E. F. Benson

“ Apart from the “storm and stress” of racing, there is a wonderful pleasure, if the track is smooth and trafficless, in this swift gliding over frozen snow, and one of the most romantic of experiences in all the gamut of motion is tobogganing by moonlight. Never will the writer forget one such night on the Klosters road. We had sleighed up from Davos, a party of friends, to Wolfgang, on one of those magical nights when no breath of wind stirred the lightest jewels of hoar-frost on the pines, when the moon was full, and the stars burned like diamonds aflame. ”

“ The sprinkle that night covers it, and it is embedded in the ice like a fly in amber. Again the sun shines on it, it melts a little water round it, and forms the nucleus of what will spread into a blister in the ice. Any dirt in the same way makes similar holes, and nothing but the clean skate-blade and the necessary and privileged boots of the icemen should ever be allowed on the rink. How amazed would be the pioneers of outdoor artificial rinks if they could see the huge and perfect surfaces now yearly prepared for the hordes of foreign visitors who flock to Switzerland. ”

“ But having once reached the platform, the spring must be made: otherwise the would-be jumper will merely flow stickily, so to speak, over the edge, bury the toes of his skis in the snow, and certainly have a bad fall. But, indeed, the nerves must be in good condition, for the platform, approaching it from above, looks exactly like a cliff’s edge, and, jutting out as it does from the slope, it entirely conceals the slope below it: your eye tells you that you are merely leaping over the end of all things. ”

“ The first difficulties that beset the beginner must be considered as concerned with climbing, since he has to get to the top of his hill before he can experience the pleasing terror of proceeding to slide down it. As he flounders and falls and back-slips, he will be astonished to see some more practised performer strolling along up the slight slope which he finds so baffling, without the slightest effort or exertion. Looking more closely he will perhaps notice that this expert is stamping his feet a little as he walks, merely as if to warm them on this cold morning. ”

“ There is, indeed, no game at which team play outwits individual brilliance so completely.
But such is not the aspect of the game that will strike the observer who watches the usual pick-up or inter-hotel match on the rink, which generally begins as soon as skaters hear the curfew of the tea-bell. Here will be found the individualist who, sooner than pass when he has once got the puck, would infinitely prefer to fall and be trampled on; and you will see him, while still sitting on the ice, hacking wildly at the beloved india-rubber, in flat contravention of the rule. ”

“ Not only has he his figures, so to speak, to cut on the snow-fields, his Telemark and Christiania swings, and his stemming turns, which correspond roughly to the threes and rockers and change of edge in the skater’s art, and the outwicks and inwicks of the curler, but he has his travel over the snows for travel’s sake: he is an artist in climbing, and the whole horizon (omitting such mountain peaks as the Matterhorn or the Aiguilles) are part of his rink, which reaches, broadly speaking, wherever there is snow. ”

“ They sit in the sun, when they are tired of skating, and see that though a torrid luminary beats down on the frozen surface, burning and browning the faces of their friends, the ice remains perfectly dry and unmelted; they trudge through snow, and find that they are not wet; they see the thermometer marking anything up or down to thirty degrees of frost, and go out coatless and very likely hatless, and are conscious only of an agreeable and bracing warmth ”

“ Nowhere else have I felt so rapturous a quality of stillness: the frozen snow lies taut under the grip of the immense energy of the frost: no avalanches slipping from the snow-laden flanks of the Jungfrau under the hot beams of the sun, startle the valley with sonorous thunder: the wind stirs not the lightest needle of the pines; the villagers are home from the frozen fields, and doors are shut. ”

“ Moritz is no doubt a most thrilling and skilled adventure, but the vast majority of people who say (with perfect truth) that they enjoy tobogganing would sooner think of ascending in an aeroplane than descending the Cresta, and would freeze with fright at the thought of embarking on it. On the other hand, the skilled Cresta runner would no more think that the quiet descent of snow-covered roads on a Swiss luge was tobogganing in his sense of the word, than the aeroplanist would allow that a man practising high jump was flying. ”

“ I rather fancy that people who have never been to the high altitudes in winter, believe that all those who say they have done so, and come back and tell their friends that sun does not melt ice, and that snow is dry, and that ten degrees of frost is an agreeable temperature to stroll about in without a coat, are in some sort of inexplicable conspiracy. ”

