GENEVA
Shortly after we reached the Grand Hôtel des Bergues, which is so
beautifully situated on the quai of the same name, it began to rain.
My room looked down on the Ile Rousseau with its clustering trees. The
five tall poplars stood dignified and disdainful and only bent their
heads when a gust of wind swept them; but the old chestnut-trees
turned up their pallid green leaves and looked unhappy. Pradier’s
bronze monument streamed with raindrops. The white swans ignored the
downpour and sailed about like little boats. The enforced monotony of
quietude required by confinement even in a commodious cockpit made
exercise indispensable, and, after luncheon, we protected ourselves
against the weather and sallied out for a walk. We had all the long
afternoon. I proposed to go to Ferney and pay our respects to the
memory of Voltaire, but we found it was too early in the season. A few
weeks later, however, one beautiful bright Wednesday, we ran over in
the Moto and carried out my pious desire.
My next proposition was to walk down to the junction of the two
rivers. There is nothing more fascinating on earth than such an union;
it is a perpetually renewed marriage. From far-separated sources, as
if from different families, the two streams come. Like human beings,
each has received a multitude of accessions as if from varied
ancestry. Then at last they meet and cast in their lots together,
never again to be parted till they are swallowed up in the great Ocean
of Death which is Life.
With them it is a perpetual circle or cycle of reincarnation or rather
redaquation. The greedy air sucks up the water and carries it away on
its windy wings until it is caught like a thief by the guardian
mountains and compelled to disgorge. The mountains are unable to keep
it even in the form of snow. It flows down their sides in the slower
rivers called glaciers, which toss up mighty waves and carry with them
great freight of boulders. Then the fierce Sun shouts down:
“Surrender,” and he liberates the imprisoned ice and, once more
changed into water, it gallops down the mountains revenging itself for
its years or centuries of imprisonment in the chains of the Frost by
carrying away with it the very foundations on which the mountains
rest, until, undermined, the proud peaks fall with a mighty crash.
The Rhône and the Arve do not fulfil the marriage injunction all at
once and become one. The muddy grey Arve brings down a quantity of
sand and rolls considerable-sized pebbles along its channel. The Rhône
emerges clear and blue. Read Ruskin’s famous description from the
Fourth Book of the “Modern Painters:”--
“The blue waters of the arrowy Rhône rush out with a depth of fifteen
feet of not flowing but flying water; not water neither, melted
glacier matter, one should call it; the force of the ice is in it and
the wreathing of the clouds, the gladness of the sky and the
countenance of time.”
So we plashed along, crossing the Rhône by the Pont de la
Coulouvrenière, where we paused to wonder at the great city water
works installed in 1886 by the clever engineer, Turretini. The
so-called Forces Motrices, utilizing the swift descent of the Rhône
makes Geneva an ideal manufacturing city. Imagine six thousand horses
at work, never wearied, never requiring grain, noiseless, joyous!
Indeed there is something rather fine in the idea of turning the old
element, Water, into its Protean manifestation, light and electric
power. It goes through the turbines, sets them whirling and comes out,
having lost nothing by this tremendous output of energy--just as
clear, just as beautiful, just as sparkling. It does not harm an
element any more than it harms a man or a horse to do some useful
work.
But it is evident that Switzerland, like other parts of the world, is
going to have some trouble to unite the interests of those that would
convert her hundreds of waterfalls into centres of manufacturing-power
and the interests of those that would keep scenic beauties free from
all mercantile desecration. What would the World of Travel say if some
concessionaire should take possession of the Staubbach, or as more
certain the Trümmelbach, and pipe it in an ugly steel stand-pipe to
create electrical energy for the purpose of manufacturing nitrates!
Yet even now there is a project for damming the Rhône between Pyremont
and Bellegarde. This structure would be one hundred and one meters in
height and would cause the water to back up even to the Swiss
frontier, submerging the whole valley.
