A Feast of Many Courses

J. Monroe Thorington

The literature of mountaineering is replete with references to food and drink, running the gamut from feast to famine. The Swiss humanist, Rhellicanus, ascended the Stockhorn in 1536, and left the earliest formula for a proper start:

"We rise and breakfast, grip our alpenstocks,

To make our foothold sure upon the rocks,

And help us up the peak.”

Assistance was almost always available. The knight, Rotario d’Asti,1 making the first ascent of the Rochemelon (the earliest Alpine snow peak to be climbed), near Susa, in 1358, was accompanied by local men. Villamont, who followed in 1588, was guided by two marrons, who carried provisions for two days and told him the mountain was nearly four leagues in height. At that time it was thought to be the highest summit of the Alps.

The gentlemen of the eighteenth century who ventured above tree-line made certain that there would be enough to eat, and were willing to subsidize the peasantry into carrying comestibles for them.

William Windham, the bicententenary of whose death fell in 1961, was a member of the first English group to visit the Montanvert. This was on a fine June day in 1741, and in the Account of the Glacieres, a letter written to Peter Martel, he says: "We took with us several Peasants, some to be our guides and others to carry Wine and Provisions. In order to prevent those among us who were the most in wind, from fatiguing the rest, by pushing on too fast, we made the following Rules: That no one should go out of his Rank; That he who led the way should go a slow and even Pace; That who ever found himself fatigued or out of Breath, might call for a Halt; And, lastly, that whenever we found a Spring we should drink some of our Wine, mixed with Water, and fill up the Bottles, we had emptied, with Water, to serve us at other Halts where we should find none.” This, of course, assured attainment of a moderate goal in a satisfying state of exhilaration, and they dined at the flat block on the glacial moraine still known as the "Englishmen’s Stone.”2 They spent half an hour on the ice and drank "in Ceremony Admiral Vernon’s health and Success to the British Arms.”

Martel, who was encouraged to repeat the journey a year later, took "seven Men both to assist us in climbing, and to carry Provisions. We descended toward the Ice, and got behind a kind of Mound, of great Stones which the Ice had raised. In this Place we dressed our Victuals, and dined under the Shade of a great Rock.”

It was not always so pleasant. "Starving men are early risers,” said an old explorer, and one recalls the catastrophes of falling rucksacks containing all the eatables, or of important flasks shattered on a rocky corner. In a crowded hut, with wet clothing steaming above the stove, a procession of guides and guideless contends for a soup kettle; there are stormbound days when food runs low and one searches the cupboards for crumbs the mice have overlooked.

Richard Lassels3 describes the primitive conditions encountered during his traverse of the Simplon pass at the end of the seventeenth century: "It was toward the very beginning of October when we passed that way, and therefore found that Hill in good humour; otherwise it is forward enough. Haueing in one Houres time crawled up the steep of the Hill, we had two houres more rideing to the Village and Inn of Sampion: where arriueing we found little meat for our great stomacks, and cold comfort for all the hot stincking Stoue.”

When Charles Weld,4 librarian of the Royal Society, crossing the Graian Alps in 1849, stopped at Tignes and put up "Chez Bock,” dinner was a meagre affair of eggs, bread, cheese and wine. But next morning the aubergiste promised "a capital déjeuner à la fourchette.” " 'Ha!,’ I said, 'a very fat hare I see.’ 'A hare, sir!’ replied M. Bock starting aside at my profound ignorance; 'no, sir, a cat!—a tom-cat—and as fine a one as ever was seen.’ ”

The inns of remote villages that saw few travellers in a year could not be expected to provide the trout and partridges and Vino d’Asti of the Hotel Royal at Lanslebourg. But Tignes had not improved by 1859, when William Mathews, chez Florentin, ate "winter mutton, rather like a piece of mahogany board, sliced into thin shreds with a very blunt knife.” At Bonneval he was offered two objects resembling roasted cricket balls, which proved to be marmots’ heads, and when split open with a knife and a geological hammer were found to contain nothing at all.

Away from the beaten track one could never be sure of fair accommodation. "Off this,” T. G. Bonney said of the Dauphiné, "everything is of the poorest kind; fresh meat can only be obtained at rare intervals, the bread and wine are equally sour, the auberges are filthy, and the beds entomological vivaria! ’’

Seventy years ago Clinton Dent,5 a former president of the Alpine Club, commented on the recurrent theme of contemporary narratives: "The mode in which the danger attacked them varied within certain restricted limits, but it always occurred and the escape was always narrow, the peril over, they remarked that they breathed freely again, and then at once fell to eating.”

