Doyle was great on winter sports; and was one of the first to introduce ski-ing into Switzerland. Before that, it had been confined to Norway. All Davos used to turn out to watch Doyle and a few others practising. The beginner on skis is always popular. My own experience has convinced me that it is, practically speaking, impossible to break your neck, ski-ing. There may be a way of doing it: if so, it is the one way I haven't tried. I must have been forty-five when I first put on skis. I had the advantage of being a good skater, and knowing all that could be done with the old-fashioned snow-shoe. Eventually I became fairly proficient. But were I to have my time over again, I would not leave it quite so late. Back somersaults, and the splits are exercises less painfully acquired in youth.
But it was worth the cost. The last time I put on skis was at Arosa, the first year of the war. We were an oddly mixed lot. American girls and German officers skated hand in hand. French, Germans and Italians clung together on the same bob-sleigh. A kind gentleman from St. Petersburg, who claimed to be related to the Tzar, gave lessons in Russian every morning to three Austrian ladies from Vienna, who were fearful that after the war they might have to talk it. We were all on the best of terms with one another. Sport is a shameless internationalist. It was the last day of my holiday. Arosa is an excellent centre for ski-ing. I had had some fine runs and was in good form. I hired a boy from the village to come with me: and climbed the slopes of the Weibhorn. No experienced skier ever goes out alone. There are positions, quite easy to fall into, from which it is anatomically impossible to rise without assistance. The snow was just perfect that day. There had been a slight fall in the night, and the surface had not yet frozen. We climbed for two hours; and then on a narrow plateau we stripped the skins from our skis and fastened them round our waists, tightened our straps, and launched forth. Often have I envied the swallows, watching them sweep on poised wing downward through the air till they almost touch the ground. I envy them more now that I know what it feels like. I can imagine only one more wonderful sensation, and that is the “jump”—an ugly word that does not really describe it. The signal is given to go, and the skier gently moves forward, skis straight, side by side, with the knees just bent. The hard, beaten track grows steeper. The pine trees glide past him, swifter and swifter. Suddenly the trees divide: the track heads straight as an arrow to—nothing. And then that glorious leap into sheer space with arms outstretched and head thrown back. I wonder how long it seems to him until the earth comes rushing up to meet him, and he is flying through the cheering crowd towards the flagstaff. It only wants nerve.
One of the most dangerous things that can happen when ski-ing is to strike a sunk-fence. A broken ankle is generally the result of that; and once I came upon a man, sitting on the edge of a precipice, over which his skis were projecting. He dared not move. He had plunged his arms into the snow behind him and was hoping it would not give way. But having regard to all the dangers that a skier is bound to face, the marvel is that so few accidents occur: and even were they umpteen times as frequent, I should still advise the average youngster to chance it.
The thing to beware of is exhaustion. Ski-ing, like riding, requires its own particular set of new muscles. Until these have been built up, avoid long excursions. It was at Villars I first put on skis. One, Canon Savage, got up a ski-ing party and asked me to come in. I told him I was only a beginner, but he said that would be all right; they would look after me; and at eight o'clock the next morning we started. On the way home, I found it impossible to keep my legs. I would struggle up merely to go down again. Towards dusk, I fell into a drift, and lost my skis. The fastenings had become loosened. They slipped away from under me, and I watched them sliding gracefully down the valley. They seemed to be getting on better without me. I had taken an equal dislike to them and, at first, was glad to see them go. Until it occurred to me that with nothing on my feet but a pair of heavy boots, I had not much chance—in my then state of exhaustion—of extricating myself. I shouted with all the breath I had left. Maybe it wasn't much; and anyhow the Canon and his party were too far ahead to hear me. Fortunately a good Christian, named Arnold, thought of me and came back. I mentioned the incident to the Canon the next morning, but his sense of humour proved keener than mine. He found it amusing.
I never cared for the English school of skating. I have the idea it must have been invented by someone with a wooden leg. I learnt it—sufficiently, at all events, to be able to pass judgment on it. There is no joy in it. It is difficult, I admit. So, likewise, would be dancing in a strait-waistcoat. Why do a thing merely because it is against the laws of nature? Pirouetting around with arms and legs stretched out, looking like something out of a Russian ballet, may not be a dignified amusement for an elderly gentleman of middle weight. But I still enjoyed it up to fifty-eight.
