Together

by Norman Douglas

THIS was a pious pilgrimage.

Ages ago there used to come to our house a visitor, a friend of my father’s, a Benedictine monk of the name of Bruhin. Of him I have, or till yesterday thought to have, dim, childish memories. He lived in the neighboring convent of St. Gerold—offshoot of the famous Einsiedeln—and was a naturalist, a rara avis hereabouts. I still possess seven of his papers, mostly on the fauna and flora of this particular province: thoroughly good work. He was a loving and accurate student both of animals and plants, and of their literature. St. Gerold is the second of various hamlets and villages in the long verdant Walserthal on our east, up which now runs a convenient carriage road ending (the road; not the valley) at the distant Buchboden, five hours’ march away. We went there, because I was anxious to learn, if possible, a few details of Bruhin’s life and to see whether their library contained any other works by him.

It is a pleasant, easy walk to St. Gerold, but the pilgrimage proved a disappointment. In the Prior’s absence, the archives could not be consulted; a young monk, a stranger who was undergoing a kind of rest-cure here—he looked a little haggard—accompanied us up to the library at the top of the building. It was well stored with books such as one might expect to find there, but contained not a scrap by Bruhin.

At the library our guide left us in charge of that old woman who has haunted the premises from time immemorial; her hair has grown whiter since last we met, her eyes are black as ever. She showed the way through some of those comfortably furnished bedrooms with their fine seventeenth century wood-carvings; into the church, which has been tastefully redecorated and where the recent governmental brigandage has not spared even the greater of the tin organ-pipes; finally down to the kitchen which, like the organ, is worked by electricity. There she fed Mr. R. on cider and cheese, saying she hoped they would soon be able to receive guests again and keep them overnight, if necessary; at present, everything was upside down, everything!

Had the Prior been visible, our search might have led to something; he was away on the mountains. Whether he resembles him of olden days? That one, I remember, used to come down and see us, and could generally be induced to stay for luncheon or dinner. It was his habit, while eating, to produce a formidable smacking noise—Germans call it Schmatzen—with his lips, a noise which we were strictly forbidden to make. One day at mealtime I gave a splendid imitation of the Prior over his soup, thinking that what was good enough for him would surely be good enough for me, and hoping, at all events, to gain some little applause. Instead of that, I was told: “Only His Reverence the Prior may make that noise. When you are Prior, you shall make it too. Meanwhile, try to eat like everybody else, unless you want to be sent out of the room.” A damper....

So much for Bruhin. All we gleaned at St. Gerold was that he served as “Co-operator” there from 1865 to 1868 and after that, presumably, left the convent. If so, the monk whom I hazily recall must have been a different one, unless Bruhin continued his visits to us from some other quarter after 1868. The Bregenz libraries might contain more of his writings; I shall look for them, if we go there.[13]

Homewards again. On leaving one of those wooded torrents that seam the road, a little incident was recalled to my mind by the sight of a certain wayside shrine which stands here. We were once passing along, as children, when we noticed that its door had been left open and a heap of coppers laid inside by some pious person or persons for the benefit of any poor travelers who might care to help themselves. I imagine it was my sister’s idea. She took a handful, and persuaded me to take one too. Nobody saw us; the governess was walking on ahead. She behaved even more flagrantly on another occasion when a plateful of money was being held aloft, for the same charitable purpose, among a congregation pouring out of some church. She reached up and swiftly grabbed a number of coins; perhaps I followed her example. Now what could we children want with money? The delicacies of the village were only three: sugar-candy in crystals, dried figs strung together, and black sticks of licorice (vulgo “Bährendreck”) and we had exhausted their charm long, long ago, in the days of the old Anna.

This nurse it was, by the way, who first took me to the hamlet of Thüringerberg, where I now found myself walking with Mr. R. who had induced me, for reasons which became apparent later on, to abandon the main road in favor of one that leads due west. It shows how little she then knew the country—she was a Tyrolese, not a native—that, after dragging me up here, aged three or four, she had to enquire the name of the place. I came home with a wonderful tale of having been to Thüringerberg, which was not believed; old Anna, afterwards, got it hot for making me walk too far. Up there, meanwhile, the kindly priest invited us to his house to rest; he gave us coffee and honey, and even offered me a pinch of his snuff—the first of several I have since taken.

Two roads descend from Thüringerberg in the direction of the distant Satteins—the convenient new one down below, and the ancient track on the higher level. Of course we chose the latter, that old, grass-grown, abandoned path. Memories lurk about these forsaken places; and memories have become my hobby during the last week or so. This particular track reminds me of sundry strolls down here ages ago with a Sempill cousin, the jovial Jumbo, who turned up in this country at odd intervals to our infinite delight. He was so utterly different from all the other people who arrived from those remote regions! The peasants adored him; he could hold long conversations with them in their own language by imitating the sound of their voices, which amused them mightily; he knew not a word of German. He used to sit for hours in their orchards, drinking wine or playing with the babies; when any one greeted him on the road with the usual “Grüass Gott,” he would reply “Great Scot”; if they said “Gueta Tag,” he said “Good dog.” What a relief was Jumbo, after those legions of unspeakable grand-aunts! They never left us alone; they were always pulling us about, as if we had no nurses or governesses of our own, to teach us how to behave. Always interfering! You mustn’t eat this; you mustn’t do that; little girls don’t climb trees; little boys ought to know that cows are not made to be ridden about on; never jump down till the carriage stops; you know what happened to Don’t Care? He was hanged; have you said your prayers? Children should be seen and not heard; a fourth helping? Now don’t do yourself any violence, dear; it’s long past bed-time—how we loathed the entire clan! Nearly everything, in fact, that hailed from Scotland was fraught with terrors.

But the terror of terrors was our paternal grandmother. If the others of that family resembled her, their descendants are to be pitied. And to think that she may have been the best of all of them! I confess that, looking over some photographs at this distance of time, I fail to see anything terrible in her appearance; here she is, for instance, at Llandudno, looking straight at you, grave and serene, with the long upper lip peculiar to her family and a high forehead; rather a handsome old woman, and one who evidently knows her mind. That may well be. Handsome or not, she spanked me as an infant, before I could walk—so much I remember clearly; what I cannot clearly remember is, whether she had any plausible reason for doing it. Later on, she punished us in the stern judicial manner which was agreeable to the taste of her generation and which is precisely the one way children should never be punished. Wonderful tales were told us of her methods of subduing her only daughter, who died in youth—perhaps from the effects of it—and lies buried under an elaborately inscribed tombstone in the Protestant cemetery at Rome. No doubt she meant to do right; it is an old pretext for doing wrong. Children should be “broken”: that was her theory.