My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1908)/An Appreciation
AN APPRECIATION.
As one who, during some years, kept the closest intellectual company with A. F. Mummery, I much value the opportunity afforded by the re-publication of this book to place on record certain memories of his personality which relate to other aspects than mountaineering. To me he was not a climber, but simply a fearless and independent thinker upon economic and other problems of modern life. Not until I came to know him intimately did the natural harmony of his varied gifts and prowess become fully manifest. He was first made known to me by common friends as a hard-headed business man who had, in the course of his experience, developed certain heretical notions about spending and saving, which he sought to get discussed. For a year or two we threshed the matter out, chiefly by correspondence, with rare occasional meetings, until, by persistent force and ingenuity of argument, he overbore all my preliminary objections. We then went together into the close work of developing what seemed to us a new and necessary statement of the relations between Production and Consumption in the modern industrial system, involving a diagnosis of under-consumption or over-saving, as the main cause of trade depressions with their accompanying unemployment. The results of our work we published in a little book entitled "The Physiology of Industry," in 1891, which, though containing the germ of an economic theory that has since shown wide and various growth, was generally received either with indifference or reprobation. But it is not with the merits or demerits of this, his only published economic work, I am here concerned, but with the insight which this co-operation gave me into one of the strongest and most original natures that could anywhere be found. At first his climbing propensity appeared to me a somewhat barbarian enthusiasm, but as I came to know more closely his intellectual and emotional character, I got to understand how it fitted into the compact unity of physical and moral powers which made Mummery such a satisfactory man to know and to have for friend and companion. For, as from talk or reading I was drawn on to follow his mountaineering enterprises, and to know something of the methods which gave him such distinction there, I could not fail to recognise that the qualities and methods of his intellectual travels were essentially the same. As thinker he was powerful, courageous, alert, persistent, and, above all else, original in the proper meaning of that term, that of creative independence. Though there was nothing idly freakish in his nature, or resentful of authority and precedent, there was a strong disposition to take his own course, to depart from beaten tracks, and to seek difficulties for the joy of overcoming them. This drives to a deep romantic streak in his nature, the attitude towards risk and danger exhibited both on the physical and intellectual planes. Though eminently capable of comradeship, and more destitute of cruder selfishness than any man I have ever known, he was, in the truest sense, an individualist, believing that whatever value lay in life was realised by strong, free, adventurous action, facing danger and risking failure. It was in no sense that he "courted" danger; he was never reckless, but for him a life that was interesting and even useful to himself or others involved a pitting of one's strength and wits against more or less unknown forces in acts of struggle. To him this was life, physical, intellectual, moral, and this alone. For beings who only wanted safety and comfort, well, even for them he had no active contempt (for contempt or any sort of malice were alien to him), but their sort of life was unmeaning to him. I make no doubt but that, had circumstances driven that way, he might have been a great soldier, as great in strategy as in fight. He could never have been a great politician, though his intellectual interests ran very strongly towards the practical application of his social theories, for two difficulties would have stood in the way. Though capable of reasonable compromise, and able to make allowances for difference of view and valuation, he would never have consented to the sort of bargaining which statesmen, perhaps, must employ. Nor would he ever have consented to use the art of language to play upon the passions of a public, or to mask meanings because it is inconvenient to declare them.
As regards the man himself, it may be unmeaning to say that he was excessive in such honesty and independence. But it may be true that he had more self-sufficiency than is consistent with easy adaptation to society. For there was a vein of almost puritanic sternness which resented overmuch the acceptance of social standards, and threw more than most could bear upon the individual judgment and the individual will. It is excellent that every society should contain a scattering of such powerful, self-reliant men and women; but it would hardly be a society that was wholly composed of them.
I wish my memory served to enable me to illustrate from word and incident the force of his personality, at once simple, subtle, trustful and confident. It was all focussed in his intellectual process. I spoke of him as original and romantic. In working with him on some line of economic reasoning, my constant effort was to draw him away from some difficult and novel mode of approach to what appeared to me the most simple and. direct argument. His aptitude for following difficult lines of thought, his preference for short cuts in a rarified atmosphere of abstraction, were interesting, though somewhat embarrassing to one who sought to walk with him. Had lived to carry out his intention of devoting his time to working out in mere detail his economic theory, this gift of abstraction would have been his great obstacle to acceptation. For, in conciseness of expression, as in boldness of speculation, he surpassed Ricardo among economists, approaching at times the compactness of Spinoza's philosophic systematisation. At any rate, it was a bracing experience to follow him into the recesses of some speculation in a fresh problem, either economic, ethical, or metaphysical, which he had carved out for himself.
Though he had read a good deal in a miscellaneous way, in literature, science, and history, he made no pretence to great erudition. So far as mere book-learning is concerned, he was not even an accomplished economist. Probably he under-used books rather than over-used them, as do most scholars. But for a nature like his we may probably adapt to the intellectual plane the famous saying that " Riches is the impediment of virtue," He probably climbed better, carrying less weight than others. For working with him intellectually was a constant series of surprises at his fertility of mind in using the knowledge he possessed, gathered somewhat carelessly from many sources and kept for use. For he would fetch from his business life, from various sports, and from special studies in military history and other branches of the wide arts of "strategy" which always interested him, peculiarly apt and forcible illustrations for some philosophic position he was seeking to maintain.
Those who did not know Mummery personally may be disposed to think that this attempt formally to analyse and set out his qualities of mind is excessive or, at any rate, unnecessary. But those who were brought into personal relations with him will, I think, be glad of some opportunity to revive their recollection of one who, though only known to fame in a particular and narrow line of achievement, will remain to them the image of a really great man. For all those qualities of body and mind which made him climber and thinker were firmly knit together to compose his character in the fuller and distinctively moral aspect. The strain of austerity, of which I have spoken, combined with a dislike for the mere artificial uses of society, prevented him from seeking or attaining popularity in any large sense; but his friendliness and the peculiar sense of absolute reliability which belonged to everything he said and did, won for him an intense feeling of respect, and, among those who were much with him, an affection which will last out their memory of him.
In this writing of my friend I am hampered only by one feeling of reluctance, due to a knowledge that the last thing he craved was open praise, or even such faithful appreciation as I have here sought to give. But, though this be so, I have not chosen that my friend's memory should be only that of a climber killed in the pursuit of a perilous pastime, without some further attempt to show what manner of man he was. And no one, of the few who knew him as well or better than I, will think for one moment that I have appraised his qualities of character too highly.
JOHN A. HOBSON.
Limpsfield,
June 20, 1908.