Swiss allmends, and a walk to see them

by F. Barham Zincke

CHAPTER I.

BRETZWYL—BERNE—ZURICH—INTERLAKEN—THE ALMENDS OF THE DELTA OF THE LÜTSCHINE.

Stand, and unfold yourself.—Shakespeare.

On the afternoon of July 30 I found myself at Bretzwyl, a village some twenty miles to the south of Bâle, far from any tourist-beaten track. I had gone there to see M. Heusler, Professeur de Droit in the University of Bâle, and author of a valuable work on the commonable lands of the Canton of Unterwalden. He was then taking his villegiatura at this pleasant and primitive retreat in, as it would appear to English eyes, a farm-house of the ruder sort, though it was in reality the mansion of one of the chief proprietors of the neighbourhood. It was distant about a mile from the village, and known by the name of Sonnen Halle. It was a large, long, rectangular structure. At the end of the ground-plan, furthest from the approach, was the stabling for the cattle; at the other end, that nearest the approach, were the kitchen and store-rooms. Above these departments was the dwelling-house: the best apartments being over the kitchen and store-rooms. It stood on ground that rose all the way from the village, with ground that was much higher behind it. All the land in front of it was in grass, studded thickly with fruit trees; on that behind it, which was higher, and not so well adapted for making hay, were, here and there, small patches of grain, and of potatoes and other culinary vegetables. These patches were unfenced, and seemed taken only for a time out of the grassland.

The Professor and Mme. Heusler were so complaisant as to insist on my spending the evening with them. I showed the Professor a paper of questions on the subject of the Almends, or Swiss commonable land, I had had drawn up in German, and had got put into print, before leaving England. This speedily and completely explained the object I had in view in wishing to see him. He readily gave me all the information, advice, and assistance in his power; including in the latter letters of introduction to several of the leading people in the Cantons of Unterwalden, Uri, Schwyz, and Glarus, who from their position, and knowledge of the subject, might be of use to me in my inquiries. I cannot recall the pleasant evening I spent at Sonnen Halle with the genial Professor and his accomplished wife, without, at the same time, acknowledging the very grateful sense I have of their kindness.

As we returned to the village—for the Professor insisted on accompanying me back to the little Inn at which I had ordered a bed—there was wafted up to us, on the night air, across the meadows, the sound of music. On entering the village I found that the villagers were concluding the day with a dance and concert; songs, in which many voices joined, alternating with dances. This entertainment was being held in a large upper room, which externally bore the appearance of doing duty as the Hotel de Ville of the humble Commune. Those who had not the right of entrée, or who preferred the cooler air outside, were standing in groups in the street. While driving through the village, early in the afternoon, I had found the roadway blocked by a crowd that was collected round the stage of a cheap jack, who was putting up to auction lots of gaudily printed cotton handkerchiefs. I afterwards found that these were not the whole of his stock in trade. The stir was great. I had heard the sound of loud merriment before I reached the crowd; and, when I was passing through it, had observed in the faces of most of those who composed it, much eagerness and animation. Such an advent from the outer world was an event of some magnitude in such a village, which its miniature proprietors can seldom leave. With many it was their only chance, for the twelve months, of investing a little of their precious hoard in a little long-wished-for finery. It was an event that moved every mind—minds masculine as well as feminine; that brought everybody into the street; and that was worthy of being commemorated in the evening with a dance and concert; which, too, would act, in so Arcadian a community, as a safety-valve for carrying off the highly wrought excitement of the day.

On being shown to my bed-room, I found that it was a long corridor with beds set head to foot, reaching from the door to the further end. On each was a loftily puffed out eider-down quilt. The day had been unusually hot, and the night was correspondingly warm. I, therefore, lifted the downy mountain from the bed nearest the door, which I had selected for myself, and deposited it on the next, the second bed. As I did this I looked beyond the mountain of eider-down on the third bed. This led to the discovery, on the pillow beyond the eider-down, of a shock of black hair. I was to be, then, not the sole occupant of the many-bedded corridor. By this time I had made also another discovery: there was in the room an overpowering odour of cows and horses. The corridor, therefore, was only the upper storey, with us it would have been the hay-loft, of a long line of stalls for cattle below. As every bed had a window opposite to it, not a yard distant—the shock of black hair had intended to spend the sultry night, under his eider-down, with every window closed—I set the one over against my bed wide open. This, by allowing the exit of the warm air from the room, and the entrance of fresh air from outside, speedily removed the accumulation of stored up effluvium. The room itself, and everything in it, walls, ceiling, furniture, bedding, &c., were of snowy whiteness, and faultlessly clean.

I was up early next morning: but not so early as the good women of the village, for as I was dressing I heard from many houses the clatter of the shuttle. Bretzwyl, then, is still so primitive as not yet to have abandoned hand-weaving; though even there it must be confined to fabrics of silk, or of wool. Money must be very hard to come at, and a little of it must go a long way, in a place where the human hand can compete with the power-loom. Being a guest of a rather unusual calibre for Bretzwyl—I had even engaged a private carriage to take me some dozen miles to the railway station at Liesthal—my breakfast was served not in the bar room of the little Inn, but in the parlour. The chair was so placed for me at the table as that I should look on the back of the door of the room. On that door was suspended, as a trophy, a work of art, a precious possession, the object which, in the general excitement of yesterday, the mistress of the house had conceived the desire of acquiring, and had bid for in the presence of the village, and paid her money for, and carried home with no ill-founded pride. And now it was displayed on that door for all to contemplate. All would be glad at least to look at it. Perhaps some favoured few might be allowed to take it in their hands, and examine its materials, and structure. It would have shown an unnatural state of mind, and an inability to enter into other people’s feelings, if such an object had forthwith been put away in a box, or drawer. It was done more considerately, and with a truer sense of the conditions of the matter, to place it where all might come, and take their fill of looking at it, and might admire it, and might understand how happy its possessor must be; for was it not—to the possession of which the aspirations of no Bretzwyl dame, or maiden, had previously risen—an embroidered, fringed, riband-trimmed panier?

July 31.—Went to Zurich to see another learned Professor, to whom I had a letter of introduction. I found that he had gone, for his vacation, to the Simmenthal. But I had also a secondary object in going to Zurich, for I wished to take another look at the collection of objects from the sites of the old lake-villages, of which I gave some account in the ‘Month in Switzerland’ I published last year. Again I regarded them with undiminished interest, as everyone would, who has any tincture of history in his composition: for they are an historical record, in which there can be no misrepresentations, or deceptions, of the resources, manners, customs, and life of a branch of our remote progenitors, unconsciously bequeathed to us by themselves, and upon the possession of which we have only lately entered. I missed, however, the custodian of last year, who had spoken of the interest of the objects in the collection, to which he was in succession directing the attention of his visitors, with the bated breath of heartfelt reverence.

August 1.—To Berne, by the first morning train, for a letter from M. Cérésole, the President of the Swiss Confederation—I knew it was awaiting my arrival—in which he would request all Landammans, and other official people, wherever in the country I might go, to give me what aid might be in their power, in furtherance of the inquiries I was desirous of making.