_Home-life in Geneva—Ferney._
OUR German experiences, sadly curtailed as to time by Boy’s sickness,
scarcely deserve the title of “loiterings.” We passed two days in
Strasburg; as many in Baden-Baden, a day and night at Schaffhausen; a
week in Heidelberg; a few hours at Basle, etc., etc., too much in the
style of the conventional tourist to accord with our tastes or habits.
At Heidelberg our forces were swelled by the addition of another family
party, nearly allied to ours in blood and affection. There, we entered
upon a three weeks’ tour, a pleasant progress that had no mishap or
interruption until we re-crossed the Alps into Switzerland, this time
by the Brünig Pass, traveling as we had done over the St. Gothard,
_en famille_, but in two _diligences_, instead of one, taking in
Interlaken, The Staubbach, Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, the Wengernalp,
Freiburg, Bern and a host of other notable places and scenes, and
brought up, in tolerable order, if somewhat travel-worn, at ten o’clock
one September night, in Geneva.
We were to disband here; one family returning to Germany; Miss M——
going on to Paris; ourselves intending to winter again in Italy. I had
enjoyed our month of swift and varied travel the more for the continual
consciousness of the increase of health and strength that enabled me
to perform it. But I had taken cold somewhere. The old cough and pain
possessed me, and for these, said men medical and non-medical, Geneva
was the worst place one could select in autumn or winter. The _bise_,
a strong, cold, west wind, blows there five days out of seven; for
weeks the sun is not visible for the fog; rain-storms are frequent
and severe, and the atmosphere is always chilled by the belt of
snow-mountains. This was the meteorological record of the bright little
city, supplied by those who should have known of that whereof they
spoke.
For three days after our arrival, it sustained this reputation. The
_bise_ blew hard and incessantly, filling the air with dust-clouds and
beating the lake into an angry sea that flung its waves clear across
the Pont du Mont Blanc, the wide, handsome bridge, uniting the two
halves of the city. I sat by the fire and coughed, furtively. Caput
looked gravely resolute and wrote letters to Florence and Rome. Then,
Euroclydon—or _Bise_,—subsided into calm and sunshine, and we sallied
forth, as do bees on early spring-days, to inspect the town—“the
richest and most popular in Switzerland.” (Vide Baedeker.)
The air was still cool, as was natural in the last week of September,
but as exhilarating as iced champagne. Respiration became suddenly
easy, and motion, impulse, not duty. We walked up the _Quai Eaux
Vives_ to the first breakwater that checks the too-heavy roll of the
waves in stormy weather; watched the wondrous, witching sheen of
ultramarine and emerald and pearly bands upon the blue lake; down
the broad quay by the English Gardens, through streets of maddening
shop-windows, a brilliant display of all that most surely coaxes money
from women’s pockets;—jewelry, mosaics, laces, carvings in wood and
in ivory, photographs, music-boxes,—a distracting medley, showed to
best advantage by the crystalline atmosphere. We crossed to Rousseau’s
Island in the middle of the lake by a short chain-bridge attaching it
to the _Pont des Bergues_, and fed the swans who live, eat and sleep
upon the water; marked the point where the Rhone shoots in arrowy
flight from the crescent-shaped lake to its marriage with the slower
Arve below the city. Thence, we wound by way of the Corraterie, a
busy street, formerly a fosse, to the Botanical Gardens; skirted the
Bastions from which the Savoyards were thrown headlong at the midnight
surprise of the “Escalade,”—and were in the “Old Town.” This is an
enchanting tangle of narrow, excursive streets, going up and down by
irregular flights of stone steps; of antique houses with bulging upper
stories and hanging balconies and archways, and courts with fountains
where women come to draw water and stay to gossip and look picturesque,
in dark, full skirts, red boddices and snowy caps. We passed between
the National Cathedral of St. Pierre and the plain church where Père
Hyacinthe preached every Sabbath to crowds who admired his eloquence
and had no sympathy with his chimerical Reformed Catholicism; along
more steep streets into a newer quarter, built up with handsome
mansions,—across an open space, climbed a long staircase and were upon
the hill on which stands the new Russian Church.
