The Spell of Switzerland Part 1

The Spell of Switzerland.

by Nathan Haskell Dole.

PREFACE

The present book is cast in the guise of fiction. The vague and flitting forms of my niece and her three children are wholly figments of the imagination. No such person as "Will Allerton" enters my doorway. The "Moto," which does such magical service in transporting "Emile" and his admirers from place to place is as unreal as Solomon's Carpet.

After Lord Sheffield and his family had started back from a visit to Gibbon at Lausanne, his daughter, Maria T. Holroyd, wrote the historian: "I do not know what strange charm there is in Switzerland that makes everybody desirous of returning there." It is the aim of this book to express that charm. It lies not merely in heaped-up ma.s.ses of mountains, in wonderfully beautiful lakes, in mysterious glaciers, in rainbow-adorned waterfalls; it is largely due to the a.s.sociation with human beings.

The spell of Switzerland can be best expressed not in the limited observations of a single person but rather by a concensus of descriptions. The casual traveller plans, perhaps, to ascend the Matterhorn or Mount Pilatus; but day after day may prove unpropitious; clouds and storms are the enemy of vision. One must therefore take the word of those more fortunate. Poets and other keen-eyed observers help to intensify the spell. These few words will explain the author's plan. It is purposely desultory; it is not meant for a guide-book; it is not intended to be taken as a perfectly balanced treatise covering the history in part or in whole of the twenty-four cantons; it has biographical episodes but they are merely hints at the richness of possibilities, and if Gibbon and Tissot and Rousseau stand forth prominently, it is not because Voltaire, Juste Olivier, Hebel, Topfer, Amiel, Frau Spyri, and a dozen others are not just as worthy of selection. One might write a quarto volume on the charms of the Lake of Constance or the Lake of Zurich or the Lake of Lucerne. Scores of castles teem with historic and romantic a.s.sociations. It is all a matter of selection, a matter of taste. It is not for the author to claim that he has succeeded in conveying his ideas, but whatever effect his work may produce on the reader, he, himself, may, without boasting, claim that he is completely under the spell of Switzerland.

NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.

BOSTON, October 1, 1913.

CHAPTER I

UNCLE AND NIECE

I must confess, I did not approve of my niece and her husband's plan of expatriating themselves for the sake of giving their only son and heir, and their twin girls, a correct accent in speaking French. But I had the grace to hold my tongue. I wonder if my wife would have been equally discreet--supposing I possessed such a helpmeet. Probably she would not have done so, even if I had; and probably also I should not, if she had. For the very fact of my having a wife would prove that I should be different from what I am.

There is an implication in this slight exhibition of boastfulness; but it is not subtle. Any one would see it instantly--namely, that I am a bachelor. A bachelor uncle whose niece takes it into her head to marry and raise a family, is as deeply bereaved as he would be were he her father. More so, indeed, for a father has his wife left to him....

The relationship between uncle and niece has never been sufficiently celebrated in poetry. It deserves to be sung. Besides the high, n.o.ble friendship which it implies, there is also about it a touch of almost lover-like sentiment. The right-hearted uncle loves to lavish all kinds of luxuries on his niece and feels sufficiently repaid by the look of frank affection in her eyes, the unabashed kiss which is the envy of young men who happen to witness it.

Here are the facts in my case. After my brother's wife died, he urged me to make my home at his house. I suppose I might have done so long before; but I had been afraid of my sister-in-law. She was a tall imperious woman; she did not approve of me at all. She could not see my jokes, or, if she did, she frowned on them. I suppose she thought me frivolous. She was one of those women who make you appear at your worst. She was sincere and genuine and good, but our wireless apparatus was not tuned in harmony. As long as she was at the helm of my brother's establishment I preferred to enjoy less comfortable quarters elsewhere.

But when, as the Wordsworth line has it, "Ruth was left half desolate"

(though her father did not "take another mate"), and they showed me how delightfully I could dispose of my library and have an open fire on cold winter evenings, and what a perfect position was, as it were, destined for my baby grand--for I am devoted to music--_en amateur_, of course,--I yielded, and for ten happy years, saw Ruth grow from a young girl into the woman "n.o.bly planned, to warn, to comfort and command."

Command? What woman does not?

At my advice she took up the violin, and I shall never forget the hours and hours when we practised and really played mighty well--if I do say it, who shouldn't--through the whole range of duets, beginning with simple pieces for her immature fingers and ending with the strange and sometimes--to me--incomprehensible fantaisies of the super-modernists.

But all these simple home-joys came to their inevitable end. The right man appeared and did as the right men always have done and will do.

Uncles are as p.r.o.ne to jealousy as any other cla.s.s of bipeds; but here again the philosophy of life which I trust I have made evident I cherish, and which, as one good turn deserves another, cherishes me, enabled me to preserve a front of discreet neutrality. I may have been over-zealous to look up the young man's record; but there was nothing to which the most scrupulous could take exception. He was a clean, straight, manly youth with excellent prospects.

Will Allerton lived in Chicago; that was a second count against him, but equally futile as a valid argument for dissuasion. After their wedding-journey, they went to a delightful little house in East Elm Street in Chicago. Business called me to that city two or three times, and I visited them. So many of my friends had been unhappily married that I was more or less pessimistic about that kind of life-partnership; but my niece's happy home was an excellent cure for my bachelor cynicism. The coming of their first child,--they did me the honour of making me his G.o.dfather, though I do not much believe in such formalities; and they also named him for me,--the coming of this little mortal made no change other than a decided increase in the bliss of that loving home.

