Swiss allmends, and a walk to see them

by F. Barham Zincke

Find little to perceive.—Wordsworth.

In the afternoon we took up our staves for the Rieder Alp. The path runs horizontally along the flank of the range: in its seven miles, from the Eggischhorn Hotel to the hotel at Rieder, you lose about 1,000 feet of altitude. This is a delightful mountain walk, through open pastures and woods, neither of which are without the rose of the Alps, over glancing runnels, by many hay granges and châlets, and some small upland villages, and with mountains always in sight at varying distances. It was towards evening, and the cows were loitering along the pastures with heads homewards, and women and children were going out to bring them in.

We reached the Rieder Alp Hotel with still an hour or so of daylight to spare. It is situated on a little rising in the midst of a large irrigated prairie of some hundreds of acres. The hay had just been carried, and we walked straight over the sward to the hotel. The turf was as smooth as that of a garden lawn. There is no waste here. The surface of the prairie is kept quite level, without a stone upon it or a hole in it, in order that every stem and blade of grass might be cut close to the ground: and it is shorn so skilfully and uniformly that you cannot trace the swing of the scythe. We found the hotel full: the proprietor, however, procured for us two apartments in contiguous châlets; one for my wife and the small boy about 200 yards from the hotel, in the châlet next to the church, and one for me about a third of a mile off, at the head of the valley that lies beyond the hotel.

As it happened, we were in luck at finding the hotel full, for we were well satisfied with our rooms in the village and with their owners. The rooms of course were as clean as those to whom they belonged were proud of them. And as they were proud of them, they did for us all that it was in their power to do. They were very desirous of pleasing, and in turn were ready to be pleased, even with a word. We could not but have been interested with what we saw of their little resources, and of their little contrivances for making the most of them, and of the small matters which naturally were not small to them. There is about the inner life of a humble home a something, one may almost say of sanctity, which is not so apparent, at all events on the surface of things, in splendid mansions. Their splendour, somehow or other, seems a matter of course: it is taken for granted both by those who witness it and by those who possess it. It is transmuted money. There is no poetry in it: if hearts are moved by it it is not in that fashion, or to that issue, that it touches them. Quite different is it with the humble home. There every object seems to have a pleasing history. The care that is taken of it tells you how hard it had been to come by. You read in it a little tale of the labour, the frugality, the self-denial expended on its acquisition. It is a revelation of an inner life which you are the better for contemplating, and for sympathizing with. The Latin text from Holy Writ, carved in ornamented letters on a beam of my wife’s room, was a glass window through which you might look into the hearts of this family, secluded from the world, and maintaining bravely and contentedly a hard struggle for existence up here in this lofty Alpine glen.

I did not inquire, but inferred, as I preferred to do, from the aspect of things in the rooms themselves, their stoves, furniture, and ornamentation, setting these by the side of the appearance of the rest of the house, that each of them was the guest chamber, the reception room of the châlet to which it belonged; and that in the summer they were hired by the proprietor of the contiguous hotel, to be converted, when his visitors overflowed his own house, into bed-rooms. At all events we saw that he had to send bedding to the nearer one; and in the more distant one, that which I occupied, the bed had to be prepared after my arrival. I guessed that the châlet near the church was the house of one of the chief peasants of Rieder. The one I was in evidently did not belong to a peasant. I reached it when daylight was fast fading. The good woman of the house was profuse in reiterating her excuses for things not being better. The good man, taught by experience, bided his time; and, when it came, made the same apologies in fewer words and with more deliberation. He weighed his words. She was more femininely impulsive; he was more masculinely thoughtful and restrained. At last, as far as her resources allowed, things were arranged to her satisfaction, and she left the room. He lighted his pipe. I took a light from him; and a conversation commenced which proved a long one. He was a man not far short of 60 years of age, and not of the hardy, weather-worn, out-of-doors-battling class. He appeared more like one who had been engaged in trade: and this might have been the case, for he told me that he did not live up here, but only came in summer for two or three months for change of air. Nor was he more robust in mind than in body. We talked about the condition and manner of life of the peasants, and about the value of property on Rieder Alp and in the valley below. These things he seemed to contemplate rather from the outside. He did not think that the people were the better morally, not even materially, for the increase that had lately taken place in the value of land and of its produce. He was well-to-do: still his tone was that of a man who feels that he has not been able to turn life and opportunities to so much account as some of his neighbours have done: or who is refusing to accommodate himself to the new conditions of business, though he sees that others are prospering by doing so, and that he is losing ground by not doing it; or who has had losses and disappointments. Night had now settled down on the valley, and no sound broke the stillness outside but the bell occasionally of an unquiet cow or goat that had not yet composed itself to rest in the neighbourhood of the châlet where it had been milked. I observed to him that here the goats were of a peculiarly marked breed. Their bodies and hindquarters are white, and their heads, necks, and forequarters black. ‘That,’ he replied, ‘is nothing: merely a fancy.’ He was, then, too rigid a utilitarian to have any respect for fancies. No matter what the subject of conversation, or how it might have been dealt with, it always, without fail, by some by-path or other, brought him back to the same conclusion, ‘All the world is changing. Everyday there is something new.’ In this châlet there were no young people—there were in the other—and they it is that create light, and keep alive hope in a house. But for them interest in this world and its concerns might flag. It was past 9 o’clock when our conversation ended, and we wished each other good night.

