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Table of Contents

Introduction

IT rains.

It has rained ever since our arrival in this green Alpine village; rained not heavily but with a grim Scotch persistence—the kind of drizzle that will tempt some old Aberdonian, sitting unconcernedly in soaking grass by the wayside, to look up and remark: “The roads is something saft.” Are we going to have a month of Landregen, as they call it? No matter. Anything for fresh air; anything to escape from the pitiless blaze of the South, and from those stifling nights when your bedroom grows into a furnace, its walls exuding inwardly all the fiery beams they have sucked up during the endless hours of noon. Let it rain!

Little I thought ever to become a guest in this tavern, familiar as it is to me from olden days. They have made us extremely comfortable. Nothing is amiss, nothing lacking. Our rooms are large and well furnished. Certain preliminary operations were of course necessary in regard to the beds. Away first of all with the Keilpolster, that wedge-shaped horror; away next with the Plumeau, another invention of the devil. And breakfast always up here please, for both of us, in my room, at half-past seven; seeing that work begins at eight sharp. Not less than a litre of milk for my friend, and two eggs; he is a milk-and-egg maniac. I am past his stage, though still young enough to revel in that delicious raspberry jelly. Why is it almost unknown in England?

On one side of my room hangs an oleograph which depicts a gay sportsman aiming at some chamois from behind a tree at twenty-five yards’ distance; such luck never came my way. The picture on the further side is still more suggestive—three roe-deer, hotly pursued by a dachshund; a pug-dog would have an equal chance of success. Cheerful pictures of this kind should hang in every room. I shall look at them whenever I feel jaundiced. Our tavern by the way is famous for its dachshunds. They have a couple of thoroughbreds, with faces like orchids, who eat and sleep most of the day and whose descendants are rapidly stocking the neighborhood. Their numerous progeny drop in for a visit from the remotest villages, and are coldly received by the parents. Just now the gentleman is asleep and his spouse, not for the first time, indulging in an agitated flirtation with one of her own remote descendants who has not yet found a home for himself: a very bad example to the rest of us....

Through the silvery curtain of drizzle I glance eastwards and recognize the old, old view, the earliest that ever greeted my eyes; for our nursery windows, up yonder, looked also towards the rising sun, and once, not in the day but late at night, I was lifted out of bed and placed on the window-sill to behold a wondrous thing—the sky all a-glister with livid rays. This aurora borealis is my first memory of life and the apparition must have been recorded in the newspapers of the day, since it was the only “Nordlicht” ever seen, to my knowledge, in the country; the vexed question, therefore, of a man’s earliest memory could be settled, so far as I am concerned, if one had the energy to hunt up the files. There, confronting me on its hillock, stands the church with red-topped steeple. During the war, the authorities carried off the four bells to be melted down; three new ones have since been purchased at Innsbruck. They chime pleasantly enough, but not quite the same as of yore. One would like to hear the old ones again, for memory’s sake, after all these years. How gayly they used to tremble on the air at midday, while one roamed about the hills at the back of the house. And how one rushed down to be in time for luncheon, seated on a fir-branch; an excellent method of progression on steep, slippery meadows, provided there be no stones or wasps’ nests on the track. One day, long ago, we three slid in this fashion and at a breathless speed down the never-ending slopes of the Furkla alp above Bludenz. Nothing happened till about half-way, when the eldest felt a jolt, a slight cavity in the ground, and called out to me to beware. It was too late; I was pitched in and out again. My sister who followed, carrying less weight, came to rest there. The cavity was a wasps’ nest. Eight stings....

And the church is backed by a mountain called Hoher Frassen; even at this distance one can detect a belt of green stretching across its middle near the scattered houses of Ludescherberg; wonderful, what manure will do! Everybody goes up the Hoher Frassen (vulgo Pfannenknecht) on account of the view, which is remarkable considering its low elevation of not even two thousand meters, though personally, if one must climb places like this, I should prefer the Mondspitze or Hochgerach. You can ascend in early morning from Bludenz or anywhere else, catch a glimpse of the Rhine and Lake Constance and snow peaks innumerable—of half this small province of Vorarlberg, in fact—and be home again in time for a late luncheon. Near the top is the now inevitable hut for the convenience of fat tourists. Cows pasture about the summit among the Alpine roses and dwarf pines.[1] Here, at the right season, you may capture as many Apollo butterflies as you please. A little boy and girl, scrambling homeward one day from this summit, dislodged with infinite trouble a huge bowlder and, while somebody was not looking, sent it on a career of delirious leaps down the incline above Raggal village. Such was its momentum after a couple of hundred yards that it went clean through a hay-hut, empty but solid, tossing its wooden blocks into the air as if they were feathers. The destruction of some poor peasant’s property was considered a great joke. We laughed over it for weeks and weeks.

