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[Contents.]
[List of Illustrations] (In certain versions of this etext [in certain browsers] clicking on the image will bring up a larger version.) (etext transcriber's note) |
THE EIGER
From the Drawing by Fleming Williams
WINTER SPORTS
IN SWITZERLAND
BY
E. F. BENSON
WITH 12 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY
C. FLEMING WILLIAMS
AND 47 REPRODUCTIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY
MRS. AUBREY LE BLOND
LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN & COMPANY, LTD.
44 & 45 RATHBONE PLACE
1913
[All rights reserved]
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
WINTER SPORTS IN SWITZERLAND
CHAPTER I
THE SUN-SEEKER
There is an amazingly silly proverb which quite mistakenly tells us that “seeing is believing.” The most ordinary conjurer at a village entertainment will prove the falsity of this saying. For who has not seen one of these plausible mountebanks put a watch into a top-hat, and, after clearly smashing it into a thousand pieces with a pestle, stir up the disintegrated fragments with a spoon and produce an omelette? Or who is so unacquainted with the affairs of the village schoolroom at Christmas as not to have seen a solid billiard-ball or a lively canary squeezed out of the side of a friend’s head? Such phenomena are by no means rare, and occur periodically all over England. The observer’s eyes have told him that he has seen such things, and the verb “to see” is merely a compendious expression to indicate that on the evidence of your eyes such or such a phenomenon has actually occurred. But no one believes that the disintegrated watch has become an omelette though ocular evidence—seeing—insists that it has. It was a conjuring trick. And this leads me to the consideration of the phenomena on which this whole book is based.
For High Alpine resorts in winter are a conjuring trick of a glorious and luminous kind. Our commonsense, based on experience, tells us that ice is cold, but is melted by heat; and that snow is wet; and that unless you put on a greatcoat when the thermometer registers frost, you will feel chilly; and that if you frequently fall down in the snow you will be wet through, and if you do not change your clothes when you return home you will catch a cold. All these things are quite obvious, and he who does not grant them as premises to whatever conclusion we may happen to base on them, is clearly not to be argued with, but soothed and comforted like a child or taken care of like a lunatic. But High Alpine winter resorts give, apparently, ocular disproof of all these obvious statements, and those who go out to these delectable altitudes in favourable seasons see (which is ocular evidence) every day and all day the exact opposite of these primitively simple prepositions regularly and continually taking place. They sit in the sun, when they are tired of skating, and see that though a torrid luminary beats down on the frozen surface, burning and browning the faces of their friends, the ice remains perfectly dry and unmelted; they trudge through snow, and find that they are not wet; they see the thermometer marking anything up or down to thirty degrees of frost, and go out coatless and very likely hatless, and are conscious only of an agreeable and bracing warmth; they go ski-ing and all day are smothered in snow, and yet return dry and warm and comfortable to their hotels, and do not catch any cold whatever. Shakespeare once made an allusion of some kind (I cannot look all through his plays to find it) about hot ice, meaning to employ a nonsensical expression. But it is the most striking testimonial to the magnificence of his brain that all he ever wrote meant something, although, as in this instance, he designed it not to. For without doubt he was alluding to what appears to occur at St. Moritz or Mürren.
But it is all a conjuring trick, or so these altitudinists are disposed to think when they return home to the dispiriting chills of a normal February in England, and find that when the thermometer marks 45° or thereabouts they shiver disconsolately in the clemming cold. Even when they were out in Switzerland they hardly believed what appeared to be happening, for they found that if the weather changed, and instead of the windless calm, or a light north-wind, the Föhn-wind blew from the south-west, warm and enervating, then, in proportion as the thermometer mounted, they felt increasingly cold. All these things, though they thought they saw and felt them, were of the nature of a conjuring trick, and they never, after their return to the lowlands, really believed them. It was obviously impossible that they could have felt warm and dry, after being rolled in the snow. It must have been an illusion, capable of immediate disproof if they now went out without a coat, or sat down on a snowy London pavement. A pleasant illusion, no doubt, but clearly an illusion. It was like the omelette emerging from the top-hat, into which a watch had, only a moment before, been placed and pestled.
And if those who think they have experienced these phenomena, which so clearly contradict the most elementary laws of Nature, cannot fully believe in them when they re-enter the chilly spring of England, still less do those who have not experienced them find it possible even to simulate credulity when the foolish Alpinist recounts them. I rather fancy that people who have never been to the high altitudes in winter, believe that all those who say they have done so, and come back and tell their friends that sun does not melt ice, and that snow is dry, and that ten degrees of frost is an agreeable temperature to stroll about in without a coat, are in some sort of inexplicable conspiracy. But the conspiracy is so widely spread now, and is still spreading so fast, that one’s remarks on the subject are received with politeness nowadays, though still with incredulity. Some strange wandering of the wits has taken possession of the conspirators, who are otherwise harmless. And, such is the force with which their illusion holds them, and so anxious are they that credence should be given to it, that they employ some sort of skin-dye to add completeness to their strange tales, and appear with brown hands and faces when they come back to the anæmic metropolis. They are clearly the victims of some obscure but infectious derangement of the brain, of which the chief symptoms are those strange illusions and an immense appetite.... And, as I have said, the victims of these illusions, before they have spent many days in England, are already themselves wondering whether all these things really were so, or whether they were but the fabric of a pleasing dream. But they make plans to dream again about the middle of the ensuing autumn, and for the most part find that the vision is recapturable. It is all great nonsense; but if you take a suitable ticket at a suitable time of the year, and go where that ticket will allow you, the nonsense is found to be recurrent.
I do not know whether ice and snow, and all the forms of the “radiant frost,” as Shelley calls it, are in themselves more beautiful than the spectacle, to which we are accustomed, of an unfrozen world, or whether it is merely because we are unused to the gleams and sparkle of these whitenesses, that we find them so entrancingly lovely. It would be interesting, for instance, to ascertain whether an Esquimo or other dweller in the Arctics accustomed to ice, would go into ecstasies of admiration at the sight—shall we say—of Hyde Park Corner on a moist warm day of September, when the roadway is swimming in a thick brown soup of mud, and gusts of tepid rain stream on the wind-swept lamp-posts, thus supporting the idea that it is to the novelty of the spectacle that the arousing of our appreciation is due. Certainly it would be hard to say that anything in the world is more beautiful than a beech-tree in spring, or a crimson rambler in full flower, or glimpses of the Mediterranean in a frame of grey-green olive-trees; and I am inclined to believe that it is partly the contrast which a sunny morning in winter among the High Alps presents to all that a Londoner has known or dreamed of hitherto that partly accounts for the ineffable impressions it never fails in producing on him. And to that we must add the exhilarating and invigorating effect of the still dry air, and the sun that all day pours Pactolus over the gleaming fields. In such an air and in such a flood of light all our senses and perceptions are quickened, the vitality of our organs is increased, and with the wonderful feeling of bien-être which the conditions give, our appreciation is kindled too. I always feel that it must have been on a frosty morning that David said: “I opened my mouth and drew in my breath.” And perhaps on that day the cedars of Lebanon were covered with the crystals of hoar-frost, and below the snowy uplands the dim blue of the sea slept insapphirined at the bases of the shining cliffs....
