FAMOUS FOLK
Immediately after luncheon we reembarked in the swift _Hirondelle_,
which was impatiently waiting for us, and started Lausanneward. As in
our trip down, we hugged the shore. High up on the hillside we saw the
Musée Ariana in its beautiful park. Later we visited it and saw its
pictures, its antiquities,--especially interesting the old Genevan
pewter-ware, furniture, weapons and stained glass and its still more
ancient relics of the Alemanni; nor did we forget the Alpine Garden
and other curiosities of the Botanical Park. This is situated directly
on the Lausanne highway.
High up also, and affording a magnificent view, stands the Château
Rothschild dominating Pregny. Then we rushed by Genthod, the home of
Switzerland’s most famous scientists. There was a regular nest of them
there. Birds of a feather! not the least of them being the zoölogist
François Jules Pictet de la Rive. I wondered what Raoul Pictet, who
did good work in liquefying gases, would think of the latest
developments in the use of liquid air. A professor whom I met in
Lausanne informed me that it now cost only a half-cent a pound. As it
is composed of two liquids, nitrogen and oxygen, which boil at
different temperatures, it is easy to eliminate the nitrogen and leave
pure oxygen, which, of course, is invaluable in foundries to stimulate
a high temperature.
The possibility that the enormous drafts on the nitrogen of the
atmosphere for manufacturing nitrates, and which have made some people
conjecture that we might ultimately become so excitable through the
preponderance of oxygen, need no longer bother us. The nitrogen will
go into nitrates all right but the balance will be kept even by the
withdrawal of oxygen for blast-furnaces, and all we need fear is that
there won’t be any air left. But let us not worry; _après nous le
vide_! The Swiss torrents offer many chances for the electrical
manufacture of these liquid gases at small expense.
At Genthod also lived the De Saussures. Will suggested that from their
exploits in climbing mountains they should have been named the
Snowshoers, a slight change not comparable with that exemplified in
his earliest known ancestor, Mongin Schouel de Saulxures, Grand
Falconer to the Duke of Lorraine!
“The illustrious” Horace-Bénédict de Saussure’s father was an
authority on farming in its scientific aspects as they were then
understood; his mother was the sister-in-law of the naturalist Charles
de Bonnet, who, until his eyesight failed him and he had to take to
philosophical speculations and to controversy with Voltaire, was
interested in studying parthenogenesis, the respiration of insects and
leaves, and kindred abstruse subjects. After a truly Rousseauesque
education, whereby he was trained to bear hardships and fatigue and
all unavoidable inconveniences without complaining, Horace de Saussure
became professor of philosophy at Geneva at the age of twenty-two. Two
years earlier he had offered a prize to the first person who should
find a practicable route to the top of Mont Blanc, though it was then,
and for years afterwards, believed to be inaccessible. He had been to
the peak of Le Brévent on the other side of the Valley of Chamonix--in
itself no small climb for those days at least--and he looked across
that tremendous chasm and up to the forbidding white dome of the
monarch of mountains, towering almost twice as high, and that intense
ambition to get to the top of the world came over him. He believed it
could be accomplished.
For fifteen years no serious attempt was made to win the prize. Then
four peasants thought they might do it in a day, but dared not spend
the night on the ice and so they came down. In 1783 three chamois
hunters spent the night at the Montagne de la Côte, and the following
morning started up over the icy slope, but one of them grew sleepy,
and as it was regarded as dangerous to sleep on ice and they were
afraid of sunstroke they also relinquished the task. One of them told
De Saussure that if he tried it again all he would take with him would
be a parasol and a bottle of smelling salts! In 1787 De Saussure
caused a hut to be built near the Glacier of Bionnassay and tried to
win the prize for himself. But it was too late in the season and he
had to give it up.
The next attempt was made in August, 1788, by Marc-Théodore Bourrit,
called “the Historian of the Alps.” He was a miniature painter. He was
also precentor of the Cathedral at Geneva. There was a tradition that
it was possible to cross the Alps from Geneva to Turin in thirty-eight
hours. Bourrit provided himself with a fourteen-foot ladder, a couple
of hatchets, ropes and staves, and started with a small party. They
had a terrible time among the crevasses but reached Courmayeur at ten
p. m. He was the first to discover the Col du Géant. He believed Mont
Blanc to be inaccessible. He tried it, however, a second time with his
son, an Englishman named Woodley and a Dutchman named Kampfer. They
had twenty-two guides, nineteen of whom were overcome. He claimed that
he got beyond the Camel’s Humps within ten minutes of the top but was
prevented by a hurricane from actually reaching it. He gave himself
away by declaring that he could see the Mediterranean. He would have
had to see it not only through a snow-storm but also through the top.