Tobogganing down a carefully prepared snow run soon loses its charm. It answers too closely to the Chinaman's description of it: “Swish. Then walk a milee.” Beginners can come off at a bend and perform a few more or less amusing antics before they come to a standstill. Fortunately they often do, or the spectators would have a dull time. I remember one winter, a lady at Mürren attempting to steer herself by means of a pole some twenty feet long, which she used as a rudder. She wasn't good. At every bump the pole shot up into the air; and then it was the crowd on the bank that performed the antics, and did all the swearing. The bob-sleigh is, of course, another matter. That wants both pluck and skill. Freeman of Davos, who was skipper, once broke his arm at the beginning of a race, and yet steered on to the end. It must have been grim work getting her round those hairpin bends above Klosters, with a splintered bone sticking into your flesh. The best use to make of the ordinary toboggan is to take it out for an afternoon's run down the valley. One walks a little, here and there, where the road is on the level. In the Gasthaus of the scattered village, one halts to drink a glass of beer, and to smoke. One glides through pine-woods, looking down upon the foaming torrent far below. It is good sport dodging the woodcutters' sledges. The horses watch you out of their quiet eyes, and jingle their bells as you pass. The children, coming out of school, bar your way. You shake your fist at them and plunge on headlong. You know that, at the last moment, they will leap aside. But you must be prepared for snowballs. You overtake stout farmers' wives, seated upright with their basket of eggs between their knees; and exchange a grave “Grüss Gott.” And so on till you reach the sleepy town at the gateway of the valley. There you take coffee, with perhaps a glass of schnapps. Then home in the little bustling train, crowded with chatty peasant folk; and maybe, if your seat is near the stove, you fall asleep.
Climbing, so far as Switzerland is concerned, will soon be a thing of the past. Every peak will have its railway. The fine thing was to talk about it afterwards, round the great pitcher of wine in the Gastzimmer of the village inn, listening to the wisdom of the guides, comparing notes with your fellow climbers, recounting your dangers and hairbreadth escapes. Who cares to do that now, when a sportsman in spats and a jazz jumper may, at any moment, burst in upon your tale of peril and exhaustion with a cheery: “Oh, yes, we bumped up there this morning by the nine forty-five. Not a bad view, but a rotten lunch”?
Only on one occasion have I been mixed up with a mishap. We were crossing a glacier, and my friend Frank Mathew fell into a crevass. We were roped together, and he did it so carelessly that he nearly pulled me in after him. The guide, of course, stood firm; but it took some time to get him out. I was all for going on; but Mathew took a more serious view of it; and we helped him to limp home.
Frank Mathew was a nephew of Father Mathew, the great temperance preacher. Frank wrote delightful Irish stories for The Idler. I am convinced he would have made a name for himself in literature if he had stuck to it. Alas! he came into money and married happily.
A snow slope is the most dangerous thing to negotiate. One day, Mathew and I walked up the Scheidegg. The hotel was not then built. It was only a hut in those days. We were looking forward to getting some
thing to eat, but found the old landlord too scared to attend to us, crying, and hardly able to stand. He had been watching through his telescope, and had just seen three men follow one another down a snow slope and over one of the precipices of the Jungfrau. Their bodies were recovered a few days later. They were three young Italians who had ventured without a guide.
The amateur photographer is the curse of Switzerland. One would not mind if they took one at one's best. There was a charming photograph in The Sphere one winter of my daughter and myself, waltzing on the ice at Grindelwald. It made a pretty picture. But, as a rule, beauty does not appeal to the snap-shotter. I noticed, in my early ski-ing days, that whenever I did anything graceful the Kodak crowd was always looking the other way. When I was lying on my back with my feet in the air, the first thing I always saw when I recovered my senses, was a complete circle of Kodaks pointing straight at me. Poor Rudyard Kipling never got a chance of learning. I was at Engelberg with him one winter. He was in the elementary stage as regards both skating and ski-ing; and wherever he went the Kodak fiends followed him in their hundreds. He must have felt like a comet trying to lose its own tail.
