CHAPTER I

_EARLY LIFE AND FIRST CLIMBS_

Owen Glynne Jones was born on November 2nd, 1867. A Welshman by blood, he was a Londoner by birth, for he first saw the light of day in Clarendon Street, Paddington. His father, Mr. David Jones, was a carpenter and builder, and the son commenced his education at a local school. Of his early life there is little to tell. He seems to have spent his holidays in Wales, and there to have developed, among what may without inaccuracy be called his native mountains, that passion for climbing which made him famous, and which led to his early and much lamented death.

In 1881, when not yet fourteen years of age, Owen Jones was sent to the Central Foundation School in Cowper Street, City Road, of which Dr. Wormell was head master. Those who knew him there speak of him as ‘a bright, promising schoolboy.’

He remained at Dr. Wormell’s for three years (1881-1884). He distinguished himself in science and won several prizes while at the school. On leaving he was awarded the Holl scholarship, and passed to the Technical College at Finsbury, under the City and Guilds of London Institute.

Jones spent two years (1884-1886) at Finsbury. During that time he passed through the complete course of instruction in the Mechanical department there. He worked with conspicuous ability and success at mechanical engineering, mechanical drawing, mathematics, and chemistry, as well as in the mechanical laboratory and in the wood and iron workshops. When he left, his teachers spoke of him in the highest terms. ‘Mr. O. G. Jones,’ said Professor Perry, ‘was as able, as earnest, as promising as any other whom I can now remember.’ Mr. John Castell-Evans speaks of his ‘eager enthusiasm and scrupulous conscientiousness;’ and Professor Silvanus Thompson wrote of him: ‘He is imbued with modern methods, ... and is possessed of a healthy enthusiasm for his work that is infectious.’ At the close of his course he passed with a Clothworkers’ Scholarship to the Central Institution in Exhibition Road, South Kensington, where he passed the next three years of his life.

The three years (1886-1889) he spent in the Engineering Department, and at the end of his course he had attained the highest position in the class-list of any student of his year, and he received the diploma of Associate of the Institute. On the completion of his course he was appointed assistant in the Mathematical Department. During his life at South Kensington he made the same impression as heretofore on all with whom he came in contact. Intellectually alert, diligent, energetic, enthusiastic, he seemed bound to make some mark in the world.

In the year following the completion of his course, and while he was an assistant at South Kensington, I first met him.

It was during the Easter holidays of 1890. Having broken away from the party with whom I had been spending most of my holiday in Borrowdale, I made my way to Wastdale Head Inn. I picked up a chance acquaintance with two young fellows in the inn, and we agreed to go together to climb the Pillar Rock--with the aid of a ‘Prior’s Guide’ which I had in my pocket.

When we commenced the ascent, which proved very easy--I believe we went up the easiest way--the dark, slim young fellow somehow naturally assumed the lead. Before we started he had discovered that I had been to Switzerland and had done some climbs there, so he was very modest about his own powers. A few seconds on the rocks dissipated all doubt. With great confidence and speed, climbing cleanly and safely, he soon showed he was no ordinary climber. I had been out with some very tolerable Swiss guides, but never before with a man to whom rock-climbing seemed so natural and easy. My curiosity was excited. He could not be one of the great climbers, for he had never been out of the British Islands, but he could climb.

On the top we found a small, rusty tin box, in which were a number of visiting cards. One of these belonged to Mr. A. Evans, of Liverpool, and a subsequent visitor had written on it the date of his death in the central gully of Llewedd. One of us produced a card, on which the other two wrote their names. The dark young fellow signed his name ‘O. G. Jones.’ I wonder if that card is there still.

That afternoon and the following day he plied me with questions about Switzerland. How did the climbing there compare with these rocks? Had I climbed the Matterhorn? Did I think he could do it?--absurd question--and so on. Restless, eagerly active, very strong, good-tempered, enthusiastic, he was a man one could not forget. We parted after a day’s acquaintance. I never dreamed I should see him again.

His companion on that occasion was another South Kensington man, Dr. Sumpner, now of Birmingham. The next time we met was at Jones’s grave in Evolena. During our conversations at that first brief meeting I learned that Jones was at South Kensington; he told me he first learned serious climbing on Cader Idris; I marvelled at his wonderful grip of the rocks, his steady head, his extraordinary power of balancing himself on one foot in what seemed to me then almost impossible positions, and I felt that his enthusiasm would soon lead him to the Alps, if any opportunity offered. His heart was already there. Yet he was so ignorant of the ‘lingo’ of the climbing world that my use of the words ‘handholds’ and ‘footholds’ considerably amused him.

The following Easter he was again among the Lake Mountains, having devoted the Whitsuntide and Christmas holidays of the preceding year to his favourite pursuit, the last mentioned period being spent in North Wales. I hurry over his climbing in the Lake District for the very sufficient reason that in this volume, so characteristic of its author, his work there is described by himself with all the accuracy of a trained scientist, and with all the enthusiasm of an ardent mountaineer. Descriptions of all these climbs were kept by him in numerous small notebooks, full of neat shorthand with dates, proper names, &c., written in, and with occasional pen and ink sketches of his routes up crags and gullies to illustrate the shorthand notes. Full of mournful interest are these touches of a vanished hand, these silent echoes of a voice that is still.

It was, I believe, during this Easter of 1891 that he met Mr. Monro, to whose enthusiasm he was subsequently wont to attribute his first visit to the Alps, which took place in the autumn of that year. The result of that meeting and the wonderful amount of climbing in ‘the playground of Europe’ that Jones managed to cram into eight short years must be reserved for another chapter.