An Oberland châlet

Front matter

THE CHALET

Orinclehvald Lower Glacier

AN

II

'TpHERE Is nothing particularly joyous about the process of starting a new house running anywhere at any time. Experta crede. But when you are a stranger in a strange land, whose language you are imperfectly acquainted with and whose inhabitants are as uncommunicative as oysters and inclined to regard the foreigner as an enemy till he has proved the contrary, the difficulties are considerably aggravated.

Among the rank and file of the people in the German cantons of Switzerland, there seem to be three classes: — those who have come in contact overmuch with tourists and have been spoiled by it; the low-browed, stupid type, surly and hostile; and the honest, intelligent, fresh-cheeked, unspoiled, who are never effusive, but frank always and friendly to those who seem to deserve it, staunch, reliable, independent, self-respecting, in every way admirable,— the bone and sinew and hope of Switzerland. The first class are nearly as extortionate and conscienceless as their confreres in France and Italy without the charming Latin manners that make one forgive their iniquity. At their worst, this type is insufferable. But one can escape. Two miles off the tourist tracks, one never finds them.

The second class one can only be sorry for. It Is not their fault that their brains and bodies are stunted by cretinism or intermarriage of relatives or insufficient nourishment or too much carrying of heavy burdens. Their skin is sallow, eyes dull, features heavy. One usually finds them tending cattle, whom they closely resemble, or inhabiting isolated chalets. If you speak to them, they either stare open-mouthed and answer nothing, or in the most unsatisfactory manner. I do not know whether they are capable of affection for their own people. They certainly waste none of it on outsiders.

There was a man of this type who lived In a chalet on the hill above us, who came out and hit the Elder Babe a resounding cuff on the head, ejaculating some wrathful Swiss German, which the poor Babe did not In the least understand. The Babe was doing nothing more sinful than looking In the grass for a pen-knife he had lost, but doubtless this man, with his poor cramped crooked wits, suspected him of some deep-dyed villainy.

There was also a boy in the neighborhood about twelve years old, who used to He in wait for the Elder Babe with a large stick and attack him viciously. I would have let the Babe (who was seven) fight it out with him, trusting to the triumph of mind over matter, if the lad had not been so absolutely unintelligent and brute-like in appearance that I thought he might crush the Babe's skull with a rock or push him off a precipice if he was angered.

Every once in a while one hears of some queer stupid outrage in Switzerland — the tires of an automobile chopped up or obstructions put at a dangerous turn in the road to upset a traveling carriage. I imagine it is always one of these quasi-deficients who is responsible for it.

In the whole world I do not know a finer people, nor one more charming to deal with, than the healthy, intelligent class of Swiss. Godfearing, law-abiding, domestic, Industrious, self-respecting, clean in mind and body. When I had once beaten my way through their uncommunicativeness and learned where I could get the necessities of life, I found it indescribably restful, after the perpetual battle over trifles of my eight months' housekeeping on the Riviera, to throw myself on the mercy of these good people, secure in the consciousness that they would take no advantage of my ignorance, and that the price of an article would be the same whether I asked before buying it or after. One of the brothers of the family that kept the meat shop was a guide in his leisure moments and was building up a fine reputation for skill and daring. While we were in Grindelwald he covered himself with glory by successfully doing some things that had never been done before. With an Alpinist from Berne, he crawled along the knife-blade edge of the Eiger, Heaven knows how many hours without sleep or rest or proper food, without standing up or sitting down, just clinging and creeping, — a feat which had been accomplished only once many years ago. It was pretty to see how proud his family were of him. A younger brother especially, once his shy reserve was overcome by sympathetic questions, talked about him as though he had won the Victoria Cross at the very least. I do really think they were the only firm of butchers I ever met who did not need to be watched while weighing the meat!

The bakery people were admirable, too, especially the young, rosy-cheeked wife, who usually tended shop, and the bright-faced little girl who brought the bread each morning. They had a small grocery attachment to the bakery, but I found it was not etiquette for me to buy there anything which I could get from the Frau Secundarlehrer in our basement. In the bakery one day I saw some packages of tapioca stacked up on a shelf, and, with the Babes in mind, ordered some sent next morning. It did not come and, supposing it had been overlooked, I stopped in later to get it. " My little girl took it up this morning with the bread," said the baker's wife, smiling sweetly, " but she found the Frau Secundarlehrer kept it in stock, so of course she brought it back." I must have looked a little blank, for she added,

" The Frau Secundarlehrer might think it strange if you got it from us instead of her."