My room was ceiled and wainscoted with new-varnished deal. On the walls were hanging three maps—of the World, of Europe, and of Switzerland, and half-a-dozen coloured prints of the chase. The series commenced with the hunter receiving, as he sallied forth, fully equipped, the adieux and good wishes of his family. Then came, in separate pieces, the death of the bear, the wild boar, the hare, and the fox—no chamois, our chasseur was got up too elaborately for that. The last gave his return, when the family inspect the trophies of his prowess, and offer their congratulations. There were also suspended on the walls two watches. These, from their size were conspicuous objects: probably they had for generations been used only for ornament. They may have belonged to the time when the bear and the wild boar were common in the Valais. There was, too, against the wall, a frame of two shelves for books. Upon this were piles of two weekly papers, one illustrated and one political: both calculated for the meridian of the Valais. They were carefully folded and preserved. Their wisdom, more particularly as it had cost money, ought to be preserved; at all events till it weighed enough for the grocer at Brieg to give something for it. By the side of the hoarded newspapers were some half-dozen very small religious books. On these was the impress of Einsiedln. There was no mirror in the room, and as I saw that the washing-table and its apparatus were brought in, I claim these facts as supports of my theory that the room was really a sitting-room.

August 28.—Rose as early as usual, but, as we were this morning not to breakfast till eight o’clock, had some time to look about me. My châlet was charmingly situated. It was above, and out of sight of the hotel—to the left of it, if you turned your back to the hotel. It was at the head of the valley of the Rieder Alp. Above it were the summits of the Riederhorn; a craggy ridge: but immediately behind this house the crags were missing. Probably what had made the valley was what had also removed them. Where they were missing, about a quarter of a mile above the house, was the Pass on the way to the Bell Alp. As I looked out of my window, I looked down a grassy ravine, not of the narrow, deep, rocky, precipitous kind. On the left side of it, as far down as you see, it is all mown smooth. In the central descent, which is that straight before you, are scattered some dozen or so detached châlets and hay granges. Each is on some little rocky knob or prominence, a few feet high, to lift it out of the way of the storm-water, that in heavy rains comes down the valley. About half a mile down, the valley takes a turn to the right. This prevents your seeing anything more of it; and also shuts out the view, which there, otherwise, would be down into the main valley of the Rhone. To the right is unmown pastured grass, with a dark pine wood below the pasture, and the battlemented crags of the Rieder ridge above it. As you can see nothing of the Rhone valley below, the grassy and wooded slopes of this side meet, to the eye, the flanks of the opposite mountains. In these flanks, just opposite to you, so that you look into them, are some long smooth ravines, or yawning fissures, of naked slate-coloured rock. Above these is a ridge of mountains of the same material and colour. As these opposite ravines and ridges have no vegetation, and are smooth, they look just like the pasteboard mountains one has seen in dioramas, and in the scenery of pantomimes. This is how they show on the upper half. Their lower half is striated, and dotted with dark pine woods and yellowish green prairies. The yellowish tinge was partly the result of the dryness of the season. Behind these scenic pasteboard mountains is Monte Leone, and a little to the right of it the Great Fletschhorn; both more than half covered with snow-fields. Between the two you see the zigzags of the Simplon Pass, descending through forests to the cultivated plain of Brieg. Brieg itself is not visible, but some part of the plain is. The view of Brieg is intercepted by the right side of our valley, on which, below the pasture, is the dark pine wood. We have just been looking to the south and right of the pasteboard mountains. If we now turn to the left, we look along the range of the opposite side of the Rhone, streaked and patched with snow, which the sun is now just getting well above, for you were up before he was over their tops; and you see that he is promising, at all events, a fine morning.

