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Chapter XXI
WE LUGE
When winter comes in America, with a proper and sufficient thickness of ice, a number of persons – mainly young people – go out skating, or coasting, or sleighing, and have a very good time. But this interest is incidental – it does not exclude all other interests – it does not even provide the main topic of conversation.
It is not like that in Switzerland. Winter sport is a religion in Switzerland; the very words send a thrill through the dweller – native or foreign – among the Swiss hills. When the season of white drift and congealed lake takes possession of the land, other interests and industries are put aside for the diversions of winter.
Everything is subserved to the winter sports. French, German, and English papers report each day the thickness of snow at the various resorts, the conditions of the various courses, the program of events. Bills at the railway stations announce the names of points where the sports are in progress, with a schedule of the fares. Hotels publish their winter attractions – their coasting (they call it "luging" – soft g), curling, skating, ski-ing accommodations, and incidentally mention their rooms. They also cover their hall carpetings with canvas to protect them from the lugers' ponderous hobnailed shoes. To be truly sporty one must wear those shoes; also certain other trimmings, such as leggings, breeches, properly cut coat, cap and scarf to match. One cannot really enjoy the winter sports without these decorations, or keep in good winter society. Then there are the skis. One must carry a pair of skis to be complete. They must be as tall as the owner can reach, and when he puts them on his legs will branch out and act independently, each on its own account, and he will become a house divided against itself, with the usual results. So it is better to carry them, and look handsome and graceful, and to confine one's real activities to the more familiar things.
Our hotel was divided on winter sports. Not all went in for it, but those who did went in considerably. We had a Dutch family from Sumatra, where they had been tobacco planting for a number of years, and in that tropic land had missed the white robust joys of the long frost. They were a young, superb couple, but their children, who had never known the cold, were slender products of an enervating land. They had never seen snow and they shared their parents' enthusiasm in the winter prospect. The white drifts on the mountaintops made them marvel; the first light fall we had made them wild.
That Dutch family went in for the winter sports. You never saw anything like it. Their plans and their outfit became the chief interest of the hotel. They engaged far in advance their rooms at Château d'Oex, one of the best known resorts, and they daily accumulated new and startling articles of costume to make their experience more perfect. One day they would all have new shoes of wonderful thickness and astonishing nails. Then it would be gorgeous new scarfs and caps, then sweaters, then skates, then snowshoes, then skis, and so on down the list. Sometimes they would organize a drill in full uniform. But the children were less enthusiastic then. Those slim-legged little folks could hardly walk, weighted with several pounds of heavy hobnailed shoes, and they complained bitterly at this requirement. Their parents did not miss the humor of the situation, and I think enjoyed these preparations and incidental discomforts for the sake of pleasure as much as they could have enjoyed the sports themselves, when the time came. We gave them a hearty send-off, when reports arrived that the snow conditions at Château d'Oex were good, and if they had as good a time as we wished them, and as they gave us in their preparations, they had nothing to regret.
As the winter deepened the winter sport sentiment grew in our midst, until finally in January we got a taste of it ourselves. We found that we could take a little mountain road to a point in the hills called Les Avants, then a funicular to a still higher point, and thus be in the white whirl for better or worse, without being distinctly of it, so to speak. We could not be of it, of course, without the costumes, and we did not see how we could afford these and also certain new adjuncts which the car would need in the spring. So we went primarily as spectators – that is, the older half of the family. The children had their own winter sports at school.
We telephoned to the Son Loup hotel at the top of the last funicular, and got an early start. You can see Son Loup from the hotel steps in Vevey, but it takes hours to get to it. The train goes up, and up, along gorges and abysses, where one looks down on the tops of Christmas trees, gloriously mantled in snow. Then by and by you are at Les Avants and in the midst of everything, except the ski-ing, which is still higher up, at Son Loup.
We got off at Les Avants and picked our way across the main street among flying sleds of every pattern, from the single, sturdy little bulldog luge to the great polly-straddle bob, and from the safe vantage of a café window observed the slide.
