The Car That Went Abroad Part 7

It is a policy which prevails in other directions. Not all things are cheap in Switzerland, but most things are--the things which one buys oftenest--woolen clothing and food. Cotton goods are not cheap, for Switzerland does not grow cotton, and there are a few other such items.

Shoes are cheap enough, if one will wear the Swiss make, but few visitors like to view them on their own feet. They enjoy them most when they hear them clattering along on the feet of Swiss children, the wooden soles beating out a rhythmic measure that sounds like a coopers'

chorus. Not all Swiss shoes have wooden soles, but the others do not gain grace by their absence.

Swiss cigars are also cheap. I am not a purist in cigars, but at home I have smoked a good many and seldom with safety one that cost less than ten cents, straight. One pays ten centimes, or two cents, in Switzerland, and gets a mild, evenly burning article. I judge it is made of tobacco, though the head of the family suggested other things that she thought it smelled like. If she had smoked one of them, she would not have noticed this peculiarity any more. Wine is cheap, of course, for the hillsides are covered with vines; also, whisk--but I am wandering into economic statistics without really meaning to do so. They were the first things that impressed me.

The next, I believe, was the lack of Swiss politics. Switzerland is a republic that runs with the exactness of a Swiss watch, its machinery as hermetically concealed. I had heard that the Swiss Republic sets the pattern of government for the world, and I was anxious to know something of its methods and personnel. I was sorry that I was so ignorant. I didn't even know the name of the Swiss President, and for a week was ashamed to confess it. I was hoping I might see it in one of the French papers I puzzled over every evening. But at the end of the week I timidly and apologetically inquired of our friendly landlord as to the name of the Swiss Chief Executive.

But then came a shock. Our landlord grew confused, blushed, and confessed that he didn't know it, either! He had known it, he said, of course, but it had slipped his mind. Slipped his mind! Think of the name of Roosevelt, or Wilson, or Taft slipping the mind of anybody in America--and a landlord! I asked the man who sold me cigars. He had forgotten, too. I asked the apothecary, but got no information. I was not so timid after that. I asked a fellow pa.s.senger--guest, I mean, an American, but of long Swiss residence--and got this story. I believe most of it. He said:

"When I came to Switzerland and found out what a wonderful little country it was, its government so economical, so free from party corruption and spoils, from graft and politics, so different from the home life of our own dear Columbia, I thought, 'The man at the head of this thing must be a master hand; I'll find out his name.' So I picked out a bright-looking subject, and said:

"'What is the name of the Swiss President?'

"He tried to pretend he didn't understand my French, but he did, for I can tear the language off all right--learned it studying art in Paris.

When I pinned him down, he said he knew the name well enough, _parfaitement_, but couldn't think of it at that moment.

"That was a surprise, but I asked the next man. He couldn't think of it, either. Then I asked a police officer. Of course he knew it, all right; '_oh oui, certainement, mais_'--then he scratched his head and scowled, but he couldn't dig up that name. He was just a plain prevaricator--_toute simplement_--like the others. I asked every man I met, and every one of them knew it, had it right on the end of his tongue; but somehow it seemed to stick there. Not a man in Vevey or Montreux could tell me the name of the Swiss President. It was the same in Fribourg, the same even in Berne, the capital. I had about given it up when one evening, there in Berne, I noticed a st.u.r.dy man with an honest face, approaching. He looked intelligent, too, and as a last resort I said:

"'Could you, by any chance, tell me the name of the Swiss President?'

"The effect was startling. He seized me by the arm and, after looking up and down the street, leaned forward and whispered in my ear:

"_'Mon Dieu! c'est moi!_ _I_ am the Swiss President; but--ah _non_, don't tell anyone! I am the only man in Switzerland who knows it!'

"You see," my friend continued, "he is elected privately, no torchlight campaigns, no scandal, and only for a year. He is only a sort of chairman, though of course his work is important, and the present able inc.u.mbent has been elected a number of times. His name is--is--is--ah yes, that's my tram. So sorry to have to hurry away. See you to-night at dinner."