Having learned this local canon, I struggled dutifully to conform to it, though it was by no means always convenient. The Frau Secundarlehrer's store was open only at odd times when the Frau was at leisure. It was always closed during the morning hours when one usually makes purchases for the day. After sending the cook to the village In the morning for marketing and piously leaving some grocery article to be purchased from the Frau in the afternoon, it was hardly soothing to find that she was just out of it or had never had it — and the nearest other grocery a mile and a half away I

There may have been other local rules of procedure equally sacred that I never did find out, and so unwittingly offended against to the end. I do not believe the Schwelzer would be forgiving toward shortcomings of this sort. He is beautifully confident that the Herr Gott approves of Swiss ways and dislikes foreigners, and this gives him a virtuous rigidity In resisting innovations. There may have been some such all-unconscious sin on my part to account for the strange behavior of the Herr Secundarlehrer at the end of the season. But we won't worry about that till the time comes.

The way we got our milk is worth describing. The cattle went up to the high pastures a few days after our arrival. They went by our house, and all day long we heard the tinkle of the cow-bells, the tramping of their patient feet, and the pushing and rubbing of their heavy swaying bodies, and the air was full of their breath as though we were in a dairy-yard. All the cattle in the valley go up about the middle of June (as soon as the snow Is off the ground) and come down the latter part of September. The pasture lands are owned by the commune, and each burgher of the valley has the right to keep a certain number of cows there. There Is a head-man in charge of each commune's cattle, who, with a corps of assistants, lives up on the heights all summer. Their chief occupation Is cheese-making. They are allowed such milk and cheese as they need for themselves during the summer (which, with coarse black bread, practically forms the whole of their diet), and at the end of the season receive a share of the cheese made in lieu of wages, the rest going per capita to the cattle-owners. Meat and eggs are scarce and dear, and this cheese forms the staple of the valley's food through the winter.

In the more distant pastures, all the milk not drunk by the cattle men is made into cheese, but from these Alps near Grindelwald a certain amount of fresh milk is sold, being brought down six or eight miles each morning strapped to the back of a man, in a cylinder of white unpainted wood that must hold from ten to fifteen gallons.

Do not imagine that we learned all this at once. It represents the wisdom of the summer, gathered and pieced together, bit by bit. All we knew just then was that more cows than we had ever seen in our lives were going past, and it was a good thing that they were not nervous animals, or their bells would surely drive them crazy. Most of them were small affairs hung around the neck from a narrow leather collar. But sometimes the collar was as much as four Inches wide and the bell a great jangling piece of metal seven or eight inches long and about the same width. It must have been a real burden for the cow to carry and the stiff collar a severe infliction. We never did learn the philosophy of these vagaries in cow adornment.

The Herr Secundiirlehrer told us, on inquiry, during those first days, that the Alpine milk was the best to be had, although It cost more, and that perhaps he could secure it for us during the summer (it was a favor, you understand) if we would say definitely what amount we would take. It could neither be increased nor decreased afterwards and It must be paid for all together at the end of the season. " But I prefer paying my bills each month," I said. " Can't be done," he replied. It was very mysterious, but we let it go at that, and the milk was delicious.

Later, after the young men and the Mother had joined us, I found we needed more milk. I lay In wait for the man who brought the milk, after the cook had tried her hand on him in vain, and asked him if there was not some way by which we could get an extra liter or so per day. He was one of the stupid variety and his "Nein" was like the speech of a stone statue (if stone statues spoke), without a flicker of expression. Wouldn't it be possible if we paid a higher price for it? Nein. Wasn't there a head-man who would have the authority to sell me more if I went to see him? Nein. I think he regarded me as the Scarlet Woman referred to in the Scriptures and felt that his soul would be endangered by further parley. So he walked off without any nonsense in the way of apology or farewell.

The only milk then to be bought was what came up from Interlaken, and even that we could not buy direct, since the man who sold it did not go on his rounds so far as our house. The baker took in a liter for us and we sent for it in the afternoon, and it was often sour and always pale and watery.

The admixture of water was not entirely unknown in our Alpine milk, for Frater one day came upon a milk-bearer cheerfully filling up his vessel from a mountain brook. Perhaps he had stumbled and spilt some, or perhaps he had been thirsty and drunk some, and of course he had a precise and definite quantity to deliver. I will not believe he had sold any on the side. It would not be In character. And I do not believe it could have happened often, or the milk would not have been so good.

