Transcriber’s Note: Boldface is indicated by =equals signs=, italics by
_underscores_.
GENEVA
OTHER BOOKS ON SWITZERLAND
THE ALPS
PAINTED BY A. D. M’CORMICK
DESCRIBED BY SIR MARTIN CONWAY
Containing 62 full-page Illustrations in Colour
=Price 20/- net=
(_Post free, price 20/6_)
MONTREUX
PAINTED BY J. HARDWICKE LEWIS AND
MAY HARDWICKE LEWIS
DESCRIBED BY FRANCIS H. GRIBBLE
Containing 20 full-page Illustrations in Colour and a
Sketch-Map
=Price 7/6 net=
(_Post free, price 7/11_)
OUR LIFE IN THE SWISS HIGHLANDS
BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
AND HIS DAUGHTER MARGARET
With 16 full-page Illustrations in Colour by
J. HARDWICKE LEWIS
=Price 7/6 net=
(_Post free, price 7/11_)
THE UPPER ENGADINE
PAINTED BY J. HARDWICKE LEWIS
DESCRIBED BY S. C. MUSSON
Containing 20 full-page Illustrations in Colour
=Price 6/- net=
(_Post free, price 6/4_)
A. AND C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON
[Illustration: SUNSET ON MONT BLANC FROM ABOVE GENEVA]
GENEVA
PAINTED BY
J. HARDWICKE LEWIS &
MAY HARDWICKE LEWIS
DESCRIBED BY
FRANCIS GRIBBLE
[Illustration]
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1908
Contents
CHAPTER I
PAGE
OLD GENEVA 1
CHAPTER II
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 9
CHAPTER III
THE REFORMATION 13
CHAPTER IV
THE EXPULSION OF THE NUNS 17
CHAPTER V
THE RULE OF CALVIN 23
CHAPTER VI
THE TRIUMPH OF THE THEOCRACY 29
CHAPTER VII
THE UNIVERSITY 33
CHAPTER VIII
PROFESSOR ANDREW MELVILL 39
CHAPTER IX
THÉODORE DE BÈZE 43
CHAPTER X
WAR WITH SAVOY 51
CHAPTER XI
THE ESCALADE 53
CHAPTER XII
AN INTERVAL OF QUIET 61
CHAPTER XIII
REVOLUTIONS 65
CHAPTER XIV
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 71
CHAPTER XV
SAUSSURE 77
CHAPTER XVI
MEN OF LETTERS 89
CHAPTER XVII
SONGS AND SQUIBS 93
CHAPTER XVIII
RELIGIOUS REVIVAL 95
CHAPTER XIX
ROMANTICISM 99
CHAPTER XX
LATER MEN OF LETTERS 105
CHAPTER XXI
VOLTAIRE 107
CHAPTER XXII
VOLTAIRE AND THE THEATRE 111
CHAPTER XXIII
VISITORS TO FERNEY 119
CHAPTER XXIV
COPPET 123
List of Illustrations
1. Sunset on Mont Blanc from above Geneva. J. H. L. _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. L’Église de la Madeleine, Geneva. M. H. L. 6
3. The Last Snow on the Wooded slopes. M. H. L. 10
4. Geneva from the Arve. M. H. L. 20
5. The Bay of Meillerie. J. H. L. 26
6. Evian les Bains, Hte. Savoie. M. H. L. 34
7. The Glaciers des Bossons, Chamonix. J. H. L. 38
8. Yvoire, Hte. Savoie. M. H. L. 44
9. La Roche, Hte. Savoie. J. H. L. 50
10. The Castle of Etrembières, Hte. Savoie. J. H. L. 56
11. Nyon Castle, looking across the Lake to Mont Blanc. J. H. L. 62
12. Montenvers and Aiguilles Verte and Dru. J. H. L. 68
13. The Jura Range from Thonon, Hte. Savoie. J. H. L. 74
14. The Aiguille and Dôme du Goûter, Mont Blanc. M. H. L. 80
15. The Statue of Jean Jacques Rousseau on the Island in the
Rhone, Geneva, from Hôtel des Bergues. J. H. L. 90
16. The Head of Lake Annecy, Hte. Savoie. J. H. L. 96
17. Nernier, Hte. Savoie. M. H. L. 100
18. The Chateau de Prangins. M. H. L. 110
19. A Vaudoise: Summer. M. H. L. 120
20. The Tricoteuse: Winter. M. H. L. 128
CHAPTER I
OLD GENEVA
Towns which expand too fast and become too prosperous tend to lose
their individuality. Geneva has enjoyed that fortune, and has paid that
price for it.
Straddling the Rhone, where it issues from the bluest lake in the
world, looking out upon green meadows and wooded hills, backed by the
dark ridge of the Salève, with the ‘great white mountain’ visible in
the distance, it has the advantage of an incomparable site; and it
is, from a town surveyor’s point of view, well built. It has wide
thoroughfares, quays, and bridges; gorgeous public monuments and
well-kept public gardens; handsome theatres and museums; long rows
of palatial hotels; flourishing suburbs; two railway-stations, and a
casino. But all this is merely the façade--all of it quite modern;
hardly any of it more than half a century old. The real historical
Geneva--the little of it that remains--is hidden away in the
background, where not every tourist troubles to look for it.