I lick the chops of memory, and go back in thought to the middle of December, when, having previously determined not to go abroad till January, I hurriedly fly the country, like a criminal seeking to escape from the justice that is hot on the heels of a murderer. In such wise do I fly from my conscience—conscience, I may remark, is one of the things that everybody leaves behind when he goes to the High Alps: apparently it and other poisonous organisms, such as the bacillus of tuberculosis cannot exist in those altitudes—while below my breath I again register the frequently broken vow that I will be at home again by the middle of January at the latest. For indeed it seems impossible to tolerate London any longer just now: the fogs have begun (these are the excuses with which I seek to stay the protests of conscience, before I fly from it), and for three days last week we lived in a thick and ominous twilight of dusky orange, tasting evilly of soot and sulphurous products. At intervals a copper-coloured plate showed itself above the house roofs: and, oh, to think that this mean metallic circle was indeed none other than the hot radiant giant that in the happier climes was rejoicing to run his course across the turquoise expanse of cloudless sky; that this remote and meaningless object was the same that sparkled on dazzling peak and precipice and turned the untrodden snows to sheets of diamond dust. Then after three days of Stygian gloom the fog was dispersed by a shrewd and shrill north wind, and for a whole morning snow fell heavily, which, as it touched the pavements and roadways of town more than usually befouled by the fog, turned into a base and degrading substance resembling melting coffee-ice. The streets swam in the icy treacle of it, and motor-buses and other ponderous vehicles cast undesired helpings of it at the legs of foot-passengers. After this dispiriting day the weather changed again and a tepid south-westerly gale squealed through the streets. This was too much: I bought a quantity of what is known as sermon-paper and two new stylographs (this was another sop to conscience, and implied the intention of working out in Switzerland), made a few hasty and craven arrangements on the telephone, and slid out of Charing Cross Station at 2.20 P.M. precisely next day, leaving conscience, like an abandoned wife, sobbing on the platform.
Now, while journeys, whether on land or sea, are apt to be but tiresome businesses when they are undertaken at the call of some tedious errand, they are vastly different affairs when they conduct the traveller to joyful places and delectable pursuits. They are coloured by that which awaits him at the end of them (like the sweetness of sugar permeating tea), and this particular progress is to me full of romantic happenings. Dusk is already closing in before I reach the coast, and as the train halts on the hill above Folkestone, before being towed backwards down to the harbour, I can see the lights beginning to twinkle in the town and along the pier, which is surrounded by the great grey immensity of the wave-flecked sea. A fine rain is falling dismally, and as I hurry across the slippery quay I am weighed down by an enormous greatcoat (the pockets of which, I am sorry to say, are “salted” by various packets of cigarettes, which is why I wear it), and I stagger under the weight of a suit-case, sooner than part with which I would die. For the French or Swiss railway companies often (no doubt with humorous intent) arrange that the traveller’s large luggage shall not arrive for twenty-four hours or so after he has got to his destination, and in less experienced years I have packed my boots and skates in these detained trunks, and have been obliged to wait in savage inaction till the railway company has come to the end of its joke, just as one waits for the end of a long funny story. Not so now: my inseparable bag contains my large and cumbrous skate-shod boots as a first charge, and after they have been stowed, the mere necessities of life, like clothes and dressing-case, as opposed to its joys, fill the rest. Even in the harbour the steamer sways with the back-wash of the heavy seas outside, and the mooring-ropes squeak and strain to its unease. I stick in the narrow gang-plank that conducts in precipitous incline to the deck (at least the corner of my suit-case does, which is part of my identity); a faint and awful smell of red plush sofas and cold beef comes up from the stairs leading to the saloon; the tarpaulins, rigged up along the open passage between decks, flap uneasily and are buffeted by the rain-soaked wind, and sailors hurry about with white japanned tin objects in their hands....
All this sounds dismal and dispiriting enough, but such incidents, I repeat, take their colour from that to which they lead the traveller, and when bound for Switzerland they are all haloed in a vague pleasurable sense of excitement and romance. We put out on the turbulent and windy sea, and as we round the end of the pier the whole boat shivers as a great white-headed wave strikes her. It is cold and wet on deck, but I have to linger there while the cliffs of my beloved native land vanish into the grey of the swift on-coming night, and feel a perfect glow of enthusiasm at the idea of not setting eyes on them again for another month or so (probably “so”: because conscience is now far away, perhaps still waiting at Charing Cross Station, in case I return by the next train), and already I am beginning to be doubtful whether I really made a vow to be back by the middle of January. I pass rows of silent figures with closed eyes reclining on deck-chairs in the more sheltered corners: then the whole ship makes a scooping curtsey into the trough of a wave, and the water pours sonorously on to the deck. Shrill whistles the wind in the rigging, and a raucous steam-siren proclaims to all the traffic in the Channel that we are off to Switzerland to skate, having left our consciences and the white cliffs of England behind us, and not caring two straws, at this delightful moment, as to whether we ever see any of them again.
I love the landing on the friendly shores of France, the waiting while the ship is reluctantly coaxed sidling up to the pier, the hustle to get through the custom-house and enter the warm, well-lit train. The foreign tongue is delightful to the ear: so, too, to the eye, the blue-bloused porters, and the unplatformed station, where the huge carriages tower high above one, emitting mysterious jets of steam. All is strange and new and delightful: the engine of unaccustomed build and outlandish voice, the grey upholstered compartments with their hot-carpeted floors, the restaurant car with bottle-filled racks, where presently I sit, part of a moving pageant of eating and drinking, as we shriek through stations and scour with ever-increasing velocity through the darkness of a stormy night. At Laon mysterious jugglings take place: another string of carriages is slowly shunted on to our train, to the accompaniment of many cries of warning and encouragement and wavings of lanterns, and the buffers come home with a soft thud. We cast off our tail, lizard-like, which is hauled away to travel divergently to Basle, and soon we are thundering on again by the more direct route to Berne. At some timeless hour a long halt is made, and compartment doors are flung open with the sonorous proclamation of the arrival of les messieurs de la douane. Enter les messieurs, and at their sesame bags fly open, and with strange staves they explore the hidden recesses under the seats, in their nightly search for laces and spirits and cigarettes and all the contraband of peace. Soon this complimentary visit is over, the green shades are adjusted again over the lamps, and the vibration and rhythm of the racing wheels mingle and blend themselves into the blurred edges of dream....
I do not wake until we are actually slowing down to enter Berne—that city so justly famous for its bears, its President of this delectable republic, and its terrace from which the eager tourist vainly scans the impenetrable clouds which invariably screen from his view all possible glimpses of the mountains of the Oberland. Whenever I arrive at Berne it is always a grey chilly morning, just above freezing point, so that the icy streets are half slush. At first this used to depress me with ominous forebodings of a thaw at the higher altitudes: now I know that all the winter through it is always just thawing at Berne, and that the sky there always is heavily be-clouded. I think a sunny frosty morning there would cause me some considerable anxiety, for it would imply a complete upset of climatic conditions, and midsummer might be expected to hold its abhorred sway on the heights. So in perfect equanimity I climb back again into our train—heated to the temperature of the second hottest room in a Turkish bath—and we jog in more leisurely fashion through the half-frozen villages towards the lake of Thun. These villages are mainly composed of houses taken from the larger-sized boxes of toys, with stones fastened down on their wood-shingle eaves to prevent their roofs blowing away, and with staircases, clearly built for ornament, and completely unpractical, climbing up the outside of their walls. Stations and banks and hotels seem to be constructed with a view to moderate permanence; the rest are clearly so made that they can be taken up and planted down somewhere else. Then as we emerge on to the edges of the lake, higher hills begin to tower across its steely-grey levels, and rifts in the clouds that shroud their heads and hunched shoulders show glimpses of sun that shine on the whiteness of snow. Mile after mile we pursue a meandering way along the shores, and thread the darkness of hoarse tunnels, whose lips are fringed with dripping icicles, and the sense of something coming, something high and clear, begins to grow. Though in front, where Interlaken lies, a veil of grey-blue mist is interspersed between us and that which, I know, soars above it, the clouds are beginning on all sides to become unravelled like wool-work pulled out, and through the rents and torn edges gleams of turquoise sky are seen. High up climb serrated rims of rock, cut vividly clear against the blue and fringed with aspiring pines; higher yet, where the boldest of these brave vegetables can find no footing, further ridges appear austere and empty and gleaming. Yet these are but the outlying buttresses and ramparts of the great towers at the base of which they lean and cluster: to-night we shall sleep in an eyrie far above them, and far above us yet will watch the unscaled precipices of the great range, over the edge of which the unheeding stars climb and swim into sight all night long, pouring the golden dew of their shining upon forest and glacier, until the snows are rosy with dawn.
