GIBBON
Voltaire belongs to Geneva rather than to Lausanne. The most
distinguished of the strangers upon whom Lausanne has an exclusive
claim is Gibbon.
He was sent there, in the first instance, as a punishment for having
embraced the Roman Catholic faith, and was lodged in the house of
M. Pavilliard, a Calvinistic minister, whose instructions were to
educate his pupil if possible, but to convert him at all costs. The
desired conversion was effected, though it was more thorough than
had been intended. Gibbon was persuaded to receive the Sacrament
from a Protestant pastor, but never troubled himself with religion
afterwards except in the capacity of historian. But, though he was
at first treated like a schoolboy, and consoled himself for the
loss of his liberty by getting drunk, he soon fell in love with the
town--'Fanny Lausanne,' as he called it in a letter--and also fell
in love with Mademoiselle Suzanne Curchod. That is one of the most
famous of all literary love-stories, and one may properly pause here
to relate it at length.
Mademoiselle Curchod was the daughter of a country clergyman--very
well educated, very beautiful, and very generally admired. Her
earliest admirers were, naturally, the rising young ministers of the
Gospel.[2] It amused her to invite them to sign documents, composed
in playful imitation of legal contracts, binding themselves 'to come
and preach at Crassier as often as she required, without waiting
to be solicited, pressed, or entreated, seeing that the greatest
of their pleasures was to oblige her on every possible occasion.'
Her female friends, hearing of this, wrote to her expressing their
disapproval, and strongly advising her to turn the preachers out of
the house as soon as they had finished their sermons; but there is no
evidence that she acted on their advice.
[Illustration: THE SPIRES OF ST. FRANÇOIS, LAUSANNE]
Visiting Lausanne, she extended the circle of her admirers. Her
bright intelligence enabled her to shine as a member of a certain
Société du Printemps, and also of a certain Académie des Eaux--a
debating club given to the discussion of such problems as 'Does
an element of mystery really make love more agreeable?' or 'Can there
be friendship between a man and a woman in the same sense as between
two women or two men?' Her conduct in this connection was such that
her friends warned her that her desire to make herself agreeable to
young men was too clearly advertised; but it does not appear that
the warning made any impression on her. At all events, she was very
successful in making herself agreeable to Gibbon, then a lad about
eighteen years of age. 'Saw Mademoiselle Curchod. Omnia vincit
amor, et nos cedamus amori,' is one of the early entries in his
diary; and we have a picture of Gibbon, at about the same date, from
Mademoiselle Curchod's own pen. In middle age--as we can see from his
portraits--he was an ugly, ungainly, podgy little man; but it is not
thus that he appears in the portrait drawn by the woman who loved him.
'He has beautiful hair,' Mademoiselle Curchod writes, 'a pretty hand,
and the air of a man of rank. His face is so intellectual and strange
that I know no one like him. It has so much expression that one is
always finding something new in it. His gestures are so appropriate
that they add much to his speech. In a word, he has one of those
extraordinary faces that one never tires of trying to depict. He
knows the respect that is due to women. His courtesy is easy without
verging on familiarity. He dances moderately well.'
So these two naturally--and rightly and properly--fell in love; they
must have seemed each other's ideal complements, if ever lovers were.
But they were not to marry. The story of their attachment, their
separation, and their subsequent Platonic friendship is one of the
romances of literature. Gibbon himself has told the story in one of
the most frequently quoted passages of his autobiography. His version
of it is inexact and misleading; but it must be quoted, if only in
order that it may be criticized:
'I need not blush,' he writes, 'at recollecting the object of my
choice; and though my love was disappointed of success, I am rather
proud that I was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted
sentiment. The personal attractions of Mademoiselle Susan Curchod
were embellished by the virtues and talents of the mind. Her fortune
was humble, but her family was respectable. Her mother, a native of
France, had preferred her religion to her country. The profession
of her father did not extinguish the moderation and philosophy of
his temper, and he lived content with a small salary and laborious
duty in the obscure lot of minister of Crassy, in the mountains
that separate the Pays de Vaud from the county of Burgundy. In
the solitude of a sequestered village he bestowed a liberal, and
even learned, education on his only daughter. She surpassed his
hopes by her proficiency in the sciences and languages; and in her
short visits to some relations at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty,
and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal
applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; I
saw and loved. I found her learned without pedantry, lively in
conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the
first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a
more familiar acquaintance. She permitted me to make two or three
visits at her father's house. I passed some happy days there, in the
mountains of Burgundy, and her parents honourably encouraged the
connection. In a calm retirement the gay vanity of youth no longer
fluttered in her bosom, and I might presume to hope that I had
made some impression on a virtuous heart. At Crassy and Lausanne I
indulged my dream of felicity; but on my return to England I soon
discovered that my father would not hear of this strange alliance,
and that, without his consent, I was myself destitute and helpless.
