On The Grigna

By Reginald Farrer.

I have already sung the song of the Mont Cenis. Sung it, indeed, with such ardour that this year, judging from the letters I have received, the Hotel de la Poste will do well to build itself a mighty annexe. Therefore I will not here repeat my former picture of its pansy-carpets, its gentian pavements, the clear nip of the air, and the luminous beauty of its hills; I will only say that sad will be the year that prevents me from returning thither; when I die, if I have been as good as the good Americans – who go for their reward to Paris, without doubt I shall be allowed to re-visit the Mont Cenis. In June, 1911, I spent there a week as rapturous as that of the year before; all the rocks on the Little Col were rosy with Primulas, and I even toiled up for hours over the solid snows that still clothed the Col de Clapier, in the instinct that the small cliffs above the Lac Savine might have been kept open by the winds. And so it proved; and even, on one broken bluff, the King of the Alps had begun to blink his azure eye to the daylight. But the slopes of the Clear Lake were still all icebound, and the season had not yet settled into the serenity of summer.

It is always with a pang that I desert known lands for new. Possibilities, from afar, are strangely alluring; when it comes to realizing them, they grow rather vast and alarming; the certainties of the present are far more comfortable. So with reluctance did I go down from the Mont Cenis to Susa, on my way to the Italian Lakes, for my first sight of Como. The journey was hot and stuffy. Monte Viso hid his face and denied me good omens. After a night of luxury in Turin (which to me is always the Capua of the Western, as Bozen of the Eastern ranges; I invariably find myself repeatedly gravitating towards one or other in the course of my wanderings), half a day of quick travelling carried us from Milan over the ocean of the Plain, into its first ripples, the advancing surf of the Alps, through breakers of increasing height, to drop us suddenly at an unexpected turn, above the waters of Como, gleaming steely in their narrow trough, between steep mountains, filmed and thunderous with advancing storm.

We had hardly got on board the boat before the tempest broke, and for three hours raged with a roaring fury of hail that lashed the Lake to a grey mist, and only now and then, in the violet glare of the lightning, showed phantom peaks far overhead – ghostly as peaks in a Chinese painting, with slants and shafts of diaphanous darkness dividing them from the deep purple of their jutting promontories along the horizons of the veiled water. And the wind blew wild as if it meant to carry off the dome of the Cathedral. But ere long the storm was exhausted, and when it became time for the steamer to start, had given way to an afternoon of tearful sunlight.

I suppose that the only possible value of a traveller’s impressions lies in their being honest. Therefore I will say that probably I expected too much from Como, since I got less. The Lake is so narrow and groove-like, its enclosing hills so uniform, green and undistinguished; l cannot compare it with the northern end of Garda, which to me at least, is more nearly perfect in its beauty than any other water I know. At the same time, it must be remembered that the Italian Lakes are so lavishly praised that perhaps a little reaction of disappointment is inevitable; much of their lauded charm consists in luxury; their hills are a décor, and one feels that the passion of their praise belongs to lovely creatures from Paris, lace-clad and high heeled, to whom a garden of oleander and magnolia lapping blue water in sunshine, with hills of a decent height, discreet in the distance, make up the most perfect tableau that Nature can compose. The soft exquisiteness of Como is a trifle théâtral [theatrical]to those who have known the fierce and austere glory of more drastic mountains.

And yet, and yet – though many be the dull sky-lines above Como, what picture is there more beautiful than that of the widening Lake towards Bellagio? Ahead, far above the green ridges, towers suddenly the grim granitic cone of Legnone, and the vast limestone mass of the Grigna rises over Varenna. Bellagio, slumberous along its promontory, mirrors the dark flame of its cypresses in the clear water, and lies its length among roses; in face of it, away up at the topmost end of the Lake, the little lower hills are put to shame by the first outliers of the real Alps – scarred, ragged ridges indeed, of no conspicuous form or eminence, but genuine masses of bare rock, and ice and snow. And, after all, even if the glory of Como lie precisely in its sybaritic, lazy loveliness, just tingling pleasantly with the contrast of a sterile peak or two at the back of the picture – is not this title enough to the appreciation of the weary wanderer, jaded with boulevards or moraines? The charm of the picture has its subtle hold, indeed, on all, and yet I do not feel that it could hold for very long the heart of one whose feet have trod moraines with loyalty and discernment. In other words, only for a day or two of mere brute rest could Como fill the need of any man who has once gripped the sacred passion of high places. Its appeal is to the townsman, to the flaneur whom not even his ignorance of Latin can inspire with any cry of Excelsior, who longs only to lie quiet among bowers and flowers, gazing idly out on hills and rills.

