The Shelleys at Chamonix

From Mary Shelley & P. B. Shelley, History of a Six Weeks' Tour (London: T. Hookham, 1817).

Extracts:

1. The Cascade de l'Arpenaz
2. Entrance to the valley of Chamonix
3. The Arveron
4. The Bosson Glacier
5. Montanvert and the Mer de Glace

Percy Shelley's letter to Peacock, reproduced in part below, describes a journey with Mary and Claire from Geneva to Chamonix, and his impressions of the glaciers of Bossons and the Mer de Glace (viewed from Montanvert). Mary Shelley used the setting of the Mer de Glace for the momentous meeting of Frankenstein and his alienated creature in Chapter X of her novel; Percy's main response was his poem "Mont Blanc." The visit to Chamonix by this time was a standard part of the tourist itinerary. It had been popularized by such travel writing as that of Bourrit (1775), Coxe (1779), and Moore (1779). Wordsworth was a visitor in 1790.

1. The Cascade de l'Arpenaz

Between Cluses and St. Martin the Shelleys saw two waterfalls, the first being the Cascade de l'Arpenaz. In his letter he wrote:

[145] [Hotel de Londres, Chamouni] July 22. [1816]

photo: D. S. Miall

They were no more than mountain rivulets, but the height from which they fell, at least of twelve hundred feet, made them assume a character inconsistent with the smallness of their stream. The first fell from the overhanging brow of a black precipice on an enormous rock, precisely resembling some colossal Egyptian deity. It struck the head of the visionary image, and gracefully dividing there, fell from it in folds of foam more like to cloud than water, imitating a veil of the most exquisite woof. It then united, concealing the lower part of the statue, and hiding itself in [146] a winding of its channel, burst into a deeper fall, and crossed our route in its path towards the Arve.

2. Entrance to the valley of Chamonix

Towards Servox the valley narrows, as Shelley noted:

[148] As we proceeded, our route still lay [149] through the valley, or rather, as it had now become, the vast ravine, which is at once the couch and the creation of the terrible Arve. We ascended, winding between mountains whose immensity staggers the imagination. We crossed the path of a torrent, which three days since had descended from the thawing snow, and torn the road away. . . .

[150] From Servox three leagues remain to Chamouni. -- Mont Blanc was before us -- the Alps, with their innumerable glaciers on high all around, closing in the complicated windings of the [151] single vale -- forests inexpressibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty -- intermingling beech and pine, and oak, overshadowed our road, or receded, whilst lawns of such verdure as I have never seen before occupied these openings, and gradually became darker in their recesses. Mont Blanc was before us, but it was covered with cloud; its base, furrowed with dreadful gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow intolerably bright, part of the chain connected with Mont Blanc, shone through the clouds at intervals on high. I never knew -- I never imagined what mountains were before. The immensity of these aeriel summits excited, when they suddenly burst upon the [150] sight, a sentiment of extatic wonder, not unallied to madness. And remember this was all one scene, it all pressed home to our regard and our imagination. Though it embraced a vast extent of space, the snowy pyramids which shot into the bright blue sky seemed to overhang our path; the ravine, clothed with gigantic pines, and black with its depth below, so deep that the very roaring of the untameable Arve, which rolled through it, could not be heard above -- all was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds of others as now occupied our own. Nature was the poet, whose harmony held our spirits more breathless than that of the divinest.

View of Mont Blanc from Pont Pelissier, which crosses the Arve about two kilometres beyond Servox.

The entrance to the Chamonix valley itself was dominated by two glaciers, the Mer de Glace and Bossons (they are now less visible, since the glaciers have receded over the last 150 years). The Shelleys stayed at the Hotel de Londres at Chamonix. In the following print the Mer de Glace can be seen descending into the valley.

Jean Dubois, "Hôtel de Londres à Chamonix," engraving. From Souvenirs de Chamouni (Genève: Chez Briquet et Dubois, n.d.). Centre d'iconographie genevois.

 

3. The Arveron

At the base of the Mer de Glace during the summer months, the melt water of the glacier issued from a spectacular ice cavern into the Arveron, which the Shelleys went on to visit. The cavern no longer exists.

The following two prints are: "Vue de la Source de L'Arveron et de son amas de Glace à Chamouni," watercolour engraving; and "Vue du glacier des Bossons, de ses Equilles, et de la partie du glacier que l'on traverse à Chamouni," Centre d'iconographie genevois.

[156] [Hotel de Londres, Chamouni] July 24. [1816]

Yesterday morning we went to the source of the Arveiron. It is about a league from this village; the river rolls forth impetuously from an arch of ice, and spreads itself in many streams over a vast space of the valley, ravaged and laid bare by its inundations. The glacier by which its waters are nourished, overhangs this cavern and the plain, and the forests of pine which surround it, with terrible precipices of solid ice. On the other side rises the immense glacier of Montanvert, fifty miles in extent, occupying a chasm among mountains of inconceivable height, and of forms so pointed and abrupt, that they seem to pierce the sky. From this glacier [157] we saw as we sat on a rock, close to one of the streams of the Arveiron, masses of ice detach themselves from on high, and rush with a loud dull noise into the vale. The violence of their fall turned them into powder, which flowed over the rocks in imitation of waterfalls, whose ravines they usurped and filled.

