EMIGRANTS AND IMMIGRANTS
Forbidden to seek careers at home, most of the aristocracy of Vaud
went abroad to pursue fortune in the service of some foreign Power.
There was always a good opening for them, whether as mercenary
soldiers or as instructors of the young, and many of them achieved
distinction and rose to high positions. Haldimand of Yverdon became
a Lieutenant-General in the British Army and Governor of Canada.
Réverdil of Nyon was first tutor to Christian VII. of Denmark, and
afterwards his secretary. Amédée de Laharpe was one of Napoleon's
generals; the only General, it is said, in the Army of Italy, who was
not guilty of rapacity and extortion. Frédéric César de Laharpe held
high office under Alexander I. of Russia; Dupuget of Yverdon was the
tutor of the Russian Grand Dukes Nicolas and Michael; J. J. Cart was
with Admiral Hood in America; Glayre became Polish Minister at St.
Petersburg; Pache became Mayor of Paris; the list could be almost
indefinitely extended.
Most of these emigrants, moreover, suffered from the nostalgia which
is characteristic of the Swiss. It was not enough for them to come
home to die; they liked to return in middle age, and spend at home
the money which they had earned abroad. And when they did return,
they had, of course, no longer the homely wits of the home-keeping
youths. They were men of experience, men of the world, men of
polished manners and cosmopolitan culture. Their presence gave a new
and a broader tone to Lausanne society. They were not to be driven
to church like a flock of sheep, or forbidden to go to the theatre
like a pack of schoolboys, or stood in the pillory for playing cards,
or told by the preachers what they should eat or wherewithal they
should be clothed. So far as they were concerned the discipline of
the Consistory broke down, and the Sumptuary Laws did not apply to
them. Their example liberalized even the clergy. They insisted upon
making Lausanne a pleasant place to live in. Strangers found out that
it was pleasant, and came to settle there in large numbers. There was
already a foreign colony in Lausanne from quite an early date in the
eighteenth century.
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU DE VUFFLENS, ABOVE LAUSANNE]
Geneva had had its foreign colonists from a still earlier date, but
they were exiles--Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, John Knox, John
Bodley, William Whittingham, and others, who fled abroad to escape
persecution by the Bloody Mary. With one accord they thanked their
hosts for the hospitality bestowed upon them, and departed as soon as
the accession of Elizabeth made it safe for them to do so. Some of
the foreigners at Lausanne were also exiles, it is true, but hardly
for conscience' sake, the opinions which had got them into trouble
being more often political than religious. But they selected Lausanne
as their place of residence because they liked it--not because it was
a 'perfect school of Christ,' but because the site and the society
were agreeable.
Voltaire himself lived there for a little while before he settled
down at Ferney, and encountered no theological objection to the
theatrical performances which he organized. Gibbon, who was there at
the time, living in the house of Pastor Pavilliard, declared that
the entertainments, to which he was sometimes invited, 'refined in
a visible degree the manners of Lausanne';[1] and the philosopher
himself paid a tribute to those manners in a letter to D'Alembert,
in which he wrote: 'All the amenities of society and sound philosophy
have found their way into the part of Switzerland in which the
climate is most agreeable and wealth abounds. The people here have
succeeded in grafting the politeness of Athens upon the simplicity of
Sparta.'
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Gibbon's acquaintance with Voltaire was only slight. _Vidi
tantum_, he writes.