A Tramp Abroad — Volume 05

by Mark Twain

  Our talk was mostly anticipatory of what we should see on the down-gradeof the Bruenig, by and by, after we should pass the summit. All ourfriends in Lucerne had said that to look down upon Meiringen, and therushing blue-gray river Aar, and the broad level green valley; andacross at the mighty Alpine precipices that rise straight up to theclouds out of that valley; and up at the microscopic chalets perchedupon the dizzy eaves of those precipices and winking dimly and fitfullythrough the drifting veil of vapor; and still up and up, at the superbOltschiback and the other beautiful cascades that leap from those ruggedheights, robed in powdery spray, ruffled with foam, and girdled withrainbows--to look upon these things, they say, was to look upon the lastpossibility of the sublime and the enchanting. Therefore, as I say,we talked mainly of these coming wonders; if we were conscious of anyimpatience, it was to get there in favorable season; if we felt anyanxiety, it was that the day might remain perfect, and enable us to seethose marvels at their best.

  As we approached the Kaiserstuhl, a part of the harness gave way.

  We were in distress for a moment, but only a moment. It was thefore-and-aft gear that was broken--the thing that leads aft from theforward part of the horse and is made fast to the thing that pulls thewagon. In America this would have been a heavy leathern strap; but, allover the continent it is nothing but a piece of rope the size ofyour little finger--clothes-line is what it is. Cabs use it, privatecarriages, freight-carts and wagons, all sorts of vehicles have it. InMunich I afterward saw it used on a long wagon laden with fifty-fourhalf-barrels of beer; I had before noticed that the cabs in Heidelbergused it--not new rope, but rope that had been in use since Abraham'stime --and I had felt nervous, sometimes, behind it when the cab wastearing down a hill. But I had long been accustomed to it now, and hadeven become afraid of the leather strap which belonged in its place. Ourdriver got a fresh piece of clothes-line out of his locker and repairedthe break in two minutes.

  So much for one European fashion. Every country has its own ways. It mayinterest the reader to know how they "put horses to" on the continent.The man stands up the horses on each side of the thing that projectsfrom the front end of the wagon, and then throws the tangled mess ofgear forward through a ring, and hauls it aft, and passes the otherthing through the other ring and hauls it aft on the other side of theother horse, opposite to the first one, after crossing them and bringingthe loose end back, and then buckles the other thing underneath thehorse, and takes another thing and wraps it around the thing I spokeof before, and puts another thing over each horse's head, with broadflappers to it to keep the dust out of his eyes, and puts the iron thingin his mouth for him to grit his teeth on, uphill, and brings the endsof these things aft over his back, after buckling another one aroundunder his neck to hold his head up, and hitching another thing ona thing that goes over his shoulders to keep his head up when he isclimbing a hill, and then takes the slack of the thing which I mentioneda while ago, and fetches it aft and makes it fast to the thing thatpulls the wagon, and hands the other things up to the driver to steerwith. I never have buckled up a horse myself, but I do not think we doit that way.

  We had four very handsome horses, and the driver was very proud of histurnout. He would bowl along on a reasonable trot, on the highway, butwhen he entered a village he did it on a furious run, and accompanied itwith a frenzy of ceaseless whip-crackings that sounded like volleys ofmusketry. He tore through the narrow streets and around the sharp curveslike a moving earthquake, showering his volleys as he went, and beforehim swept a continuous tidal wave of scampering children, ducks, cats,and mothers clasping babies which they had snatched out of the way ofthe coming destruction; and as this living wave washed aside, along thewalls, its elements, being safe, forgot their fears and turned theiradmiring gaze upon that gallant driver till he thundered around the nextcurve and was lost to sight.

  He was a great man to those villagers, with his gaudy clothes and histerrific ways. Whenever he stopped to have his cattle watered and fedwith loaves of bread, the villagers stood around admiring him whilehe swaggered about, the little boys gazed up at his face with humblehomage, and the landlord brought out foaming mugs of beer and conversedproudly with him while he drank. Then he mounted his lofty box, swunghis explosive whip, and away he went again, like a storm. I had notseen anything like this before since I was a boy, and the stage used toflourish the village with the dust flying and the horn tooting.

