MT. ST. BERNARD
I turned my back on Italy with regret. The men carried me backwards down the mountain. The snow on this side very deep, and they waded through it with great labour; they often fell, but I was neither hurt nor frightened. My intrepidity is more owing to an indifference about life than to natural courage. I have nothing to love, so life is not to me invaluable. Half-way we stopped to look at the melancholy receptacle for the bodies of those who perish on the mountains. There is only one body; it has been exposed for a year, but the rarefaction of the air was such that the putrefaction has not commenced. It was shrivelled, but the features were perfectly distinguishable. The sun set. We reached St. Pierre, a small village dependent on the monastery we had just quitted. I lodged in the house of a curé at Liddès, where I slept, who had formerly been a monk in the upper region, but growing infirm he was rewarded with half-freezing. He said he lived a happier life among the community than in solitude. The small house he has is pretty and fantastically covered with some creeping plant over the walls. Early in the morning I was awakened by the melody of the birds and the fragrance of the plants; the sun shone into my bed by 5 o’clock.
On the 14th, early in the morning, I set off. The carriages were put upon the wheels, but the baggage was conveyed on mules. The roads exceed anything I ever beheld in point of danger. A narrow corniche without a garde-fou, upon the brink of a precipice of many hundred feet; in some places I am sure the fall would have been 1500 perpendicular feet.
The Drance gushes with the violence and noise of a torrent in the valley. Orsières is the first village; the houses are made of wood with immense high treillages to dry beans upon them. The next village was Sembrancher; about half a mile on this side of it the view is delicious—I was quite enraptured. We got close to the Drance, whose roar whitened its waters. We crossed it frequently; one of the bridges was very old and weak; they persuaded me to get out and walk over it. The valley is evidently opened by violence, as the angles of the mountains on each side correspond exactly. The sublimity of the scenery among these mountains inspires one with a notion of the grandeur of our world, but this thought is still dissipated on a starlight night, for then we behold what a speck we are in the creation—a twinkling orb like them.
We dined at Martigny, the capital of the Valois, a dirty town abounding in loathsome objects, crétins and bugs. The much celebrated cascade of the Pisse Vache was in full beauty, but even so it is much inferior to Tivoli and Terni. The Rhône is very fine and the adjacent country beautiful; we crossed it over an old Roman Bridge at St. Maurice. Just on this side of the bridge the Berne bear announced our arrival into its territory.
Upon my coming into Bex I met Prince Hatzfeldt and my tiresome Scotch lover, Mr. Douglas. We supped together at the inn, where I had a pretty terrace to walk upon out of my bedroom.
Early in the morning, Tuesday, 16th, I set off in a char-a-bande [sic] to see the salines of Bex. My compagnon de voyage was, as usual, ill-disposed and sulky, and spared me the torment of his company. I went into a subterranean gallery perforated for 3000 feet under the mountain; the smell of the lamps made me sick, and I was obliged to return without seeing the cylinder which is the film (?) of rock salt. The salt springs are fully impregnated with the saline matter.
LOST FRIENDS
Left Bex at one o’clock. Dined at Vevey. Hodges came out to meet us; he brought me a packet of letters. My father continues ill, but less dangerously so than by my former letters. The last time I was in Vevey the Guiches dined with us in a pavilion belonging to the Count St. Leger. Ludlow’s[72] house is on the skirts of the town; the little rampart round it formerly planted with swivels is still to be seen. He lived in perpetual dread of being taken by the Royalist party; he was often fired at. I felt melancholy at the sight of Lausanne now, deserted by all the cheerful band who had assisted in making me pass cheerfully some of the pleasantest hours of my uncomfortable life. Gibbon’s house is abandoned; he is in England. Poor Ly. Sheffield’s apartment will never again contain her; she is no more. Mde. de Juigné is again no more. All my friends are living in obscure poverty, or have fallen in the field of battle. The English here are the Cholmondeleys, the old Duchess of Ancaster, Ld. Morpeth, his friend who travels with him, and various other English, and the son of an Irish bishop.
The events in Paris are still disgusting and bloody. Biron[73] is impeached; the charge is having conducted the war with insouciance. Those who know him say his disposition is to do everything so, but he is humane and gentlemanlike. He preserved all Lady Rivers’ goods, etc., when he entered Nice. Lord Beauchamp, now Lord Yarmouth,[74] is at Frankfort upon some political mission; hopes are entertained that it is to adjust a general Congress for the termination of these horrid scenes. Ld. Porchester is made an earl, as a reward for deserting Mr. Fox, whose party is breaking up apace; some quit him from opinion, but most for the loaves and fishes which are promised to them for their desertion. Mr. Fox’s debts are to be paid by a subscription among his friends; he is to have an annuity of 3000l. per annum. As he is not popular, people think it a mean transaction, but formerly it was proposed as an honourable one. Ld. Cholmondeley tells me that party runs very high in England, disgustingly so.