EXCEPTIONAL GERMANS--THE BERNINA HOUSE--THE HEUTHAL--LIVIGNO--LAPLAND
AT LIVIGNO--‘MINE HOST.’
To please his pleasure.--THOMSON.
_August 13._--After breakfast walked to St. Moritz to replenish the
fisc. As English sovereigns were reckoned at twenty-five francs
only--the Swiss Post-office allows twenty cents more per sovereign
on money orders from England--I did not understand, nor have I
since learnt, why I was asked to pay for the transaction the little
commission of two francs and a half.
Having returned to Pontresina I went to the Post _bureau_ to despatch
some heavy luggage to Lausanne. In the middle of the business, while
the clerk was engaged in weighing the pieces, a German pushed his way
through the crowd, and interrupting the business in hand, without a
word of apology, took possession of the clerk. I once saw at Interlaken
another gentleman of the same nationality act in precisely the same
fashion. The action exactly corresponded--the comparison must be
excused for the sake of its illustrative aptness--to that of a pig,
who having come up to the feeding-trough a little late, instantly
knocks aside those who are already in possession, and setting his
forefeet in the dish, gulps down all he can. The German pig, however,
goes further than this, for he plants himself lengthways in the narrow
dish, so that the first comers who have been knocked aside, can have
no more till he is satisfied. On both of these occasions the clerk
submitted without remonstrance. I have also seen managers of hotels
accept with equal meekness German animadversions long and loud on items
in their bills, which I cannot but suppose they would have resented
had they come from Frenchmen or Englishmen. Why this difference? Is it
because the Swiss are used to this kind of Tudesque violence? Has much
experience taught them at last that there is nothing for it but to wait
till the storm has exhausted itself? Or is it because they are afraid
of it? And, then, of these barbarians; as all the world knows that
Germans are for the most part easy, good-natured, reasonable people, to
what class do they belong? Are they junkers? Or are they specimens of
the Allemanic variety of the _nouveaux riches_? Do they belong to the
shopocracy, or to the Bureaucracy, or to the barrack? Do they come from
Berlin, or from the Hercynian Forest?
This was my last day at Pontresina. My little guide had now to return
to the college of Lausanne, where he would have to put in his
appearance on the 15th. It was now the 13th. He, therefore, and his
mother, must leave to-night by the 4 A.M. diligence. I would join them
at Lausanne, but at present it was too soon for me to return; and so I
determined to go by some cross-country way to the Stelvio and to the
Ortler; and when I had reached Trafoi to think about where I would go
next. My own idea for the start was to take the lakes Nero and Bianco
on the way to Poschiavo; and then by Val di Campo, and Val Viola, to
get to Bormio. But Christian Grass, a name well known in Pontresina,
whom I had engaged to accompany me, was quite sure that I should find
more to interest me if I went by the way of the Stretta to Livigno,
and thence over M. della Neve, and by Isolaccia, to Bormio. I was
easily persuaded, for so that we went I cared little what way we went.
I knew we could not go a bad way. His advice was, that I should send
on my _sac_ to the Bernina House, by the Post this afternoon, and walk
there in the evening; and then, at 6 A.M. to-morrow, by which hour he
would himself, having slept at home, arrive from Pontresina, start for
Livigno. As this was what I had myself thought would be best, so soon
as the Livigno route had been decided on, I showed my confidence in him
by telling him I would act on his advice.
About an hour before dark I reached the Bernina House. There is a bit
of wet ground, three or four acres in extent, between the House and
the Bernina Bach. It is completely levelled for cutting; but, as it is
swampy, it grows hardly anything but the large-leafed dock, and other
kinds of marsh-weeds. Still its produce is of much use in a country
where there is no straw for littering cows, and horses. I now found in
it a gang of ten men at work, cutting the weeds. Those who in these
parts mow for wages, are generally Italians; the native men being
employed on their own land, and in waiting in one way or another on
travellers; or, which comprises a considerable proportion of the young
men, have gone abroad for a time to seek their fortune. The pay of
these itinerant haymakers, was, I found, two francs, seventy cents a
day. As they live almost exclusively on polenta, they are able to save
the greater part of their wages. I asked one of them what they did in
winter. ‘We go home,’ he replied, ‘and sleep like the marmots.’