It is a diminutive fabric, made the most of by a gilded dome and four
gilt minarets, and by virtue of its situation, contrives to look twice
as big as it is, and almost half as large as the old Cathedral which
dates from 1024.
Geneva was below us, and diverging from it in every direction, like
veins from a heart, were series of villas, châteaux and humbler homes,
separated and environed by groves, pleasure-grounds and hedge-rows. The
laughing lake, which seldom wears the same expression for an hour at a
time, was dotted with boats that had not ventured out of harbor while
the wind-storm prevailed. Most of these carried the pretty lateen sail.
The illusion of these “goose-winged” barques is perfect and beautiful,
especially when a gentle swell of the waves imparts to them the
flutter of birds just dipping into, or rising from the surface;—birds
statelier than the swans, more airy than the grebe circling above and
settling down upon the _Pierres du Niton_. These are two flat boulders
near the shore whereon tradition says Julius Cæsar once sacrificed to
Neptune,—probably to propitiate the genius of the _bise_. Across the
water and the strip of level country, a few miles in breadth, were the
Juras, older than the Alps, but inferior in grandeur, their crests
already powdered with snow. On our side of the lake behind town and
ambitious little church,—outlying _campagnes_ (country-seats) and
dozens of villages, arose the dark, horizontal front of the Saléve. It
is the barrier that excludes from Geneva the view of the chain of Alps
visible from its summit. Mont Blanc overtops it, and, to the left of
its gleaming dome, the _Aiguilles du Midi_ pierce the sky. Others of
the “Mont Blanc Group” succeed, carrying on the royal line as far as
the unaided eye can reach. Between these and the city rises the Mole, a
rugged pyramid projecting boldly from the plain.
Chamouny, the Mer de Glace, Martigny, Lausanne, Vevay, Chillon, Coppet,
Ferney! To all these Geneva was the key. And in itself it was so fair!
We talked less confidently of Italian journeyings, as we descended
the hill; more doubtfully with each day of fine weather and
rapidly-returning strength. Still, we had no definite purpose of
wintering in Geneva, contrary to the advice of physicians and friends.
It was less by our own free will than in consequence of a chain
of coincident events, which would be tedious in the telling, that
December saw us, somewhat to our astonishment, settled in the “Pension
Magnenat,” studying and working as systematically as if Italy were
three thousand watery miles away.
That a benignant Providence detained us six months in this place we
recognize cheerfully and thankfully. I question if Life has in reserve
for us another half-year as care-free and as evenly happy. There are
those who rate Geneva as “insufferably slow;” the “stupidest town on
the Continent,” “devoid of society except a _mélée_ of Arabs, or the
stiffest of exclusive cliques.” Our American “clique” may have been
exceptionally congenial that year, but it supplied all we craved, or
had leisure to enjoy of social intercourse. Foreigners who remain there
after the middle of December, do so with an object. The facilities for
instruction in languages, music and painting are excellent. Lectures,
scientific and literary, are given throughout the season by University
professors and other _savans_. The prices of board and lessons are
moderate, and—an important consideration with us and other families of
like views and habits—Sabbath-school and church were easy of access and
well-conducted.
There were no “crush” parties, and had they been held nightly, our
young people were too busy with better things to attend them. But
what with music and painting-classes; German and French “evenings;”
reading-clubs in the English classics; the “five o’clock tea” served
every afternoon in our _salon_ for all who would come, and of which
we never partook alone; what with Thanksgiving Dinner and Christmas
merry-making, when our rooms were bowers of holly and such luxuriant
mistletoe as we have never seen elsewhere; with New Year Reception and
birth-day “surprise;” daily walks in company, and, occasionally a good
concert, our happy-family-hood grew and flourished until each accepted
his share in it as the shelter of his own vine and fig-tree. We were a
lively coterie, even without the _divertissements_ of the parties of
pleasure we got up among ourselves to Coppet, Ferney, Chillon and the
Saléve. Shall we ever again have such pic-nics as those we made to the
top of the Grand Saléve—our observatory-mountain, driving out to the
base in strong, open wagons, then ascending on foot or on donkeys?
