The Spell of Switzerland Part 27

"Did you know that in the Thirteenth Century when Berngerus,--I wonder if he was a bear-slayer,--when Von Wile was living in Zurich,--there was a regular school of poetry here? Heinrich Mannes, the Probst of the Abtei, who founded the Library, had charge of it. He died in 1270.

Rudiger Mannesse had a great collection of song-books, and the tests in 'Mastersong' were much enjoyed. Count Krafto von Toggenburg was afterwards Probst of the Abtei. It is supposed that Hadloub was his pupil. He was the nephew of Elizabeth von Wetzikon, the Furstabtissin, who made him chaplain of St. Stephen's outside the walls. This Elizabeth von Wetzikon's mortuary inscription was found in the old church, but badly mutilated. The Zurich Antiquarian Society has published nearly three score of Hadloub's poems. I read some of them. There is one that reminded me of the old English song--'Sumer is i-k.u.men in--lude sing kuku.' It begins:--

"'Sumer hat gesendet z sin Wunne; Seht die bluomen gent f dur daz gras.

Lter klar stet n der liechte sunne Da der winter e vil trebe was.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FRAUMuNSTER.]

As it was still cloudy we went into the Swiss National Museum. A hasty glance at the old furniture, at the stained gla.s.s--the best collection in the world--made it evident that a week was all too short for Zurich--I should want at least a week for that wonderful museum alone.

And with such an intelligent guide as Professor Landoldt it was most edifying. When we came out the sun was s.h.i.+ning and we went to the top of the Polytechnik.u.m and got that bird's-eye view of the town which is the best introduction. I shall always remember the beauty of it; I can see with my mind's eye the twin towers of the Gross-Munster--not that they are beautiful, at least not their caps--and (from closer observation) the quaint statue of Charlemagne with his gilded crown and sword.

"The mola.s.ses-sandstone which was used for building so many of the old edifices in Zurich," said the Professor, "comes from quarries at the upper end of the lake that were known in Roman times. Unfortunately it crumbles rather readily 'under the tooth of time.' Some of the carvings on the old cathedral are most quaint and curious, as you will see. For instance, on the third story is a knight dressed in tunic and chlamys. He may have been meant for Rupert, an Alleman duke, or for Burkhart, Duke of Suabia. Besides the human and angel figures you will see birds and all sorts of four-footed creatures, many of them imaginary or apocalyptic. It is odd that the statues and decorations do not refer to Biblical subjects but rather to heathen imaginations--chimeras, dragons, hippogrifs, sirens, lions eating men who are certainly not meant to be Daniels; there are a winged crocodile devouring a giant's ears, a toad standing on its head, a bearded Hercules strangling twisted serpents, Delilah cutting Samson's hair, wolves biting at a boar, skinny monkeys with skulls at their mouths, a face with fish coming out of the mouth and ears, centaurs shooting bows, conventionalized grapes and monsters eating them, and the like.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE QUAINT STATUE OF CHARLEMAGNE.]

"The first towers," he went on to say, "were in Romanesque style and not intended to rise much above the roof; there should have been a separate campanile; at the end of the Fifteenth Century both towers were built higher in Gothic style. I think it was the ambitious Burgermeister Waldmann, envious of the tall towers of Basel and Fribourg, who had them elevated. To meet the expenses he himself contributed three hundred gulden, and taxed the whole priesthood from the bishop down, but he did not live to see his ambition carried out.

These towers went through various vicissitudes. In 1490 a pointed cap ornamented with lead was put on each, but the lead was too heavy and was taken off twenty years later and the caps were covered with larch s.h.i.+ngles. These lasted till they caught fire in 1575; then a copper top was put on; then s.h.i.+ngles again; then in 1763 it was struck by lightning and burned to the bell-deck. In 1770 a stone gallery with pyramids on the four corners showed itself. The present rather ridiculous top--the octagonal wooden helmets--dates back to 1779."

"There must be any amount of interesting remains all around Zurich,"

said I, leading him on.

"Indeed there are. A number of years ago the favourite spot for viewing Zurich was up on the Balgrist, where you look down into the Limmat valley and across the lake to the mountains. In 1814, I think it was, some labourers requiring material to mend the roads with dug down and discovered some skeletons. It was supposed to be remains of soldiers killed in the battle between the Russians and the French in 1799 and they gave these remains Christian burial. But they were really prehistoric. Afterwards all sorts of things were found there, but, as it was not then a scientific age, most of them were lost. The place is Entebuchel, which local etymology interprets as the Hill of the Giants; Buchel, equivalent to Huhl, meaning hill, and Ente the local word for giant. But it really means 'Beyond the Hill,' the word _ent_ or _ennet_ being an Alleman word."