A heavy shower drove me from the field into the house for the
rest of the evening, for it soon became continuous rain without
any intermission of the patter against the window. Under these
circumstances, the landlady, who was also a not inconsiderable landlord
proved a host as well as an obliging hostess. She was never long
together out of the room, always having something fresh to tell about
herself, the people, the country, the summer and winter traffic of the
road, or something or other. The House is her own property. She has
also between thirty and forty thousand klafters of prairie, or grass
land levelled and irrigated for mowing, and fourteen cows. Fourteen
hundred klafters are about equal to an English acre. I have already
mentioned, as we found yesterday, that the good woman treats her guests
well in respect both of what she gives them, and of what she takes from
them. The bedrooms, of which there are six, are small but clean. They
are over the stabling, on the opposite side of the way.
* * * * *
_August 14._--It rained all night. At 6 A.M. Christian Grass, true
to time, arrived. At 10.15 the rain having subsided to a drizzle, we
started for Livigno. Our road lay up the Heuthal. We had been out half
an hour when the sun finished off the attenuating clouds, and we had a
most charming day for our walk. The marmots before us, and right and
left of us on the mountain sides, had come out from their earths to
salute, in their fashion, the return of ‘the God of gladness.’ Their
sharp short cries we heard all around us. ‘That,’ said Christian, ‘is
the barometer of fine weather; as the descent of the chamois from the
mountain tops is of a coming storm.’ Who would not have thought well of
the man who put local observation in such a form?
If one can be pleased with a long treeless valley, marvellously full of
flowers (though, indeed, they abound more on the high flanks than in
the bottom, where the path lies), and with mountains that are neither
covered with snow, nor very rugged, he will be more than satisfied with
his five miles’ walk through the Heuthal. All throughout it that admits
of being mown is assigned in lots to the burgers of Pontresina, for
hay-making: the rest is good Alpine summer pasture. Of course, as in
every Swiss valley, the music of a hurrying stream accompanies you all
the way. Near the further end of it, you come on a little shallow tarn.
‘What,’ you ask, ‘has created this tarn in this place?’ Something must
have excavated it. It seems itself to put the question to you; ‘can you
tell how I came here?’ As I looked up to the mountain that overhung
it, that seemed to give the answer. From its top down to the little
tarn there was a steep side, in fact an unchecked slide, if reckoned
vertically, of 2,000 feet. What enormous masses, then, of snow, must at
times, probably every year, drop down to this very spot! Their momentum
must be suddenly checked, and expended, just where the little tarn is.
The expenditure of such a force must have an effect. The little tarn is
the effect. Whatever in the soil is compressible must be compressed,
and whatever is expressible must be driven out, by the blow. This is
what the mountain seemed to say in explanation of the existence of the
tarn. ‘It is my work,’ quoth the mountain; ‘I excavated it.’
A little beyond the tarn, and on the same level with it, you suddenly,
without any preparation, find yourself on the top of a lofty mountain,
with a deep valley at your feet. In fact for the last five miles
you have been walking up the western declivity of this mountain,
without perceiving it, or giving it a thought, and latterly, without
being aware of it, you have been walking on its summit; and now in a
moment, you come to the brow of the summit, and the eastern side of
the mountain, all but, as it seems to you now you are looking down, a
mountain-deep precipice, is at your feet. One step more you think would
roll you down to the bottom of it. You slept last night at a height of
6,735 feet. You are now on the summit of the Pass, at a height of 8,143
feet. So gradual, through your five miles’ walk up the valley, has been
your ascent. The peaks right and left of you are 2,000 feet higher,
and the sight of them had assisted in keeping the true character of
your position out of your thoughts. There in the deep valley of the
Spöl below you, into which you now have to descend, lies your way to
Livigno. The valley is at right angles to what has hitherto been the
direction of your path.