It is now believed that he did not get above the Rochers Rouges. M.
Auldjo traced the limitation of vision by a map and showed it was
impossible to see the Mediterranean.
The next year partisans of two different routes tried in rivalry to go
up from opposite sides. Each party was made up of three men; a fourth,
named Jacques Balmat, attached himself to one of them, and, when they
deserted him, he continued alone, and by digging steps in the ice
along the crest of the Rochers Rouges got within less than three
hundred meters of the summit. He realized that if he went alone no
one would believe him; when he managed to retrace his steps and
reached the Grand Plateau he was overcome by snow-blindness. He kept
his eyes shut for half an hour and his sight returned, but it was
growing dark. He was obliged to spend the night where he was. He
burrowed into the snow and kept alive.
When he reached Chamonix the next day he was so worn out that he slept
twenty-four hours at a stretch. Then he went to the doctor of
Chamonix, Michel Paccard, and told him his secret. They determined to
try it. They started August 8, 1786, not together but one taking the
right bank, the other the left bank of the Arve, so as not to awaken
suspicion of their purpose. They camped on the Montagne de la Côte,
and the next day attained Les Petits Mulets, about a hundred meters
below the tip-top. Here they were nearly blown off the crest by a
fierce gust of icy wind. The doctor refused to take another step.
People were watching them from the village with a telescope. Balmat
went alone to the top, and wigwagged a greeting to the villagers, who
answered it. Then he went down and got the doctor by main force to the
top. Balmat had practically to drag him down to the valley; the poor
man was completely blinded and half frozen to death.
The next year De Saussure, with Balmat as guide, and a large party,
bearing scientific apparatus, successfully reached the summit--the
professor dressed in a long-tailed silk coat with huge buttons, which
is preserved as a mute witness of the achievement in the De Saussure
house at Genthod. Balmat lived to be an old man and was proud of the
patent of nobility which the King of Sardinia conferred on him in
honour of his feat.
Later, Dr. Paccard forgot what Balmat had done for him and how
generously he had shared with him the honour of first conquering the
proud monarch, and he began to claim all the credit of the enterprise.
He issued a prospectus of a book, which should bring him a reward for
his exertions. He promised to give a short history of previous
attempts, an account of his own success, and a description of the
stones and rocks, the insects, the rare plants, as well as his
physical and medical observations, and all necessary notions for those
who might wish to visit the glaciers. The subscription price was to be
six livres de France for copies on fine paper and four livres, ten
sols for copies on ordinary paper. He very cordially invited persons
of a higher class who might desire to join in giving the author a
prize for this conquest, and they also were promised a share in some
of the curiosities found on Mont Blanc. He succeeded by this means in
securing a number of subscribers.
De Saussure did not climb the Alpine mountains for sentimental
reasons; his purpose was purely scientific, but occasionally in his
writings there are passages of charming freshness and humanity. Once
he camped out on the bleak Col du Géant for more than two weeks. He
thus describes the last evening:--
“The sixteenth and last evening which we spent on the Col du Géant was
ravishingly beautiful. It seemed as if all those lofty summits desired
that we should not depart from them without regret. The icy wind which
had made the most of the nights so uncomfortable did not blow. The
peaks which looked down upon us and the snows lying between them took
on the most beautiful tints of rose and of carmine. The whole Italian
horizon seemed to wear a zone and the full moon came rising above this
zone with queenly majesty and glowing with the most exquisite
vermilion. The atmosphere about us had that purity and that
crystalline limpidity which Homer attributes to that of Olympus, while
the valleys, filled with mists condensing there, seemed the
dwelling-place of gloomy shadows.
