The Spell of Switzerland

“But the remainder with incredible courage pushed on the next day to Ilanz, where it was found that at least five thousand were missing.

“On the 8th of October they reached Coire, where, at last, the starved wretches had something to eat.

“And all this loss and suffering might have been largely obviated had Suvórof known enough to follow the Splügen pass and the Grisons, or having reached Altorf, joined Lipken by the Schächental.

“In honour of the heroic management of the Swiss campaign the Emperor made him generalissimo of the Russian army, calling him ‘the most renowned commander of this or any other age.’”

“That is certainly a great story,” said I. “Isn’t there a statue or a memorial to Suvórof?”

“Oh, yes. At the Devil’s Bridge, on the side of the chasm, there is a tall granite cross, about ten meters high, put up in 1899, and with an inscription in Russian to the memory of him and his brave comrades. The bridge itself is generally called after him.”

“It brings these great events very vividly before one to be at the very spot where they took place, does it not?”

“Yes, just think what centuries of history this Zürich of ours has seen! While I was in England a few years ago I picked up at a second-hand bookshop a queer old copy of Thomas Coryat’s ‘Crudities.’ Here is the book: in his dedication he calls himself ‘Thy benevolent itinerating friend T. C., the Odcombian Legge-Stretcher.’ He travelled through all this region, using his ‘ten toes for a nagge.’ Here he refers to Zürich: he says that while here he met Rodolphus Hospinianus, Gaspar Waserus and Henricus Bultigerus. Gaspar Waserus was the ‘ornamêt of the town, speaking eight languages’ but Hospinian – that ‘glittering lamp of learning’ – told him that their city was founded in the time of Abraham. He derives the names from the fact that it belonged to two kingdoms —zweier Reich– ‘one, on the farther bank of the Limacus,’ he says, ‘belonged to Turgouia, that on the hither bank Ergouia.’ The Latin name, according to him, was Turegum, quasi, duorum regum civitas.”

“An amusing case of imaginary etymology,” I should say. “But Zürich is a very ancient city, I believe.”

“Oh, yes. In 1853 and the following year there was a remarkable diminution of the waters in the lake and wide surfaces were laid bare. Near Obermeilen, above half-way up the lake, some labourers were embanking some new land and they discovered piles, bits of charcoal and other relics. Ferdinand Keller began making investigations and he discovered that these piles were in parallel rows and were evidently the remains of habitations. After that any number of similar discoveries were made. At Concise, near Neuchâtel, from one single aquatic village twenty-five thousand different objects were recovered. And they now know exactly how these villages looked with their floors of fire-hardened clay, their circular walls, their conical roofs made of wattled reeds and straw or bark. If you have been into any of the Swiss museums you have seen their weapons and stag-horns, bulls’ skulls, flint arrowheads, serpentine hatchets, slings, horn-awls, rings, and clay vessels, toys, quoits, ornamented often with rude but not inartistic etchings, – there is no end to the things preserved, – and even their canoes hollowed out of one trunk, just such as Hannibal used for crossing the Rhône. Each village had probably two or three hundred huts connected with the shore by a bridge. One investigator discovered a storehouse containing a hundred measures of barley and wheat. They evidently had their farms; they raised apples, pears and plums. They had a trade with other tribes, for coral and amber articles were found. Yes, Zürich is built on a settlement that existed probably fifteen hundred years before Christ – not so very far from the time of Abraham.”

“Who were they?”

“Some think they were of the same race as the Etruscans. It is probable that they were attacked by the Kelts, who burnt their villages.”

“I suppose it was Kelts who attacked Hannibal.”

“Probably; they were Allobrogi. The Kelts were always freedom-loving.”

“I remember what Kant says about the people of mountains loving freedom: ‘The peoples that dwell around and on the mountains are very strong and bold and in all ways seek to assert their freedom —ihre Freiheit zu behaupten. But this probably comes from the fact that in such regions it is very easy for a few to defend themselves against great armies, and, moreover, the mountain-peaks are uninhabited and uninhabitable; in the valleys also little wealth is to be found and no one is especially tempted to dwell in such regions.’ He also claims that the peoples that do live there and are vegetarians are the freest.”

“I am not so certain about the valleys not tempting to invasion. Do you know one of the most interesting episodes in Swiss history is the coming of the Saracens? Yet they left surprisingly few remains – a few medals without dates – a few names embedded in other names – like Pontresina, which is Pons Sarecenorum.”