Having got down to the valley we selected a halting place just above
the stream of the Spöl, and below the brow of its bank. Here we were in
the sun, but out of the wind; and having seated ourselves on the turf,
with rocks for footstools, we spent three-quarters of an hour about
what we called our dinner. We had breakfasted early, and had walked
just enough to make us hungry. It was a very pleasant three-quarters
of an hour. There was the bright, warm sun, the pleasant sensations of
its brightness and warmth enhanced by the recollection of the cold,
wet morning; there was the green valley before us, with a herd of cows
grazing near, and a party of salt carriers returning with their asses
to Poschiavo; there were the naked drab-coloured mountain-tops, three,
or more, thousand feet above us; there was the motion and the music
of the lively crystal stream, as it hurried by over its rocky channel
at our feet, near enough to enable us to dip from it without rising,
what we wanted for diluting and cooling our wine, that we might take
it in long draughts; and then there was for me the conversation of a
companion, who I knew was intelligent, and who also, I had every reason
to believe, was a man of good faith.
One source of pleasure in such a three-quarters of an hour is the
perception of its difference from your ordinary life. There is a
present sense of the long thread that connects you with home. What is
around and before you is not all that is at the moment in the mind’s
eye. Even the seas, the lands, the cities, the mountains that lie
between are not altogether lost to view. The images it may be of your
East Anglian Vicarage, and of all that you have lately seen between it
and this charming little halting place below the brow of the bank, and
just above the stream, of the Spöl, are recalled to mind. That within
you which thinks and feels is quickened into its own proper life. The
sense of life is the conscious enjoyment of the powers of life. And
here, as you sit at rest on this sunny fresh-aired bank with so many
senses of body and of mind so pleasantly appealed to, you have the
sense of life abundantly--the sense of a living mind in a living body.
The rest of our way was along a gentle, almost unobserved descent; at
times, as we passed along the silted-up beds of old lakelets, quite on
a level. The rounded tops of most of the contiguous mountains showed
where the materials had come from to fill up the lakelets. You see
in thought the steps of the process; the frost disintegrating the
summits, and the torrents from rain, and from melting snow, bringing
the particles and pieces down to the lakelets; and then you see man
appearing on the scene, and toiling through the short summer in
burying and removing the fragments of rock that strewed the surface,
and levelling all with what soil he could find, to make a bed for the
carpet of turf over which you are walking, and upon which you see that
all the life in the detached _châlets_ and hamlets you are passing,
ultimately rests: for here, that is the one means of supporting life.
The valley down to Livigno is generally broad and verdant. At 4 P.M.
we reached Livigno. It is a large scattered village, perhaps a mile
and a half long. Its houses are old, or at all events most of them
have the appearance of age, for the cembra timber of which they are
built after some years of exposure weathers to a rich black. This the
people call sun-burning. The place has three or four churches. On a
blocked-up window of one of these, I counted six tiers of swallow’s
nests. I saw here no gnats or musquitoes. This numerous colony,
therefore, must be supported chiefly by the house-fly. The reason why
there are so many house-flies here, and elsewhere in Switzerland, is
that there are so many landed proprietors. The valley is broad, and
is divided into little estates, each just big enough to support a
single family. The land can only be turned to account through cows.
