The Flower-Fields of Alpine Switzerland: An Appreciation and a Plea

The Flower-Fields of Alpine Switzerland: An Appreciation and a Plea

Last year Mr. G. Flemwell gave us a very beautiful volume upon the Alpine Flora, and it has met with well-deserved success. But the author is not yet satisfied. He thinks to do better, and would now make known other picturesthose of Alpine fields, especially during the spring months. Springtime in our Alps is certainly the most beautiful moment of the year, and the months of May and June, even to the middle of July, are the most brilliant of all. It is a season which, up to the present, we have rather considered as reserved for us Swiss, who do not much like that which is somewhat irreverently called lindustrie des trangers, and perhaps we shall not be altogether enchanted to find that the author la mode is about to draw the veil from our secrets, open the lock-gates of our most sacred joys to the [Pg viii] international flood, and sound the clarion to make known, urbe et orbi, the springtime glory of our fields. With this one little reservation to calm the egotistical anxiety which is in me (Mr. Flemwell, who is my colleague in the Swiss Alpine Club, knows too well our national character not to understand the spirit in which we make certain reservations with regard to this invasion of our mountains by the cosmopolitan crowd), I wish to thank the author, and to compliment him upon this fresh monument which he raises to the glory of our flowers. He here presents them under a different aspect, and shows us the Alpine field, the meadow, the great green slope as they transform themselves in springtime. He sings of this rebirth with his poet-soul, and presents it in pictures which are so many hymns to the glory of the Creator. And he is justified in this, for nothing in the world is more marvellous than the re-flowering of Alpine fields in May and June. I have seen it in the little vallons of Fully and of Tourtemagne in Valais, in the fields of Anzeindaz and of Taveyannaz (Canton de Vaud), at the summit of the [Pg ix] Gemmi and on the Oberalp in the Grisons; I have seen the flowering spring in the Bernese Oberland and on the Utli (Zurich), in the vallons of Savoie and in those of Dauphin; I have seen the metamorphosis of the Val de Bagnes and of the Bavarian plain, the transformation of the marvellous valleys of Pimont and of the elevated valley of Aosta. But I have never seen anything more beautiful or more solemn than spring in the Jura Mountains of Vaud and Neuchatel, with their fields of Anemone alpina and narcissiflora, when immense areas disappeared under a deep azure veil of Gentiana verna or of the darker Gentiana Clusii, and when the landscape is animated by myriads of Viola biflora or of Soldanella. In reading what Mr. Flemwell has written, my spirit floats further afield even than thisto the Val del Faene, which reposes near to the Bernina, and I see over again a picture that no painter, not even our author, could render: the snow, in retiring to the heights, gave place to a carpet of violet, blue, lilac, yellow, or bright pink, according as it was composed of either Soldanella pusilla, of long, narrow, pendent bells, which [Pg x] flowered in thousands and millions upon slopes still brown from the rigours of winter, or Gentiana verna, or Primula integrifolia, whose dense masses were covered with their lovely blossoms, or Gagea Liotardi, whose brilliant yellow stars shone on all sides in the sun, or Primula hirsuta. All these separate masses formed together a truly enchanting picture, which remained unadmired by strangerssince these had not yet arrivedand which I was happy and proud to salute under the sky of the Grisons. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 57753
Author: Flemwell, G. (George)
Release Date: Aug 23, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English