We paused in Interlaken Central Station to draw breath after our lake-side amble. Here the snow lay crisp and hard-trodden in the streets, but overhead the gutters gurgled and the eaves of houses dripped with its melting in this brilliant morning. No shred of cloud was left in all the shining heavens, and like the flanks of a galloped horse the pine-clad hillsides steamed in the sun.... And then the miracle.... As we steamed forth again to the Eastern station, a long valley lying between two wooded hills opened out, and there, clear in the light of the young day, and white with virgin snows and blue with precipices of ice, and set in the illimitable azure, rose the Queen of Mountains, the maiden, the Jungfrau, peaked and domed and pinnacled in ineffable crystal.
The Jungfrau is and will always be my mistress among mountains, as she was when I first saw her at the age of twelve. One mistake I have made in my conduct towards her, and that was ten years later when I climbed her—and yet who could tell she would prove so tedious and heavy (not in hand but in foot)? For I approached the lady of my adoration from the Concordia hut, and instead of feasting my eyes at every step on her queenly gracious carriage and maiden slenderness, I found that the closer I got to her the more did she appear round-shouldered, not to say hump-backed. In addition, a quantity of fresh snow had fallen, and we had a long tiresome and utterly unexciting trudge, a hot and stodgy affair. I had imagined that ventures and perils would have to be encountered for this wooing and winning of her, with balancings and poisings on stairways of precipitous ice and needles of pinnacled rock: instead she had to be solidly and laboriously and dully approached; it was like wooing some great bolster or gigantic cow. For a little while after that I cared nothing for her; she was a mature and silent barmaid of vast proportions, but gradually her charm and enchantment cast their spell over me again, the dissolution of which I intend never to risk in the future, unless I approach her by a more hazardous and daring route. To those who approach her dully, she gives herself dully: the more daring wooer she may perhaps kill, but she does not bore him.
But the wonder of her, when seen through clear air with the brilliant winter sky around her head from the entrance to this valley that leads up to Lauterbrunnen! Up it we steamed in a little angry rattling snorting train, which cut itself in half to take some of its aspiring contents to Grindelwald on the left, and others among whom I numbered myself to Wengen and to Mürren. By the side of our way ran a turbulent mountain stream fed by the glaciers of the Oberland, too swift to freeze altogether, but with its backwaters and sheltered reaches covered over with lids of ice. For all its glacier-birth steam rose from it in the icy air that hovered in shaded places, and the alders and hazels that hung over it were thickly encrusted with the marvellous jewellery of the hoar-frost, spiked and parsemès and refoliaged in wondrous winter growth with tendrils and scrolls of minutest diamond-dust. Narrower grew the valley, steeper and taller the wooded hills that overhung it till at last we reached Lauterbrunnen, close to which the Staubbach, most amazing of all waterfalls, leaps a clear eight hundred feet from the edge of the high plateau-shelf, which skirts along the mountain-side on to the rocks below. Even in summer, when the melting of the snows that feed the stream make it of far greater volume than when the stricture of frost is on it, the water, poured as from a jug-spout, disintegrates in its fall, so that it reaches the valley more in wreaths of mist than in solid water, and collects again from the dripping rocks; while in winter its diminished volume is further spent in the manufacture of the huge icicles that fringe the edge of its leaping-place, and hang in great streamers, the beard and hair, you would say, of the very Frost-king himself, who sits at ease on this precipitous throne. Little water to-day runs away from where the clouds of mist and water-smoke fall on the rocks, for most of them are frozen there, and a layer of ice covers the boulders where they come to earth. For here, so engorged lies the valley, so close to the great rampart of the Oberland, that the sun which blazed on Interlaken has not yet surmounted the barrier of mountain-peaks.
Parallel with the Staubbach, and up a hillside which appears hardly less sheer than the precipice itself, runs the funicular railway which leads to the Mürren-plateau. At first sight it seems as if it must be meant for a practical joke, constructed by humorous engineers to astonish the weak minds of travellers, and, though practical from the point of view of a joke, to be perfectly impracticable as a means of conveyance. Its steepness is that of disordered images seen in a dream, and it was with a sense of utter incredulity that I first took my place in one of the small wooden compartments and was locked in by an apparently sane and serious conductor. He blew a whistle, or a bell sounded, just as is done on real lines of traffic, and immediately afterwards we began to ascend that impossible line of rails, sauntering with smooth and steady progress up that ridiculous precipice. More amazing still we soon observed a similar car sauntering steadily down it, just strolling down, even as we were strolling up. We met, we passed, and I had a vision of passengers smoking and chatting, as if nothing in the least remarkable was happening and imminent death did not await us all....
But more remarkable things than that were happening. Upwards from the valley we climbed on this Jacob’s ladder that reached if not to Heaven, to very heavenly places. Pine woods and rocks melted away below, streaming quietly downwards; presently we were level with the top of the towering precipice from which the Staubbach was discharged, and presently that too was left below. But higher as we mounted there climbed with us, in fresh unfoldings of glaciers and peaks and glittering snow fields, the great range of the Oberland. New peaks “met Heaven in snow,” new arêtes, too steep and wind-swept to allow a vestige of snow to lie there pointed arrow-like to the tops above them. Eiger, Monch, Silberhorn, and Jungfrau towered glittering just across the Lauterbrunnen valley from which we had come, and as we sidled along the upland shelf on which Mürren stands, gradually the whole range spread itself out in tremendous rampart, radiant, rejoicing, and austere. For foreground was this narrow ledge of white fields dotted here and there with cattle-châlets, and pines scattered singly or in companies, all wearing plumes and tippets of snow that made their foliage seem a black blot in the sunlight, and soon the congregation of village roofs appeared, and Mürren stood bathed and basking in sunshine, drowned, so to speak, in the sparkling champagne of the invigorating winter morning. And the intoxication of the high places, an entrancing vintage of oxygen and ice and sun, invaded limb and sinew and brain.
It is supposed by those who have never seen the infinite variety of forms into which frost converts mist and dew and all manner of water, that there must be a monotony in those vast expanses of snow and ice. They figure to themselves the depressing spectacle of snow as it usually appears in England, smooth and soft and wet, and too close a cousin to slush not to be tainted with a family resemblance; the image called up by ice is a grey surface in which are imbedded dead leaves, twigs and stones thrown on to it by boys for purposes not clearly understandable, while all they know of hoar-frost is an evanescent decoration that occurs at the edges of ditches and on lawns when tea is being made in the morning and disappears as soon as the poached eggs, leaving the grass soaked and dripping. But as is crystal to soap so are those radiant congelations of the High Alps to the same as seen beneath grey skies and unluminous days. Here, if snow has fallen, as sometimes happens, while wind is blowing, it is driven into all manner of curving wave crests and undulations; then when the fall is over, the sky clears again, a night of frost hardens and congeals the outlines, and the trees wear fine feathers and plumes of whiteness. As the snowfall packs with its own weight, there grows on the surface of the fields a crust half snow, half ice, covered with dazzling minute crystals. During the fall of the snow there has been moisture in the air, and often on that brilliant morning that succeeds the fall, the air is full of minute frozen particles of water that sparkle like the old-fashioned glass-decoration on Christmas cards, so that one walks through a shining company of tiniest diamond fire-flies. And the frozen surface of snow reflects the wonderful azure and gold of sun and sky, and here in the blaze it lies white beneath a vivid yellow, there in the shade a dim blue permeates it. After a few days of hot sun more of the fall will have melted and slipped from the trees, and they stand black-foliaged and red-trunked waiting for the decoration of the hoar-frost. The one more night of frost covers every sprig and fir-needle with amazing spikes and fernlike sprays of minute crystal. Wondrous are their growths, more particularly if, as sometimes happens, some cold mist comes up from the valleys. Then with a craze for decoration almost ludicrous, you shall see your friends with hair and eyebrows bedecked with these jewels, each separate hair wearing its frozen garniture, and their coats and stockings ornamented in like manner. They grow white in a single minute almost; and such as have moustaches, close to the moisture of their breath will suddenly turn to walruses with long dependence of icicles. And yet—here is a conjuring trick again—though ice and frost frame their faces they are conscious of no cold at all.