  When we reached the base of the Kaiserstuhl, we took two more horses; wehad to toil along with difficulty for an hour and a half or two hours,for the ascent was not very gradual, but when we passed the backbone andapproached the station, the driver surpassed all his previous efforts inthe way of rush and clatter. He could not have six horses all the time,so he made the most of his chance while he had it.

  Up to this point we had been in the heart of the William Tell region.The hero is not forgotten, by any means, or held in doubtful veneration.His wooden image, with his bow drawn, above the doors of taverns, was afrequent feature of the scenery.

  About noon we arrived at the foot of the Bruenig Pass, and made atwo-hour stop at the village hotel, another of those clean, pretty, andthoroughly well-kept inns which are such an astonishment to peoplewho are accustomed to hotels of a dismally different pattern in remotecountry-towns. There was a lake here, in the lap of the great mountains,the green slopes that rose toward the lower crags were graced withscattered Swiss cottages nestling among miniature farms and gardens,and from out a leafy ambuscade in the upper heights tumbled a brawlingcataract.

  Carriage after carriage, laden with tourists and trunks, arrived, andthe quiet hotel was soon populous. We were early at the table d'hote andsaw the people all come in. There were twenty-five, perhaps. They wereof various nationalities, but we were the only Americans. Next to me satan English bride, and next to her sat her new husband, whom she called"Neddy," though he was big enough and stalwart enough to be entitled tohis full name. They had a pretty little lovers' quarrel over what winethey should have. Neddy was for obeying the guide-book and taking thewine of the country; but the bride said:

  "What, that nahsty stuff!"

  "It isn't nahsty, pet, it's quite good."

  "It IS nahsty."

  "No, it ISN'T nahsty."

  "It's Oful nahsty, Neddy, and I shahn't drink it."

  Then the question was, what she must have. She said he knew very wellthat she never drank anything but champagne.

  She added:

  "You know very well papa always has champagne on his table, and I'vealways been used to it."

  Neddy made a playful pretense of being distressed about the expense,and this amused her so much that she nearly exhausted herself withlaughter--and this pleased HIM so much that he repeated his jest acouple of times, and added new and killing varieties to it. When thebride finally recovered, she gave Neddy a love-box on the arm with herfan, and said with arch severity:

  "Well, you would HAVE me--nothing else would do--so you'll have to makethe best of a bad bargain. DO order the champagne, I'm Oful dry."

  So with a mock groan which made her laugh again, Neddy ordered thechampagne.

  The fact that this young woman had never moistened the selvedge edge ofher soul with a less plebeian tipple than champagne, had a marked andsubduing effect on Harris. He believed she belonged to the royal family.But I had my doubts.

  We heard two or three different languages spoken by people at thetable and guessed out the nationalities of most of the guests to oursatisfaction, but we failed with an elderly gentleman and his wife anda young girl who sat opposite us, and with a gentleman of aboutthirty-five who sat three seats beyond Harris. We did not hear any ofthese speak. But finally the last-named gentleman left while we were notnoticing, but we looked up as he reached the far end of the table. Hestopped there a moment, and made his toilet with a pocket comb. So hewas a German; or else he had lived in German hotels long enough to catchthe fashion. When the elderly couple and the young girl rose to leave,they b
owed respectfully to us. So they were Germans, too. This nationalcustom is worth six of the other one, for export.

  After dinner we talked with several Englishmen, and they inflamed ourdesire to a hotter degree than ever, to see the sights of Meiringen fromthe heights of the Bruenig Pass. They said the view was marvelous, andthat one who had seen it once could never forget it. They also spoke ofthe romantic nature of the road over the pass, and how in one place ithad been cut through a flank of the solid rock, in such a way that themountain overhung the tourist as he passed by; and they furthermore saidthat the sharp turns in the road and the abruptness of the descent wouldafford us a thrilling experience, for we should go down in a flyinggallop and seem to be spinning around the rings of a whirlwind, like adrop of whiskey descending the spirals of a corkscrew.