I took him one morning to a ski-ing ground I had discovered some mile or more away: an ideal spot for the beginner. We started early and thought we had escaped them. But some fool had seen us, and had given the hulloa; and before we had got on our skis, half Engelberg was pouring down the road.
Kipling is not the meekest of men and I marvelled at his patience.
“They might give me a start,” he sighed; “I would like to have had them on, just once.”
Engelberg is too low to be a good sports centre. We had some muggy weather, and to kill time I got up some private theatricals. Kipling's boy and girl were there. They were jolly children. Young Kipling was a suffragette and little Miss Kipling played a costermonger's Donah. Kipling himself combined the parts of scene-shifter and call boy. It was the first time I had met Mrs. Kipling since her marriage. She was still a beautiful woman, but her hair was white. There had always been sadness in her eyes, even when a girl. The Hornungs were there also, with their only child, Oscar. Mrs. Hornung, née Connie Doyle, was as cheery and vigorous as ever, but a shade stouter. Both boys were killed in the war.
It was election time in England, and the hotel crowd used to encourage Kipling and myself to political argument in the great hall. I suppose I was the only man in the hotel who was not a Die-hard conservative. Kipling himself was always courteous, but not all the peppery old colonels from Cheltenham and fierce old ladies from Bath were. Notwithstanding, on wet afternoons, when one couldn't go out, it wasn't bad sport. Conan Doyle in his memoirs writes me down as one “hot-headed and intolerant in political matters.” When I read the passage I was most astonished. It is precisely what I should have said myself concerning Doyle. I suppose the fact is that tolerance is another name for indifference. A man convinced that his views, if universally adopted, would be of ineffable service to humanity, is bound to attribute opposition to stupidity or else to original sin. Socrates himself—if Plato is to be trusted—was quite an intolerant person. I am not sure that, arguing with Socrates, I would not rather he called me a fool and have done with it, than proceed to prove it to me, step by step, according to that irritating method of his. Thrasymachus, I am prepared to wager, thought Socrates one of the most intolerant men he had ever met. If Doyle can get into touch with Thrasymachus, he might put it to him if I am not right. Not until we have come to see that man's goal lies within him, not without—that what we call the “progress of the Race” is never towards the truth, but always round it, do we become tolerant—on most matters of opinion.
The road has disappeared. The motor track has taken its place. But the wheel is a poor substitute for the ribbons. I speak as an old coachman. It was good sport, going for a drive with jolly horses that you loved; who knew they were part of the game, and took care that it never got dull. I have a city friend who, in the old days, whenever he would take his mind off business worries, would have out his dog-cart, and drive tandem through Piccadilly and the Broadway, and so home by Richmond Hill and Brentford. Now, he takes out his motor, and all he has to do is to watch the policeman. It is no help to him whatever. Driving a coach and four was interesting but, compared with tandem driving, it was restful. In a team your leaders were coupled together and, unless they had talked it over beforehand and arranged upon a signal, could not suddenly turn round and look at you. Your tandem leader could, and sometimes would; and then you had to be quick with the flick of your whip: and maybe an oath or two, thrown in. Of course, the perfectly trained tandem was easy to take anywhere; but such was only for the rich: and, after all, there was more fun when your horses were not mere machines, and you had to watch their twitching ears and try to guess what they were thinking. I had a little Irish horse. He was a born leader. I did not have to drive him, beyond just giving him a general idea of where I wanted to get. He would pick his own way through an agricultural town on market day, leaving me to concentrate myself upon the wheeler. But that was when he was feeling good. And when he wasn't, he was just a little devil. I had some Oxford boys staying with me one summer. The horses hadn't been out all day, and the boys suggested a tandem drive by moonlight. We didn't take my old coachman, and he didn't clamour to come.
“I should keep my eye on the Little 'un, if I were you, sir,” he advised me, as he handed me the reins. “I don't like the way he has been picking up his feet.”