Marvellous, too, are the dealings of the frost with the running streams and the lakes such as those at St. Moritz or Davos or Sils. Often, unfortunately, it happens that a snowfall will occur when they are but lightly frozen over, in which case the snow quite covers them, breaks through perhaps in places, and with the ice already formed, makes a rough uneven surface useless to the skater, and to the beholder no more than a level snow-field, with perhaps ugly stains on it where the water has come through and formed the grey ice, which is of no artistic moment. But sometimes it happens that a snowfall occurs before any ice has formed on the lake, and thus, though it lies on the surrounding ground, it melts in the water, and at the end of the fall the lake is still unfrozen, though the winter mantle lies over field and wood. Then let us suppose there comes a hard frost with no more snow. Night after night ice absolutely clear like glass forms on the water and gradually thickens. If the days are windless it is entirely smooth, and practically invisible, so that it is impossible to believe that you are not looking on a sheet of water. Then the glad word goes forth that the lake bears, and you hurry forth to skate on it. But mountain and wood and landscape are all mirrored in it as in perfectly still water, and it is almost incredible that here is ice a foot or two thick. Tremblingly you launch yourself on it, scarcely able to believe in its solidity; for through that unwavering surface you see every weed and stump under water. The very fishes flit and flick visibly below your feet, and so glassy is it that through it it is possible to see the subaqueous foundations of the lacustrine dwellings in the lake of Sils, never to be seen unless the lake is frozen, since the slightest ripple of the water sets the surface a-quiver and mars its translucency. But seen through this foot or so of perfectly clear ice—black ice, as it is called—it is as if one looked through that charming contrivance called the bathyscope, by which you can observe the depths of the sea. Below the ice, the water lies still and in a calm sheltered by this solid ceiling of crystal, and you see, as if in an aquarium, the fishes and the water-weeds, and all the gales that ever blew will not shatter the reflections or obscure the depths. Then when your courage has come to you, and you begin to grasp the fact that an army might march across this invisible plain of ice without breaking through, you will no doubt venture forth from the shore, and feel what you never feel on rinks and other prepared surfaces of ice, the divine elasticity of your floor. And very likely just when you are some half-mile from the shore, you will be terror-stricken to hear a crack as of artillery resound close to you, and a great crack will zigzag like lightning through the ice. The first time you hear that, the present writer is willing to wager any reasonable sum that your face will blanch (unless too sun-tanned) and you will skate with incredible celerity for the nearest land. But that salvo portends no danger whatever, except if your skate-blade enters such a crack (of which there will be, unfortunately, a considerable number in the course of a few days) longitudinally. Then it is true you may have a fall, but these explosions do not mean that you will ever be food for fishes.
But after a few days, in all probability, even though no snow falls, the surface of the ice, except where it is kept swept, becomes useless for skating, thanks to another of the wonderful conjuring tricks of the frost. Owing to dew, or from other moisture in the air, there begin to form upon the ice little nuclei of hoar-frost such as are seen in Plate VI. They look harmless enough, and with perfect justice you admire their exquisite fanlike fronds, and think no more of them. But in a couple of days the same surface, as shown from the identical point of view in Plate VII, presents a totally different aspect, and one which is clearly discouraging to the most ardent of skaters. But then, since you are finally and completely and irrevocably thwarted in any ambition to skate on this depressing surface (for it is as if all the ice-moles in the world had made their common earth there, multiplying exceedingly), you will be wise to examine and admire the astounding forms of this fairy frost-work before it becomes confluent, and, losing the individuality of its separate tufts, covers the whole lake like powdery snow. In Plate VIII you may see the marvellous delicacy in detail of these bouquets of frost-flowers, and the same on larger scale in Plate IX, where they are already becoming a very jungle of anti-tropical growth.
In that wonderful poem “By the Fireside,” Robert Browning, in speaking of the Alps in autumn, says:
“But at afternoon or almost eve
’Tis better; then the silence grows
To that extent you half believe
It must get rid of what it knows
Its bosom does so heave.”
And that which he weds to such lovely language is another of the spells which the circle of the Alpine day and night weaves round us. Only, I think, in winter the silence which he speaks of at evening, or, he might have added at night, is a thing incredible to those who, I may almost say, have never heard that silence. In spring or summer or autumn it is broken by sounds of cowbells perhaps, and, almost certainly by a murmur of wind in pine-woods, or of water hurrying from the heights. But in winter, on a still evening those evidences of life are dumb, and yet the silence itself is pregnant with vitality. At sunset the high tops burn in rose-coloured flame, and as the glory fades into the toneless velvet of the frosty sky, the stars in their wheeling are of a brilliance utterly unknown to lower altitudes, except perhaps where the desert lies fallow and dry beneath Egyptian skies, and no emanation from the earth dims the burning of these “patins of bright gold.” But that “quiring to the bright-eyed Seraphim” reaches not the mortal ear, and at evening or at night in these High Alps, there is felt, as it were, that ecstasy of silence that seems on the point of bursting into chorus: “it must get rid of what it knows.” Nowhere else have I felt so rapturous a quality of stillness: the frozen snow lies taut under the grip of the immense energy of the frost: no avalanches slipping from the snow-laden flanks of the Jungfrau under the hot beams of the sun, startle the valley with sonorous thunder: the wind stirs not the lightest needle of the pines; the villagers are home from the frozen fields, and doors are shut. Slowly the last rose-colour fades from the peaks, and the stars brighten, and you hold your breath to hear the most wonderful thing you have ever heard—utter stillness, that yet is strained almost to bursting point with the energies that make it, the peace that passes understanding that lies above the snow and beneath the stars....
Then having heard it, having thought perhaps you understood it, or best of all, being conscious that you do not understand it at all, you may start for home, and glide on your skis down a slope to the very doors of your hotel. Probably you will have a great many falls, for it is the most difficult thing in the world—which is saying a good deal—to ski with the smallest success in a fading or faded light. But you will have heard the silence of the winter night: that will generously console you for your misadventures....
Plate I
WINTER SUNLIGHT
Plate II
BY THE STREAM-SIDE
Plate III
HOAR-FROST
Plate IV
JEWELS OF THE FROST
Plate V
BLACK ICE ON THE SILS LAKE
Plate VI
THE BUDDING ICE FLOWERS
Plate VII
THE FULL-BLOWN ICE FLOWERS
(twenty-four hours later)
Plate VIII
ICE FLOWERS IN DETAIL
Plate IX
MAGNIFIED ICE FLOWERS
Plate X
WINTER MOONLIGHT
CHAPTER II
RINKS AND SKATERS
Something has already been said about the swift-growing jungles of frost-flowers that so speedily cause the lakes in Switzerland to be utterly useless for all purposes connected with skates. It suddenly strikes the writer that the inexperienced in these matters will have concluded that I mean that when once those frost-flowers have formed all skating is over, and that if they have gone to Switzerland for the indulgence of this taste, all that is henceforth to be offered them is the opportunity to admire this frozen vegetation instead of cutting figures. I therefore hasten to assure them that lake skating in Switzerland does not count; indeed most winter resorts have no lake at all; and even if they have, skating there is quite the exception and not the rule. In nine cases out of ten the snow spoils the ice before it bears, and the frost-flowers spoil the greater part of it, even if the snow has held off, almost immediately afterwards. Lake-skating, in fact, is of the nature of a bonus rather than a dividend: to be enjoyed if it happens, but by no means to be reckoned on.
But at every Swiss resort there are rinks made, which render the skater independent of natural surfaces of ice, and those, at all well-conducted places, are “new every morning,” because every evening they are swept and sprinkled with water, which by the ensuing day has frozen, and presents a fresh surface to the zealot. In fact, an artificial skating-rink is as necessary an equipment in the Swiss winter resort as is the hotel itself. The construction and renovation of these rinks is most interesting, and ranks among the fine arts, just as does the architecture of a fine golf-links or the preparation of good wickets. These rinks are used for two purposes: skating, including bandy or ice hockey, and curling. I do not count ice-gymkhanas or ice-carnivals, because anything is good enough for them. You can play the shovel-game or crawl through barrels among the jungles of frost-flowers. I do not imply that such entertainment is not exceedingly amusing; I only mean that the artist in rink-making paints his masterpieces primarily for the sake of the skater and the curler, not for the Pierrot with his Chinese lantern, or those who win three-legged races.