There are those who will read this page with smiles chastened by tender
thoughts of vanished joys, as one by one, the salient features of those
holiday excursions recur to mind. Donkeys that would not go, and others
that would not stop. The insensate oaf of a driver who walked far ahead
of the straggling procession and paid no attention to the calls of
bewildered women. The volunteer squad of the stronger sex who strode
between the riders and the precipice, and beat back the beasts when
they sheered dangerously close to the edge. The gathering of the whole
company for rest and survey of the valley, at the stone cross half-way
up. The explorations of straggling couples in quest of “short cuts” to
the crown of the upper hill, and their return to the main road by help
of the bits of paper they had attached to twigs on their way into the
labyrinth of brushwood and stones. Who of us can forget the luncheons
eaten under the three forlorn trees that feigned to shade the long, low
hut on the summit? When, no matter how liberal our provision, something
always gave out before the onward rush of appetites quickened by the
keen air? How we devoured black bread bought in the _Châlet_ where we
had our coffee boiled, and thought it sweeter than Vienna rolls! Do you
remember—friends belovéd—now so sadly and widely sundered—the basket
of dried thistles proffered gravely, on one occasion, and to whom,
when the cry for “bread” was unseemly in vociferation and repetition?
And that, when our hunger was appeased, we, on a certain spring day,
roamed over the breast of the mighty mount, gathering gentians, yellow
violets, orchis and scraggy sprays of hawthorn, sweet with flowers,
until tired and happy, we all sat down on the moss-cushions of the
highest rocks, and looked at Mont Blanc—so near and yet so far,—stern,
pure, impassive,—and hearkened to the cuckoo’s song?
I know, moreover, because I recollect it all so well, that you have
not forgotten the as dear delights of talking over scene and adventure
and mishap—comic, and that only in the rehearsal,—on the next rainy
afternoon. When we circled about the wood-fire, tea-cups in hand,
raking open the embers and laying on more fuel that we might see each
others’ faces, yet not be obliged to light the lamps while we could
persuade ourselves that it was still the twilight-hour. We kept no
written record of the merry sayings and witty repartees and “capital”
stories of those impromptu conversaziones, but they are all stored up
in our memories,—other, and holier passages of our intercourse, where
they will be yet more faithfully kept—in our hearts.
If I am disposed to dwell at unreasonable length upon details that
seem vapid and irrelevant to any other readers, I cry them, “pardon.”
The lapse may be overlooked in one whose life cannot show many such
peaceful seasons; to whom the time and opportunity to renew health and
youth beside such still waters had not been granted in two decades.
Rome was rest. Geneva was recuperation. I have likened the air of
Switzerland to iced champagne. But the buoyancy begotten by it had
no reaction: the vigor was stable. I had not quite appreciated this
fact when, at Lucerne, I talked with fair tourists from my own land
who “would have died of fatigue,” if compelled to walk a couple of
miles, at home, yet boasted, and truly, of having tramped up the Rigi
and back—a distance of three leagues. But when I walked upon my own
feet into Geneva after an afternoon at Ferney, and experienced no
evil effects from the feat, we began to discredit scientific analyses,
dealing with the preponderance of ozone in the atmosphere, and to
revert to tales of fountains of perpetual youth and the Elixir of Life.
The town of Ferney is a mean village four miles-and-a-half from Geneva,
and over the French frontier. The château is half-a-mile further;—a
square, two-storied house set in extensive and handsome grounds,
gardens, lawn, park and wood. It is now the property of a French
gentleman who uses it as a country-seat, his chief residence being in
Paris. A liveried footman opened the gate at the clang of the bell and
showed two apartments that remain as Voltaire left them. These are on
the first floor, the entrance-hall, or _salon_, being the largest. The
floor is of polished wood inlaid in a cubic pattern. An immense stove
of elaborate workmanship stands against the left wall; a monument of
black and gray marble in a niche to the right. A tablet above the urn
on the top of this odd construction is inscribed:—
“_Mon esprit est partout,
Mon cœur est ici._”
Below is the very French legend:—“_Mes manes sont consolés, puisque mon
cœur est au milieu de vous._”
“The stove of Voltaire! His monument!” pronounced the servant in slow,
distinct accents.
