Chapter XIII: The Drama of the Mountains

Non canimus surdis.—VIRGIL.

I will here give two or three pages to the blue boy. He is not at all aware that I am about to put him into print. The reader, I trust, will think that the betrayal of confidence involved in my doing so is not altogether unjustifiable. I mentioned that on the day we crossed the Grimsel, from the Rhone Glacier to Meiringen, he was unusually silent. He afterwards told me that he had then been engaged in composing a drama, which was to be entitled ‘The Drama of the Mountains,’ in which the most conspicuous mountains he had seen—he had in 1870 made the acquaintance of M. Blanc—were to be the _Dramatis Personæ_. Nothing more was said on the subject then, or afterwards. We have infantine productions of Dr. Johnson, Pope, the late Professor Conington, and of others. I now offer the following drama, as an addition to this kind of literature. I can vouch for its entire authenticity and genuineness. It shall be printed from the blue boy’s own MS. The whole composition was arranged in his mind, some days before it was put upon paper, without a hint or suggestion from anybody, and subsequently not a word was corrected, nor even a point in the stopping altered. It could not have been more entirely his own had he been the only soul in Switzerland at the time it was composed. He was alone, too, at the time it was put upon paper. On the first day we were at Aigle—I have just mentioned that it was a wet day—I found him writing it _currente calamo_; and on hearing what he was about, I immediately left the room.

I must premise that last summer I had read to him Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar (he was then translating Cæsar’s Commentaries), and the Midsummer Night’s Dream. On each of which occasions he immediately afterwards produced a drama of his own; one in the high classical style founded on Roman history, the other in the style of Bottom’s interlude. His having had those two plays read to him is the extent of his acquaintance with dramatic literature.

Those who may happen to have no personal acquaintance with his _dramatis personæ_, will allow a word or two on the appropriateness of the parts imagined for them. Blanc, of course, is Emperor in his own, the old, right: from his shoulders and upwards he is higher than any of his people. So with Rosa: she has the same fitness for being Empress. Weishorn and Jungfrau are, beyond controversy, worthy of being, as the order of nature has made them, Prince and Princess Imperial. Cervin (the blue boy thinks in French, and so he calls Matterhorn by his French name), by reason of his signal and conspicuous uprightness, is the best of Prime Ministers. Schreckhorn’s name and character fit him for the Ministry of Police, and prepare us for his horrible treason. Simplon has conferred on him the place of the Emperor’s Messenger, on account of his services to the world in supporting the most serviceable of the great passes into Italy. We are not surprised at finding Silberhorn acting as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mönch appropriately counsels peace. Finsteraarhorn, it will be observed, is taunted with hardly daring to show his face: a sarcastic allusion to the difficulty there is of getting a view of this mountain.

That the Empire of the Mountains was transferred to the Potentate of the Himalaya, was intended not only as an illustration of the bad policy of calling in to our assistance one stronger than ourselves—the mistake the horse made when he entered into a league with man to drive the stag from the contested pasture—but, also, as an application, and this was the main idea, of the broad simple principle of _detur digniori_.

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_THE DRAMA OF THE MOUNTAINS._

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Dramatis Personæ.

BLANC, _emperor of the Alps_.
ROSA, _his wife_.
CERVIN, _his prime-minister_.
JUNGFRAU, _his daughter_.
WEISHORN, _his son_.
FINSTERAARHORN, _Jungfrau’s husband_.
MÖNCH, _the priest_.
SCHRECKHORN, _the police-agent_.
SIMPLON, _messenger of the Alps_.
SILBERHORN, _treasurer_.
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CHIMOULARI, _king of the Himalaya_.
DWALAGIRI, _his prime-minister_.
EVEREST, _his son_.

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Prologue.

The empire of the Alps consists of a large number of European
mountains, who think themselves the highest in the world; but it
is not so, for the kingdom of the Himalaya is still higher and
wiser. In the empire of the Alps, there had been internal
disturbances between Blanc, the emperor, and Schreckhorn, the
police-agent, in which Schreckhorn had mostly had the advantage
and had shut the others up in a prison. But they escaped and
applied to Chimoulari, king of the Himalaya, to help them, which
he accordingly did, and defeated Schreckhorn. Chimoulari then
received the empire of the Alps, and was then emperor of all the
mountains in the world.

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