I may as well say here that I renewed acquaintance with my steamship
friend, M. Criant, and had the pleasure of going with him and my
nephew, some weeks later, when the river was much diminished in
volume, to that wonderful curiosity of nature called La Perte du
Rhône. We examined the narrow deep gorge between the Crêt d’Eau and
the Vuache Mountain and just above where the Rhône and the Valserine
meet, the river narrows to about fifteen meters in width. Here for a
distance of twenty kilometers it suddenly disappears. M. Criant
explained the cause of this “loss.” The bed of the stream consisted of
two strata or matrasses--the upper harder than the lower. Stones of
various sizes brought down by the Arve and whirled around by the swift
current of the big torrent--falling not far from twenty-five meters
between Bellegarde and Malpertuis made pot-holes, and then when they
reached the softer strata they excavated it, making a tunnel: through
this the stream when reduced in volume makes its tortuous and invisible
way.
M. Criant did not believe at all in the wisdom of building this dam
which would be one of the highest in the world. It would cover the
Perte du Rhône with a lake nearly seventy meters deep, and although
power enough would be created to supply all Lyons and perhaps be
carried as far as Paris, still it would be a menace to the safety of
the towns below. He agreed with his friend Professor Blondel, of the
Ecole Superieure des Ponts et Chaussées, that the whole valley of the
Rhône is in unstable equilibrium, and such a mass of water with its
enormous weight would be likely to tear out its walls and overwhelm
even Lyons with its catastrophe. He told me what was said by another
friend of his, M. E. A. Martel. He did this as a compliment, and I
hardly dared tell him what the Congress of the United States was
likely to do in turning over the wonderful Hetch-Hetchy Valley to the
water-seeking vandals of San Francisco. M. Martel said:--
“In the United States, that great country, famous for its monumental
works and the utilization of hydraulic forces, the discussion of the
two projects would not even be entered into; for the Americans who,
generally speaking, are not embarrassed with a sentiment for art, at
least respect and worship the natural beauties of their country. We
must recognize their talent for being able to conciliate at once the
protection of nature and the development of industries. Long since
they would have declared the Perte and the Canyon of the Rhône to be
a National Park and the two dams (lower down) would have become an
accomplished fact.
“At Niagara Falls an agreement was made with the Canadian Government
so that the primitive natural aspect of the banks themselves was
preserved. Its immediate shores are freed from all installations,
constructions and parasitic shops. But this has not prevented the
establishment and development, in a discreet and invisible way, of
methods of taking the water above the falls, while the machinery that
transforms the force of the water into electric energy is placed
below, thereby not injuring the beautiful features of the landscape.”
M. Criant showed how easy it would be to solve the difficulty here in
a more economical way and at the same time make the approach to this
wonderful curiosity of nature more feasible.
My nephew and I walked down as far as the end of the fascinating
Sentier des Saules, out to the very point where the two swirling
streams begin their passionate wooing. If it had been a pleasant
afternoon we should have crossed the Arve by the Pont de
Saint-Georges and penetrated the Bois de la Bâtie, but an umbrella
has no place in a grove, and so we came back by the boulevard named
for the same popular saint, past the Vélodrome and the gas works, the
cemetery of Plainpalais to the Place Neuve. Here we admired Le Grand
Théâtre, standing by itself with ample approaches and artistic façade
adorned with sculptures and stately columns.
It is a splendid thing for a man, whether prince or pawnbroker,
enriched through the forced or accidental gift of the people, to
return his fortune in the form of a benefaction _en bloc_. This the
true osmose of wealth, to use a chemical figure. The slow flowing of
countless littles into the hands of the One Overmaster Great is
suddenly reversed. So it was with the fortune of Duke Charles II of
Brunswick, who died in 1873 and left Geneva twenty millions of francs
for public purposes. This has enabled Geneva to build the opera-house,
and to carry on many other municipal undertakings. Duke Charles had
fifteen years of sovereignty though a good part of that time he had to
be studying his lessons while a regent ruled for him. When he became
of age he became a tyrant and his people drove him out. He gave
Napoleon the Little pecuniary aid and expected to be reinstated, but
after 1848 that was hopeless. In 1870 he retired to Geneva and died
there.
