The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

If the treatment of women, of the higher or lower order of creation, is a fair test of the civilization of a country, this Switzerland will rank very low. Good roads are considered an evidence of a high standard of civilization, and very justly; yet there must be some exceptions, for here in Switzerland, where they harness the cows and make them draw heavy loads, the roads are first-rate, smooth as a floor, and solid in all weathers.

Probably this glorious land that I am now rejoicing in, can find some excuse for the sin and shame of making the cows and women do so much of the hard and heavy work; and they may pretend that the women like it, and the cows are all the better for it. But it strikes me that nature has required certain duties of the gentler sex, that are so incompatible with the severer labors of the country, that they may be fairly excused from a service that requires the greater strength which God has given to men and oxen. In the beautiful city of Zurich, the most enlightened, cultivated, and refined city in the interior of Switzerland, where the most learned of her sons are educated, the city of Zuingle and Lavater and Pestalozzi,—and that boasts a monument to Nagel, a university, and polytechnic institute,—in that fair city I met a team, composed of a horse and cow, harnessed side by side, drawing a heavy load, the driver walking by the side of the cow, whose side was in welts, raised by the stout whip which he carried, and used mainly on her to make her keep up with the horse. It is more common still to see a single cow in harness drawing a load, and a yoke of oxen is a sight that I have very rarely seen in travelling here. Whether the males are more generally sold for beef or not I cannot learn; but it does not appear to any one here that it is out of the way to make this use of the cows. And I was rather pleased than otherwise, in conversation with a great and good philanthropist and reformer, to find that he professed to be ignorant of the fact that cows were put to such service, and when I assured him that I saw one in harness going by his door that day, he said it must have been an ox!

And to understand why it is that women work so much in the fields, we must see what is the principal employment of the people. I have seen forty women at work in the same field here, and not a man among them. No sort of work on the farm is considered too heavy for the women. How could it be, when at Boulogne we had crossed the British Channel, and landed in France, women rushed on board the steamer to carry our baggage ashore! And here the women dig the fields, when a plough would do the work far better and more quickly. They carry out manure, or drive a cow that drags a load of it, and spread it on the soil. They mow. They rake and pitch hay. They plant and sow, and reap and pull, and manage the farm as they would do if the men were all off at war. And where are the men?

They are not idle, nor dissipated, nor away from home. They are at work, and in the house, not tending the baby, nor baking the bread, nor washing the clothes; but they are industrious, and what are they at? The Swiss are a frugal, saving, thriving people. The amount of arable land is not enough to meet their wants. They are a manufacturing, not an agricultural people, though they export cattle, butter, and cheese. Watches, jewelry, muslins, embroidery, and carved wood-work, are the principal articles of manufacture for export, and these, with a few other branches, employ the most of the men; for the work is done in the country very largely. The city of Geneva sells 75,000 watches yearly; but as you are riding in a diligence among the mountains, a man will step out from a little cottage and hand a neat, small package to the postilion, who puts it carefully into a place prepared for such deposits. It is the works of watches, or some jewelry, which the man has made in his own house, and is now sending to his employer in Geneva. In the retired village where I am now writing, so secluded that if a man should commit a murder and come here to live, the New York detectives would never find him, even here the cellars of small houses are filled with machinery to weave Swiss muslins, and to embroider it exquisitely. The buyers from the Broadway stores have learned where to come, and boxes are lying in front of my window directed to Stewart, and to Arnold and others in New York. The places where this delicate work is done are damp and unhealthy; but unless it is done in a damp room the gossamer thread becomes so brittle that it breaks in weaving.

And all through the mountainous parts the carving of wood is the great business of the people. Saw-mills are run to cut up the trees to be made into ornamental articles for sale, and these extend from mantel clock cases worth $1,000 to some gimcrack not worth a cent. The centre tables and chairs, the game pieces and desks, knives and forks, and whatnots, are far too numerous to mention; but they display a degree of skill and taste in execution that would do no discredit to Greece or Italy in the days when sculpture was their glory. And all this mechanical work is done by men, and men only.

The tendency of things is always to extremes, and here in the working-classes, and nearly all are in those classes in Switzerland, the men have pushed the women too largely out of doors, usurping employments that women might follow with success, while the men should take upon themselves the labors that are too heavy for their wives. But Switzerland itself is an exceptional country. It has no fair chance in the world as a nation; and so large a part of its surface is impracticable for the use of man, and it has become so great a resort for foreign tourists, they are expected to spend all the money they can afford in the works of art which the natives produce.

Walking out with a young German friend, who did not understand a word of the English language, I saw at a little distance an enclosure, neat gravel walks and shrubbery, with flowers showing through the iron railing that surrounded it. I asked what the enclosure was, and the answer, in German, struck me pleasingly: “Gottesacker.”

I had never heard the word for graveyard before in German, though the English of it, “God’s Acre,” is familiar, and has often been the theme of poetry and prose. Gottes Acker is the acre or piece of ground that belongs not to man of all the land in the earth that he claims as his own, but is the Lord’s. And why is it his? The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness. The mountains and the valleys, the plains also, and all that are therein. Why is this small enclosure, a petty piece of ground in the midst of a wide, magnificent domain, alone called God’s?

Yes, it is his, because all who inhabit this place have gone to him. We walked into the sacred enclosure, for the gate was open, inviting the passer-by to come in. The paths were neatly gravelled, and the plots surrounded with flowering shrubs, and the graves not raised above the ground as ours often are, but levelled, and each grave bordered with boxwood and planted with flowers. Few were marked with a headstone, but most of them had a staff set up in form of a cross, and on it a plate with a brief inscription. The centre of the graveyard was laid off in a circle, planted with trees and furnished with seats, where friends could sit in the shade, and meditate among the graves of departed friends.

“And is Gottesacker the only word for this place in your German tongue?” I asked.