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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Edmund Burke

 The prevailing attitude to mountains up to the late 18th C, even if they were regarded as sacred sites, was one of fear and awe.  They were the source of bad weather, one didn't venture into them lightly and according to a Swiss scientist 'they were the abode of dragons'.

Joseph Jacob Scheuchzer carried out extensive studies on the mountain environment.  His work on glaciology may have led to future exploration of mountain regions. His Proof of the Existence of Dragons may have expressed the generally held view of the era.  On the 'Grand Tour', if mountains were to be traversed, the curtains were drawn on the carriage windows lest the scenes were too dramatic.

Edmund Burke was an 18th C Irish author, political theorist, philosopher and Whig politician in the Westminster Parliament.  He was not the first  to discuss the concept of the 'sublime'.  Before him most writers on the subject "agreed that pleasant feeling of awe, delight, and admiration were the result of contemplating mountain ranges ..."  In his   A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful he developed, uniquely, a physiological theory of beauty and sublimity and was the first to explain the concepts in terms of the process of perception and its effect upon the perceiver. 

His ideas on this can be seen to have influenced many of the poets and painters of the Romantic Era leading up to the early years of the 19th C.  In England the key figures of the romantic movement are considered to include the poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron and Shelley and artists such as Constable and Turner and the works of such people had a significant influence in the change of attitude towards nature, wilderness and the mountain environment.

Mary Tighe

An almost forgotten Irish poetess was Mary Tighe (1772-1810).  Her writing is said to have influenced Keats, Byron and Shelley and the Irish lyricist Thomas Moore among others.  A number of her poems extolled the beauties of the mountains, woods and lakes around Killarney after her visit there in about 1800.

Robert James Graves (1796-1853) was a Dublin surgeon, who travelled widely in Europe and on one visit in the Swiss Alps, Graves became acquainted with the painter JMW Turner. They travelled and sketched together for several months, eventually parting company in Rome.

In general it would have been the wealthy middle and upper classes that would have been familiar with the works of such poets and artists and 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 become the motivation for the phenomenon that become known as the 'Grand Tour'.

By Mary Tighe

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Charles Barrington - Eigerman

 A Dublin merchant from a Quaker family, was  born at Fassaroe, near Enniskerry, Co Wicklow in 1834

Courtesy: R.Barrington:F.Nugent

As part of his European 'Grand Tour' he visited the Bernese Oberland and on August 9th 1858 he climbed the Jungfrau (4,158m) - the highest summit in the range - accompanied by guides Christian Almer and Peter Bohren, from Grindelwald.

Two days later, with the same two guides, he made the first ascent of the Eiger (3,970m).

Despite these impressive achievements he never returned to the Alps.

Other interests included steeplechasing, hunting, shooting and yachting and  was the owner, trainer and jockey of the horse that won the first Irish Grand  National, using an alias to disguise his identity.

 He provided the prize for the winner of the first Irish hill-running event,  held  on the Sugar Loaf mountain in Co Wicklow.  It seems that he was inspired by an event he witnessed in the English Lake District

Modern West Flank Route, very similar to that followed by Barrington

Courtesy:  Summit Post

See: In search of Peaks, Passes and Glaciers by Frank Nugent for more detail.

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Playground of Europe

 'How the English made the Alps'  is Jim Ring's book in which he explains how the English, during the 19th century, were gradually taking over the Alps, scaling their peaks, driving railways through them, and introducing both winter sports and their social institutions.

As we have seen,  this movement was driven by the influence of the Romantic poets, painters, writers and the impresario Albert Smith;  the effect of which was that an alpine visit - 'glacier tourism' - became an essential part of the Grand Tour that became an almost mandatory part of the education of a certain class.

As Jim Ring points out, from the point of view of  the locals, the tourists in question were 'English speaking' but were, in fact, English, Irish, Scots and Welsh. 

Of course there were people in the 'Alpine' countries who were exploring their mountains, e.g. -:

Gottlieb Studer (1804-1890) was Swiss and a prolific climber and topographer - '(his) descriptions of the less known parts of the Alpine chains, are appreciated by all Alpine travellers'' (John Ball, 1st President of the Alpine Club).

Placidus a Spescha, (1752-1833) also Swiss, a Benedictine monk and self taught mountaineer, spent fifty years exploring and climbing and was a pioneer of alpinism in the eastern Swiss Alps up to 1833.

Peter Carl Thurwieser (1789-1865) was a pioneer in the Austrian Alps, had many first ascents and was 'the first man who climbed for the sake of climbing... the first real "mountaineer"', according to WAB Coolidge.

John Ball

However, it was the surge in British, i.e. English speaking, tourists that led to  the designation of a ten year period, 1854 -1865, as the Golden Age of Alpinism.  During this period 36 summits higher than 4,000m were first climbed, 31 of them by British parties with their guides; hidden under this term, a significant number of the leading figures were from Ireland.

This 'Golden Age' saw the foundation of the Alpine Club (1857), a London gentlemen's club, the world's first mountaineering association, that was described  disparagingly as a club for 'walking steeply uphill'.

Its first president was John Ball, born in Dublin and an indefatigable Alpine traveller who explored the whole range of the Alps before and after the arrival  of the railways.

More on the Irish in the Golden Age of Alpinism to follow.

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