John Auldjo

John Auldjo (26 July 1805–6 May 1886) was a Montreal-born traveller, alpinist, geological observer, author, and draughtsman whose illustrated accounts of Mont Blanc and Vesuvius occupy a significant place in the literature and visual culture of early nineteenth-century travel. He was the elder son of Alexander Auldjo, a Scottish-born Montreal merchant, militia officer, and member of the Lower Canadian assembly, and Eweretta Jane Richardson. His mother died in 1808, shortly after the birth of a daughter, and his father, who had returned to Britain, died in London in 1821. Auldjo was educated at Atwood’s School in Hammersmith and matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1823, but did not take a degree. He was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in 1827, though he did not proceed to the bar. His inherited means permitted him to pursue the pattern of continental travel, amateur scientific inquiry, and artistic publication that defined his public career.

During a continental tour in 1827 Auldjo determined to attempt Mont Blanc, then still regarded as a hazardous undertaking situated between scientific expedition and adventurous travel. After preliminary excursions in the Chamonix district, he ascended by the comparatively recent Corridor route on 8–9 August, accompanied by an experienced party of local guides. The ascent lasted approximately thirty-seven hours. Auldjo’s importance to the history of mountaineering rests less upon priority than upon the manner in which he recorded the expedition. His Narrative of an Ascent to the Summit of Mont Blanc, on the 8th and 9th August, 1827, published in London in 1828, combined close description of the physical ordeal with images based upon drawings made by a participant in the ascent. Its views of crevasses, snow bridges, exposed traverses, improvised shelters, and the techniques employed by the guides constituted some of the earliest widely circulated visual representations of climbing as an embodied activity rather than merely a distant feature of Alpine scenery.

The Narrative enjoyed an unusually durable publishing history for an early account of Mont Blanc. A second edition appeared in 1830 with additional maps and notes; a substantially reconfigured third edition was issued in Longman’s Traveller’s Library in 1856, augmented by an annotated record of ascents through 1855; and this text was reprinted in 1867. Extracts and abridgements circulated separately in periodicals, annuals, and books for younger readers. The work thus reached beyond the relatively restricted audience for privately printed expedition narratives. Its combination of personal testimony and pictorial incident helped to make the ascent intelligible to the general reader and contributed to the gradual transformation of mountaineering from an exceptional scientific or aristocratic enterprise into a recognizable form of travel and recreation. Auldjo’s original pencil letter from the summit, subsequently discovered in a presentation copy of the book and preserved by the Alpine Club, provides an unusually immediate documentary survival from the expedition.

From 1829 Auldjo spent several years principally at Naples, where he entered the cultivated British expatriate circle associated with the classical archaeologist Sir William Gell. He also knew Keppel Craven and became acquainted with distinguished visitors, among them Sir Walter Scott, for whom he acted as a guide during Scott’s Neapolitan sojourn. The landscape and antiquities of the Bay of Naples encouraged Auldjo’s convergence of travel writing, draughtsmanship, and geological observation. In September 1831 he examined Vesuvius during a period of eruptive activity, repeatedly approaching the crater and recording lava, fumaroles, eruptive cones, and the topography of the volcano.

The resulting Sketches of Vesuvius, with Short Accounts of Its Principal Eruptions, from the Commencement of the Christian Era to the Present Time was first published at Naples by George Glass in 1832, in English and French versions, and was followed by a London edition in 1833. The illustrations, lithographed principally by Francesco Wenzel from Auldjo’s drawings, form an essential rather than subordinate part of the volume. In many copies they were finished by hand in vivid reds, yellows, greys, and blacks. Particularly notable are the folding panorama of the crater and the elaborate map distinguishing the historical lava flows by numerous separately applied colours. Although Auldjo did not claim a major theoretical contribution to volcanology, the book united historical compilation, topographical guidance, direct observation, and sophisticated visual documentation. It belongs both to the literature of the Grand Tour and to the developing iconography of geological phenomena, while its printing and colouring make complete copies of particular interest in the history of illustrated scientific and travel books.

In 1833 Auldjo travelled through the Greek islands to Constantinople. His Journal of a Visit to Constantinople, and Some of the Greek Islands, in the Spring and Summer of 1833 appeared in London in 1835, illustrated with etchings by George Cruikshank after Auldjo’s sketches. The book records antiquities, landscapes, social customs, and contemporary political conditions, and demonstrates the breadth of his interests beyond Alpine and volcanic subjects. His friendship with Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first formed at Cambridge and renewed in Naples, linked him to the literary representation of the Vesuvian landscape: Bulwer-Lytton consulted Auldjo’s knowledge of the volcano while composing The Last Days of Pompeii, and dedicated the 1836 edition of Devereux to him.

Auldjo’s standing as a gentlemanly scientific traveller was recognized by election to learned societies. He was a fellow of the Geological Society, belonged to the Royal Geographical Society, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 7 May 1840. His activities were nevertheless never confined to formal scientific institutions. An active Freemason, he was appointed Deputy Provincial Grand Master for Upper Canada by Simon McGillivray in 1837 and visited the province to investigate the condition of its lodges, although the surviving evidence for the practical results of this mission is limited. By the early 1840s he was again resident in London, at Noel House near Holland House, apart from further travel, including a journey through southern Spain in 1841–42.

Financial difficulties compelled Auldjo to leave England in 1856 and settle temporarily at Calais. In 1860 he married Caroline H. Hammet in Paris. After periods in Geneva and Florence, the family established itself permanently in Geneva in 1865, where two daughters were born. From 1870 until his death Auldjo served as British consul at Geneva, an unpaid appointment through which he became a familiar figure within the British colony. He also served for many years as president of the committee of Geneva’s Anglican church. He died after a short illness at his residence, 7 rue des Alpes, on 6 May 1886 and was buried in the Châtelaine cemetery; a memorial was placed in Holy Trinity Church, Geneva.

Auldjo’s historical position lies at the intersection of early alpinism, gentlemanly science, Romantic travel, and illustrated publishing. He was not a professional geologist or artist, and his publications did not establish a sustained scientific programme. Their importance derives instead from the precision with which direct experience was converted into image and narrative. The Mont Blanc plates helped define a visual vocabulary for mountaineering before the foundation of the Alpine Club, while the hand-coloured lithographs and maps of Sketches of Vesuvius remain distinctive documents of nineteenth-century volcanic observation and book production. His surviving diaries, correspondence, drawings, and annotated volumes, dispersed among institutional collections including the British Library, the Royal Society, and the Alpine Club, further illuminate the networks of travel, science, sociability, and print through which his books were produced and received.