“But how shall I depict the night that followed this lovely evening,
when after the twilight the moon, shining alone in the sky, poured
forth the waves of her silvery light over the vast pile of snow and
rock surrounding our cabin? What an astonishing and delicious
spectacle under the gentle radiance of the luminary of night was made
by those very slopes of snow and ice the sight of which is unendurable
in the sunlight. What a magnificent contrast those granite crags,
darkened and hewed out with so much precision and boldness, made
against these glittering snows! What a moment for meditation! How many
trials and privations find compensation in such moments! The soul is
elevated, the mind seems to cover a wider outlook, and in the midst of
this majestic silence you may believe you hear the voice of Nature and
become the secret witness of her most hidden works.”
De Saussure’s “Voyages dans les Alpes” are still well worth reading.
He was acquainted with most of the great men of his day; Goethe sought
him out to ask his advice; the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, explorer of
glaciers, Buffon, David Garrick, Sir William Hamilton and dozens of
others were proud of his friendship. In a way, he was the father of
modern mountain-climbing. He crossed the Alps by eight different
passes and penetrated to parts of the mountains never deemed
accessible before his day.
Women began quite early to have aspirations to get to the top of the
mountain. In August, 1823, a Mrs. Campbell of London, with her
daughter, got to the Col du Géant and tried to reach the summit but
failed. In September, 1838, Mlle. Henriette d’Angeville, no longer
young, succeeded. It was then regarded as an extraordinary feat. She
says she “looked out toward those superb mountains which lifted above
the plains and mediocrities of the earth their brows adorned with an
eternal splendor;” she was “attracted by their solitude where she
might breathe the free pure air of the mighty Alpestrian Nature;” she
was bound to climb “on the white carpet of the spotless snows to those
glittering peaks which are like luminous altars, the sojourn of joy,
of sweetness, of infinite serenity.” Her relatives and friends tried
to restrain her but she cried: “If I suffocate, take my body to the
top and leave it there.” She started with seven guides and two
porters, and succeeded.
Afterwards she confessed:--“If we had started from the Grands Mulets
at four o’clock instead of at two, the ascension would have been a
failure and we should have got caught in the tempest; if we had gone
back without reaching the summit, they would have made sport of us; if
one of my guides had perished I should have been stoned and if I had
perished it would have been said: ‘Too bad, but what business had she
to get into such a scrape?’”
She has been called “the Bride of Mont Blanc” and it is said of her
that “her name shines with fiery brilliancy in the firmament of
Alpinism.”
Undoubtedly, if she were living now, she would be the first woman to
cross the Alps in an aeroplane, for in 1838 she proposed to go to
London to make an ascension in Charles Green’s balloon.
In the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris are three volumes containing
fourteen narratives by those travellers who successfully reached the
summit between 1786 and 1838, including an account of the supposed
discovery of the valley of Chamonix and a history of the Priory,
accompanied by a series of pictures, portraits and original letters,
collected by Markham Sherwill, who was the first to put an end to the
legend of the discovery of the valley by Windham and Pococke.
* * * * *
The sight of Coppet of course instantly brought to mind Gibbon’s early
love and her later residence with her unhappy husband (“the past, the
present and the future all odious to him”) and their strong-minded
daughter, Madame de Staël. In one of Gibbon’s letters he tells of the
report that the Necker had purchased the barony of “Copet” and had
found the buildings in great disrepair. He added:--“They have now a
very troublesome charge ... the disposal of a Baroness. Mademoiselle
Necker, one of the greatest heiresses in Europe, is now about
eighteen, wild, vain but good-natured and with a much larger provision
of wit than beauty; what encreases their difficulties is their
religious obstinacy of marrying her only to a Protestant.”
She had chance to display her wit, for their house, whether at Paris
or in Switzerland, was always frequented by distinguished public men
and writers. In one of her youthful essays speaking of “La Nouvelle
Héloïse” she criticizes Julie for continually lecturing Saint-Preux:
“A guilty woman may love virtue,” she says, “but she should not prate
about it.”
She might have been the wife of William Pitt; the Comte de Guibert (to
whom Mademoiselle de l’Espinasse wrote such glowing love-letters and
whose marriage to another lady broke her heart) was also regarded as a
possibility. But finally the choice fell on the Swedish Baron de
Staël-Holstein, who was, in consequence of her dowry, raised to the
rank of ambassador, but was more heavily laden with debts than with
intellect.
At Coppet, while in exile from her beloved Paris, she wrote her
romance “Corinne,” and at Coppet she managed to gather about her that
circle of wits and admirers which was so essential to her happiness.