The technique of these ice-pictures is in brief as follows:
In the beginning of the creation (from the skater’s point of view) a piece of ground is carefully and accurately levelled. This, if it is to be the foundation of a well-and truly-laid rink in the ensuing winter, should be done early in the spring, because the ground will have then had time to settle down, and the inequalities which always occur in this settling can be made good, before the first frosts of the autumn begin, and the soil gets fixed and frozen. Also, so I am told, the fact that the ground will then be covered with a growth of weeds and grasses, causes the foundation of the rink to be of better quality. This is easily understandable: the base is matted, and is probably more coherent in texture and less liable to contain holes through which the water may drain away. Then, when the whole ground has been doctored, i.e. when the small inequalities have been corrected and it is as uniformly level as can be expected of anything in this shifting world, everybody sits down and smokes (as is the habit of the Swiss peasant) till the first good snowfall comes, probably in November or early in December. Then the merry peasant has to put down his pipe and work begins again.
A row of them (I am describing the most up-to-date method) stand close together with arms interlocked, in as straight a line as may be, and trample down all this beautiful fresh snow. Up and down they go, in slow time, stamping heavily with their great feet, and making out of perhaps a foot of snow some 3 or 4 inches at the most, of really compact and hard foundation. It will resemble at the best, as regards evenness, a lane over which flocks of ponderous sheep have passed; but the groundwork (this is the main point) will be of hardened snow, though extremely rough of surface. Then they may all sit down and smoke their pipes again—all, that is, except the headman and those who pull about, at his bidding, the yards of hose which at one end terminate in a brass nozzle, at the other in the water-supply, which should run in the main at high pressure. This water is then turned on to the compacted snow which gets soaked with it, and, if a few nights of hard frost follow the original snowfall, becomes gradually converted into a sort of rough but glazed and solid ice. Then, if nothing untoward happens, in the shape of thaw or further snowfall, the next step is taken. But if there is during these few days a thaw, they have to wait for more snow to fall, and do their trampling over again; while if there is more snow, the poor wretches have still to trample and get the foundations firm again. But if all goes well—and the experienced iceman will delay the original trampling until the barometer or his weather-sense (preferably the former) promises cold weather to follow—he makes his second operation. He will have built a small bank of snow perhaps 3 feet high and well-spaded down, round his rink, and have sprinkled that as well as his rink surface, so that it is at any rate glazed with ice and water-tight. Then, waiting for a bright sunny morning, he floods the whole rink with perhaps 2 inches of water. The sunniness of the day is most important for this operation: if he put on this flood on a cold day, or at evening when a frosty night was imminent, all the water he put on, lying on the cold frozen surface below, and with the frosty air above it would freeze solid without cohering to the original frozen foundation. But putting it on while the sun is hot, the top surface of the foundation is percolated with the flood, and when the frost of the night follows, the flood binds with it. One night possibly may not consolidate the flood: if it does not, he waits till another night completes the work. All the time, it must be remembered, the rink presents the most depressing appearance: little bits of frozen snow have floated up to the surface, frost-flowers perhaps have made their ill-starred appearance, and it still somewhat resembles a sheep-trampled lane. But then things begin to look better: and another inch of water is put on, and then another inch, and then another, each being consolidated before the next is applied, and each being applied not in the evening, but when the sun will slightly melt the previous surface. With each of these floodings the ice grows more desirably smooth, and more immaculately clean, till at the end of perhaps a fortnight there is something like 18 inches of solid ice over the ground that was levelled in the spring. At least this thickness is required if the ice is to last properly, for even in mid-winter the most sickening series of climatic catastrophes may occur, which, unless there is good thickness of ice originally built up, may spoil the rink altogether. For on hot sunny days, though the surface of the ice remains quite dry, very great evaporation occurs, and the dryness of the air drinks up the melted ice before it visibly or tangibly becomes water. Or again, even in the most well-conducted winters, at the most approved resorts, there may be a complete thaw, and “the pools are filled with water,” which also evaporates. In both these cases, there is a consequent loss of ice, and the bullion, so to speak, must be able to stand the drain upon it. Still worse, there may be a snowfall followed by a thaw, followed by a frost. The thaw has eaten into the ice; the frost has caused this rodent mixture to get encrusted again. And then, if there is not good depth of ice, the most excruciating events tread on each others’ heels. The ground below the thin ice is warmed with the penetrating sun, and begins to exude bubbles; the bubbles rise, and horrible water-blisters, skinned over with ice, appear. The skates crash through them (“and langwedge which I will not pollewt my pen with describing,” as Miss Fanny Squeers said) and cut into the half-frozen ground, which thereupon begins to leak. The most awful mess ... there are no words for it. Therefore it is necessary, as soon as possible, to get a good thickness of ice.
But this building-up of the rink requires immense patience and forethought. Night after night when the building is going on, and the weather is warm and beastly, the head iceman, if he is really competent, will sit up through the long tale of dark hours, keeping himself awake with coffee, and watching the thermometer to see when it registers sufficient degrees of frost to enable him to put more water on to the ice. He will wait all through a cloudy night, hoping for the sky to clear, in order to get a half inch more foundation. It is useless and worse than useless to apply more water unless there are several degrees of frost, for this only weakens his original trampled foundation of snow, and leads to the awful trouble of blisters coming up from the ground. But if even an hour or two before daybreak the temperature sinks, and there is a chance of gaining a further thickness of ice, he will rouse his men, and at any rate spray or sprinkle the whole surface of the rink, in order to get a little more ice, just a little more. Night and day, like a mother over a sick child (I am not exaggerating), a man like Rudolf Baumann, and others not so well known to me, will watch over their rink, to console, to fill up holes, to add another fibre of underlying muscle.
But even when a couple of feet of solid ice are built up over the ground, the trouble of the iceman is not over. Again a snowfall may come, followed by a thaw, and the removal of this reveals sometimes a terrible sort of chicken-pox on the ice. If the snowfall is followed by cold weather, not much harm is done, for the snow is removed by shovels and barrows, and a sprinkle of water over the whole rink—sprinklings being made at night, since a sprinkle freezes almost as it falls, opposed to the slower habits of a flood—shows next day that the rink is no whit the worse. But if a thaw follows a snowfall, the general laws of nature are suspended, in order to thwart icemen and skaters. Theoretically, the surface of the ice below the melting snow will thaw evenly. Practically, it does nothing of the kind. The surface is unaffected in one spot, and immediately adjoining it has thawed into a small round hole about 6 inches in circumference. Why this happens I cannot say, except that it is part of the general malignity of natural law; but the effect is apparent enough, and when the thawing snow is removed, the ice is found to be covered by numberless small holes. Each one of these has to be filled up by hand, with a freezing mixture of snow and water, or better of pounded ice and water.... There are rinks in Switzerland 300 yards long—I leave the consideration of these, in the matter of labour required, to mathematicians who like dealing with progressions that approach the infinite.
Now the shrinkage of the ice already gained goes on all winter long, owing to the evaporation of the surface, and owing to the cutting edges of skates, which cover it with a sawdust of frozen stuff that has to be swept off every evening. This perpetual loss must be made good, or else the rink would soon vanish altogether, and it is made good by floodings or sprinklings. A flood of a couple of inches over the whole surface is of course the easiest way of doing this, but it is far the least satisfactory. For, as I have said, the flood must be put on while the sun is still on the ice, to enable it to bind into the ice already formed, and thus hours of daylight are lost to the skater. Furthermore, unless a really severe night follows, it will not be all properly frozen. So the good ice-maker, instead of turning skaters off the ice, and getting by one flood sufficient thickness to last for three or four days more, sprinkles instead. This is a far longer and more troublesome process, for with his hose-pipe with its small nozzle he has to go over the ice again and again, six or seven times perhaps, or more, in a single night, if ice is badly wanted. If it is freezing hard, each sprinkle will solidify almost as soon as it falls, and sometimes he sprinkles all night long; while if it is far too warm for a flood to have a chance of solidifying, he will, unless a real thaw is going on, still find it possible to sprinkle once or twice before morning, even though there is but a degree or two of frost. Another immense advantage that sprinkling has over flooding is, that ice thus made, little by little, in exceedingly thin layers, lasts, for some reason, far longer than a greater thickness of ice frozen solid in a single night. Why this should be so, I do not know; but the fact is incontestable. Certainly also a flood of a couple of inches frozen solid is far more brittle in itself than ice built up in thin layers, and an awkward toe-strike with the tip of the skate will cut a great chunk out of flood-ice, whereas it makes far less impression on sprinkled ice. The sprinkle should be thrown far and high (as illustrated in Plate XIII), so that it comes down on to the ice in fine mist-like rain that freezes quickly and freezes tightly into the ice already there. Of course all these difficulties are not encountered in a perfectly cold winter. Given a hard frost every night, it is easy to keep pace with the daily evaporation. But even in the loftiest winter resorts in this excellent republic, mid-winter thaws occur.