Certainly the early mountaineers intended to be comfortable. They knew nothing of calories or Primus stoves, without doubt would have scorned pemmican and dehydrated provender, and rejected with horror the strange combinations of snow, jam and incongruous additions, which have seemed Lucullan to exhausted climbers of a later day. A century ago few expeditions demanded economy of weight or concentrated diet. It was seldom necessary to be away from an inn for more than one or, at most, two nights. In the absence of huts there was little chance of cooking, once the snow-line had been passed. Vitamins were unknown and, by our standards, the climber’s diet was not balanced. However absurd it may seem, one leaves the contemporary narratives with the impression that the mountaineer of the nineteenth century, in Chamonix at least, subsisted chiefly on roast chicken and champagne! Research along this line in other centers would undoubtedly uncover the same pattern except for regional variants in the choice of wine. It sets one to wondering whether we have lost something in our modernity. The important thing was a full belly, not a tabloid meal, and in those faraway days one could afford the required porters.

There were hardy men who could climb the Matterhorn up and down from Hotel Monte Rosa and be back for dinner on the same day, but they saw no reason for being Spartan if it could be avoided. Not everyone followed the example of John Tyndall who, on his solitary ascent of Monte Rosa in 1858, was content with a ham sandwich and a bottle of tea. Nor was it inevitable. To prove the point, C. E. Mathews,6 the annalist of Mont Blanc, in 1879 at the remote and ill-equipped Aiguille Grise hut, provided a banquet of five courses, including fresh trout, with café noir and liqueurs. The then president of the Club Alpino Italiano, Quintino Sella, was reported to be on the mountain, and was to be invited to this repast if he were found in the hut. Unfortunately he was camping on the rocks higher up, and it was not until early dawn of the next day that the two presidents met on the upper snows. It was an historic encounter, and in token of the cordial relations between the two clubs, Sella accepted an invitation to a dinner at Couttet’s, which came off with great éclat on the second night afterwards.

But equally elaborate affairs took place elsewhere. Because of his attachment to the Vignemale, highest peak of the French Pyrenees, Count Henry Russell,7 in 1882 and subsequent years had grottoes carved from the rock at high levels, in which he made prolonged sojourns, dispensing hospitality to French and British climbers. On one occasion in 1889, at an elevation of 3200 m., an extraordinary scene was enacted, "recalling an Arabian banquet displaced in temperature and altitude.” A capacious tent was raised on the snow of the Ossoue glacier before the grottoes; "columns sculptured in frozen snow flank the entrance and the approach is a lawn of red lichens, silene acaulis and androsace carnea. Persian carpets are spread and white napery. They decant vintage wines and carve a huge jambon de Bayonne . . . reclining on cushions they burn oriental perfumes and long Havana cigars.” It is worth noting that Russell, in his own words, had "the shape of a champagne bottle.”

John Ball, in his paper on Mountaineering Equipment, written for the Alpine Club a century ago, included a provision list which would scarcely satisfy a climber of the present time. A pound of rice per day, and tea as the only luxury (unless the small stone carried in the mouth to keep away thirst be included if swallowed) does not sound inviting.

When William Mathews, in a large party ascended Monte Rosa in 1856 and approached the base of the highest point, he noted: "Every now and then, when we stopped to rest, I was surprised to see the porters throw themselves onto the snow, and one by one they dropped down exhausted and drunk . . . appearing on the mountain side in continually diminishing perspective.”

W. T. Kirkpatrick8 suggested that guides were responsible for a large proportion of bottles marking the route up many well-known mountains, and that the assistance of these signposts made possible the rise of guide- less climbing.

Before 1859, when F. F. Tuckett9 made the first ascent of the Aletschhorn, he had invented "a wonderful apparatus, pot within pot, for boiling water at great heights, first for scientific and then for culinary purposes.” With this he revealed the possibilities of soup at a bivouac, but also held such high revel on the rocks above the Mittel Aletsch Glacier that some of his guides were unfit for the climb next day. This was long remembered. Clinton Dent, in 1907 at the Jubilee of the Alpine Club, spoke humorously of Tuckett (by then an honorary member) as "that volatile youth whose devotion to science was such that on his famous ascent of the Aletschhorn, being desirous of studying the expansion of gaseous bodies under a diminished atmospheric pressure, he carried with him to the top of that mountain, from purely scientific motives, a bottle of champagne.”