After a painful struggle I yielded to my fate; I sighed as a lover,
I obeyed as a son; my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence,
and the habits of a new life. My cure was accelerated by a faithful
report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself, and
my love subsided in friendship and esteem.'
Such is Gibbon's story, which is also the accepted story. It is,
perhaps, a palliation of its inaccuracies that, at the time when he
wrote it down, he and Mademoiselle Curchod--then Madame Necker--were
on such pleasant terms of friendship that neither of them cared to
remember or be reminded that either had ever treated the other badly.
We shall come to that matter presently; here it is proper that the
inaccuracies should be noted.
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU DE PRANGINS
THE STEPS BY WHICH JOSEPH BUONAPARTE ESCAPED IN 1815]
Gibbon's story, it will be observed, gives us the impression that,
on getting home, he lost no time in opening his heart to his
father, and, having done this, lost no further time in acquainting
Mademoiselle Curchod with his father's views. M. d'Haussonville
tells us that he left Lausanne in 1758, kept Mademoiselle Curchod
waiting four years for a letter,[3] and then in 1762 sat down and
wrote, breaking off the engagement. One shrinks from the attempt to
picture the feelings of the poor girl who, after enduring suspense,
and trying to frame excuses for silence, broke the seal of the
long-expected missive, only to read:
'I do not know how to begin this letter. Yet begin it I must. I take
up my pen, I drop it, I resume it. This commencement shows you what
it is that I am about to say. Spare me the rest. Yes, Mademoiselle, I
must renounce you for ever. The sentence is passed; my heart laments
it; but, in the presence of my duty, every other consideration must
be silent....
'My father spoke of the cruelty of deserting him, and of sending him
prematurely to his grave, of the cowardice of trampling underfoot my
duty to my country. I withdrew to my room and remained there for two
hours. I will not attempt to picture to you my state of mind. But I
left my room to tell my father that I agreed to sacrifice to him the
happiness of my life.
'Mademoiselle, may you be happier than I can ever hope to be! This
will always be my prayer; this will even be my consolation.... Assure
M. and Madame Curchod of my respect, my esteem, and my regrets.
Good-bye. I shall always remember Mademoiselle Curchod as the most
worthy, the most charming, of women. May she not entirely forget a
man who does not deserve the despair to which he is a prey.'
Even this, however, was not the end of the story, though one would
think it was if one had only Gibbon's narrative to go by. In 1763
he revisited Lausanne, and his own story of his sojourn does not so
much as mention Mademoiselle Curchod's name. One would gather from
it either that he did not see her, or that love had already on both
sides 'subsided in friendship and esteem.' But when the Vicomte
d'Haussonville was given access to the archives of the Necker family,
he found letters proving that this was not by any means the case.
Mademoiselle Curchod's father was then dead, and she was living
at Geneva, supporting her mother by teaching. Some of her
friends--notably Pastor Moultou--tried to bring Gibbon to a sense of
the obligations which they felt he owed to her. Rousseau was brought
into the business, and expressed an opinion which led Gibbon to
retort, 'That extraordinary man, whom I admire and pity, should have
been less precipitate in condemning the moral character and conduct
of a stranger.' It is useless, however, to try to piece the whole
story together--the materials are inadequate. One can only take the
letters which the Vicomte d'Haussonville has published, and which, as
he points out, are by no means the whole of the correspondence, and
see what sidelights they throw upon it.
First we have one of Mademoiselle Curchod's letters. Whether she
wrote it because she had met Gibbon and found his manner towards her
changed, or was perplexed and troubled because he had not sought a
meeting, we have no means of knowing. But it is quite clear that she
wrote it under the sense of having been treated badly.
'For five years,' she writes, 'I have, by my unique and, indeed,
inconceivable behaviour, done sacrifice to this chimera. At last
my heart, romantic as it is, has been convinced of my mistake. I
ask you, on my knees, to dissuade me from my madness in loving you.
