Where Have All the Dragons Gone?
“Goblins and devils have long vanished from the Alps, and so many years have passed without any well-authenticated account of a discovery of a dragon that dragons too may be considered to have migrated.” So the Alpine Club was informed in May 1877 by Mr Henry Gotch, the secre-tary, and the news set off great celebrations among sporty but superstitious Englishmen. The golden age of mountaineering, as it was then known, began in 1854 and ended with a bang around 1865, the year five Englishmen fell to their death climbing the Matterhorn. Among the dead was Lord Francis Douglas, whose older brother went after Oscar Wilde some 30 years later. A little known fact is that when the bodies were found, mostly shredded and unrecognisable after a fall of more than 4,000 feet, and brought down for burial, a young man by the name of Carson was in Zermatt following the gruesome proceedings. Carson was the QC the ghastly Queensberry chose to defend him against the playwright’s suicidal libel suit. Even more amazing was the presence of Alfred Wills, later Sir Alfred, the man who presided over the trial and the first to conquer the Wetterhorn in 1854. Today, any shyster lawyer would have got Oscar off on conflict of interest, mountain climbing, but those were more innocent days.
Many strange things happen in the mountains, and 20 minutes from where I live in Gstaad is the village of Diablerets, named after the devils inhabiting the surrounding gorges. Although the Alps today are the playground of the rich and ugly, only 200 years ago they were a wilderness of fear and superstition. Just above the pastures of Switzerland, it was believed dragons and ghosts existed, inhabiting the glaciers and snowy peaks. No one in their right mind thought of going up and disturbing the devils, and many a naughty child was warned that a dragon would snatch it away if it didn’t behave.
Then, in the late 18th century, scientists got involved. Seeking knowledge of glacial formations and the earth’s origin, the learned ones managed to do what they always do, ruin the Alps’ fearsome reputation as well as that of the dragons, ghosts and devils who lived there. It was one of the greatest ecological disasters of all time. Just imagine the Alps without Mark Rich, fat Russian oligarch crooks, oily Saudi thieves, and disgusting nouveaux-riches hedge fund conmen. No choppers, no ski lifts, no snow boarders, no social climbers. Just a few sporty types like myself, walking up mountains in summer and using skins in winter. We would never go near the top and disturb the devils. A one- or two-hour climb, then a quick descent by ski and live to tell the tale. Oh, yes, I almost forgot, there would be no private ski clubs as no one in their right mind would be willing to work there and be snatched away in the middle of the night. And fire-breathing dragons are no laughing matter. Only 50 years or so ago, another fire-breathing animal was spotted above Gstaad, a fierce monster whose breath literally knocked out people, but it turned out to be Charlie Clore, the multi-millionaire Cockney shoe salesman, now selling air conditioners in that sauna-like place below.
After the scientists got down and done, the romantics flocked to the Alps. The savage beauty of the mountains inspired thousands of young men to get their courage up to try to undress their girlfriends. (In the case of the English, their boyfriends.) Then, in the 1850s, came the climbers, many of whom went up only to come down rather suddenly. It got so bad that the pre-Murdoch Times asked, “Why is the best blood of England to waste itself in scaling hitherto inaccessible peaks? In staining the eternal snows and reaching the unfathomable abyss never to return?” The London Illustrated News was hysterical at the thought of a lord falling off a cliff, “an event which threatens the very fabric of society.” Very well put, except that, if it were true, the Alps today would be called the Blairs.
Never mind. What the climbers didn’t manage to ruin, the social mountaineers did. After the Alps were finally conquered, spas sprang up in the surrounding foothills. Places like Evian and Leukerbad, Kleinen Scheidegg, Grindenwald, and, yes, Gstaad and St Moritz. The last two were for social climbing only, with both resorts having signed a charter forbidding sports of any kind. The first Arab visitor to the Alps was a camel by the name of Nustradin, and its name is etched in gold in both Palace hotels in Gstaad and St Moritz. This was in 1947. At present the Alps and Alpine resorts are under Russian siege, thousands of whom are flocking here as if the Alps were Noah’s Ark. Their manners are enough to chase the few remaining dragons even further into the mists and glaciers of the peaks. In the resort of Diableret, I heard a local lady warn her grandson to behave, otherwise an ugly fat Russian oligarch would grab him. The poor kid howled for an hour.
Mind you, the only ones who can afford Alpine prices nowadays are the ghosts. Many a time I find items on my bills that have been tacked on as extras and which I never ordered or consumed. They are obviously for the phantoms, or so the locals tell me when I complain. Still, it’s lovely to be up here, nearer the dragons and ghosts and away from the scum on the Riviera. Give me a dragon any day.