For the benefit of intending housekeepers in the Oberland, I would say that marketing, when one has learned the ropes, is an easy matter. If the family is blessed with good appetites and is contented with simple fare and small variety. In meat there was always veal and pork to be had, beef and mutton only occasionally. When we wanted poultry we had to send to Interlaken for it, and the price was appalling, thirteen francs for a pair of small chickens hardly enough for a meal. Nearly everybody owned a few chickens, but they would not sell them, and eggs were often hard to get. As for fresh vegetables and fruit, we were wholly dependent on a rascally Italian who kept a fruit shop for tourists near the station and charged tourist prices for inferior articles. The only time he ever gave us good value was toward the end of the season when Antonio happened to address him in Italian, and he and his wife glowed all over and heaped up the grapes in the bag. But that did not prevent them from palming off a collection of absolutely rotten pears on my poor unsuspecting cook the next day! No fruit is grown in the valley except a few late apples on the road down to Interlaken, and the little wild strawberries that come up for themselves in June, no vegetables except cabbages and carrots and the like, which each family toilfully raises for its own use and cannot be induced to sell. The Frau Secundarlehrer had some lettuce which she generously invited us to help ourselves to as long as it lasted, but she would not sell it. One hardly realizes that it is summer, for one has to depend so much on canned things. One learns to eat a lot of the local cheese, which is always good. And I must not forget the honey. It is the invariable accompaniment of the Swiss breakfast, which consists for the rest of rolls and butter, coffee and milk. When the bees have gathered their honey from the wild flowers on the Alpine meadows, the flavor is complexly delicious. One soon learns to despise the insipid lowland product.

I must not forget the salt, nor the long morning spent in hunting for that useful staple. I ordered it the first day from our basement grocery. It didn't come, and I repeated the order. I was told the Frau had none. I supposed she was just out of It and asked Belle Soeur, who was going Into the village, to get some at any grocer's. She went dutifully to every grocer in the village and grew more and more puzzled at being everywhere told they didn't keep it. She knew the Swiss used the condiment, for she had been eating it. She inquired and was told to go to the post-office. This sounded so perfectly foolish that she paid no attention to it and inquired elsewhere. She received the same answer. After she had been told three times to go the post-office, she went there, feeling distinctly Idiotic as she asked the old man behind the stamp window if he sold salt. To her astonishment, the reply was affirmative. Salt, it appears, is a government monopoly in Switzerland, and, in Grlndelwald at least, the postmaster had the exclusive right to sell It. In time it became perfectly natural to say, " Give me five postage stamps and a kilo of salt," but It required practice.

Ill

T OOKING out on cocoa-palms and mango ■^ trees from my Puerto Rican balcony (whatever bad things may be said about the life of a naval officer's wife, nobody ever accused it of monotony) it is hard to realize that last summer our outlook was on Alpine meadows and glaciers. . . . How can I catch and imprison in words that glorious Swiss air or the more elusive spiritual atmosphere of it all? How tint the pictures with that characteristic " local color " of which we talked so much that it became family slang?

The air at first was a little thin for us, and we easily got out of breath. Accustoming ourselves to it and gradually enlarging our climbing radius, we were soon doubling and by the end of the season nearly trebling our altitude without inconvenience. It was when we went down to the low levels that we felt oppressed by the dense air and fatigued by the heat. A sudden change of altitude either up or down 25

26 AN OBERLAND CHALET most of us found produced clicking of the eardrums alternating with a wad-of-cotton-in-theear sensation. Antonio was like the man who couldn't shiver. His eardrums wouldn't click. Our assurance to him that there was nothing especially joyous In the sensation made no difference. He felt that he wasn't in the swim, and it grieved him.

There was certainly a magic in the air. It made us all healthy and hungry and happy and filled us with the desire and eventually the ability to walk almost unlimited distances.

Belle Soeur, the Elder Babe and I did most of the preliminary exploring together. Shall I ever forget the beauty of the wild flowers that first month ? They were lovely all summer, but never so lovely nor so many as during June, when the Alpine meadows in our vicinity were all blue with forget-me-nots or yellow and purple with little Johnny.jump-ups. I don't remember the gentians till later, and I know the Alpenroses blossomed In July. The Swiss have a great sentiment for this flower, a sort of rhododendron whose clusters of pink blossoms growing on low scraggly shrubs color miles of mountain-side at the proper season. But they have no such loveliness as the dainty little flowerets that grow down In the grass. The Edelweiss cult, of course, Is entirely a matter of sentiment. The furry, pulpy little plant, stalk, leaves, flowers, all of the same grayish, greenish white, has no trace of beauty and Indeed does not look like a flower at all. Only its fondness for growing in dangerous and inaccessible places could make it desirable. There seems to be plenty of it, too, if you know where to go for it. During the season the tourist routes are lined with little solemn, silent children selling edelweiss. The supply never fails. But I may as well confess right here that though of course we purchased a certain amount of this article of commerce, we never found a sprig of it growing. We could doubtless have done so by paying a native to lead us to a proper place, but there would have been no sentiment In that. We were always hoping to come upon It accidentally, but we never did.