“I know it is, because one of my favourite novels is Viktor von Scheffel’s ‘Ekkehard.’”

“Do you know that?”

“Indeed I do, and, above all things, I want to go to the Lake of Constance – your Bodensee – and make a pilgrimage to the Hohentwil, where Ekkehard taught the duchess Latin and she taught him love.”

“We will go there together; that will be an excellent excursion.”

This plan also, I will say here, we carried out, visiting at the same time Constance and two or three other towns on the lake, and also the Falls of the Rhine. Really, to know Switzerland, one would have to live here years. Everywhere I go the charm and variety of it grows on me. Mountains, mountains everywhere! I can say with old Coryat: —

“Such is the height of many of these mountains that I saw at the least two hundred of them that were ‘farre aboue’ some of the clouds!”

I was glad that Constance, which controls the mouth of its lake, has also its Reformer – John Huss – to compare with Geneva’s Calvin and Zürich’s Zwingli; they prize him all the more because they put him to death!

The Professor and I talked of all manner of things, – antiquities, Swiss history, which, except in spots, and its final results, is not very inspiring; strikes and labour-troubles, woman-suffrage, the growth of commercialism, the Swiss railways and the advantage of having them owned by the state, and education. We forgot that it rained. But the following morning the storm showed symptoms of dissolution, and the Professor and I sallied forth to see the city. Every city is worthy of a hundred books; for every city is full of human beings, or else of history, or both. Zürich has nearly two hundred thousand inhabitants and also has its history. I had seen lying on the library table a beautifully printed and well illustrated pamphlet describing the restoration of the Fraumünster, which was completed in 1912. That venerable building settles Zürich’s historic solidity. There were found in it, or rather under it, traces of the little church which was torn down in the Ninth Century to make room for the Carolingian minster, which has been so successfully repaired. We went around it and into it and the Professor pointed out to me the relics of its most ancient carvings, more or less mutilated inscriptions, grave-stones – one of them to the Ritter Berngerus von Wile, dated 1284.

“Did you know that in the Thirteenth Century when Berngerus, – I wonder if he was a bear-slayer, – when Von Wile was living in Zürich, – there was a regular school of poetry here? Heinrich Mannes, the Probst of the Abtei, who founded the Library, had charge of it. He died in 1270. Rüdiger Mannesse had a great collection of song-books, and the tests in ‘Mastersong’ were much enjoyed. Count Krafto von Toggenburg was afterwards Probst of the Abtei. It is supposed that Hadloub was his pupil. He was the nephew of Elizabeth von Wetzikon, the Fürstabtissin, who made him chaplain of St. Stephen’s outside the walls. This Elizabeth von Wetzikon’s mortuary inscription was found in the old church, but badly mutilated. The Zürich Antiquarian Society has published nearly three score of Hadloub’s poems. I read some of them. There is one that reminded me of the old English song – ‘Sumer is i-kumen in – lude sing kuku.’ It begins: —

“‘Sumer hât gesendet ûz sîn Wunne;Seht die bluomen gênt ûf dur daz gras.Lûter klâr stêt nû der liechte sunneDâ der winter ê vil trûebe was.’”

As it was still cloudy we went into the Swiss National Museum. A hasty glance at the old furniture, at the stained glass – the best collection in the world – made it evident that a week was all too short for Zürich – I should want at least a week for that wonderful museum alone. And with such an intelligent guide as Professor Landoldt it was most edifying. When we came out the sun was shining and we went to the top of the Polytechnikum and got that bird’s-eye view of the town which is the best introduction. I shall always remember the beauty of it; I can see with my mind’s eye the twin towers of the Gross-Münster – not that they are beautiful, at least not their caps – and (from closer observation) the quaint statue of Charlemagne with his gilded crown and sword.

“The molasses-sandstone which was used for building so many of the old edifices in Zürich,” said the Professor, “comes from quarries at the upper end of the lake that were known in Roman times. Unfortunately it crumbles rather readily ‘under the tooth of time.’ Some of the carvings on the old cathedral are most quaint and curious, as you will see. For instance, on the third story is a knight dressed in tunic and chlamys. He may have been meant for Rupert, an Alleman duke, or for Burkhart, Duke of Suabia. Besides the human and angel figures you will see birds and all sorts of four-footed creatures, many of them imaginary or apocalyptic. It is odd that the statues and decorations do not refer to Biblical subjects but rather to heathen imaginations – chimeras, dragons, hippogrifs, sirens, lions eating men who are certainly not meant to be Daniels; there are a winged crocodile devouring a giant’s ears, a toad standing on its head, a bearded Hercules strangling twisted serpents, Delilah cutting Samson’s hair, wolves biting at a boar, skinny monkeys with skulls at their mouths, a face with fish coming out of the mouth and ears, centaurs shooting bows, conventionalized grapes and monsters eating them, and the like.