The German poet and romanticist, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, lived at
Madame de Staël’s château for about fourteen years. Byron visited her
there; so did George Ticknor of Boston. But Switzerland exercised no
spell on Madame de Staël and interesting as her love-affairs are,
especially her long liaison with Benjamin Constant de Rebecque, whose
cant name was “La Fausseté,” just as Madame de Montolieu’s was “Le
Tourbillon” and Gibbon’s was “Neptune” or her secret marriage with
the handsome youth Albert de Rocca, she was only, as it were, a
prisoner in sight of the Alps and yearning for her beloved Paris.
Sainte-Beuve, who was for a time a professor at Lausanne, gives a
brilliant account of the society which gathered in her salon. He
says:--
“What the sojourn at Ferney was for Voltaire, the life at Coppet was
for Madame de Staël, but with a more romantic halo round her, it seems
to us, more of the grandeur and pomp of life. Both reigned in their
exile; Voltaire, in his low flat plain, his secluded, poverty-stricken
castle, with a view of despoiled, unshaded gardens, scorned and
derided. The influence of Coppet is quite different; it is that of
Jean-Jacques continued, ennobled, installed, and reigning amid the
same associations as his rival. Coppet counterbalances Ferney, half
dethrones it.
“We also, of this younger generation, judge Ferney by comparing it
with Coppet, coming down from Coppet. The beauty of its site, the
woods which shadow it, the sex of its poet, the air of enthusiasm we
breathe there, the elegant company, the glorious names, the walks by
the lake, the mornings in the park, the mysteries and the inevitable
storms which we surmise, all contribute to idealize the place for us.
Coppet is the Elysium which every disciple of Jean-Jacques would
gladly give to the mistress of his dreams....
“The literary and philosophical conversations, always high-toned,
clever and witty, began as early as eleven in the morning, when all
met at breakfast; and were carried on again at dinner, and in the
interval between dinner and supper, which was at eleven at night, and
often as late as midnight. Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël
engrossed the conversation.... Their intellects were in accord; they
always understood each other.
“But we must not suppose that everyone there was always either
sentimental or solemn; very often they were simply gay; Corinne had
days of _abandon_, when she resembled the signora _Fantastici_. Plays
were often acted at Coppet, dramas and tragedies, or the chivalric
pieces of Voltaire, ‘Zaïre’ and ‘Tancrède,’ favourites of Madame de
Staël’s; or plays composed expressly by her or her friends. These
latter were sometimes printed at Paris, so that the parts might more
easily be learned; the interest taken in such messages was very keen;
and when in the interval some important correction was thought of, a
courier was hurried off, and sometimes a second to catch him up, and
modify the correction already _en route_. The poetry of Europe was
represented at Coppet by many celebrated men. Zacharias Werner, one of
the originators of that court, whose ‘Attila’ and other dramas were
played with a considerable addition of German ladies, wrote about this
time (1809) to Counsellor Schneffer:--
“‘Madame de Staël is a queen, and all the intelligent men who live in
her circle are unable to leave it, for she holds them by a magic
spell. They are not all, as is foolishly believed in Germany, occupied
in forming her literary character; on the contrary, they receive a
social education at her hands. She possesses to admiration the secret
of uniting the most unlikely elements, and all who come near her,
however different their opinions may be, agree in adoring this idol.
Madame de Staël is of middling height, and, without possessing the
elegance of a nymph, is of noble proportions.... She is healthy, a
brunette, and her face is not exactly beautiful; but this is not
observed, for at sight of her eyes all else is forgotten; they are
superb; a great soul not only shines in them, but shoots forth flame
and fire. And when, as so often happens, she speaks straight from her
heart, we see how this noble heart is hedged round by all that is
great and profound in her mind, and then one must adore her, as do my
friends A. W. Schlegel and Benjamin Constant.’
“It is not difficult to imagine to oneself the sprightly author of
this picture. Werner, in his uncouth dress, purposely besmeared with
snuff, furnished as he was with an enormous snuff-box, which he used
plentifully during his long, erotic, and platonic digressions on
_androgyne_; his fate was, he said, to be dragged hither and thither
in fruitless search for that other half of himself, and from one
attempt to another, from divorce after divorce, he never despaired of,
in the end, reconstituting his original self.
