AT a period when everybody travels, and the yearly number of English-speaking visitors in Switzerland is counted by the hundred thousand, the writer who presumes to offer the long-suffering public a book of Swiss impressions would seem to be courting the yawn reserved for the Nth repetition of the Utterly Familiar. But the discoverer of a new country still has, I believe, some privileges. It might even be considered selfish of one who had found the way back to Arcadia to keep the sailing directions secret. And though there are countless tourists who know the Swiss hotels and mountain railroads, numerous villa people well versed in the tennis and golf facilities of Montreux or Lucerne, and a goodly company of Alpinists who can tell you all about guides and ropes and the ascent of the Matterhorn, there never was anybody who got out of a Swiss summer precisely what we did, or who, in fact, knows our own particular private Switzerland at all.
In the beginning, there were but four—no, five—of us,—Belle Soeur and my two Babes and I and our good French Suzanne, who, besides looking out for the Younger Babe, performed various useful functions about the house. After some six weeks Frater and his college chum, Antonio, dropped in on us from their commencement across the sea, and a few days later the Mother.
Now the Husband-and-Father, who is also the brother of Belle Soeur, and incidentally a naval officer, had been ordered from the Mediterranean, where he had been cruising, to the Philippines, which are not so nice, especially for Babes, particularly in summer. So, instead of following him when we gave up our little villa on the hills above Nice the first of June, we moved into Switzerland. None of us had ever been there before except the Chronicler and the Mother, who had spent the usual sort of summer there when the Chronicler was a small child. We knew we wanted to be high enough for bracing air, as far as possible from tourist centers and among the really and truly great and lofty mountains. So we went to Interlaken for a start and hunted around among the neighboring mountain villages till we found what we were after. And on the tenth day we moved into the Châlet Edelweiss, which lies about a mile and a half from the Grindelwald station on the road to the Upper Glacier, and started housekeeping.
It did not seem very propitious that first day. It was raining dismally when we got off the train; the roads were full of mud, and the clouds had rolled down over the mountains, so that nothing could be seen but the big brick Bear Hotel and the ugly village street lined with shops and restaurants. I tried to remember how beautiful it had been the day I was in Grindelwald house-hunting, and the others tried to act as if they believed what I was telling them about it, but I knew they didn’t, and they knew I knew they didn’t. When we got to the house, it, too, was depressing. On the bright sunshiny day when I had seen it before, it had looked primitive enough, but now it seemed aggressively barren and comfortless. Was it possible that we could live in this barn for four months? I could see the effort the family were making to act as if they liked it—all but the Younger Babe, who made no effort at all, but got frankly quivery about the lower lip and begged to be taken back to the Villetta Valentine at Nice or even to the hotel in Interlaken. “I don’t like this house!” he said. “It’s an ugly house. It’s not a happy little home. It’s ugly. It hasn’t got any ‘fings’ in it. It hasn’t even got any paper on the wall!”
Now, this was quite true. Walls, ceilings and floors were all of the same, well-scrubbed, unpainted pine boards, and “fings” were limited to strictly essential furniture of the plainest type. And it’s wonderful how little is strictly essential when you get down to it. But at the age of three material accessories are apt to assume an exaggerated importance. Every infant is by nature a snob till the tendency is reasoned or spanked out of him.
With wholly artificial buoyancy, we wandered over the house, apportioning beds and rooms and hunting for something to cheer up the Babe. We found it to a certain extent in what he dubbed the two “Charmantes bêtes” which stood in the dining-room. They were stuffed chamois, and all summer we intended asking if the Herr Secundärlehrer had shot them himself, but somehow we got away without settling the question. A wreath awarded to him as first prize at a Schützenfest, which hung framed on the wall, made it seem quite likely that he did shoot them. These two bêtes formed, with a melodion, a narrow deal table and six chairs, the furniture of the dining-room. The rooms had only been differentiated into dining-room, sitting-room and bedrooms for our benefit. The furniture had all been jumbled up when I saw the house before, and every room except the kitchen had had one or more beds in it.
I wonder if I can make you see the Châlet Edelweiss? It is the regulation Oberland châlet of the better type,—exactly like the tooth-pick boxes if you don’t know it otherwise. The basement is of whitewashed concrete and contains a small grocery store kept by the Frau Secundärlehrer when she isn’t teaching school or farming, and which she said she was sure would not annoy us because it was so very small and hardly anybody ever came there to buy anything. There isn’t any basement at the back of the house because the sloping hillside brings the ground to the level of the kitchen and dining-room windows. Our part of the châlet consists of two stories of unpainted wood, surmounted by a big red roof. The shutters are painted bright green. At both ends of the house are broad two-storied balconies. The only staircases are on the balconies. There are moments when this is inconvenient. Above the second-story windows on the front of the house runs a legend in large black Gothic letters, saying that the Secundärlehrer and his wife caused this house to be built by such and such a master carpenter. Some of the houses in the village have verses or mottoes painted on them, and we always regretted a little that ours did not. It was rather nice to see the wife’s name associated with the husband’s in this matter. Doubtless her dowry had helped build the house, certainly her industry was helping to maintain it. But it was rather decent of him to recognize the fact.
The châlet has been built only two years, so its timbers have not acquired the rich sepia and burnt-Sienna tones which make the old ones such a joy to the eye. But the new kind is better to live in!
The house stands just above the highroad. Behind it the green Alpine meadows roll steeply upward to the Faulhorn ridge, which separates Grindelwald valley from the depression occupied by Lake Brienz. There are between four and five thousand upward feet in this direction, we being at about the four-thousand-foot level ourselves. Below the road, the land runs down rapidly to the rushing Lütschine, the stream which drains the glaciers. We can hear the roar of the water plainly, especially at night. From the other side of the stream rise almost precipitously the rocky cliffs of the Mettenberg, getting up about ten thousand feet. To the left the gleaming snow and ice of the Upper Glacier, then the square gray, snow-capped mass of the Wetterhorn. To the right the Lower Glacier, with broad white firns and snow peaks, and to the right of the glacier the knife-edged Eiger. These three giants fill up our whole immediate foreground. Far to the right is the saddle-like depression known as the Kleine Scheidegg, where the mountain railroad runs over into the Lauterbrunnen Valley, and to the left of the Wetterhorn, the narrow end of the Grindelwald Valley is closed by a similar saddle,—the Grosse Scheidegg, which separates it from the Rosenlaui Valley. To the extreme right is the rift in the mountains through which the Lütschine escapes and the railroad gets down to Interlaken. But it was all veiled in mist the first day. We couldn’t see fifty feet in any direction. There were some few tantalizing glimpses as the clouds began to break apart about sunset. But the family had to take on faith the “glorious views” I had described till next morning.
The one heart-warming spot in the chilly interior of the châlet that first afternoon was the kitchen, where the Frau Secundärlehrer, in the kindness of her heart, assisted by her little Dienst-Mädchen, was beating up the eggs and milk, which I had asked her to get for me, into an omelet. We really had no use for an omelet at half-past four in the afternoon, but we would not have dampened her hospitable zeal by letting her see our lack of appetite. So we sat down dutifully at the deal table between the melodion and the stuffed chamois and ate it. Then the Frau and her handmaiden bade us good-night and left us—masters of all we surveyed, including a fine crop of partially repressed blues.
Who would ever have guessed this was the opening scene of the finest summer that ever happened?