Some Words From The Silent

A Silent Member

The advent of a Club journal has at last given us, the silent members of the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club, the longed-for opportunity to express our appreciation of the many strange tales our more venturesome fellows have told us of their wanderings among the wrinkles of Mother Earth.   They have scorned to selfishly hide their talents in a napkin, but have used them freely for our delight.   Many folios of foolscap and countless lantern slides – eloquent witnesses to much burning of the midnight oil – have compelled our gratitude.  Poetic fervour and subtle wit, burning eloquence and kindly humour, have ministered to our pleasure.

Recent books of travel, with their weird story of savage wanderings and Homeric exploits, make us suspect that even modern travellers tell strange tales.  Our travellers feared to taint our simple minds with guile, and told us only plain tales from the hills.  We have been spared the usual preliminary columns in the press ere they embarked upon their perilous adventures, and with the night of their recital their narratives have passed into silence.  With beautiful self-denial they have resisted the wily publisher, and his insidious designs upon our attenuated purses.

A President of the Alpine Club (the writer mentions him with due reverence) has spoken of us as “a mild body.”  Could he have known these Yorkshire Ramblers, or has he judged them by their modesty? To us, at least, remains a record of silent heroism, which has carried us speechless through nearly a decade of meetings with Spartan courage.

While turning deaf ears to the voice of the charmers in the chair, who have invited us to make fools of ourselves, we have privately encouraged members to believe in their literary ability.  With sympathetic tact we have eulogised their elocutionary attainments, and prophesied for them a dazzling career on public platforms.  Yet, with a modesty as singular as it is unanimous, they remain content with the common round, the daily task, and an occasional private display of their brilliant possibilities.

We have listened with the uplifted hair of unwavering belief to the deeds of “derring do” narrated by our rock-climbers.  Our hearts have thrilled with the difficulties of jammed stones, the terrors of face-climbs, and the dangers of holds for feet and hands – so scant that only the nail of a boot or the tip of a finger could find a purchase.  Indigestion by suggestion has troubled us as we heard of traverses which, like pills, were frequently and painfully stomachic.  We have fidgetted in our chairs while they backed in here, ventured on the face there, or stood – unflinching veterans – under a heavy fire of falling stones.  A stern sense of duty, or perhaps a desire to conciliate the Philistines who don’t climb, has induced many of them to make involved scientific observations under many and great difficulties, and we have forgiven them.  Their doubtless necessary, if violent, declamation of those idiots who violate all the laws and canons of the art of treading where the foot of man was never meant to tread, has carried conviction with it.  Our premature ice-axe will never know the eternal snows; relegated to the coal cellar it has, in other hands, become a domestic implement of much utility.

We have gaped at the foolish hardihood of men, apparently respectable, who sought adventure in caves and pot-holes.  Have we not heard how, when standing on the brink of some great abyss, magnesium ribbon and a plumb-line revealed a depth exceeding-twenty feet!!! The bottomless pool beneath, with scum and froth swirling upon its horrid surface, has failed to cover even a Rambler’s foot.  Reassured, we carried tins of paraffin and solid baulks of timber incredible distances and at unheard-of hours to other pot-holes.  We cut multitudes of sandwiches and made gallons of tea for intrepid explorers, and thankfully gnawed the mutton bones they left us.  Disillusioned our hearts have hardened, and we are going to submit to the comforts of home a little longer, despite a consuming passion for fireworks and a fierce desire to be called speleologists.

In spirit we have wandered through the pillared aisles of many churches.  We have seen countless Norman naves standing on a similar number of Saxon crypts.  We have deplored the absence of the triforium, and even criticised the stained glass by judicious references to “Murray.” We have pondered deeply on the state of Sir Rufus Robbaire’s liver when he gave three carucates of land to the Abbey of St. Dufferus for ever.  We have recognised the latent poet in members who veiled the commonplaces of lunch in such charming phrases as “lubrication of the tonsils” and “distortion of the alimentary canal.” We still reserve our judgment upon the expediency of port wine and brandy for the former operation, and upon the wisdom of performing the latter with the sausage of modern commerce; but we have never failed to give the heroic survivors their meed of applause.

With others we have foolishly slept on rock ledges in Norway, spent arduous days on ice-slopes, and chased legions of furtive fleas in the climbers’ huts and chalets of Switzerland.  With De Foe we have made the ascent of Cheviot, viewed, like Moses, the climbers’ Promised Land from Scafell, and the Pillar Rock from Pisgah, and, unlike Moses, been permitted to pass the Jordan.  Up the Dolomites with scarpetti’d feet we have been dragged on double ropes.  We have shuddered upon the verge of the Stygian courses of hidden rivers, and sung Christmas carols in snow-drifts.  In the Yosemite Valley avalanches of quotations from the poets have overwhelmed us.  We have exhibited an intelligent interest in the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, and become mildly enthusiastic over a plaster model intended to represent them.  In caves and pot-holes innumerable garments have been spoilt, and countless geological specimens brought forth for our edification.  The GrÈpon Crack has become our own familiar friend, and bids fair to oust from our affections our quondam boon companion, the Napes Needle.

Some compensations have been granted us.  Few, if any, Ramblers know Gaelic.  When they return from “Caledonia stern and wild” their tremendous adventures lack location, and our share in them is but shadowy.

We have discovered an impressionist school of photographic art, and with some success seen the artists’ meanings in their mysterious pictures.  We have learned to look unflinchingly upon photographs of our familiar friends clinging like flies to stupendous rock faces, well knowing the foreground has been removed for our pleasure and their glory.  In earlier days we listened with patient resignation to speeches relevant to everything but the matter under discussion.  Some of these, if irrelevant, had evidently a purpose and a warning, but we have never been able to decide upon the state of mind which induced a speaker to declare “the beauties of Canterbury make it incumbent upon every right feeling member to spend Christmas and Easter in the Lake District.”

By the help of an exhibition of scientific Alpine equipment, held in the Club-room, we have attained at least some knowledge of the things not needed for a pleasant holiday.  When “the winter of our discontent is made glorious summer” we shall seek the happy shores of dear old Scarborough.  There, by the summer sea, conscious of a duty discharged, of gratitude expressed, our strained minds will relax, and we shall return to listen with increased zest to those wonderful tales our brother Ramblers tell us of their marvellous adventures by flood and field, on peak and glacier.

“A SILENT MEMBER.”