What did Caroline-Amelia-Elizabeth, by the Grace of God (and the extreme ill-will of her husband), Queen of Great Britain – what did “the Sainted Caroline, in a long pelisse, with feathers in her head,” contrive, I wonder, to make of Como? The Hotel Villa d’Este and Reine d’Angleterre preserves the memory of her sojourn – a vast barrack, poked tightly back under a wall of mountainous verdure. Probably the sham wildness of the scene, combined with its essential mildness, was dear to the mild “romantick” taste of the period. There is a little of Caroline-Amelia yet lingering in the careless good-nature, the opulent display of Como, no less than in its sudden squalls and abandonments, and that passion for publicity which placards its precipices with loudly painted appeals in favour of special vermouths and that mysterious universal liquid, Ferro-China Bisleri. (If you pronounce this in strict English it sounds a very fine botanical name.)

Bellagio is a charming and lovely little place in itself. But alas! So many other people have agreed on this for many years that now it is full of palatial great hotels and German waiters. It is a place to flee from and admire from a distance. We fled accordingly; in earliest blue dawn we fled across the water to Varenna, while the velvet sky was still aflame with great stars. Neither in dawn – chilly and cross, nor in dusk – weary and footsore, shall I forget the charm of the little neat Hotel Oliveda that sits by the landing-stage at Varenna. But perhaps my own taste is no fair guide for others in the matter of hotels; for, though no one more loves the delights of elaborate eating and drinking, I detest beyond measure that atmosphere best described as “luxe” or “luxus.” This, which I gather is dear to the hearts of all travellers of every nation, has nothing to do with good cooking or curious cellars; it means German waiters and velvet-clad reading-rooms containing travel-circulars, English chaplains and American old maids; it means cane rocking-chairs, liveries, tennis courts, and a billiard room made up as a chapel; it means, in fact, a sort of Esperanto concoction of all the snobberies of every European nation, which can thus carry with them, not the comforts of “home,” but of home as they would like to have it, constructed in accordance with the rules of high-class fiction.

From all such hotels I flee; for, not only do they not mean good living, but they mean the very reverse of good living. Their food is dull, pretentious and machine-made; they sacrifice the arts of the table to that of serving it with a cheap sham splendour. Better, far better, a veal cutlet of Italy in a small arboured inn, than stalled rosbif in a wide house, served up by vice-faced waiters in golden braid.

Our object that day from Varenna was the Grigna, the 9,000 ft. mass of limestone that rises gaunt above the wooded hills along the Lake. My tin was on my back, my trowel in hand; Teodoro Maranesi, the botanist of the neighbourhood, was going to lead us up to the haunts of Primula glaucescens, Campanula Raineri and Saxifraga Vandelli. These treasures live far up, are very rare and hard to come by. As I am now chiefly addressing those who, I trust, will content themselves with admiring from below my prowess in ascending the Grigna, I shall make no pretences, or few, at concealing the localities of the plants I seek; nor would any lesser motive move me (or any other sane mortal) to ascend the Grigna, so that its presiding deities should be safe in their seclusion. It is, indeed, a hateful mountain to ascend; the way is steep and hard and far: worse, though, than anything else, are the cobblestones that compose the track almost up to the Capanna. I cannot decently describe the agonizing weariness they induce; my brother described it, indeed, but not decently; it couldn’t be done. The ascent begins sharply behind Varenna; steep rises the track, all of rounded cobbles, up and up and up, for nearly a thousand feet; then the path winds for an hour or two on the level, in and out along the creeks and flanks of the mountains, above the winding course of the stream-valley that descends from the Grigna, and falls into the Lake at Varenna. Hot sunlight filled the glen; above and below were copsy slopes of grass and chestnut, aflame with golden brooms, and the long rosy spires of the sweet-scented orchis, whose fragrance floated quietly in the warm air. The dew had not yet vanished, but hung in heavy jewel-work in the blue shadows. Here and there, in steep places, were little iron crosses on some rock, to record how Pietro or Maria had fallen over into the gulf and met their death.

