LORD BYRON AND THE LAKE
Lord Byron, in 1816, landed on this very spot with his friend John Cam
Hobhouse. They came over from Clarens, probably in a _naue_, whose
name, as well as its shape, harked back to olden days. Byron wrote
about it:--
“I feel myself under the charm of the spirit of this country. My soul
is repeopled with Nature. Scenes like this have been created for the
dwelling-place of the Gods. Limpid Leman, the sail of thy barque in
which I glide over the surface of thy mirror appears to me a silent
wing which separates me from a noisy life. I loved formerly the
warring of the furious ocean; but thy soft murmuring affects me like
the voice of a sister.
“Chillon! thou art a sacred place. Thy pavement is an altar, for the
footsteps of Bonivard have left their traces there. Let these traces
remain indelible. They appeal to God from the tyranny of man.”
Byron made the fame of Chillon, and his Bonivard (or, as he spelt the
name with two n’s, Bonnivard) was a far more ideal patriot than the
actual prisoner, whose character has been shown of late years in a
somewhat unfavourable light. Byron was devoted to the Lake of Geneva.
He commemorated some of the great names associated with its shores in
a sonnet, one of the few that he ever wrote:--
“Rousseau--Voltaire--our Gibbon--and De Staël--
Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore,
Thy shore of names like these. Wert thou no more
Their memory thy remembrance would recall:
To them thy banks were lovely as to all
But they have made them lovelier, for the lore
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core
Of human hearts the ruin of a wall
“Where dwells the wise and wondrous; but by thee
How much more, Lake of Beauty, do we feel
In sweetly gliding o’er thy crystal sea
The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal
Which of the Heirs of Immortality
Is proud and makes the breath of Glory real.”
Can it be that Lord Byron pronounced “real” as if it were a
monosyllable? But he also wrote “There let it _lay_!”
There are, on the shores of Lake Geneva, several hotels associated
with Byron. At the Anchor Inn, still extant at Ouchy, he wrote that
misleading rhapsody--“The Prisoner of Chillon.”
He had in 1816 definitely separated from his wife and had shaken the
dust of England from his poetic shoes. Percy Bysshe Shelley with his
wife and daughter, Williams, and Jane Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s
half-sister, were established at Sécheron, a suburb of Geneva. Byron
had never met the Poet of the Sky-lark, but Jane Clairmont, who was a
passionate, fiery-eyed brunette, imbued with her father’s ideas of
free love, had begun her unfortunate liaison with him, having
deliberately thrown herself into his arms. They had met clandestinely
a number of times just before their departure from England.
Byron and Shelley were both fond of sailing and they had many
excursions on the lake. One evening they were out together when the
_bise_, as the strong northwest wind is called, was blowing. They
drifted before it and, getting into the current of the Rhône, were
carried swiftly toward the piles at the entrance of Geneva harbour. It
required all the strength of their boatmen to extricate them from the
danger.
“I will sing you an Albanian song,” cried Byron. “Now be sentimental
and give me all your attention.”
They expected a melancholy Eastern melody, but, instead, he uttered “a
strange, wild howl” admirably suited to the dashing waves with which
they were struggling. A few days later the Shelleys moved across to
the south side of the lake, and settled down at Campagne Mont-Allègre.
Byron stayed at Sécheron, but used often to row over to visit them.
Finally, he himself rented the Villa Diodati, which stands a little
higher up.
He and Shelley made a tour of the lake and had some exciting
experiences. They left Mont-Allègre on June 23 and spent the first
night at Nerni, where Byron declared he had not slept in such a bed
since he left Greece five years before. At Evian, on the French side,
they had trouble with their passports, but, when the Syndic learned
Byron’s name and rank, he apologized for their treatment of him and
left him in peace. On June 26 they were at Chillon. Off Meillerie they
were attacked by what Byron called a squall. Shelley described it in a
letter to Thomas Love Peacock:--
“The wind gradually increased in violence, until it blew tremendously;
and as it came from the remotest extremity of the lake, produced
waves of a frightful height, and covered the whole surface with a
chaos of foam. One of our boatmen, who was a dreadfully stupid fellow,
persisted in holding the sail at a time when the boat was on the point
of being driven under water by the hurricane. On discovering his error
he let it entirely go and the boat for a moment refused to obey the
helm; in addition the rudder was so broken as to render the management
of it very difficult; one wave fell in, and then another. My
companion, an excellent swimmer, took off his coat, I did the same,
and we sat with our arms crossed, every instant expecting to be
swamped. The sail was, however, again held, the boat obeyed the helm,
and still in imminent peril from the immensity of the waves, we
arrived in a few minutes at a sheltered port, in the village of
Saint-Gingoux.”
Byron, in a letter to John Murray, wrote:--“I ran no risk, being so
near the rocks, and a good swimmer; but our party were wet and
incommodated a good deal; the wind was strong enough to blow down some
trees, as we found at landing.”
He was at this very time engaged in composing the third canto of
“Childe Harold.”
[Illustration: MONT BLANC.]