On the other side of our valley one can discern, despite the rain, those peaks of the Rhætikon group. They have been powdered with freshly fallen snow almost down to the Kloster alp, where cows are grazing at this moment. The Kloster alp, on which I have passed many nights with no companion save a rifle, is forever memorable in my annals as being the spot where, at the age of six, I smoked my first cigar. We were on an excursion and somebody—the little Dr. Zimmermann, I daresay, the blithe veterinary surgeon—gave me, doubtless at my repeated and urgent solicitation, a long black Virginia, a so-called rat’s tail, the strongest weed manufactured by the Austrian Government. Delighted with my luck, I puffed through an inch or so. Then, without any warning, death and darkness compassed me about. Death and darkness! The world was turned inside out; so was I. Not for several weeks did I try tobacco again; this time only a cigarette and in a more appropriate locality; even that made me rather unhappy. Here, on the cliffs just above the Kloster alp, you used to be able to gather a bouquet of Edelweiss with your eyes shut, so to speak; here, among the tumbled fragments of rock further on, was a numerous colony of marmots. Never, in my bloodthirstiest days, had I the heart to shoot one of these frolicsome beasts, whose settlements are scattered over most of our mountains at the proper elevation. They call them “Burmentli” in our dialect—a pungent variety of alemannic—and their fat is supposed to cure every ill that flesh is heir to; it is chiefly on account of this fat that they have been persecuted in all parts of the Alps, and exterminated in not a few. Their cheery whistle carries half a mile; if you sit perfectly motionless, they will creep out of their burrows, one by one, and frisk and gambol around you. Once, at Christmas, a hunter brought me a hibernating marmot which he had taken, together with its whole family, out of winter-quarters. I put it, drowsy but half-awake, into a cold room, where it immediately rolled itself under a

Marmot’s skull with malformed teeth

bundle of hay. There it slept, week after week. A marmot in this condition is cold to the touch but not altogether stiff, and Professor Mangili calculated long ago that during the whole of its six months’ lethargy it respires only 71,000 times (awake, 72,000 times in two days)—a veritable death-in-life! Mine displayed no resentment at being aroused now and then in a warm room; indeed, it behaved with exemplary meekness and allowed itself to be pinched or caressed or carried about; but preferred sleeping, and always seemed to say, in the words of the poet’s sluggard, “You have waked me too soon! I must slumber again.” When summer came round, we took it back to its old home, where it trotted off without a word of thanks, as if the past experiences in our valley had been nothing but a silly dream.

One would hardly think that marmots ever fed each other, yet a skull in my collection makes me wonder how this particular animal, an old beast, can have survived without receiving nourishment from its fellows. It was shot near St. Gallenkirch in the Montavon valley on September 12th, 1886; and is remarkable since, in consequence of what looks like the fracture of a single incisor tooth, the lower jaw has been partially and slowly displaced, shifted to one side of the upper—at the cost, no doubt, of incessant pain. What happened? All four incisors therewith became not only useless but an intolerable hindrance; lacking the necessary attrition, they grew ever longer in mammoth-like curves, and sharply pointed; the shortest—the injured one, which is still deprived of enamel at its extremity—measures six and a half centimeters in length, the longest all but eight; and one of them, in the course of its circular development, has actually begun to bore into the bone of the upper jaw. I am not much of a draftsman, but these two sketches will suffice to give some idea of the freak specimen. A squirrel with somewhat similar dentition was described in the “Zoologist” (Vol. IX, p. 220). Here was one marmot, at least, who must have been glad when summer food-problems were over, and it grew cold enough to scuttle downstairs again for a six months’ rest. And some of them sleep in this fashion for eight months on end. What a sleep! Why wake up at all?

