There is good warrant for turning directly to Lucerne and to the lake which lies in the midst of the four Forest Cantons when making, or renewing, acquaintance with Switzerland; and there should be no question of thereby slighting other famed districts of this favoured land. Almost invariably it is best to go straight to the heart of things, and the Vierwaldstätter-See, or Lake of the Four Forest Cantons—commonly known to us as the Lake of Lucerne—is held to be, both geographically and historically, at the very heart of Switzerland. There is, too, the additional assurance that no other district in the whole of the twenty-two Cantons which go to the making of the Confederation can offer a more admirable, a more ideal introduction to the fascinating wonders and delights of Swiss scenery. In spite of our being in the heart of the country, we are, as it were, upon the frontier of a Promised Land, one flowing as literally as may be with milk and honey—and glaciers; we are, that is to say, at the portal by which we may as lief best enter the domain of the Swiss Alps. For if we except Pilatus, that gaunt, tormented rock-mass standing in severe isolation upon the threshold of the city, Lucerne is relatively modest and restrained as regards its immediate scenery; but away on the horizon which bounds the waters of the Lake is the long snowy array of majestic Alps, and we may soon reach by boat and rail the giants of Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden and the Bernese Oberland. The steamboats alone will transport us, through graduated scenic grandeur, to the great cliffs and snow-covered crags of Uri, romantic birthplace of the Swiss Republic.
However, there is no occasion to become restive at the prospect; Lucerne itself is the most charming of preludes and points d’appui for all that lies afield. Particularly is this so if opportunity allows us to be here in the spring of the year, with the fruit trees all a-flower and the grey-towered Musegg ramparts deep set in a rosy-white haze; and with the fields all a-wave with blue, white, and gold, and the lakeside promenade laden with the myriad flower-spikes of the horse-chestnut trees. Spring is earlier here—some ten days earlier in May—than away at the very feet of the Alps. We may well be content, then, to remain awhile amid such vernal freshness, studying the life and history of the town of the “wooden storks’ nests”, and revelling on the quay in the Alpine panorama framed by the soft blue sky and blue-green waters—a panorama which is never more delightful than at this season of the year, never even in autumn when October clears the atmosphere, robes the near hills in fire, deepens the blue colouring of distant rock and forest, and spreads a new white drapery upon the higher peaks.
To those who knew this town, say, five-and-twenty years ago, and who have not revisited it until to-day, how many are the changes which they will meet, and with what mixed feelings will they meet these changes! The past twenty-five years have meant astonishing developments for almost every quarter of Switzerland. Cities have burst their bounds and have spread far along the countryside; villages have grown into towns, and from nothing, or perhaps from a single old-time chalet, great groups of hotels and their dependencies have sprung up upon the mountains. And Lucerne certainly has been no laggard in this movement. Twenty-five years ago the sign and symbol of the city was a stolid, stunted tower set in water beside a long, roofed, wooden bridge running slantwise across a river, with tapering twin steeples beyond. But nowadays the place would be unrecognizable without an airship floating above vast Palace hotels which all but obscure the twin steeples and cause the aged Kapell-Brücke and its faithful companion, the Wasserturm, to look as two quaint old country folk come into town to see the sights, and who remain coyly by the See-Brücke on the outskirts, so to speak, of all the splendid modern hustle—two dear, simple, reticent old things in their old-world garb, despite the efforts of the authorities to bring them abreast of the times by festooning them about with many strings of electric lights. We have to be thankful that these and other intensely individual relics of the past weathered the rage for demolition that appears to have reigned in the town during the middle of the nineteenth century. Something of what this rage was like can be gathered from Professor Weingartner’s pictures which line the walls of Muth’s Beer Restaurant in the Alpen-Strasse. Here, whilst sampling the Schweinswürstl, a speciality of the house, we can study the presentment of at least a dozen old gates and towers which were pulled down between the years 1832 and 1870. That the remaining nine Musegg towers, the two wooden bridges
LUCERNE: SPRINGTIME ON THE MUSEGG
and the Water Tower escaped this onslaught would seem to have been a miracle of good luck. At any rate, the townspeople of to-day must surely look upon it in some such light. For a new spirit now rules in this direction—a spirit of conservatism, even of rehabilitation—and what of the antique past remains is dear and safe, and what can be done to reinstate or reconstruct that which was lost, or in danger of being lost, in the fresco and iron-work decorated house-fronts is rapidly being done. Art is in the ascendancy to-day in Lucerne, and Hans Holbein’s heart would be rejoiced could he but return to the quarters he frequented in 1516 before he journeyed, in 1526, to the Court of England. I do not think that the townspeople would go so far as Rodin, the great French sculptor, and say, “Une seule chose est utile au monde: l’Art!” (for there is the hotel business, and however artistically inclined the Lucerneois may be, they are eminently practical); but it is quite evident that to-day they would never accept without amendment Plato’s scheme for a republic in which Art was ignored.
