In search of a grave
Johann Josef Benet (1824–64), who John Tyndall called ‘Bennen’, was Tyndall’s favourite Alpine guide. Edward Whymper, the first ascentionist of the Matterhorn, described him as ‘a good-looking man, with courteous, gentlemanly manners, skilful and bold’. Tyndall gave a rather more physical description: ‘a large man with round shoulders bent forward and a thick pedestal of a neck, bearing a massive head and earrings’. For Tyndall, Bennen the guide was ‘as a Wellington to an ord