Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers. A Series of Excursions by Members of the Alpine Club. Jacomb's copy, with marginalia in his hand.

Beschreibung

Third edition. 8vo. pp. xx, 532; a defective copy, lacking the frontispiece, but the remaining coloured plates present, 9 maps, the majority relaid on stubs; tape repairs to inner hinges at front, lacking free endpapers, fixed endpapers with tape laid over, a poor copy in the original cloth, which is slightly worn, letter "M" to spine in black, previous owner's inscription to half title, and bookplates of Charles Thurston Holland and Kenneth J. Griffiths to front pastedown. Numerous pencilled marginalia by Jacomb through much of the book, with Jacomb's annotations to maps at pp. 77 & 127, and his initialled written comments and additions to map at p. 233. Frederick Jacomb, a barrister based in Huddersfield, was one of the original members of the Alpine Club of London. He took part in several notable climbs: in 1860, he accompanied Leslie Stephen on the first crossing from Zermatt to Saas, climbing the Alleleinhorn; in 1861, he joined William Mathews in the first ascent of Monte Viso. Descriptions of his climbs were included in the second series of Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers (1862), and articles by him appeared in the first two volumes of the Alpine Journal. The present defective copy of the first series belonged to Jacomb, who made more than sixty annotations to some of the essays. Many of these are personal recollections of climbs made during two seasons (1855, and again in 1860), several of them being quite extensive - in two instances, his notes run over three or four pages. His comments range from the terse - "True" often appears alongside a description - to personal expressions. He notes guides that have accompanied him on his own climbs: Octonier; "Kronig" [presumably Johann Kroneg]; Simond; and Franz Andermatten - :He is one of the best Guides. We had him over our new pass from Saas to Zermatt . also alone over the Weiss Thor" (p. 210). Some notes gloss or comment on a piece of information, as when he writes of Curé Imseng that :He keeps the Inn there [Saas] now" (p. 208), or that the "friend who had to quit Chamonix instead of joining an expedition to the west side of Mont Blanc was Dr. Lightfoot, afterwards Bishop of Durham" (p. 59). Most valuable, though, of Jacomb's annotations are his recollections of Alpine climbing experiences. Prompted by an aside in William Mathews' article on 'The Montains of Bagnes', Jacomb relates how he and "Kronig" made a pass from Prerayen to Zermatt in a day rather than "the then circuitous route of 2 days by the Col d Erin", with an ascent en route of the Tete Blanche, "a previously unascended Mountain of between 12 & 13,000 ft." (pp. 104-7). A reference to Monte Rosa in Thomas Hinchcliff's article on the Trift Pass elicits the note "Ascended by us in July 1860 with only 2 Guides & the weather so bad the Guides lost all knowledge of where they were for some time . . . We were a mass of icicles & nearly frozen" (p. 130). A later mention of Zinal prompts Jacomb's recollection of the only room to be had in the village, which he shared one night with "a deaf and dumb Frenchman . . . we carried on an animated communication in French for which purpose he furnished me with a pencil & a bundle of small papers" (p. 148). Jacomb joined Leslie Stephen for an ascent of the Alleleinhorn in 1860; during the descent the party found themselves towards evening above a "tremendous Couloir ending at the bottom in a maze of Crevasses"; anxious to make the descent before nightfall, they tied together their two ropes, and successively lowered themselves to a platform cut out from the ice by a guide; realising this technique would take too long, a decision was made to glissade down the slope: "Accordingly all 8 tied closely together we shot to the bottom of the slope like a flash of lightning & only escaped by 1/2 a yard destruction in a Crevasse" (pp. 227-9) - a detail not related in Stephen's own telling of the climb (in Francis Galton's Vacation Tourists and Notes of Travel in 1860). Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 19041

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