Not the least of the traveler's pleasure in Switzerland is derived from
the English people who overrun it: they seem to regard it as a kind
of private park or preserve belonging to England; and they establish
themselves at hotels, or on steamboats and diligences, with a certain
air of ownership that is very pleasant. I am not very fresh in my
geology; but it is my impression that Switzerland was created especially
for the English, about the year of the Magna Charta, or a little later.
The Germans who come here, and who don't care very much what they eat,
or how they sleep, provided they do not have any fresh air in diningroom
or bedroom, and provided, also, that the bread is a little sour, growl
a good deal about the English, and declare that they have spoiled
Switzerland. The natives, too, who live off the English, seem to
thoroughly hate them; so that one is often compelled, in self-defense,
to proclaim his nationality, which is like running from Scylla upon
Charybdis; for, while the American is more popular, it is believed that
there is no bottom to his pocket.
There was a sprig of the Church of England on the steamboat on Lake
Leman, who spread himself upon a center bench, and discoursed very
instructively to his friends,--a stout, fat-faced young man in a white
cravat, whose voice was at once loud and melodious, and whom our
manly Oxford student set down as a man who had just rubbed through the
university, and got into a scanty living.
“I met an American on the boat yesterday,” the oracle was saying to his
friends, “who was really quite a pleasant fellow. He--ah really was, you
know, quite a sensible man. I asked him if they had anything like this
in America; and he was obliged to say that they had n't anything like
it in his country; they really had n't. He was really quite a sensible
fellow; said he was over here to do the European tour, as he called it.”
Small, sympathetic laugh from the attentive, wiry, red-faced woman on
the oracle's left, and also a chuckle, at the expense of the American,
from the thin Englishman on his right, who wore a large white waistcoat,
a blue veil on his hat, and a face as red as a live coal.
“Quite an admission, was n't it, from an American? But I think they have
changed since the wah, you know.”
At the next landing, the smooth and beaming churchman was left by
his friends; and he soon retired to the cabin, where I saw him
self-sacrificingly denying himself the views on deck, and consoling
himself with a substantial lunch and a bottle of English ale.
There is one thing to be said about the English abroad: the variety
is almost infinite. The best acquaintances one makes will be
English,--people with no nonsense and strong individuality; and one gets
no end of entertainment from the other sort. Very different from the
clergyman on the boat was the old lady at table-d'hote in one of the
hotels on the lake. One would not like to call her a delightfully wicked
old woman, like the Baroness Bernstein; but she had her own witty and
satirical way of regarding the world. She had lived twenty-five years at
Geneva, where people, years ago, coming over the dusty and hot roads
of France, used to faint away when they first caught sight of the Alps.
Believe they don't do it now. She never did; was past the susceptible
age when she first came; was tired of the people. Honest? Why, yes,
honest, but very fond of money. Fine Swiss wood-carving? Yes. You'll get
very sick of it. It's very nice, but I 'm tired of it. Years ago, I sent
some of it home to the folks in England. They thought everything of it;
and it was not very nice, either,--a cheap sort. Moral ideas? I don't
care for moral ideas: people make such a fuss about them lately (this
in reply to her next neighbor, an eccentric, thin man, with bushy hair,
shaggy eyebrows, and a high, falsetto voice, who rallied the witty
old lady all dinner-time about her lack of moral ideas, and accurately
described the thin wine on the table as “water-bewitched”). Why did n't
the baroness go back to England, if she was so tired of Switzerland?
Well, she was too infirm now; and, besides, she did n't like to
trust herself on the railroads. And there were so many new inventions
nowadays, of which she read. What was this nitroglycerine, that exploded
so dreadfully? No: she thought she should stay where she was.
There is little risk of mistaking the Englishman, with or without his
family, who has set out to do Switzerland. He wears a brandy-flask, a
field-glass, and a haversack. Whether he has a silk or soft hat, he is
certain to wear a veil tied round it. This precaution is adopted when he
makes up his mind to come to Switzerland, I think, because he has read
that a veil is necessary to protect the eyes from the snow-glare. There
is probably not one traveler in a hundred who gets among the ice and
snow-fields where he needs a veil or green glasses: but it is well
to have it on the hat; it looks adventurous. The veil and the spiked
alpenstock are the signs of peril. Everybody--almost everybody--has an
alpenstock. It is usually a round pine stick, with an iron spike in one
end. That, also, is a sign of peril. We saw a noble young Briton on the
steamer the other day, who was got up in the best Alpine manner. He
wore a short sack,--in fact, an entire suit of light gray flannel, which
closely fitted his lithe form. His shoes were of undressed leather, with
large spikes in the soles; and on his white hat he wore a large quantity
of gauze, which fell in folds down his neck. I am sorry to say that
he had a red face, a shaven chin, and long side-whiskers. He carried a
formidable alpenstock; and at the little landing where we first saw
him, and afterward on the boat, he leaned on it in a series of the most
graceful and daring attitudes that I ever saw the human form assume. Our
Oxford student knew the variety, and guessed rightly that he was an army
man. He had his face burned at Malta. Had he been over the Gemmi? Or up
this or that mountain? asked another English officer. “No, I have not.”
And it turned out that he had n't been anywhere, and did n't seem likely
to do anything but show himself at the frequented valley places. And
yet I never saw one whose gallant bearing I so much admired. We saw him
afterward at Interlaken, enduring all the hardships of that fashionable
place. There was also there another of the same country, got up for the
most dangerous Alpine climbing, conspicuous in red woolen stockings that
came above his knees. I could not learn that he ever went up anything
higher than the top of a diligence.