“But his heart is not really there?”
“But no, monsieur. He is interred in Paris. Madame comprehends that
this is only an epitaph.”
Inferentially,—a lie.
Pictures hung around the room; one remarkable etching of “Voltaire and
his friends;” old engravings and some paintings of little value. The
furniture, of the stiffest order of the antique, was covered with faded
embroidery.
“The work of Madame du Chatelet, the niece of Voltaire,” continued the
footman, demurely.
The next room was his bed-chamber. A narrow bed, head and foot-board
covered with damask to match the arras; more embroidered chairs
from the niece’s hand, and, just opposite the door, a portrait of
Voltaire, painted at the age of twenty-five. A dapper, curled, and
be-frilled dandy of the era that produced Chateauneuf, Ninon de
l’Enclos and Chaulieu. The visage is already disfigured by the smirk
of self-satisfaction he intended should be cynical, which gives to the
bust in the outer apartment, and to sketched and engraved likenesses,
taken in mature manhood and old age, the look of a sneering monkey.
Close to the young Voltaire hung the portrait of Madame du Chatelet.
“The niece of Voltaire!” reiterated the serving-man, pointedly.
There could then be no impropriety in our prolonged survey of the
beautiful face. She was the mistress of a fine fortune and château
at Cirey, when Voltaire sought a retreat in the neighborhood from
governmental wrath, excited by his eulogistic “_Lettres sur les
Anglais_.” She was the ablest mathematician of her time, revelling in
the abstruse metaphysics and political economics which were Voltaire’s
delight, and so thorough a Latinist that she read the “_Principia_” in
Latin from choice. Her husband was much older than herself, an officer
in the French army, and thus furnished with an excuse for absenteeism
from the society of a woman too much his superior mentally to be an
agreeable help-meet. The Platonic attachment between the accomplished
_châtelaine_ and the poet-satirist lasted nineteen years. He was
thirty-six when it began. Her death broke what little heart he had.
There is a story that he sent his confidential _valet_ into the room
where her corpse lay, the night after her demise, to take from her
hand a ring he had given her, long ago, containing his miniature. When
it was brought to him, he kissed it passionately, and, before fitting
it upon his own finger, touched the spring of the seal concealing the
picture. It was not his, but the handsomer face of a younger man, that
met his eyes, one who had bowed, she would have had Voltaire believe,
hopelessly, at her feet. The duped lover bore the dead woman no malice
for her perfidy, if the contents of the Ferney apartments be admitted
as evidence. On the mantel in the bedroom is a glass case, covering the
model designed by him for her sarcophagus. The flat door of the tomb is
cleft in twain by the rising figure of the woman, holding in her arms
the babe that cost her life and was buried with her.
The Philosopher’s Walk, Voltaire’s favorite promenade, is nearly a
hundred yards in length, and completely embowered by pollarded limes,
the lateral branches meeting and interlacing over the broad alley.
From the parapet of the adjoining terrace can be had, on clear days,
a magnificent view, comprehending the Bernese Alps, the Juras, the
Aiguilles and their crowned Monarch—Mont Blanc—by day, a silver
dome,—at the rising and going down of the sun, a burning altar of
morning and evening sacrifice.
“In sight of _this_, the Man of Ferney could say—‘There is no GOD!’”
interjected an indignant voice, while we hung, entranced, over the wall.
“The ‘Coryphæus of Deism’ never said it!” answered Caput. “His last
words,—after he had, to secure for his meagre body the rites of
Mother Church, signed a confession of faith in her tenets—were,—‘I
die, worshiping GOD, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, _but_
detesting superstition.’”
The philosopher had, presently, another and more enthusiastic defender.
I had tried, unsuccessfully, to obtain a photograph of the little
church outside the gate of the château. Albeit no artist, except for my
own convenience and amusement, I resolved to have something that should
look like the interesting relic. While my companions strayed down the
pleached walk into the woods, I returned to the entrance, sat down upon
the grassy bank opposite the church-front and began to sketch. There
was no one in sight when I selected my position, but, pretty soon, a
party of three—two ladies and a gentleman—emerged from the gate and
stopped within earshot for a parting look at the lowly sanctuary, now a
granary.