It is disappearing fast. Italian stonemasons are constantly engaged
in driving lines through it. They have rebuilt, for instance, the old
Corraterie, which is now the Regent Street of Geneva, famous for its
confectioners’ and booksellers’ shops; they have destroyed, and are
still destroying, other ancient slums, setting up white buildings of
uniform ugliness in place of the picturesque but insanitary dwellings
of the past. It is, no doubt, a very necessary reform, though one may
think that it is being executed in too utilitarian a spirit. The old
Geneva was malodorous, and its death-rate was high. They had more than
one Great Plague there, and their Great Fires have always left some of
the worst of their slums untouched. These could not be allowed to stand
in an age which studies the science and practises the art of hygiene.
Yet the traveller who wants to know what the old Geneva was really like
must spend a morning or two rambling among them before they are pulled
down.
The old Geneva, like Jerusalem, was set upon a hill, and it is towards
the top of the hill that the few buildings of historical interest are
to be found. There is the cathedral--a striking object from a distance,
though the interior is hideously bare. There is the Town Hall, in
which, for the convenience of notables carried in litters, the upper
stories were reached by an inclined plane instead of a staircase.
There is Calvin’s old Academy, bearing more than a slight resemblance
to certain of the smaller colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. There,
too, are to be seen a few mural tablets, indicating the residences of
past celebrities. In such a house Rousseau was born; in such another
house--or in an older house, now demolished, on the same site--Calvin
died. And towards these central points the steep and narrow, mean
streets--in many cases streets of stairs--converge.
As one plunges into these streets one seems to pass back from the
twentieth century to the fifteenth, and need not exercise one’s
imagination very severely in order to picture the town as it appeared
in the old days before the Reformation. The present writer may claim
permission to borrow his own description from the pages of ‘Lake Geneva
and its Literary Landmarks’:
‘Narrow streets predominated, though there were also a certain number
of open spaces--notably at the markets, and in front of the Cathedral,
where there was a traffic in those relics and rosaries which Geneva was
presently to repudiate with virtuous indignation. One can form an idea
of the appearance of the narrow streets by imagining the oldest houses
that one has seen in Switzerland all closely packed together--houses at
the most three stories high, with gabled roofs, ground-floors a step or
two below the level of the roadway, and huge arched doors studded with
great iron nails, and looking strong enough to resist a battering-ram.
Above the doors, in the case of the better houses, were the painted
escutcheons of the residents, and crests were also often blazoned
on the window-panes. The shops, too, and more especially the inns,
flaunted gaudy sign-boards with ingenious devices. The Good Vinegar,
the Hot Knife, the Crowned Ox, were the names of some of these; their
tariff is said to have been fivepence a day for man and beast.
‘The streets, being narrow, were also very generally crowded, and were
particularly crowded in the evenings. From the stuffy houses--and even
in these days of sanitation a really old Swiss house is sometimes
stuffy enough to make the stranger gasp for breath--the citizens of
high as well as low degree sallied to take their pleasure in the
street. The street was their drawing-room. They stood and gossiped
there; they sat about on benches underneath their windows. Or some
musician would strike up a lively tune, and ladies of the highest
position in society--the daughters and wives of Councillors and
Syndics--attired in velvets and silks and satins, would dance
round-dances in the open air. For all their political anxieties, these
early Genevans were, on the whole, a merry people.
‘But--let there be no mistake about it--they made merry in the midst of
filth and evil smells. On this point we have unimpeachable information
in the shape of a rescript issued by the Chapter of the Cathedral after
conference with the Vidomne and the Syndics. The Chapter complains that
too many citizens dispose of their slops by carelessly throwing them
out of window, and establish refuse-heaps outside their front-doors--a
noisome practice which still prevails in many of the Swiss villages,
though no longer in any of the Swiss towns. It is also complained
that nearly every man has a pig-sty, and lets his pigs run loose in
the streets for exercise, and that there is an undue prevalence of
such unsavoury industries as the melting of tallow and the burning
of the horns of cattle. One can imagine the net result of this great
combination of nuisances. In a city of magnificent distances it might
have passed. Bayswater, at the present day, lives in ignorance of the
smells of Bermondsey. But in Geneva, when Geneva was almost as small
as Sandwich, one can understand that the consequences were appalling
to the nostrils of the polite. The fact that the city was so overrun
with lepers and beggars that two lazar-houses and seven _hôpitaux_--or
casual wards, as one might say--had to be provided for their reception,
adds something, though not perhaps very much, to this unpleasant side
of the picture.
[Illustration: L’ÉGLISE DE LA MADELEINE, GENEVA]
‘Our ecclesiastical rescript further proves that while the Genevans
were a merry and a dirty, they were also an immoral, people. It records
that they are unduly addicted to the game of dice, and that the outcome
of this pastime is “fraud, deception, theft, rapine, lies, fights,
brawls, and insults, to say nothing of damnable blasphemy”; and it
ordains that any man who “swears without necessity” shall “take off his
hat and kneel down in the place of his offence, and clasp his hands,
and kiss the earth”--or pay a fine of three halfpence if he fail to do
so. Then it proceeds to propound an elaborate scheme for the State
regulation of immorality, forbidding certain indulgences “to clergymen
as well as laymen”; and requiring the Social Evil to wear something in
the nature of a Scarlet Letter to distinguish her from other women.’