“The first towers,” he went on to say, “were in Romanesque style and not intended to rise much above the roof; there should have been a separate campanile; at the end of the Fifteenth Century both towers were built higher in Gothic style. I think it was the ambitious Bürgermeister Waldmann, envious of the tall towers of Basel and Fribourg, who had them elevated. To meet the expenses he himself contributed three hundred gulden, and taxed the whole priesthood from the bishop down, but he did not live to see his ambition carried out. These towers went through various vicissitudes. In 1490 a pointed cap ornamented with lead was put on each, but the lead was too heavy and was taken off twenty years later and the caps were covered with larch shingles. These lasted till they caught fire in 1575; then a copper top was put on; then shingles again; then in 1763 it was struck by lightning and burned to the bell-deck. In 1770 a stone gallery with pyramids on the four corners showed itself. The present rather ridiculous top – the octagonal wooden helmets – dates back to 1779.”

“There must be any amount of interesting remains all around Zürich,” said I, leading him on.

“Indeed there are. A number of years ago the favourite spot for viewing Zürich was up on the Balgrist, where you look down into the Limmat valley and across the lake to the mountains. In 1814, I think it was, some labourers requiring material to mend the roads with dug down and discovered some skeletons. It was supposed to be remains of soldiers killed in the battle between the Russians and the French in 1799 and they gave these remains Christian burial. But they were really prehistoric. Afterwards all sorts of things were found there, but, as it was not then a scientific age, most of them were lost. The place is Entebüchel, which local etymology interprets as the Hill of the Giants; Büchel, equivalent to Hühl, meaning hill, and Ente the local word for giant. But it really means ‘Beyond the Hill,’ the word ent or ennet being an Alleman word.”

“What is the oldest monument in Zürich?”

“Oh, probably a grave-stone of the Second Century, which some Roman official set up to his beloved son; it stands in the present Lindenhof and has the words ‘Statio turicensis’ carved on it. When this region became Roman the tax-collectors dwelt here. After the fall of the Romans, the Allemanni came, then the Franks, then the German kings. Zürich was a palatinate, which means, as you know, palatium regis; a palace where the kings stayed when they visited here. Really, you might spend a life-time studying the history of Zürich and this lake. I shall like you to compare the Lake of Geneva with our much smaller Zürich Lake,” said Herr Landoldt. “I shall take you on a trip around it.”

He was true to his promise. After he had shown me all the sights of his splendid city – the largest in Switzerland – we made the tour of the lake. It has not the beauty of colouring of Lake Leman; it is a pale green but “the sweet banks of Zürich’s lovely lake” are what the French call riant, a little more than our smiling; and the background of snow-covered Alps is magnificent. The lake is about ten times as long as it is wide and is one hundred and forty-two meters deep. Just as from the end of Leman rushes the Rhône, so from the Zürich end of its lake rushes in a torrential dash the green Limmat. On the left shore, at the place where it attains its greatest width, are the two little islands of Lützelau and Ufenau. On Ufenau is a church and a chapel dating from about the middle of the Twelfth Century. Here died in 1523, Maximilian’s poet-laureate, Luther’s zealous partizan, the high-tempered, witty, impetuous Ulrich von Hutten. He had to flee from his enemies, and found a refuge through the protection of his fellow-reformer, Zwingli, who exercised somewhat the same commanding influence in Zürich as Calvin did in Geneva. I had never read any of Von Hutten’s works, but I found an excellent edition of them in the Professor’s library and I read with much amusement some of the sarcasms which he put into verse in his “Awakener of the German Nation.”

We went to Rapperswyl – the ending wyl or wil reminds one of the multitude of New England towns ending in ville and has the same origin – and spent an hour in the Polish National Museum founded in 1870 by Count Broel-Plater and installed in the Fourteenth-Century castle, which came to the Hapsburgs when its founders lost it. It seemed strange to see all the memorials of a vanquished people – weapons, banners and ornaments, portraits and historical pictures – on the walls or in the cabinets of a city so far away.