“ The kings and captains of all the Zermatt ranges soar skywards against the incredible blue, Weisshorn, Roth-horn, Dent Blanche, Gabelhorn, Matterhorn are standing in their immemorial stations, and in the west Mont Blanc, with its guard of arrow-headed aiguilles, looks down over France and Switzerland. Nowhere else, unless you climb the inhospitable peaks themselves, shall you enjoy so immense a range of vision that contains so many giants of the mountain world. ”

“ Here, if snow has fallen, as sometimes happens, while wind is blowing, it is driven into all manner of curving wave crests and undulations; then when the fall is over, the sky clears again, a night of frost hardens and congeals the outlines, and the trees wear fine feathers and{17} plumes of whiteness. As the snowfall packs with its own weight, there grows on the surface of the fields a crust half snow, half ice, covered with dazzling minute crystals. ”

“ There’s nothing to play for.
This means he is going to play for a fluke. There is no reasonable chance whatever of reaching that stone on the tee, and a wild toboggan of a shot sent down among all those guards may do something, though heaven alone knows what. He puts down stone with full swing, most unevenly, so that it careers up the ice violently rocking. It hits the long guard by the hog, which is exactly what he didn’t want to do, almost full in the face, and sends it scudding off into the abominably bad stone he himself has just put down before. ”

“ These rinks are used for two purposes: skating, including bandy or ice hockey, and curling. I do not count ice-gymkhanas or ice-carnivals, because anything is good enough for them. You can play the shovel-game or crawl through barrels among the jungles of frost-flowers. I do not imply that such entertainment is not exceedingly amusing; I only mean that the artist in rink-making paints his masterpieces primarily for the sake of the skater and the curler, not for the Pierrot with his Chinese lantern, or those who win three-legged races. ”

“ Or again, the valley will be full of cloud in form of breaking waves, and tossing crests throw themselves against the hillsides and are shattered into wreaths of cloud-spray. No boat could live in so turbulent a water. Then, as the sun declines to its setting, rosy beams of fire pierce this wonderful sea, and it is shot with flame, and lit from within by a glow that baffles all language. ”

“ Of all spectacular feats compassable upon frozen snow surfaces, ski-jumping is, to the minds of most people, the most amazing, and compared with it all performances on ice-rinks and toboggan-runs seem to the spectator almost tame. ”

“ If not so fortunate, he is somewhere in the middle of that sudden-spouting billow of snow that mars the smooth whiteness of the hill. But in any case, the beginner has seen a specimen of ordinary straight-running, the figure upright and inclined forward, the skis close together, with sinecure for the sticks. And if our beginner’s courage is high, he will instantly attempt, from the more gradual slope on which he stands, to do the same. ”

“ Then as we emerge on to the edges of the lake, higher hills begin to tower across its steely-grey levels, and rifts in the clouds that shroud their heads and hunched shoulders show glimpses of sun that shine on the whiteness of snow. Mile after mile we pursue a meandering way along the shores, and thread the darkness of hoarse tunnels, whose lips are fringed with dripping icicles, and the sense of something coming, something high and clear, begins to grow. ”

“ In fact, though we do not go out to Switzerland primarily for the sake of the view, the natural beauty of the places we go to make, even to the sternest and most determined athlete, a certain appeal. And though every place alike has the witchery and magic with which the radiant frost clothes peak and mountain-side, there are four places, three of which are set on high shelves on the mountain-side facing south, which, to my mind, altogether outshine the rest, and these are Mürren, Montana, Grindelwald and Villars. ”

“ Should the ice be slow, greater force is given to the stone by a longer swing, and should the ice be fast the swing is shortened. But in no case, if the ice is playable on at all, should the impetus be derived from a muscular effort of the arm as in throwing; but as in golf, the swing of the arm and body together give the stone its impetus. And throughout the swing the eyes of the curler must never leave the directing besom of his skip. It is as fatal to look away from that as it is to take the eye off the ball at golf. ”

“ You will find him a rarer visitor to either form of rink than is the inoculated skater or curler to the ski-ing slopes. It will often happen, also, that the inoculated curler visits the skating-rinks, or the inoculated skater the house and the hog. But the man who comes out to Switzerland in order to ski very seldom visits either. For various and intricate as are the manœuvres which the expert can perform on skates, and various as are the movements which the expert can cause his curling-stones to perform, there is at the command of the skier a greater expanse of conquerable territory. ”