It was divided into three parts – one track for bobsledders – the wild riders – a track for the more daring single riders, and a track for fat folks, old folks, and children. Certainly they were having a good time. Their ages ranged from five to seventy-five, and they were all children together. Now and then there came gliding down among them a big native sled, loaded with hay or wood, from somewhere far up in the hills. It was a perfect day – no cold, no wind, no bright sun, for in reality we were up in the clouds – a soft white veil of vapor was everywhere.
By and by we crossed the track, entered a wonderful snow garden belonging to a hotel, and came to a little pond where some old men and fat men were curling. Curling is a game where you try to drive a sort of stone decoy duck from one end of the pond to the other and make it stop somewhere and count something. Each man is armed with a big broom to keep the ice clean before and after his little duck. We watched them a good while and I cannot imagine anything more impressive than to see a fat old man with a broom padding and puffing along by the side of his little fat stone duck, feverishly sweeping the snow away in front of it, so that it will get somewhere and count. When I inadvertently laughed I could see that I was not popular. All were English there – all but a few Americans who pretended to be English.
Beyond the curling pond was a skating pond, part of it given over to an international hockey match, but somehow these things did not excite us. We went back to our café corner to watch the luging and to have luncheon. Then the lugers came stamping in for refreshments, and their costumes interested us. Especially their shoes. Even the Dutch family had brought home no such wonders as some of these. They were of appalling size, and some of them had heavy iron claws or toes such as one might imagine would belong to some infernal race. These, of course, were to dig into the snow behind, to check or guide the flying sled. They were useful, no doubt, but when one saw them on the feet of a tall, slim girl the effect was peculiar.
By the time we had finished luncheon we had grown brave. We said we would luge – modestly, but with proper spirit. There were sleds to let, by an old Frenchman, at a little booth across the way, and we looked over his assortment and picked a small bob with a steering attachment, because to guide that would be like driving a car. Then we hauled it up the fat folks' slide a little way and came down, hoo-hooing a warning to those ahead in the regulation way. We did this several times, liking it more and more. We got braver and tried the next slide, liking it still better. Then we got reckless and crossed into the bobsled scoot and tried that. Oh, fine! We did not go to the top – we did not know then how far the top was; but we went higher each time, liking it more and more, until we got up to a place where the sleds stood out at a perpendicular right angle as they swirled around a sudden circle against a constructed ice barrier. This looked dangerous, but getting more and more reckless, we decided to go even above that.
We hauled our sled up and up, constantly meeting bobsleds coming down and hearing the warning hoo-hoo-hooing of still others descending from the opaque upper mist. Still we climbed, dragging our sled, meeting bob after bob, also loads of hay and wood, and finally some walking girls who told us that the top of the slide was at Son Loup – that is, at the top of the funicular, some miles away.
We understood then; all those bobsledders took their sleds up by funicular and coasted down. We stopped there and got on our sled. The grade was very gradual at first, and we moved slowly – so slowly that a nice old lady who happened along gave us a push. We kept moving after that. We crossed a road, rounded a turn, leaped a railway track and struck into the straightway, going like a streak. We had thought it a good distance to the sharp turn, with its right-angle wall of ice, but we were there with unbelievable suddenness. Then in a second we were on the wall, standing straight out into space; then in another we had shot out of it; but our curve seemed to continue.
There was a little barnyard just there and an empty hay sled – placed there on purpose, I think now. At any rate, the owner was there watching the performance. I think he had been expecting us. When all motion ceased he untelescoped us, and we limped about and discussed with him in native terms how much we ought to pay for the broken runner on his hay sled, and minor damages. It took five francs to cure the broken runner, which I believe had been broken all the time and was just set there handy to catch inadvertent persons like ourselves. We finished our slide then and handed in our sled, which the old Frenchman looked at fondly and said: "Très bon – très vite." He did not know how nearly its speed had come to landing us in the newspapers.
We took the funicular to Son Loup, and at the top found ourselves in what seemed atmospheric milk. We stood at the hotel steps and watched the swift coasters pass. Every other moment they flashed by, from a white mystery above – a vision of faces, a call of voices – to the inclosing mystery again. It was like life; but not entirely, for they did not pass to silence. The long, winding hill far below was full of their calls' – muffled by the mist – their hoo-hoo-hoos of warning to those ahead and to those who followed. But it was suggestive, too. It was as if the lost were down there in that cold whiteness.