Such in brief is the making of these rinks that seem such simple affairs when made, just a level piece of ice with a smooth surface. But the knowledge, the care, the watchfulness which are necessary to secure good ice that will last all winter and reasonably resist any thaws and snowfalls that may occur, are enormous. And the same care that is lavished on their making must be expended on their keeping. No one with soil on his gouties or a cigarette even in his mouth should be allowed on the sacred surface, for even a feathery ash of tobacco if allowed to lie on the ice will get warmed by the sun and gradually melt its way into the ice. The sprinkle that night covers it, and it is embedded in the ice like a fly in amber. Again the sun shines on it, it melts a little water round it, and forms the nucleus of what will spread into a blister in the ice. Any dirt in the same way makes similar holes, and nothing but the clean skate-blade and the necessary and privileged boots of the icemen should ever be allowed on the rink. How amazed would be the pioneers of outdoor artificial rinks if they could see the huge and perfect surfaces now yearly prepared for the hordes of foreign visitors who flock to Switzerland. Of those pioneers John Addington Symonds was one, and in his charming essays he recounts how at Davos he and a few enthusiastic friends took exercise by incessantly working the handle of a pump that stood in the middle of a level field, until, I think, the pump froze. Then greatly daring they proceeded to skate over the amazing ridges and shelves of ice which must certainly have been the result of this hardy undertaking. Nowadays a reservoir must be built at a sufficient height above the rink to secure a good pressure of water for the sprinkling, and patient laudable men sit up all night watching the thermometer to see if it is safe to offer water to the delicately-nurtured crystal. But from these fine-art rinks has fine-art skating been evolved, and if the pioneers of rink-making wondered at our reservoir, our cohorts of workmen, our huge glassy surfaces, still more perhaps would the skaters of those days be astonished to see some champion of the Continental execute his “back loop change loop eight” laying the loops on top of the other, or observe four gentlemen of the English swoop down at top speed and on back edges to their centre, flick out four creamy rockers and glide away again to their appointed circumference. So much then for the skater’s material needs; we pass on to consider the use he puts them to.
Now there are two styles of skating (I do not refer to good skating and bad skating), known respectively as the English and the Continental or International. In past days, certain exponents of one or the other school, with the mistaken idea that to belittle another was to magnify themselves, fell into the stupid error of comparing the two to the accompaniment of robust vilifications of that style which happened not to be so fortunate as to number them among its adherents. But it is no exaggeration to say that the two styles have nothing whatever to do with one another. It is true that the performer in each case is on skates, and that the skates progress over ice; but the very skates are different; so, too, is the whole mode, manner, style, and effect of performance, and it would be as reasonable for the Rugby football player to assert that Association is not real football, as for the English skater to label the International skater an acrobat or contortionist, or for the International skater to call his detested English brother an exponent of the ramrod school. Many flowers of speech bloomed in the gardens of these controversialists, the more exotic and violently coloured blossoms springing, I think, from
SKATING—ENGLISH STYLE
From the Drawing by Fleming Williams
certain skaters in the International style, who were admirably industrious at one time in their denunciation of anyone who ventured to skate in the English style. The present writer, for instance, who, poor fool, thought he was amusing himself quietly in attempting unambitious feats in English skating, without interfering with anybody, had an open letter addressed to him in the Engadine Post, pointing out the vileness and wickedness of his heretic ways; and a precious little book, that now lies open before me, which did not attract as much attention as its unconscious humour seems to warrant, informs us that the theories on which English skating are based are “diametrically opposed to every principle of nature, science and art, and at variance with the unrestrained freedom of action and movement which prevails in every other branch of athletic sport.” Probably the writer felt better after that, for we have heard nothing of him since; while with regard to the above-quoted criticism, the only comment that need be made is, that on the same silly lines it would be reasonable to call lawn-tennis at variance with unrestrained freedom of action and movement, because it is not part of the game to slog the ball wildly out of court.
But of late this controversy has somewhat died down, the fact being that no one with the smallest knowledge of the difficulties and beauties of skating at all, in whichever of these two styles, ever joined in it, since, whether in personal preference he was English or Continental, he had sufficient acquaintance with skating matters to appreciate and admire the excellence both of his own school and of that to which he owed no allegiance. He saw also that the two schools had nothing to do with each other, and instead of jeering at the other, contentedly practised at the one he happened to prefer. Naturally, most Swiss resorts tend to one style or the other; but at Davos, the original cradle of the modern English style, the two schools flourish side by side, as also they do at Mürren, one of the newly-opened Swiss centres. There particularly—at Davos there is a separate English rink, mainly occupied by English skaters—you may see the votaries of the different schools of this now obsolete controversy cheek by jowl on the ice, and lying down together, after a fall, like the lion and the lamb. At St. Moritz, similarly, both styles are bloodlessly practised, though the International style is the more popular; while Grindelwald is nowadays exclusively International, after having been exclusively English. So, too, is Wengen. On the other hand, at Villars, one of the largest skating resorts in the country, there is scarcely an Internationalist to be seen, and Château d’Oex, Montana, and Morgins are similarly almost entirely English in their leanings. But without more enumeration it is sufficient to say that both schools flourish exceedingly, and will undoubtedly continue to do so, and nothing that anybody says will detract from the prosperity of either.
Now skating, in both these styles, is largely a matter of form, and herein it differs from nearly every other sport. It does not suffice in skating, whether you are English or Internationalist, to do certain things, to cut threes, to execute rocking-turns, or loops or back-brackets. All these things have to be done in the manner prescribed by the Vedas, so to speak, of your school. Without doubt there is reason at the base of these methods, for it is clear that if, in a combined figure, four English skaters were
SKATING—CONTINENTAL STYLE
From the Drawing by Fleming Williams
allowed to fly into their centre on a back edge with their unemployed leg waving, and there execute a rocker, there would immediately be a heap of mangled bodies on the ice, a result which is not recognised as being among the objects of combined skating; and similarly, in the International style, the graceful poses of arm and leg, which ignorant English skaters look upon as mere display, are designed to assist the movement. But in all other games (and this is where skating differs from them all) the point is to achieve a certain object, and the achievement of that object, however attained, renders the achiever a notable performer if he consistently attains it. The golfer, for instance, who consistently drives a long straight ball, puts his mashie shot near the hole, and generally putts out, is a magnificent golfer, in whatever manner or style he executes these tyrannously difficult feats. There are a hundred and a hundred hundred styles and modes of putting, and they are all good, provided only they enable the putter to hole his ball. At cricket, similarly, a man may bowl fast or slow with any sort of break, and with any sort of action (provided his shirt sleeve is not wantonly flapping), and he is a good bowler if only he gets wickets cheaply. But at skating the prescribed thing has to be done in the prescribed manner, and the prescriptions of the English school are, broadly speaking, all of them diametrically opposed to the principles of the International school. In the English style the employed leg (i.e. the one which for the moment is being skated on) must be straight; in the International style it must be bent. In the English style the unemployed leg must be close to the other, and hang beside it, loosely and easily; in the International, wherever the exigencies of the movement demand that it should be, it must at any rate never be there. In English the arms must not be spread and swung abroad to assist the movement, but must be carried inactively by the side, whereas in International, as long as the skate moves the arms must be engaged on their assigned activity. In both schools, in fact, every movement must be executed in a given way, but in no case is there the smallest resemblance between those ways, though both should result in clean edges and clean turns executed at defined places.