There must be some who would find the quiet of a sojourn at Rieder Alp preferable to the crowding of the Eggischhorn, and of the Bell Alp. As to the glacier, the great sight of this neighbourhood, that, of course, is not visible from the Rieder, as it is from the Bell Alp; but then, in compensation, it is more accessible. Nor is the view from the Rieder so good as from the Bell Alp; but still it is good. The Bell Alp, and the Eggischhorn, are both within visiting distance, that is to say, you may go to either of them for an early dinner, and return in the evening. I do not mean that I should like, myself, to stay there. I like staying nowhere, except at home. When I am travelling I like to be moving on. It was for that that I left home. It seems to me insufferable to return in the evening to the place I left in the morning. The same distance in walking would have carried me to some new place: that is to say, I might have had something additional at the same cost of time and exertion. But there are many who, on this point, would not agree with me; and they, I think, might spend a week pleasantly at Rieder Alp.

This quiet place might also be recommended as an experiment to those—on the supposition that they mean what they say—who are in the habit, in season and out of season, of announcing their want of sympathy with the ideas and tone of mind of their travelling fellow-countrymen. It may perhaps be conceded to such fault-finders that they are not quite without materials for getting up a plausible case. Speaking generally, we do not show to advantage when on our travels. What is required for making a traveller agreeable to his fellow-travellers, in their short chance meetings, is versatility, adaptability, bonhomie, savoir faire, the art of conversation, particularly the power of making anyone you may happen to converse with for a few minutes, believe that you are pleased with him, or, perhaps, and which may be the easier task, of making him pleased with himself. These, however, are qualities for which we are not remarkably conspicuous. For some of them we have not even English expressions. But deficiencies of this kind, though they come out most prominently in the rubs, and collisions, and close contacts of travel, pre-existed at home: our objectors, therefore, ought to have been familiar enough with the thing; and it is, after all, but a small matter to fash oneself about. Besides, our want of a provision of such small change may not be altogether unbalanced by the possession of some pieces of a coinage which, though not always available at the moment, is yet of sterling value.

Another of their allegations, and it is one on which they lay much stress, is that they find their travelling fellow-countrymen haunted by the idea that they must assert, or maintain, a position. For this, too, there may be some ground, for it is only what might be expected in a state of society such as ours, in which the endeavour is made, illogically, to work the hierarchical principle of rank conjointly with the democratic principle of wealth; and in which, at the moment, that which feeds the democratic principle is rapidly increasing. If wealth and rank were preponderantly found united in the same persons, as was the case some centuries ago, there would be no difficulty in working the two principles simultaneously. In fact they would themselves have entered into combination. But as things are at present, each of the two principles has its own representatives, and these are somewhat in antagonism. They have almost been drawn off into opposing camps. And the representatives of the democratic principle (socially democratic) are, numerically, in the ascendant. From this emanate attempts as naturally as light from the sun, to maintain, or to assert, a position; and as these attempts are made by Englishmen, it is only to be expected that they will very frequently participate rather more of the national fortiter in re, than of what should be the traveller’s suaviter in modo. It is not in us to work the two principles side by side with the ease and smoothness and social dexterity of Italians or Frenchmen. Our objectors then, having, in the close contacts and promiscuous gatherings of travellers such as we fall in with at the Eggischhorn and Bell Alp Hotels, sometimes to witness, perhaps sometimes to deal with, this kind of thing, speak of it as a grievance. But may not its being annoying to them arise from their ideas being too Utopian? They may, from their not having been sufficiently ‘tried and tutored in the world,’ be expecting impossibilities.