Subscribe the full confession of your indifference, and my soul will
adapt itself to the changed conditions; certainty will bring me the
tranquillity for which I sigh. You will be the most contemptible of
men if you refuse to be frank with me. God will punish you, in spite
of my prayers, if there is the least hypocrisy in your reply.'
The reply is lost. Mademoiselle Curchod presumably destroyed it
because it pained her. Apparently it contained a proposal of Platonic
friendship as a substitute for love. At all events, Mademoiselle
Curchod's answer seems to accept that situation, whether with
ulterior designs or not, for it begins:
'What is fortune to me? Besides, it is not to you that I have
sacrificed it, but to an imaginary being which will never exist
elsewhere than in a silly, romantic head like mine. From the moment
when your letter disillusioned me, you resumed your place, in my
eyes, on the same footing as other men; and, after being the only man
whom I could love, you have become one of those to whom I feel the
least drawn, because you are the one that bears the least resemblance
to my chimerical ideal.... Follow out the plan that you propose,
place your attachment for me on the same footing as that of my other
friends, and you will find me as confiding, as tender, and, at the
same time, as indifferent as I am to them.'
And the writer proceeds to take up the Platonic position at once, to
criticize Gibbon's first essay in literature, to offer him useful
introductions, and to ask him to advise her whether she would be
likely to be well treated if she took a situation as 'lady companion'
in England.
Even in this Platonic correspondence, however, Gibbon, with a
prudence beyond his years, seems to have scented danger.
'Mademoiselle,' he wrote, 'must you be for ever pressing upon me a
happiness which sound reason compels me to decline? I have forfeited
your love. Your friendship is left to me, and it bestows so much
honour upon me that I cannot hesitate. I accept it, mademoiselle,
as a precious offering in exchange for my own friendship, which is
already yours, and as a blessing of which I know the value too well
to be disposed to lose it.
'But this correspondence, mademoiselle, I am sensible of the
pleasures which it brings me, but, at the same time, I am conscious
of its dangers. I feel the dangers that it has for me; I fear the
dangers that it may have for both of us. Permit me to avoid those
dangers by my silence. Forgive my fears, mademoiselle; they have
their origin in my esteem for you.'
And he proceeded to answer her questions concerning the position and
prospects of 'lady companions' in England, expecting, no doubt, that
he would hear no more from her.
Even then, however, the story was not ended. The most passionate of
Mademoiselle Curchod's letters bears a later date. It is the letter
of a woman who feels that she has been treated shamefully. If it were
not that Mademoiselle Curchod made a happy marriage so very soon
afterwards, one would also say that it was the letter of a woman
whose heart was broken. One gathers from it that, while Mademoiselle
Curchod appreciated Gibbon's difficulty in marrying her while he was
dependent upon his father, she was willing to wait for him until his
father's death should leave him free to follow the impulse of his
heart. In the meantime she reproaches him for having caused her to
reject other offers of marriage, and protests that it is not true,
whatever calumnious gossips may have said, that, in Gibbon's absence,
she has flirted with other men. Above all, she protests that she has
not flirted with Gibbon's great friend, M. Deyverdun. Her last words
are:
'I am treating you as an honest man of the world, who is
incapable of breaking his promise, of seduction, or of
treachery, but who has, instead of that, amused himself in
racking my heart with tortures, well prepared, and well carried
into effect. I will not threaten you, therefore, with the wrath
of heaven--the expression that escaped from me in my first
emotion. But I assure you, without laying any claim to the gift
of prophecy, that you will one day regret the irreparable loss
that you have incurred in alienating for ever the too frank and
tender heart of
'S. C.'
[Illustration: LAUSANNE, LOOKING EAST]
The rest is silence; and the presumption is strong that these were
actually the last words which sealed the estrangement. If it were not
for Mademoiselle Curchod's subsequent attitude towards him, one would
be bound to say that Gibbon behaved abominably. But, as we shall see
presently, her resentment was not enduring. Perhaps she was aware of
extenuating circumstances that we do not know of. Perhaps, in her
heart of hearts, she was conscious of having spread her net to catch
a husband who then seemed a very brilliant match to the daughter of
the country clergyman. The letter of the friend who begged her not
to advertise so clearly her desire to make herself agreeable to men
would certainly lend some colour to the suggestion. At any rate,
since she herself forgave Gibbon, it seems unfair for anyone else to
press the case against him.
