Monsieur Joseph of the Ski

by Algernon Blackwood

The banners of this gorgeous summer have trailed below the horizon, and already the leaves may be seen drifting over the waters of the Serpentine in their brilliant funeral dress. Autumn is in the air; and, not so very far behind, the least imaginative effort realises the silent gathering of the white winter clans. Their marshalling takes time, and the preparation is slow and careful, but it is already under way. It betrays itself in the nip of the air after sundown, the mist that rises over the meadows with the dusk, the brighter eyes of the stars Two months more and the music of the winds will be set to another key. The intermezzo that we have still to hear, though very beautiful, is brief enough.

And so, at the first hint of a change, the minds of hundreds leap across these intervening autumn weeks to think of the next stage⁠—blazing fires in the hall, shrill winds about the house, and the atmosphere of ice and snow and frost. For hundreds of us, the number increasing with every year, the thought brings pictures of snowy slopes lying in dazzling sunshine beneath skies of cloudless blue. The snow throws up a sort of advance mirage, and with the picture and the dream there rises too a curious shape that is a symbol of it all. An outline like a pointing finger rises above the edge of the mind. It is a long and slender strip of wood, gracefully curved, narrow and shapely as a woman’s hand, strong as steel, elastic and alive, and running in front to a delicately tapered point that tilts saucily upwards to the sky⁠—and its name is in Norwegian ski, pronounced, significantly enough, she. For an experienced “runner” thinks of his ski as a man may think of his hunter, a sailor of his ship, or perhaps as fondly even as Ernst and Remenyi thought of their loved and priceless old Cremonas.

It is no time just now to write of the exhilarating delights of skiing. The air is still too soft, the sun too warm, the trees too sweetly covered; but, on the other hand, it is the moment to burrow into cupboards and sheds and into the dry lofts above the stables where winter things are put away for safety: to hunt up one’s cumbersome ski-boots and see if they will stand “just one more season”; to give them an extra coating of oil before another strike comes on and sends the price up; and, for some of us, perhaps, to climb with difficulty into the attic and make sure that the grease, rubbed into the wood when last March was whispering about the spring, has done its work, and that the lath-like and mysterious creatures have not cracked or warped in the fierce heats of the intervening summer months. And what lover of outdoor life does not welcome these little detailed duties with the zest of true joy: packing away the implements of the season when it dies and working with keen anticipation over those next in use? The process comes nearer to eating one’s cake and having it than any that I know!

And ski, in particular, repay painstaking care and trouble. They run fishing-rods very close in this respect. The carelessness and ignorance of the ordinary holiday skier are dearly paid for in the terms of delay, exhaustion, tiresome and tiring falling, and perhaps of broken bones. For the great majority of winter-sport lovers, who go to the snow for a brief fortnight or three weeks’ holiday, hire their ski on the spot from the hotel or village shop, and thus never know the pleasure of a perfect fit, the value of the right length that suits the character of the country (short ski for trees, where turning is sharp and sudden, longer ski for open, treeless slopes where turning can be leisurely, for instance), the width and kind of wood best adapted to their weight and build and personal idiosyncrasy, and a dozen other things that make the personal equation of such importance in the choice of a good pair.

The ski for hire in hotels or village shops are a battered and indifferent chattel at the best, and at the worst a very obvious invitation to various kinds of disaster. The hirer, moreover, pays in a single season probably the cost of two new and perfect pairs. Those who, with more foresight but no better judgment, take a little extra trouble and go to the big winter-sport emporiums in towns like Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchatel, etc., gain little advantage on the other hand. The writer, having passed that stage, knows it to his cost, for once up in an isolated mountain “centre” with bad or defective ski, it is too late for radical remedy, and the season is lost. The ski for hire in these emporiums are probably the least satisfactory article for hire in the whole world. In the room at the back of the shop devoted to that purpose an apprentice hurriedly hammers in the iron clamps that hold the boot firm by the toes. The hirer or purchaser pense que ca va bien because it feels secure, and goes off with an article, highly overpaid, that either turns out to be so loose that effective curving on a slope is impossible, or else so tight that the root of his big toe is sore and bruised at the first tumble and remains so till far into the following summer; while very probably the straps of the “fixations” have been so carelessly inserted that he cannot kneel (without which essential a fall at high speed may wrench his foot or break his ankle), or, worse still, the fastenings fly suddenly wide open while he is racing down his “best slope” and he falls forwards with the sharp point of the ski aimed directly into his eyes or mouth or nose!

Nor is the slightly more experienced purchaser treated any better. He has no doubt read a book on skiing; he knows something of the “patter,” while behind him he has the advantage (?) of last winter’s three weeks’ incessant, wearisome tumbling⁠—and he is lost! The consequence is that he buys a strip of slow wood with the grain running the wrong way, un-oiled most likely since it left the factory six months before, cheap straps (with peau de bouc doing duty for peau de porc) that freeze stiff and turn unmanageable at the touch of Zero, and fastenings that open at the slightest inducement⁠—probably in mid-descent and leave his foot loose and wobbling upon an express train he cannot control or guide. This is what he carries proudly away with him, highly paid for. The falls that follow he ascribes modestly to his own lack of skill with the remark that “no chap can expect to learn to ski in a single season, you know.”

