A walk in the Grisons

by F. Barham Zincke

One source of pleasure in such a three-quarters of an hour is the perception of its difference from your ordinary life. There is a present sense of the long thread that connects you with home. What is around and before you is not all that is at the moment in the mind’s eye. Even the seas, the lands, the cities, the mountains that lie between are not altogether lost to view. The images it may be of your East Anglian Vicarage, and of all that you have lately seen between it and this charming little halting place below the brow of the bank, and just above the stream, of the Spöl, are recalled to mind. That within you which thinks and feels is quickened into its own proper life. The sense of life is the conscious enjoyment of the powers of life. And here, as you sit at rest on this sunny fresh-aired bank with so many senses of body and of mind so pleasantly appealed to, you have the sense of life abundantly—the sense of a living mind in a living body.

The rest of our way was along a gentle, almost unobserved descent; at times, as we passed along the silted-up beds of old lakelets, quite on a level. The rounded tops of most of the contiguous mountains showed where the materials had come from to fill up the lakelets. You see in thought the steps of the process; the frost disintegrating the summits, and the torrents from rain, and from melting snow, bringing the particles and pieces down to the lakelets; and then you see man appearing on the scene, and toiling through the short summer in burying and removing the fragments of rock that strewed the surface, and levelling all with what soil he could find, to make a bed for the carpet of turf over which you are walking, and upon which you see that all the life in the detached châlets and hamlets you are passing, ultimately rests: for here, that is the one means of supporting life.

The valley down to Livigno is generally broad and verdant. At 4 P.M. we reached Livigno. It is a large scattered village, perhaps a mile and a half long. Its houses are old, or at all events most of them have the appearance of age, for the cembra timber of which they are built after some years of exposure weathers to a rich black. This the people call sun-burning. The place has three or four churches. On a blocked-up window of one of these, I counted six tiers of swallow’s nests. I saw here no gnats or musquitoes. This numerous colony, therefore, must be supported chiefly by the house-fly. The reason why there are so many house-flies here, and elsewhere in Switzerland, is that there are so many landed proprietors. The valley is broad, and is divided into little estates, each just big enough to support a single family. The land can only be turned to account through cows. Every house, therefore, in the long village has a manure heap at, or beside, its door. These manure heaps, one for each house, are coverts and preserves for breeding flies. If this part of the valley was in a single property, there would be but one fly-preserve; as things now are, there is a series of them a mile and a half long. The chain, then, of conditions is as follows; a broad grassy valley at an altitude of more than 6,000 feet; this is divided into small properties; each of these is devoted exclusively to the support of cows; the manure from each byre, for the eight months the cows are under cover, is heaped up at the door; these heaps are left festering in the sun throughout the summer, for the land, the hay not yet having been made, is not yet ready for the manure, and the people are too busy to remove it; in these heaps, innumerable flies are bred, these flies feed the martins that build on the blocked-up church window nests six tiers deep. If the whole valley were put into a few cheese farms, the reduction in the number of flies, and so in the number of martins, would correspond to the reduction in the number of proprietors. The number of flies is in correlation to the size of the landed properties.

The only attempt that I saw had been made in Livigno to grow anything except grass was that by the side of some half dozen houses in the village in little enclosures of a few yards square, white turnips and white-leafed beet had been sown. But in the middle of August, the former had no tubers, and the latter were very stunted. Some of the mountains right and left of the village, a little below it, have a peculiarity: those in the second range appear to have mountains of black rock placed on the top of what may be called the original mountain, in shape somewhat like the naves of titanic cathedrals without towers. One of these superimposed masses on the left is especially well formed and grand.