"What is the oldest monument in Zurich?"

"Oh, probably a grave-stone of the Second Century, which some Roman official set up to his beloved son; it stands in the present Lindenhof and has the words 'Statio turicensis' carved on it. When this region became Roman the tax-collectors dwelt here. After the fall of the Romans, the Allemanni came, then the Franks, then the German kings. Zurich was a palatinate, which means, as you know, palatium regis; a palace where the kings stayed when they visited here. Really, you might spend a life-time studying the history of Zurich and this lake. I shall like you to compare the Lake of Geneva with our much smaller Zurich Lake," said Herr Landoldt. "I shall take you on a trip around it."

He was true to his promise. After he had shown me all the sights of his splendid city--the largest in Switzerland--we made the tour of the lake. It has not the beauty of colouring of Lake Leman; it is a pale green but "the sweet banks of Zurich's lovely lake" are what the French call _riant_, a little more than our smiling; and the background of snow-covered Alps is magnificent. The lake is about ten times as long as it is wide and is one hundred and forty-two meters deep. Just as from the end of Leman rushes the Rhone, so from the Zurich end of its lake rushes in a torrential dash the green Limmat.

On the left sh.o.r.e, at the place where it attains its greatest width, are the two little islands of Lutzelau and Ufenau. On Ufenau is a church and a chapel dating from about the middle of the Twelfth Century. Here died in 1523, Maximilian's poet-laureate, Luther's zealous partizan, the high-tempered, witty, impetuous Ulrich von Hutten. He had to flee from his enemies, and found a refuge through the protection of his fellow-reformer, Zwingli, who exercised somewhat the same commanding influence in Zurich as Calvin did in Geneva. I had never read any of Von Hutten's works, but I found an excellent edition of them in the Professor's library and I read with much amus.e.m.e.nt some of the sarcasms which he put into verse in his "Awakener of the German Nation."

We went to Rapperswyl--the ending _wyl_ or _wil_ reminds one of the mult.i.tude of New England towns ending in _ville_ and has the same origin--and spent an hour in the Polish National Museum founded in 1870 by Count Broel-Plater and installed in the Fourteenth-Century castle, which came to the Hapsburgs when its founders lost it. It seemed strange to see all the memorials of a vanquished people--weapons, banners and ornaments, portraits and historical pictures--on the walls or in the cabinets of a city so far away.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RAPPERSWYL.]

We got back to Zurich in the evening, and the Professor called my attention to the romantic effect of the lighted boats plying on the glittering waters. There was a brilliant moon, too, and a more beautiful scene I have rarely witnessed than the city with its myriad lights.

My week went like a breath. Before I knew it, we were off for our trip through the Austrian Tyrol. Will and Ruth appeared in due time, and, to my surprise, they brought Lady Q. with them. It is one of the curiosities of travel that one is always meeting the same persons. We should have toured the Bernese Oberland had not motor-vehicles been barred. But in the Tyrol splendid roads have been constructed and those incomparable regions are a paradise for travel. To detail the itinerary would be merely a catalogue with superlatives for decoration. To describe the journey with all its memorable details,--picturesque towns, valleys sweeping down between rugged mountains, rivers and cataracts, would occupy a book as big as a dictionary. I noticed that we came to the third cla.s.s of mountain-peaks: the first was Dents, the second was Horns, and now we found the term was Piz. One of the most fascinating little places that we visited on a side trip to Davos-Platz was Sertig Dorfli, with its attractive church and its view of the Piz Kesch. At Davos lived John Addington Symonds, and I pleased my niece especially by reciting his beautiful sonnet: "'Neath an uncertain moon." Besides that Piz we saw Piz Michel and Piz Vadret and Piz Grialetsch. In several cases, where we could not go in the car, we went either by train or by carriage. At Sils, also, finely situated on the largest of the Engadine lakes, there were still more Pizes: Piz della Marga, Piz Corvatsch, Piz Guz.

There is no end to them.