Every house, therefore, in the long village has a manure heap at, or
beside, its door. These manure heaps, one for each house, are coverts
and preserves for breeding flies. If this part of the valley was in a
single property, there would be but one fly-preserve; as things now
are, there is a series of them a mile and a half long. The chain, then,
of conditions is as follows; a broad grassy valley at an altitude of
more than 6,000 feet; this is divided into small properties; each of
these is devoted exclusively to the support of cows; the manure from
each byre, for the eight months the cows are under cover, is heaped
up at the door; these heaps are left festering in the sun throughout
the summer, for the land, the hay not yet having been made, is not yet
ready for the manure, and the people are too busy to remove it; in
these heaps, innumerable flies are bred, these flies feed the martins
that build on the blocked-up church window nests six tiers deep. If the
whole valley were put into a few cheese farms, the reduction in the
number of flies, and so in the number of martins, would correspond to
the reduction in the number of proprietors. The number of flies is in
correlation to the size of the landed properties.
The only attempt that I saw had been made in Livigno to grow anything
except grass was that by the side of some half dozen houses in the
village in little enclosures of a few yards square, white turnips
and white-leafed beet had been sown. But in the middle of August,
the former had no tubers, and the latter were very stunted. Some of
the mountains right and left of the village, a little below it, have
a peculiarity: those in the second range appear to have mountains
of black rock placed on the top of what may be called the original
mountain, in shape somewhat like the naves of titanic cathedrals
without towers. One of these superimposed masses on the left is
especially well formed and grand.
It was 4 P.M. when we reached the inn. An hour afterwards, the rain of
the early morning returned. It soon, as the temperature continued to
fall, changed into snow, which continued for thirty hours. This was
a severe test of the resources of the place. I had heard that it was
celebrated for trout. One might of one’s self have supposed this, for
we had for the last 9 miles been walking by the side of a stream, the
water of which was nowhere too broken for fish. Of course, therefore,
we ordered trout for our supper, which was to be served at 6 o’clock.
The little inn has two little parlours. In each of these we found a
party of card-players. The two parties were forthwith placed in a
single room, that the other might be appropriated to the visitors.
These card-players were elderly men, they represented the class who
had in their younger days sought fortune in foreign cities, and in the
degrees which satisfied them had found what they sought. They had now
returned to Livigno to live on meagre cheese, mummy beef when a great
occasion justified such an indulgence, and black bread, with a trout
or two I suppose now and then; to be regarded as the aristocracy of
the place; to spend a large proportion of their evenings in playing at
cards for schnapps, and to lay their bones in the God’s acre of one of
the four above-mentioned churches. As we stood at the door of the inn,
looking at the falling snow, and not forgetting that it was the middle
of August, I asked one of these elders, ‘What, when he might have lived
in comfort elsewhere, had induced him to return to such a place?’ His
reply was, ‘The memory of one’s parents is a beautiful thing.’ I felt
ashamed of my question. I was rebuked, humiliated, and silent. In a
moment his sentiment so natural, or if not, then something much better,
so human, or again if not, then something much better, so tender, so
pleasing, was confronted by the recollection of the brutality of the
English wife-beater. What, I thought, can account for this world-wide
difference? Why is this peasant’s mind in this wretched Alpine recess a
smiling garden, while had his lot been cast in smiling England it might
have been a howling, outrageous wilderness? Can, I asked myself, can
in the one case the general diffusion of property, the great educator,
and the absence of it in the other, lead, through their natural
consequences, and effects, to these two so widely opposite states of
mind? Is this at the root of the difference?
