In 1881, the nameless author of a Baedeker guide cautioned his readers that “glacier-water should not be drunk except in small quantities, mixed with wine or cognac.” And, on the matter of cold milk, the Baedeker Switzerland Handbook for Travellers advised that it is “safer when qualified with spirits.”
A generation later, now in 1905, and a dozen edi tions on in Baedeker’s series of guides to Switzerland, precisely the same advice was still be ing com municated to English-speaking readers. The principle was not reserved to an English-language audience, although the bever age advice was nuanced to ac commodate per ceived national differ ences. While well-prepared Eng lish tourists gather ed by glaciers armed with a supply of wine or cognac, German visitors to those same icy spots, duti fully following Baedeker’s advice in the German lan guage edi tion of the 1900 guide, were using rum rather than cognac to add a bit of punch to their glacier water.
Beware of interlopers
Early Baedeker guides deftly melded severe advice with veiled prejudice. So while the English needed to be warned to avoid the stale bread served in Alpine huts, the Germans — presumably all men of an altogether tougher disposition — took this culi nary challenge in their stride and didn’t need advance notice. In German editions from the late 19th century and early years of the last century, travellers were warned of the dangers of ‘hangers- on’ — viz. foreign tourists in the mountain regions of Switzerland who might attempt to latch onto a small group of German hikers intent on visiting a glacier or two. Baedeker warned that, though surely good-humoured souls, these casual inter lopers might not be properly clad and may not necessarily have the same Teutonic commitment to pain and suffering on rain-lashed mountain paths.
Curiously, English travellers — who generally took an al together more casual approach to moun tain excursions — were not forewarned of the dangers of uninvited intru ders. It’s a nice ex ample of how different Baedeker audiences received tailored advice. German-language editions of Baedeker’s guides to the Riviera carefully pointed out which areas German visitors may wish to avoid if they preferred not to be swamped by English tourists. The west bay at Sanremo, on the coast of Liguria, was a case in point if Baedeker’s 1903 guide to Italy was to be trusted.
Early Baedeker guides deftly melded severe advice with veiled prejudice. So while the English needed to be warned to avoid the stale bread served in Alpine huts, the Germans took this culinary challenge in their stride and didn’t need advance notice.
To round off our examples of audience-specific advice, the 1857 German-language Baedeker guide to Switzerland and northern Italy gave a careful warning about hotels in Switzerland where the best rooms were evidently reserved for English travellers. In such establishments, the guide ad vised, unwary visitors might find themselves consigned to a small room under the eaves but still pay the same prices as the English guest in more luxurious accommodation. In an afterthought, the Baedeker author then reminded readers that such ‘barracks’ are normally run by French-speaking hosts. By this device, Baedeker’s German readers were nudged into fa vouring Swiss hotels run by German speakers.
Signs of the times
The presumptions and prejudices embedded in Baedeker’s varying language editions are fascinat ing. So too is the way in which the advice in the guidebooks evolved through time. This has been the subject of far less study than the intriguing vari ations in tone and content between editions in different languages. And it is on this matter of how the narratives evolved over time that we shall now focus.
We have selected two English-language Baede ker guides to Switzerland. The first is the 9th edition, published in 1881. The second is the 21st edition of the same book, which appeared in 1905. For a popular title such as this, a new edition would normally appear every two years. The 24-year span between the two editions was one of sustained peace and prosperity in Switzerland. The Golden Age of Alpinism and the expansion of Switzerland’s railway network had led to well developed mountain tourism and, for many visitors from England, a copy of the latest Baedeker guide was an essential element of the traveller’s armamentarium.
With the books’ complex mix of typographical styles, ac complished users of a Baedeker could adeptly navigate around the pages, skipping relent less detail if they so wished. There was a rigour and consistency in the use of fonts and typefaces that was carried for ward over very many editions. So the 1905 edition of Baedeker’s Switzer land guide looks and feels very similar to the 1881 edition. How many series of guidebooks have managed such continuity in recent times?