Because of the multiplicity of Mont Blanc narratives, it is in connection with this mountain that one discovers most about the gustatory procedures, and the astounding culinary impedimenta afford at least one explanation of recorded mountain sickness. The usual course of events, following the start of the caravan, stimulated by the cheers of the populace and a few potables, was an afternoon meal at the Pierre à l’Échelle before starting across the Glacier des Bossons; a lesser collation at the Grands Mulets (an uncomfortable eating place before the first hut was built) ; a minor celebration on the summit, champagne predominating over solid food; a triumphal reentry into Chamonix, with more champagne and, on the same or, usually, the following evening, a boisterous supper for the guides.

Dr. Hamel,10 on his disastrous attempt in 1820, included in his equipment, a closed pot to demonstrate cooking at high altitudes.

John Auldjo,11 whose book describing the ascent of 1827 is enlivened by lithographs from his own drawings, breakfasted with his entire party on a sagging snow bridge!

Dr. Martin Barry,12 gave a supper for his guides at the Hôtel de l’Union on the evening after his success in 1834, at which Jacques Balmat was present and told of his experience nearly 50 years before.

The ascent of Mile. d’Angeville13 in 1838 is of interest in its recording of the expedition’s list of provisions:

2 gigots de mouton

2 longes de veaux

24 poulets

6 pains de 3 à 4 livres

18 bouteilles de vin de St. Jean

1 bouteille d’eau-de-vie de Cognac

1 bouteille de sirop de capillaire

1 baril de vin ordinaire

12 citrons

3 livres de sucre

3 livres de chocolat

3 livres de pruneaux

These were the general items for the large group, including guides and porters, but Mile. d’Angeville had the foresight to bring for her personal use: 1 blancmanger, 1 gourde d’orgeat, 1 gourde de limonade, 1 pot de bouillon de poulet. She dined so heartily at the Pierre à l’Échelle that she had no appetite at the Grands Mulets although, after a tent was erected, she sketched, acknowledged the greetings of two parties that arrived subsequently, and listened with pleasure to the singing of the guides.

Dr. Harry Allen Grant,14 an American physician who attempted Mont Blanc in 1839, took 18 guides, "and six more, after seeing the preparations of eatables and drinkables the landlord had prepared for our journey, volunteered to accompany us, for the privilege of free access to our haversacks.” He observes that "as thirst increases, the desire for food diminishes, until it becomes an actual loathing. This was experienced not only by myself, but to a great extent even by the guides, who at the Grands Mulets devoured the fattest kind of roast and boiled meat with the greatest goût, but at the Grand Plateau cared for nothing more than the wing of a chicken, refusing positively the hearty meats, but swallowed with infinite satisfaction the Bordeaux wine which I had carried for my own use.”

When Albert Smith,15 with three companions, sixteen guides and a score of porters made the ascent in 1851, the amazing list of food and drink added 450 francs (£45 or $225) to the expedition’s cost. One wonders what it must have weighed!

60 bottles of vin ordinaire 6 bottles of Bordeaux

10 bottles of St. George

15 bottles of St. Jean

3 bottles of cognac

1 bottle of syrup of raspberries

6 bottles of lemonade

1 bottles of champagne

20 loaves

10 small cheeses

6 packets of chocolate

6 packages of sugar

4 packets of prunes

4 packets of raisins

2 packets of salt

4 wax candles

6 lemons

4 legs of mutton

4 shoulders of mutton

6 pieces of veal

1 piece of beef

11 large fowls

35 small fowls

At the Grands Mulets the guides held an exciting contest by racing the empty bottles down the snow. The return to Chamonix was followed by a festive table in the courtyard of the Hôtel de Londres, decked with bouquets and champagne bottles, an additional noisy party being held at the same time by young Sir Robert Peel, who was visiting the village.

Four views of the 1853 ascent were printed in oil colours by Baxter16 from John MacGregor’s sketches. Albert Smith accompanied the climbers as far as the Grands Mulcts, where the first wooden hut had recently been completed. In the letter-press accompanying the prints one reads: "The highest point of Europe. More earth to be seen from hence than ever again by any of us! Look quickly for you must soon go down. Very well then, where’s the champagne? Let’s feast on that wretched fowl’s body, whose case has been reserved for discussion before this high court. From a leathern cup we quaffed, to the Queen’s health, what hissed and brightly sparkled like bubbling fire.”

