Together

Together by Norman Douglas (1923)

Norman Douglas's "Together" opens with the author settling into a familiar Alpine inn in the rain, in a Vorarlberg village where he spent his own childhood, accompanied by his young French pupil, Mr. R. From this base he ranges over the surrounding valley, weaving present-day rambles with a dense fabric of childhood memory: the tavern's dachshunds, the church whose old bells were melted down during the war, the Hoher Frassen and Kloster alp, and a first, disastrous cigar smoked at age six. He recalls his father and the veteran guide called the Brunnenmacher and his son, their exploits and rivalries on peaks like the Zimba and Scesaplana, the elder Brunnenmacher's secret conquest of the Zimba ahead of the narrator's father, and the mountain huts built in that era. He describes local marmots ("Burmentli"), a deformed specimen in his collection, and the district's economic hardship after the war — collapsing currency, ruined wine trade, starving cockchafer-plagued crops, and the loss of moles that once checked the larvae. Domestic life fills much of the narrative: elaborate meals negotiated with the innkeeper's wife, comic lessons in English grammar with the obstinate but affectionate Mr. R., and reflections on French education and folklore. He recounts childhood escapades with his sister — wasp stings on the Furkla alp, a soaking in the Feldbächle stream, doll-smashing rituals, cigar and cider mishaps — and figures from his youth: the ghoulish nurse "Alte Anna," governesses including the ineffectual Miss Prim, and his fearsome Scottish grandmother, against whom he once rebelled with a walking stick over her hated Gregory's Powder. He details the family's cotton-mill fortune founded by his grandfather, and his father's mountaineering, archaeological writings, and fatal fall near the Rothe Wand while chamois hunting, which the narrator investigates by climbing to view the accident site with Mr. R. Excursions continue to the ruined castles of Blumenegg and Jagdberg and Rosenegg, dwelt on at length for their romantic decay, and to villages including Tiefis, Schlins, and St. Gerold, where he seeks traces of a naturalist monk named Bruhin. Comic threads run throughout: Mr. R.'s infatuation with an innkeeper's daughter at Tiefis, his mouth-organ compositions, his bafflement at English idiom, and a visit to the Valduna asylum after a search for the region's "idiots" proves disappointing. The narrator also recalls his flamboyant, tyrannical maternal grandfather at Bregenz, a veteran of Otho's Greece, and closes this portion with reflections on vanishing wooden bridges and troughs being replaced by cement, and childhood pranks involving the family dogs at Lasko's well.

By Norman Douglas · First published 1923 · Genre: Travel Literature, Fiction, Satire · 14 chapters · 59,193 words

First lines

It rains.

It has rained ever since our arrival in this green Alpine village; rained not heavily but with a grim Scotch persistence -- the kind of drizzle that will tempt some old Aberdonian, sitting unconcernedly in soaking grass by the wayside, to look up and remark: "The roads is something saft. " Are we going to have a month of _Landregen_, as they call it? No matter. Anything for fresh air; anything to escape from the pitiless blaze of the South, and from those stifling nights when your bedroom grows into a furnace, its walls exuding inwardly all the fiery beams they have sucked up during the endless hours of noon. Let it rain!

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friendship · community · relationships · love · human connection · social dynamics · intimacy · collaboration · support · togetherness · empathy · understanding

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