We soon decided that it was a waste of time to eat our meals in a stuffy little dining-room, looking out only at an upward slope of grass, even though it was adorned with two chamois and a Schutzenfest prize. So we had the deal table and the chairs transferred to the more private of the lower balconies, the one that did not communicate with the street; and we found that the Elger and Mettenberg and the Lower Glacier, the whole regal glory of our outlook, added a wonderful savor to our simple repasts, — changed the prosaic process of eating, In fact, into a sort of Magnificat. For It is true that there are places in this world which make even a pagan feel religious, and among all the winds and rains and fields and rivers and beasts and stars which "praise the Lord," there are none which entone their hymns in a voice more insplringly audible than the mountains which lift their snow-crowned heads so near to Heaven. Is It surprising that the Swiss are a simple and an honest race? It seems to me it would be surprising if they were anything else. It must be almost a physical Impossibility to He In the presence of a glacier or on the edge of a precipice. Before these hoary Titans of mountains the complexities of our life fall away from us like dust from a shaken garment. All our artificial distinctions and sophistications become infinitely unimportant. Perhaps ants feel this way in the presence of the Pyramids, or flies who light on the buttresses of Cologne Cathedral.

After all, the Simple Life is not hard to live if you get the right setting for it.

We breakfasted, lunched, drank tea and dined on that balcony till the snow drove us indoors at the end of September. When it rained we pulled the table back into the shelter of the glass at the north end of the veranda. When it was cold, we put on overcoats and golf capes. As we lived with those mountains day by day, and grew to know all their moods and manners, good and bad, as one knows those of one's truly intimates, they became to us, not scenery, but friends and kindred, not anything external, but a part of our larger selves.

We watched the snow line creep up at the beginning of the season and down again at the end. We watched the mountains hide themselves in black lowering clouds, saw them lit up by flashes of lightning, heard them roll back the thunder, saw them repent and hang out a rainbow from the Wetterhorn precipice across the white of the Upper Glacier and down in front of the Mettenberg, the upper peaks shake off their bad humor and emerge from the clouds all wet and shiny, rocks as well as snow, in the happy sunlight. Eiger is the same as ogre, etymologically, I suppose. Anyhow, it means giant, I have somewhere read. But when the wind blew fleecy white clouds across his gray flank and summit, half-hiding, half-revealing, the effect was as alluring as a chiffon veil on a beautiful woman. Then there was the delicate pink Alpenglow to hope for about simultaneously with dessert. Sometimes instead there were eerie green lights among firns and snowfields and white peaks above the Lower Glacier, wherefore one of them is named the Grindelwalder Grunhorn. And later, when the dinner things had been cleared away and the moon came up over the mountain walls of the valley, our world was too beautiful to be true. It was so exquisite that it almost hurt. It induced silence and a sort of swelling of the heart and an overpowering desire to be good. . . o

I did not mean to be betrayed into a rhapsody. Permit me to call attention to the dash of "local color" on our dinner-table furnished by the cow-bell with which we summoned Suzanne from the kitchen. I have that cow-bell still among my most valued possessions. It and the bowl of wild flowers in the center of the table (not to mention the view) quite redeemed the meagerness of the Frau Secundarlehrer's table linen and our consciousness that there were just exactly enough knives, forks, spoons, cups, saucers, plates and glasses to go around once and that they had to be washed between courses! If I wanted to ask anyone to dinner, I would have to send to the village to buy one more of everything!

