New regime
Where there’s a Will there’s a Way: An Ascent of Mont Blanc by a New Route and Without Guides, by Charles Hudson and Edward Shirley Kennedy. Printed in London by Longman, Brown, Green, 1856. Lower Library, E.36.33–34
In the 1850s the Chamonix valley in Savoy, then annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia, was unconnected by public transport to the outside world. Communication was difficult and mapping in its infancy. For an adventurous undergraduate from the flatlands of the Fens the wild and untamed terrain must have possessed a irresistible appeal.
Edward Shirley Kennedy did not fit the conventional mould of a Cambridge undergraduate. He was admitted to Caius in October 1852 at the advanced age of 35. Educated in Sussex, previously he had worked for the East India Company and was described as being ‘of independent means’. In 1850 he had published a short, contemplative book, Thoughts on Being. By what motives he came to Cambridge is unclear; what is certain is that it took him five years to obtain a degree. His first interest seems to have been climbing and the leisurely progress of his studies enabled him to spend his summers abroad. In time he helped to found the University Alpine Club and became its second President.
The concept of mountain-climbing as a pastime was in its infancy. Well-heeled Britons had long travelled to the Continent as tourists, on the Grand Tour, the zenith of a classical education. Travel for sporting activities or for physical endeavour was new. Mountaineering, skiing and tobogganing were activities that appealed to a mindset seeking adventure, danger and conquest.
An Ascent of Mont Blanc recounts the climb Kennedy made in summer 1855 in the company of a handful of other Cambridge undergraduates. In order to acclimatize and to ensure full fitness, the party first explored the glaciers and passes of the region of Monte Rosa (the second highest mountain in the Alpine region, after Mont Blanc). On Tuesday 7th August they set out from a small village on the first attempt at an ascent, using a ‘new’ (i.e. to tourists) route, aided by several porters recruited locally. Kennedy disliked the tourist-trap of Chamonix from where most climbers started their ascent. In the book he complains bitterly about the cartel enforced by local guides there, whom he refused to employ. He claimed to be undaunted by the challenge but was aware of the risks; an attempt the previous August had failed. This time the party succeeded, but it took them two tries, the first being abandoned due to heavy and persistent rain within four hours of the summit. Kennedy compared their achievement, mid-month, to ‘victory over the old monarch’.
Kennedy made further trips to the Alps. In 1861 he tackled the Fuorcla Crast’ Agüzza in Italy, the following year Monte Disgrazia in the company of Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf. He became the editor of Peaks and Passes magazine but died in the rather sedate surroundings of Exmouth, Devon, in 1898.
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