is written to encourage other women to undertake the activity. The following is a short excerpt from the introduction:

In offering the following pages to the public, the authoress is actuated, not so much by the motive to describe her own especial excursions, as by the wish to persuade other ladies to depart more than is their usual habit from the ordinary routine of a Swiss summer tour ; to urge them no longer to pause on the threshold of the Alpine world, but to pass its snow-marked boundaries, and to see and admire for themselves those wonders of nature which many of them are content to gaze on from a distance, thus losing half their beauty.