“ They grow white in a single minute almost; and such as have moustaches, close to the moisture of their breath will suddenly turn to walruses with long dependence of icicles. And yet—here is a conjuring trick again—though ice and frost frame their faces they are conscious of no cold at all. ”

“ Away from the glare of the festooned lights, your eye gets accustomed to the gloom, and presently it ceases to be gloom at all. Ivory white shine the untrodden snows beneath the full moon and the glory of innumerable stars: far below, perhaps, a level sea of cloud extends like a marble floor over the valley, and across it the aiguilles of Mont Blanc, and nearer the summits of the Dent du Midi stand sparkling like crystals. ”

“ But nobody who cannot hold a long firm edge, for which the proper travelling position is essential, need ever trouble his dreams with the notion of becoming a good skater. And no one’s edges approach perfection, if he cannot traverse, on backward and forward edges, outside and inside alike, a distance of at least a hundred yards, given that the ice is reasonably good, without stirring from the attitude he has taken up after his stroke. A really fine skater will traverse much more, and be still as a rock throughout his travel ”

“ It is no doubt possible to skate charming “threes to a centre” doing everything quite wrong from beginning to end. But if you choose to adopt a style, you must conform to the rules of that style. Similarly, it is quite possible to skate the same “threes to a centre” in the International style, which shall leave the same mark on the ice (though the skating of them broke every possible rule) as the most finished performer could leave there. But who would not applaud the International judge who ruthlessly ploughed such a candidate? ”

“ If he is incapable of climbing slopes except with an infinite degree of slipping and stumbling, he is a nuisance to his companions; while if in the descents he is incapable of any turn, he may, if he has the nerve to fall down promptly, be only a worse nuisance; but if he has not, he may become a source of much danger to himself.
Further, however expert a skier he may eventually become, he should never dream of making an expedition alone, unless he is always close to some well-frequented track or road, or unless he is certain that other skiers will pass that way before nightfall. ”

“ There is a fairly good artificial ice-run for toboggans, and another snow-run down valleywards, and plenty of those quiet, hard-trodden paths down which the amateur tobogganer likes to ramble. There are two{189} lakes which, when the snow has made an agreeable arrangement with the frost, can be used for skating, and in summer, when the sun has come to an understanding with the snow, a fine golf-course is found to reveal itself. But all winter long the sun blazes on Montana, while its altitude and the cold of its nights preserves its frozen mantle. ”

“ It is a fascinating pursuit to watch, and can be practised over a frozen lake or along the down-trodden snow of roads. Especially in the Engadine you will hear the sound of bells, and observe a horse trotting or cantering briskly on the road, followed at a yard or two distance by an upright figure that glides along after him, a charioteer with only his skis as chariot. But though it is concerned with skis, it is not exactly concerned with ski-ing, which enters into it, as an art, less than does the knowledge of horses and the use of reins. ”

“ If you walk but for ten minutes either up or down from Villars towards the east, a gap opens out, and you shall see the most part of the Chamounix range, and the vast dome of Mont Blanc itself. Magical are the wonders of cloudland spread out before you in the Rhone valley below. Sometimes an ocean of cloud, solid as if made of grey marble, and to all appearance as level as the sea, is spread from the promontories a little below where Villars stands straight across to the hills on the far side of the valley. ”

“ I therefore hasten to assure them that lake skating in Switzerland does not count; indeed most winter resorts have no lake at all; and even if they have, skating there is quite the exception and not the rule. In nine cases out of ten the snow spoils the ice before it bears, and the frost-flowers spoil the greater part of it, even if the snow has held off, almost immediately afterwards. ”

“ Utterly different, yet in its way no less sublime, is the immense panorama of big peaks as seen from Montana. Here again{174} (though perhaps, strictly speaking, you are in the Rhone valley) there is no impression of being in a valley at all, so lofty is the shelf on which Montana stands, so swiftly the ground plunges into the Rhone valley proper below. But this is no narrow cleft as at Mürren, and the hills that climb out of it on the further or southern side are miles away. But what a row of glistening giants is piled up on those hills. ”