November is National Novel Writing Month, and I’m participating again this year. I’ll be working on a middle grade historical novel inspired by, but not in any way based on my summer hike, the Tour du Mont Blanc. As I researched the scenes of my story, I discovered that Charles Dickens toured Switzerland in the summer of 1846. One of the places that both Dickens and I went to was the hospice at the top of the Great Saint Bernard Pass.
This Hospice is the highest winter habitation in the Alps. It is also the place where the eponymous dog breed got its start. Run by Augustinian monks, it has been sheltering and protecting travelers since its founding, nearly a thousand years ago, by Bernard of Menthon. Etchings from Dicken’s time demonstrate that little has changed in the past two hundred years.
One thing that has changed is access to one of the hospice’s more morbid rooms: the mortuary. In Dickens’ time, the mortuary that still stands beside the Hospice was a great curiosity to travelers. Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Switzerland, published in 1843 included it among the must-see sites. It is known that Dickens took a copy of this travel guide with him. He describes the room in a letter he wrote to John Forster on September 6, 1846:
Beside the convent, in a little outhouse with a grated iron door which you may unbolt for yourself, are the bodies of people found in the snow who have never been claimed and are withering away – not laid down, or stretched out, but standing up, in corners and against walls; some erect and horribly human, with distinct expression on the faces; some sunk down on their knees; some dropping over one on side; some tumbled down altogether, and presenting a heap of skulls and fibrous dust.
The door to the mortuary is closed now. I do not know whether I could have pleaded to gain access, and I suspect that the bodies that had remained there are now long gone.
One set of bodies in particular fascinated both Dickens, who included her in his novel Little Dorrit, and Murray, who includes a description in his travel guide. She is a mother who Dickens describes as “storm-belated many winters ago, still standing in the corner with er baby at her breast.” Dickens pities the mother and gives her voice: “Surrounded by so many and such companions upon whom I never looked, and shall never look, I and my child will dwell together inseparable, on the Great Saint Bernard, outlasting generations who will come to see us, and will never know our name, or one word of our story but the end.” Dickens did not care to create a backstory for the poor, frozen woman and her child. Neither shall I. But his words continue to keep her alive in the hearts of readers some two hundred years after her death.
One set of bodies in particular fascinated both Dickens, who included her in his novel Little Dorrit, and Murray, who includes a description in his travel guide. She is a mother who Dickens describes as “storm-belated many winters ago, still standing in the corner with er baby at her breast.” Dickens pities the mother and gives her voice: “Surrounded by so many and such companions upon whom I never looked, and shall never look, I and my child will dwell together inseparable, on the Great Saint Bernard, outlasting generations who will come to see us, and will never know our name, or one word of our story but the end.” Dickens did not care to create a backstory for the poor, frozen woman and her child. Neither shall I. But his words continue to keep her alive in the hearts of readers some two hundred years after her death.
Jennifer Bohnhoff writes novels for middle grade and adult readers. Many of them are historical in nature.
