The Hopkinson boys' earliest experience of hills and fells was on visits to Skipton. In the summer of 1856 Alice wrote to John that she was taking long walks with the eldest three – John, who was 7 at the end of July, Alfred who had recently had his fifth birthday and Ellen aged nearly 3 – and their nursemaid
Nelly requires a good deal of carrying and Alfred a helping hand. Johnny bounds away like a wild one. [1]
In old age Alfred remembered
As early as the age of five I recall going up the River Aire to Gordale Scar, than which there is no more impressive scene in the country. To a young child the grandeur of it was almost overpowering. And then came the delight of climbing up the rocks at the side of the falls and crossing the moor to the great Cove above Malham. [2]
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| William Cecil Slingsby on Vesle Skagastølstind with Storen in the background 1908 |
It was when they were in Skipton that the boys first went out on the moors with one of their future mountaineering companions, William Cecil Slingsby (1849-1929), always known as Cecil. He was their second cousin, part of the Skipton cousinage – his grandfather Isaac Dewhurst and the Hopkinsons' grandfather John Dewhurst were brothers.
One of Cecil's earliest great expeditions to Norway was in 1874 with Algernon Dewhurst, Bonny Dewhurst's son, so we can probably assume that there was quite a small gang of Dewhurst cousins going out together on the uplands of Craven. Alfred wrote Cecil's obituary for the Alpine Journal, explaining to readers
I knew Slingsby for nearly 70 years, from the time when as boys we walked together over Pen-y-ghent and the hills of Craven. [3]
Cecil had written the Alpine Journal obituaries for Alfred's brother John and for John's son Bertram, remembering
Every member of my generation of my cousins, the Hopkinsons, has been endowed from earliest childhood with an intense love of the hills, a love which deepened naturally as years rolled on. This was inherited from their father, as was the case with me and my father. In boyhood days I had many a good walk with a few climbs thrown in amongst the fells of Craven
And when he wrote Charles Hopkinson's obituary for the Journal in 1920, he explained the intense love of the hills was inherited "from both of their parents". [4] Walking on the hills and fells of Craven, just as their mother Alice had done from childhood, was the beginning of the Hopkinson brothers' lives as mountaineers and their love of it was nurtured by both their parents.
John and Alice's habits were clearly frugal and their way of life struck Evelyn Oldenbourg as austere, but they certainly put a high value on their annual holidays, though the whole large family did not always holiday together.
In June 1857, John took the two oldest boys John and Alfred to the Lake District to join his sister Alice Wills, now a 30 year old mother of two little boys, and her husband Henry. John wrote to his Alice on 18 June 1857 from Grasmere
We had yesterday another famous time on the mountains. Alfred, Johnnie, Henry, Alice and myself set off to walk over the pass by Grisedale tarn between Helvellyn and Fairfield to Patterdale understanding the distance was six miles. And so it is, but as the crow flies or a direct line on the map. By the road it is certainly nine miles beside the ascent of some 1,600 feet – as it is one of the highest passes. They all managed it comfortably. Alfred coming in at a run. [5]
Alfred's memory was still vivid many years later
When I was six my father took us to the Lake District for the first time and we bathed in Easedale Tarn, climbed Helm Crag under his guidance, and another day reached the top of Fairfield with some friends. A boy's whole spirit was filled with the joy of the first ascent of one of the higher mountains and the widespread view around. [6]
At least two of Alice Wills' sons became mountaineers, and it seems likely that they climbed with the Hopkinson brothers. Her third son Maitland was at Cambridge at the same time as Edward Hopkinson and his death must have been one of the Hopkinson family's earliest experiences of climbing fatalities. Maitland died at the age of 27 in an accident in Wales in April 1885. He had walked to Aber with a younger brother and a friend, and they were descending by the Aber waterfall when Maitland, who had been jumping from crag to crag, sprang, lost his balance and fell about 50 feet into a pool below. He died instantly. But this was not the first climbing tragedy in the Wills family. His 14 year old cousin William Wills had been found dead on Newquay beach two years earlier; they thought he had been climbing the cliff.
In 1859, two years after the holiday in the Lakes, John took Johnnie, now nearly 10, and Alfred, who would very soon be 8, to join his sister Elizabeth Rooker and her family at Llangollen in the valley of the River Dee. John and Alice's entire holiday philosophy can be found in this little exchange: Alice wrote to John on 19 June
I was quite grieved to find that your Bible was not put in the box. I understood, when I enquired, that the Bible and testaments were there. I like the dear boys to hear or read some portion of God's word every day
while on the same day he was writing to her
The dear boys greatly enjoy the scenery and are learning something every step. I like their companionship and am glad to have them find their best pleasures in their parents' society … We are just going to have a Bible lesson, having borrowed one from the landlady [7]
Very observant and knowledgeable himself, John had the rare ability of "finding little forms of life of all sorts", as his granddaughter Ellen Ewing later put it, and making them interesting for children without in any way making them feel they were being taught or lectured. Alfred called this "having attention directed to anything of interest without any obtrusive attempt at giving lessons on any subject". [8]
At Llangollen they had the Berwyn Range and the beautiful Clwydian Range of hills to explore, and their cousins, 12 year old Alice and Marian (whom John calls May), who was the same age as Alfred, to play with. On 20 June John wrote
The cousins are very happy together. May and Alfred are well matched and Alice and Johnnie equally distinguished by their own individuality. [9]
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| The Parade, Llanfairfechan between 1890 & 1900 |
The following years saw seaside holidays. In July 1861, when the children were recovering from whooping cough, we find the family at Abergele on the North Wales coast, easily reached by train from Manchester, and where there were shingle and sandy beaches and wooded hills. Alice's letters home ask for old slippers to protect feet from the stones on the seashore. But from 1863 they took their holidays at Penmaenmawr or nearby Llanfairfechan, where the younger children could play on the beach and John could take the older boys up into the hills and mountains.
In 1862, however, they had a holiday at Sunderland Point on the Lancashire coast. It was to prove rather too memorable.
Notes
[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 26
[2] Sir Alfred Hopkinson, K.C., LL.D., Penultima (1930) pub. Martin Hopkinson Ltd, p. 225
[5] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910, p. 27
[6] Penultima, p. 226
[7] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910, p. 30
[8] Penultima, p. 226
[9] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910, p. 30
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