The provision list of Dr. Israel Tisdale Talbot17 who, in 1854, made the second American ascent of the mountain, was, per capita, larger than that of Albert Smith. For a party of ten he took:

6 large loaves of bread

2 quarters of roast veal

2 legs of roast mutton

1 boiled ham

3 boiled tongues

1 large piece of roast beef

12 chickens

2 turkeys

5 lbs. chocolate

5 lbs. sugar

4 lbs. figs

3 lbs. dates

12 lemons

4 bottles of Bordeaux

10 bottles of vin ordinaire

1 small cask of vin ordinaire

1 bottle of brandy

The small cask of wine was for the dinner at Pierre à l’Échelle. The bottle of brandy, surprisingly, was returned unopened. Misfortune befell them next morning at the Grands Mulets. "In the hot chocolate we were sadly disappointed; for, after spending more than a half hour in melting the ice and nicely preparing our beverage, to drink at the last moment before starting, with surprise and chagrin we found that a pair of the guides’ mittens, made of chamois skin, had been boiling in the bottom of the kettle during the whole time. They had fallen into the kettle during the night, and in the dark had been unnoticed by the porter as he filled it.” There was a celebration (champagne, bouquets and a triumphal arch) at Chamonix when the party returned, and supper for the guides the following evening, with toasts, speeches and songs.

Through more than a century the pot story recurs in many variants. K. Lukan, in Tausend Gipfel (1960), tells of a meal in the Aigle hut after a traverse of the Meije, when a much-rusted reserve Mauerhaken appeared in the noodle-kettle, and even a liberal application of pepper could not eliminate the taste of well-spiced railroad track! Breakfast on the following morning also lacked the gourmet touch, softened butter in a rucksack having combined with glacier-cream, chocolate and salami rind.

An American, George Heard,18 who went to the Jardin with a young Etonian, K. A. Chapman, in 1835, wrote: "We dined at this lovely spot and very well, too. Knives and forks were scarce; and chickens were devoured much in the same way as they are at Eton on Election Saturday or 4th of June. Neither, to make the simile complete, was champagne wanting, as the French lady and gentleman had some, of which they gave us a goodly share.”

The same party made the third American ascent of Mont Blanc19 not long afterward. "In the evening we gave the guides a dinner, as is customary, and a grand one it was; the keeper of the hotel was so pleased that he gave each guide a bottle of the best Burgundy. We invited several to dine with us, & of course, Mons. Balmat [Auguste, nephew of Jacques— Ed.]; we were a merry set. I don’t mean we drank so much wine as to make us so, which was not true, but we had a real good-natured festivity. Some persons, interested in the occasion, brought a cannon near the hotel & fired it during the dinner & so we ate amidst what a Fourth of July orator would call 'the thunder of artillery & the applause of the surrounding spectators.’ ”

Charlotte Fairbanks,20 who waited at the Grands Mulets while her brother, Henry, ascended in 1856, described their return: "Just as we reached the village we heard the cannon from our hotel which announced our arrival. Instantly the streets were filled with most curious faces— peasants and visitors were all out and such an absurd sight. Henry and I walked first, followed by the guides with their axes and alpenstocks, and the crowd would make room for us to pass just as we came to them. Until we reached the hotel, cannon were firing, & crowds following us, but we were not relieved from this most embarrassing position even then, for we found the hotel keeper ready to meet us with a bouquet of beautiful flowers . . . and all together drank champagne. In the evening a continued firing was kept up, and bands playing under our windows.”

George Heard,21 who followed his 1855 ascent by a second in 1857, records: "We arrived safely at the Pierre à l’Échelle at the base of the

Aiguille du Midi, the spot where the ladder is kept, & where parties always stop for the first meal, the 'Déjeuner’ as they call it, after leaving Chamonix. Knapsacks were thrown off,—mutton, beef, chicken, bread and cheese are handed round & readily accepted. Kegs of wine are put on tap, and a bottle of brandy, as it passes from hand to hand is soon emptied by a series of sips to the success of the enterprise. We rested there nearly an hour, & then got ready to cross the 'Glacier des Bossons.’ ”

