Swiss cottage

“ This angle will generally be very obtuse; and this is one reason why the Swiss cottage is always beautiful when it is set among walnut or chestnut trees. Its obtuse roof is just about the true angle. With pines or larches, the angle should not be regulated by the form of the tree, but by the slope of the branches. The building itself should be low and long, so that, if possible, it may not be seen all at once, but may be partially concealed by trunks or leafage at various distances.
For the colour, that of wood, is always beautiful. If the wood of the near trees be used, so much the better ”

“ For the cottage is beautifully national: there is nothing to be found the least like it in any other country. The moment a glimpse is caught of its projecting galleries, one knows that it is the land of Tell and Winkelried; and the traveller, feels that, were he indeed Swiss-born, and Alp-bred, a bit of that carved plank, meeting his eye in a foreign land, would be as effectual as a note of the Ranz des Vaches upon the ear. ”

“ Such are the chief characteristics of the Swiss cottage, separately considered. I must now take notice of its effect in scenery.
42. When one has been wandering for a whole morning through a valley of perfect silence, where everything around, which is motionless, is colossal, and everything which has motion, resistless; where the strength and the glory of nature are principally developed in the very forces which feed upon her majesty; and where, in the midst of mightiness which seems imperishable, all that is indeed eternal is the influence of desolation ”

“ It is true that the art which carves and colours the front of a Swiss cottage is not of any very exalted kind; yet it testifies to the completeness and the delicacy of the faculties of the mountaineer ”

“ It is a Swiss cottage, containing five rooms, one of the five being a very pretty tea-room, and here Her Royal Highness sometimes favours her friends with the "cup that cheers," often, too, cutting bread and butter and cake with her own fair hands. Moreover, the same hands have often made the butter that is used—as each of the ladies of the family is skilled in dairy management, and capable of turning out a good honest pat of creamy Norfolk. Merry times they have had in this cottage, arrayed in apron and sleeves, doing the real work, not merely giving directions. ”

“ The sluggish nature of the air of the valleys has a malignant operation on the mind; and even the mountaineers, though generally shrewd and intellectual, have no perceptible nationality: they have no language, except a mixture of Italian and bad German; they have no peculiar turn of mind; they might be taken as easily for Germans as for Swiss. No correspondence, consequently, can exist between national architecture and national character, where the latter is not distinguishable. Generally speaking, then, the Swiss cottage cannot be said to be built in good taste ”

“ Here the steep path leads to a small Swiss cottage with a little stall near by. Higher is a similar cottage and above them still another, the smallest of all perched up among the wild rocks. Before the low door is a grassy sward where the goats are milked, and in the summer the door stands always open. ”

“ However high you may ascend, you always find a winding road between the mountains, and just when you fancy yourself at the top of the mountain, you see before you, a grassy plain, a Swiss cottage, children and flowers, sometimes the prettiest group of pines and deciduous trees, and before you, new heights, with pasture, fields, cattle, and cottages, and so on, everywhere, till at last wood and pasturage cease and the bare mountain alone rears towards heaven its bold peaks and horns. ”

“ It cannot but be an alien child of the mountains; but it must show that it has been adopted and cherished by them. This effect is only attainable by great ease of outline and variety of color; peculiarities which, as will be presently seen, the Westmoreland cottage possesses in a supereminent degree.
50. Another feeling, with which one is impressed during a mountain ramble, is humility. I found fault with the insignificance of the Swiss cottage, because "it was not content to sink into a quiet corner, and personify humility." ”

“ The ornaments employed in the decoration of the Swiss cottage do not demand much attention: they are usually formed in a most simple manner, by thin laths, which are carved into any fanciful form, or in which rows of holes are cut, generally diamond-shaped; and they are then nailed one above another, to give the carving depth. Pinnacles are never raised on the roof, though carved spikes are occasionally suspended from it at the angles. No ornamental work is ever employed to disguise the beams of the projecting part of the roof, nor does any run along its edges. ”

“ There are Swiss cottages with overhanging chambers, and Italian villas with flat roofs, and Gothic structures with incipient spires that look as though they had stopped in their childhood and never got their growth, and Grecian temples with rows of wooden imitations of marble pillars of Doric architecture, and one house in which all nations and eras combine—a Grecian porch, a Gothic roof, an Italian L, and a half finished tower of the Elizabethan era, capped with a Moorish dome, the whole approached through the stiffest of all stiff avenues of evergreens, trimmed in the latest French fashion. ”

“ Swiss cottages made of cut wood, tents, wire-lattices, aviaries, chairs, tables, and garden-seats, elevators, garden-tools, guns and fishing tackle, porcelain and terra-cotta vases—in short, everything which tends to ornament parks and gardens, or to the culture of plants, or the raising of stock. ”

“ In fact, the Italian cottage is usually found in groups. Isolated buildings are rare; and the arcade affords an agreeable, if not necessary shade in passing from one building to another. It is a still more unfailing feature of the Swiss city, where it is useful in deep snow. But the supports of the arches in Switzerland are generally square masses of wall, varying in size, separating the arches by irregular intervals, and sustained by broad and massy buttresses ”

“ The larger and better kind of Swiss cottages are built with roofs projecting from five to seven feet over the sides; these projections are strengthened by strong wooden supports, that the heavy snow which falls upon the roofs need not crush them. ”

“ To some cottages there is an outside stair leading to the second story, or even to the third, if there be one, for these [Pg 331] houses are frequently the property of several owners. The peasant who, in the Valais, possesses the third part of a mule and the fourth part of a cow, has often only the half or third of a house. “The Jura cottage has no daintiness of garden nor wealth of farm about it,—it is indeed little more than a delicately-built chalet, yet trim and domestic, mildly intelligent of things other than pastoral, watch-making and the like ”