Baedeker’s majestic fold-out panoramas were a hallmark of the company’s guides. The opening in 1890 of the railway to the summit of Monte Generoso prompted the addition of a new panorama to the Swiss guide.
When the 9th edition of Baedeker’s Switzerland was released in 1881, the Gotthard Railway was close to opening. Just prior to the publication of the 21st edition of the guide in 1905, the Albula Railway was completed, so giving the Engadine region its first year-round reliable transport link with the rest of Switzerland. But the celebrated Bernina Railway, linking the Engadine with the Valtellina area of northern Italy was in 1905 still at the planning stage. It didn’t open until 1910.
So during the 24 years between the two editions of the guide access to some remoter parts of the Swiss Alps improved dramatically. Of the journey between Chur (always rendered in the French manner as Coire in the English-language Baedeker guides) and the Engadine, the 1905 Baedeker guide to Switzerland gives a good if uncompromisingly factual account which runs to over four sides — with even more handsome bridges and picturesque villages than was normal for Baedeker.
Even though the 1905 focus was now very much on the new railway, there was still a short piece on the parallel Albula Pass road route, largely relying on text carried forward from earlier editions, albeit with some modest updating. The hospice on the summit of the pass was condemned as only ‘poor’ in the 1881 Baedeker guide. By 1905, this roadside establishment had closed. A brief remark in a Baedeker guide could spell the death knell for a business. But in 1899 a new hotel had opened in the area. The Baedeker author was restrained, describing it as ‘very fair’ — one of those recurrent Baedeker phrases which leave the reader a little uncertain. Is ‘very fair’ better than ‘fair’? Happily the Preda Kulm Hotel survived being only ‘very fair’ and is still in business today.
Admire the view
Baedeker guidebooks were of course greatly prized for their maps and panoramas. For many travellers, the first-rate cartography, with its own distinctive rhetoric, was part of the magic of a Baedeker guide. Between 1881 and 1905, the number of maps in the Switzerland guide more than doubled. With cleanly executed panorama drawings of some of the finest views in the Alps, Baedeker excelled here, and the Swiss book became a real shop-window for this aspect of the Baedeker enterprise. The company did a good trade selling the panoramas separately.
The very first Baedeker guide to Switzerland had been published in 1844 (in German) and had just a single panorama. Predictably, that was of the Rigi. The event that focused Baedeker’s attention on panoramas was a rival publication in 1862 of a Switzerland guide. That book, the very first example of what in time became the Meyers series, had lavish panoramas executed by Hermann Berlepsch, so Baedeker upped his own game.
The two new panoramas introduced between 1881 and 1905 are among the best ever to emerge from Baedeker’s studio. One is of the view from Pilatus, the mighty mountain which rears up above Lake Lucerne. The key impetus was that, although Pilatus had long been fairly accessible — Queen Victoria had made it to the top in 1868 — the opening of the cog railway to the summit in 1889 was bringing huge numbers of tourists to Mount Pilatus, which quickly began to rival the Rigi as a favoured excursion from Lucerne. The other new panorama added by 1905 was also prompted by a new railway to a mountaintop. The line to the summit of Monte Generoso, right on the Italian frontier in the Lugano Prealps, had opened in 1890. Baedeker’s panorama, with subtle colour tints, is a superb creation, a beautifully choreographed view over Lake Lugano to the Monte Rosa chain.
Dabbling with diction
Comparing the 1881 and 1905 guides, there is a perceptible dulling of the flowery language used in the earlier edition. The later book is actually 80 pages longer than the early edition, but there is a stronger sense of space being at a premium. Of the antics on the Rigi at dawn on spring and summer mornings — still as popular in 2020 as they were in Baedeker’s day — the 1881 guide advises:
Half an hour before sunrise, the Alpine horn sounds the reveille […] As the sun will wait for no man, eager expectants often indulge in impromptu toilettes of the most startling description. A red Indian in his blanket would on those occasions be more appropriately dressed […] The sleepy eye soon brightens, the limb stiffened by the exertions of the preceding day is lithe again.
