AH: You write that it is not until the governor of Wisconsin, Warren Knowles, arrives in Elm in 1970 and the Swiss and American flags are flying side by side against the Zwölflihorn that “it seemed that the whole Swiss and American duality was coming together in a meaningful unity” (Schelbert, New Glarus 1845–1970).
HK: Elm and New Glarus: the preservation not just of an invented tradition, but of rural cultures.
AH: Rip van Winkle, who seeks to escape familial duties by drinking with a group of ghosts a liquor that makes him fall asleep for twenty years, becomes a kind of model.
HK: “Having propelled myself out of the world into which I was born and never achieving the world toward which I aspired, I have been no place, belonged nowhere” (Kubly, At Large).
AH: You belong to your readers, still.
HK: Guilt from turning my back on my roots and paranoia from seeing myself a lonely outcast, fueled by a feeling of inferiority, what I call “the dilemma of the feeling man” (Kubly, Native’s Return).
AH: The legacy of, as Kay Boyle puts it, the mountain man, “the restlessness, the loneliness, the uneasiness.”
HK: Zwingli was, after all, from Glarus.
AH: As is Elmer Citro, the most popular soft drink in Switzerland.
HK: And Schabziger (Sapsago), the only fat-free cheese, flavored by a local herb and pressed into a cone, that literally keeps forever.
Americanizing
Swiss Stories
Swiss Family Robinson (1812); or, “The Most Famous Robinsonade”
* * *
Since we must have books, there is one book which, to my thinking, supplies the best treatise on education according to nature. This is the first book Emile will read; for a long time it will form his whole library, and it will always retain an honoured place. … What is this wonderful book? Is it Aristotle? Pliny? Buffon? No; it is Robinson Crusoe.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile; or, On Education (1762)
To girls this species of reading cannot be as dangerous as it is for boys; girls must soon perceive the impossibility of their rambling about the world in quest of adventure; and where there appears an obvious impossibility in gratifying any wish, it is not likely to become, or at least to continue to torment the imagination.
Maria Edgeworth, Practical Education (1798)
I could lecture to you now on The Swiss Family Robinson and it would be a glowing lecture, because of the emotions felt in boyhood. … That is my eternal summer, that is what The Swiss Family Robinson means to me.
E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927)
I have recently reread The Swiss Family Robinson, some 65 years after my last reading, to see what I make of it now. I must confess that I have been as enchanted, or almost, as I remember myself being at my first reading, at about the age of ten.
J. Hillis Miller, “Reading: The Swiss Family Robinson as Virtual Reality” (2004)
About six weeks ago Gertrude Stein said, it does not look to me as if you were ever going to write that autobiography. You know what I am going to do. I am going to write it for you. I am going to write it as simply as Defoe did the autobiography of Robinson Crusoe. And she has and this is it.
Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)
Crusoe is a corruption of Kreutznaer, the name of Robinson Crusoe’s father, who emigrated from Bremen first to Hull and then to York, in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719).
There is a female Crusoe and a Catholic Crusoe, a Sachsen Robinson and a Danish Robinson, a Robinson of the wilderness and a Robinson of the prairies. There are false Robinsons, where the likeness to the original appears only in the title, but there is no Swiss family by the name of Robinson.
J. D. Wyss (1743–1818), a mercenary and then military chaplain, served as rector of the Protestant cathedral in Bern. He was an outdoorsman and avid reader of travel narratives, and sought to educate his four sons by having them found a colony in the South Seas. By 1859 his name appeared nowhere on the title page of the seventh edition in English of The Swiss Family Robinson. He has no entry in most Swiss books of literary reference.
J. R. Wyss, a professor of philosophy and author of the Swiss national anthem, organized his father’s unwieldy 841-page manuscript for publication. Sometimes called Charakteristik meiner Kinder in einer Robinsonade (Qualities of my children in a Robinsonade), it includes sixty illustrations by his brother, J. E. Wyss. It was originally published in Zürich in two parts in 1812 and 1813.
William Godwin’s second wife, Mary Jane Godwin, is the first to translate Der Schweizerische Robinson; oder, Der schiffbrüchige Schweizerprediger und seine Familie; Ein lehrreiches Buch für Kinder und Kinderfreunde zu Stadt und Land (The shipwrecked Swiss clergyman and his family; or, an instructional book for children and the friends of children in both city and country) into English. She may have used the French translation, rather than the German original. The Family Robinson Crusoe; or, Journal of a Father Shipwrecked, with his Wife and Children, on an Uninhabited Island joins the list of the Juvenile Library, published by M. J. Godwin and Co. in 1814. William Godwin, also an educational theorist, believed, like Rousseau, that children should learn directly from nature, rather than from books. Not until 1849 was there a standard edition in English.