The fog grew thicker, more opaque, as the day waned. It was an impalpable wall. We followed the road from the hotel, still higher into its dense obscurity. When a tree grew near enough to the road for us to see it, we beheld an astonishing sight. The mist had gathered about the evergreen branches until they were draped, festooned, fairly clotted with pendulous frost embroidery.
We had been told that there was ski-ing up there and we were anxious to see it, but for a time we found only blankness and dead silence. Then at last – far and faint, but growing presently more distinct – we heard a light sound, a movement, a "swish-swish-swirl" – somewhere in the mist at our right, coming closer and closer, until it seemed right upon us, and strangely mysterious, there being no visible cause. We waited until a form appeared, no, grew, materialized from the intangible – so imperceptibly, so gradually, that at first we could not be sure of it. Then the outlines became definite, then distinct; an athletic fellow on skis maneuvered across the road, angled down the opposite slope, "swish-swish-swirl" – checking himself every other stroke, for the descent was steep – faded into unknown deeps below – the whiteness had shut him in. We listened while the swish-swish grew fainter, and in the gathering evening we felt that he had disappeared from the world into ravines of dark forests and cold enchantments from which there could be no escape.
We climbed higher and met dashing sleds now and then, but saw no other ski-ers that evening. Next morning, however, we found them up there, gliding about in that region of vapors, appearing and dissolving like cinema figures, their voices coming to us muffled and unreal in tone. I left the road and followed down into a sort of basin which seemed to be a favorite place for ski practice. I felt exactly as if I were in a ghostly aquarium.
I was not much taken with ski-ing, as a whole. I noticed that even the experts fell down a good many times and were not especially graceful getting up.
But I approve of coasting under the new conditions —i. e. with funicular assistance. In my day coasting was work – you had to tug and sweat up a long slippery incline for a very brief pleasure. Keats (I think it was Keats, or was it Carolyn Wells?) in his, or her, well-known and justly celebrated poem wrote:
It takes a long time to make the climb,
And a minute or less to come down;
But that poetry is out of date – in Switzerland. It no longer takes a long time to make the climb, and you do it in luxury. You sit in a comfortable seat and your sled is loaded on an especially built car. Switzerland is the most funiculated country in the world; its hills are full of these semi-perpendicular tracks. They make you shudder when you mount them for the first time, and I think I never should be able to discuss frivolous matters during an ascent, as I have seen some do. Still, one gets hardened, I suppose.
They are cheap. You get commutation tickets for very little, and all day long coasters are loading their sleds on the little shelved flatcar, piling themselves into the coach, then at the top snatching off their sleds to go whooping away down the long track to the lower station. Coasters get killed now and then, and are always getting damaged in one way and another; for the track skirts deep declivities, and there are bound to be slips in steering, and collisions. We might have stayed longer and tried it again, but we were still limping from our first experiment. Besides, we were not dressed for the real thing. Dress may not make the man, but it makes the sportsman.
Part II
MOTORING THROUGH THE GOLDEN AGE
Chapter I
THE NEW PLAN
But with the breaking out of the primroses and the hint of a pale-green beading along certain branches in the hotel garden, the desire to be going, and seeing, and doing; to hear the long drowse of the motor and look out over the revolving distances; to drop down magically, as it were, on this environment and that – began to trickle and prickle a little in the blood, to light pale memories and color new plans.
We could not go for a good while yet. For spring is really spring in Switzerland – not advance installments of summer mixed with left-overs from winter, but a fairly steady condition of damp coolness – sunlight that is not hot, showers that are not cold – the snow on the mountainsides advancing and retreating – sometimes, in the night, getting as low down as Chardonne, which is less than half an hour's walk above the hotel.
