Count Henry Russell (The man who married a mountain)

Russell's father was Thomas John Russell, who was feudal baron of Killough, County Down, and a relative of Charles Russell, later Baron Russell of Killowen. 

Thomas John Russell emigrated to France aged 22 to escape anti-Catholic discrimination in Ireland. He fought in the Papal Army in 1860 and was made a Papal Count in 1862. Henry was born in Toulouse on St Valentine's Day 1834 to Thomas' second wife, Marie-Josephine-Aglaë-Ferdinande, daughter of the Marquis de Flamarens.

 Henry was educated in Ireland at Clongowes Wood College, and later studied chemistry at Dublin University.  He made regular trips to the west of Ireland, where he fell in love with the wild landscape and developed a love of mountain grandeur.

His family often returned to the Pyrenees and he grew up bilingual.

From 1861, Russell became devoted to the exploration of the Pyrenees.  He is especially known for his ascents of the Vignemale.  He had seen it for the first time with his mother at age six.  He climbed it for the first time on 14 September 1861 with the guide Laurent Passet. H he loved it so much that he climbed it 33 times and, with local masons, he dug numerous 'cave-homes' near the summit. and even declared that: 'She will be my spouse'

This was the era that the Alps were being climbed and explored but most of the Pyrenees remained untouched.  He preferred the Pyrenees - they inspired tenderness, the Alps terror and he made more than thirty 'First Ascents' there with and without guides.  A man of incredible stamina, he often walked for twelve hours at a stretch, conquering new peaks or visiting old favourites.  Apart from Vignemale he climbed Pic du Midi thirty times.

He contributed to the foundation of two organisations: Société Ramond to honour Ramonde  Carbonnieres, an early writer and traveller in the Pyrenees; and Club Alpin Français (CAF), the French Alpine Club and initiated the construction of the refuges (mountain huts), of which there are now  more than 100.

Anniversary edition.

Caves on Vignemale

He is well remembered in the region with a large bronze statue in Gavarnie, a peak named after him and a street in Pau. 

Sheepskin Sleeping bag.

   For further details of his mountaineering, see:

In search of peaks, passes and glaciers,  By Frank Nugent (Collins Press);

The man who married a mountain, Paul Clements, in Vol 3, IMEHS journal, Mountaineering Ireland

The man who married a mountain, Rosemary Bailey,  (Bantam)

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People involved (a list with links)

The following are some of the people involved with mountains, mainly during the 19th Century.  There will be further additions to the list in due course.

 John Ball                                                                1 Mary Burtchell

 Charles Barrington                                                 2 Susan Gavan Duffy

 Richard Barrington                                                 3 Elizabeth Hawkins-Whithed

 James Bryce                                                           4 Elizabeth Le Blond

 Edmund Burke                                                       5 Mrs Main

 Arthur David Mc Cormick                                      6 Mary Tighe

 Richard Cotter                                                        7 Beatrice Tomasson 

 Darby Field                                                             8 Louisa Tyndall

Tom Fitzpatrick                                                     9. Frederica Plunkett

Robert James Graves

William Spottswood Green

Ewart Grogan

 Henry Chichester Hart

Brian Merriman

John Palliser

Richard Pococke

Anthony Adams Reilly

Henry Russell

Henry Swanzy

John Tyndall

Buck Whaley

Arthur Oliver Wheeler

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Outside the Alps

Bryce.  Wikipedia

 The Golden Age of Alpinism is generally agreed to have ushered in a sustained period of mountain climbing in the Alps that made fashionable the idea of mountaineering as a sporting activity.  In the period between 1854 and 1865 thirty six summits higher than 4,000m (13,000 ft) were first climbed, 31 of them by British parties and their guides: we have seen that a significant number of the climbers were Irish.  

A notable feature of the people undertaking this activity was that they were wealthy.  It required substantial financial resources to travel to the Alps, spend at least a couple of weeks there and to hire the necessary porters and guides to undertake expeditions that may have lasted for a number of days.  John Tyndall's initial foray to the mountains may have been an exception because he 'got by very cheaply' but that was before he did 'serious' climbing.

The local people who climbed summits did so mainly at the behest of the 'wealthy tourists' who employed them as guides and porters because their knowledge and experience gained through hunting and other activities.

Russell. Wikipedia

Cotter

Many of the 'summiteers' wrote of the experiences and the result was that  the interest in climbing mountains spread to many other regions in the years following the Golden Age.  Some of the Irish who were involved in the second half of the 19th Century were the following and not all were wealthy:

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Richard Cotter in North America.

James Bryce in many places

Henry Russell in the Pyrenees.

William Spotswood Green in Canada and New Zealand.

More about all these to follow.

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.