THE MONT CENIS TUNNEL IN SNOW
Sketched with Ruskin at Modane, November 11, 1882
At Annecy, in the pleasant Hôtel Verdun, he confessed himself already stronger, and fit for anything but proofs and business letters; but the "plague-cloud" still hung over the view. He noted that the smoke from the factory chimneys could not be told from the clouds except by its density, and mixed with the mist so as to throw a pall over the lake from the town to the Tournette—the great mountain of the neighbourhood above Talloires. But still he did not see that the black, ragged, dirty weather was caused by the smoke, though he compared it with a London November. The nearer scenery was visible and beautiful. The blue lake, always blue, with a light of its own, and Talloires, with pleasant associations and unspoiled surroundings of most romantic character, charmed him as of old. We drove there the first Sunday; he took me up to Eugène Sue's house and then on to the cascade, two and a half hours' walk, and then sauntered among the vineyards and along the bay, under the plane-tree avenues, driving home in an open carriage, and said he had not spent such an idle day for ten years. Next day we "did" the Gorge of the Fier, and discussed the possible causes of this great ravine, through which the river plunges so unexpectedly and, one would think, unnecessarily. Then to Talloires again, and planned return for work.
Meanwhile he had made appointments in Italy. He talked of a rush to Rome and hasty visits to Lucca and Florence, coming back soon to the Alps. But this turned out to be a longer journey than he had meant. His seal-motto was "To-day," and the business of the moment was always the most important with him; and so the Italian tour was prolonged to nearly two months. It ended in his catching a thorough cold at Pisa through sketching in November winds, and in his longing for the clear air of the Alps again, before returning to London for the lecture he had promised to give in December. This was the lecture announced as "Crystallography," but delivered as "Cistercian Architecture," about which he said, joking at his own expense, that it would probably have come to much the same thing whatever the title had been. I did not quite see why he should lecture on either; but he declared himself quite well, and as we had dropped crystallography—the chief subject before the tour—for cathedrals and abbeys in Italy, he shut himself up at Pisa, cold and all, to write his lecture. Then having, as he thought, mastered it, we ran north. He wanted to stay at St. Michel, a favourite place on the Mont Cenis line, but high, and likely to be bleak in November for a man with a bad cold, I thought—very possibly mistaken. I took tickets for Aix-les-Bains, and we had our only quarrel on that trip. I felt particularly guilty as he recounted to me, in an injured tone, the horrors of Aix, the one place he abominated, and the beauties of St. Michel, while the train climbed the Dora valley to Bardonecchia in fairly fine weather.
On the French side it was deep snow and bitter weather as we ran down to Aix. The next day was delightful, but I always shirked the recollection of my misdemeanour until I found how his diary-entries ignored it. "The cold's quite gone! Friday in glowing sunshine, Pisa to Turin; Saturday in frightful damp and cold, Turin to Aix; but quite easy days both. Sun coming out now. Dent de Bourget over mist and low cloud, very lovely, as I dressed."
The next entry I copy because it shows that he was not as entirely hostile to railways as the casual reader imagines. Writing of the ride to Annecy he says in the "Cashbook": "An entirely divine railway-coupé drive from Aix by the river gorges; one enchantment of golden trees and ruby hills." But it was a splendid day. In clumsier phrasing I wrote home of "all the prettiest autumn colours that ever were made out of remnants of old rainbows patched up into a gala dress for the world."