Food-problems of our own——

They are non-existent. This region has suffered relatively little from the effects of war; it is a self-supporting district of peasant-proprietors where nearly every family possesses its own house and orchard and fields and cattle; the ideal state of affairs. Nothing is lacking, save tobacco and coffee. To obtain the first, one plagues friends in England; instead of the second, we have to put up with cocoa, a costive and slimy abomination which I, at least, will not be able to endure much longer. Prolonged and confidential talks with the innkeeper’s wife—his third one, a lively woman from the Tyrol, full of fun and capability—have already laid down the broad lines of our bill of fare. I must devour all the old local specialties, to begin with, over and over again; items such as Tiroler Knödel and Saueres Nierle and Rahmschnitzel (veal, the lovely Austrian veal, is scarce just now, but she means to get it) and brook-trout blau gesotten and Hasenpfeffer and fresh oxtongue with that delicious brown onion sauce, and gebaitzter Rehschlegel (venison is cheap; three halfpence a pound, at the present rate of exchange); and, first and foremost, Kaiserfleisch, a dish which alone would repay the trouble of a journey to this country from the other end of the world, were traveling fifty times more vexatious than it is. Then: cucumber salad of the only true—i. e., non-Anglo-Saxon—variety, sprinkled with paprika; no soup without the traditional chives; beetroot with cummin-seed, and beans with Bohnenkraut (whatever that may be); also things like Kohlrabi and Kässpätzle—malodorous but succulent; above all, those ordinary, those quite ordinary, geröstete Kartoffeln with onions, one of the few methods by which the potato, the grossly overrated potato, that marvel of insipidity, can be made palatable. How comes it that other nations are unable to produce geröstete Kartoffeln? Is it a question of Schmalz? If so, the sooner they learn to make Schmalz, the better. Pommes lyonnaises are a miserable imitation, a caricature.

In the matter of sweets, we have arranged for Schmarrn with cranberry compote, and pancakes worthy of the name—that is, without a grain of flour in them, and Apfelstrudel and—quick! strawberries down from the hills, several pounds of the aromatic mountain ones, to form those wonderful open tarts which are brought in straight from the oven and eaten then and there, hot—if you know what is good. Should the weather grow sultry, I will also make a point of consuming a bowl of sour milk, just for the sake of auld lang syne. It may well ruin my stomach, which has acquired an alcoholic diathesis since those days.

There! A change of food, at last.

Whether Mr. R. will take to this diet is another matter. I should be in despair if he were a true Frenchman, for your Gaul, in this and other matters, is the most provincial creature in the world; like a peasant, he can eat nothing save what his grandmother has taught him to think eatable. Mr. R., luckily for him, is French only from political necessity. And besides, persons of his age should never be encouraged to express likes and dislikes in the matter of food; it is apt to make them capricious or even greedy, and what says the learned Dr. Isaac Watts, from whom I quoted a moment ago? “The appetite of taste is the first thing that gets the ascendant in our younger years, and a guard should be set upon it early.” How true! Nobody is entitled to be captious until he has reached the canonical age. After that, he has acquired the right of being not only critical, but as gluttonous as ever he pleases.

Here, meanwhile, are the latest statistics of our village. It contains about seven hundred inhabitants, three hundred cows and calves (most of them on the mountains just now), five taverns, and three Dorftrottels or idiots, of the genuine Alpine breed. Mr. R. is dying to have a look at them as soon as the weather clears; and so am I. There is a fascination about real idiots. They have all the glamour of a monkey-house, with an additional note of human pathos.

A heated discussion after dinner with Mr. R.—one of our usual ones—as to the right meaning of the English words “still” and “yet” which, like “anybody” or “somebody,” he refuses to distinguish from each other. On such occasions, he complains of the needless ambiguity and prolixity of my language; I retort by some civil remark about the deplorable poverty of his own. I should explain that I hold certificates as teacher of French and English, and am in possession of an infallible coaching method (a family secret) for backward or forward pupils; and that this is not the first time I have endeavored to instill a little knowledge of English into the head of Mr. R. who, for all his faults, is a companionable young fellow with certain brigand-strains in his ancestry that go well with those in mine (vide Peter Hinedo’s “Genealogy of the most Ancient and most Noble Family of the Brigantes, or Douglas,” London, 1754).