It was nearly twenty years later--in 1783--that Gibbon decided to
make Lausanne his home.
A good deal of water had flowed under the bridge in the meantime.
He had written, and published, half of his History; and that half
had sufficed to make him famous. He had been an officer in the
militia and a Member of Parliament. He had been a constant figure in
fashionable society, and an occasional figure in literary society;
a fellow-member with Charles James Fox of Boodle's, White's, and
Brooks's; a fellow-member of the Literary Club with Johnson, Burke,
Adam Smith, Oliver Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Sir Joseph
Banks. He had held office in the department of the Board of Trade,
and lost it at the time of the coalition between Fox and North. His
applications for employment in the Diplomatic Service--whether as
Secretary to the Embassy at Paris or as Minister Plenipotentiary at
Berne--had been politely rejected. And he had become a middle-aged
bachelor whose income, unless supplemented by the emoluments of some
public office, hardly sufficed for the demands of his social position.
In these circumstances it occurred to him to propose to his friend,
M. Deyverdun--the same M. Deyverdun with whom Mademoiselle Curchod
vowed that she had never flirted--that they should keep house
together at Lausanne. M. Deyverdun, who was like himself a confirmed
bachelor of moderate means, and had a larger house than he wanted,
was delighted with the proposal. All Gibbon's friends and relatives
told him that he was making a fool of himself; but he knew better.
He sold all his property, except his library, and 'bade a long
farewell to the _fumum et opes strepitumque Romæ_.' His first winter,
as he puts it in his delightful style, 'was given to a general
embrace without nice discrimination of persons and characters.' The
comprehensive embrace completed, he settled down to work.
His life at Lausanne is faithfully mirrored in his letters, more
particularly in his letters to Lord Sheffield. It was at once a
luxurious and an industrious life. One fact which stands out clearly
is that Gibbon took no exercise. He boasts that, in a period of five
years, he never moved five miles from Lausanne; he apologizes for a
corpulence which makes it absolutely impossible for him to cross the
Great Saint Bernard; he admits that, when he entertained Mr. Fox, he
did not go for walks with that statesman, but hired a guide to do so
on his behalf. He also drank a great deal of Madeira and Malvoisie.
His letters to Lord Sheffield are full of appeals for pipes of these
exhilarating beverages. He declares that they are necessary for the
preservation of his health, and appears to have persuaded himself
that they were good for gout. The consequence was that he had several
severe attacks of that distressing malady.
Gout or no gout, however, he freely enjoyed the relaxation of social
intercourse. He was never tired of pointing out to his correspondents
that, whereas in London he was nobody in particular, in Lausanne he
was a leader of society. His position there was, in fact, similar
in many ways to that of Voltaire at Geneva; though he differed from
Voltaire in always keeping on good terms with all his neighbours. To
be invited to his parties was no less a mark of distinction than it
had been, a generation earlier, to be invited to the philosopher's
parties at Ferney. One of the letters tells us how he gave a ball,
and stole away to bed at 2 a.m., leaving the young people, his
guests, to keep it up till after sunrise. He also gave frequent
dinners, and still more frequent card-parties. When the gout was very
bad, he gave card-parties in his bedroom.
Distinguished strangers often came to see him, and gave Lausanne the
tone of a fashionable resort. 'You talk of Lausanne,' he writes,
'as a place of retirement, yet, from the situation and freedom of
the Pays de Vaud, all nations, and all extraordinary characters are
astonished to meet each other. The Abbé Raynal, the great Gibbon,
and Mercier, author of the "Tableau de Paris," have been in the same
room. The other day the Prince and Princesse de Ligne, the Duke
and Duchess d'Ursel, etc., came from Brussels on purpose to act a
comedy.' And again: 'A few weeks ago, as I was walking on our terrace
with M. Tissot, the celebrated physician; M. Mercier, the author
of the "Tableau de Paris"; the Abbé Raynal; Monsieur, Madame, and
Mademoiselle Necker; the Abbé de Bourbon, a natural son of Lewis
the Fifteenth; the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick, Prince Henry of
Prussia, and a dozen Counts, Barons, and extraordinary persons,' etc.