As there was no going outside the door, and as the room assigned to us
was, now that the snow had been falling some time, uncomfortably cold,
I went into the kitchen for warmth, for company, and for something to
see. The arrangements of the ground floor of the inn were as follows:
the front door by which you entered, opened, throughout the day it
was never closed, upon a hall about 25 feet long, and 18 wide. On the
right of this were the two parlours; they were small square rooms,
each with a small square window, which had, as is usual in Grison
_châlets_, a strong family resemblance to an embrasure, the object
of this unusual diminutiveness and peculiarity of form being to keep
out the cold. On the walls were a few coloured prints on religious
subjects, and a few photographs of friends and relatives. Of these two
parlours the one nearest the front door was assigned to us, the other
to the card-players. Opposite to our parlour was a small room without
a window, strongly fortified against frost. In this was sunk the well,
which in winter was the only source to the house for its supply of
water. Opposite the other parlour was the door of the cellar. Next
to the hall, this was the largest room in the house. It was somewhat
sunk in the ground, and by placing the cow-house against it, and by
other devices, all available means for keeping out the frost had
been resorted to. It contained many vats, hogsheads, and barrels of
various sizes, which are replenished each year, while the roads are
still passable, or so soon as they become passable, but while there
is no probability of the occurrence of some of the few hot days of
a Grison summer. The hall has no window, and receives all its light
from the front door, which must therefore be left open except in very
severe weather, and from the embrasures of the two parlours. Against
the wall of the hall, between the doors of the two parlours, stood a
table, on which were two or three black bottles accompanied by some
little glasses. This was the provision for supplying the villagers
with schnapps of distilled drinks. Opposite to this table, against the
opposite wall, between the doors of the pump-room and of the cellar,
was another table, on which also were black bottles, but accompanied
with small tumblers. This was the provision for those who preferred
Valtelline wine to distilled schnapps. At the further end of the hall
was, on the right, the staircase to the bedroom floor; and to the left
of that, the entrance to the kitchen.
The kitchen had but one window, and that, again, as it was in the
embrasure style, admitted a very insufficient amount of light, and
that insufficiency was minimized by the blackness with which nearly a
century of smoke had stained the ceiling and walls: for in these wooden
interiors whitewashing is unknown. On a high stool on the right side
of the fire, in the chimney corner, sat the aged father of our host.
His hair was long, and as white as the snow that was falling. He wore a
kind of full dress, a swallow-tailed coat, and knee-breeches, I suppose
to indicate that he no longer made any pretence to do any kind of work.
In front of the fire was the burly wife of our host, preparing the
coffee, and frying the fish. The fuel used was the wood of the cembra.
This is so full of turpentine, that no sooner does a chip of it touch
the fire than it bursts into flame. It was by the aid of these chips
that the good woman from time to time ascertained whether the milk was
burning, the coffee had come to the boiling point, and the fish were
frying to her satisfaction. Supposing that her visitor had come to see
how things were done at Livigno, she took a large chip, and having
touched the fire with it, held it up before me in a blaze of pure
white flame, and said, ‘Behold a Livigno candle.’ ‘Thanks, Signora,’
quoth the visitor, ‘I see that bountiful nature has well supplied your
wants.’ All the while the landlord, when not summoned to the hall to
pour out a glass of schnapps--the wine to-day was seldom called for: it
was too cold and damp for such thin potations--was constantly coming
in, and standing by the good woman’s side, watching her proceedings
with deep, and generally silent, attention, as the eyes of a maiden
might watch the hand of her mistress. He was not quite calmed by his
reasonable conviction that the result would be a triumph, but he wished
to have himself some share, however small it might be, in producing
that triumph; so he would at times inquire, _sotto voce_, whether there
was anything he could do. Should she want any more wood? Any more milk?
He would now bring the jugs for the coffee, and for the milk, and the
dish for the trout. He would now warm the plates.
At last it was time for us to leave the scene of these preparations.
The moment had arrived, when all that could be done had been done for
the coffee and the trout. And now the good man’s turn had come. No
sense of social inferiority had he in serving his guests. Indeed in
Livigno, his function was honourable, and conferred much distinction.
