A WIFE ON HER TRAVELS.-11I.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
Pontresina, September 14, 1867. SIR,—I didn't like to let Mamma and Sophy know, for they both doat on me, and it would have frightened them so, but the truth is 1 was stoned in Nauders. You may well say that the change of associations and ideas is complete when you get abroad. But I don't like it quite so complete as this, and have had a bad opinion of the barbarism of the Jews, ever since I had this practical experience of their favourite judicial sentence. Well, I know, you, who induced me to go abroad, will feel the responsibility painfully, so I hasten to relieve you. It was only the population under ten years of age which rose up against me. The little boys of Nauders solicited Edward for kreuzers, which he, in the most courtly and cultivated German, declined to give. I regret to say that the little boys of Nauders thereupon began mimicking his highly educated accent, and followed us in what may be called a " corps of observation " ou our walk. When they found me detached from the main body, they took up stones and sent a shower after me, one of these inexpensive but dangerous missiles hitting me on the back of the head. Luckily the slight but elegant wreath round my straw hat broke the force of the blow, which being delivered by an urchin of nine, was not perhaps of the most formidable kind. I called to Edward, who pursued this light infantry with a stick,—I need not say in vain. He then, remembering, Sir, your impressive lessons on the much greater power of moral than physical force (which struck him the more vividly at the moment, because physical force was wanting), appealed to public opinion in the shape of a friendly washerwoman. Having detailed the outrage, this excellent person made some very impressive theological remarks on the mystery attaching to the problem why " der liebe Gott " sent such ill-disposed urchins into this " beautiful world," a mystery which, in spite of my alarm and annoyance, certainly did seem to me a moral octave or two above the occasion. The good woman, however, then took the more practical measure of shrieking threats after the little mob, which had a visibly greater effect than Edward's stick. You see, she was probably acquainted with their mothers, and might possibly exercise a moral influence on their even- ing rations. Apart from the stones above, and stones below,— (the cobbled stones of foreign streets are to me amongst the greatest trials of foreign travel, how my sister Sophy and I used to suffer from it at Nuremberg! but darling Sophy had a great fortitude and stoical equanimity),—I shall never forget that walk above Nauders as long as I live ! We went out that I might make a little sketch for Edward of a great ragged mountain opposite, seamed with snow in every furrow, and with a spine that I think must have been as horrid as that Caucasian one on which Prome- theus was hung out. I am not a great painter, but have some feeling for colour, and perhaps a sketch or two of mine now and then has been thought a little Turneresque. Well, I didn't satisfy myself at all that day with my great subject, but Edward, who was ranging up and down with his usual restlessness while I sketched, suddenly became excited, drew out his travelling glass, shifted his position, and at last insisted on my leaving my drawing to come with him and look down the valley from a rather higher point. The clouds were lifting, and the great Orteler was just beginning to gleam out, filling, up the end of the valley like a tall pale mountain phantom. In another quarter of an hour' what a change ! The yellow setting sun just caught the towering pile of the Orteler glacier, and turned it in a moment to shining gold. It was fifteen miles off, and looked like an apparition from another world. It must have been such a sight as that which gave rise to the dreams of Delectable mountains and golden cities, in vain search for which men would spend their lives. The green valley at our feet, speckled with yellow harvest-fields, the dark pine woods on the mountain sides, the dead white of the snowy ridges near us which were not in sun,—the sun was hidden behind them,— and, closing the long valley, this pyramid of dazzling gold, whence lit up we could not see, made me whisper to myself that fine outbreak of Mr. St. John's in Jane Eyre, in taking leave of his wild Yorkshire moor, "And I shall see it again, in dreams when I sleep by the Ganges : and, again, in a remoter hour, when a deeper sleep overcomes me, by the side of a darker stream." It was indeed a glimpse to haunt one all one's life. It comes to me suddenly sometimes when I wake at night, or even amidst the gibbering of the hot table d'hôte here, and I wonder if it was I who saw it or somebody else. It was the sort of vision which makes idealists.