We got back to Zürich in the evening, and the Professor called my attention to the romantic effect of the lighted boats plying on the glittering waters. There was a brilliant moon, too, and a more beautiful scene I have rarely witnessed than the city with its myriad lights.

My week went like a breath. Before I knew it, we were off for our trip through the Austrian Tyrol. Will and Ruth appeared in due time, and, to my surprise, they brought Lady Q. with them. It is one of the curiosities of travel that one is always meeting the same persons. We should have toured the Bernese Oberland had not motor-vehicles been barred. But in the Tyrol splendid roads have been constructed and those incomparable regions are a paradise for travel. To detail the itinerary would be merely a catalogue with superlatives for decoration. To describe the journey with all its memorable details, – picturesque towns, valleys sweeping down between rugged mountains, rivers and cataracts, would occupy a book as big as a dictionary. I noticed that we came to the third class of mountain-peaks: the first was Dents, the second was Horns, and now we found the term was Piz. One of the most fascinating little places that we visited on a side trip to Davos-Platz was Sertig Dörfli, with its attractive church and its view of the Piz Kesch. At Davos lived John Addington Symonds, and I pleased my niece especially by reciting his beautiful sonnet: “’Neath an uncertain moon.” Besides that Piz we saw Piz Michel and Piz Vadret and Piz Grialetsch. In several cases, where we could not go in the car, we went either by train or by carriage. At Sils, also, finely situated on the largest of the Engadine lakes, there were still more Pizes: Piz della Marga, Piz Corvatsch, Piz Güz. There is no end to them.

We took the advice of some chance acquaintances who had been motoring through the Tyrol. We went to Bozen, and, after spending the night there, we followed the Val Sugana and the Broccone and Gobbera passes and then the new roads of the Rolle, the Pordoi and the Falzarego into the Dolomites. Of course the Dolomites do not belong to Switzerland as a State but only geologically. We crossed over into Italy and enjoyed the drive by the Italian lakes – a succession of “dreams of beauty,” as Lady Q. said with more truth than originality. We spent a day in Milan and then returned to Switzerland by the Saint-Gotthard.

CHAPTER XXIV

ON THE SHORES OF LAKE LUCERNE

MY classmate, Ned Allen, was always a dilettante; if he had been obliged to work, he might have accomplished great things; but, though he may have had ambitions, the days of his young manhood slipped away while he travelled all over the world. Then he became disgusted with what he considered unjust taxation, and, converting all his property into income-bearing bonds, so that he had no care or worry, he came to Europe and lived part of the time in his villa on the Lake of the Four Cantons and part of the time in a lovely palazzo near Palermo in Sicily.

He had everything to make him happy, and, yet, like most of the rich men whom I have ever known, he was not happy. Happiness comes only in forgetting one’s self, and that he had no time to do, because he had all the time there was.

It did him good, I think, to be obliged to exert himself a little to show me the sights. Like myself, he was very fond of music, and he followed the example of a good many wealthy men in Switzerland – he had a string quartet play every Sunday afternoon and also two or three evenings a week. One day he took me to the house of a friend of his who supported a large orchestra and gave concerts to a few invited guests or to himself alone according to circumstances. He had been to Paderewski’s villa on the Lake of Constance and to the Count von Hesse-Wartegg’s, where his wife, Madame Minnie Hauk, after retiring from the stage, has lived for a number of years. As I knew them all, I wished that I might pay my respects, but I had no chance – there were so many other things to do.

One of my first objects of pilgrimage at Lucerne was the Peace and War Museum, founded by that remarkable Austrian Jew, Von Bloch. My classmate was inclined to scoff at the notion of Universal Peace. I found he had not read or even thought very deeply on the subject, and I really think that my enthusiasm communicated itself somewhat to him. He had never thought, before I suggested it to him, that the small stature of the present-day French and Italians was probably due to the fact that the best and strongest of the youth of those two nations were killed off in the Napoleonic and subsequent wars. War does not ensure the survival of the fittest. The old and weaklings are left to perpetuate the race.

One would hardly believe it, but Ned had never been to the top of Pilatus; I found he was not especially interested in scenery, he who lived in the midst of the most splendid scenery in Switzerland. But he went with me to Pilatus. As we started I quoted the rhymed proverb: —

“Hat der Pilatus einen HutDann wird das Wetter gut;Hat er einen DegenSo giebt es sicher Regen.”

