3-074-705 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Hospice of St. Bernard, 1883. 'Multitudes of English and other tourists, in the fine-weather season, enjoy a passing visit to the hospitable Monastery of St. Bernard, accept a cheerful table d'hôte, presided over by the courteous Clavandier, pass a very pleasant evening, and sleep as well as in the best of Swiss hotels. Dickens, in his "Little Dorrit," gives a capital description of the Hospice, as it appears in summer. It can accommodate seventy or eighty people very comfortably. This Monastery was founded in 962 by St. Bernard, who was a native of Savoy, and who ruled the establishment forty years; but it is said that another Bernard, a son of Pepin or of Charles Martel, had founded a preceding monastic institution at the same place. In the fifteenth century the St. Bernard Monks possessed a great amount of wealth; but they are now dependent mainly on contributions from the Catholics in the Canton of Valais, and on gifts from those who visit the Hospice. Every tourist ought to give as much as he would pay at an inn. The monks have to live on salt meat in winter, and fetch all their fuel from a wood four leagues distant'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.