We took the advice of some chance acquaintances who had been motoring through the Tyrol. We went to Bozen, and, after spending the night there, we followed the Val Sugana and the Broccone and Gobbera pa.s.ses and then the new roads of the Rolle, the Pordoi and the Falzarego into the Dolomites. Of course the Dolomites do not belong to Switzerland as a State but only geologically. We crossed over into Italy and enjoyed the drive by the Italian lakes--a succession of "dreams of beauty," as Lady Q. said with more truth than originality. We spent a day in Milan and then returned to Switzerland by the Saint-Gotthard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Serlig Dorfli_]

CHAPTER XXIV

ON THE Sh.o.r.eS OF LAKE LUCERNE

My cla.s.smate, Ned Allen, was always a dilettante; if he had been obliged to work, he might have accomplished great things; but, though he may have had ambitions, the days of his young manhood slipped away while he travelled all over the world. Then he became disgusted with what he considered unjust taxation, and, converting all his property into income-bearing bonds, so that he had no care or worry, he came to Europe and lived part of the time in his villa on the Lake of the Four Cantons and part of the time in a lovely palazzo near Palermo in Sicily.

He had everything to make him happy, and, yet, like most of the rich men whom I have ever known, he was not happy. Happiness comes only in forgetting one's self, and that he had no time to do, because he had all the time there was.

It did him good, I think, to be obliged to exert himself a little to show me the sights. Like myself, he was very fond of music, and he followed the example of a good many wealthy men in Switzerland--he had a string quartet play every Sunday afternoon and also two or three evenings a week. One day he took me to the house of a friend of his who supported a large orchestra and gave concerts to a few invited guests or to himself alone according to circ.u.mstances. He had been to Paderewski's villa on the Lake of Constance and to the Count von Hesse-Wartegg's, where his wife, Madame Minnie Hauk, after retiring from the stage, has lived for a number of years. As I knew them all, I wished that I might pay my respects, but I had no chance--there were so many other things to do.

One of my first objects of pilgrimage at Lucerne was the Peace and War Museum, founded by that remarkable Austrian Jew, Von Bloch. My cla.s.smate was inclined to scoff at the notion of Universal Peace. I found he had not read or even thought very deeply on the subject, and I really think that my enthusiasm communicated itself somewhat to him.

He had never thought, before I suggested it to him, that the small stature of the present-day French and Italians was probably due to the fact that the best and strongest of the youth of those two nations were killed off in the Napoleonic and subsequent wars. War does not ensure the survival of the fittest. The old and weaklings are left to perpetuate the race.

One would hardly believe it, but Ned had never been to the top of Pilatus; I found he was not especially interested in scenery, he who lived in the midst of the most splendid scenery in Switzerland. But he went with me to Pilatus. As we started I quoted the rhymed proverb:--

"Hat der Pilatus einen Hut Dann wird das Wetter gut; Hat er einen Degen So giebt es sicher Regen."

He had heard that and said it was quite true; if the mountain was adorned with a little cloudy cap it meant that there would be fair weather; fortunately the peak wore his hat and not his dagger, so we had bright suns.h.i.+ne and not rain.

But Ned did not know the legend which connects Pilate with the mountain. Of course it should be _Mons Pileatus_--the capt mountain; but the story became widespread that after Christ was put to death, Pilate was recalled to Rome. He wore Christ's robe. He was found guilty of malfeasance and was put to death. His body was thrown into the Tiber which refused it and angry storms arose. It was sent to Vienna: the Danube refused it; it was brought to the Rhone; again storms; the lake refused it; new disasters came upon Lausanne. Then it was brought to the Frankmunt--that is what the rough upper part of the mountain is called; the _mons fractus_--where Pilate's ghost fought with the spectre of King Herod--the red of the conflict was seen then and afterwards at sunset on the mountain-top. Up came a necromancer and laid a terrible spell. In the days that followed nothing would grow there, and on Good Friday the disgraced procurator was doomed to appear on a black mule with a white spot--like a Roman knight--and show himself.

So great was the fear of Pilatus that until comparatively modern times no one dared to go up to it. Now there is a railway, and the ghost of Pilate is laid. Sir Edwin Arnold speaks of the legend in his lilting poem:--

"He riseth alone,--alone and proud From the sh.o.r.e of an emerald sea; His crest hath a shroud of the crimson cloud, For a king of the Alps is he; Standing alone as a king should stand, With his foot on the fields of his own broad lands.