Madame la Baronne Isabelle de Montolieu (1751–1832), the daughter of a vicar of Huguenot descent who grew up in Lausanne and at an early age made the acquaintance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is best known as the author of Caroline de Litchfield (1813). The first translator of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion into French, she is the first to provide a translation of Le Robinson Suisse, ou, Journal d’un père de famille naufragé avec ses enfants. Given her imperfect mastery of English and German, her translations more closely resemble free adaptations. Is it she who invents the English girl, Emily Montrose, sometimes Jenny Montrose (a Walter Scott heroine), rescued by the oldest son? Early editions end with an English ship that discovers the family but fails to rescue it because a storm sends it back out to sea, taking only the manuscript. In later editions, the family is divided into those who want to remain on the island and those who seek to be repatriated. In my edition, Fritz rescues Emily, Fritz and Francis return to Europe, and Emily returns with them, hoping to once again reach England.
The first edition of Robinson Crusoe abridged specifically for children is published in 1768. Between 1719 and 1819 there are approximately 150 abridgements for children. The first German version aimed at young people is written by Joachim Heinrich Campe in 1779. Campe translates Robinson der Jüngere as Robinson the Younger in 1781. Robinson is no longer eighteen years old, but twenty-eight.
Frederick Marryat, the captain of Virginia Woolf’s The Captain’s Deathbed, writes Masterman Ready; or, The Wreck of the Pacific (1841) in response to his children’s request for a sequel to The Swiss Family Robinson. Mr. and Mrs. Seagrave, their four children—one of whom is Caroline—and a black servant, Juno, are bound for Australia. Masterman Ready, the only crew member to survive, provides a practical education by recounting his conversion from a life of rebellion to one of filial responsibility, even though he has never heard of Robinson Crusoe. In addition, Marryat seeks to correct the many errors found in The Swiss Family Robinson having to do with seamanship, flora, and fauna. But, as James Joyce points out, what about the errors in the original: “How could Robinson Crusoe have filled his pockets with biscuits if he had undressed before swimming from the beach to the stranded ship? … How could the Spaniards have given Friday’s father a written agreement if they had no ink or quill pens? Are there bears or not on the islands of the West Indies?”
By the time R. M. Ballantyne writes The Coral Island (1858), the parents have disappeared and only three boys remain, to endure dangers but above all to have fun. One boy becomes the leader, and together they enjoy the bounty of the island and their newfound freedom, even as they begin by establishing a daily regimen. Being stranded on a South Sea island has now become a
boy’s adventure story.
The Swiss Family Robinson is made into a Hollywood film in 1940 and remade by Disney in 1960. When the story comes to America, the boys, of whom there are only three, are turning into teenagers. The only thing missing on the bountiful island is girls. The only reason to explore the island is to look for a potential mate. When they find an Englishman with a fourteen-year-old boy held captive by pirates, Fritz and Ernst decide he’s not the right kind of boy, but rather a sissy who has never used his hands. When the boys reminisce about Switzerland, besides “real mountains” and “snow in the air,” they wax nostalgic about the girls on the Marktgasse in Bern, where “you look and they look.” When they discover the boy is actually a girl, Roberta, the brothers become rivals for her, since the island, in all its bounty, has produced only one girl for three sons. Will she return to London with Ernest, so he can continue his studies and wear a tall hat, or will she remain with Fritz, who instead of working in an office wants to build a new country with his own hands? When the pirates return during the “first national holiday in the history of New Switzerland,” Roberta imagines a third option, giving herself up for the safety of a family (of all boys). Once her grandfather saves them from pirates, he offers to take the family back to Europe or on to New Guinea. The parents decide to stay on the island with Francis, and Ernest decides to leave for England, to become someone not quite a sissy, not quite an adventurer. When Roberta asks “what it is one really wants,” for a girl there is only one answer: to stay “alone” on the island with Fritz, who already is someone, that is, a dependable provider.
Two years after the release of the film, Disney re-creates the story as the Swiss Family Treehouse in Yesterland, California, nestled in the branches of a banyan tree belonging to the species Disneyodendron eximus, or “out of the ordinary Disney tree.” The giant artificial tree is made out of steel and concrete, with “roots” forty-two feet into the ground, fourteen hundred branches, and three hundred thousand polythene leaves, although draped with real Spanish moss. The furnishings, “an intriguing combination of European goods and primitive jungle products,” is most noted for its “clever and functional” (American) plumbing system, which provides “clean, running water to every room” (Yesterland, “Swiss Family Treehouse”), so no one has to share. All of this is accompanied by the theme tune “Swisskapolka.” In 1999 Disneyland evicts the Swiss Family from their tree house to make room for Tarzan, just as Tarzan premiers in movie houses. The giant tree receives a massive makeover, including replacement vinyl leaves. The old gramophone still plays “Swisskapolka,” for those nostalgic for the old country. Those nostalgic for another adventure can find the evicted family in several other Disney locations, including those in Florida, Japan, and France.
What Is an Island?
If an island isolates species, is it like a schoolhouse without walls, or like a curiosity cabinet?
Is it an ideal scene of instruction, or an imaginary solution to a social contradiction?
Does it have an educational purpose, and if so, what is it teaching besides an imperial fantasy?
Is the Swiss pastor a precursor to Lord Baden-Powell or to J. H. Pestalozzi?
The pastor, his wife, and their four sons are bound for Tahiti, with plans to go on to Port Jackson (now Sydney, Australia). Shipwrecked, they establish “New Switzerland” somewhere near New Guinea. Eventually their colony will be absorbed into the British Empire.