Of course the duke himself had to be commemorated by a decorative
monument and place was found for it between the Quai du Mont Blanc and
the plaza des Alpes. It takes up considerable room. There is a
platform more than sixty-seven meters long (two hundred and twenty-two
feet) and nearly twenty-five meters (seventy-eight feet) wide and
about twenty-one meters (sixty-six feet) high. On this stands a
three-story hexagonal canopy sheltering a sarcophagus bearing a
recumbent figure of the duke by Iguel, who also designed the reliefs
depicting historic events in Brunswick. At each of the six corners are
marble statues of his Guelf kinsmen. At a pedestal to the right is a
bronze equestrian statue of Charles II. Two colossal lions of yellow
marble, like those in Pilgrim’s Progress warranted not to bite, guard
the entrance. The architect, Franel, went for his inspiration to the
flamboyant Gothic tomb of the Della Scala princes at Verona but it is
generally considered that he did not improve on his model. The
equestrian statue was at first mounted on top of the monument and
there are pictures of it in that position but apparently people
wondered how a horse could have climbed so high and so they made him
back down.
Sculpture at its best is the most decorative of all the arts, at least
for out-of-doors, but mediocre statuary ought to be regarded as what
Mrs. Malaprop called a statuary offence. Geneva is not much more
fortunate than other cities in the appropriateness of its sculptures.
Victor Hugo, who made a flying visit to Geneva in September, 1839,
thought the city had lost much by its so-called improvements. He did
not like it that the row of old worm-eaten dilapidated houses in the
Rue des Domes, which made such a picturesque lake-front, had been
demolished, and he thought the white quais with the white barracks
which the worthy Genovese regard as palaces could not compare with the
old dirty ramshackle city which he had known a dozen or so years
previous. He complained bitterly because they had been putting it
through a process of raking, scraping, levelling and weeding out, so
that with the exception of the Butte Saint-Pierre and the bridges
across the Rhône there was not an ancient structure left. He called it
“a platitude surrounded by humps.”
“Nothing,” he said, “is more unattractive than these little imitation
Parises which one now finds in the provinces, in France and out of
France. In an ancient city with its towers and its carved
house-fronts, one expects to find historic streets, Gothic or Roman
bell-towers; but one finds an imitation Rue de Rivoli, an imitation
Madeleine resembling the façade of the Bobino Theater, an imitation
Column Vendôme looking like an advertising-tower.”
I wonder what he would have thought of the Duke Charles II imitation.
Nevertheless time has justified the Genevans; its brand-new quais are
no longer glaringly new, and “its yellow and its white and its plaster
and its chalk” have been toned down by time. It has grown into a truly
imperial city. I was surprised at the number of buildings of seven
stories and more; it cannot be called an imitation of Paris.
In one of the second-hand book-shops--I wonder why they are always on
quais, where there are quais--I picked up an amusing little volume
entitled, “The Present State of Geneva,” published in 1681 and
purporting to have been composed in Italian for the Great Duke of
Florence by Signior Gregorio Seti. He begins with this bold
statement:--“Geneva, as appears by some chronicles of the County of
Vaux, is one of the ancientist cities of Europe, being commonly
supposed to have been built by Lemanus, son of Hercules, the great
King of the Gaules, who gave his name likewise to the Lake Lemanus.
The first foundation of it was laid in the Year of the World 3994,
upon a little rising Hill covered with Juniper Trees called by the
French _Geneuriers_, from whence it afterwards took the name of
_Geneura_.”
