Slowly, reluctantly (rather like a _vers libre_ poem) the quaint
little train comes to a stand. Along the station platform each of the
_fiacre_ drivers seizes a large dinner-bell and tries to outring the
others. You step from the railway carriage--and instantly the hellish
din of those droschky bells faints into a dim, far-away tolling. Your
eye has caught the superb sweep of the Casa Grande beetling on its crag.
Over the sapphire canal where the old men are fishing for sprats, above
the rugged scarp where the blue-bloused _ouvriers_ are quarrying the
famous champagne cheese, you see the Gothic transept of the Palazzio
Ginricci, dour against a nacre sky. An involuntary tremolo eddies down
your spinal marrow. The Gin Palace, you murmur.... At last you are in
Strychnine.
Unnoted by Baedeker, unsung by poets, unrhapsodied by press
agents--there lurks the little town of Strychnine in that far and
untravelled corner where France, Russia, and Liberia meet in an
unedifying Zollverein. The strychnine baths have long been famous among
physicians, but the usual ruddy tourist knows them not. The sorrowful
ennui of a ten-hour journey on the B.V.D. _Chemise de fer_ (with
innumerable examinations of luggage), while it has kept out the
contraband Swiss cheese which is so strictly interdicted, has also kept
away the rich and garrulous tourist. But he who will endure to the end
that tortuous journey among flat fields of rye and parsimony, will find
himself well rewarded. The long tunnel through Mondragone ends at
length, and you find yourself on the platform with the droschky bells
clanging in your ears and the ineffable majesty of the Casa Grande crag
soaring behind the jade canal.
The air was chill, and I buttoned my surtout tightly as I stepped into
the curious seven-wheeled _sforza_ lettered _Hôtel Decameron_. We
rumbled _andante espressivo_ over the hexagonal cobbles of the Chaussée
d'Arsenic, crossed the mauve canal and bent under the hanging cliffs of
the cheese quarries. I could see the fishwives carrying great trays of
lampreys and lambrequins toward the fish market. It is curious what
quaintly assorted impressions one receives in the first few minutes in a
strange place. I remember noticing a sausage kiosk in the _markt-platz_
where a man in a white coat was busily selling hot icons. They are
delivered fresh every hour from the Casa Grande (the great cheese
cathedral) on the cliff.
The Hôtel Decameron is named after Boccaccio, who was once a bartender
there. It stands in a commanding position on the Place Nouveau Riche
overlooking the Casino and the odalisk erected by Edward VII in memory
of his cure. After two weeks of the strychnine baths the merry monarch
is said to have called for a corncob pipe and a plate of onions, after
which he made his escape by walking over the forest track to the French
frontier, although previous to this he had not walked a kilometer
without a cane since John Bull won the Cowes regatta. The _haut ton_ of
the section in which the Hôtel Decameron finds itself can readily be
seen by the fact that the campanile of the Duke of Marmalade fronts on
the rue Sauterne, just across from the barroom of the Hôtel. The
antiquaries say there is an underground corridor between the two.
The fascinations of a stay in Strychnine are manifold. I have a weak
heart, so I did not try the baths, although I used to linger on the
terrace of the Casino about sunset to hear Tinpanni's band and eat a
bronze bowl of Kerosini's gooseberry fool. I spent a great deal of my
time exploring the chief glory of the town, the Casa Grande, which
stands on the colossal crag honeycombed underneath with the shafts and
vaults of the cheese mine. There is nothing in the world more entrancing
than to stand (with a vinaigrette at one's nose) on the ramp of the
Casa, looking down over the ochre canal, listening to the hoarse shouts
of the workmen as they toil with pick and shovel, laying bare some
particularly rich lode of the pale, citron-coloured cheese which will
some day make Strychnine a place of _pélérinage_ for all the world. _Pay
homage to the fromage_ is a rough translation of the motto of the town,
which is carved in old Gothic letters on the apse of the Casa itself.
Limberg, Gruyère, Alkmaar, Neufchâtel, Camembert and Hoboken--all these
famous cheeses will some day pale into whey before the puissance of the
Strychnine curd. I was signally honoured by an express invitation of the
burgomaster to be present at a meeting of the Cheesemongers' Guild at
the Rathaus. The Kurdmeister, who is elected annually by the town
council, spoke most eloquently on the future of the cheese industry, and
a curious rite was performed. Before the entrance of the ceremonial
cheese, which is cut by the Kurdmeister himself, all those present
donned oxygen masks similar to those devised by the English to combat
the German poison-gas. And I learned that oxygen helmets are worn by
the workmen in the quarries to prevent prostration.
It was with unfeigned regret that I found my fortnight over. I would
gladly have lingered in the medieval cloisters of the Gin Palace, and
sat for many mornings under the pistachio trees on the terrace sipping
my _verre_ of native wine. But duties recalled me to the beaten paths of
travel, and once more I drove in the old-fashioned ambulance to catch my
even more old-fashioned train. The B.V.D. trains only leave Strychnine
when there is a stern wind, as otherwise the pungent fumes of the cheese
carried in the luggage van are very obnoxious to the passengers. Some
day some American efficiency expert will visit the town and teach them
to couple their luggage van on to the rear of the train. But till then
Strychnine will be to me, and to every other traveller who may chance
that way, a fragrant memory.
And as you enter the tunnel, the last thing you see is the onyx canal
and the old women fishing for lambrequins and palfreys.