“ In the landscapes of other countries, the house—the habitation of man—be [Pg 710] it farm-house or cottage—gathers, so to speak, some of the country about itself—makes itself the centre of some circle, however small. Not so in Switzerland. The hooded chalet, which even in summer speaks so plainly of winter, and stands ever prepared with its low drooping roof to shelter its eyes and ears from the snow and the wind—these dot the landscape most charmingly, but yet are lost in it; they form no group, no central point in the scene. I am thinking more particularly of the chalets in the Oberland. ”

“ As you saunter up the garden, back to the house, crushing the sweet-odoured black peppermint in the grass underfoot, the stars seem very near. The cottage looks like a toy, with the light shining from each little window. And as you cross the threshold into the living-room, the log fire flashes and gleams (a fire is acceptable up here after sundown, even in the summer) , and everything smiles with such a cosy welcome, till brass candlesticks and cups and jugs and the homely willow patterns on the dresser, all seem to say, “We are so glad you’ve come.” ”

“ The mountains at every step grow more grand; the fine trees, which abound, are mostly chestnut; and the cottages, now built in the Swiss style, with jutting roofs and outside stairs and galleries, hide themselves among them, sometimes betrayed only by a stream of light smoke. Their gardens are even neater than in England, and we have a luxury which you perhaps will hardly comprehend, in cooling our horses’ feet in the innumerable mountain streams which sparkle along at every step. ”

“ Thus, reasoning sadly, she went along, when suddenly, on the slope of a gentle hill in front of her, gracefully encircled with a young wood of larch and copper-beech, she caught sight of the cottage. It was a tasteful imitation of those seen in the Oberland, and with its wild background of lofty mountain, an appropriate ornament to the landscape.
A small stream running over a rocky, broken bed formed the boundary of the little grounds, and over this a bridge of a single plank conducted the way to the cottage. ”

“ The cottages and artificial "mountains" (ten feet high, perhaps) are exceedingly pretty models in miniature, and probably illustrate very fairly the ideas of a palace-bred fancy upon natural scenery. There are glens and grottoes, and rocky beds for brooks that run at will ("les rivieres à volonté," the guide called them) , and trees set out upon the crags at most uncomfortable 59 angles, and every contrivance to make a lovely lawn as inconveniently like nature as possible. The Swiss families, however, must have been very amusing. ”

“ The soil and the climate are, indeed, such, that the place which, in more northern mountain regions, would be occupied by furze and heather, is hereabouts taken up by perfect thickets and jungles of thriving box-wood; while the laurel and rhododendron grow in bushy luxuriance. Charming, however, as is the landscape, and thoroughly poetic the first aspect of the cottages, they are in reality wretched, ricketty, and unwholesome hovels. In fact, poor huts, and a mountain country, go almost invariably together. In German Switzerland, the cottages are miserable ”

“ Solitary and lifeless, summer and winter, it looks silently down like a wall-eyed ghost over the waste of rocks and sea.
Below the house and close down by the seashore, is a low, thatched cottage, built against the rock, which forms its back wall, and on to which the rough granite blocks of which the cottage is constructed are rudely cemented with earth and clay; the floor also consists of the living rock, not levelled, but just as the foot of the wanderer had trodden it under the winds of heaven for ages before the cottage was built. ”

“ It has been frequently observed that the gate lodges and farm cottages attached to large estates are generally more attractive in their architectural proportions and beauty than the mansion itself; and this has been usually attributed to the education of the proprietor's tastes, the cottages being the latest erections. This impression is not, however, always true; for there is a peculiar beauty and attractiveness about cottage architecture which can not be produced in buildings of a larger and more commodious class. Certain it is that a prettily designed cottage will always arrest attention. ”

“ But it is a wonderful landscape that, on every side of the little house which skaters on this part of the marshes use as their headquarters, lies glistening in the sunshine. A few old alder trees and storm-beaten Scotch firs shelter the cottage a little from the wind. And its all too scanty stacks and its picturesque sheds and outbuildings, whose [Pg 190] roof of tiles are weathered to every imaginable shade of red and brown, help to give an air of warmth and comfort. A primitive place. ”

“ The building, which is close to the city of Aosta, unites in itself all the peculiarities for which the Italian cottage is remarkable: the dark arcade, the sculptured capital, the vine-covered gallery, the flat and confused roof; and clearly exhibits the points to which we wish particularly to direct attention; namely, brightness of effect, simplicity of form, and elevation of character. Let it not be supposed, however, that such a combination of attributes is rare; on the contrary, it is common to the greater part of the cottages of Italy. ”

“ The contrast between the new and the old is indeed deplorable. The old cottage is a thing of beauty. Its odd, irregular form and various harmonious colouring, the effects of weather, time, and accident, environed with smiling verdure and sweet old-fashioned garden flowers, its thatched roof, high gabled front, inviting porch overgrown with creepers, and casement windows, all combine to form a fair and beautiful home. And then look at the modern cottage with its glaring brick walls, slate roof, ungainly stunted chimney, and note the difference. ”

“ THE interior of the cottage is exquisitely clean; it has that bright pleasant appearance which is only possible when the housewife feels a pride in her duties, and goes about them with a cheerful heart. Not a speck of dust can be seen upon the furniture, amongst which is a large old-fashioned sofa: the window panes are clear and transparent—a certain sign of loving care expended on the place, as on the other hand dirty windows are an indication of neglect, so much so that the character of the cottager may almost be guessed from a glance at her glass. ”