There is something curiously unreal about this Swiss springtime. We saw the trees break out into leaf, the fields grow vividly green and fresh, and then become gay with flowers, without at all feeling the reason for such a mood. In America such a change is wrought by hot days – cold ones, too, perhaps, but certainly hot ones; we have sweltered in April, though we have sometimes snowballed in May. The Swiss spring was different. Three months of gradual, almost unnoticeable, mellowing kept us from getting excited and gave us plenty of time to plan.
That was good for us – the trip we had in mind now was no mere matter of a few days' journey, from a port to a destination; it was to be a wandering that would stretch over the hills and far away, through some thousands of kilometers and ten weeks of time. That was about all we had planned concerning it, except that we were going back into France, and at one point in those weeks we expected to touch Cherbourg and pick up a missing member of the family who would be dropped there by a passing ship. We studied the maps a good deal, and at odd times I tinkered with the car and wondered how many things would happen to it before we completed the long circle, and if I would return only partially crippled or a hopeless heap of damage and explanations. Never mind – the future holds sorrow enough for all of us. Let us anticipate only its favors.
So we planned. We sent for a road map of France divided into four sections, showing also western Germany and Switzerland. We spread it out on the table and traced a variety of routes to Cherbourg; by Germany, by Paris direct, by a long loop down into southern France. We favored the last-named course. We had missed some things in the Midi – Nîmes, Pont du Gard, Orange – and then there was still a quality in the air which made us feel that the south would furnish better motor weather in May.
Ah, me! There is no place quite like the Provence. It is rather dusty, and the people are drowsy and sometimes noisy, and there are mosquitoes there, and maybe other unpleasant things; but in the light chill of a Swiss spring day there comes a memory of rich mellowness and September roadsides, with gold and purple vintage ripening in the sun, that lights and warms the soul. We would start south, we said. We were not to reach Cherbourg until June. Plenty of time for the north, then, and later.
We discussed matters of real importance – that is to say, expenses. We said we would give ourselves an object lesson, this time, in what could really be done in motor economies. On our former trip we had now and again lunched by the roadside, with pleasing results. This time we would always do it. Before, we had stopped a few times at small inns in villages instead of seeking out hotels in the larger towns. Those few experiments had been altogether satisfactory, both as to price and entertainment. Perhaps this had been merely our good fortune, but we were willing to take further chances. From the fifty francs a day required for our party of four we might subtract a franc or so and still be nourished, body and soul. Thus we planned. When it was pleasant we enjoyed shopping for our roadside outfit; a basket, square, and of no great size; some agate cups and saucers; some knives and forks; also an alcohol stove, the kind that compacts itself into very small compass, aluminum, and very light – I hope they have them elsewhere than in Switzerland, for their usefulness is above price.
Chapter II
THE NEW START
It was the first week in May when we started – the 5th, in fact. The car had been thoroughly overhauled, and I had spent a week personally on it, scraping and polishing, so that we might make a fine appearance as we stood in front of the hotel in the bright morning sunlight where our fellow guests would gather to see us glide away.
I have had many such showy dreams as that, and they have turned out pretty much alike. We did not start in the bright morning. It was not bright. It was raining, and it continued to rain until after eleven o'clock. By that time our fellow guests were not on hand. They had got tired and gone to secluded corners, or to their rooms, or drabbling into the village. When the sun finally came out only a straggler or two appeared. It was too bad.
We glided away, but not very far. I remembered, as we were passing through the town, that it might be well to take some funds along, so we drove around to the bank to see what we could raise in that line. We couldn't raise anything – not a centime. It was just past twelve o'clock and, according to Swiss custom, the bank was closed for two hours. Not a soul was there – the place was locked, curtained, barred. Only dynamite would have opened it.
We consulted. We had some supplies in our basket to eat by the roadside as soon as we were well into the country. Very good; we would drive to some quiet back street in the suburbs and eat them now. We had two hours to wait – we need feel no sense of hurry. So we drove down into Vevey la Tour and, behind an old arch, where friends would not be likely to notice us, we sat in the car and ate our first luncheon, with a smocked boy for audience – a boy with a basket on his arm, probably delaying the machinery of his own household to study the working economies of ours. Afterward we drove back to the bank, got our finances arranged, slipped down a side street to the lake-front, and fled away toward Montreux without looking behind us. It was not at all the departure we had planned.