When little Lawrence was four years old, and the twins were two, his grandfather died suddenly. It was a tremendous change to have my good brother removed from my side. My niece and her husband came on from Chicago. They were pathetically solicitous for my welfare. Most insistently they urged me to come and live with them. There was plenty of room in the house, they said.

I was greatly touched by their generous kindness, but I set my face sternly against any uprooting of the sort. I said I much preferred to stay on where I was. I had consulted with my Lares and Penates and found that they opposed any such _boulevers.e.m.e.nt_. The old housekeeper who had looked after our comfort was still capable of doing all that was necessary for me. My wants were few; I lived the simple life and its cares and pleasures amply satisfied my ambition. I had a small circle of congenial friends, particularly among my books. I did not know what it meant to be lonely. If I needed company, I could always fortify myself with the presence of college cla.s.smates. I had organized a quartet of fairly capable musicians who came once or twice a week to play chamber-music with me, and for me. I had several proteges studying music at the conservatory and my Sunday afternoon musicales were a factor in my satisfaction. So it was arranged that I should make no radical change for the present, at least. I would spend my vacations with them at the seash.o.r.e, where we had a comfortable little _datcha_, and at least once during the winter I would make them a visit in Chicago.

Thus pa.s.sed two more years. Then out of a clear sky came the report that my niece and her husband were going to take their young hopeful and his sisters to Switzerland, so that he might learn to speak French with a perfect accent! Will had a rich old aunt--a queer, misanthropic personage, who lived the life of a hermit. She, too, took the long journey into the Unknown and, as she could not carry her possessions with her, they fell to her nephew.

I saw them off, and the last word my niece said, as we parted tenderly, was, "You must run over and make us a visit."

I shook my head: "I am afflicted with a fatal illness. I am afraid of the voyage."

Her sweet face expressed such concern that I quickly added: "It is nothing serious; but there is no hope for it--it is only old age."

"That's just like you," she exclaimed, "and I know you do not dread the ocean."

"Well, we'll see," I tergiversated. "I don't believe you'll stay.

You'll miss all the American conveniences and you'll get so tired of hearing nothing but French."

"Nonsense!" she exclaimed. "Of course we shall stay, and of course you'll come."

CHAPTER II

JUST A COMMON VOYAGE

It was inevitable. I, who had always jestingly compared myself to a brachypod, fastened by Fate to my native reef, and getting contact with visitors from abroad only as they were brought by tides and currents, began to feel the irresistible impulse to grow wings and fly away. How could I detach my clinging tentacles?

Every letter from Lausanne, where my dear ones had established themselves, urged me to "run over" and make them a long visit. My room was waiting for me. They depicted the view from its windows; splendid sweeps of mountains, snow-clad, tinged rose-flesh tints by the marvellous, magical kiss of the hidden sun; the lake glittering in the breeze, or dazzlingly azure in the afternoon calm; the desk; the comfortable, old, carved bedstead; the quaint, tiled stove which any museum would be glad to possess. There were excursions on foot or by automobile; mountains to climb; the Dolomites to visit. Each time new drawings, new seductions. With each week's mail I felt the insidious, impalpable lure.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _In the Engadine Valley_ [_See page 444_]]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I have many friends who put faith in astrology. One of my acquaintances is making a large income from constructing horoscopes.

She is sincere; she has a real faith. She acts on the hypothesis that from even the most distant of the planets radiate baleful or beneficent influences which move those mortals who are, as it were, keyed or tuned to them. Saturn, whose density is less than alcohol, a billion miles away; Neptune, almost three billion miles away, infinitesimal specks in the ocean of s.p.a.ce, make men and women happy or miserable. How much more then is it possible that the heaped-up ma.s.ses of mighty mountains may work their spell on men half-way around this globe of ours? I began to be conscious of the Spell of Switzerland.

A half-crazy friend of mine, a painter, who loved mountains and depicted them on his canvases, once broached a theory of his, as we stood on top of Mount Adams:--

"The time will come," he said with the conviction of a prophet, "when we shall be able to take advantage of the electric current flowing from this mountain-ma.s.s to Mount Washington, yonder, and commit ourselves safely and boldly to its control. Then we shall be able to practise levitation. It will be perfectly easy, perfectly feasible to leap from one peak to another."

I am sure I felt stirring within me the impulse to leap into the air with the certainty that I should land on top of the Jungfrau or of Mont Blanc. It was a c.u.mulative attraction. Every day it grew more intense. I got from the library every book I could find about Switzerland. I soaked myself in Swiss history. I began to know Switzerland as familiarly as if I had already been there.

Then came the decisive letter. My niece absolutely took it for granted that I was coming. She said: "We will meet you at Cherbourg with the motor. Cable."

This time I was obedient. I wound up my affairs for an indefinite absence.

I took pa.s.sage on a slow steamer, for I was in no hurry, and I wanted to have time enough to finish some more reading. I wanted to know Switzerland before I actually met her. I knew that I was destined to love her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ALPENGLOW ON THE JUNGFRAU.]

Theoretically one may understand psychology, even the psychology of woman--_may_, I say, not insisting too categorically upon this point, especially since the recent discovery that woman has, to her advantage over man, a superfluous and accessory chromosome to every cell in her dear body--one may know anatomy and physiology; but, when one falls in love with her, all this knowledge is as nought; she becomes, in the words of Heine, _die eine, die feine, die reine_. In this spirit, I studied the geology of Switzerland, realizing in advance that, as soon as I saw the Alpenglow on the peak of the Wetterhorn or of Die Jungfrau, I should not care a snap of my finger for the scientific const.i.tution of the vast rock-ma.s.ses, or for the theories that explain how they are doubled over on themselves and piled up like the folds of a rubber blanket.