He could not have served his guests with more observance had they come
to his house direct from Paradise, for the purpose of opening to him
the gate of Paradise, as soon as their supper should be finished. He
was quite sure that the gate would be opened; and gladness, that stood
in no need of words for its expression, filled his heart; but still
something might depend, a little, but still something possibly, on
his attention, and on the satisfaction his guests might receive from
their supper. And now the coffee, the trout, the bread and cheese,
and the butter are on the table at which we take our places. For some
minutes he stands looking on in an attitude, and with an expression,
of attention, and of readiness to fetch anything more that might
be required. In his own thought he was sure that everything was of
the best; that everything would go off well; that nothing had been
forgotten; but he would stay for a few minutes to be assured of this by
his visitors from that higher and better world. The assurance was given
him; and he left the room, as if loath to go, but with his whole face
beaming with the light that will suffuse the faces of those, who have
heard the blessed words that have opened for them the gates of Paradise.
In all this, as we found the next morning, there was nothing assumed.
It was his natural manner and disposition; only schnapps have the
power of bringing out, and of making predominant over everything else,
a man’s natural temper and disposition. Schnapps reveal the true
character. Through them the bad-tempered are made more bad-tempered,
and nothing but bad-tempered, and the good-tempered more good-tempered,
and nothing but good-tempered. And so on this day, they made our host
all over, body and soul, a host, and nothing but a host. Everything
else, if there had been anything else, was obliterated. From the bottom
of his heart to the tip of his tongue, and the tip of his fingers, he
was a host. If there was ever at other times a mask on him, it was now
torn off, and what was the essence of his being--the host--remained
unrepressed, unclouded, unqualified.
The guests’ bedchamber contained three beds. Their scantling was so
much beyond what is common in this part of the world, that one was
almost brought to think that they had been intended to accommodate each
of them two persons. This, however, is an uncertain inference, for of
course they were the work of a native carpenter, and his ideas may have
been enlarged by finding that in this room his handiwork would not
be so much cramped for space as is usual hereabouts. Or perhaps the
increase in the size of the beds might have been, and probably was, a
result of this not being Grison ground; for we were now in Italy, and
in Italy beds are generally as remarkable for amplitude, as in the
Grisons for exiguity, of dimensions. As I had invited Christian to
take his meals with me while we might remain here, I now extended the
invitation to the offer of one of the three beds. The price I had to
pay for this was, that I was obliged to sleep with the window closed.
The good man had so unfeigned a horror of night air, that is to say
of admitting fresh air from without, into the room in which he was
sleeping, in consequence of some supposed ill-effects it would have
on the eyes, that there was nothing for it but to comply with his
prejudice.
We were now in Italy, and had been since we descended the Stretta. Our
dinner, therefore, on the banks of the Spöl had been eaten in Italy,
and this had somewhat heightened the flavour of the enjoyment so many
other pleasant adjuncts had contributed to impart to it. Neither there,
however, nor here, nor elsewhere on the way, had we seen anything of a
custom-house, or of a custom-house official. We might, to the prejudice
of the holders of the bonds of the Italian tobacco loan, have brought
with us to Livigno, without let or hindrance of any kind, any amount
of cigars that we could have carried. I take it, therefore, that the
dwellers in these valleys on this part of the frontier, do not burn so
many cents when consuming the fragrant leaf as other Italians, and so
do not contribute much to the payment of the interest of that loan.
* * * * *
_August 13._--At 6.30 A.M. I came down to see how things were going
on. Snow was still falling. The hillsides down to the valley bottom
were white, but the valley bottom was still green. It was a fête day,
the greatest, I believe, of the year in these valleys. There was a
stream of people passing the door on their way to the church, about
half-a-mile off, just below the north end of the village. Men and women
were all in their holiday attire. The get-up of the men was very like
what was common some years ago, and may still be, in Ireland. Those
who were in the fashion, perhaps who retained the old fashion, wore
the swallow-tailed coat, of a frieze-like material, but of a dark
colour, adorned with brass buttons, and the knee-breeches with dark
gray stockings, I have already mentioned. Those who were of a less
conservative turn of mind, wore a kind of shooting coat, and long
trousers, but of the same dark material as the others; probably it was
homespun. I saw no overcoats, which appear to be quite unknown in this
part of the world, where people dress the same in fine weather and in
foul, in summer and in winter. They give a reason for this practice;
they say that what in this climate they have most to dread is checked
_transpiration_; and that they dress the same at all times in order
that they may not increase _transpiration_ by additional clothing, or
run the risk of having it checked by the removal of an overcoat: that
to dress the same at all times is safest in their climate.