4. The Bosson Glacier

In the evening I went with Ducrée my guide, the only tolerable person I have seen in this country, to visit the glacier of Boisson [sic]. This glacier, like that of Montanvert, comes close to the vale, overhanging the green meadows and the dark woods with the dazzling whiteness of its precipices and pinnacles, which are like spires of radiant [158] crystal, covered with a net work of frosted silver. These glaciers flow perpetually into the valley, ravaging in their slow but irresistible progress the pastures and the forests which surround them, performing a work of desolation in ages, which a river of lava might accomplish in an hour, but far more irretrievably; for where the ice has once descended, the hardiest plant refuses to grow; if even, as in some extraordinary instances, it should recede after its progress has once commenced. The glaciers perpetually move onward, at the rate of a foot each day, with a motion that commences at the spot where, on the boundaries of perpetual congelation, they are produced by the freezing [159] of the waters which arise from the partial melting of the eternal snows. They drag with them from the regions whence they derive their origin, all the ruins of the mountain, enormous rocks, and immense accumulations of sand and stones. These are driven onwards by the irresistible stream of solid ice; and when they arrive at a declivity of the mountain, sufficiently rapid, roll down, scattering ruin. I saw one of these rocks which had descended in the spring, (winter here is the season of silence and safety) which measured forty feet in every direction.

The verge of a glacier, like that of Boisson, presents the most vivid image of desolation that it is possible to conceive. [160] No one dares to approach it for the enormous pinnacles of ice which perpetually fall, are perpetually reproduced. The pines of the forest, which bound it at one extremity, are overthrown and shattered to a wide extent at its base. There is something inexpressibly dreadful in the aspect of the few branchless trunks, which, nearest to the ice rifts, still stand in the uprooted soil. The meadows perish, overwhelmed with sand and stones. Within this last year, these glaciers have advanced three hundred feet into the valley. Saussure, the naturalist, says, that they have their periods of increase and decay: the people of the country hold an opinion entirely different; but as I [161] judge, more probable. It is agreed by all, that the snow on the summit of Mont Blanc and the neighbouring mountains perpetually augments, and that ice, in the form of glaciers, subsists without melting in the valley of Chamouni during its transient and variable summer. If the snow which produces this glacier must augment, and the heat of the valley is no obstacle to the perpetual existence of such masses of ice as have already descended into it, the consequence is obvious; the glaciers must augment and will subsist, at least until they have overflowed this vale.

I will not pursue Buffon's sublime but gloomy theory -- that this globe [162] which we inhabit will at some future period be changed into a mass of frost by the encroachments of the polar ice, and of that produced on the most elevated points of the earth. Do you, who assert the supremacy of Ahriman, imagine him throned among these desolating snows, among these palaces of death and frost, so sculptured in this their terrible magnificence by the adamantine hand of necessity, and that he casts around him, as the first essays of his final usurpation, avalanches, torrents, rocks, and thunders, and above all these deadly glaciers, at once the proof and symbols of his reign; add to this, the degradation of the human species -- who in these regions are half [163] deformed or idiotic, and most of whom are deprived of any thing that can excite interest or admiration. This is a part of the subject more mournful and less sublime; but such as neither the poet nor the philosopher should disdain to regard.

This morning we departed, on the promise of a fine day, to visit the glacier of Montanvert. In that part where it fills a slanting valley, it is called the Sea of Ice. This valley is 950 toises, or 7600 feet above the level of the sea. We had not proceeded far before the rain began to fall, but we persisted until we had accomplished more than half of our journey, when we returned; wet through.

5. Montanvert and the Mer de Glace

Chamouni, July 25th.

We have returned from visiting the glacier of Montanvert, or as it is called, the Sea of Ice, a scene in truth of dizzying wonder. The path that winds to it along the side of a mountain, now clothed with pines, now intersected with snowy hollows, is wide and steep. The cabin of Montanvert is three leagues from Chamouni, half of which distance is performed on mules, not so sure footed, but that on the first day the one which I rode fell in what the guides call a mauvais pas, so that I narrowly escaped being precipitated down the mountain. We passed over a hollow covered with snow, down which vast stones are accustomed to roll. One [165] had fallen the preceding day, a little time after we had returned: our guides desired us to pass quickly, for it is said that sometimes the least sound will accelerate their descent. We arrived at Montanvert, however, safe.

[Carl Hackert, "Vue de la Mer de Glace et de l'Hôpital de Blair" (1781). (Centre d'iconographie genevois)]

On all sides precipitous mountains, the abodes of unrelenting frost, surround this vale: their sides are banked up with ice and snow, broken, heaped high, and exhibiting terrific chasms. The summits are sharp and naked pinnacles, whose overhanging steepness will not even permit snow to rest upon them. Lines of dazzling ice occupy here and there their perpendicular rifts, and shine through the driving vapours with inexpressible brilliance: they [166] pierce the clouds like things not belonging to this earth. The vale itself is filled with a mass of undulating ice, and has an ascent sufficiently gradual even to the remotest abysses of these horrible desarts. It is only half a league (about two miles) in breadth, and seems much less. It exhibits an appearance as if frost had suddenly bound up the waves and whirlpools of a mighty torrent. We walked some distance upon its surface. The waves are elevated about 12 or 15 feet from the surface of the mass, which is intersected by long gaps of unfathomable depth, the ice of whose sides is more beautifully azure than the sky. In these regions every thing changes, and is in motion. [167] This vast mass of ice has one general progress, which ceases neither day nor night; it breaks and bursts for ever: some undulations sink while others rise; it is never the same. The echo of rocks, or of the ice and snow which fall from their overhanging precipices, or roll from their aerial summits, scarcely ceases for one moment. One could think that Mont Blanc, like the god of the Stoics, was a vast animal, and that the frozen blood for ever circulated through his stony veins.

We dined (M***, C***, and I) on the grass, in the open air, surrounded by this scene. The air is piercing and clear. We returned down the mountain, sometimes encompassed by the [168] driving vapours, sometimes cheered by the sunbeams, and arrived at our inn by seven o'clock.