A NIGHT ON A MOUNTAIN

There are not many English abroad this morning on the top of the hill. In fact, unless they had passed the night here it would not be easy for them to present themselves, seeing that San Salvatore, though a very modest mound, standing as it does in the neighbourhood of the Alps, is high enough to lift its crest out of the curtain of mist that lies over the lower world. Lugano, its lake, and its many small towns as like each other when seen from a distance as if they had been turned out of a mould are understood to lie at some uncertain depth beneath the mist. In truth, unless they have wholly disappeared in the night, we know that they are there, for we walked up in the late afternoon with intent to sleep here.

The people of Lugano, more especially the hotel-keepers, were much exercised at this undertaking. Nobody in recent recollection had been known to spend the night on San Salvatore, and if the eccentricity were permitted and proved enjoyable, no one could say that it might not spread, leaving empty beds at Lugano. There was, accordingly, much stress laid on possible dangers and certain discomforts. Peradventure there was no bed; assuredly it would be hard and damp and dirty. There would be nothing to eat, nor even to drink; and in short, if ever there was madness characteristic of the English abroad, here was the mid March of its season.

But the undertaking was not nearly so mad as it looked. I had been up Salvatore on the previous day and surveyed the land. It is a place that still holds high rank in the Romish calendar of Church celebrations. Many years ago a chapel was built on its summit, and pilgrimages instituted. These take place at Ascension and Pentecost, when the hillside swarms with devout sons and daughters of Italy, and the music of high mass breaks the silence of the mountains. Even pilgrims must eat and drink and sleep, and shortly after the chapel was built there rose up at its feet, in a sheltered nook, a little house, a chapel-of-ease in the sense that here was sold wine of the country, cheese of the district, and jambon reputed to come across the seas from distant “Yorck.” A spare bedroom was also established for the accommodation of the officiating priests, and it was on the temporary reversion of this apartment that I had counted in making those arrangements that Lugano held to be hopelessly heretical.

When, on my first visit to the top of San Salvatore, I reached the pilgrimage chapel, I found an old gentleman standing at the door of the hostelry by which the pilgrim must needs pass on his way to the chapel a probably undesigned but profitable arrangement, since it brings directly under his notice the possibility of purchasing “vins du pays, pain, fromage, saucissons, and jambon d’Yorck.”

When I broached the subject of the night’s entertainment the landlord was a little taken aback, and evidently inclined to dwell upon those inconveniences of which Lugano had made so much. But the more he thought of it, the more he liked the idea. As I subsequently learned, the hope of his youth, the sustenance of his manhood, and the dream of his old age was to see his little hut develop into a grand hotel, with a porter in the hall, an army of waiters bustling about, and himself in the receipt of custom. It was a very small beginning that two English people should propose to lodge with him for a night. Still, it was something, and everything must have a beginning. Monte Generoso, among the clouds on the other side of the lake, began in that way; and look at it now with its chambres at eight francs a day, its table d’hote at five francs, and its bougies dispensed at their weight in silver!

“Si, signor”; he thought it might be done. He was sure nay, he was positive.

As the picture of the hotel of the future glowed in his mind he became enthusiastic, and proposed that we should view the apartments. The bedroom we found sufficiently roomy, with both fireplace and one of the two windows bricked up to avoid draughts. The mattress of the bed, it is true, was stuffed with chopped straw, and was not free from suspicion of harbouring rats. But there was a gorgeous counterpane, whose many colours would have excited the envy of Joseph’s brethren had their pilgrimage chanced to lead them in this direction. The floor was of cement, and great patches of damp displayed themselves on the walls. Over the bed hung a peaceful picture of a chubby boy clasping a crook to his breast, and exchanging glances of maudlin sentimentality with a sheep that skipped at his side. The damp had eaten up one of the legs of mutton, and the sheep went on three legs. But nothing could exceed the more than human tenderness with which it regarded the chubby boy with the crook.

We soon settled about the bed, and there remained only the question of food. On this point also our host displayed even an increase of airy confidence. What would signor? There were sausage, ham of York, and eggs, the latter capable of presentation in divers shapes.