After long dulcet ambiguities, the track makes its second steep ascent to the little village of Esino, which one had long seen perched on a pinnacle unattainably far above. Not even from Esino do you get more than the direction of the Grigna, many daunting mountains still intervene; but now the backward prospect over the Lake is wide and lovely. We found an albergo and refreshed ourselves with coffee; it was not a pleasant albergo – neither clean, nor sweet, nor cordial. Meanwhile, Teodoro had gone to find the keeper of the Capanna Monza. You will have gathered that the ascent of the Grigna is a large and long affair; by no possibility could it be comfortably achieved in a day – still less with the necessity of a many hours’ plant-hunt. But both the Italians and the Austrians are inveterate lovers of their mountains, with the result that every eastern and western range is dotted, high up, with many a delightful rifugio or schutz-haus, where the wanderer, for minimal prices, can find every comfort of food and drink and fire and bed. They are like Japanese houses, these clean wooden palaces – to me an inexhaustible joy. In Switzerland and France they are comparatively rare, and, I believe, comparatively bad. In Austria they are as frequent as they are delightful; this was to be my first experience of an Italian mountain-hut. On the Grigna there are two of them, indeed, the Capanna Cecilia, on the summit ridge, and the Capanna Monza, about 1,000 feet below. But on the 21st of June the Capanna Cecilia was still buried deep in snow; our aim was, therefore, to spend the night in the lower hut. This also, of course, was still shut, for these schutz-häuser are not usually open before about the15th of July (some earlier, some later), when the tourist season draws near, from which time they are kept, like any inn, by a resident caretaker, who cooks and supplies all needs; members of the Alpine Clubs, however, can always borrow the key, and make what use they choose of the hut and stores, keeping due record of all they consume, and paying the bill when they descend again and return the key. This practice postulates a pleasant honesty in those concerned; it seems to answer so well that I am fortified in my value for the moral effect of mountains. Clearly they do breed a probity in their lovers which it would probably prove hopeless to expect in a country so comparatively flat as ours.

At last Teodoro returned with the key (without his membership of the Club Alpino Italiano the expedition would have been hopeless) and we resumed our climb. The cobble-track winds up behind Esino into a gorge full of hayfields and great chestnut trees. Here the hay was making, and one old lady seized the chance of our passing by to take a “breather.” She accompanied our cortège for some distance, making much talk. Then was a long woodland toil, then grass and copse with cows, and then, and very high, and very far away, our first sight of a grey peak that was the corner of the Grigna. After this the track turned and mounted stiffly along the outer flank of a hill, under a woodland fringe filled with dying leaves of Hepatica. There were hayfields down the other slope, in which St. Bruno’s white lily stood rare and pure. And the distance had widened beyond belief; the lake seemed lost in the depths below; green range over green range unfolded; Legnone loomed magnificent; Generoso hovered beyond the Lake, and higher in the north, Garzirola, where the rare Androsace lives. So one’s eye ravaged the ranges, and the panorama was tremendous. And then, when our gaze had devoured all the earth, there were rolling clouds in the distance to admire. And then suddenly, high above these again, a thing unexpected, miraculous – hard billows of pure snow, crests and towers of solid white, glowing creamy in the sunlight. I have been called to many a wonderful sight in my time among the mountains; the great peaks have shown me their best, and I have known Fuji-San the Holy in all his moods. Never yet have I seen anything that can compare with the mass of Monte Rosa from the Grigna standing out above the Lombard Plain, far over the lesser ranges, with a serener majesty of bulk and height than any other mountain in the world. I had spoken stupid words of Monte Rosa, knowing her only from the Zermatt side; henceforth, nobly to avenge herself, she dominated every moment I spent on the Grigna.