Several of the passers by at this early hour, and throughout the day,
walked up to the table in the hall, on which stood the black bottles
and small glasses. It would fortify them against the raw wet day.
The shooting jackets which, perhaps, represented young Livigno and
modern ideas, were more open to conviction on this point, than the
swallow-tails. One brought with him a sturdy little fellow of about
eleven years of age who took his schnapps with the same gravity and
silence as his broad-shouldered parent. They walked together up to the
table, did not ask for the glasses to be filled, emptied them when
filled, and retired without a word, and without moving a muscle of the
face any more than of the vocal mechanism.
At 7 o’clock a young man came into the kitchen to make a mess of
polenta. When the milk had been raised to the full boiling-point, he
added about an equal quantity of meal, perhaps a little more than as
much, and stirred it continuously for about a quarter of an hour,
with a strong crooked stick, to mix it equally and to prevent its
burning. When the meal had absorbed all the milk, and had become very
stiff, it was prepared. It required much strength to stir it. He and
two companions now sat down at the kitchen table with the mess before
them. One ate it with cheese; one with milk, and the other with butter.
The old gentleman at the same time descended from his high stool in
the chimney-corner, which he had in vain attempted to persuade me to
occupy, and sat down at the same table for his breakfast, which his
daughter-in-law had prepared for him. It was a large basin of soup, or
more correctly, of a kind of vegetable broth. This he ate with black
rye-bread. The maker of the polenta offered me some on a plate. As long
as it is warm it is not a bad kind of food, though far from as good
as the hot maize cakes you get in the United States, or as the same
polenta would have been if in West Indian fashion it had been allowed
to get cold, and then been cut into slices, and fried, or toasted. Its
merit is that it is quickly prepared, and requires no apparatus but a
pot and stick.
At 8.30 our turn came. Fish again, and everything we had had at
supper last night. The anxious ministering of the good man was very
impressive, though of course not in quite so high a degree as on the
previous evening. It was too early in the day for that, though he was
already on the road that would bring him to the same point. At 9.30 he
announced that he must go to church, and that he should be absent for
an hour and a half. I told him that I would accompany him. A gleam of
satisfaction, felt in his heart, irradiated his face. ‘Well! well!’ was
his reply. He disappeared for a few minutes, and returned in his festa
dress; his face brightened with soap and with satisfaction. His attire
was that of the innovating party. The function, at which we were to
assist, was to commence at 10. All the world was on the road, and every
face was towards the church. He conducted me into a detached chapel,
a few yards from the church; it was already full. There were about
sixty men in it--all men. No priest was present. All were employed in
chanting a Latin Litany to the Holy Virgin. The harshness of their
voices was great, and so was the dissonance, for hardly any attempt
was made to keep together. When the Litany was concluded, we all left
the chapel, and entered the church. Here mass was to be celebrated.
We, that is to say the men, occupied the right side of the building;
the women, who far outnumbered us, occupying the left side, and the
whole of what might have been the west end. The service commenced by
seven or eight women walking up the main aisle to the priest, and, as
it appeared, making an offering, and then returning again down the
aisle to their seats. The large proportion of men in the congregation,
and the demeanour of all indicated that the controversies of the day
had not reached Livigno. Here the sense of the Unseen, which, under
whatever form it may show itself, is Religion, was quick and strong,
and prepotent in shaping the thought and lives of all. In them debates
about forms had not weakened the effect of the substance.