This, it must be admitted, engendered a feeling of discouragement. We had two days earlier tasted the sausage of the country when served up in a first-class hotel as garnish to a dish of spinach. It is apparently made of pieces of gristle, and when liberated from the leather case that enshrines it, crumbles like a piece of old wall. Sausage was clearly out of the question, and the ham of York does not thrive out of its own country, acquiring a foreign flavour of salted sawdust. Eggs are very well in their way, but man cannot live on eggs alone.

Our host was a man full of resources. Why should we not bring the materials for dinner from Lugano? He would undertake to cook them, whatever they might be. This was a happy thought that clenched the bargain. We undertook to arrive on the following day, bringing our sheaves with us, in the shape of a supply of veal cutlets.

The ostensible object of spending a night on San Salvatore is to see the sun set and rise. The mountain is not high, just touching three thousand feet, an easy ascent of two hours. But it is a place glorious in the early morning and solemn in the quiet evening. Below lies the lake of Lugano, its full length visible. Straight before you, looking east, is the long arm that stretches to Porlezza, with its gentle curves where the mountains stand and cool their feet in the blue water. To the west, beyond a cluster of small and nameless lakes that lie on the plain, we see the other arm of the lake, with Ponte Tresa nestling upon it, and still farther west the sun gleams on the waters of Lago Maggiore. Above Porlezza is Monte Legnone, and far away on the left glint the snow peaks of the Bernina. High in the north, above the red tiles and white walls of the town of Lugano are the two peaks of Monte Camoghe, flanked by something that seems a dark cloud in the blue sky, but which our host says is the ridge of St. Gothard. The sun sets behind the Alps of the Valais among which towers the Matterhorn and gleam the everlasting snows of Monte Rosa.

These form the framework of a picture which contains all the softness and richness of the beauty of a land where the grape and the fig grow, and where in these October days roses are in full bloom, and héliotropes sweeten every breath of air. Yesterday had opened splendidly, the morning sun rising over the fair scene and bringing out every point. But as we toiled up the hill this afternoon, carrying the cutlets, the sun had capriciously disappeared. The mountains were hid in clouds, and the lake, having no blue sky to reflect, had turned green with chagrin. There was little hope of visible sunset; but there was a prospect of sunrise, and certainty of a snug dinner in circumstances to which the novelty of the surroundings would lend a strange charm.

It was rather disappointing on arriving to find that our acquaintance of yesterday had disappeared. I have reason to believe the excitement of our proposed visit had been too much for him, and that he had found it desirable to retire to rest in the more prosaic habitation of the family down in the town. He had selected as substitute the most stalwart and capable of his sons, a man of the mature age of thirty-five. This person had the family attribute of readiness of resource and perfect confidence. The enthusiasm which had been too dangerously excited in the breast of his aged parent had been communicated to him. He was ready to go anywhere and cook anything, and having as a preliminary arranged a napkin under his arm, went bustling about the table disturbing imaginary flies and flicking off supposititious crumbs, as he had seen the waiter do in the restaurant at the hotel down in the town.

“Signor had brought the cutlets? Si, and beautiful they were! How would signor like to have them done? Thus, or thus, or thus?” in a variety of ways which, whilst their recital far exceeded my limited knowledge of the language, filled me with fullest confidence in Giacommetti.

That was his name, he told me in one of his bursts of confidence; and a very pretty name it is, though for brevity’s sake it may be convenient hereafter to particularise him by the initial letter.

As I was scarcely in a position to decide among the various appetising ways of cooking suggested by G., I said I would leave it to him.

But, then, the signor could not make a dinner of cutlets. What else would he be so good as to like? Sausage, ham of York, and eggs eggs a la coque or presented as omelettes. No? Then signor would commence with soup? Finally potage au riz was selected out of the embarrassment of riches poured at our feet by the enthusiastic G.

