in length, others but a few yards, and yet like some short rivers,
furious in their brevity. All degrees of skill and courage and taste may
be suited in your neighbourhood. But perhaps the true way to toboggan is
alone and at night. First comes the tedious climb, dragging your
instrument behind you. Next a long breathing-space, alone with snow and
pine-woods, cold, silent, and solemn to the heart. Then you push off;
the toboggan fetches away; she begins to feel the hill, to glide, to
swim, to gallop. In a breath you are out from under the pine-trees, and
a whole heavenful of stars reels and flashes overhead. Then comes a
vicious effort; for by this time your wooden steed is speeding like the
wind, and you are spinning round a corner, and the whole glittering
valley and all the lights in all the great hotels lie for a moment at
your feet; and the next you are racing once more in the shadow of the
night with close-shut teeth and beating heart. Yet a little while and
you will be landed on the high-road by the door of your own hotel. This,
in an atmosphere tingling with forty degrees of frost, in a night made
luminous with stars and snow, and girt with strange white mountains,
teaches the pulse an unaccustomed tune and adds a new excitement to the
life of man upon his planet.
IV
THE STIMULATION OF THE ALPS
To any one who should come from a southern sanatorium to the Alps, the
row of sun-burned faces round the table would present the first
surprise. He would begin by looking for the invalids, and he would lose
his pains, for not one out of five of even the bad cases bears the mark
of sickness on his face. The plump sunshine from above and its strong
reverberation from below colour the skin like an Indian climate; the
treatment, which consists mainly of the open air, exposes even the
sickliest to tan, and a tableful of invalids comes, in a month or two,
to resemble a tableful of hunters. But although he may be thus surprised
at the first glance, his astonishment will grow greater, as he
experiences the effects of the climate on himself. In many ways it is a
trying business to reside upon the Alps: the stomach is exercised, the
appetite often languishes; the liver may at times rebel; and because you
have come so far from metropolitan advantages, it does not follow that
you shall recover. But one thing is undeniable--that in the rare air,
clear, cold, and blinding light of Alpine winters, a man takes a certain
troubled delight in his existence which can nowhere else be paralleled.
He is perhaps no happier, but he is stingingly alive. It does not,
perhaps, come out of him in work or exercise, yet he feels an enthusiasm
of the blood unknown in more temperate climates. It may not be health,
but it is fun.
There is nothing more difficult to communicate on paper than this
baseless ardour, this stimulation of the brain, this sterile joyousness
of spirits. You wake every morning, see the gold upon the snow-peaks,
become filled with courage, and bless God for your prolonged existence.
The valleys are but a stride to you; you cast your shoe over the
hilltops; your ears and your heart sing; in the words of an unverified
quotation from the Scots psalms, you feel yourself fit "on the wings of
all the winds" to "come flying all abroad." Europe and your mind are too
narrow for that flood of energy. Yet it is notable that you are hard to
root out of your bed; that you start forth, singing, indeed, on your
walk, yet are unusually ready to turn home again; that the best of you
is volatile; and that although the restlessness remains till night, the
strength is early at an end. With all these heady jollities, you are
half conscious of an underlying languor in the body; you prove not to be
so well as you had fancied; you weary before you have well begun; and
though you mount at morning with the lark, that is not precisely a
song-bird's heart that you bring back with you when you return with
aching limbs and peevish temper to your inn.
It is hard to say wherein it lies, but this joy of Alpine winters is its
own reward. Baseless, in a sense, it is more than worth more permanent
improvements. The dream of health is perfect while it lasts; and if, in
trying to realise it, you speedily wear out the dear hallucination,
still every day, and many times a day, you are conscious of a strength
you scarce possess, and a delight in living as merry as it proves to be
transient.
The brightness--heaven and earth conspiring to be bright--the levity and
quiet of the air; the odd stirring silence--more stirring than a tumult;
the snow, the frost, the enchanted landscape: all have their part in the
effect and on the memory, "_tous vous tapent sur la tete_"; and yet when
you have enumerated all, you have gone no nearer to explain or even to
qualify the delicate exhilaration that you feel--delicate, you may say,
and yet excessive, greater than can be said in prose, almost greater
than an invalid can bear. There is a certain wine of France known in
England in some gaseous disguise, but when drunk in the land of its
nativity still as a pool, clean as river water, and as heady as verse.