One sees a good many nationalities in Switzerland, and some of them I soon learned to distinguish. When I saw a man with a d.i.n.ky Panama hat pulled down about his face, and wearing a big black mustache or beard, I knew he was a Frenchman. When I met a stout, red-faced man, with a pack on his back and with hobnailed shoes, short trousers, and a little felt hat with a feather stuck in it, I knew him for a German. When I noticed a very carefully dressed person, with correct costume and gaiters--also monocle, if perfect--saying, "Aw--Swiss people--so queah, don't you know," I was pretty sure he was an Englishman. When I remarked a tall, limber person, carrying a copy of the Paris _Herald_ and asking every other person he met, "Hey, there! Vooly voo mir please sagen--" all the rest incomprehensible, I knew him for an American of the deepest dye.

The Swiss themselves have no such distinguis.h.i.+ng mark. They are just st.u.r.dy, plainly dressed, unpretentious people, polite and friendly, with a look of capability, cleanliness, and honesty which invites confidence.

An Englishwoman said to me:

"I have heard that the Swiss are the best governed and the least intelligent people in the world."

I reflected on this. It had a snappy sound, but it somehow did not seem to be firm at the joints. "The best governed and the least intelligent"--there was something drunken about it. I said:

"It doesn't quite seem to fit. And how about the magnificent Swiss public-school system, and the manufacturing, and the national railway, with all the splendid engineering that goes with the building of the funiculars and tunnels? And the Swiss prosperity, and the medical practice, and the sciences? I always imagined those things were in some way connected with intelligence."

"Oh, well," she said, "I suppose they do go with intelligence of a kind; but then, of course, you know what I mean."

But I was somehow too dull for her epigram. It didn't seem to have any sense in it. She was a gra.s.s widow and I think she made it herself.

Later she asked me whereabouts in America I came from. When I said Connecticut, she asked if Connecticut was as big as Lausanne. A woman like that ought to go out of the epigram business.[10]

As a matter of fact, a good many foreigners are inclined to say rather peevish things about st.u.r.dy little, thriving little, happy little Switzerland. I rather suspect they are a bit jealous of the pocket-de-luxe nation that shelters them, and feeds them, and entertains them, and cures them, cheaper and better and kindlier than their home countries. They are willing to enjoy these advantages, but they acknowledge rather grudgingly that Switzerland, without a great standing army, a horde of grafters, or a regiment of tariff millionaires to support, can give lessons in national housekeeping to their own larger, more pretentious lands.

I would not leave the impression, by the way, that the Swiss are invariably prosperous. Indeed, some of them along the lake must have been very poor just then, for the grape crop had failed two years in succession, and with many of them their vineyard is their all. But there was no outward dest.i.tution, no rags, no dirt, no begging. Whatever his privation, the Swiss does not wear his poverty on his sleeve.

Switzerland has two other official languages besides French--German and Italian. Government doc.u.ments, even the postal cards, are printed in these three languages. It would seem a small country for three well-developed tongues, besides all the canton dialects, some of which go back to the old Romanic, and are quite distinct from anything modern.

The French, German, and Italian divisions are geographical, the lines of separation pretty distinct. There is rivalry among the cantons, a healthy rivalry, in matters of progress and education. The cantons are sufficiently a unit on all national questions, and together they form about as compact and st.u.r.dy a little nation as the world has yet seen--a nation the size and shape of an English walnut, and a hard nut for any would-be aggressor to crack. There are not many entrances into Switzerland, and they would be very well defended. The standing army is small, but every Swiss is subject to a call to arms, and is trained by enforced, though brief, service to their use. He seems by nature to be handy with a rifle, and never allows himself to be out of practice.