  I got all the information out of these gentlemen that we could need; andthen, to make everything complete, I asked them if a body could get holdof a little fruit and milk here and there, in case of necessity. Theythrew up their hands in speechless intimation that the road was simplypaved with refreshment-peddlers. We were impatient to get away, now, andthe rest of our two-hour stop rather dragged. But finally the set timearrived and we began the ascent. Indeed it was a wonderful road. It wassmooth, and compact, and clean, and the side next the precipices wasguarded all along by dressed stone posts about three feet high, placedat short distances apart. The road could not have been better built ifNapoleon the First had built it. He seems to have been the introducer ofthe sort of roads which Europe now uses. All literature which describeslife as it existed in England, France, and Germany up to the closeof the last century, is filled with pictures of coaches and carriageswallowing through these three countries in mud and slush half-wheeldeep; but after Napoleon had floundered through a conquered kingdom hegenerally arranged things so that the rest of the world could followdry-shod.

  We went on climbing, higher and higher, and curving hither and thither,in the shade of noble woods, and with a rich variety and profusion ofwild flowers all about us; and glimpses of rounded grassy backbonesbelow us occupied by trim chalets and nibbling sheep, and other glimpsesof far lower altitudes, where distance diminished the chalets to toysand obliterated the sheep altogether; and every now and then someermined monarch of the Alps swung magnificently into view for a moment,then drifted past an intervening spur and disappeared again.

  It was an intoxicating trip altogether; the exceeding sense ofsatisfaction that follows a good dinner added largely to the enjoyment;the having something especial to look forward to and muse about, likethe approaching grandeurs of Meiringen, sharpened the zest. Smokingwas never so good before, solid comfort was never solider; we lay backagainst the thick cushions silent, meditative, steeped in felicity. ** * * * * * * I rubbed my eyes, opened them, and started. I had beendreaming I was at sea, and it was a thrilling surprise to wake up andfind land all around me. It took me a couple seconds to "come to," asyou may say; then I took in the situation. The horses were drinking ata trough in the edge of a town, the driver was taking beer, Harris wassnoring at my side, the courier, with folded arms and bowed head, wassleeping on the box, two dozen barefooted and bareheaded children weregathered about the carriage, with their hands crossed behind, gazing upwith serious and innocent admiration at the dozing tourists baking therein the sun. Several small girls held night-capped babies nearly as bigas themselves in their arms, and even these fat babies seemed to take asort of sluggish interest in us.

  We had slept an hour and a half and missed all the scenery! I did notneed anybody to tell me that. If I had been a girl, I could have cursedfor vexation. As it was, I woke up the agent and gave him a piece ofmy mind. Instead of being humiliated, he only upbraided me for beingso wanting in vigilance. He said he had expected to improve his mind bycoming to Europe, but a man might travel to the ends of the earth withme and never see anything, for I was manifestly endowed with the verygenius of ill luck. He even tried to get up some emotion about thatpoor courier, who never got a chance to see anything, on account of myheedlessness. But when I thought I had borne about enough of this kindof talk, I threatened to make Harris tramp back to the summit and make areport on that scenery, and this suggestion spiked his battery.

  We drove sullenly through Brienz, dead to the seductions of itsbewildering array of Swiss carvings and the clamorous HOO-hooing ofits cuckoo clocks, and had not entirely recovered our spirits when werattled across a bridge over the rushing blue river and entered thepretty town of Interlaken. It was just about sunset, and we had made thetrip from Lucerne in ten hours.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  [The Jungfrau, the Bride, and the Piano]

  We located ourselves at the Jungfrau Hotel, one of those hugeestablishments which the needs of modern travel have created in everyattractive spot on the continent. There was a great gathering at dinner,and, as usual, one heard all sorts of languages.