It is more than probable that in its noble natural condition this was
the very wine of Anjou so beloved by Athos in the "Musketeers." Now, if
the reader has ever washed down a liberal second breakfast with the wine
in question, and gone forth, on the back of these dilutions, into a
sultry, sparkling noontide, he will have felt an influence almost as
genial, although strangely grosser, than this fairy titillation of the
nerves among the snow and sunshine of the Alps. That also is a mode, we
need not say of intoxication, but of insobriety. Thus also a man walks
in a strong sunshine of the mind, and follows smiling, insubstantial
meditations. And whether he be really so clever or so strong as he
supposes, in either case he will enjoy his chimera while it lasts.
The influence of this giddy air displays itself in many secondary ways.
A certain sort of laboured pleasantry has already been recognised, and
may perhaps have been remarked in these papers, as a sort peculiar to
that climate. People utter their judgments with a cannonade of
syllables; a big word is as good as a meal to them; and the turn of a
phrase goes further than humour or wisdom. By the professional writer
many sad vicissitudes have to be undergone. At first he cannot write at
all. The heart, it appears, is unequal to the pressure of business, and
the brain, left without nourishment, goes into a mild decline. Next,
some power of work returns to him, accompanied by jumping headaches.
Last, the spring is opened, and there pours at once from his pen a world
of blatant, hustling polysyllables, and talk so high as, in the old
joke, to be positively offensive in hot weather. He writes it in good
faith and with a sense of inspiration; it is only when he comes to read
what he has written that surprise and disquiet seize upon his mind. What
is he to do, poor man? All his little fishes talk like whales. This
yeasty inflation, this stiff and strutting architecture of the sentence
has come upon him while he slept; and it is not he, it is the Alps, who
are to blame. He is not, perhaps, alone, which somewhat comforts him.
Nor is the ill without a remedy. Some day, when the spring returns, he
shall go down a little lower in this world, and remember quieter
inflections and more modest language. But here, in the meantime, there
seems to swim up some outline of a new cerebral hygiene and a good time
coming, when experienced advisers shall send a man to the proper
measured level for the ode, the biography, or the religious tract; and a
nook may be found between the sea and Chimborazo, where Mr. Swinburne
shall be able to write more continently, and Mr. Browning somewhat
slower.
Is it a return of youth, or is it a congestion of the brain? It is a
sort of congestion, perhaps, that leads the invalid, when all goes well,
to face the new day with such a bubbling cheerfulness. It is certainly
congestion that makes night hideous with visions, all the chambers of a
many-storied caravanserai, haunted with vociferous nightmares, and many
wakeful people come down late for breakfast in the morning. Upon that
theory the cynic may explain the whole affair--exhilaration, nightmares,
pomp of tongue and all. But, on the other hand, the peculiar blessedness
of boyhood may itself be but a symptom of the same complaint, for the
two effects are strangely similar; and the frame of mind of the invalid
upon the Alps is a sort of intermittent youth, with periods of
lassitude. The fountain of Juventus does not play steadily in these
parts; but there it plays, and possibly nowhere else.
STEVENSON AT PLAY
STEVENSON AT PLAY
INTRODUCTION BY MR. LLOYD OSBOURNE
In an old note-book, soiled and dog-eared by much travelling, yellow and
musty with the long years it had lain hid in a Samoan chest, the present
writer came across the mimic war correspondence here presented to the
public. The stirring story of these tin-soldier campaigns occupies the
greater share of the book, though interspersed with many pages of
scattered verse, not a little Gaelic idiom and verb, a half-made will
and the chaptering of a novel. This game of tin soldiers, an intricate
"Kriegspiel," involving rules innumerable, prolonged arithmetical
calculations, constant measuring with foot-rules, and the throwing of
dice, sprang from the humblest beginnings--a row of soldiers on either
side and a deadly marble. From such a start it grew in size and
complexity until it became mimic war indeed, modelled closely upon real
conditions and actual warfare, requiring, on Stevenson's part, the use
of text-books and long conversations with military invalids; on mine,
all the pocket-money derived from my publishing ventures as well as a
considerable part of my printing stock in trade.
