Richards Ivor Armstrong

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Biografie:
geboren in Sandbach/Cheshire (Großbritannien)

Ivor Armstrong Richards, CH (1893-1979)
Ivor Armstrong Richards was born at Sandbach in Cheshire in 1893, not a great distance from the Welsh hills which he learned to know and love in boyhood. As a Cambridge undergraduate and young don, he lost his heart to the crags. He was an inveterate designer of new routes. Many remained theoretical but not all. The Holly Tree Wall on Idwal Slabs was worked out by him with C. F. Holland. Dorothea Pilley, later to become his wife, was with them. It was a typical perfectionist enterprise discarding and incorporating variants until at ay later dale it was finalized to Ivor's satisfaction. Dorothea remarks: “He had great pleasure in telling his second (me) how to do an awkward move as though he were analysing a mathematical problem”. Good craftmanship was at the heart of his delight in mountaineering, particularly in the Alps where so many different skills combine. It is the underlying theme of his superb essay “The Lure of High Mountaineering” * I still recall his displeasure when I clumsily destroyed the outer edge of a snowstep on some traverse. Objectively, it did not much matter in that particular place. He minded the clumsiness. A well-made snowstep deserved to be respected like a well-made poem.
Though not perhaps one of the handful of great guideless leaders of the 20s and 30s, his talent for planning expeditions was of a high order and he and Dorothea made a remarkable team, picking up peak after peak, often traverses, as the seasons went by, mostly alone but sometimes with friends. Once or twice they had the rare pleasure of making a new route from some little-frequented quarter. Such was the ascent of the rock spire of the Becca Rayette by the big unclimbed ridge running up from the Val Sassa. It cost them a fearsome descent in the dark of the Upper Chardonney glacier followed by a night out and a dawn descent into the Valpelline.
1921 round them at Arolla. They climbed the Aiguille de la Za carrying on with a traverse of the extended crest of the Douves Blanches dropping down to the N Col de Bertol. Here, they were met by a young guide who explained that he had seen them on the long ridge, guessed they might be thirsty and had brought them a flask of hot tea. This was Joseph Georges le Skieur. They made friends at once and engaged Joseph for a week which finished with the Ferpecle Ridge of the Dent Blanche and a new route up the Petit Bouquetin from the Arolla glacier. So began one of the great guide-client partnerships. In succeeding seasons they did many fine expeditions with Joseph. I name 3 for their difficulty and/or diversity. The NE ridge of the Jungfrau, a second ascent. The summits of Monte Rosa to the Signalkuppe, followed after a rest-day at the Cabane Margherita by the traverse of the Lyskamm and over Castor down to the Schwarzthor. The N ridge of the Grivola, that year (1924) a shining curve of ice which entailed more than 6 hours continuous step-cutting for Joseph. In 1928 came the climax, the longed-for unclimbed N ridge of the Dent Blanche, an achievement splendidly described in Dorothea's book Climbing Days.
Ivor's professional career began brilliantly at Cambridge in the 1920s. He became a Fellow of Magdalene in 1926 and was one of the key figures in building up the English School and in a revolutionary approach to literary criticism. He was also deeply involved with C. K. Ogden ill the invention and use of Basic English.
But all told me Richards spent many years away from Europe. Ivor held a chair at Peking 1929-1930 and from 1936-38 he was director of the Orthological Institute of China. Wherever they went they sought out mountains and in Yunnan they made first ascents of Gymaloko (6100m) and Haba Sham (5790m) in the Soweto range. Returning home via America they visited the Bugaboo chain and made 2 first ascents. They were in Canada twice ill the 30s and made a first ascent of the highest point in the Bobbie Burns range with C. Kain. I pick only a few examples and have not even enumerated all their “firsts”. A complete catalogue of the ranges they visited would double my already over-running space. Ivor was still climbing small peaks in the Alps in his 85th year and in his 87th year he joyfully accepted for himself and Dorothea an invitation from the Chinese Government to return to the University of Peking for an extensive lecture tour, taking up once more the problems of Basic English. It was a gallant finale but more than his now frail strength could bear. He was taken gravely ill, flown home to hospital in England and died in Addenbrook's some weeks later.
At the outbreak of war, Ivor was due to go to Harvard where he was appointed to a chair in 1944. He was loath to leave England but the Foreign Office was insistent. So me war years were spent in New England. As always every possible opportunity took the Richards to mountains. Working with the Canadian Alpine Club Ivor trained Commando units in mountaineering. In winter, he and Dorothea, with the famous Bemis Crew of the Appalachian Mountain Club, climbed all the main summits of the Mt Washington range on snowshoes.
Snowshoe travel appealed to them specially and they made many trips à deux in the White Mountains.
In 1935,7 of us met to ski in the Oetzthal; Philip and Margot Bowden, Paul Sinker, Ivor and Dorothea, Theo Chorley and myself. All but the Bowdens were novices, but after a few days they suggested a glacier tour: “You'll be alright” said Philip: “You're all mountaineers”.
During the war, when we were scattered, I recalled those days, specially perhaps the evenings in some Austrian hut when with legs luxuriously stretched out and tongues loosened by “thee mit” or kirsch talk began-real talk. It was dominated though never domineered by Ivor. He began to talk only when he had sensed the mood of the company, moving through depth, brilliance, irony, wit that could blast away any sham position but at other times could be puckish in its play. During those privileged evenings I caught glimpses into one of the finest minds of my generation.
He was surely the most distinguished writer-cum climber member of the Club since Leslie Stephen and it was good to hear of his pleasure when he knew just before he fell ill in China that he had been made an Honorary Member. He wrote a number of brilliant books but unlike Stephen he wrote little specifically about mountains. I think of the essay already mentioned, 'Mountains and Mountaineering as Symbols', an exciting adventure with ideas (AJ 8235), a few poems, among them the entrancing “Building Fires in Snow”, and “Resign Resign” printed below, his own farewell.
Katharine Chorley
*Republished in Complementarities, New Carcanet Press 1977.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 85, 1980, Seite 263-265


Geboren am:
1893
Gestorben am:
1979