As we returned from the church the snow had at last begun to lie in the
valley bottom. The grass was now buried, and everything on which the
eye rested was white, with the exception of the roofs of the _châlets_,
and the paved roadway, which, however, was slushy with half-melted
snow. The contrast with the bright sun of yesterday at the same hour
was complete. Twenty-four hours had transported us from Italy to
Lapland. Probably in Lapland the aspect of things was at the moment
more summer-like. There was no prospect now of doing anything to-day,
for even if it were to clear speedily, it would be too late to cross
the mountains. Dinner, therefore, began to assume in one’s thoughts
a disproportionate importance; and we were not long in broaching the
subject to the good man. What could he give us? We should be glad of
the best he had. Had he any meat? He had. What was it? Was it dried
beef? Well! it was a day for dried beef. That would be one thing. ‘No,’
he replied with sorrowful firmness. ‘That I cannot let you have.’ Why
not? We can eat it; we have already become acquainted with it, and you
see it has done us no harm. ‘No,’ again, but with the sorrowfulness and
firmness more accentuated. ‘I can let you have eggs, and fat cheese,
and butter, and soup, and fish, but not the dried beef.’
‘My good man, we shall be glad to have it. Why not let us have it?’
‘Because your souls are due to heaven as well as my own.’
It was, then, because it was the festa. ‘But,’ quoth the visitor, ‘that
is just the reason why we should have it. To-day is not a fast, but a
festa.’
‘No! no! It is impossible.’ Such subtleties were ensnaring. They came
from the enemy of souls. The fact was that schnapps had quickened the
good man’s religiosity, while they had obscured his understanding. It
would have been unfeeling, and perhaps unavailing, to have argued the
point, or pressed the request further in any way. And so with thanks
for having reminded us of the road we must both travel to reach heaven,
he was told that his guests would be content to-day with what elements
of meat there might be in the eggs, and fat cheese, and soup, and
fish, and would dispense with the thing itself in its ordinary Livigno
form of dried beef. Who would not have abstained from a few shreds of
the hock of a mummied ox for the sake of witnessing the satisfaction
this announcement gave the good man? The momentary cloud passed away
from his face, and he instantly became again, and, as the afternoon
advanced, in a still higher degree than he had been yesterday, the man
of one thought--the host, and nothing else. At dinner his ministerings
were bliss; at supper they became devotion.
But dinner, though made the most of, was at last over; and supper,
the next event, was a long way off. The roadway, and the roofs of the
_châlets_ had at last succumbed to the ceaseless snow, and everything
was now unbroken white. The question was, therefore, forced upon us of
What was to be done? How was the afternoon to be got through? The cold
in the house was getting down to the bone, notwithstanding the dinner,
and frequent visits to the kitchen fire, for the outer hall door, and
all other doors were constantly kept open for the sake of the light,
and the kitchen fire was a mere pretence, except when some cooking
was going on. The card-players had again returned, notwithstanding
the festa, or perhaps because of the festa, for ‘on festas the church
before midday, and the tavern after midday’ is a saying here. What,
then, can be done? Rather for the sake of saying something than from
the hope of hearing any useful suggestion, I put my despair in the form
of a question to the good man.
‘The best thing you can do,’ he replied with a readiness and decision
which indicated that what he was announcing was the familiar practice
of Livigno, the outcome of the experience of life in the place, ‘the
best thing you can do is to go to bed till supper time.’
The novelty of the idea precluded an immediate answer. The time,
however, required for fully taking it in, was also sufficient for
enabling one to see that there was reason in it. Really there was
nothing else that could be done; and so half an hour’s more looking out
at the door, and walking up and down the hall, overcame the repugnance
I had at first felt to the suggestion. Do at Livigno as the Livignese
do worked in the same direction. And so at 3 P.M. we went up stairs,
lay down upon our beds, drew our coverlets over us, and were soon lost,
and continued lost for three hours, to all sense of the incongruity of
a day that would have been wretched in the middle of January coming
upon us suddenly in the middle of August.