Many of the Protestant missionaries in the British Empire, by way of the London Missionary Society, founded in 1795, were German (Hermann Hesse’s grandfather), or Danish (Olive Schreiner’s father), or Swiss. It is said Robinson Crusoe was among their favorite reading.
Although the pastor emigrates due to financial distress, ostensibly because of losses incurred during the Napoleonic wars, he does not abandon his family in Switzerland, like J. A. Sutter. Rather, the family is a model of piety, hard work, and collective effort. It is a hierarchy organized by birth order, where youth feminizes but intellectual as well as manual labor represents an acceptable form of masculinity. The sons must compete with each other in athletic games but only inasmuch as mens sana in corpore sano.
“The Piece of Land Entrusted to Each Is the Soul”
They have lost their way but not their things.
They have everything they need to found a colony.
The colony will be established elsewhere.
Human creatures … are the colonists of God; we are required to perform the business of probation for a certain period, and, sooner or later, are destined to be taken hence. Our final destination is Heaven, and a perfect happiness with the spirits of just men made perfect, and in the presence of the bountiful Father of us all. The piece of land entrusted to each is the soul; and according as he cultivates and ennobles it, or neglects or depraves it, will be his future reward or punishment. (Wyss, The Swiss Family Robinson)
God, not the empire, demands a colony, which leaves the Swiss off the hook. The soul is that piece of land that has been entrusted by God, not appropriated by stealth or murder. It is perfected only in heaven, which requires labor on earth. Labor conquers idleness in order to banish ignorance. Those who are averse to labor, as all German-Swiss know, are the Italians. The island is paradise, but not Eden. It is too insular, too isolated. It is uninhabited by other Swiss.
“A Native of Switzerland”
Swiss Family Robinson is about being at home in a strange land. Its strangeness lies in the fact that it is surrounded by water, unlike Switzerland, a landlocked island dotted by lakes. Homesickness for the homeland makes salt water turn into tears.
The lake was situated in a deep and abrupt valley. No one who is not a native of Switzerland can conceive this emotion which trembled at my heart, the faithful miniature of so many grand originals, which I had probably lost sight of for ever [sic]. My eyes swam with tears! Alas! A single glance upon the surrounding picture, the different characters of the trees, the vast ocean in the distance, destroyed the momentary illusion, and brought back my ideas to the painful reality, that I and mine were—strangers in a desert island. (Wyss, The Swiss Family Robinson)
The lake, in the middle of the island, is like an island in the middle of the ocean. It is like Switzerland in the middle of Europe, which has acted like an island for much of its history, living in splendid isolation with a strong sense of self-determination and an idealized sense of its past. It relies on the immutability of its mountains, rather than the waywardness of the sea. One might lose one’s way, but one can’t get lost. There are storms, but one will never be cast away.
“New Switzerland”
Animals replace natives as those who threaten and those who can be tamed. Some are hunted and others are killed and catalogued in the cabinet of natural history. The liminal figure is the monkey, between man and animal, both pet and prey.
I even thought it might be practicable to erect a sort of farmhouse on the soil, which we might visit occasionally, and be welcomed by the agreeable sounds of the cackling of our feathered subjects, which would so forcibly remind us of the customs of our forsaken but ever-cherished country. (Wyss, The Swiss Family Robinson)
In the absence of natives there are untutored Swiss children. They will be taught to govern themselves, and their learning will take the form of an adventure. Fritz, the oldest, plays the role of the savage, dressed up in costume to look like a Malay. Friday is the girl dressed up as a boy who has lived on an island of her own, a future girl Friday.
“English was the Language of the Sea”
The Swiss family is a multilingual microcosm.
English will mediate between the major continental languages.
Malay remains useless.
We all knew a little of French, for this is as much in use as German throughout Switzerland. Fritz and Ernst had commenced to learn English at Zurich, and I had myself paid some attention to the language, in order to superintend their education. I now urged them to continue their studies, as Engli
sh was the language of the sea, and there were very few ships that did not contain some one [sic] who understood it. Jack, who knew nothing at all, began to pay some attention to Spanish and Italian, the pomp and melody of these two languages according with his character. As for myself, I laboured hard to master the Malay tongue; for the inspection of charts and maps convinced me that we were in the neighborhood of these people. (Wyss, The Swiss Family Robinson)
The father is the source of all book knowledge. He must eradicate not just idleness but ignorance. Everything they discover is recognizable because of what he has learned in books. Knowledge is taxonomic. He has always already read the world. The book they read together is Robinson Crusoe. In contrast to the solitary castaway, the family is still intact, smug. They each contribute to the written journal, the only proof that they were really there.
The Female Castaway
Together with Heidi, The Swiss Family Robinson maintains its position among the ten most popular children’s books in the world.
The family has no daughter. Emily/Jenny, the adopted daughter, is born in India of English parentage and receives a boy’s education from her father, a colonel. As a girl, because she is not allowed to board a battleship in time of war, she is to return to England on a ship whose passage her father arranges, a ship eventually thrown off course by a storm. On her island, she accomplishes in three years what the Swiss family accomplishes in ten.
Coming Out Swiss Page 19