Thomas Hinchliff, writing in Peaks, Passes and Glaciers (1859), the predecessor of the Alpine Journal, describes a contemporary scene above Zermatt: "The knapsacks were emptied and used as seats, bottles of red wine were stuck upright in the snow; a goodly leg of mutton on its sheet of paper formed the centre, garnished with hard eggs and bread and cheese, round which we ranged ourselves in a circle. High festival was held under the deep blue heavens, and now and then, as we looked up at the wonderful wall of rocks we had descended, we congratulated ourselves on the victory. Mr. Seiler’s oranges supplied the rare luxury of a desert.” There were fewer amenities in the neighboring Saas valley when Clinton Dent22 took the Burgeners there in 1870. The boots of the hotel appeared later as the waiter, undertook the duties of chambermaid, and turned out to be the proprietor. "I find a record of the dinner served. There were ten dishes, exclusive of what Americans term fixings. As to the nature of nine I cannot speak with certainty. The tenth I have reason to think was a blackbird that had died of starvation, and was bulged out by the chef with extraneous matter. . . .No luxurious provisions did we take with us. Some remarkable red wine, so sour that it forced you to turn your head round when you drank it, filled one knapsack. The other was stored with some slices of bread with parallel strata of a greasy nature intervening. These articles of diet were wrapped in an old number of the Pall Mall Gazette, and called sandwiches. However, the fat did my boots good.” Tourists at the close of the century were not much better off, and as in A. D. Godley’s much-quoted poem, "Switzerland” (1899),

"They will dine on mule and marmot, and on mutton made of goat,

They will face the various honors of Helvetian table-d’hôtes.

John Wilkinson,23 on his descent from Mont Blanc in 1866, noted that "the hotels were decorated with French and American flags, cannon and champagne forming the usual climax.” It was seldom that an individual gave orders that no cannon were to be fired on his return. The majority had a secret hankering for it, which they were half-ashamed to own up to. Occasionally it led to near-tragedy, as when two gardeners almost lost their eyesight from looking down the bore of a cannon to find out the reason why the charge had not exploded.

Toward the end of the century these celebrations became too expensive, possibly too commonplace; but they died out when the innkeepers began adding the costs to the travellers’ bills. Thereafter, a bottle of St. Julien on the summit typifies ensuing austerity. One wonders what became of all the cannon; no example is to be found in the Alpine historical collections at Chamonix.

Conviviality in mountaineering circles is assumed but seldom alluded to. Gaiety has never emerged in a more unlikely place than when Meta Brevoort’s party gained the summit of Mont Blanc, with champagne flowing, the "Marseillaise” sung and a quadrille danced. The date was October 3, 1865, six weeks after the Matterhorn accident.

When Albert Smith’s London Show24 was at the height of its popularity, there were gatherings at Egyptian Hall on the nights preceding a change in the form of entertainment. There was a liberal supply of champagne and oysters, and guests were summoned by witty invitations in the form of passports. On the night of January 21, 1854, for example, there were among those present Francois Favret, the Chamonix guide, Dr. Hamel, John Auldjo, John MacGregor and, of course, Albert Smith as master of ceremonies. This was a notable contingent from Mont Blanc to meet in a London room, at a date when no Alpine Club existed as a bond between mountaineers.

The Alpine Club, founded in 1857, within four years had a membership of 158, and was expanding not only into a wining and dining club but into an important society as well. Anthony Trollope and John Ruskin were among the early guests, and it should not be forgotten that this and nearly all related organizations had their beginnings in a dinner and were kept alive by such gatherings.

There can even be a club within a club,25 and one which arose long before 1885 had its own note-paper bearing an embossed crest which included a black waiter on the left and a green guide on the right, a black-and-blue shield in between and, below, the words "Curre per Alpes.” A. W. Moore interpreted this as follows: "A small number of the A. C.’s have for years past dined together before the meetings, and the device is their private property now superseded for postcards! The man in black symbolises a waiter, he in green a guide, the sole idea of the community being dining and climbing. The bloody hand grips—a carving knife. The falling figure is prophetic of the fate which will not improbably befall us, while the chamois grins with serene happiness from the elevated and exalted position which the faller vainly strove to reach!”

In one of our favorite books, C. E. Montague’s The Right Place, we are told that "There are many courses to this feast,” and it is evident that a large volume could not contain the record of the innumerable gatherings of clubs, the festive banquets, the luxurious menus, the rare wines and long-remembered speeches. Only a few can be included here.