We started all right. “Pat” let his collar hang and seemed sleepy, but I knew his head was full of mischief: I could feel it through the eighteen feet of rein. In the hope of discouraging him, I turned up a narrow road with a high bank on either side. He still seemed drowsy, but I wasn't trusting him. It was a winding road. Suddenly, at a bend, he flung up his head and laid back his ears. “Hold on,” I shouted. The next moment we were charging up the bank. There was nothing else to be done but to let the wheeler follow: a dear quiet girl, when left to herself; but Pat always gave her a bit of his devil. The two men behind were shot out, but hung on, and managed somehow to scramble back. I wish they hadn't. I could have got on better without them. We cleared the top, and then they started cheering. We went through that cornfield at twenty miles an hour. I saw an open gate and made for that. We crossed a lane and through the hedge to the other side: by good luck it was chiefly bramble. The two fools at the back, I gathered, were unhurt. They were singing “Annie Laurie.” We took the Ewelme golf links still at the gallop. They seemed to me to be all bunkers. At the Icknield corner, I managed to get the horses on to the road. It rises four hundred feet in a mile and a half; and at Swyncombe, Pat agreed to my suggestion that we should pull up and have a look at the view. We returned home, via Nettlebed, at a gentle trot. Beyond having lost our hats, and the temporary use of my left eye, we were not much damaged. My Oxford friends crowded round Pat and congratulated him. The youngest of them, who had an indulgent mother, offered me my own price for him, then and there. He had been bitten with the idea of starting a tandem of his own.
Poor Pat! I had to shoot him when the motors came. He had never let anything pass him on the road, before, and one day, at the Henley Fair Mile, he ran his last race. He was only a few days short of twenty then: though you wouldn't have thought it. He had had a good time.
Tandem driving is asking for trouble, sooner or later. I had driven tandem, summer and winter, for over ten years, in and out among the Chilterns, which isn't an easy country; and my escapes had put it into my head, I suppose, that nothing ever could happen to me. And then, one afternoon, driving quietly round a corner at eight miles an hour, I tilted over a heap of stones that had been shot out there that morning for road-mending and broke poor Norma Lorimer's leg. She and Douglas Sladen were staying with us at the time. Sladen had remained behind to write a book-review in answer to a telegram: which shows how wise it is always to put duty before pleasure. Fortunately, we were near home, and some labourers quickly came to our assista
nce. I got on my bicycle and rode down to Wallingford, and wired for a bone setter; and when I started to return, I discovered I had broken an ankle. I had not known it till then, when my excitement had begun to cool down. I remember we boys had a way of getting into the Alexandra Palace by climbing a tree and dropping down inside the fence. One day, I slipped and fell upon the spikes. I felt nothing at the time, except the desire to put distance between myself and a young policeman who seemed to have suddenly sprung out of the earth. It was my mother who noticed that my arm was in ribbons. Nature, red though she be in tooth and claw, provides an anæsthetic. It was man who invented cold-blooded cruelty. Miss Lorimer stayed with us for a month, and forgave me. She talked as if all I had done had been to provide her with a good excuse for a pleasant holiday. But I was glad of that broken ankle. I'd have felt mean merely saying “I'm sorry.” We used to play croquet on crutches.
Killing has never attracted me. I give myself no airs. As Gilbert points out, there is no difference, morally speaking, between the Judge who condemns a man to be hanged and the industrious mechanic who carries out the sentence. If I like eating a pheasant (which I do) I ought, logically, to take a pleasure in shooting it. Possibly, if we all had to be our own butchers, vegetarianism would be less unpopular. But there would still remain a goodly number to whom the cutting of a pig's throat would afford enjoyment; and such, alone, are entitled to their bacon. There was an old farmer I knew in Oxfordshire, a simple soul. He owned the shooting over one solitary field, in the centre of which was a three-acre copse of beech wood. All round him, for miles, were rich men who spent quite fabulous sums on rearing pheasants.
“No,” he said to me one day during a big shoot. We were leaning over the gate of his one small field. “No, I don't myself go in for breeding. I just take what the Lord sends me.”
I didn't count them but, speaking roughly, I should say about a hundred birds had gained the shelter of that three-acre copse while we had been talking.
My Life and Times Page 19