Douglas William Freshfield (27 April 1845 – 9 February 1934) was a British lawyer, mountaineer and author, who edited theAlpine Journalfrom 1872 to 1880. He was president of both theRoyal Geographical Society and theAlpine Club. He was also the founding president of theGeographical Association. He served from 1897 to 1911, the longest serving president in the history of the Association.
Born inLondon, Freshfield was the only son ofHenry Ray Freshfield and his wifeJane Quinton Crawford. His father was a notable lawyer and member of the family firm ofFreshfields. His mother was the daughter ofWilliam Crawford, MP for the City of London (1833–1841), who had made a fortune in theEast India Company. She was an author and her publications included "Alpine Byways" and "A Tour of the Grisons" (the Swiss Alps now known asGraubünden).
In an interview with Adolfo Hess, Freshfield recalls that his family loved to take long holidays in the summer of up to five weeks. He recalls that when he was six, they visitedLodore Falls in theLake District, where he was disappointed that the waterfall was slowed due to a sandbank. The following year they travelled to Scotland. In 1854, they travelled to theSwiss Alps, going from Basel to Chamonix.[1] His father attached great importance to preserving open spaces for public enjoyment and was active in campaigns to saveHampstead Heath andAshdown Forest.
Freshfield was educated atEton College, andUniversity College, Oxford, where he obtained a degree incivil law andhistory. He was called to the bar in 1870.[2]
Freshfield was a keen traveller and mountaineer. From his childhood acquired a deep love of the mountains and was particularly fond of the Alps. In July 1867 he made the first ascent of theTour Ronde[3]: 130 and the col on its eastern side now bears the name 'Col Freshfield'.
By his twenties, Freshfield was already venturing further afield. In 1868 he made an attempt onElbrus with his Balkarian guide Akhia Sottaev, and although they failed to reach the higher Western summit, Freshfield was the first foreigner to reach the Eastern Summit.
Freshfield led an exploration of theCaucasus and was the first man, officially, to conquerKazbek with guides from the village Gergeti. He described the denuded territories ofAbkhazia in a moving chapter on 'The Solitude of Abkhazia', inThe Exploration of the Caucasus published in 1896.
In 1899 Douglas Freshfield travelled to Green Lakes accompanied by the Italian photographerVittorio Sella. He conducted expeditions aroundKangchenjunga (Khangchendzonga) and set out with his party to trek in a circle around Kangchenjunga from the North. When he arrived safely in atDzongri, he lit a big bonfire, which could be seen fromDarjeeling and theGovernor of Bengal ordered a Gun Salute to be fired in his honour. He also became the first mountaineer to examine the western face of Kangchenjunga, which rises from the Kanchenjunga Glacier. Freshfield describedSiniolchu as "The Most Superb Triumph of Mountain Architecture and The Most Beautiful Snow Mountain in the World".
In 1905 he attempted to climbRwenzori Abruzzi inUganda but failed due to bad weather. However the Freshfield Pass on the mountain was named after him.
Freshfield wrote extensively about travel and the Alps, editing theAlpine Journal from 1872 to 1880. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and became its joint secretary in 1881. At that time he was living at Stanhope Gardens, and by 1891 at Camden Hill, Hampstead. He was president of theAlpine Club from 1893 to 1895, chairman of theSociety of Authors from 1908 to 1909, and president of the Association of Geographical Teachers from 1897 to 1910.
In 1904, he was president of the Geographical Section of theBritish Association. He was awarded theFounder's Medal of theRoyal Geographical Society in 1903, became a vice-president of the society in 1906 and its president from 1914 until 1917. He became a trustee of the RGS in 1924.University College, Oxford made him an honorary fellow, and he was awarded honorary degrees ofDoctor of Civil Laws at theUniversity of Oxford and theUniversity of Geneva
Freshfield married Augusta Charlotte Ritchie (1847–1911) on 27 November 1869. She was the daughter ofWilliam Ritchie and the sister ofSir Richmond Ritchie. They had four daughters and a son, Henry Douglas Freshfield, who died aged fourteen in 1891. The family loss was the occasion of a memorial gift for the people ofForest Row in the form of a building to be used as a parochial hall and institute.
The first Freshfield Hall was very short-lived, for it was burnt down on 14 February 1895. Douglas Freshfield and his wife wasted no time in having it rebuilt and it reopened on 17 November 1895. At the reopening Freshfield expressed the wishes of his wife and himself when he hoped the hall would be used by all classes of parishioners, and that it would keep alive the memory of its original founder.[4]
Freshfield became a friend ofViolet Needham, a near neighbour at Forest Row. Cultivated and cultured as well as adventurous, Freshfield and Charles Needham have been seen in many Violet Needham heroes.[5]
Freshfield died at Wych Cross Place, Forest Row,Sussex. He is buried atBrookwood Cemetery in front of the memorial to his son Henry Douglas Freshfield (1877–1891), which was carved byEdward Onslow Ford. This memorial consists of a pediment displaying a relief ofApollo in his chariot below which is a bas-relief group of two naked putti with inverted torches, emblems of death, above which is a profile portrait of the young Henry Freshfield wearing an Eton collar. The monument has beenGrade II listed since 2004.[6][7]
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Freshfield's mother was a mountaineer and author as well, and considered it important to educate her son in the appreciation of nature and the arts. From an early age his parents took him on journeys which included the English Lake District and Scotland. When he was eight his father started taking the family on holiday inSwitzerland, particularly theAlps. The ten years of summer holidays in the Swiss and Italian Alps greatly impressed the child. He said, sixty years later, in an interview with Adolf Hess:
I think that, without any interruption, for the following ten years, I went each August to the Alps with my parents, and I experienced not only the easy trips, but also many less usual destinations. We toured theMonte Bianco, theMonte Rosa and theBernina Range; we went toArolla, toEvolene, toCogne, inVal Formazza, in theGlarus Alps, toDavos, toLivigno and in theVorderrhein. Some maps I drew still show our yearly itineraries. We climbedMount Titlis, theJazzi Peak, theMittelhorn, and some other peaks of moderate height. But as those didn't satisfy my ambition, in 1863 I decided to try alone theGran Paradiso, where the unforgiving weather stopped me. I was able, anyway, to pass through theDent du Géant, and to climb the Monte Bianco.