There are regular practice meets every Sunday, and I am told the government supplies the cartridges. Boys organize little companies and regiments and this the government also encourages. It is said that Switzerland could put half a million soldiers in the field, and that every one would be a crack shot.[11] The German Kaiser, once reviewing the Swiss troops, remarked, casually, to a sub-officer, "You say you could muster half a million soldiers?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"And suppose I should send a million of my soldiers against you. What would you do then?"

"We should fire two shots apiece, Your Majesty."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARCHe VEVEY

"IN EACH TOWN THERE IS AN OPEN SQUARE, WHICH TWICE A WEEK IS PICTURESQUELY CROWDED"]

In every Swiss town there are regular market days, important events where one may profitably observe the people. The sale of vegetables and flowers must support many families. In each town there is an open square, which twice a week is picturesquely crowded, and there one may buy everything to eat and many things to wear; also, the wherewith to improve the home, the garden, and even the mind; for besides the garden things there are stalls of second-hand books, hardware, furniture, and general knick-knacks. Flanking the streets are displays of ribbons, laces, hats, knitted things, and general dry-goods miscellany; also antiques, the sc.r.a.pings of many a Swiss cupboard and corner.

But it is in the open square itself that the greater market blooms--really blooms, for, in season, the vegetables are truly floral in their rich vigor, and among them are pots and bouquets of the posies that the Swiss, like all Europeans, so dearly love. Most of the flower and vegetable displays are down on the ground, arranged in baskets or on bits of paper, and form a succession of gay little gardens, ranged in long narrow avenues of color and movement, a picture of which we do not grow weary. Nor of the setting--the quaint tile-roofed buildings; the blue lake, with its sails and swans and throng of wheeling gulls; the green hills; the lofty snow-capped mountains that look down from every side. How many sights those ancient peaks have seen on this same square!--markets and military, battles and buffoonery. There are no battles to-day, but the Swiss cadets use it for a drill ground, and every little while lightsome shows and merry-go-rounds establish themselves in one end of it, and the little people skip about, and go riding around and around to the latest ragtime, while the mountains look down with their large complaisance, just as they watched the capering ancestors of these small people, ages and ages ago; just as they will watch their light-footed descendants for a million years, maybe.

The market is not confined entirely to the square. On its greater days, when many loads of wood and hay crowd one side of it, it overflows into the streets. Around a floral fountain may be found b.u.t.ter, eggs, and cheese--oh, especially cheese, the cheese of Gruyere, with every size and pattern of holes, in any quant.i.ty, cut and weighed by a handsome apple-faced woman who seems the living embodiment of the cheese industry. I have heard it said--this was in America--that the one thing not to be obtained in Switzerland is Swiss cheese. The person who conceived that smartness belongs with the one who invented the "intelligence" epigram.

On the market days before Christmas our square had a different look. The little displays were full of greenery, and in the center of the market place there had sprung up a forest of Christmas trees. They were not in heaps, lying flat; but each, mounted on a neat tripod stand, stood upright, as if planted there. They made a veritable Santa Claus forest, and the gayly dressed young people walking among them, looking and selecting, added to this pretty sight.

The Swiss make much of Christmas. Their shop windows are overflowing with decorations and attractive things. Vevey is "Chocolate Town." Most of the great chocolate factories of Europe are there, and at all holiday seasons the grocery and confectionary windows bear special evidence of this industry. Chocolate Santa Clauses--very large--chickens, rabbits, and the like--life size; also trees, groups, set pieces, ornaments--the windows are wildernesses of the rich brown confection, all so skillfully modeled and arranged.

The toy windows, too, are fascinating. You would know at once that you were looking into a Swiss toy window, from the variety of carved bears; also, from the toy chateaux--very fine and large, with walled courts, portcullises, and battlements--with which the little Swiss lad plays war. The dolls are different, too, and the toy books--all in French. But none of these things were as interesting as the children standing outside, pointing at them and discussing them--so easily, so glibly--in French. How little they guessed my envy of them--how gladly I would buy out that toy window for, say, seven dollars, and trade it to them for their glib unconsciousness of gender and number and case.