I have now confided to you nearly everything I know about our housekeeping arrangements, but I have not even mentioned our good cook, Anna. This is not surprising, for she was the most unobtrusive person I ever met in my life. I secured her through an Interlaken employment agency, but she was not at all like the output of an employment agency in our own glorious land of the free. Her voice was so low and she was so timid and deprecatory that it was sometimes extremely difficult to find out what she was talking abouto She was so superlatively meek that she seemed always to be inviting one to ill-treat her. I suppose it was this characteristic which made Suzanne bully her so at first At Nice we had had a cook who kept Suzanne terrorized, drove her out of the kitchen with a poker and reduced her to daily tears. The joy of emancipation from that servitude, combined with Anna's meekness, were evidently too much for her. This time it was Anna who wept. She came to me at the end of a fortnight and told me she would have to leave, that she seemed to be able to please Madame well enough, but that It was quite impossible to satisfy Suzanne. I told her to think better of it, reasoned with Suzanne and appealed to her sympathies (she has the best heart in the world), and the two soon became excellent friends.

Dear little mild, meek, faithful Anna, I do hope she is prospering! She was a widow and supported her three little children on the thirtyfive francs a month she got from me. I put it up to forty-five, unsolicited, from pure sympathy, but I don't suppose she could get more than half of that through the winter. She was bi-lingual, — French and German, — so it was easy for all of us to communicate with her, and she had pretty rosy cheeks and soft, good eyes.

I remember the time I asked her (speaking French) what they called a bureau {commode) In German. "On Vappelle comme qa,*' she murmured flutteringly. *' Comme ga?" I repeated. "But what do they call it?" "On Vappelle comme ca," she said again more flutteringly than before. We bandied this back and forth until I thought we had struck an impasse like that of the famous story where the Englishman asks the Scotchman what there is In haggis. The Scotchman begins to enumerate, "There's leeks intilt," and the Englishman, not understanding the word, interrupts, " But what's ' intilt '? " " I'm telling ye," says the Scotchman, " there's leeks intilt." " But 1 want to know what's 'intilt.'" "If ye'U only keep quiet ye'll know what's Intilt. There's leeks . . ." And so It goes on forever.

Anna and I would probably be doing the same until now, her voice growing more frightened and fluttering each time, had I not lost patience and exclaimed, " Comme QUOI, mon Dieuf Say to me in German, ' There's a bureau in my room/ " By which means I discovered that she meant the same word, commode, was used in German as in French.

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to tell a little more about our landlord and his family. The Herr Secundarlehrer, as might be inferred, taught in the higher grades at the big school-house, with so many lovely mottoes painted outside, at the edge of the villageo He was evidently proud of his learned calling, for his title was Inscribed on his cards and letterheads and invariably appended to his signature. But that, of course, is characteristically German. He was a good-looking man of about thirty, his face a trifle heavy in repose and just a little weak, but lighting up charmingly when he smiled. Like most Swiss, he carried himself rather slouchlly. I don't know how strenuously he may have labored during school hours, but he was nearly always resting out of them. Not so his wife. She was a teacher In the primary school, but that was merely an Incident in her life. She also kept the store and cared for her three small children and took charge of the family housekeeping (with the aid of the little dienst-madchen), did washing and sewing, and along in the late twilight would be standing by a table outside the door of the store (ready for a customer if one should come) ironing till the last ray of light faded. Or she and the dienst-madchen would take hoe and spade and weed the cabbage patch or get the ground ready for planting turnips. While they did that, the mascullne head of the family would sit on a bench smokmgo They don't spoil their women in Switzerland.

That reminds me of the local newspaper we subscribed to. It came three times a week and once in a while contained an illustrated supplement, with stones and poems, which were not exciting, but highly moral. The news part contained, besides local items of occasional Interest, a quaint little summary of what was going on in the world, from the standpoint of the Grindelwald valley, and delicious editorials on such burning topics of the day as Love, Shakespeare, or the Sphere of Woman.

It was from the last that we culled the useful phrase, "Housely Herd." I was reading it aloud to the assembled family, translating Into English as I went, "The good God is not pleased," I read (that editor was always well posted as to the Almighty's views and sentiments)— "The good God is not pleased when women leave the housely herd and force themselves into business and professions for which He never intended them." Now of course I should have translated " haiisUcher Herd," " domestic hearth," but I honestly thought It was housely herd at the moment, and the phrase so beautifully expressed the masculine attitude of this pastoral people toward their women that it ought to have been true if it wasn't. We therefore put it into our daily vocabulary, and the feminine part of the family joyously referred to Itself as the Housely Herd all the rest of the season.

IV

^TpHE Younger Babe made friends with an Italian workman engaged in the construction of a chalet half a mile up the road and was presented by him with a piece of wall paper about a foot square. He bore it home in triumph and asked me to paste it up on the wall above his bed. The comfort he took in that reminder of what he regarded as civilization was really touching. He said he didn't mind the house so much now that it had some wall paper in it.