The text continues, inviting comparison with the disciples of Zoroaster who “prostrate themselves before the great source of light and life.” The Baedeker author also invokes Schiller, quoting a stanza from Wilhelm Tell.
By 1905 the ‘Red Indian’, the Zoroastrians and Schiller (avec Tell) have all been banished, although there is still a hangover nod to the Red Indian in a reference to how the dawn sun seekers on the summit of the Rigi are “enveloped in all manner of wraps.”
So we can see that, just as Baedeker quickly re acted to new travel opportunities, as in the case of the opening of the Albula Railway, so too the editors at Baedeker’s Leipzig offices nuanced their texts to reflect chang ing cultural attitudes. The slight ly overwritten style found in some sections of the 1881 guide had become a shade more insipid by 1905. And some details have dis appeared. The specialist institution in Davos run by Dr Perthes for “boys with delicate chests” has morphed into “a school for delicate boys.”
One might merely smile at the modest refor mu lation noted above, but, com paring the two edi tions, disease is definitely wan ing. In 1881, the Valais town of Martigny is described as “a busy little town” and the Baedeker author commends the excellent local wine. But the following para graph goes on to describe two local afflictions, viz. “cretinism in its most re pulsive form” and “a small kind of gnat with black, gauzy wings.” By 1905, the gnats and cretins have been banished, but the excellent wine remains.
Shift to Lausanne, and our 1881 guide reminds travellers that Château de Vennes, on the edge of town, is devoted to looking after “sick and imbecile children” while noting that “the penitentiary, erected in 1828, is a model of good order.” All very re assuring, but both château and penitentiary have disappeared by 1905, when Lausanne visitors, by then more interested in healing rather di sease, are nudged towards the Arnaud Gallery to see Jean Jouvenet’s famous painting of the New Testament scene of a man with palsy being healed.
Emerging cycle tourism
Apart from the opening of new railways in the 24-year period between the two guides, we see evi dence of some dramatic changes in travel patterns. Touring the Alps by bicycle hardly existed in 1881. But by 1905, it was growing in popularity, with all the attendant poetry and pain that one might expect. Here the Baedeker author, in an entirely new section of the guide, is at his very best. “Cycling in Switzerland means cycling in mountains,” he reminds the innocent reader.
The formidable bureaucracy facing cyclists is well handled in the 1905 guide with fastidious attention to detail. It was in those early days of cycle touring necessary to affix number plates to a bicycle, but only in certain places. The Baedeker guide explains where. In one canton, Va lais, there was an obligation on cyclists to hide their bikes from sight if they approached restive horses on the road. But, as the guidebook explains in fine print, the biggest imposition on cyclists planning a tour of the Alps was the customs duty upon entering Switzerland. A tax, based on the weight of the bike, was charged. Upon paying the fee, the hapless cyclist was given a lead seal (presumably proportional to the weight of the bike), which then had to be lugged around Switzerland, prior to being surrendered upon leaving the country in order to secure reimbursement of the import taxes.
The formidable bureaucracy facing cyclists is well handled in the 1905 guide with fastidious attention to detail. It was in those early days of cycle touring necessary to affix number plates to a bicycle, but only in certain places. The Baedeker guide explains where.
“Many cyclists leave the country by train and lose their deposits because the train does not stop sufficiently long on the Swiss side of the frontier to allow of the money being recovered,” mourns the Baedeker author. One imagines that being able to keep the piece of lead was some kind of perverse consolation.
English cyclists inclined to turn to prayer as they tackled Swiss mountain passes were well catered for in the 1905 Baedeker guide, which gives far more details on Anglican church services than are to be found in the 1881 edition — presumably reflecting the growing numbers of church-going English visitors to the Alps in the last two decades of the 19th century.
Baedeker’s success bred its own iniquities. In the preface to the 1905 edition, there appears the following cautionary note: “Hotel keepers are warned against persons representing themselves as agents for Baedeker Handbooks.” It was new. The innocent virtue of the Victorian era had disappeared for ever. Cyclists were condemned to carry lumps of lead, and now there were travellers abroad who sought advantage by pretending to be agents of the great Baedeker.
