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80 PRÆTERITA-I
copied from Saussure, at p. 201, and reading some of the very singular information about the Alps which it illustrates. So that Switzerland must have been at once included in the plans,-soon prosperously, and with result of all manner of good, by God’s help fulfilled.
89. We went by Calais and Brussels to Cologne; up the Rhine to Strasburg, across the Black Forest to Schaffhausen, then made a sweep through North Switzerland by Basle, Berne, Interlachen, Lucerne, Zurich, to Constance,-following the Rhine still to Coire, then over Splügen to Como, Milan, and Genoa; meaning, as I now remember, for Rome. But, it being June already, the heat of Genoa warned us of imprudence: we turned, and came back over the Simplon to Geneva, saw Chamouni, and so home by Lyons and Dijon.1
To do all this in the then only possible way, with posthorses, and, on the lakes, with oared boats, needed careful calculation of time each day. My father liked to get to our sleeping place as early as he could, and never would stop the horses for me to draw anything (the extra pence to postillion for waiting being also an item of weight in his mind);-thus I got into the bad habit, yet not without its discipline, of making scrawls as the carriage went along, and working them up “out of my head” in the evening. I produced in this manner, throughout the journey, some thirty sheets or so of small pen and Indian ink drawings, four or five in a sheet; some not inelegant, all laborious, but for the most part one just like another, and without exception stupid and characterless to the last degree.
90. With these flying scrawls on the road, I made, when staying in towns, some elaborate pencil and pen outlines, of which perhaps half-a-dozen are worth register and preservation. My father’s pride in a study of the doubly-towered Renaissance church of Dijon was great. A still more laborious Hôtel de Ville of Brussels remains with it
1 [For a fuller account, and the rhymed history, of this journey (not quite accurately given here), see Vol. II. pp. 340 seq.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
