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Davos in Switzerland
Selection copyright © 1997 by Rictor Norton. All
rights reserved. This edition may not be reproduced or
redistributed to third parties without permission of the
editor.
[From Our Life in the Swiss Highlands,
1892; first published in The Fortnightly
Review, July 1878.]
It has long been acknowledged that high Alpine air in summer is
beneficial to people suffering from lung troubles, but only of
late years, and in one locality, has the experiment of a winter
residence at a considerable elevation above the sea been made.
The general results of that experiment are so satisfactory that
the conditions of life in winter at Davos, and the advantages it
offers to invalids, ought to be fairly set before the English
public. My own experience of eight months spent at Davos, between
August 1877 and April 1878, enables me to speak with some
confidence; while a long previous familiarity with the health-
stations of the Riviera — cannes, Bordighera, Nice, Mentone,
and San Remo — furnishes a standard of comparison between
two methods of cure at first sight radically opposite.
Accustomed as we are to think that warmth is essential to
the satisfactory treatment of pulmonary complaints, it requires
no little courage to face the severity of winter in an Alpine
valley, where the snow lies for seven months, and where the
thermometer frequently falls to 10 degrees or 15 degrees
Fahrenheit below Zero. Nor is it easy, by any stretch of the
imagination, to realise the fact that, in spite of this intense
cold, the most sensitive invalids can drive in open sledges with
impunity, expose themselves without risk to falling snow through
hours of exercise, or sit upon their bedroom balconies, basking
in a hot sun, with the world all white around them, and a spiky
row of icicles above their heads. Yet such is a state of things
which a few months spent in Davos renders quite familiar.
* * *
The method of cure is very simple. After a minute personal
examination of the ordinary kind, your physician tells you to
give up medicines, and to sit warmly clothed in the sun as long
as it is shining, to eat as much as possible, to drink a fair
quantity of Valtelline wine, and not to take any exercise. He
comes at first to see you every day, and soon forms a more
definite opinion of your capacity and constitution. Then, little
by little, he allows you to talk; at first upon the level, next
up-hill, until the daily walks begin to occupy from four to five
hours. The one thing relied upon is air. To inhale the maximum
quantity of the pure mountain air, and to imbibe the maximum
quantity of the keen mountain sunlight, is the sine qua
non. Everything else — milk-drinking, douches, baths,
friction, counter-irritant applications, and so forth — is
subsidiary. Medicine is very rarely used: and yet the physicians
are not pedantic in their dislike of drugs. They only find by
long experience that they can get on better without medicine.
Therefore they do not use it except in cases where their
observation shows that it is needed. And certainly they are
justified by the result. The worst symptoms of pulmonary sickness
— fever, restless nights, cough, blood-spitting, and
expectoration — gradually subside by merely living and
breathing. The appetite returns, and the power of taking exercise
is wonderfully increased. When I came to Davos, for example, at
the beginning of last August, I could not climb two pairs of
stairs without the greatest discomfort. At the end of September
I was able to walk 1000 feet up-hill without pain and without
fear of haemorrhage. This progress was maintained throughout the
winter; and when I left Davos in April the physical could confirm
my own sensation that the lung, which had been seriously injured,
was comparatively sound again, and that its wound had been
healed. Of course, I do not mean that the impossible had been
achieved, or, in other words, that what had ceased to be organic
had been recomposed for me, but that the disease had been
arrested by a natural process of contraction.
* * *
It is a great injury to any new system to describe it in too
roseate colours, or to withhold the drawbacks which it shares
with all things that are merely ours and mortal. No candid
advocate can conceal the fact that there are serious deductions
to be made from the great advantages offered by Davos. First and
foremost stands the fact that life in a confined alpine valley
during winter is monotonous. It is true that the post comes
regularly every day, and that the Swiss post for letters, books,
and parcels is so admirably managed that almost anything a man
desires can be had within forty-eight hours from London. It is
true that the Alps, in their winter robe of snow, offer a
spectacle which for novelty and splendour is not surpassed by
anything the fancy can imagine. it is true that sledging is an
excellent amusement, and that a fair amount of skating can be
reckoned on. It is also true that the climate enables weak people
to enjoy all opportunities of rational amusement without stint
or hindrance. But, in spite of this, life is monotonous. The
mechanic pacings to and fro, which are a condition of the cure,
become irksome; and the discontented invalid is apt to sigh for
the blue Mediterranean and the skies he remembers on a sunny
Riviera shore. Then it cannot be denied that a great deal of snow
falls in the winter. The peasants concur in telling me that it
is rare to have four fine weeks together, and my own experience
of one winter, not exceptionally bad, leads me to expect two
snowy days to three fine ones. Snowfall is, however, no
interruption to exercise, and I never found that my health
suffered from bad weather. On the contrary, I had the
exhilarating consciousness that I could bear it, harden myself
against it, and advance steadily under conditions which in
England would have been hopeless.