It is not my intention to give here a manual of English skating, beginning with instruction to beginners and ending with timorous hints to experts, but any book on Winter Sports would necessarily be incomplete unless it babbled to some considerable extent about skating, which, without doubt, is the sport in pursuit of which the large majority of English folk visit the High Alps in winter. From whatever cause, this slippery art exercises a unique spell over the able-bodied and athletic section of Anglo-Saxon mankind. It may be that this is partly accounted for by the comparative rarity of the occasions on which we can skate, owing to our Gulf-Stream-beridden and generally pestilential climate, and it is sufficient that some puddle-place in a village green should be half-frozen to cause the majority, not only of youth but of sedate men and women, to hurry down to the spot, and there slide about on both feet with staggerings and frequent falls and the ever-present possibility of occasional immersions. But the rarity of even half-frozen puddles in England does not wholly account for the transcendent spell: there is something in the quality of motion which is started by a stroke of the tense muscles, and then continues of its own accord, without effort or friction, until the impetus is exhausted, that appeals to our unwinged race, who must otherwise keep putting foot before foot to get anywhere. The sensation itself is exquisite, and the sensation is rendered more precious by the fact that from the days when the tyro slides cautiously forward on both feet, to the days when, having become a master in his art, he executes back-counters at the centre in a combined figure, there is always a slight uncertainty as to what is going to happen next. The tyro rejoicing in the unaccustomed method of progress is conscious of a pleasing terror as to whether he will not fall flat down, and glows with callow raptures all the time that he does not; while the finest skater who ever lived, will never be quite sure that he will flick out his back-counter cleanly and unswervingly. We can all walk pretty perfectly—at least, there is no pleasing terror that we may be going to fall down—but none of us at our respective levels as artists in skating can skate pretty perfectly. We can only skate moderately well, considering how well we can skate. And the joy of it! The unreasoning, delirious joy of the beginner who for the first time feels his outside edge bite the ice, and, no less, the secret elation of the finest performers in the world, when they execute their back-counter close to the centre, at high speed, and without the semblance of flatness in the edge! And even if any of us was so proficient as to perform such a feat with absolute certainty, there is no doubt whatever that we should find some further feat that would put us back into the dignified ranks of stragglers again. And the same holds good with regard to International skating: at least if there is any among those delightful artists who will execute the Hugel star first on one foot and then on the other without a pleasing anxiety gnawing at his heart, I should very much like to know his name and black his boots for him.
To go more into detail with regard to the manner and style of these antipodal twins, we will take first the twin known as English skating. This falls into two broad classes, namely, single skating and that which is the cream and essence of English skating, combined skating. A further development of combined skating, namely, combined hand-in-hand skating, has not long ago been undergoing a successful evolution, under the auspices chiefly of Miss Cannan, Lord Doneraile and Mr. N. G. Thompson. Without doubt it holds many charming possibilities, and very likely there is a great future before it, but owing to right of primogeniture we will first consider the two elder branches. In both the technique, so to speak, is the same. The object is to skate fast on large bold edges, to make turns of all sorts and changes of edge cleanly and without effort, and to skate all these turns and edges in a particular and prescribed manner.
The first consideration, therefore, is the manner. The stroke must be taken, i.e. impetus must be set up, not with a push of our skate-toe into the ice, but from the inside edge of the skate blade. The reason is obvious, for if a skater thrusts his sharp skate-toe into the ice he will make a hole in it, and damage the ice. That is sufficient: I think there are probably four or five other reasons, which in a general and unspecialised treatise like this need not be gone into.
The skater having got his impetus by leaning against the inside edge of one skate, launches himself on the other. Now there are two edges to a skate, namely, the inside and the outside. There is also the flat base of the skate. Both theoretically and practically, he never uses the flat of the skate in his actual progress. When he turns, whether the turn is a three-turn or a rocker, or a counter or a bracket, he comes up to the flat for a moment, but instantly leaves it again. He progresses on one edge, the inside, or on the other edge, the outside. And while he progresses, he must progress in the prescribed manner. And the prescription is this:
I. His head must be turned in the direction of his progress, whether he is progressing forwards or backwards. Again common-sense is at the base of this rule. For if his head is turned in the direction of his progress, he is looking, unless unfortunately blind, where he is going. This avoids trouble to himself, if there are holes in the ice, and trouble to other people if there are other people on the ice.
II. He must be standing erect with his shoulders and body sideways to the direction of his curve, not facing square down it. In other words, he must, among other things, be travelling not further forward than on the middle of his skate, otherwise he will not be standing erect, but leaning forward. This attitude is that which is referred to, in the humorous book I have already quoted, as characteristic of the ramrod school. But the author, in his blissful ignorance of skating matters, is not aware that it is impossible to execute a long smooth circumference of curve if you progress on the forepart of your skate. If you are on the forepart of the skate, you must be leaning forward, and no one of known anatomy can lean forward and execute a long smooth edge. The balance is unsteady, and the edge wobbles. Commonsense, then, again endorses this rule. In order to be steady on a long edge, your balance must be of the established order. You must be upright, and travelling without muscular effort to retain your position. This is only attained by travelling on the middle or the aft part of the skate. For nobody can stand still on their toes. But standing on the middle part of the foot or with the weight on the heel it is perfectly easy to do so. But when this humorous author (whom I drag out of his obscurity for the last time) calls this the ramrod school, he proves himself ignorant of the first principles of English skating, or perhaps has only observed himself in some mirror at Prince’s Club attempting to assume the correct attitude himself. As a matter of fact, the proper attitude of the skater in the English style is exactly that of a man who is well made and master of his limbs standing still with the weight chiefly on one foot. While skating, it is true, the weight is entirely on one foot, and the performer is moving, and not standing still. But the pose necessary to smooth and swift progression is exactly that. It no more resembles a ramrod, when decently done, as every good English skater does it, than it resembles a coal-scuttle or a pince-nez, or what you will.
III. The unemployed leg, i.e. the leg of the foot which is not skating, must hang close to the employed leg. Again the reason is obvious. If four persons came into their centre with a waving unemployed leg, they would hit each other. Also, if the unemployed leg is put out behind, the skater must lean forward in order to counteract its weight. He will then tend to skate on the forepart of his skate. In a series of long edges this attitude is impossible to maintain except by effort. Nobody could skate for a quarter of an hour in combined skating, accurately and largely on such a principle.
IV. The arms must hang by the side, and be carried loosely easily, close to the body. Again the explanation is obvious. There is no need for their flying abroad, since a long edge is most easily accomplished with the limbs and body in rest after the stroke, and these long smooth edges are part and parcel of English skating: it is founded on them. English skating postulates so perfect a balance, travelling on the middle of the skates, that it chooses (this is the reason for the rule) not to let that balance be assisted by the added or subtracted weight of a correcting arm. It says (this is what it comes to) that you must be so firm on your travelling root, so to speak, of balance, that you dispense with all adjustments of weight. The weight has to be practically perfectly adjusted. There must be no adjustments adventitiously obtained.
Now these four rules are at the base of English skating. If you happen to play a game, you conform to the rules, and you do not argue, for instance, when you are playing cricket, whether you should be given out, when quite clearly you have been caught at the wicket. If you are at all sensible, or in any way like cricket, you pocket your duck’s egg and retire. Superb strokes may be made at cricket, which nevertheless are fatal to the striker. Superb attitudes, similarly, may be made in the International style, which are quite completely wrong. They may be supremely statuesque, but they are not skating. The case is exactly the same with the English style. Certain canons have been laid down, all of which seem to be necessary to the attainment of excellence. It is no doubt possible to skate charming “threes to a centre” doing everything quite wrong from beginning to end. But if you choose to adopt a style, you must conform to the rules of that style. Similarly, it is quite possible to skate the same “threes to a centre” in the International style, which shall leave the same mark on the ice (though the skating of them broke every possible rule) as the most finished performer could leave there. But who would not applaud the International judge who ruthlessly ploughed such a candidate? He has not kept the rules, which in contradistinction to other games prescribe not only what the object in view is, but the manner in which the performance is to take place. But this manner, we venture to point out, has not been laid down in an arbitrary way: it is the manner, both in International skating and in English alike, in which the feats demanded can alone be properly performed.
