"The Inn" by Guy de Maupassant

Published in 1890.

Would you believe there really is a Berghotel Schwarenbach in the Swiss Alps? Built in 1742. And that Guy de Maupassant had stayed there. In fact, all the locations mentioned in the story are real!

Which you would think would make name pronunciation real easy, just find examples of real people saying the real names. Alas, as much as people like to share videos about these places, THEY NEVER SAY THE NAMES! They just show panoramic views of the place, typically set to some obnoxiously loud music, and they never say the name. So, in fact, I had very little guidance on pronunciations, despite these being real place names. Mostly I was forced to listen to google translate, which isn't great. Fortunately German is a language I did learn in school, from actual Germans, so hopefully I did alright with the German names at least. Although I learned it from German Germans, not Swiss Germans (well, I had one teacher who was Austrian, but still not Swiss) so the pronunciations might not be quite right from a Swiss perspective, but at least it's German of some form or another.

Except, rather curiously, the name Loëche, which appears to correspond to the present day name of Leukerbad. The name Loëche was in use 100+ years ago, although seemingly not so much today? Except you find the French name for it as Loèche-les-Bains, so it remains in the French, but obviously gets a very different pronunciation than what it would as a German word. Given how incredibly confused it all is, I had no idea what kind of pronunciation to use for it. But since it looks like a German word (due to the umlaut, you see...), I gave it my best attempt a German pronunciation. Whether or not they would have done that in 1890 I cannot even begin to guess. *sigh*

Jean Hauser - for the life of me, I could not tell from the text whether Jean was the matriarch of the family or the patriarch. It's really confusing. Given the time period being written in and the way the name is used, you'd expect it to be the patriarch, but there are enough suggestions in the text that it is the matriarch that you really have to scratch you head and wonder what is going on. It matters for purposes of pronunciation - as a male name I would give it the sound more like John, but for a woman more like Gene. And it turns out Jean can be a form of Jane as well. What a name! Authors, if you are going to use such gender-neutral names, unless it is a specific plot point for it to be ambiguous, please make it clear exceedingly whether the character of that name is male or female.

Gawd, name selection by authors really is the bane of narrators. It's no problem if you are just reading it for yourself, you can fancy whatever pronunciation you like in your own mind, but a narrator has to pick something. Since authors NEVER give any hints as the pronunciations they have in mind, it can become painfully difficult in many cases to know what to do. Ugh.

crupper: a strap buckled to the back of a saddle and looped under the horse's tail to prevent the saddle or harness from slipping forward

brisque: an 18th-century, French Ace-Ten card game for two players played with a 32-card Piquet pack. It is a member of the Marriage group of games in which the 'marriage' of a King and Queen earns a bonus

chamois: a species of goat-antelope native to the mountains of Europe. I don't know what pronunciation to use for this animal, we don't have it in North America so I've never heard of it before now, but I decided to go with the French as it is a French word. Watching some clips on youtube it seems there's a variety of pronunciations used, so seemingly nobody else knows what it should be either. Words like this should just be retired and new words of obvious pronunciation used instead :-P

18F = -8C, almost getting chilly!

5000 feet = 1525 meters

gimlet: a small tool with a screw point, grooved shank, and cross handle for boring holes

palliasse: straw mattress

The picture used is of the Schwarenbach in 1880! Obviously not in the winter, but anyways, a picture of the actual locale during the actual time period of the story!

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21327/21327-8.txt
No link directly to the story, they apparently couldn't be bothered with hyperlinks to each individual story from the TOC, but it's near the bottom.

So, shades of The Shining? King didn't write his version until 1977, but it's not obvious that the similarity of setting and general theme of madness through isolation is enough to say King had read or was inspired by this. It seems like an obvious enough trope on its own. And King went the supernatural route with his story, while this story does not have any supernatural element to it. So, which is the more terrifying?