* * *
The gradual approach of winter is very lovely at Davos. The
valley itself is not beautiful, as Alpine valleys go, though it
has scenery both picturesque and grand within easy reach. But
when summer is passing into autumn, even the bare slopes of the
least romantic glen are glorified. golden lights and crimson are
cast over the gray-green world by the fading of innumerable
plants. Then the larches begin to put on sallow tints that deepen
into orange, burning against the solid blue sky like amber. The
frosts are severe at night, and the meadow grass turns dry and
wan. The last lilac crocuses die upon the fields. Icicles,
hanging from water-course or mill-wheel, glitter in the noonday
sunlight. The wind blows keenly from the north, and now the snow
begins to fall and thaw, and freeze, and fall and thaw again. The
seasons are confused; wonderful days of flawless purity are
intermingled with storm and gloom. At last the time comes when
a great snowfall has to be expected. There is hard frost in the
early morning, and at nine o'clock the thermometer stands at 2
degrees. The sky is clear, but it clouds rapidly with films of
cirrus and of stratus in the south and west. Soon it is covered
over with gray vapour in a level sheet, all the hill-tops
standing hard against the steely heavens. The cold wind from the
west freezes the moustache to one's pipe-stem. By noon the air
is thick with a congealed mist; the temperature meanwhile has
risen, and a little snow falls at intervals. The valleys are
filled with a curious opaque blue, from which the peaks rise,
phantom-like and pallid, into the gray air, scarcely
distinguishable from their background. The pine-forests on the
mountain-sides are of darkest indigo. There is an indescribable
stillness and a sense of incubation. The wind has fallen. Later
on, the snow-flakes flutter silently and sparely through the
lifeless air. The most distant landscape is quite blotted out.
After sunset the clouds have settled down upon the hills, and the
snow comes in thick, impenetrable fleeces. At night our hair
crackles and sparkles when we brush it. Next morning there is a
foot and a half of finely-powdered snow, and still the snow is
falling. Strangely loom the chalets through the semi-solid
whiteness. Yet the air is now dry and singularly soothing. The
pines are heavy with their wadded coverings; now and again one
shakes himself in silence, and his burden falls in a white cloud,
to leave a black-green patch upon the hillside, whitening again
as the imperturbable fall continues. The stakes by the roadside
are almost buried. No sound is audible. Nothing is seen but the
snow-plough, a long raft of planks with a heavy stone at its
stern and a sharp prow, drawn by four strong horses and driven
by a young man erect upon the stem. So we live through two days
and nights, and on the third a north wind blows. The snow-clouds
break and hang upon the hills in scattered fleeces, glimpses of
blue sky shine through, and sunlight glints along the heavy
masses. The blues of the shadows are everywhere intense. As the
clouds disperse, they form in moulded domes, tawny like sun-
burned marble in the distant south lands. Every chalet is a
miracle of fantastic curves, built by the heavy hanging snow.
Snow lies mounded on the roads and fields, writhed into loveliest
wreaths, or outspread int he softest undulations. All the
irregularities of the hills are softened into swelling billows
like the mouldings of Titanic statuary. It happened once or twice
last winter that such a clearing after snowfall took place at
full moon. Then the moon rose in a swirl of fleecy vapour þ
clouds above, beneath, and all around. The sky was blue as steel,
and infinitely deep with mist-entangled stars. The horn above
which she first appears stood carved of solid black, and through
the valley's length from end to end yawned chasms and clefts of
liquid darkness. As the moon rose, the clouds were conquered and
massed into rolling waves upon the ridges of the hills. The
spaces of open sky grew still more blue. At last the silver light
comes flooding over all, and here and there the fresh snow
glistens on the crags. There is movement, palpitation, life of
light through earth and sky. To walk out on such a night, when
the perturbation of storm is over and the heavens are free, is
one of the greatest pleasures offered by this winter life. It is
so light that you can read the smallest print with ease. The
upper sky looks quite black, shading by violet and sapphire into
turquoise upon the horizon. There is the colour of ivory upon the
nearest snow-fields, and the distant peaks sparkle like silver;
crystals glitter in all directions on the surface of the snow,
white, yellow, and pale blue. The stars are exceedingly keen, but
only a few can shine in the intensity of moonlight. The air is
perfectly still, and though icicles may be hanging from beard and
moustache to the furs beneath one's chin, there is no sensation
of extreme cold.
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