Italian Alps / Sketches in the Mountains of Ticino, Lombardy, the Trentino, and Venetia

by Douglas William Freshfield

Last year I explored this new magnificence. Externally it displayed itself in some additions and wooden galleries over the courtyard. Indoors many of the rooms had been prepared for occupation and a large bare salle-à-manger added. There was also a comfortable general sitting-room.

The splendour was still growing, for, as new guests arrived, a carpenter employed downstairs ran up fresh furniture for their use, some of the hundred bedrooms of the advertisement being still in a state of more than conventual simplicity. The 'service bon et exact' was represented by three Italian youths, pale, untidy and swift-footed, who fled with the greatest alacrity from any guest whose face gave tokens of an approaching want. Their goodwill, however, was on the whole so much in excess of their capacities that it was impossible to treat them seriously.[57] For instance, the head waiter, having been charged by an Englishman to wake him and get ready an early breakfast, was found in the morning fast asleep in a chair in which he had sat up all night with a fond intention of carrying out his instructions. It must in fairness be added that, if an early start was not better understood and provided for, it was chiefly the fault of the guests. With a few notable exceptions they were the least active and enterprising company I ever set eyes on. With exquisite scenes on every side of them within a short half-hour's distance, they were content to spend their days in the sleepy hollow, or, if they took a walk at all, strolled along the new road for three hundred yards, that is, nearly halfway to the corner of revelation where the great view bursts so splendidly into sight. Guide-books not having yet catalogued 'excursions from Campiglio,' it never seemed to enter their minds that there could be any; and they were content to loiter away their time among the glories of nature, having eyes and seeing nothing. If you asked your neighbour at the dinner-table which of the glens of the dolomites he had rambled into? he did not know there were any; if he had seen the Lares snow-fields flush at sunrise or swim in sunset haze? if he had stood on any crest or 'tower of observance' high enough to overlook the Trentino to where the peaks of Primiero and Cadore raise their ramparts against a golden sky?—he could only reply with a stare of dull incredulity.

But, once hardened to the contemplation of such misery in one's fellow-creatures, the state of the pension was not without its advantages. The gregarious British tourist was happily conspicuous by his absence; Germans were rare, and the few who passed did not care to linger where they were not allowed to smoke with their guides in a public room during other people's meals.

Consequently there were none of those absurd but most disagreeable differences over windows which arise whenever the haters of fresh air gather in any number. For even with the greatest respect for a nation and the strongest desire to fraternise with its members, it is hardly possible to get on well with people whose favourite atmosphere is to you as insupportable as Mars might be to the inhabitants of this earth. Extended travel must surely in time enable the North German mind to realise the existence, at least in others, of a horror of stuffiness. I am sure that when this fact is once grasped many worthy men will be saved from behaviour which if it did not arise from want of imagination would be intolerable bearishness.

But if we speak freely of the shortcomings of others we must not forget our own excesses. The appropriation, no matter for what purpose, of the public room of an inn by a section of the guests is a thoroughly selfish and unwarrantable proceeding. What should we think in Scotland if an American congregation were to take possession of the inn coffee-room every Sunday, and use it constantly on weekday evenings for practising hymns? Yet this is what on the Continent tourists of other nations have to submit to in all spots which have been discovered by either of our missionary societies. No one can reasonably object to English churches being built wherever the sick are sent, or even, as a luxury and by those who can afford it, at such places as Chamonix and Zermatt. But it is difficult to believe that our countrymen are so much creatures of habit that they cannot sometimes gratify their religious emotion in the Greek clearness of the mountain-top or under the Gothic shade of the neighbouring grove without intruding their devotions on their fellow-travellers of other creeds or countries.

At Campiglio, for the present at least, the Italian coming down on Sunday morning runs no risk of finding himself in the midst of a transformation scene; the tables chased, the chairs ranged in regimental ranks, his acquaintance in the grey suit of last night, black-coated and roped round his neck with a white tie, pinning up notices of hymns on the backs of 'menus,' and a much-embarrassed host endeavouring to explain to the non-British guests the cause of the general turmoil.

I must not dismiss the Stabilimento without a short mention of its two most important inmates at the time of my visit. The first was a young member of the local 'Societa Alpina,' whose adventures and heroism had made him a public character. Accompanied by the gardener and carpenter of the establishment, he had ventured to attack one of the limestone peaks east of Val Selva. The way proved longer and more arduous than had been expected, and night was falling as the party descended a narrow crest of the mountain. Suddenly they were made to pause by a terrific roar, and a few moments afterwards beheld, several hundred feet below, and on a spot they must pass, what they believed to be a large bear. The animal instead of walking off, as bears in every-day life are accustomed to do, behaved exactly like a bear in a story, or one of the animals which are the terror and delight of the modern nursery. Erect on his hind legs, he flashed fury from his eyes, opening his red mouth and snapping his jaws at intervals with ferocious significance. 'Si può immaginare nostra paura,' said the poor mountaineer. He and his companions prudently decided not to risk a nearer encounter with a monster who knew his part so perfectly. They stopped exactly where they were, and spent the night, haunted by deep breathings and strange sounds, which they attributed generally to wild animals, and more particularly to the bear, camozzi and contrabandisti.

The gardener who was a sharer in this adventure was, it appeared, permanently attached to the establishment. This gentleman spent many hours daily under the shelter of a vast felt wideawake, superintending the laying out of the surrounding grounds, which consisted of a flat square plot of meadow, perhaps thirty yards by twenty. But genius shows itself in small things as well as great. The variety of shape of which flower-beds are capable is endless; and with an underling provided with long strips of turf to mark the edges, our artist studied at leisure the most pleasing forms and combinations. The ground idea, one showing no slight originality, was taken from a plate of veal cutlets such as sometimes appeared at the midday meal. One cutlet a day was as much, however, as the creative mind could accomplish without risk of repetition; and this finished, the broad hat and its owner would after a few minutes of thankful contemplation retreat for rest to a neighbouring bench.

To sum up. Those who look for the charm of Campiglio in any view from the windows will be cruelly disappointed. Its attraction lies in the wonderful freshness and purity of the air, which rivals that of the Engadine, and in the variety and beauty of the excursions within reach.

For ladies, botanists, and quiet strollers there is an unusual abundance of easy walks, through shady glades full of rare and beautiful flowers and ferns, by the side of clear dove-coloured brooks glancing down over the limestone shelves, or up to secluded tarns and grassy ridges whence the great horns and teeth glow orange against the sky, or the Adamello snows glitter in the sunlight. Moreover, active climbers have within easy reach a variety of glacier-work which all but two or three of the greatest Swiss centres might envy, and rock scenery such as Switzerland can nowhere rival.