It was 4 P.M. when we reached the inn. An hour afterwards, the rain of the early morning returned. It soon, as the temperature continued to fall, changed into snow, which continued for thirty hours. This was a severe test of the resources of the place. I had heard that it was celebrated for trout. One might of one’s self have supposed this, for we had for the last 9 miles been walking by the side of a stream, the water of which was nowhere too broken for fish. Of course, therefore, we ordered trout for our supper, which was to be served at 6 o’clock. The little inn has two little parlours. In each of these we found a party of card-players. The two parties were forthwith placed in a single room, that the other might be appropriated to the visitors. These card-players were elderly men, they represented the class who had in their younger days sought fortune in foreign cities, and in the degrees which satisfied them had found what they sought. They had now returned to Livigno to live on meagre cheese, mummy beef when a great occasion justified such an indulgence, and black bread, with a trout or two I suppose now and then; to be regarded as the aristocracy of the place; to spend a large proportion of their evenings in playing at cards for schnapps, and to lay their bones in the God’s acre of one of the four above-mentioned churches. As we stood at the door of the inn, looking at the falling snow, and not forgetting that it was the middle of August, I asked one of these elders, ‘What, when he might have lived in comfort elsewhere, had induced him to return to such a place?’ His reply was, ‘The memory of one’s parents is a beautiful thing.’ I felt ashamed of my question. I was rebuked, humiliated, and silent. In a moment his sentiment so natural, or if not, then something much better, so human, or again if not, then something much better, so tender, so pleasing, was confronted by the recollection of the brutality of the English wife-beater. What, I thought, can account for this world-wide difference? Why is this peasant’s mind in this wretched Alpine recess a smiling garden, while had his lot been cast in smiling England it might have been a howling, outrageous wilderness? Can, I asked myself, can in the one case the general diffusion of property, the great educator, and the absence of it in the other, lead, through their natural consequences, and effects, to these two so widely opposite states of mind? Is this at the root of the difference?

As there was no going outside the door, and as the room assigned to us was, now that the snow had been falling some time, uncomfortably cold, I went into the kitchen for warmth, for company, and for something to see. The arrangements of the ground floor of the inn were as follows: the front door by which you entered, opened, throughout the day it was never closed, upon a hall about 25 feet long, and 18 wide. On the right of this were the two parlours; they were small square rooms, each with a small square window, which had, as is usual in Grison châlets, a strong family resemblance to an embrasure, the object of this unusual diminutiveness and peculiarity of form being to keep out the cold. On the walls were a few coloured prints on religious subjects, and a few photographs of friends and relatives. Of these two parlours the one nearest the front door was assigned to us, the other to the card-players. Opposite to our parlour was a small room without a window, strongly fortified against frost. In this was sunk the well, which in winter was the only source to the house for its supply of water. Opposite the other parlour was the door of the cellar. Next to the hall, this was the largest room in the house. It was somewhat sunk in the ground, and by placing the cow-house against it, and by other devices, all available means for keeping out the frost had been resorted to. It contained many vats, hogsheads, and barrels of various sizes, which are replenished each year, while the roads are still passable, or so soon as they become passable, but while there is no probability of the occurrence of some of the few hot days of a Grison summer. The hall has no window, and receives all its light from the front door, which must therefore be left open except in very severe weather, and from the embrasures of the two parlours. Against the wall of the hall, between the doors of the two parlours, stood a table, on which were two or three black bottles accompanied by some little glasses. This was the provision for supplying the villagers with schnapps of distilled drinks. Opposite to this table, against the opposite wall, between the doors of the pump-room and of the cellar, was another table, on which also were black bottles, but accompanied with small tumblers. This was the provision for those who preferred Valtelline wine to distilled schnapps. At the further end of the hall was, on the right, the staircase to the bedroom floor; and to the left of that, the entrance to the kitchen.