For my part, I wonder nobody sets up one of the great hotels at Nauders,—though I heartily hope nobody will,—for it is impos- sible to conceive a grander and lovelier place. The valley opens out there wide enough for joauty, and thn three diverging glens, —that down the Finsterimiinz Pass, that up the Inn (the Engadin), and that up the Stile Bach (" the Still Brook," about as " still," by the way, as my little Colin) towards the Stelvio, are much grander than " such beings as we are" have the power to take in. As it is, however, Nauders is a rough place. The infant population stone you, and the adult population wash your husband's shirts so as to look like rough-dried huckaback towels, and give you tea-soup in- stead of tea. I confess it did go to my heart to see the state in which North's excellent 4s. 6d. tea came out at that inn. A teapot was not to be found, and they gave us something without any strainer in the spout, and water that didn't boil. The result was a dilute vegetable hardly possible to drink. When the little maid made her exit with " Ich wiineche Ihnen guten Appetit " (" I wish you a good appetite"), Edward said, " She may well wish us that! this is an eatable, not a fluid ; and I never had the appetite that would have been requisite to consume it." Nor shall we easily forget the condition in which a trout was brought up there for breakfasts I
suppcse it had been half baked. Anyhow, it was livid and tumbled, and the sight was too much for us. Still, we were fed very respectably on the whole, but I wouldn't recommend fastidious people to stay there. Dear Cecilia, for instance (my youngest sister, she has a beautiful manor and park of her own at Castle Browside), would be miserable there.
Well, it was hard to leave Nauders, in spite of the rough fare, but we did after a day or two,—in an Einspanner—which, to my surprise, immediately dived with us down about a thousand feet to Martinsbriicke, on the Inn. Nauders is in the valley of the Salle Bach, and near 1,000 feet above the valley of the Inn, which we bad seen a dizzy depth beneath us, as we wound up to Nauders through that grand Finstermiinz Pass, a day or two before. I never saw a grander road. It is a military road made by the Austrians on the side of the mountain, with 800 feet of precipice beneath and very likely 800 feet above it. They were so jealous of it in 1800 that an English artist was arrested for sketching it, and wrote out a piteous and almost lyrical effusion on the subject—he lest his dinner by the arrest, and a good one, he says—in the guest-book at our little hotel, whereupon other and later guests had insolently made fancy pen-and-ink sketches of the artist being carried before the Com- mandant. The Finstermiinz Pass really did look terrible in the evening light, as we drove up it, and I felt some fear that we should make even a more dangerous " leap in the dark" than Lord Derby. I had forgotten that we must get down to the valley of the Inn again, in order to go up the Engadin, and when our Einspanner deliberately began diving with us down an almost perpendicular descent, you may be sure we rather impetuously got out. Even on foot it was terrible work. The whole sensitive and percipient part of us was concen- trated in the toes of our boots, so that when we reached the bot- tom at Martinsbriicke, where we leave the Tyrol for the Swiss Canton of Graubunden (Grisons), and were asked " whether we had anything to declare," Edward faintly answered, " Two pair of boots," instead of "two pounds of tea" (it was only a pound and a half by this time). He apologized, on the ground that he could not declare anything of which he was not percipient, and that he was at the time percipient only of his boots. But the Swiss Custom-House officer only stared at him, and waived both the tea and the metaphysics with a grand air that made him feel very foolish,—which he was, you know.
Our Badeker said the drive to Schuls was dull. But I suppose the writer hadn't ever tried it, and only "damned it at a hazard," as Charles Lamb did the old lady's hero whom he didn't know well enough to join her in blessing. The Rhastian Alps on one side and the Stelvio range on the other made every turn in the valley of the Inn a fresh wonder ; and when, after a slight shower, the sun came out and completely bridged the glen with one of the most brilliant of double rainbows, if my heart didn't leap up as high as Mr. Wordsworth's on a like occasion, it was only for want of the full poetic buoyancy of his. I am sure even he never saw a more wonderful sight than those delicate aerial arches, one bright, the second faint, stretching from peak to peak of solid, barren masses of rock and snow, while the green river running swiftly under it, lost itself in the shadow of mountains blackened by the passing storm. We got into Schuls just as the heavy part of the storm reached us, and found more civilized quarters than at Nauders, but rather pensiony, if I may be excused the expression, — in other words, an hotel in which people are half expected to converse with each other as at a great boarding-house, and the other guests scrutinize you when you come in as a new arrival is scrutinized by those who are expected to adapt themselves to his society. Hence inns which are also pensions.—inna with medicinal waters or baths in the neighbourhood—are a little distressing to the reserve of English travellers. It rained all night, but the next morning was lovely, and we went part of the way through the pine woods up the opposite Alp, falling in with a caravan of chalet carts, drawn by meek-eyed oxen, whose bells you could hear tinkling through the clear air a quarter of a mile below, as they wound up the rough, steep road, which was little more than a dry watercourse. The bells are meant to warn descending carts of their approach, for there are only a few places where the one could get aside into the wood to let the others pass, and it is necessary, therefore, to have long notice. The caravan was taking up supplies to the thirteen chalets on the Alp,—at a height of three or four hours' march above the valley. A fine dog gravely accompanied the little com- pany of mountaineers, and came up to me with a profound con- fidence in the pleasure I should take in making his acquaintance that was very gratifying. Certainly I should dislike pensions less if the pensionnaires were dogs who offer you their friendship in