He had heard that and said it was quite true; if the mountain was adorned with a little cloudy cap it meant that there would be fair weather; fortunately the peak wore his hat and not his dagger, so we had bright sunshine and not rain.

But Ned did not know the legend which connects Pilate with the mountain. Of course it should be Mons Pileatus– the capt mountain; but the story became widespread that after Christ was put to death, Pilate was recalled to Rome. He wore Christ’s robe. He was found guilty of malfeasance and was put to death. His body was thrown into the Tiber which refused it and angry storms arose. It was sent to Vienna: the Danube refused it; it was brought to the Rhône; again storms; the lake refused it; new disasters came upon Lausanne. Then it was brought to the Frankmünt – that is what the rough upper part of the mountain is called; the mons fractus– where Pilate’s ghost fought with the spectre of King Herod – the red of the conflict was seen then and afterwards at sunset on the mountain-top. Up came a necromancer and laid a terrible spell. In the days that followed nothing would grow there, and on Good Friday the disgraced procurator was doomed to appear on a black mule with a white spot – like a Roman knight – and show himself.

So great was the fear of Pilatus that until comparatively modern times no one dared to go up to it. Now there is a railway, and the ghost of Pilate is laid. Sir Edwin Arnold speaks of the legend in his lilting poem: —

“He riseth alone, – alone and proudFrom the shore of an emerald sea;His crest hath a shroud of the crimson cloud,For a king of the Alps is he;Standing alone as a king should stand,With his foot on the fields of his own broad lands.“And never a storm from the stores of the NorthComes sweeping along the skyBut it emptieth forth the first of its wrathOn the crags on that mountain high;And the voice of those crags has a tale to tellThat the heart of the hearer shall treasure well.“A tale of a brow that was bound with gold,And a heart that was bowed with sin;Of a fierce deed told of the days of oldThat might never sweet mercy win,Of legions in steel that were waiting byFor the death of the God that could never die.“Of a dear kind face that its kindness keptDabbled with blood of its own;Of a lady who leapt from the sleep she sleptTo plead at a judgment-throne.Of a cross and a cry and a night at noonAnd the sun and the earth at a sickly swoon.“But climb the crags when the storm has ruleAnd the spirit that rides the blast,And hark to his howl as he sweeps the poolWhere the Roman groaned his last;And to thee shall the tongue of the tempest tellA record too sad for the poet’s shell.”

Whatever may have been the bareness of its sides in consequence of necromancer’s spells it is now filled with beautiful plant life – hundreds of varieties. If I had been as much of a botanist as I am a collector for my mental picture-gallery I might fill a page with the names and descriptions of the Alpine flowers, which I noticed as merely blue or pink or yellow and cared little for distinguishing them apart. Once during one of my trips I did see the edelweiss growing, but it is not very pretty; but the fields of gentians and the forget-me-nots – those acres of blue sky fallen to earth and growing up again – those would or might inspire and extract a poem from the most prosaic.

We went together also to the top of the Rigi, which is easily attainable by railway.

Töpfer, in his story entitled “Les Deux Scheidegg,” gives a most enthusiastic description of an avalanche. I think I like the view from Pilatus better than from Rigi; but from both the mountains look like a colossal ocean in a storm and suddenly stricken by the sight of Medusa’s face!

Ned took me in his motor-boat on several trips around the lake which has so many names. I was not really so much interested in the William Tell region as I suppose I should have been. Suppose it were proved as decisively as Tell, as Eindridi with King Olaf, as Hemingr with King Harald, or as Geyti, son of Alask, have been proved to be mere sun myths, that Napoleon and Apollo were really the same, and that George Washington was only a sun myth! His axe corresponds to the bow and arrow; it cuts down the cherry-tree of darkness with its glittering edge and brings liberty to his fellow-man. Who would then care, for any sentimental reasons, to go to Mount Vernon? Why, Schiller, himself, never saw the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons any more than Coleridge ever saw Chamonix; he got all his local colour from Goethe’s descriptions. To go to the Tell Chapel is to participate in a fraud! Yet the natives each year take part in a sort of folk-play, which has all the solemnity of a semi-religious celebration. I did not care to stop as we passed by; still less when we took passage in a big Zeppelin dirigible and looked down upon the big sprawling lake winding among its mountains!