  The table d'hote was served by waitresses dressed in the quaint andcomely costume of the Swiss peasants. This consists of a simple gros delaine, trimmed with ashes of roses, with overskirt of scare bleu ventresaint gris, cut bias on the off-side, with facings of petit polonaiseand narrow insertions of pate de foie gras backstitched to the miseen sce`ne in the form of a jeu d'esprit. It gives to the wearer asingularly piquant and alluring aspect.

  One of these waitresses, a woman of forty, had side-whiskers reachinghalf-way down her jaws. They were two fingers broad, dark in color,pretty thick, and the hairs were an inch long. One sees many women onthe continent with quite conspicuous mustaches, but this was the onlywoman I saw who had reached the dignity of whiskers.

  After dinner the guests of both sexes distributed themselves about thefront porches and the ornamental grounds belonging to the hotel, toenjoy the cool air; but, as the twilight deepened toward darkness, theygathered themselves together in that saddest and solemnest and mostconstrained of all places, the great blank drawing-room which is thechief feature of all continental summer hotels. There they groupedthemselves about, in couples and threes, and mumbled in bated voices,and looked timid and homeless and forlorn.

  There was a small piano in this room, a clattery, wheezy, asthmaticthing, certainly the very worst miscarriage in the way of a piano thatthe world has seen. In turn, five or six dejected and homesick ladiesapproached it doubtingly, gave it a single inquiring thump, andretired with the lockjaw. But the boss of that instrument was to come,nevertheless; and from my own country--from Arkansaw.

  She was a brand-new bride, innocent, girlish, happy in herself and hergrave and worshiping stripling of a husband; she was about eighteen,just out of school, free from affectations, unconscious of thatpassionless multitude around her; and the very first time she smotethat old wreck one recognized that it had met its destiny. Her striplingbrought an armful of aged sheet-music from their room--for this bridewent "heeled," as you might say--and bent himself lovingly over and gotready to turn the pages.

  The bride fetched a swoop with her fingers from one end of the keyboardto the other, just to get her bearings, as it were, and you could seethe congregation set their teeth with the agony of it. Then, withoutany more preliminaries, she turned on all the horrors of the "Battle ofPrague," that venerable shivaree, and waded chin-deep in the blood ofthe slain. She made a fair and honorable average of two false notes inevery five, but her soul was in arms and she never stopped to correct.The audience stood it with pretty fair grit for a while, but when thecannonade waxed hotter and fiercer, and the discord average rose tofour in five, the procession began to move. A few stragglers held theirground ten minutes longer, but when the girl began to wring the trueinwardness out of the "cries of the wounded," they struck their colorsand retired in a kind of panic.

  There never was a completer victory; I was the only non-combatant lefton the field. I would not have deserted my countrywoman anyhow, butindeed I had no desires in that direction. None of us like mediocrity,but we all reverence perfection. This girl's music was perfection in itsway; it was the worst musi
c that had ever been achieved on our planet bya mere human being.

  I moved up close, and never lost a strain. When she got through, Iasked her to play it again. She did it with a pleased alacrity and aheightened enthusiasm. She made it ALL discords, this time. She got anamount of anguish into the cries of the wounded that shed a new light onhuman suffering. She was on the war-path all the evening. All the time,crowds of people gathered on the porches and pressed their noses againstthe windows to look and marvel, but the bravest never ventured in.The bride went off satisfied and happy with her young fellow, when herappetite was finally gorged, and the tourists swarmed in again.

  What a change has come over Switzerland, and in fact all Europe, duringthis century! Seventy or eighty years ago Napoleon was the only man inEurope who could really be called a traveler; he was the only man whohad devoted his attention to it and taken a powerful interest in it; hewas the only man who had traveled extensively; but now everybody goeseverywhere; and Switzerland, and many other regions which were unvisitedand unknown remotenesses a hundred years ago, are in our days a buzzinghive of restless strangers every summer. But I digress.