The kitchen had but one window, and that, again, as it was in the embrasure style, admitted a very insufficient amount of light, and that insufficiency was minimized by the blackness with which nearly a century of smoke had stained the ceiling and walls: for in these wooden interiors whitewashing is unknown. On a high stool on the right side of the fire, in the chimney corner, sat the aged father of our host. His hair was long, and as white as the snow that was falling. He wore a kind of full dress, a swallow-tailed coat, and knee-breeches, I suppose to indicate that he no longer made any pretence to do any kind of work. In front of the fire was the burly wife of our host, preparing the coffee, and frying the fish. The fuel used was the wood of the cembra. This is so full of turpentine, that no sooner does a chip of it touch the fire than it bursts into flame. It was by the aid of these chips that the good woman from time to time ascertained whether the milk was burning, the coffee had come to the boiling point, and the fish were frying to her satisfaction. Supposing that her visitor had come to see how things were done at Livigno, she took a large chip, and having touched the fire with it, held it up before me in a blaze of pure white flame, and said, ‘Behold a Livigno candle.’ ‘Thanks, Signora,’ quoth the visitor, ‘I see that bountiful nature has well supplied your wants.’ All the while the landlord, when not summoned to the hall to pour out a glass of schnapps—the wine to-day was seldom called for: it was too cold and damp for such thin potations—was constantly coming in, and standing by the good woman’s side, watching her proceedings with deep, and generally silent, attention, as the eyes of a maiden might watch the hand of her mistress. He was not quite calmed by his reasonable conviction that the result would be a triumph, but he wished to have himself some share, however small it might be, in producing that triumph; so he would at times inquire, sotto voce, whether there was anything he could do. Should she want any more wood? Any more milk? He would now bring the jugs for the coffee, and for the milk, and the dish for the trout. He would now warm the plates.

At last it was time for us to leave the scene of these preparations. The moment had arrived, when all that could be done had been done for the coffee and the trout. And now the good man’s turn had come. No sense of social inferiority had he in serving his guests. Indeed in Livigno, his function was honourable, and conferred much distinction. He could not have served his guests with more observance had they come to his house direct from Paradise, for the purpose of opening to him the gate of Paradise, as soon as their supper should be finished. He was quite sure that the gate would be opened; and gladness, that stood in no need of words for its expression, filled his heart; but still something might depend, a little, but still something possibly, on his attention, and on the satisfaction his guests might receive from their supper. And now the coffee, the trout, the bread and cheese, and the butter are on the table at which we take our places. For some minutes he stands looking on in an attitude, and with an expression, of attention, and of readiness to fetch anything more that might be required. In his own thought he was sure that everything was of the best; that everything would go off well; that nothing had been forgotten; but he would stay for a few minutes to be assured of this by his visitors from that higher and better world. The assurance was given him; and he left the room, as if loath to go, but with his whole face beaming with the light that will suffuse the faces of those, who have heard the blessed words that have opened for them the gates of Paradise.

In all this, as we found the next morning, there was nothing assumed. It was his natural manner and disposition; only schnapps have the power of bringing out, and of making predominant over everything else, a man’s natural temper and disposition. Schnapps reveal the true character. Through them the bad-tempered are made more bad-tempered, and nothing but bad-tempered, and the good-tempered more good-tempered, and nothing but good-tempered. And so on this day, they made our host all over, body and soul, a host, and nothing but a host. Everything else, if there had been anything else, was obliterated. From the bottom of his heart to the tip of his tongue, and the tip of his fingers, he was a host. If there was ever at other times a mask on him, it was now torn off, and what was the essence of his being—the host—remained unrepressed, unclouded, unqualified.

The guests’ bedchamber contained three beds. Their scantling was so much beyond what is common in this part of the world, that one was almost brought to think that they had been intended to accommodate each of them two persons. This, however, is an uncertain inference, for of course they were the work of a native carpenter, and his ideas may have been enlarged by finding that in this room his handiwork would not be so much cramped for space as is usual hereabouts. Or perhaps the increase in the size of the beds might have been, and probably was, a result of this not being Grison ground; for we were now in Italy, and in Italy beds are generally as remarkable for amplitude, as in the Grisons for exiguity, of dimensions. As I had invited Christian to take his meals with me while we might remain here, I now extended the invitation to the offer of one of the three beds. The price I had to pay for this was, that I was obliged to sleep with the window closed. The good man had so unfeigned a horror of night air, that is to say of admitting fresh air from without, into the room in which he was sleeping, in consequence of some supposed ill-effects it would have on the eyes, that there was nothing for it but to comply with his prejudice.