this grave and serious manner, lifting a large paw up to your arm, instead of chattering men and women. From Schuls to Zernetz was scarcely a less grand excursion than the previous day's between Nauders and Schuls, and during the drive we came in sight of one grand glacier, with a small company of coal-black rocks scattered - over it, which brought out in wonderful relief its dazzling whiteness. And what a pretty little neat of a town was Zernetz, where the Spohl joins the Inn, and the valley widens (as usual at a confluence of gorges) into a bright wide basin of the greenest turf It was the most charming little inn, too, very quiet, but with the most perfect appointments; where the trout were ethereal, the soup good, even the beef edible, and the eternal Mehlspeise — a pudding varying from sponge cake to omelette, according to the proportion of eggs—was conceived and executed with a Parisian delicacy of feeling that transfigured it into a new and ideal type. They say that the Engadin supplies cooks to all Europe, who, when they have made their little fortunes, come back and set up inns in their native towns. Certainly the cook of the " Lion " at Zernetz must have had Parisian training. I had made Edward buy me a quarter of a pound of salt for my private salt-cellar, to the un- bounded astonishment of almost the only shopwoman in the little town ; but here it was not needed ;—we had separate salt spoons, and the whitest linen I ever saw. Cosy little Zernetz, when shall I forget the bright impression of the cheerfulness and homeliness, in sight of so much grandeur, it made upon me ? It was a place where you felt compelled to talk to the friendly inhabitants, even though you could only make yourself half understoOd. All of them talk Romansch (a curious Latin patois), but most of them also talk German, and I quite struck up a friend- ship with an old woman who pursued her spinning on a bench in the open air near our inn. What an amusement it was, too, to see the goats, with their tinkling bells, come down at. night from the mountain, and sort themselves to their different homes 1 One opposite us had to stand for an hour waiting outside her door, bleating, till her mistress came home, and the poor creature was quite uneasy at the delay, and nibbled mortar off the wall, in the hope, I suppose, of effecting an entrance burglariously.
I myself could not subside into my novel till the old woman arrived with the key. When shall we have such a sunset walk as that again by the side of the river, with the amber clouds resting on the snowy edges of the hills, the pale half-moon hanging just above them, and the autumn crocuses making a violet carpet of the sward at our feet? The Spohl, white with melted glacier, runs for a long stretch in the same channel with the green Inn, their waters quite unmingled, and the pretty little town (shaped like a V, as are many of these Engadin towns, the church standing at the meeting-point of the two branches), stretches one of its arms towards the valley of the Spiihl, the other along the course of the Inn. The Michaelmas daisy grew wild here in large, bright patches, and seems to me singularly expressive of this cheerful, cosy, simple little Alpine village,—
" Then unassuming common-place Of Nature, with that homely face, And yet with something of a grace Which Love makes for thee !"
From Zernetz we dame in a short morning drive to Pontresina, where I regret to say English travellers, and pompous alpenstocks.
are as plenty as gentians and pines. We find both the inns so full that we are boarded off in a pretty little room of a private house, looking straight on the grand Roseg Glacier. There are two alloys. One is that we have little journeys to make to the hotel for our meals, and generally have to go first to order them, and a second time to eat them. But as our fellow guests there say that they never get any sleep at night for the noise of the guides' room, where they make a fuss till after twelve and begin getting up again at four, that is perhaps a trifling evil. But the second alloy is more serious. It is the queerest of queer houses we are in, consisting mostly of large, pitch-dark, wooden halls, seemingly stacked with wood, —behind which I believe brigands to be secreted in large bands, — but with two cheerful little rooms for their victims.. Edward's money is all in gold in his pocket, and as the old crone to whom the house seems to belong is usually out, we have been given a gigantic door-key to let ourselves in to our doom. I auL rather low in spirits, perhaps, for Edward is just come back from the post, and I have no letter from Hannah, and consequently no news of my darlings. Hannah was, I think, " keeping company" when I left,—" with a most respectable young man, ma'am, a carpenter ;—his father have five houses of his own, which will be Robert's when the old gentleman die,"—and I fear she has
neglected her letter. I hope she has not neglected her charge. Yet, if we perish here from assassins' hands, perhaps it would be
well for them also not to survive. In profound gloom, I am, Sir, —perhaps for the last time,—your obedient servant,
A WIFE ON HER TRAVELS.
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