There being yet an hour to dinner, we ascended the few steps that led to the summit of the hill on which the chapel is perched, a marvel to all new-comers by the highway of the Lake. The door was open, and we walked in. There was no light burning on the altar, nor any water in the stone basin by the door. But there was all the apparatus of worship the gaudy toyshop above the grand altar, the tiny side chapels, with their pictures of the dying Saviour, and the confessional box, now thick with dust, and echoless of sob of penitent or counsel of confessor. It was evidently a poorly endowed chapel, the tinsel adornments being of the cheapest and the candles of the thinnest. But in some past generation a good Catholic had bestowed upon it an altarcloth of richest silk, daintily embroidered. The colours had faded out of the flowers, and the golden hue of the cloth had been grievously dimmed. Still it remained the one rich genuine piece of workmanship in a chapel disfigured by an overbearing hankering after paper flowers and tinsel.

Early the next morning, whilst reposing under the magnificent counterpane on the bed of chopped straw, I was awakened by hearing the chapel bell ring for mass. I thought it must be the ghost of some disembodied priest, who had come up through the darkness of the night and the scarcely more luminous mist of the morning to say a mass for his own disturbed soul. But, as I presently learned, they were human hands that pulled the bell-rope, and a living priest said mass all by himself in this lonely chapel whilst dawn was breaking over a sleeping world.

I saw him some hours later sitting on the kitchen dresser, in the sanctum where G. worked the mysteries of his art. He was resting his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward, and had in his mouth a large pipe, from which he vigorously puffed. I found him a very cheerful old gentleman, by no means unduly oppressed with the solemnity of this early mass in the lonely chapel. He lived down at Barbeng, at the back of the hill, and had come up this morning purely as a matter of business, and in partial fulfilment of a contract entered into with one of his parishioners, whose husband had been lost at sea whilst yet they were only twelve months married. The widow had scraped together sufficient money to have a due number of masses said on San Salvatore for the repose of the soul of her young husband. So once a week, whilst the contract ran, the old priest made his way up through the morning mist, tolled the bell, said the mass, and thereafter comforted himself with a voluminous pipe seated on the dresser in G.’s kitchen.

This is a digression, and I confess I have rather lingered over it, as it kept the soup waiting.

The preparation was brought in in a neat white bowl gracefully carried aloft by G., who still insisted upon going about with a napkin under his arm. Everything was in order except the soup. I like to think that the failure may have been entirely due to myself. G. had proposed quite a dozen soups, and I had ignorantly chosen the only one he could not make. The liquid was brown and greasy, smelling horribly of a something which in recognition of G.’s good intention I will call butter. The rice, which formed a principal component part, presented itself in conglomerate masses, as if G., before placing it in the tureen, had squeezed portions of it in his hand.

Perhaps he had, for he was not in the humour to spare himself trouble in his effort to make the banquet a success.

We helped ourselves plentifully to the contents of the tureen, which was much easier to do than to settle the disposition of the soup. G. was in an ecstasy of delight at things having gone on so well thus far. He positively pervaded the place, nervously changing the napkin from arm to arm, and frantically flicking off imaginary crumbs. At length it happily occurred to him that it would be well to go and see after the cutlets. Whereupon we emptied the soup back into the tureen, and when G. returned were discovered wiping our lips with the air of people who had already dined.

After all, there were the cutlets, and G. had not indulged in exaggerated approval of their excellence when in a state of nature. They were those dainty cuts into which veal naturally seems to resolve itself in butcher’s shops on the Continent. We observed with concern that they looked a little burned in places when they came to the table, and the same attraction of variety was maintained in the disposition of salt. There were large districts in the area of the cutlet absolutely free from savouring. But then you came upon a small portion where the salt lay in drifts, and thus the average was preserved. We were very hungry and ate the cutlets, which, with an allowance of bread, made up the dinner. There were some potatoes, fried with great skill, amid much of the compound we had agreed to call butter. But, as I explained to G. in reply to a deprecatory gesture when he took away the floating mass untouched, I have not for more than three years been able to eat a potato. One of my relations was, about that date, choked by a piece of potato, and since then I have never touched them, especially when fried in a great deal of butter.