The following year I was ready to begin my excursions with two of my schoolmates, and I made the march recorded inAcross Country from Thonon to Trent (printed privately)
Mrs Freshfield was an author herself and her publications included "Alpine Byways" and "A Tour of the Grisons". Valeria Azzolini wrote about her inI resoconti di viaggio di Freshfield ("Freshfield's Travel Journals"):
Lover of the mountain in the youngest and truest sense, hurry was unknown to her because it wasn't really reaching the top which insterested her, but the captivation of the landscapes she encountered on the path, and thus the hours she spent in that enjoyment.
Apart from the members of the family, there was another protagonist in Mrs Freshfield's narrations: theguide, Michel Alphonse Couttet. And it was surely in those years that the young Freshfield understood the importance, in every mountain action, of the presence of a good guide.
Freshfield believed in good companionship more than the physical exercise when climbing. When he had almost reached the end of his career, he stated:
My highest ambition has never been to spend my days in strenuous exercises to develop my muscles. No other mountaineering moment was instead more appreciated by me than that in which I could enjoy the landscape, while the others had to open a path.
In his first work,The Italian Alps (1875), he abandoned himself to enjoying the mountains, writing with an elegant descriptive ability. He repeatedly refined his drafts about his excursions and mountaineering, like anante litteram correspondent. This made him one of the best prepared and finest 19th century linguists in the UK to write about exploring Italy. As an instinctive and inspired narrator, he reported ecstatically on all the mysterious wonders of the Alps. He wanted to hare these with the rest ofEurope and described the characteristics of the Alps with unrivalled sharpness. His descriptions were from all angles –poetic,ethnographic, andscientific. Letting the reader into the atmosphere of theGiudicarie Alps he noted:[8]
The low elevation of the valleys, their sunny exposure, and the gentle slope of their hillsides, give the scenery an air of richness rarely found at the base of great snow-mountains. The frequent and gay-looking villages, the woods of chestnuts, the knots of walnut-trees, the great fields of yellow-podded maize, the luxuriant vines and orchards, have the charm which the spontaneous bounty and colour of southern nature always exercise on the native of the more reserved and sober North. No contrast could be at once more sudden and more welcome than that offered by these softer landscapes to the eye fresh from the rugged granite of theAdamello chain.
Nobody who had entered the Giudicarie valleys previously had revealed so much in spite of the humbledolomitic reality. He dedicated further pages to the familiarVal Rendena.[9]
The road, winding at first high on a woody hillside, commands a charming view of the upper valley as far asPinzolo. Orchards and cornfields separate the rapidly succeeding hamlets, each of which resmbles its neighbour. The method of construction in this country is peculiar. The lower stories only, containing the living-rooms, are built of stone; from the top of their walls rise large upright beams supporting an immensely broad roof. The spaces between the beams are not filled up, and the whole edifice has the air of having been begun on too large a scale, and temporarily completed, and roofed in.
The great upstairs barn is used as for the storage of wood, hay, corn, and all sorts of inflammable dry goods. The roof being also of wood, the lightning finds it easy enough to set the whole mass in a blaze, and fires arising from this cause are of common occurrence.
These lines recollect a Rendena which no longer exists, but they can still teach those who are passionate about mountains to discover and preserve whatever remains that is still untouched by time or the hand of man.
Below us lay the smooth level of theVal d'Algone; on one side rose the bare, torn and fretted face of a great dolomite, surrounded by lower ridges scarcely less precipitous, but clothed in green wherever trees or herbage could take root. Towards the south the distant hills beyond theSarca waved in gradations of purple and blue through the shimmer of the Italian sunshine. A short zigzag through thick copses took us down to the meadows. The large solitary building in their midst is a glass manufactory. At this point a good car-road begins, which branching lower down leads either toTione orStenico.
The loftier dolomites were soon lost to view behind a bend in the valley, and the road plunged down a deep and narrow glen between banks of noddingcyclamens, bold crags, and the greenest of green hillsides.
After his expeditions aroundKangchenjunga Freshfield wrote of Dzongri:[10]
Suddenly you are in the presence of the Snow mountain unless they are indeed as they seem, in the first awestruck moment of beholding, embodied spirits of overwhelming power and malignity. Below you is the Prague Chu Valley; before you on the other side, long line of mountains-a succession of terrible granite spires, running down, one and all so steep and jagged that it seems as if no snow could ever cling to their sides. They have been fearfully searched by winds that mark the course in sweep of the wrinkled drifts and all the scars and lines run downwards giving the mountains an infinitely cheerless and depreciating expression like a sad, worn face.