That astonishing French education.... What is one to do with people, future candidates for government posts, who cannot tell the difference between an adverb and a conjunction, who, if you ask them to define a reflexive verb, gaze at you with an air of injured innocence, almost as if you had asked them to say what is the capital of China, the position of their own colony of Obok, and whether Chili belongs to Germany or to Austria? They learn none of these things at school; or if they do, it is in some infant class where they are forgotten again, promptly and forever. Instead of this, they are crammed with microscopic details, under the name of “Littérature,” concerning the lives of all French writers that ever breathed the air of Heaven, and with a bewildering mass of worthless physical formulæ, enough to daze the brain of a Gauss. What Mr. R. does not know about convex lenses and declination needles and such-like balderdash is not worth knowing; his acquaintance with every aspect of Molière’s life and works is devastating in its completeness, and makes me feel positively uncomfortable. Now Molière was doubtless a fine fellow, but no youngster has any right to know so much about him. I only wish they had taught him a few elements of grammar instead.[2]

It is too late now. He laughs at grammar—a frank, derisory laugh. In other words, my task is rendered none the easier by his serene self-confidence. He does not share my view that his English is still rudimentary, though he admits that it may require “a little polish here and there.” Everything in the nature of a difficulty or exception to the rules is an idiom—not worth bothering about. He conjugates our few irregular verbs as if they were regular; go, go’ed, go’ed; find, finded, finded; and gets in a towering passion, not with me but with the language, whenever I have to set him right. Their mellow auxiliaries of “should” and “can” and all the rest of them, so useful, so reputable, so characteristic of the versatile genius of England, are treated as a perennial joke; indeed, it is a wretched idiosyncrasy of his to discover fun in the most abstruse and recondite material. (He nearly died of laughing the other day, because I told him that the Neanderthal race of man was less hairy than the Pithecanthropus erectus of Java; and failed to explain why such a bald scientific statement of fact should provoke even a smile.) Simple phrases like “Est-ce que l’enfant n’aurait pas dû acheter le chapeau?” give birth to English renderings that would send any less patient tutor into convulsions; renderings such as you might expect from the average Englishman when asked to put into French “If I had not noticed it, you would not have noticed it either (using s’en apercevoir).”

To all my suggestions that it might be well to study this or that more conscientiously, I receive the stereotyped reply “I know my vocables”; as if the possession of an English vocabulary were synonymous with the possession of English speech. It is perfectly true; he has a fair stock of words, and nobody would believe what can be done with our language until he hears it handled by a person who knows his vocables (and nothing else) after the manner of my pupil; I often tell him that he could make his fortune in England, on the music-hall stage, with that outfit alone. Nevertheless, strange to say, he was nearly always the first in his English class at school. Vainly one conjectures what may have been the attainments of the rest of them or, for that matter, of their teachers.

So he studies two hours a day with me and two hours alone, preparing for an examination in October; and that is his raison d’être in this country. He has just given me, to correct, a translation from a book full of “thèmes et versions,” all of which are too difficult for him; this one is his English rendering of a stiff piece that describes P. L. Courier’s disgust at the French Court. It is a noteworthy specimen of my pupil’s command of vocables and of nothing else; a document which I should not hesitate to set down here, in full, could I persuade anybody into the belief that it was authentic. That is out of the question. People would say I had wasted a good week of my life, trying to manufacture something comical.

Instead of this “anglais au baccalauréat” we have lately begun a course of Grimm’s Fairy Tales which are nearer to his level, and I am realizing once more what this stuff, so-called folk-lore, is worth. A desert! For downright intellectual nothingness, for misery of invention and tawdriness of thought, a round half dozen of these tales are not to be surpassed on earth. They mark the lowest ebb of literature; even the brothers Grimm, Germans though they were, must have suffered a spasm or two before allowing them to be printed. Fortunately Mr. R.’s versions of this drivel are far, far superior to the original; they beat it on its own ground of sheer inanity; and I am carefully collecting them to be made up, at some future period, into an attractive little volume for the linguistic amateur.