We had some cheese, for which Earl Granville’s family motto would serve as literal description. You might bend it, but could not break it. I never was partial to bent cheese, but we made a fair appearance with this part of the feast, owing to the arrival of G.’s dog, a miserable-looking cur, attracted to the banquet-hall by unwonted savours. He seemed to like the cheese; and G., when he came in with the coffee, was more than ever pleased with our appreciation of the good things provided for us.

“Rosbif and chiss ha!” he said, breaking forth into English, and smiling knowingly upon us.

He felt he had probed the profoundest depths of the Englishman’s gastronomical weakness.

With the appearance of the coffee the real pleasure of the evening commenced. Along nearly the whole of one side of the banquet-hall ran a fireplace, a recess of the proportions of a spare bedroom in an ordinary English house. There were no “dogs” or other contrivance for minimising the spontaneity of a fire. There are granite quarries near, and these had contributed an enormous block which formed a hearth raised about six inches above the level of the floor. On this an armful of brushwood was placed; and the match applied, it began to burn with cheerful crackling laughter and pleasant flame, filling the room with a fragrant perfume. For all other light a feeble oil lamp twinkled high up on the wall, and a candle burned on the table where we had so luxuriantly dined.

The fitful light shone on the oil paintings which partly hid the damp on the walls. There was a picture (not a bad one) of St. Sebastian pierced with arrows, and in his death-agony turning heavenward a beautiful face. There was the portrait of another monk holding on to a ladder, each rung of which was labelled with a cardinal virtue. There was a crucifixion or two, and what elsewhere might well pass for a family portrait an elderly lady, with a cap of the period, nursing a spaniel. The damp had spared the spaniel whilst it made grave ravages upon the lady, eating a portion of her cheek and the whole of her left ear.

G. having the dinner off his mind, and having, as was gathered from a fearsome clattering in the back premises, washed up the dishes, wandered about the shadows in the background and showed a disposition for conversation. It was now he unfolded that dream of the hotel some day to be built up here, with the porter in the hall, the waiters buzzing round, the old man, his father, in the receipt of custom, and he (G.) exercising his great natural talents in supervising the making of soup, the frying of potatoes, and the selection of elastic cheeses. He showed, with pardonable pride, a visitors’ book in which was written “Leopold, Prince of Great Britain and Ireland.” His Royal Highness came here one rainy day in 1876, riding on a mule, and escorted by a bedraggled suite.

Did they partake of any refreshments?

No; the father, G. frankly admits, lost his head in the excitement of the moment a confession which confirms the impression that, on a much less auspicious occasion, it has been thought desirable that a younger and stronger man should assume the direction of affairs. To proffer Royalty potage au riz on such brief notice was of course out of the question. But the fatuous old gentleman had permitted a Prince of Great Britain and Ireland to descend the mountain without having tasted any other of the comestibles which were doubtless on hand at the time, and portions of which most probably remain to this day.

About eight o’clock there were indications from the shadowy portions of the banqueting chamber that G. was getting sleepy, and that the hour had arrived when it was usual for residents to retire for the night. Even on the top of a mountain one cannot go to bed at eight o’clock, and we affected to disregard these signals. Beginning gently, the yawns increased in intensity till they became phenomenal. At nine o’clock G. pointedly compared the hour of the day as between his watch and mine.

It was hard to leave a bright wood fire and go to bed at nine o’clock; but G. was irresistible. He literally yawned us out of the room, up the staircase, and into the bed-chamber. There was a key hanging by the outside of the door the size of a small club, and weighing several pounds. On the inside the keyhole, contrary to habitude, was in the centre of the door. From this point of approach it was, however, useful rather for ventilation than for any other purpose, since the key would not enter. Looking about for some means of securing the door against possible intrusions on the part of G. with a new soup, I discovered the trunk of a young tree standing against the wall. The next discovery was recesses in the wall on either side of the door, which suggested the evident purpose of the colossal bar. With this across the door one might sleep in peace, and I did till eight o’clock in the morning.

G. had been instructed to call us at sunrise if the morning were fair. As it happened, our ill luck of the evening was repeated in the morning. A thick mist obscured all around us, though as we passed down to civilisation and Lugano the sun, growing stronger, lifted wreaths of white mist, and showed valley, and lake, and town bathed in glorious light.