He goes on to say:--“In the time of Julius Cæsar this City was of
great renown and by him called the Bulwork of Helvetia and frontiere
town of the Allobrogi, which name at present it deserves more than
ever.
“When the eruption was made upon the _Swissers_ in the year of God
230, by the Emperor Heliogabalus Geneva was almost utterly destroyed
by Fire but in the Time of Aurelian the Emperour about the Year of
Grace 270, it was by the same Emperour rebuilt, who having bestowed
many priviledges on those that came to repair it, commanded it for the
future to be called Aurelia, but the inhabitants could not easily
banish from their minds the ancient name of Geneva which to this day
it bears, though during the Life of Aurelian they called it Aurelia.”
He tells how on the south it is “adorned with a spatious Neighboring
Plain reaching to the very Walls and encompassed by two large Rivers,
the _Rone_ and the _Arue_. This Plain,” he says, “serves the Citizens
for a place of diversion and Recreation and here they walk to take the
Air and refresh themselves in the delightful Gardens which inviron it,
of which there is a great number. There likewise they train and
exercise their Souldiers and divert themselves at Play in a long Mall.
“This Plain is commonly called the Plain Palace and in a Corner
thereof where the _Arue_ falls into the _Rone_ there is a spatious
burying place for the dead.”
At that time there were four bridges. All four had originally houses
and shops on them but in 1670 a terrible fire broke out on one of the
largest and most inhabited of them and destroyed seventy houses,
leaving one hundred and thirty families homeless and taking the lives
of more than a hundred persons. The new bridges that took the places
of the old ones were by edict freed from all such incumbrances, which,
however picturesque, are certainly dangerous and unsanitary.
The little book contained a good deal of information in small space,
in spite of its erratic spelling. It stated, for instance, that Calvin
was originally buried in Plain Palace, but when the Genevians heard
that the Savoyards were coming “to dig up and insult over his bones
they were removed and buried within the cloyster of Saint Peter’s
Church.”
We had plenty of time to go there. We could see its towers and spire
high in the driving clouds, and its roof, which reminded me of a
Western political-convention hall. Considering that it was built so
early as the Tenth Century, it ought to have the deepest historical
interest. Probably the Emperor Conrad, who founded it, would probably
hardly recognize it, so much has it been altered since his stormy life
closed. No wonder he wanted a cathedral in those Alps which he was for
ever crossing. As soon as he got out of sight down in Italy his German
subjects revolted; then when he had returned and punished them the
Italians would try to throw off his yoke. Life was not smooth for him
either as King of the Germans, or as Emperor of the Romans or as ruler
of the Burgundians, but five years before he died he saw his cathedral
consecrated. Something happened to it a couple of hundred of years
later (about the middle of the eighteenth century): it was probably
enlarged. Then its Romanesque style of architecture was made
ridiculous by a Corinthian portico.
A Corinthian portico, being Greek, perhaps was not theoretically so
out of place if Don Gregorio Seti was right in telling us that “Saint
Peter’s Church was in ancient times dedicated to Apollo, as is to be
seen in some very old inscriptions.”
[Illustration: SWISS MEDIAEVAL CARVINGS.]
We went into the venerable edifice and my nephew suggested that I had
better initiate myself first of all by sitting down in the sacred
chair that once belonged to John Calvin. If there had been any risk of
inoculating myself with his grim and forbidding theology by sitting in
the seat of the Calvinists, be sure I should have refrained. Calvin
was a wonderful man, but at heart a tyrant. He could not endure
contradiction. Jerome Bolsec found that out when he got the better of
him in his argument on predestination: “You make God the author of
sin,” said he, “for you say in your Institution, ‘God foresaw Adam’s
Fall and in this Fall the ruin of all mankind; but He willed it, He
ordered it and predetermined it in His eternal plan. God willed that
the Israelites should worship the golden calf and that men should be
guilty of the sins that they commit every day.’ God being a simple and
changeless Being, how can He be in accord with Himself, since in Him
are two things contrary, Will and Not-will? How can He order and
forbid the same thing? On the other hand, if the Will of God is the
substance of God Himself, it is the cause of the sins committed by
men; consequently God is the author of evil.”