“As for portraits of Madame de Staël, we see how all who try to limn
her agree in the chief points, from M. de Guibert to OEhlenschlæger
and Werner. Two faithful and trustworthy portraits from the brush
allow us to dispense with literary word-painting,--the portrait
painted by Madame Lebrun in 1807, which presents Madame de Staël to us
as Corinne, bare-headed, her hair in curls, a lyre in her hand; and
the picture by Gérard, painted after her death, but from perfect,
unerring remembrance. However, in collecting together several sketches
from various contemporaneous pens, we think we have not done a useless
thing; one is never weary of harmonizing many reminiscences of those
beloved and admired ones who are no more.
“English poetry, which, during the Continental wars, was unrepresented
at this long congress of thought of which Coppet was the
abiding-place, appeared there in 1816, in the persons of Lewis and
Byron. The latter has spoken of Madame de Staël in his Memoirs in an
affectionate and admiring manner, despite a certain levity the
_oracle_ indulges in. _Blasé_ as he is, he admits that she has made
Coppet the most pleasant place in the world, through the society she
chooses to receive there, and which her own talent animates. On her
side, she pronounced him to be the most seductive man in England,
always adding: ‘I credit him with just sufficient tenderness to
destroy the happiness of a woman.’”
* * * * *
Higher and higher grow the shores of the lake. We left Coppet and its
memories of that brilliant and unhappy genius behind and were soon
skirting Nyon, which the Romans knew as Noviodunum. Now that name is
most interesting. It contains in it the noun _dun_ which as a Saxon
word means a hill and is seen in its simplest form in the expression,
sand-dunes; it also appears as “downs;” but it is also a Keltic word
and means a fortified hill; both Saxon and Keltic words are
etymologically the same as _ton_ or town. Cæsar made it a garrison
forty-five years before Christ and called it Colonia Equestris.
There is often a wonderful germ of history hidden away in proper
names. Who would ever dream that the little town of Gstaad which, of
course, is the same as Gestade, meaning shore or bank, represents its
ancient Latin name of Ripa Barbarorum? In the same way the Roman Mons
Saccarum was pronounced by the Germans Masox or Meysachs, the Rhetii
called it Misanc and from that came the name of the Barons of Misaucus
who inhabited a magnificent castle built before the middle of the
Tenth Century. The Germans call the Italian the Wälsche, which is the
same as calling them Welch, meaning strangers; that name is seen in
the town of Wahlenstadt and in the people Walloons. Vaud itself means
Valli, which is Walli, the same as Welch. So Montigl is _monticulus_,
a little mountain; Rinegg is _Rheni angulum_, a bend of the Rhine;
Gräppelen comes from _c zappa longa_, meaning long rocks.
There is a pretty little French characterization of Nyon in four
lines. It reads:--
“A Nyon, la riante ville
Qui se dresse sur son coteau,
Avec ses murs, son vieux château,
Le lac est bleu d’un bleu tranquille.”
We passed under it, but could see its stately castle crowned with a
multitude of spiry towers. From its terrace there is a splendid view
across to the pearly pyramid of Mont Blanc. The castle has walls ten
feet thick, but is now used as a museum. Next we catch a glimpse of
the Château de Prangins, where Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s oldest
brother, lived, caring more for a scholarly and agricultural life than
to be king of turbulent Spaniards. The two torrents rushing down from
the Jura, the Promenthoux and the Aubonne, have thrust their cones out
into the lake and given room for pretty villages.
Byron, returning from a walking expedition, stopped at Aubonne
“which,” he says, “commands by far the fairest view of the Lake of
Geneva; twilight; the Moon on the Lake; a grove on the height, and of
very noble trees. Here Tavernier (the Eastern traveler) bought (or
built) the Château, because the site resembled and equalled that of
Erivan (a frontier city of Persia); and here he finished his voyages.”
There is a lovely bay between the two “cones” and the shore bears the
distinctive name of La Côte; it is famous for its delicious grapes and
excellent white wine. The now distant shore of Savoy swims in a
delicate haze; over the water, just ruffled by a gentle breeze, curl
those curious smooth-looking streaks which are called “fontaines” and
are supposed to be caused by minute particles of oil, though some
attribute them to subterranean springs.
It was growing late in the afternoon and the shores of the lake are
not so interesting, that is not so bold, after passing Rolle and its
precious island, and we cut across from Saint-Prex to Saint Sulpice,
leaving Morges for another time, though its old castle looked enticing
from the distance.
It was pleasant to get home again.