In August, 1832, Alexander Dumas26 crossed the Col de Balme and arrived at Chamonix, with three things in mind: 1. To take a bath; 2. To have supper; 3. To extend an invitation to dinner on the following evening to Monsieur Jacques Balmat, dit Mont Blanc. Over the wine he held the famous interview concerning the first ascent of Mont Blanc, in which Balmat so belittled the part taken by Dr. Paccard that the published version produced the Paccard versus Balmat controversy, which took Alpine historians 125 years to resolve.

Because of the Paris Exhibition in 1878, the International Congress of Alpine Clubs27 was held at the Palace of the Tuileries instead of in the mountains. It was continued informally at the fête of Fontainebleau on September 10, when a banquet was held in the Great Gallery of Henry II, the hall being lit by hundreds of candles. The distinguished actor of the Comedie Française, Mounet-Sully, himself a member of the Club Alpin Français, recited in the charming little theater of the palace. M. Joanne, of guidebook fame, was in the chair, the presidents of the English and Swiss clubs were present, as well as a delegation of 30 members of the C. A. I. The menu was tempting and the dinner superbly served, the band of the 11th Hussars providing music from the garden. A toast was drunk to the prosperity and increasing union of all European Alpine Clubs, and M. Foucher de Careil, a senator and one of the founders of the C. A. F., made an amusing speech in which he mentioned the right which each Englishman reserved to himself of breaking his own neck as one of the most dearly prized of the many blessings of Habeas Corpus. The audience adjourned to the garden, where a magnificent display of fireworks was provided.

On December 31, 1903, the second annual dinner of the American Alpine Club was held in New York at the rooms of the Aldine Association. Twenty-eight members and guests attended. The menu offered "Mt. McKinley pemmican” and salad "a la Goodsir.” President Fay had made the first ascent of Mount Goodsir during the summer and Dr. F. A. Cook, who was present, had attempted Mount McKinley from the west.

An exceptionally brilliant dinner was tendered by the club to its honorary member, the Duke of the Abruzzi, on May 28, 1907, at the Hotel Astor in New York. Admiral Peary also attended, and both made brief speeches. Cakes of clear ice, fashioned to resemble a mountain and illuminated from within by electric light bulbs, were a feature of the dessert course. Diminutive climbers in full equipment swarmed over the peaks.

The Alpine Club Centenary Meet28 at Zermatt started with an official dinner at the Monte Rosa Hotel on August 19, 1957, 117 members (several of whom were also members of the A. A. C.) and guests being present. After an apéritif of Cordon Rouge at the Matterhorn Stube of the Mont Cervin Hotel, the party set out for Hotel Monte Rosa, escorted by the Zermatt band, who subsequently played outside the hotel. The dining room was arranged with one long table stretching the full length of the room and several small tables at right angles to it. Swiss flags and Union Jacks adorned one wall, and wild flowers were arranged in patterns along all the tables. Grace was said by the Lord Bishop of Leicester. The menu and the list of well-chosen wines were recorded. A one-metre-high relief of the Matterhorn, coated with chocolate and sugar, and with the Hörnli hut made of solid chocolate was brought in and placed before the president, and remained in the dining room for the next fortnight. This was followed with singing by the Zermatt choir. Speeches and adjournment to the Mont Cervin bar kept the party alive until 2 a.m.

The Centenary Dinner29 was held on November 6, 1957, at the Dorchester Hotel in London, and was one of the most representative gatherings ever to have taken place. Four hundred and ten persons were present, the date being chosen to correspond with that of the historic dinner at The Leasowes in 1857 which led to the founding of the club shortly after. Seven members, who were also members of the American Alpine Club, including the president and four past-presidents, flew the Atlantic or otherwise arrived for the occasion. The great T-shaped top table, flanked by numerous smaller round ones, all gaily decorated with flowers, the sparkle and glitter of many orders, made a colorful scene.

The menu was adorned by a colored print of Grindelwald and the Wetterhorn after the original by J. J. Biedermann, and on the first page was the message from H. R. H. Prince Philip, Honorary Member of the A. C. Mr. John C. Oberlin, president of the American Alpine Club, replied to the toast for the English guests, stating that the English spokesman had backed out, so now "all guests must be content with a response by a foreigner in a foreign language!” The menu featured Le Blanc de Faisan aux Chanterelles des Alpes, and for dessert each table received a delectable mound of ice-cream covered with chocolate, Le Mont Blanc à la crême.30 Sir John Hunt took the chair, Tensing was among the guests, and one listened to eloquent speeches by such men as Lord Hailsham, G. W. Young and Dr. Tom Longstaff. The excitement of the evening will long be remembered.

