The Grand Tour

Richard Pococke

In general it was the wealthy middle and upper classes that would have been familiar with the works of Edmund Burke and the writers, poets and painters of the Romantic period.  As much as the appreciation of poetry and art was part of a good education so also had become the appreciation of landscape.  All of these may have been part of the motivation for the phenomenon that became known as the ‘Grand Tour’.  The benefits of such an undertaking were to ‘enrich the mind with knowledge…in a word to form the complete gentleman.’  This form of foreign travel became the favourite pursuit of ‘the quality’ across Europe and produced a comprehensive literature in English.  It was not, however, confined to the English.  ‘Despite the scorn and scoffing it may have aroused among the English abroad it had, by the middle of the century (18^th), become an integral part of upper-class Irish life…’ Among such well known travellers were James Caulfield (4^th Viscount Charlemont, spent seven years abroad), Frederick Augustus Hervey (4^th Earl of Bristol) and George Berkley, the philosopher.

Richard Pococke was one such traveller.  ‘An Englishman by birth but Irish by adoption’ was how his biographer described him.  Although appointed to important clerical positions in the Church of Ireland as early as 1725 (aged about 21) he remained an absentee for about twenty years until he was appointed to very senior positions, including the bishopric of the dioceses of Ossory and Meath.  Returning from one of his tours, a visit to Egypt in 1741, he climbed Mt Ida in Crete, visited Naples and climbed Vesuvius twice and descended into the caldera, before going on to Geneva.
  It was his meeting, in Geneva, with William Wyndham that was the catalyst that led to their visit to Chamonix and the Mer de Glace that they explored on 17th June 1741.

This visit and Windham’s accounts of it that followed ‘marked the beginning of glacier tourism’ and Pococke came to be regarded as the pioneer of Alpine travel.

For more information on Richard Pococke's travels see:

Finnegan, Rachel (ed) Letters from abroad: the Grand Tour Correspondence of Richard Pococke and Jeremiah Milles, Pococke Press, Kilkenny 2011. pp 2

'Buck' Whaley:

has been described as 'Ireland's greatest adventurer'.  From his childhood he had wanted to explore distant lands.  In 1788 he undertook a ten month journey from Dublin to Jerusalem for a wager and this may have been the inspiration for Jules Verne's Around the world in 80 days. When he returned in 1789 he became an overnight celebrity.

The first ascent of Mont Blanc had been in 1786.  In Chamonix in 1792 during another 'Grand Tour' Whaley read an account of the ascent and decided that he would add his name to those of others at the summit.  With three English friends, none of whom had significant mountaineering experience, they hired twenty local guides and nonchalantly set off  on the climb 'as if on a pleasure trip'.

Gite a Balmat 

  It all went horribly wrong. In trying to reach the Gite a Balmat     conditions deteriorated to heavy rain and thick, icy fog. 

  Dislodged  boulders badly injured two of the guides and the others     decided to retreat.  The 'Gentlemen' considered continueing without the   guides but thought better of it.  In his memoirs, written some years   later,  he claimed that they had been two thirds of the way to the   summit  and that an avalanche had caused them to return and had killed two guides!

This was the first attempt to climb Mont Blanc by an Irishman.

Reckless and impulsive, he squandered a fortune through gambling and died aged 34 in 1800.

The full story of his incredible life and adventures is told by

David Ryan, in Buck Whaley, Ireland's greatest adventurer (Merrion Press 2019);

and his Alpine adventure by: G.R de Beer in The Alpine Journal, No 55, Oct 1946

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