The abiding spirit of the child in Stevenson was seldom shown in more
lively fashion than during those days of exile at Davos, where he
brought a boy's eagerness, a man's intellect, a novelist's imagination,
into the varied business of my holiday hours; the printing press, the
toy theatre, the tin soldiers, all engaged his attention. Of these,
however, the tin soldiers most took his fancy; and the war game was
constantly improved and elaborated, until from a few hours a "war" took
weeks to play, and the critical operations in the attic monopolised half
our thoughts. This attic was a most chilly and dismal spot, reached by a
crazy ladder, and unlit save for a single frosted window; so low at the
eaves and so dark that we could seldom stand upright, nor see without a
candle. Upon the attic floor a map was roughly drawn in chalks of
different colours, with mountains, rivers, towns, bridges, and roads of
two classes. Here we would play by the hour, with tingling fingers and
stiffening knees, and an intentness, zest, and excitement that I shall
never forget. The mimic battalions marched and counter-marched, changed
by measured evolutions from column formation into line, with cavalry
screens in front and massed supports behind, in the most approved
military fashion of to-day. It was war in miniature, even to the making
and destruction of bridges, the entrenching of camps, good and bad
weather, with corresponding influence on the roads, siege and horse
artillery proportionately slow, as compared to the speed of unimpeded
foot and proportionately expensive in the upkeep; and an exacting
commissariat added to the last touch of verisimilitude. Four men formed
the regiment or unit, and our shots were in proportion to our units and
amount of ammunition. The troops carried carts of printers'
"ems"--twenty "ems" to each cart--and for every shot taken an "em" had
to be paid into the base, from which fresh supplies could be slowly
drawn in empty carts returned for the purpose. As a large army often
contained thirty regiments, consuming a cart and a half of ammunition in
every engagement (not to speak of the heavy additional expense of
artillery), it will be seen what an important part the commissariat
played in the game, and how vital to success became the line of
communication to the rear. A single cavalry brigade, if bold and lucky
enough, could break the line at the weakest link, and by cutting off the
sustenance of a vast army could force it to fall back in the full tide
of success. A well-devised flank attack, the plucky destruction of a
bridge, or the stubborn defence of a town, might each become a factor in
changing the face of the war and materially alter the course of
campaigns.
It must not be supposed that the enemy ever knew your precise strength,
or that it could divine your intentions by the simple expedient of
looking at your side of the attic and counting your regiments. Numerous
numbered cards dotted the country wherever the eye might fall; one,
perhaps, representing a whole army with supports, another a solitary
horseman dragging some ammunition, another nothing but a dummy that
might paralyse the efforts of a corps, and overawe it into a ruinous
inactivity. To uncover these cards and unmask the forces for which they
stood was the duty of the cavalry vedettes, whose movements were
governed by an elaborate and most vexatious set of rules. It was
necessary to feel your way amongst these alarming pasteboards to obtain
an inkling of your opponent's plans, and the first dozen moves were
often spent in little less. But even if you were befriended by the dice,
and your cavalry broke the enemy's screen and uncovered his front, you
would learn nothing more than could reasonably be gleaned with a
field-glass. The only result of a daring and costly activity might be
such meagre news as "the road is blocked with artillery and infantry in
column" or "you can perceive light horse-artillery strongly supported."
It was only when the enemy began to take his shots that you would begin
to learn the number of his regiments, and even then he often fired less
than his entitled share in order to maintain the mystery of his
strength.
If the game possessed a weakness, it was the unshaken courage of our
troops, who faced the most terrific odds and endured defeat upon defeat
with an intrepidity rarely seen on the actual field. An attempt was made
to correct this with the dice, but the innovation was so heart-breaking
to the loser, and so perpetual a menace to the best-laid plans, that it
had perforce to be given up. After two or three dice-box panics our
heroes were permitted to resume their normal and unprecedented devotion
to their cause, and their generals breathed afresh. There was another
defect in our "Kriegspiel": I was so much the better shot that my
marksmanship often frustrated the most admirable strategy and the most
elaborate of military schemes. It was in vain that we--or rather my
opponent--wrestled with the difficulty and tried to find a substitute
for the deadly and discriminating pop-gun. It was all of no use.
