Smythe’s Mountains

SMYTHE’S MOUNTAINS. The Climbs of F. S. Smythe. By Harry Calvert. Pp. 223, 20 illustrations, 4 maps, 1985. (Victor Gollanez, London, £14.95).

Some men, as famous as Smythe is, wear a shield of their fame. People have a preconceived idea, however little it is, about who he was and what were his achievements. They wear a kind of a uni¬form which gives them a rank above others.

One of my good friends remarked about a Colonel. ‘Meeting him is like talking to a hanging uniform. Where is the man inside?’ So until the man is brought out, in the case of such a book, it never you a true picture. It can only give you the fame.

‘What all this overlooks is that Smythe purported to be not a rock-climber as such, but a mountaineer and if what is being assess¬ed is the ability to travel with maximum safety over difficult high-mountain terrain in the worst conditions, then Smythe was, in the view of many who travelled with him, brilliant’. (p. 204).

The book assesses the travels and climbs of Smythe. And in the first and the last chapter the author assesses the man. As the author puts it in the Preface ‘the book is neither a climbing guide nor a biography except in a most unusual sense’. It portrays Smythe as an author, photographer, visionary and a mountaineer. This is achieved by a kind of summarizing from his books, climbs and travels to the Alps, in Britain, on Kangchenjunga, Everest, Kamet and Rocky Mountains. You can imagine the author’s task that Smythe wrote 25 books — either the task is made easy or complicated!

In ‘A Brief Life’ the motivations for climbing are traced. Smythe lost his father when he was two. Mother over-protected him and he was always considered a weak child and physically phased put of R.A.F. All these led to Smythe wanting to prove himself on the mountains. He achieved this to a great degree through his writing and climbs, particularly in introducing the pleasures of the mountains to many an arm-chair mountain-lover. However, one aspect draws clear from the book, that Smythe was not regarded as an ‘all time great’ by his contemporaries. But:

‘It is doubtful if Smythe would have cared very deeply whether the judgment of experts placed him amongst the greatest of modern mountaineers. His first wish would certainly have been to maximise his delight in mountains, and in this he patently suc¬ceeded.’ (p. 21)

Smythe started his ‘First Steps’ in the British hills, served his ‘Alpine Apprenticeship’, and then completed ‘The Great Alpine Routes’. Himalaya came next. Two expeditions to Kangchenjunga and Everest were the only ever to 8000 ers. The expeditions failed on both. But they brought out Smythe as a mountaineer. But what he would be most remembered for, was the ascent of Kamet and later solo climb on Mana. In fact he seemed to have enjoyed the latter or both immensely. He was devoted to small expeditions, but not as emotionally committed to it as Shipton and Tilman. Similarly he was against any artificial aids, particulary pitons in rock climbing. In India he is most known for his naming of ‘The Valley of Flowers’ to the Bhyundar valley in Garhwal. Though there are many valleys which are equally beautiful with rare flowers, this romantic name given by Smythe caught on. It is situated on the pilgrim route to Badrinath and easy of access. Even Smythe would not have imagined its popularity today. With the number of visitors it attracted, the valley was ecologically damaged and had to be closed to all visitors. All this almost directly related to the catchy name, amongst” other things. Smythe would have hated it all, despite the fame it gave him.

We are also told of detractors of Smythe. Arnold Lunn, himself a writer of many Alpine books, thought Smythe’s ‘literary reputa¬tion suffered from the fact that he rather over wrote himself. Or to Schuster he was ‘a copious (perhaps too copious) writer of Alpine books’. But as Raymond Greene pointed out in his obituary on Smythe that ‘he is not to be blamed because the public liked his work — such a judgment smacks of snobbery and puts him in the condemned cell with many a better writer. Rather we should be grateful to him for bringing a love of mountain adventure into the lives of thousands who would never otherwise known it’. Smythe, any way, never could become part of the leading members of the climbing establishment of the day till his early death in 1949 at the age of 49.

Faults, to me serious in a book like this, are mis-spellings of Garhwal names in the chapters on Kamet and Valley of Flowers. The photo captions are wrong, even with so few pictures given. The sketch map on p. 213 titled ‘Garwhal’ (sic) could not be better¬ed for the number of mistakes it contains. Even the ghost of Smythe would be troubled at these.

The book tells us about the climbs and life of Frank S. Smythe. But can it compress in one book such a varied life and literature? We know the fame but do we get to know who he was — the real man? It is worth a read — at least to question this.

HARISH KAPADIA