In some of its aspects Lucerne is reminiscent of both Nuremberg and Venice: of the former in its ancient towers, its beaten ironwork and its frescoed houses; and of the latter in its river and lakeside life and architecture, especially looking from the Schweizerhof Quay to the finely domed railway station across the water, or again at night-time when many-tinted reflected lights dance upon the flood, and row-boats, with the oarsmen poised much as in Venetian gondolas, move stealthily athwart the velvet shadows. All this, however, is merely reminiscent; Lucerne is substantially herself—“Lucerna, the Shining One”, quick with an individual beauty in which orderliness, dignity, and self-respect are prominent qualities. And because these traits in her character are so manifest, certain lapses in good taste and the fitness of things are apt to be the more keenly regretted. Go down along the right side of the Reuss river, past the Kapell-Brücke with its 154 paintings of ancient local history and legend filling the beam-spaces beneath the roof, past the befrescoed Gasthaus zu Pfistern, past the Flower and Fruit Market in the old Rathaus arcades, past the Hotel Balances and its history-telling façade, across the Wine Market containing a fifteenth-century fountain dedicated to St. Maurice—who, with St. Leodegar, is co-patron of the town—down to the Mühlen-Platz, and there you will find stark modernism, in the shape of ramshackle baths and uncompromising factory workshops, right beside one of the chief and most picturesque relics of Old Lucerne—the fourteenth-century wooden Spreuer-Brücke, with its quaint shrine and paintings of the Dance of Death, sung of by the poet Longfellow. But perhaps a more brazen example of this intrusiveness is to be seen by passing over the bridge and standing at the nearest corner of the Zeughaus. From this point there is what is probably the most perfect ensemble of varied mediaeval architecture to be found in the town—the old bridge and its quaint, rosy-red shrine in the foreground, spanning the green and rapidly flowing Reuss, and backed by the Musegg towers and ramparts and the bulky monastic building whose deep roof is pierced by a triple line of windows. It is a nearly perfect glimpse of the past, and that it is not entirely perfect is due to a bald modern villa set high against the rampart walls. This brazen-faced building is wellnigh as incongruous, perched up there beneath the unique and precious Mannlithurm, whose warrior sentinel, hand upon sword, watches over the town, as is the Alhambra Labyrinth, with its “interesting Oriental groups and palm-groves”, in the Glacier Garden.
However, it will not do to be too critical. Rather should we give thanks for the strong directing hand which in the main the town now holds upon Progress, that arch-egoist with no eyes but for itself. There are times when it is no easy matter to reconcile the old with the new: to say where antiquity shall rule for art and sentiment’s sake, and where it shall give way, tears or no tears, before the utilities of the present. Nor is it less difficult to give an unprejudiced and far-sighted judgment upon the actual truth, and, therefore, upon the actual merit and value of beauty and ugliness. It is such a personal matter—personal so largely to the time being. We must not imagine that the chimney-pot hat will be for all time cherished as respectable, though we may expect some wailing and remonstrance when its call to go arrives. So, possibly, even probably, here in this town the old inhabitants of 400 years ago, when every house was of wood, were heard to carp and grumble—may even have risen in protest—when Jacob von Hertenstein built for himself the first stone dwelling and had it painted gaily with pictures by young Hans Holbein, thus setting a fashion which eventually not only ousted the “storks’ nests”, but set up something for whose preservation we now clamour, although at the same time we incline to rave against some of its recent offspring, the Palace hotels. Thus, if we are not careful, do we find ourselves caught in a tangle of inconsistencies. Apt to think, like the cicerone of Chichester Cathedral, that “nothing later than the fourteenth century is of much value”, we should be wary lest posterity has cause to deride us. We are enthusiastic children where temporary custom and passing bias are concerned, and what to us is horrible to-day is often splendid to-morrow.