The Centenary Reception31 was held on December 9 in the Great Hall of Lincoln’s Inn, 550 members and guests attending, H. M. the Queen and H. R. H. Prince Philip having graciously announced their intention of being present.

To conclude this incomplete survey we must mention an unusual banquet:32 "A very wealthy lady in Chicago, noted for her daring feats as an expert climber in Switzerland, once gave a dinner on the roof of her house. The guests being all amateur climbers were previously invited to attend the dinner in mountaineering garb. The house was transformed into a miniature copy of Mont Blanc. The lady herself received the guests at the entrance and after being fastened with ropes in the usual manner they climbed to the summit guided by the hostess, where a sumptuous dinner was awaiting the merry mountaineers.”

This paper has resulted from an amusing investigation, and is written for a Club within a club, for those whose memories reach far back and for whom the 4000 m. contour is now as far away as the moon. Waistlines no longer concern them, but they maintain in the convivial reunion of a club dinner their cherished contact with the Spirit of the Hills.

1 Les Voyages de Seigneur Villamont (1598). The word marron is Savoyard patois and means guide. See J. M. Thorington "Sledging à la Ramasse”, A. J. 53, 59.

2 J. M. Thorington, "La Pierre des Anglais”, A. J. 48, 140.

3 The Voyage of Italy (1670).

4 Michael Roberts, "English Travellers in the Graians”, A. J. 56, 253.

5 ''Mountaineering” (Badminton series, 1892).

6 Ronald Clark, The Victorian Mountaineers, 16; A. J. 22, 599.

7 Souvenirs d’un Montagnard (2nd edit., 1885); Ann. du C. A. F. (1888), 21; A. J. 24, 503; A. C. Register, ii, 305; Robin Fedden, "Russell and the Vignemale”, A. J. 65, 83; W. F. Heald, "Man in Love with a Mountain’’, Appal., xxxiii, 479.

8 A. J. 22, 555.

9 Hort, Life and Letters (1896), i, 446.

10 J. M. Thorington, "Dr. Hamel, Impassive Scientist”, A. J. 58, 171.

11 J. M. Thorington, "John Auldjo, Fortunate Traveller”, A. J. 58, 460.

12 J. M. Thorington, “Martin Barry, Quaker Microscopist”, A. J. 59, 20.

13 Mary Paillon, "Mile d’Angeville”, Ann du C. A. F., 1893.

14 "An Attempt on Mont Blanc in 1839”, A. A. J. ii, 496.

15 The Story of Mont Blanc (1853). J. M. Thorington, Mont Blanc Sideshow (1932).

16 J. M. Thorington, "Notes on Early Ascents”, A. J. 47, 125.

17 "The Second American Ascent of Mont Blanc”, A. A. J. iii, 70.

18 The Times, Sept. 9, 1855.

19 "The Third American Ascent of Mont Blanc”, A. A. J. iii, 188.

20 "An American Ascent of Mont Blanc in 1856”, A. A. J. ii, 357.

21 "An American Reascends Mont Blanc”, A. A. J. iii, 319.

22 A. J. 11, 385.

23 A. A. J. ii, 370.

24 J. M. Thorington, “Albert Smith’s Mont Blanc”, A. J. 58, 3.

25 Clark, loc. cit., 83.

26 A. Dumas, Impressions de Voyage (1833); H. Dübi, Paccard wider Balmat (1913), 184.

27 A. J. 9, 155.

28 A. J. 63, 51.

29 A. J. 63, 61.

30 Evidently invented for retired climbers, the original Mont Blanc aux Marrons consists of chestnut purée in rum syrup, put through a pastry bag onto meringues and decorated with whipped-cream rosettes and coarse chocolate (Cordon Bleu Cook Book). Another version substitutes candied fruit for chocolate, but gourmets assure one that such garnishing is equivalent to adding pineapple juice to fine Scotch. The Italian Monte Bianco eliminates these doubtful additions and studs the whipped cream with pastry-curls called cialdoni.

31 A. J. 63, 80.

32 J. Rey, The Whole Art of Dining (1921). The hostess may have been Harriet Monroe, founder of American Poetry. She had a real interest in mountaineering, and died in Peru in 1936 while climbing at about 8000 feet.