Comments
Every time I turn around Taki is excoriating the Russians. Are their manners that bad, or are these Russians just the newly rich?
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I would imagine that Taki is not exaggerating…
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Taki fails to note that the infernal combustion engine, as applied to motorcars and aircraft, can be blamed as much as the parvenu Russkies. As long as the likes of Gstaad and St. Moritz were all but inaccessible by motor they were, so I understand, still idyllic. The MOB (Montreux-Oberland Bernois and Rhaetische Railways provided pleasant access without all the degradation that motors inevitably provide. With oil becoming more and more of a problem, there will eventually be a return to the electric trains. Just be patient, Taki. Maybe the Russkies will buy private cars so the modest public first-class will be suitable for the politer sort. There is always hope.
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I assure you, Taki is not exaggerating about the manners of the Russian new rich. They are thick on the ground here in Paris in all the better restaurants and shops, and a more horribly ill-bred group of lunkheads you have never seen. There is a lot to be said for French waiters and store attendants responding with their famous withering looks and ignoring them, but sadly the brutes don’t get it and don’t care. Our only hope is that they get bored and move on to somewhere else.
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Everyone was nouveau-riches at one time. While the Russians are notoriously brutish, I have faith that, finally, after too many centuries, they will be civilized and prosporous. Unless Bush and the neocons start World War three or five depending on how you count them. Then we’ll have to start all over again.
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Oh, Tak’san let us see our christian russian brothers as soulfull like us with our crosses and crowns strapped upon all of us xians. There is mostly Greek influence in the xian. (Perhaps not you are xian-?- but no, no, no, no, Yes.
Plato for the grandiose, and Aristotle for the sanguine...it’s an occasion, not a ‘purpose.’ It’s why God made the world to be all things even the absurd if we wish to believe it is a purpose...not an ‘occasion.’ ZORBA the Greek! I hear that. Tak’san - blesses! (Don’t get ‘spooked’ - just means well wishes.)
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It would be good if writers would always indicate the ethnicity of the objects of their scorn so that, e.g., Russians of the Russian ethny did not get inadvertently tarnished by non-Russians who happen to be living in or citizens of Russia. E.g., Russian “oligarchs” seem to be mostly Jews, from what I can see.
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Tonton is biting off something dreadful. Jews have a group identity, to be sure. My late father vehemently denied that Jews are white, much less Americans. But consider that Kaiser Wilhelm II’s principal naval advisor was Albert Ballin, a German Jew and managing director of Hamburg- America Line. And consider that Hitler ran Einstein out of Germany. A friend who was a Luftwaffe pilot remarked that only an Austrian mooncalf could have run Germany’s smartest out before taking on the rest of the world. Many of Russia’s looters (Ayn Rand’s term) may indeed qualify as Jews, but did they loot simply because they are Jews, or was something else involved.
A half century ago Harry Golden noted that Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” was revolutionary. Until then anti-Semitic plays were a dime a dozen, and Jews were the villains because they were Jews. Shakepeare wrote a play in which Shylock the Jew was a villain for very human reasons and not just because he was a Jew. Please, let’s try to do better.
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Russia is undergoing another cycle. Europeans coming to Russia in the 18th century remarked on the boorishness of the upper class. By the time of the Revolution, they had become utterly civilized, only to be replaced by another group of savage boors. The great-grandchildren of these barbaric revolutionairies (the last generation of Soviet elite) are more civilized than the average European. They can recite hundreds if not thousands of lines of poetry, appreciate opera and theater, and retain the chivalry that disappeared in the West due to the feminist onslaught. One can still find them in Russia - they live in the same apartments in the center of the city, poor among the new rich who are crowding them out, and unable to afford to participate in the bachanalia around them.
But these people have been replaced by a group of barbarians, who rose to the top following the Soviet collapse through a ruthlessness not seen since 1917. And the Russian cycle continues. Russian televison recently showed a didactic program on proper etiquette, and the New Rich have even started importing Viennese musicians for their balls, for which they are learning how to waltz. The children or grandchildren of the boors you see in those resorts will probably be more civilized than Western counts!
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Taki,
You may enjoy Ramuz’s La Grand Peur dans la Montagne, a Swiss novelists’s oeuvre about a haunted mountain.
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Actually the Swiss view the new rich class from Russia not different than they saw the hordes of Americans 50 years ago coming to Europe on their “Europe in 8 days” tours. They are seen as strange people, who will be overcharged for everything and who will never be accepted in their society. And in the case of the Russians and the Marc Riches of this world, once they have spent all their fortune trying to be accepted, will be booted out of the country, just like an out of money John out of the boom boom room of a Reeperbahn nepp joint.
But I guess if you make your fortune the easy way by ripping off your countrymen, you don’t deserve better.
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