The Traveling American dashes at dead languages as valiantly as at
living.
“_Deo erexit Voltaire_” is cut into a small tablet below the belfry.
Will it be believed that I heard, actually and literally, the
conversation I now write down?
“_I_ call that blasphemous!”
The speaker was a lady, in dress and deportment.
“Heaven-daring blasphemy!” she added, in a low, horrified tone, reading
the Latin aloud.
“I don’t see that—exactly,” answered a deeper voice. “It is strange
that an infidel, such as Voltaire is usually considered, should build a
church at all, but there is nothing wrong——”
“But look at the inscription! ‘GOD _erects it to Voltaire_!’ Horrible!”
“I doubt if that is _quite_ the right translation, my love”—began the
spouse.
The lady caught him up—“I may not be a classical scholar, but I hope I
can read, and I am not altogether ignorant of Latin. And Baedeker says
it is an ’ostentatious inscription.’ I suppose Baedeker knows what he
is talking about—if I do not!”
They walked off down the lane.
Voltaire built the church for the use of his servants and tenantry.
The Bishop refused to consecrate it, and Voltaire created a Bishopric
of Ferney. The priest was paid by him and was often one of the
château-guests. Upon Sabbath mornings, it was the master’s habit to
march into church, attended by visitors and retainers, and engage, with
outward decorum, in the service. Religious ceremonies were a necessity
for the vulgar and ignorant, as were amusements. He provided for both
needs on the same principle.
The building is of stone, with sloping roof and two shed-like wings
joined to the central part. A small clock-tower is capped by a
weather-cock. There is but one door, now partly boarded up. Over
this is a single large window with a Norman arch. It was a perfect
October afternoon, dreamy and soft. Chestnuts and limes were yet in
full leaf; the garden was gay with flowers untouched by a breath of
frost. I had my turfy bank all to myself for half an hour, and in the
stillness, could hear the hum of the bees in the red and white clover
of the meadow behind me, the voices of men and women in the vineyard,
three fields away. It was the vintage-season and they were having rare
weather for it. Heavy steps grated upon the road; were checked so near
me that I looked up. The intruder was a peasant in faded blue shirt
and trowsers, a leather belt, a torn straw hat and wooden shoes, and
carried a scythe upon his shoulder. A son of the soil, who grinned and
touched his hat when I saw him.
“_Pardon, madame!_”
I nodded and went on with my work. He stood as still as the church,—an
indigo shadow between me and the sky. I glanced at him again, this
time, inquiringly.
“_Pardon, madame!_”
He was respectful, and had he been rude, I could call through the gate
to my friends who were walking in the grounds. There was nothing to
alarm me in his proximity, but a certain annoyance at his oversight of
my occupation.
“Are you one of the laborers on the estate?” asked I, coldly.
“Madame is right. I am the farm-servant of M. David.”
Who, it was so evident, did not suspect that he was impolite in
watching me that I forgave him.
“I am only making a little sketch of the church,” I deigned to explain.
“_Est-ce que je vous gêne, Madame?_” said the “clod,” deprecatingly.
“If so, I will go. I am an ignorant peasant and I never, until now, saw
a picture make itself.”
Upon receiving permission to remain, he lowered his scythe and stood
leaning upon it, while the poor little picture “made itself.” To put
him at his ease, I asked who built the church.
“M. Voltaire. My grandfather has told me of him.”
“What of him?”
“That he built Ferney and would have made of it a great city—much finer
than Geneva—perhaps as grand as Paris. Who knows? And free, Madame! He
would have had all the people hereabouts”—waving his hand to indicate a
circuit of miles—“free, and learnèd, and happy. He was a wise man—this
M. Voltaire! _un si bon Protestant!_”
“Protestant!”
“_Mais, oui, parfaitement, Madame!_ He hated the priests. He succored
many distressed Protestants. He was, without doubt, a good Christian.”
I recollected Calas and Sirven, and refrained from polemics.
“Ferney is free, now that France is a Republic. You vote, and so govern
yourselves.”