Calvin tried to creep out of the dilemma by saying:--“I have said that
God’s will as a supernatural cause is the necessity for all things;
but I have declared at the same time that God does what He does with
such justice that even the wicked are constrained to glorify Him.”
Bolsec, who could see no equity in such a justice as that, would not
give in and Calvin used his power to exile him. He was forbidden to
return under pain of being whipped through all the squares of the
city.
It is wonderful what an influence and for so long a time was exercised
by Calvin. Certainly during all the years while the fortifications
stood and the gates were shut at night no one dared contravene the
strict regulations which his theocracy enjoined.
There are other famous people buried in the Cathedral of Saint Peter.
Near the main entrance is a tablet commemorating Théodore Agrippa
d’Aubigné, the Huguenot adviser to Henry IV who spent the last twenty
years of his life in Geneva and died there in 1630. He was the
grandfather of Madame de Maintenon, wife of a poet and wife of a king.
We noted the black tombstone to Cardinal Jean de Brogny who built the
lovely Gothic Chapelle des Macchabées, now excellently restored. “Anno
1628,” says our friend Signior Seti, “was interred Emilia of Nassau
and sometime after the Princess her sister, both Sisters to the Prince
of Orange, Emilia being Wife to Don Antonio, King of Portugal, who was
banished by the Spaniards. In another Chappel lies the Body of the
Duke of Rohan, buried in the year 1638 in a most magnificent monument
built by the Dutchess, who was laid there also near her husband in the
year 1660, as their son Tancred was in the year 1661.”
Perhaps the “magnificent monument” is the black marble sarcophagus,
but the statue of the duke who was leader of the French Protestants
and fell at the battle of Rheinfelden is modern--the work of Iguel.
His “Dutchess” was the daughter of the famous “reformer of finances,”
the Duc de Sully, whose great scheme for an International Amphyctionic
Council supplied by the fifteen Christian States of Europe seems to
have fore-shadowed the modern Interparliamentary Union.
By rare good fortune some one was practising on the excellent organ.
Whoever it was played a prelude and fugue of Bach and a brilliant
piece which I recognized as by Saint-Saëns.
On our way back from the cathedral we swung round by the English
Garden and the National Monument with its two figures representing
symbolically Helvetia and Geneva. Like most such colossal sculptures
the farther away one gets the better it looks: that may be carried to
its logical extreme! Then we crossed the long Pont du Mont Blanc but
his Majesty was wholly hidden in the clouds. There were people
fishing, however, just as they have always fished from the beginning
of time. What says Signior Seti?--“Fishing in the Lake of this City is
very considerable both for the profit and pleasure; they commonly take
trouts of four score pound weight at twelve ounces the pound and in
the Middle of the River opposite it the Town preserve their fish alive
for use on two little deal board houses made for that purpose. In the
Summer time it is a very pleasant recreation to go a Fishing here and
both strangers and Citizens mightily delight in it.”
Not then, but at another time, I amused myself watching the dozens of
washerwomen by the riverside, in booths roofed over and closed at the
ends--leaning forward on their bare arms and spending more time
gossiping in their terrible dialect or watching the little boats
flying by. The Billingsgate of a Genevan _blanchisseuse_ is not so
melodious as the notes of a Vallombrosan nightingale, but it has a
picturesque quality all its own.
As it was still raining we decided not to go out after dinner. But in
spite of the rain I confessed to myself that I liked my first sight of
Geneva and cherished a sneaking regret in my heart that Will and Ruth
had not chosen their residence there instead of locating at Lausanne.
Any place that is cheerful in a rain-storm is the place for me, and I
thought Geneva actually smiled through her tears, if I may so express
myself.