It rained again at Montreux, but the sun was shining at Chillon, and the lake was blue. Through openings in the trees we could see the picture towns of Territet, Montreux, Clarens, and Vevey, skirting the shore – the white steamers plying up and down; the high-perched hotels, half lost in cloudland, and we thought that our travels could hardly provide a more charming vision than that. Then we were in Villeneuve, then in the open flat fields of the Rhone Valley, where, for Europe, the roads are poor; on through a jolty village to a bridge across the Rhone, and so along the south shore by Bouveret, to St. Gingolph, where we exhibited our papers at the Swiss douane, crossed a little brook, and were again in France. We were making the circuit of the lake, you see. All winter we had looked across to that shore, with its villages and snow-mantled hills. We would now see it at close range.
We realized one thing immediately. Swiss roads are not bad roads, by any means, but French roads are better. In fact, I have made up my mind that there is nothing more perfect in this world than a French road. I have touched upon this subject before, and I am likely to dwell upon it unduly, for it always excites me. Those roads are a perfect network in France, and I can never cease marveling at the money and labor they must have cost. They are so hard and smooth, so carefully graded and curved, so beautifully shaded, so scrupulously repaired – it would seem that half the wealth and effort of France must be expended on her highways. The road from St. Gingolph was wider than the one we had left behind. It was also a better road and in better repair. It was a floor. Here and there we came to groups of men working at it, though it needed nothing, that we could see. It skirted the mountains and lake-front. We could look across to our own side now – to Vevey and those other towns, and the cloud-climbing hotels, all bright in the sunshine.
We passed a nameless village or two and were at Evian, a watering-place which has grown in fame and wealth these later years – a resort of fine residences and handsome hotels – not our kind of hotels, but plenty good enough for persons whose tastes have not been refined down to our budget and daily program of economies.
It was at Thonon – quaint old Thonon, once a residence of the Counts and Dukes of Savoy – that we found a hostelry of our kind. It had begun raining again, and, besides, it was well toward evening. We pulled up in front of the Hôtel d'Europe, one of the least extravagant of the red-book hostelries, and I went in. The "Bureau" as the French call the office, was not very inviting. It was rather dingy and somber, and nobody was there. I found a bell and rang it and a woman appeared – not a very attractive woman, but a kindly person who could understand my "Vous avez des chambres?" which went a good ways. She had "des chambres" and certainly no fault could be found with those. They were of immense size, the beds were soft, smooth, and spotlessly clean. Yes, there was a garage, free. I went back with my report. The dinner might be bad, we said, but it would only be for once – besides, it was raining harder. So we went in, and when the shower passed we took a walk along the lake-front, where there is an old château, once the home of royalty, now the storehouse of plaster or something, and we stopped to look at a public laundry – a square stone pool under a shed, where the women get down on their knees and place the garments on a board and scrub them with a brush, while the cold water from the mountains runs in and out and is never warmed at all.
Returning by another way, we found about the smallest church in the world, built at one corner of the old domain. A woman came with a key and let us into it and we sat in the little chairs and inspected the tiny altar and all the sacred things with especial interest, for one of the purposes of our pilgrimages was to see churches – the great cathedrals of France. Across from the church stood a ruined tower, matted with vines, the remains of a tenth-century château – already old when the one on the lake-front was new. We speak lightly of a few centuries more or less, but, after all, there was a goodly period between the tenth and the fourteenth, a period long enough to cover American history from Montezuma to date. These old towers, once filled with life and voices and movement, are fascinating things. We stood looking at this one while the dusk gathered. Then it began sprinkling again and it was dinner time.
So we returned to the hotel and I may as well say here, at once, that I do not believe there are any bad dinners in France. I have forgotten what we had, but I suppose it was fish and omelet, and meat and chicken, and salad and dessert, and I know it was all hot and delicious, and served daintily in courses, and we went to those soft beds happy and soothed, fell asleep to the sound of the rain pattering outside, and felt not a care in the world.