Whatever the missile--sleeve-fink, marble, or button--I was invariably
the better shot, and that skill stood me in good stead on many an
ensanguined plain, and helped to counteract the inequality between a boy
of twelve and a man of mature years. A wise discretion ruled with regard
to the _personnel_ of the fighting line. Stevenson possessed a horde of
particularly chubby cavalrymen, who, when marshalled in close formation
at the head of the infantry, could bear unscathed the most accurate and
overwhelming fire, and thus shelter their weaker brethren in the rear.
This was offset by his "Old Guard," whose unfortunate peculiarity of
carrying their weapons at the charge often involved whole regiments in
a common ruin. On my side there was a multitude of flimsy Swiss, for
whom I trembled whenever they were called to action. These Swiss were so
weak upon their legs that the merest breath would mow them down in
columns, and so deficient in stamina that they would often fall before
they were hurt. Their ranks were burdened, too, with a number of
egregious puppets with musical instruments, who never fell without
entangling a few of their comrades.
Another improvement that was tried and soon again given up was an effort
to match the sickness of actual war. Certain zones were set apart as
unwholesome, especially those near great rivers and lakes, and troops
unfortunate enough to find themselves in these miasmic plains had to
undergo the ordeal of the dice-box. Swiss or Guards, musicians, Arabs,
chubby cavalrymen or thin, all had to pay Death's toll in a new and
frightful form. But we rather overdid the miasma, so it was abolished by
mutual consent.
The war which forms the subject of the present paper was unusual in no
respect save that its operations were chronicled from day to day in a
public press of Stevenson's imagination, and reported by daring
correspondents on the field. Nothing is more eloquent of the man than
the particularity and care with which this mimic war correspondence was
compiled; the author of the "Child's Garden" had never outgrown his love
for childish things, and it is typical of him that, though he mocks us
at every turn and loses no occasion to deride the puppets in the play,
he is everywhere faithful to the least detail of fact. It must not be
supposed that I was privileged to hear these records daily read and thus
draw my plans against the morrow; on the contrary, they were sometimes
held back until the military news was staled by time or were guardedly
communicated with blanks for names and the dead unnumbered. Potty,
Pipes, and Piffle were very real to me, and lived like actual people in
that dim garret. I can still see them through the mist of years; the
formidable General Stevenson, corpulent with solder, a detachable midget
who could be mounted upon a fresh steed whenever his last had been
trodden under foot, whose frame gave evidence of countless mendings; the
emaciated Delafield, with the folded arms, originally a simple
artilleryman, but destined to reach the highest honours; Napoleon, with
the flaming clothes, whom fate had bound to a very fragile horse;
Green, the simple patriot, who took his name from his coat; and the
redoubtable Lafayette in blue, alas! with no Washington to help him.
The names of that attic country fall pleasantly upon the ear and
brighten the dark and bloody page of war: Scarlet, Glendarule, Sandusky,
Mar, Tahema, and Savannah; how sweetly they run! I must except my own
(and solitary) contribution to the map, Samuel City, which sounds out of
key with these mouthfuls of melody, though none the less an important
point. Yallobally I shall always recall with bitterness, for it was
there I first felt the thorn of a vindictive press. The reader will see
what little cause I had to love the _Yallobally Record_, a scurrilous
sheet that often made my heart ache, for all I pretended to laugh and
see the humour of its attacks. It was indeed a relief when I learned I
might exert my authority and suppress its publication--and even hang the
editor--which I did, I fear, with unseemly haste. It will be noticed
that the story of the war begins on the tenth day, the earlier moves
being without interest save to the combatants themselves, passed as they
were in uncovering the cards on either side; and in learning, with more
or less success, the forces for which they stood. This was an essential
but scarcely stirring branch of tin-soldiering, and has been accordingly
unreported as too tedious even for the columns of the _Yallobally
Record_. When the veil had been somewhat lifted and the shadowy armies
discerned with some precision, the historian takes his pen and awaits
the clash of arms.
LLOYD OSBOURNE
WAR CORRESPONDENCE FROM STEVENSON'S NOTE-BOOK
GLENDARULE TIMES.--10th. _Scarlet_.--"The advance of the enemy continues
along three lines, a light column moving from Tahema on Grierson, and
the main body concentrating on Garrard from the Savannah and Yallobally
roads. Garrard and Grierson have both been evacuated. A small force,
without artillery, is alone in the neighbourhood of Cinnabar, and some
of that has fallen back on Glentower by the pass. The brave artillery
remains in front of Scarlet, and was reinforced this morning with some
ammunition. All day infantry has been moving eastward on Sandusky. The
greatest depression prevails."
