LATER MEN OF LETTERS
One would be tempted, if space permitted, to say something of the
later literary luminaries of Geneva: of Amiel, the ‘virtuous Don
Juan,’ as his friends called him, who, after living rather a futile
life, acquired posthumous fame through his ‘Journal’; of Cherbuliez,
the novelist, once very popular, though now somewhat out of fashion;
of Marc Monnier, the sparkling and versatile father of Dr. Philippe
Monnier who has inherited his wit; of Toepfer, author of ‘Nouvelles
Genevoises,’ described by one critic as ‘a sort of Swiss Ally Sloper,’
and by another as ‘a sort of Swiss Max O’Rell, with just a dash of
Mr. Barlow’; of Emile Javelle, who climbed the Alps diligently and
wrote of them poetically; of MM. Eugène Ritter and Albert de Montet,
the pillars of historical research in French Switzerland. But space
does not permit. What little space remains is claimed by certain
distinguished strangers who have shed lustre upon Geneva by living in
the neighbourhood. We must visit Voltaire at Ferney, and Madame de
Staël at Coppet. Let the patriarch come first.