"And never a storm from the stores of the North Comes sweeping along the sky But it emptieth forth the first of its wrath On the crags on that mountain high; And the voice of those crags has a tale to tell That the heart of the hearer shall treasure well.

"A tale of a brow that was bound with gold, And a heart that was bowed with sin; Of a fierce deed told of the days of old That might never sweet mercy win, Of legions in steel that were waiting by For the death of the G.o.d that could never die.

"Of a dear kind face that its kindness kept Dabbled with blood of its own; Of a lady who leapt from the sleep she slept To plead at a judgment-throne.

Of a cross and a cry and a night at noon And the sun and the earth at a sickly swoon.

"But climb the crags when the storm has rule And the spirit that rides the blast, And hark to his howl as he sweeps the pool Where the Roman groaned his last; And to thee shall the tongue of the tempest tell A record too sad for the poet's sh.e.l.l."

[Ill.u.s.tration: LUCERNE AND MOUNT PILATUS.]

Whatever may have been the bareness of its sides in consequence of necromancer's spells it is now filled with beautiful plant life--hundreds of varieties. If I had been as much of a botanist as I am a collector for my mental picture-gallery I might fill a page with the names and descriptions of the Alpine flowers, which I noticed as merely blue or pink or yellow and cared little for distinguis.h.i.+ng them apart. Once during one of my trips I did see the edelweiss growing, but it is not very pretty; but the fields of gentians and the forget-me-nots--those acres of blue sky fallen to earth and growing up again--those would or might inspire and extract a poem from the most prosaic.

We went together also to the top of the Rigi, which is easily attainable by railway.

Topfer, in his story ent.i.tled "Les Deux Scheidegg," gives a most enthusiastic description of an avalanche. I think I like the view from Pilatus better than from Rigi; but from both the mountains look like a colossal ocean in a storm and suddenly stricken by the sight of Medusa's face!

Ned took me in his motor-boat on several trips around the lake which has so many names. I was not really so much interested in the William Tell region as I suppose I should have been. Suppose it were proved as decisively as Tell, as Eindridi with King Olaf, as Hemingr with King Harald, or as Geyti, son of Alask, have been proved to be mere sun myths, that Napoleon and Apollo were really the same, and that George Was.h.i.+ngton was only a sun myth! His axe corresponds to the bow and arrow; it cuts down the cherry-tree of darkness with its glittering edge and brings liberty to his fellow-man. Who would then care, for any sentimental reasons, to go to Mount Vernon? Why, Schiller, himself, never saw the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons any more than Coleridge ever saw Chamonix; he got all his local colour from Goethe's descriptions. To go to the Tell Chapel is to partic.i.p.ate in a fraud! Yet the natives each year take part in a sort of folk-play, which has all the solemnity of a semi-religious celebration. I did not care to stop as we pa.s.sed by; still less when we took pa.s.sage in a big Zeppelin dirigible and looked down upon the big sprawling lake winding among its mountains!

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON THE LAKE OF LUCERNE.]

Ned actually waked up enough to walk with me about Lucerne; like one who always has the opportunity, he had never before been through the two covered bridges past the imposing water tower or scrutinized the quaint wall paintings. He went with me to see the famous Lion of Lucerne--one of the few memorial monsters that do not pall on acquaintance. The little pool in front adds immensely to the effect.

I had to tear myself away from the pleasant and luxurious home of my friend. I went back to Lausanne by a somewhat different route, taking in Sarnen, Meyringen and Brienz, and then going by steamboat from end to end of the Brienzersee, not failing to spend a few hours at the Giessbach. They illuminate it at night, but there is something immodest about such an exhibition; it is like catching sight of a wood-nymph or a water-fairy. I remember once seeing a great fire at Niagara Falls and the river actually turned red with shame. But, by moonlight, without artificial streams of light, it must be enchanting.

I made a little stay at Interlaken, and from there I ran over to Lauterbrunnen, where the Staubbach falls over its frowning suicidal cliffs and dies before it reaches the valley. It is weird and ghostlike--the _spirit_ of a waterfall. I walked far up into the valley, and, coming back to the hotel once more, saw that delicate blush on the Jungfrau. I don't wonder Thomas Gray declares that "the mountains are ecstatic and ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a year." I would go farther and say that as one grew older, one should live among them or in sight of them.