Meanwhile the sly Grigna was reserving for us a joke of almost impish malignity. For now the path (or what was left of it) was wandering along a small upland valley, close with green bushes. And straight in front of us by this time rose the whole daunting mass of the Grigna, a ragged and rather shapeless bulk of limestone. It seemed quite near at hand; we were obviously drawing to its foot, across the inevitable little upland plain, enamelled with pinks and pansies, that always closes each Alpine valley in a cul de sac. Beyond the lip of our glen must lie the final smooth plateau, a pleasant penultimate rest for our feet, and there beyond it, just over the rim of the foreground, at the upper edge of the pine forest on the mountain, our hungry eyes were gladdened by the box-like shape, the corrugated iron roof of the still too-distant Capanna Monza. However, once over the level flowery plateau before us, there would only remain the steep, short final pull up to the hut.

What, then, was our rage and horror, when the path, instead of ambling quietly across the expected plain, turned back to the right and began fiercely climbing up a wholly unnecessary hill. It climbed and climbed and climbed; its perverse stupidity seemed beyond belief; I doubted our guide; I detested the Grigna; and still the track ascended breathlessly, till at last it emerged on the edge of a cliff, and we understood the reason of its odiousness and the delusiveness of our hopes. For there was no little flowery plain at all; between us and the mountain lay a vast abyss, perhaps a mile across, falling so far down towards the lower levels that its trees and rocks were barely discernible. To the upper lip of this basin had we now attained, and our way to the Capanna, instead of running straight, now ran right round along the semi-circular wall of cliffs to our right, adding miles to our journey towards our lunch, so tantalizingly clear in front of us, and yet so remote from all those who have not the wings of a crow.

The place and its prospect were beautiful indeed. The gaunt precipices at our feet, sinking plumb into deep distances of woodland; the great amphitheatre to our right, the huge bulk of the Grigna in face of us across the gulf. But I was too cross to appreciate its charms, even though the golden suns of Telekia were bursting in bud from the crevices, and little Rock-Brooms hanging in a spray of gold over the grey walls, and Saxifraga Hostii waving in tall plumes of white above its masses of silvery rosettes.

From this point of emergence the track now led us along the amphitheatre. It was a maddening path, for feet already weary, and depleted stomachs. For it would slope downwards for a hundred yards or so, only in order to make us climb up again; it lost us endless time, and wasted our last energies; it was very rotten, and eroded by the winter, fading often to nothing on the edge of gulches and precipices. High overhead rose the cliffs, from which grey bastions stood out from time to time across the way. This ran through stifling copse and over stony slopes; leaves and flowers of Cyclamen began to peer, and Archduke Rainer’s Harebell threaded the stark walls of rock. In and out of precipitous ravines we slithered and toiled, skirting the bluffs; shining broad cushions of Primula in the dank and silty ridges of the brushwood could not now detain me; at last we reached the foot of the last climb and desperately breasted it.

The joy of that Capanna. No eyes had we for the wide prospect over all the earth that lay before us (though the Capanna is so placed that a little pine-clad hummock about half a mile away exactly hides the whole miracle of Monte Rosa), Teodoro unlocked it, and we made fire, and fetched water, and cooked. Bread he had brought from Esino, for the rest we ravaged the resources of the hut. And the fun of housekeeping in a Refuge-hut is a thing to make one ten years younger; one is a child again, marooned on a pirate isle. And the place inside is like a clean, delicious doll’s house to play with; there are rows of bottles on the shelf, and pots, and pans, and tins and condiments. All these we had at our pleasure; never before or since have I so loved a Schutz-haus. For here it was our own – no caretaker, no fellow-guests, just ourselves alone on the mountain, with the appetites of Gargantua, and the opportunities of Lucullus. I made soup with pounded squares of Parmentier, lumps of sugar, salsa di Pomidoro (which, in less romantic phrase, is tomato sauce), vin de Malaga, and shredded sardines. I mixed, and ground, and stirred, in an ecstasy; never was soup so allèchant, so catholic, so heartening before. Meanwhile, Teodoro kneaded polenta (delicious to look at in its golden consistency, but insipid to my obviously artificial taste), and my brother unearthed from the shelves tinned peaches, and potted meats, and tunny-fish in oil, and more sardines. Even now I can remember that it was three o’clock and that we had not fed since eight (and then on coffee and rolls). Fatigue and hunger are divine ecstasies, when once the means of their cure are to hand; not a yard would I now sacrifice of the cobblestones on the Grigna.