My friend was out of soundings. “_Plaît-il?_” staring imbecilely. Then,
pulling his thoughts together—“Madame is right. France is a great
country. She demands many soldiers. Conscripts are taken every year
from Ferney. It maybe I shall go, one day. Unless I can lose these two
front teeth, or, by accident, cut off this finger.”
He had his inquiry when the sketch was done.
“The pictures one sees on the walls in Geneva—beasts and people—red and
blue and many colors—that are to play in the _spectacles_—are they made
like that?”
I laughed—“They are printed,”—then, as the difficulty of enlightening
him on the subject of lithography struck me, I added—“Somebody makes
the drawing first.”
He shook his head compassionately. “I never knew how much of work they
were! Ah! I shall always think of it when I see them. And of the poor
people who draw them!”
“_Les Délices_”—Voltaire’s home in Geneva prior to his purchase of
Ferney, is now a girls’ boarding-school. We had friends there, and
were, through the kindness of the Principal, allowed free access to the
grounds and such apartments as retained traces of Voltaire’s residence.
The house is large and rambling, and Voltaire’s dressing- and bed-rooms
are, as at Ferney, upon the ground-floor. The frescoes are fairly
distinct, as yet, and the carved mantels unaltered. One long wing is
unused and closed. This was the private theatre that shattered, at
last, and forever, the brittle friendship between Voltaire and Rousseau.
“You have basely corrupted my Republic!” was the angry protest of the
author of “_La Nouvelle Héloïse_.”
Voltaire retorted by satire, caustic and pointed;—some say, with the
famous sarcasm upon the Canton of Geneva, which is but fifteen miles
square:—
“When I shake my wig, I powder the whole Republic!”
The theatre was built, in spite of Rousseau’s remonstrances; actors
brought from naughty Paris, and complimentary tickets for the first
representation sent to the magnates of Calvin’s city. Not one of these,
from the Mayor down to the constable, had any intention of going. All
were thrilled with horror at the suspicion that some weak brother might
be allured by the forbidden fruit. All were curious to know who the
recreant would be, and burning with jealousy for the purity of the
public morals. Early in the afternoon of the appointed day, loungers
and spies stationed themselves on the bridge and road by which the
delinquents must pass to _Les Délices_. The cordon lengthened and
spread until the throng at Voltaire’s gates pressed back upon those
pouring out of the city. When the theater-doors were opened, the crowd
rushed in, still moved by pietistic and patriotic fervor; the seats
were filled and the curtain rose.
Reckoning shrewdly upon the revulsion of the human nature he knew
so well, Voltaire sent privily to the Cathedral of St. Pierre for
the triangular chair of Calvin preserved there, with holy care, and
introduced it among the stage-properties in the last scene. The
Genevese municipality recognized it immediately, as did the rest of the
spectators, but so intoxicated were they by now with the novel draught
of “corrupting” pleasure, that they actually applauded its appearance!
We heard this story from the lips of the Lady-Principal of the
_pensionnat_, upon the threshold of the barred doors of the theatre.
Groups of girls sat under the spreading chestnuts; walked, arm-in-arm,
up and down the avenues. The casements of the old house were open to
the warm air. Boy, who had accompanied us, in defiance of the ordinance
excluding young gentlemen, was the cynosure of the merry band, and
being spoiled faster than usual by offerings of flowers, confectionery,
kisses and coaxing flatteries.
A faintly-worn path beyond the theatre marks “Voltaire’s Walk.” It
is shaded by a double row of splendid trees, and at the far end is a
mossy stone bench on which he used to sit. It was easy for Fancy to
conjure up the picture of what might have been there on the morrow
of the theater-opening, and the image of him who was the life of the
party, glorying insolently in their triumph. The meager figure wrapped
in the gorgeous dressing-gown, remembered still at _Les Délices_—the
sardonic smirk that poisoned equivoque and epigram; the Du Chatelet’s
lover-comrade; the friend and slanderer of Frederick the Great; the
pupil of the Jesuits, and the _bon Chrétien_, who “hated the priests;”
the philosopher, who died, worshiping his Maker, and at peace with the
world,—but who had, living, feared not GOD, neither regarded Man!