_Editorial Comment_.--General Stevenson may, or may not, be a capable
commander. It would be unjust to pronounce in the meantime. Still, the
attempt to seize Mar was disastrously miscalculated, and, as we all
know, the column has fallen back on Sandusky with cruel loss. Nor is it
possible to deny that the attempt to hold Grierson, and keep an army in
the west, was idle. Our correspondent at Scarlet mentions the passage of
troops moving eastward through that place, and the retreat of another
column on Glentower. These are the last wrecks of that Army of the West,
from which great things were once expected. With the exception of the
Yolo column, which is without guns, all our forces are now concentrated
in the province of Sandusky; Blue Mountain Province is particularly
deserted, and nothing has been done to check, even for an hour, the
advance of our numerous and well-appointed foes.
11th. _Scarlet_.--The horse-artillery returned through Scarlet on the
Glendarule road; hideous confusion reigns; were the enemy to fall upon
us now, the best opinions regard our position as hopeless. Authentic
news has been received of the desertion of Cinnabar.
_Sandusky_.--The enemy has again appeared, threatening Mar, and the
column moving to the relief of the Yolo column has stopped in its
advance in consequence. General Stevenson moved out a column with
artillery, and crushed a flanking party of the enemy's great centre army
on Scarlet, Garrard, and Savannah road; no loss was sustained on our
side; the enemy's loss is officially calculated at four hundred killed
or wounded.
_Scarlet_.--At last the moment has arrived. The enemy, with a strong
column of horse and horse-artillery, occupied Grierson this morning.
This, with his Army of the Centre moving steadily forward upon Garrard,
places all the troops in and around this place in imminent danger of
being entirely cut off, or being forced to retreat before overwhelming
forces across the Blue Mountains, a course, according to all military
men, involving the total destruction of General Potty's force. Piffle's
whole corps, with the heavy artillery, continued its descent on the left
bank of the Sandusky river, while Potty, dashing through Scarlet at the
hand-gallop, and among the cheers of the populace, moved off along the
Grierson road, collecting infantry as he moved, and riding himself at
the head of the horse-artillery.
NOTE.--General Potty was an airy, amiable, affected creature, the very
soul of bravery and levity. He had risen rapidly by virtue of his
pleasing manners; but his application was small, and he lacked
self-reliance at the Council Board. Piffle called him a parrot; he
returned the compliment by calling Piffle "the hundred-weight of
bricks." They were scarce on speaking terms.
Half an hour after, he had driven the fore-guard of the enemy out of
Grierson without the loss of a trooper on our side; the enemy's loss is
reckoned at 1,600 men. I telegraph at this juncture before returning to
the field. So far the work is done; Potty has behaved nobly. But he
remains isolated by the retreat of Piffle, with a large force in front,
and another large force advancing on his unprotected flank.
_Editorial Comment_.--We have been successful in two skirmishes, but the
situation is felt to be critical, and is by some supposed to be
desperate. Stevenson's skirmish on the 11th did not check the advance of
the Army of the Centre; it is impossible to predict the result of
Potty's success before Grierson. The Yolo column appears to meet with no
resistance; but it is terribly committed, and is, it must be remembered,
quite helpless for offensive purposes, without the co-operation of
Stevenson from Sandusky. How that can be managed, while the enemy hold
the pass behind Mar, is more than we can see. Some shrewd, but perhaps
too hopeful, critics perceive a deep policy in the inactivity of our
troops about Sandusky, and believe that Stevenson is luring on the
cautious Osbourne to his ruin. We will hope so; but this does not
explain Piffle's senseless counter-marchings around Scarlet, nor the
horribly outflanked and unsupported position of Potty on the line of the
Cinnabar river. If General Osbourne were a child, we might hope for the
best; there is no doubt that he has been careless about Mar and Yolo,
and that he was yesterday only saved from a serious disaster by a fluke,
and the imperfection of our scout system; but the situation to the west
and centre wears a different complexion; there his steady, well-combined
advance, carrying all before him, contrasts most favourably with the
timid and divided counsels of our Stevensons, Piffles, and Pottys.
[Illustration: _From the original sketch in Stevenson's Note-book_]