We raided the cellar-shelves; experimented on vintages; ate, drank, rested, and were as gods. By four I was out on the mountain again, with different eyes. The Grigna, though, is an ungenial mass. All around, above the Capanna, lies a vast and tumbled waste of snow and stones, rising in successive shapeless lumps of cliff to the final ridges and peaks. My brother struck away up towards the Capanna Cecilia and the summit, though half his way was over snowdrifts, and the other over bluffs of trackless rock. Under the inspiration of Teodoro I made my way towards other cliffs, and over stony slopes and hollows. Soon I was alone in the silence; it was very wonderful and good. Over screes and scars I sought and scrambled; far above my head, in awful faces of the precipice, hung out the unattainable white flowers of Saxifraga Vandelli, the lovely rose-pink alpine garlic of Piedmont was poking up myriads of green shoots in sheltered hollows of soil in the ghylls, and on the shingle, where the snow had melted, lay already the fragrant lilac tuffets of Iberidella.

Slowly I returned at last, through the sunset and down again to the Capanna Monza. And on a little hillock l paused and sat. Sundown was filling all the lower world with blue films. In veil over folded veil of sapphire lay the mountain ranges; the west was a soft and opalescent haze; the valleys were dim and obscure in the dusk. Behind the highest mountain peaks, up towards the zenith, lay long level stretches of soft grey cloud, one upon the other, like restful surfaces of some quiet sea. And above that sea, diaphanous, delicate and pale, floated Monte Rosa, like an Island of the Blest, and the ranges of earth melted into a gentle chaos below. I sat, in the vast silence of the Alpine twilight, while that ghostly and tremendous presence still shone like a soft sapphire, sailing upon an unrippled sea; quickly the world darkened from sight at my feet, and sank into the profundities of night. Night comes swiftly on the mountains, and soon the still air vibrates to a strange note of menace and awe. The sunset blushed and quickened and died in the west; to the end, when all else had gone except the horizon, the lucent vision of Monte Rosa kept its place, immovably poised above the growing darkness.

In the Capanna once more we cooked and revelled. And then my brother and I climbed up to my hillock and sat again. By now the night had fully descended. The sea of cloud had risen and engulphed that fairy island, and the level barrier now lay black from end to end of the sky. But underneath the sunset lingered in an afterglow of glaring orange, and against its steady, piercing light, all the peaks of the horizon started in shapes of carved ebony. Only where Monte Rosa should have been, and the Viso far beyond, there was confusion of cloud; otherwise the afterglow gave us all the mountains in the north and east. I cannot catalogue the items in the wide view which makes the Grigna so famous; but all my old friends were there, even to the uttermost distance of the Oberland; a stern triangle of blackness on the rim of the world can only have been the Finsteraarhorn. The earth below us lay in deep sapphire night. A huge stillness held the hills, and a denser silence seemed to fill the valleys and the bed of the lakes; here and there remote pin points of light appeared, intensifying the midnight of the depths from whence they shone; now and then, with a soft and heavy sound, the note of a bell would rise out of the violet obscurity at our feet with the light and calm precision of a snowflake falling through still air. So then the glow died swiftly beyond the peaks, and the velvet sound of the bell grew deeper, as the last voice of daylight faded utterly among the mountains, and left them coldly sleeping, or dead, until the dawn.