On the third of June he had been dazzled by a glimpse of “yonder
Alpine snow--Imperishably pure beyond all things below,” and a month
later he wrote, “I have this day observed for some time the distinct
reflection of Mont Blanc and Mont Argentière in the calm of the lake,
which I was crossing in my boat. The distance of these mountains from
their mirror is sixty miles.” In the poem he sings--I believe that is
the proper verb!--
“Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,
The mirror where the stars and mountains view
The stillness of their aspect in each trace
Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue:
There is too much of man here, to look through
With a fit mind the might which I behold;
But soon in me shall Loneliness renew
Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old,
Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in its fold....
“Is it not better, then, to be alone
And love Earth only for its earthly sake
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhône,
Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake,
Which feeds it as a mother who doth make
A fair but froward infant her own care,
Kissing its cries away as these awake;--
Is it not better thus our lives to wear,
Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear?
“I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me,
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture: I can see
Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,
And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.”
And again further along:--
“Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wide world I dwelt in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing
To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn ocean’s roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet as if a Sister’s voice reproved,
That I with stern delights should e’er have been so moved.”
And how beautifully he describes night on the lake:--
“It is the hush of night, and all between
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more;
“He is an evening reveller, who makes
His life an infancy, and sings his fill;
At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
But that is fancy, for the starlight dews
All silently their tears of love instil,
Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
Deep into Nature’s breast the spirit of her hues.
“Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven,
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires,--’tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o’erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar,
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.
“All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most:
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:--
All heaven and earth are still: From the high host
Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain-coast,
All is concentered in a life intense,
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense
Of that which is of all Creator and defence.”
He is in his darkest, gloomiest, most characteristic pose when he
describes a storm at night:--
“The sky is changed! and such a change! O night
And storm and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as in the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue;
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!
“And this is in the night:--Most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight--
A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
And now again ’tis black,--and now, the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,
As if they did rejoice o’er a young earthquake’s birth.
“Now, where the swift Rhône cleaves his way between
Heights which appear as lovers who have parted
In hate, whose mining depths so intervene,
That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted;
Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,
Love was the very root of the fond rage
Which blighted their life’s bloom, and then departed;
Itself expired, but leaving them an age
Of years all winters--war within themselves to wage.
“Now, where the quick Rhône thus hath cleft his way,
The mightiest of the storms hath ta’en his stand:
For here, not one, but many, make their play,
And fling their thunderbolts from hand to hand,
Flashing and cast around; of all the band,
The brightest through these parted hills hath forked
His lightnings, as if he did understand
That in such gaps as desolation worked,
There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked.
“Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye,
With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul
To make these felt and feeling, well may be
Things that have made me watchful; the far roll
Of your departing voices, is the knoll
Of what in me is sleepless,--if I rest.
But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal?
Are ye like those within the human breast?
Or do ye find at length, like eagles, some high nest?
“Could I embody and unbosom now
That which is most within me,--could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,
All that I would have sought, and all I seek,
Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe--into one word,
And that one word were Lightning, I would speak;
But as it is, I live and die unheard,
With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword.”
The Swiss poet, Juste Olivier, grows enthusiastic over the beauty of
Chillon:--
“What perfection!” he exclaims, “What purity of lines, what suavity of
harmony! In this gulf which one might describe as merging from the
lake like a thought of love, in this manoir growing out of the bosom
of the billows with its dentelated towers, petals bourgeonning from a
noble flower, in this encirclement of mountains and these white or
rosy peaks which hold them in close embrace, there is something which
bids you pause, takes you out of yourself and in order to complete the
enchantment compels you to love it.”
And he goes on to tell how once dwelt here the little Charlemagne,
brave Count Pierre, who, when he was ill, used to look out on the
joyous waves, living in memory his battles, his tourneys and his
festivities. Here, too, his brother, the Seigneur Aymon, used to lie
on a vast bed with hangings of armorial silk and surrounded by
candles, while he listened to melancholy tales or comic adventures
from the poor pilgrims whom he sheltered. In that day the feudal
kitchen, with its marquetrie floor, used to see a whole ox roasted to
give meat to the visitors, and great casks of wine from the Haut Crêt
used to cheer the down-hearted. Little did the revellers care for the
poor wretches below in the dungeons where the light filtering through
the loop-holes failed to dissipate the gloomy shadows or make clearer
the visions which solitude evoked from the stormy strip of sky.
* * * * *
The finest aspect of Chillon is from a point just a few hundred meters
out into the lake. There it has a double background; the steep,
green-wooded slope tumbling down from the Bois de la Raveyre, and,
beyond the head of the lake, the saw-like roof of the snow-capped Dent
du Midi. It does indeed look like a tooth--like the colossal molar of
the king of the mastodons. It was too early in the day to see the
Alpenglow; but afterwards many times I saw it, not only on this
imperial height but also on the heads of Mont Blanc and his haughty
vassals and on many another sky-defying range, either bare of snow or
wearing the ermine of the clouds.
As it happened, that beautiful day in May, not a cloud, not a wisp of
cloud, hovered over the rugged bosom of the mighty mountain. It stood
out with startling clearness against a dazzling blue sky, and was
framed between the converging slopes of the mountains that meet the
lake beyond Chillon and on the other side, beyond Villeneuve. The
lofty red-capped central tower of the ancient castle seemed as high,
or rather made the first step up to the mountains that cut off the
view of the base of the grander height.
Taken all in all, is there on earth any bit of landscape more
interesting and thrilling in its combination of picturesque beauty and
historical association?