Others, cleverer as they think, write direct to the big factories at Christiania, sending boot measurements, and are treated much the same, for the dishonesty in the ski business is invited by the ignorance of the ordinary purchaser, and the discomfort and bother the average ski-runner is put to for want of a little trouble and a little guidance amount, in many cases, to the complete spoiling of his brief holiday’s enjoyment The pleasure of the sport, as well as its safety, depend so much upon a perfect fit⁠—length, quality of wood, fine balance and the delicate adjustment of every detail⁠—and can, moreover, be ensured for so small an expenditure of money and trouble, that many may like to share my discovery of that rare combination⁠—a ski-artist and an honest fellow, and learn how to avail themselves of his unique services. My own satisfaction has justified the step; others may like to know. Patience and great skill, as well as love and passion, go to the making of fine ski, and I can only compare in my mind the relief I might have felt, after playing for years upon a five-pound factory fiddle, had I suddenly tumbled upon the cottage of some Guarnerius or Amati at Cremona making perfect things of beauty for the sheer love of making them.

A grave-faced man with iron grey hair and eyes that rarely smile (how slowly one learns to distrust that trick of facile smiling behind a counter!), he keeps an ironmongery shop in a little watch-making village of the Jura called Ste. Croix. It lies close to the French frontier, nineteen miles from Pontarlier to be exact, and is the terminus of a funicular railway that runs up from Yverdon (near Lausanne), the biggest fortified camp the Romans had in Switzerland, and before them a “busy centre” of the lake-dwellers. Here you may buy pots, cans and kettles, enamelled tinware, cheap skates, chains to carry your pocket knife or keys, and⁠—perfect ski. If you hire a pair, you may be sure they have been well kept all the summer, oiled at proper intervals, and lying in an even temperature, so that December finds them true and fast and in sweet condition every way. “Monsieur Joseph” will tell you in a few words⁠—he economises language as he does his smiles⁠—exactly what you are hiring. And you may believe him. Be you green novice or experienced runner and jumper, it makes no difference; and if he feels the artist’s contempt for the tyro he conceals it utterly, entering into complete sympathetic understanding of your needs and powers. Also, with infinite care, he will fit them onto your boots, and sell you the best wax for greasing them, even though his shelves are burdened with more expensive and less efficacious substitutes. He will never suggest to you to buy anything at all: the suggestion must come from you; only, if you are worth talking to, he will talk the lore of skiing es a man talks who loves his subject and understands it. Standing among those pots and pans beneath the low ceiling, I have made more than one thrilling mental ski expedition with “Monsieur Joseph,” and left the shop forgetting what I had come to purchase!

And if you wish to buy instead of hire it is the same, as you have only to send him your ski-boots, mention your height and weight, add the kind of country you intend to ski over and then leave yourself in his hands. At the close of the season, too, he will keep your things in good condition, for a franc or two, till the following year, then send them to any address you mention. If, however, you are on the spot, you may go in overnight and see him chalk the outline of your boot upon a piece of paper (nothing is left here to an apprentice!), and upon calling in the morning you will find a perfect fit awaits you. Your toes will not be gripped in a sort of thumbscrew, nor will the foot be so loose that the boot moves sideways without carrying the ski with it. Boot and ski will move as one piece. Also, you will be able to kneel and pray with ease and comfort therefore fall, too, with safety at top speed as well. He will tell you in his grave, enthusiastic way the advantages of oak and ash and beautiful swift hickory, for he knows the distinctive values of the woods for speed and durability, as you may know the values of your stocks and shares, your stables or your motorcars.

In July and August he makes mysterious journeys far afield, as the Cremona artists did, to choose these woods. Here is the great secret, and here come in the skill and love and patience. He has in him the true instinct for the grain, this “Monsieur Joseph” of the pots and cans. Then, with his precious freight, he comes back to his mountain village and at the back of his modest shop begins the marvellous process by which he converts these lath-like strips of vegetable fibre into swift engines that shall carry human beings silently, swiftly, easily into the furthest recesses of the mountain valleys that he loves. The spirit of the mighty snow slopes is in his ski. To look at them, or run your hand along the velvet grain, is to conjure up visions of far, splendid journeys over virgin wastes into the heart of his frozen, sunny peaks.

Yet, Eugéne Joseph of Ste. Croix is unknown to fame. Only a few of us bless him and are glad. He has a little printed catalogue that travels no further than to the next village or the hotel, and above the shop one reads, “Joseph et Cie,” wondering what the “company” may include, unless they be strange spirits of the lonely winter valleys. He knows no word of English, and will assuredly never see this article. But if you are “experienced” in ski you may easily prove the truth of what I say, and if ignorant and a novice, just tell him so frankly, and leave yourself without risk or danger in his competent hands.

A personal interview, of course, is always best, and from Geneva or Lausanne the journey is easy. Take a little imagination with you, guess for a moment, if you can, the passion of the artist, and enter his magic shop one day when the snow is falling thick and silently and the tinware gleams beneath the ceiling in the flickering light of the two oil lamps. You will see him there, grave-faced, with keen brown eyes, watching you solemnly from behind the little counter, with a forest of tapering, slender ski-forms beyond him, where he fits you on in the back shop. Complete your business as briefly as your knowledge will permit you, and then, a little later, when you race across the sunlit slopes, wondering why you curve and steer so easily, and fall so much less than in previous years, admit gratefully that in these days of dishonesty and humbug you are glad to have found a man who will not impose upon your ignorance, nor take your money for an article which, as the idealists say, is “not what it appears to be.” Your skiing, to use the telling Yankee phrase, will “go up fifty percent.”