On the afternoon before Christmas the bells began. From the high mountainsides, out of deep ravines that led back into the hinterland, came the ringing. The hills seemed full of bells--a sound that must go echoing from range to range, to the north and to the south, traveling across Europe with the afternoon. Then, on Christmas Day, the trees. In every home and school and hotel they sparkled. We attended four in the course of the day, one, a very gorgeous one in the lofty festooned hall of a truly grand hotel, with tea served and soft music stealing from some concealed place--a slow strain of the "Tannenbaum," which is like our "Maryland," only more beautiful--and seemed to come from a source celestial. And when one remembered that in every corner of Europe something of the kind was going on, and that it was all done in memory and in honor of One who, along dusty roadsides and in waste places, taught the doctrine of humility, one wondered if the world might not be worth saving, after all.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] In 1913-14. The rate to-day is somewhat higher.

[10] I have thought since that she may have meant that the Swiss do not lead the world in the art and literary industries. She may have connected those things with intelligence--you never can tell.

[11] When the call to arms came, August 1, 1914, Switzerland put 250,000 men on her frontier in twenty-four hours.

Chapter XVIII

THE LITTLE TOWN OF VEVEY

It would seem to be the French cantons along the Lake of Geneva (or Leman) that most attract the deliberate traveler. The north sh.o.r.e of this lake is called the Swiss Riviera, for it has a short, mild winter, with quick access to the mountaintops. But perhaps it is the schools, the _pensionnats_, that hold the greater number. The whole sh.o.r.e of the Lake of Geneva is lined with them, and they are filled with young persons of all ages and nations, who are there mainly to learn French, though incidentally, through that lingual medium, other knowledge is acquired. Some, indeed, attend the fine public schools, where the drill is very thorough, even severe. Parents, as well as children, generally attend school in Switzerland--visiting parents, I mean. They undertake French, which is the thing to do, like mountain climbing and winter sports. Some buy books and seclude their struggles; others have private lessons; still others openly attend one of the grown-up language schools, or try to find board at French-speaking _pensions_. Their progress and efforts form the main topic of conversation. In a way it makes for a renewal of youth.

We had rested at Vevey, that quiet, clean little picture-city, not so busy and big as Lausanne, or so grand and stylish as Montreux, but more peaceful than either, and, being more level, better adapted for motor headquarters. Off the main street at Montreux, the back or the front part of a car is always up in the air, and it has to be chained to the garage. We found a level garage in Vevey, and picked out _pensionnats_ for Narcissa and the Joy, and satisfactory quarters for ourselves.

Though still warm and summer-like, it was already late autumn by the calendar, and not a time for long motor adventures. We would see what a Swiss winter was like. We would wrestle with the French idiom. We would spend the months face to face with the lake, the high-perched hotels and villages, the snow-capped, cloud-capped hills.

Probably everybody has heard of Vevey, but perhaps there are still some who do not know it by heart, and will be glad of a word or two of details. Vevey has been a place of habitation for a long time. A wandering Asian tribe once came down that way, rested a hundred years or so along the Leman sh.o.r.e, then went drifting up the Rhone and across the Simplon to make trouble for Rome. But perhaps there was no Rome then; it was a long time ago, and it did not leave any dates, only a few bronze implements and trifles to show the track of the storm. The Helvetians came then, st.u.r.dy and warlike, and then the Romans, who may have preserved traditions of the pleasant land from that first wandering tribe.

Caesar came marching down the Rhone and along this waterside, and his followers camped in the Vevey neighborhood a good while--about four centuries, some say. Certain rich Romans built their summer villas in Switzerland, and the lake sh.o.r.e must have had its share. But if there were any at Vevey, there is no very positive trace of them now. In the depths of the Castle of Chillon, they show you Roman construction in the foundations, but that may have been a fortress.