Richards Dorothea

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Biografie:
Dorothea Richards 1894-1986
Dorothea Richards's love-affair with the mountains started in her teens, with a reading of A E W Mason's Running Water; and after a family holiday in North Wales, culminating in an ascent of Snowdon, she knew that her greatest pleasure in life was to be among the hills. And so, when long after they could be climbed in memory only, 'my own fanatic passion' still burned bright.
Dorothy Pilley was born in 1894, daughter of an industrial chemist. She early made it clear that her energies and ambitions were not to be confined by the conventions of a comfortable middle-class home in Blackheath. She did various kinds of war-work, then turned to journalism, first as a reporter for the Daily Express (resigning in 1922 after a clash over the paper's line on the Irish troubles), then as a free-lance. She had scant formal education; her university, she said, was the Cliffs of Wales. There-in thick tweed knickerbockers, under a full tweed skirt put in the sack at the foot of the climb- she learned to test and stretch herself, to face danger and discomfort; and there she made friendships that lasted a lifetime. In 1917 and 1918 with Herbert Carr, RA Frazer, I A Richards (and his spaniel Sancho Panza), C F Holland and others, she explored Tryfan, Lliwedd, the Devil's" Kitchen, Cwm Idwal-and was one of the first party up Holly Tree Wall. Then came the Lakes (with Eagle's Nest Direct) and the Cuillin (a new climb on the West Wall of the Cioch); and in 1920 her first Alpine season, under the wing of the Carr family. Ascents of Charmoz, Grepon (in a snowstorm), Geant, the traverse of the Drus, led to membership of the LAC (because of the last war years, one alpine season backed by a notable list of British climbs was enough to qualify). These climbs were guided; she had also led the Aiguille de I'M and the Petit Charmoz. Her conviction that women must learn to lead if they were to become true mountaineers led her and like-minded friends-Pat Kelly, Len Winthrop Young, Lilian Bray, the three Wells sisters-to form the Pinnacle Club in 1921; for 20 years she edited the Club's Journal. Her second alpine season started with a guideless party of women at Saas Fee, who traversed the Egginergrat and the Portjengrat. Then came the Zmutt Ridge of the Matterhorn, climbs round Arolla with I A Richards, and their fortunate meeting with Joseph Georges le Skieur: a guide whose enthusiasm matched their own. This happy partnership over many years included the second ascent of the NE ridge of the Jungfrau (1923), the N ridge of the Grivola (1924, where Joseph cut steps for six hours) and-a long-cherished ambition-the first ascent of the N ridge of the Dent Blanche (1928). This was perhaps the high point of her climbing career, and it is fittingly the climax of her splendid Climbing Days. There, helped by the diaries which she kept from girlhood till her death, she recorded, along with the rocks and ridges, summits gained and new routes made, the climber's sensations and emotions: the miseries, discomforts and apprehensions, as well as the exhilarations and delights. Lively, laced with apt quotations (IAR helping?), Climbing Days remains one of the very best of mountain books.
Two years before the Dent Blanche climb, Dorothy Pilley had become Dorothea Richards. She had been in Canada, IAR in the States; they met again and married, improbably in Honolulu. Henceforth, with Ivor's appointments at Peking (1929 and 1936-8) and at Harvard (from 1939), they spent most of their days outside Europe. Wherever they went they found something to climb-the Great Wall of China, the peaks of Yunnan, the Japanese Alps, the Diamond Mountains of Korea, the Selkirks and Bugaboos of the Canadian Rockies-where, in the war, Ivor did some training of commando troops. Whenever possible, they were back in the Alps in the summer-always preferring to cross a peak or pass and come down into another valley, always ingenious at finding good climbs that the crowd had passed by.
In their Harvard years they were off to the White Mountains most weekends-snow-shoeing and 'lighting fires in snow' as Ivor described in a poem of that title. At the end of one such weekend in 1958 they were involved in a car crash which left Dorothea with a badly damaged hip. Lameness severely restricted her mountain activity, but by no means ended it. Teleferiques and chair-lifts helped with high-level walks in the Alps and hut-to-hut wanderings in Austria; a donkey and driver made possible a camping holiday in Peru; a helicopter took the Richards to the Cabane Rossier in 1966 to celebrate the centenary of the ascent of the Dent Blanche (and correct some myths about their N ridge ascent!); a snow-mobile on the lower slopes allowed Dorothea to climb Mount Hood in Oregon in 1968, her last big mountain.
In 1974 the Richards moved back from the American Cambridge to the English, and were soon again in the swim of Alpine Club affairs. After the merger with the LAC Dorothea became the first woman Vice-President of the Club, in 1975. After Ivor died in 1979-taken ill during a heroic educational mission to China at the age of 86-Dorothea gave £4000 in his memory to the Alpine Club Library. She loved the meetings and dinners, the sociabilities of club life-at the Alpine, Fell and Rock, Pinnacle-and was a tireless recruiting sergeant for them. She was avid for the latest climbing news, as eager to hear of the doings of her contemporaries' children and grandchildren as to recall her own golden days.
After IAR's death she lived on in the house which Magdalene College had made available for them, next to the Fellows' Garden, and looking down to the Cam. There she welcomed friends, and sallied forth to lectures, concerts, plays, exhibitions, dinners- “an excuse for a splendid party was irresistible” , as Henry Chadwick said at her funeral. She resented growing old, and worried her friends by behaving as if she were not: trains and buses when she could well afford taxis, rucksack for her luggage, a liking for very late nights, a reluctance to abandon “my gipsy ways”. It was no use arguing with her on grounds of comfort, common-sense-or the convenience of others. Like her friend T S Eliot's Rum-Turn Tugger she would do as she did do, “and there's no doing anything about it”.
“I never guessed age might keep me sur place' she complained to me in 1984, after poor health forced her to cancel her cherished annual holiday in New England. But it didn't! In the early 20s she and Ivor had seen the New Year in on the top of Snowdon. In 1986 she saw in her last New Year at the climbers' hut in Glen Brittle where she sat up happily with a party of Scottish climbers till 3am, drinking whisky and talking mountains. In June she joined in the celebration of the centenary of Haskett-Smith's ascent of the Needle. One climber remembers her holding court in front of the Wastwater Hotel, arrestingly handsome in a green dress of Chinese silk, black hair centre-parted like raven's wings, youthfully alert despite her sticks. My last sight of her was on the afternoon of Prince Andrew's wedding which (despite her disapproval of TV) she had watched on a friend's set. What she'd most enjoyed were the shots at the Palace: 'You know that Victoria Memorial in front of it-I climbed it on Armistice Day in 1918 with the help of a soldier and a sailor'. There was no one like her.
Let IAR's lines be her epitaph, written to cheer her after the hip accident, recalling a late descent from the Epicoun:
'Leaping crevasses in the dark,
That's how to live!' you said
Janet Adam Smith (Janet Carleton)
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 92, 1987, Seite 308-310



Geboren am:
1894
Gestorben am:
1986