Now if the skater will take the trouble to conform to the four rules given above, he will find that even at the outset of his career there is great fun in store for him. Should he conform to them completely, when the complication of turns is added, he will quite certainly find that there is a championship, if he cares for that, in store for him also. The rules were not negligently made; indeed they were never made at all, but are simply the condensed experience of the best skaters, the methods by which the fittest survived. And the fittest did, and always will do, that which is recorded in these rules, and the ensuing complications, even the most complicated of them, are comparatively easy to those who can maintain the proper travelling position. But nobody who cannot hold a long firm edge, for which the proper travelling position is essential, need ever trouble his dreams with the notion of becoming a good skater. And no one’s edges approach perfection, if he cannot traverse, on backward and forward edges, outside and inside alike, a distance of at least a hundred yards, given that the ice is reasonably good, without stirring from the attitude he has taken up after his stroke. A really fine skater will traverse much more, and be still as a rock throughout his travel; but no good skater will be so unsteady that he will not easily traverse that. In his actual skating he will, probably, never be called upon to make so lengthy an edge, but its accomplishment should present no difficulty to him, if he aspires to be a fair performer. Even as the pianist, when performing, is not called upon to play simple scales with both hands, so the skater will not be called upon, in his combined figure, to skate for a hundred yards on one edge. But both pianist and skater ought to find no difficulty at all in executing these simple feats.
The beginner is advised to get a fair mastery of all the edges before he begins to attack the fortress of the turns. He should be able to progress steadily and smoothly both on the outside edge and the inside edge forward, and to make some progress also on the back edges, namely, outside back and inside back. This last is far the most difficult of the edges, and it will be a long time before he is able to take fast bold strokes on it. But he should have some acquaintance with it before he attempts to make the turns that necessitate its employment, and be able to hold it in the correct position. He can then set about turns and changes of edge, which all imply correct travelling.
Now there are four groups of turns, common both to the English and International styles, each group of which contains four turns to be executed on each foot. Altogether, therefore, there are sixteen turns to be learned which employ each foot singly. These with the four edges, executed in the prescribed manner, form the material of the art. These turns are common both to English and International skating,
I. The first group is known as simple turns, and consists of turns (or changes of direction, from backwards to forwards or forwards to backwards) from:
| (i) | Outside forward to inside back. |
| (ii) | Inside forward to outside back. |
| (iii) | Outside back to inside forward. |
| (iv) | Inside back to outside forward. |
They are all of the same shape with regard to the marks they leave on the ice, and from their shape are known as “three” turns, or “threes.”
Thus:
The arrow shows the direction of progress: the turn is the cusp in the middle between the two curves. Thus if the first edge is outside forward, the second is inside back: if the first is inside forward the second is outside back: if the first is outside back the second is inside forward: if the first is inside back the second is outside forward.
II. The second group of turns is known as rocking turns, or more generally as “rockers.” Like the “three” turns, they are all of the same shape, thus:
and are four in number, namely:
| (i) | Outside forward to outside back. |
| (ii) | Inside forward to inside back. |
| (iii) | Outside back to outside forward. |
| (iv) | Inside back to inside forward. |
Now, in both these groups the body revolves or rotates at the moment of making the turn in the direction indicated by the dotted lines; it revolves, that is to say, outside the direction of the first curve. But it is possible for the body to revolve in the opposite direction, that is to say, inside the direction of its first curve. This makes possible the third and fourth groups of turns.
III. This group, which is known as brackets, from the mark left on the ice, corresponds to Group I, and the edges employed in it are the same, namely, outside forward to inside back, &c. But in this group the body revolves on the inside of the direction of the first curve, and the mark on the ice, consequently, is as follows, the dotted line again indicating the revolution of the body:
IV. The fourth group is known as counter-rocking turns, or more generally as counters. It corresponds with Group II, for the marks on the ice are approximately the same, and the edges employed are outside forward to outside back, &c. But here again the revolution of the body, as in the brackets, takes inside the direction of the first curve, thus:
These sixteen turns, or changes of direction while skating on one foot, comprise all the varieties of so doing that seem theoretically possible, since they include every forward edge to every back edge and every back edge to every forward edge, skated with rotation of the body both outside and inside the direction of the first curve, and until somebody discovers a third edge to a skate, or a third direction of rotating the body, it is not possible that they will be added to.
But changes of direction may be made by the employment, not of one but of both feet, and though these might be more properly described as strokes rather than turns, there are two groups of them which enter largely into English skating. These are known as mohawks and choctaws.
I. Mohawks consist of either forward edge combined with the corresponding back edge taken up by the other foot. Thus if the right foot starts as an outside forward, the left, to complete the mohawk, is put down on the outside back edge, thus:
Here the rotation is made, as in the brackets and counters, on the inside of the direction of the first curve, and the figure is known as the outside forward mohawk. Similarly, the mohawk can be skated on the inside edges, i.e. the right foot starts with an inside forward, and the left completes with an inside back. Here the rotation, as in the threes and rockers, takes place on the outside of the direction of the first curve.
II. Choctaws also employ both feet, but the second curve of a choctaw is on the opposing edge to the first curve. An outside forward choctaw thus consists of an outside forward on one foot completed by an inside back on the other, thus:
In this, as in the corresponding mohawk, and the brackets and counters, the rotation of the body takes place inside the direction of the first curve. Similarly, the inside forward choctaw consists of an inside forward on one foot and an outside back on the other. Here, following the corresponding mohawk, the rotation of the body takes place outside the first curve.
Theoretically, of course, there are corresponding mohawks and choctaws starting from the back edges, i.e. outside back to outside forward, &c., but though these strokes are constantly used, both in single and combined skating, they are never dignified by this sounding title of “back mohawk” or “back choctaw,” merely because the manœuvre is so simple and common a one, that it needs no name at all, and if, for instance, in combined skating, the caller (who directs what shall be done) has his skaters on a back edge, and desires that the next stroke, let us say, shall be an inside forward edge, he calls “inside forward” merely.
Finally, in giving this catalogue of material out of which all English skating is built, there remain only the changes of edge, made on one foot, to enumerate. They, as must naturally be the case, are four in number:
| (i) | Outside forward to inside forward. |
| (ii) | Inside forward to outside forward. |
| (iii) | Outside back to inside back. |
| (iv) | Inside back to outside back. |
With regard to the cross-mohawks and cross-choctaws—in case the skater ever “hears tell” of them—he need not worry himself even to remember their existence, since, most rightly, they have been blotted out of the book of English skating, owing to their clumsiness and the fact that to skate any of them violates some canon of the essential form of English skating. Apart from them, the whole material of English skating has now been stated, namely, the four edges, the sixteen turns, the two mohawks, the two choctaws, and the four changes of edge.
But when we consider that the first-class skater must be able to skate at high speed on any edge, make any turn at a fixed point, and leave that fixed point (having made his turn and edge in compliance with the proper form for English skating, without scrape or wavering) still on a firm and large-circumferenced curve, that he must be able to combine any mohawk and choctaw with any of the sixteen turns, and any of the sixteen turns with any change of edge, and that in combined skating he is frequently called upon to do all these permutations of edge and turn, at a fixed point, and in time with his partner, while two other partners are performing the same evolution in time with each other, it begins to become obvious that there is considerable variety to be obtained out of these manœuvres. But the consideration of combined skating, which is the cream and quintessence of English skating, must be considered last; at present we will see what the single skater may be called upon to do, if he wishes to attain to acknowledged excellence in his sport.
Now the National Skating Association of Great Britain encourages both the English and International styles, and for each there have been instituted certain graduated tests, not competitive but standard, of three orders. The third or lowest test in the English style is broadly designed to encourage skaters, the second to discourage them again (i.e. begin to make them feel the difficulty of the whole affair, just when they thought by passing their third test they had broken the back of their difficulties), and the first or highest to give them healthy occupation for a few winters, and fit them for becoming really first-class skaters. All of these tests must be passed before at least two qualified judges, appointed by the N.S.A., and they are as follows:—