SALEMINA and I were in Geneva. If you had ever travelled through Europe
with a charming spinster who never sat down at a Continental _table
d’hôte_ without being asked by an American _vis-à-vis_ whether she were
one of the P.’s of Salem, Massachusetts, you would understand why I call
my friend Salemina. She doesn’t mind it. She knows that I am simply
jealous because I came from a vulgarly large tribe that never had any
coat-of-arms, and whose ancestors always sealed their letters with their
thumb nails.
Whenever Francesca and I call her “Salemina,” she knows, and we know that
she knows, that we are seeing a group of noble ancestors in a sort of
halo over her serene and dignified head, so she remains unruffled under
her _petit nom_, inasmuch as the casual public comprehends nothing of its
spurious origin and thinks it was given her by her sponsors in baptism.
Francesca, Salemina, and I have very different backgrounds. The
first-named is an extremely pretty person of large income who is
travelling with us simply because her relatives think that she will “see
Europe” more advantageously under our chaperonage than if she were
accompanied by persons of her own age or “set.”
Salemina is a philanthropist and educator of the first rank, and is
collecting all sorts of valuable material to put at the service of her
own country when she returns to it, which will not be a moment before her
letter of credit is exhausted.
I, too, am quasi-educational, for I had a few years of experience in
mothering and teaching little waifs and strays of the streets before I
began to paint pictures. Never shall I regret those nerve-racking,
back-breaking, heart-warming, weary, and beautiful years, when, all
unconsciously, I was learning to paint children by living with them.
Even now the spell still works and it is the curly head, the “shining
morning face,” the ready tear, the glancing smile of childhood that
enchains me and gives my brush whatever skill it possesses.
We had not been especially high-minded or educational in Switzerland,
Salemina and I. The worm will turn; and there is a point where the
improvement of one’s mind seems a farce, and the service of humanity, for
the moment, a duty only born of a diseased imagination.
How can one sit on a vine-embowered balcony facing lovely Lake Geneva and
think about modern problems,—Improved Tenements, Child Labour, Single
Tax, Sweat Shops, and the Right Training of the Rising Civilization?
Blue Lake Geneva!—blue as a woman’s eye, blue as the vault of heaven,
dropped into the lap of the green earth like a great sparkling sapphire!
Mont Blanc you know to be just behind the clouds on the other side, and
that presently, after hours or days of patient waiting, he may condescend
to unveil himself to your worshipful gaze.
“He is wise in his dignity and reserve,” mused Salemina as we sat on the
veranda. “He is all the more sublime because he withdraws himself from
time to time. In fact, if he didn’t see fit to cover himself
occasionally, one could neither eat nor sleep, nor do anything but adore
and magnify.”
The day before this interview we had sailed to the end of the sapphire
lake and visited the “snow-white battlements” of the Castle of Chillon;
seen its “seven pillars of Gothic mould,” and its dungeons deep and old,
where poor Bonnivard, Byron’s famous “Prisoner of Chillon,” lay captive
for so many years, and where Rousseau fixes the catastrophe of his
Héloïse.
We had just been to Coppet too; Coppet where the Neckers lived and Madame
de Staël was born and lived during many years of her life. We had
wandered through the shaded walks of the magnificent château garden, and
strolled along the terrace where the eloquent Corinne had walked with the
Schlegels and other famous _habitués_ of her salon. We had visited
Calvin’s house at 11 Rue des Chanoines, Rousseau’s at No. 40 on the
Grande Rue, and Voltaire’s at Ferney.