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my alpine jubilee 1851 1907

by Harrison Frederic

Bibliography » Early printed books » Catalogs

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE ALPS ONCE MORE (A letter published by ' The Times' in 1906.) Axenstein : Sept. 20, 1906 Here, in Axenstein, in view of the historic cradle of Swiss liberty, and amidst some of the sublimest scenes in Europe, we have enjoyed the pleas you have made for the preservation of these wonderful works of Nature, and for the due use of them by foreign tourists. It is now exactly fifty-five years since I first saw this lake and these crags ; and in my old age I return to them and find them somewhat changed in the half-centurythough the change is the work of man, no wise the work of Nature. Nature is as lovely, as sublime, as ever, and the railways, pensions and grand hotels, motors and circular trippers, are after all but scratches on the surface and flies upon thegranite rock. Will you allow me to jot down a few thoughts from the experience of more than half a century ? It is common observation that in many parts of Switzerland, and those some of the most interesting and beautiful, the English are now but seldom to be found. In my young days the English were about three-fourths of the travellers. To-day, in some of the most beautiful haunts, they are rather one-fifth, or even one-tenth. Of course other nations, especially the German and Italian, have gained in half a century enormous facilities of access, and also in wealth, energy, and ambition. And it is often said that Switzerland is exhausted, connu, hackneyed to Englishmen. But this is not the truth, or the whole truth. It cannot be ; for if most English men and women of leisure and means at middle age have already visited the great centres of the Alps, the younger generation has not had time or opportunity yet to do so, and the vast increase of facilities for tours must have tapped an area of myriads of new tourists. ...

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...I had to play the tramp as I used to do of old. Plain living and high climbing are only for hardy youth. We must put up with what we cannot prevent, whatever the shock to our feelings. The D 34 MY ALPINE JUBILEE Alps used to be the British Playground. They are now a German Kurhaus. Britain has indeed taken a back seat in the pit or the shilling gallery. It contributes still tennis, golf, five-o'clock tea, and the smoking-jacket which garment plethoric bankers from Ham- burg and nervous pork-packers from Chicago all feel it a solemn duty to wear at dinner. The glory, charm, bracing air of the Alps are untouched. 1 have found here a nest where we will come and rest, if we live to see another year a haven which combines the bloom ot Italy and the panorama of the Mountains. There we will come and read again Voltaire's c Letters, ' Rousseau's whining, Gibbon's ' Memoir ' and Byron's ' Diary ' and 'Poems. ' We will read all these, with Ruskin, and Manzoni, and Goethe. And then we shall feel...