Discover

'Douglas William Freshfield' (London, April 27, 1845 – Forest Row, February 9, 1934) was a British mountaineer and a prominent member of the Royal Geographical Society.
He edited the Alpine Journal from 1872 to 1880.

Contents

Life and memories

1845-1864

Unsustainable and perennial vibrations

Exercising and refining his scripts

Publications

Obituary

Life and memories

1845-1864

Unsustainable and perennial vibrations

The only son of Henry Ray Freshfield - notable lawyer and financial expert of the Bank of England - since an early age Douglas William Freshfield was brought - thanks to the income of his father - in fashionable resorts, at first in the British territories, then in the Swiss Alps, developing little by little that deep love for the mountains which accompanied and comforted him until the end of his days. After having received the due education, at first in Eton College, then at the University of Oxford, where he obtained a degree in civil law and history, he became, thanks to the strong influence on him of his romantic mother, Jane Henry Freshfield - exquisite mountain writer - a fine lover of his own language and an exceptional writer of his own contemplations.
The journeys of this unique child, until his eighth year of age, were limited to the experience and enjoyment of the most pastoral and heartwarming places of England. Journeys that Mrs Freshfield, aided by the wealth of her family, considered the first requirement to educate his son to the veneration of nature. And of the arts.
The contact of the sensitive child with what would have become the dream of his existence - the love for the mountain territories - happened three years later, when the vacations of Henry Ray Freshfield - also for working reasons - shifted to Swiss, thus in the Alps, awakening little by little in the sensitive child unforgivable impressions. He said, sixty years later, in an interview with Adolf Hess:
Ten years of summer vacations in the wonderful Swiss and Italian Alps couldn't help but leave in the teenager unsustainable and perennial vibrations.
Mrs Freshfield was, at that time, not only a suavely moving mother, and an ageless woman enthusiastic of her maternity, but also an authentic master of a clean and refined language; she was the author of splendid tourist guides (diaries of her excursions) which make her one of the precursors of the female excursionism in Europe. Valeria Azzolini wrote about her in ''I resoconti di viaggio di Freshfield'' ("Freshfield's Travel Journals"):
Only by firmly believing in the importance of a good companion during climbings, Douglas (when he had almost reached the end of his formidable career) could have stated:

Exercising and refining his scripts

The above weren't just considerations inspired by age. Already in his masterpiece ''The Italian Alps'' (1875), the elegant descriptive ability of Douglas William Freshfield found in the contemplative abandonment to the enjoyment of the mountains his highest consecration. Because it was in the crude but true alpine reality - even though he was overwhelmed by the emotions - that he kept exercising and refining his scripts about excursionism, mountaineering, almost like an ''ante litteram'' correspondent, proving himself as one of the most prepared and fine linguist among all those who - in the UK during the 19th century - wrote passionately about the explorations of Italy. When, being an instinctive and inspired narrator, he became an ecstatic reporter of every mysterious alpine wonder, in his convincing notes he described all those singular aspects, sometimes poetic, sometimes ethnographic, sometimes scientific, sometimes simply characteristics of the Alps that with unrivalled acuity he wanted to reveal to all of Europe. He noted, letting the reader enter the atmosphere of the Giudicarie Alps:
Nobody before, entering the Giudicarie valleys, had opened so many doors, despite the humble dolomitic reality. Still more revealing pages he dedicated to the familiar Val Rendena:
These lines today remind us of a Rendena which is definitely extinct, but are still capable of educating the mountain passionate to the research and preservation of those pure and primitive remains still untouched by the events or dismantled by men.

Publications

★ ''Italian Alps: Sketches in the Mountains of Ticino, Lombardy, the Trentino, and Venetia'', 1875, new ed. 1937

★ ''The Exploration of the Caucasus'', London, Edward Arnold, 1896

★ 'Round Kangchinjinga (Kangchenjunga)', ''Alpine Journal'', Vol. XX, no. 149, August 1900

★ ''Round Kangchenjunga: A Narrative of Mountain Travel and Exploration'', London, Edward Arnold (Publisher to the India Office), 1903. Dedicated to Joseph Dalton Hooker

★ ''The Life of Horace Benedict de Saussure'' (with the collaboration of F. Montagnier), London, Edward Arnold, 1920

★ ''Below the Snow Line'', London, Constable and Co., 1923

Obituary

Obituary: Mr. Douglas Freshfield - ''Geographical Journal'', Vol. 83, No. 3, March 1934, , pp. 255-6