From time to time he faced the question whether it would be well to
marry. Madame Necker dissuaded him from the adventure on the ground
that in order to marry happily it is necessary to marry young. It is
not certain that her advice was disinterested, but it was good advice
to give to a man who, after expressing his readiness to adopt 'some
expedient, even the most desperate, to secure the domestic society
of a female companion,' summed up his sentiments upon the subject in
this candid language:
'I am not in love with any of the hyænas of Lausanne, though there
are some who keep their claws tolerably well pared. Sometimes, in a
solitary mood, I have fancied myself married to one or another of
those whose society and conversation are the most pleasing to me;
but when I have painted in my fancy all the probable consequences of
such a union, I have started from my dream, rejoiced in my escape,
and ejaculated a thanksgiving that I was still in possession of my
natural freedom.'
[Illustration: THE MARKET-PLACE, LAUSANNE]
This, however, was not written until after the History was finished.
Gibbon never felt the need of a female companion so long as he had
his work to occupy him. The fact that he began to feel it
acutely as soon as ever the work was done gives an added pathos to
this, the most famous and the most frequently quoted passage of his
memoirs:
'I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now
commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day,
or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of
eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page,
in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took
several turns in a _berceau_, or covered walk of acacias, which
commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The
air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon
was reflected from the waters, and all Nature was silent. I will not
dissemble the first emotions on the recovery of my freedom, and,
perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled,
and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had
taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and
that whatsoever might be the future fate of my History, the life of
the historian must be short and precarious.'
The life of the historian was, in fact, destined to last only for
another six years--years in which he sometimes was desperately
anxious to relieve his loneliness, aggravated by the death of
Deyverdun, by seeking 'the domestic society of a female companion,'
but inclined, on the whole, to the opinion encouraged by Madame
Necker, that the remedy would be worse than the disease. We probably
shall not be wrong in conjecturing that the pleasure which he derived
from Madame Necker's correspondence and society assisted him in
coming to this decision. At any rate, we must admit that there are
few literary romances more remarkable than this story, of the renewal
of love some thirty years or so after a lovers' quarrel.
The lovers parted, as we have seen, with high-strung feelings--at
least upon the lady's side. They met again soon after Mademoiselle
Curchod had accepted the heart and hand of Jacques Necker, the rich
Parisian banker, destined to become Louis XVI.'s Minister of Finance.
Gibbon, coming to Paris, called, and was well received. We have
accounts of the visit from both of them. Madame Necker says that her
vanity was flattered because Gibbon appeared to be dazzled by the
contemplation of her wealth. Gibbon complains that he was not taken
very seriously, that M. Necker invited him to supper every evening,
and went to bed, leaving him alone with his wife. The philosopher
Balzac would have called him a fool, and classed him with the
_prédestinés_; but it does not appear that scandal, or occasion
for scandal, or anything worse than the interchange of sentimental
_persiflage_, resulted.
A gap in the history of their friendship follows, but in 1776 we
find the Neckers visiting Gibbon in Bentinck Street. Gibbon writes
patronizingly of the husband as 'a sensible, good-natured creature,'
and of the wife he says: 'I live with her just as I used to do twenty
years ago, laugh at her Paris varnish, and oblige her to become a
simple, reasonable Suissesse.'
We need not interpret this statement _au pied de la lettre_, but the
visit certainly marks a stage in the story of their intimacy. Gibbon
went to see the Neckers in Paris in the following year, and after his
return to London Madame du Deffand told him how she had talked to
Madame Necker about him. 'We talked of M. Gibbon. Of what else? Of M.
Gibbon--continually of M. Gibbon.' And Madame Necker herself wrote,
at about the same time, with reference to the publication of the
first volumes of 'The Decline and Fall':
'Wherever I go your books shall follow me, and give me pleasure and
happiness. If you write, too, your letters will be welcome and
appreciated. If you do not write ... but I refuse to contemplate this
painful possibility.'
Gibbon's migration to Lausanne and the Neckers' purchase of their
famous country seat at Coppet united them by still closer ties, and
one cannot help noticing that at this period of their lives--when
they were both something over fifty years of age--Madame Necker's
letters to Gibbon became at once more frequent and more affectionate.
Some of those letters, indeed, can only be distinguished from
love-letters by reading into them our knowledge of Madame Necker's
reputation for propriety. We have seen her dissuading Gibbon from
marriage on the ground that to marry late is to marry unhappily.
Another reason which she gives is that 'without a miracle it would be
impossible to find a woman worthy of you.' Of a contemplated visit to
Lausanne she says: 'I am looking forward with a delightful sentiment
to the day I am to pass with you.' And afterwards:
'Returning here, and finding only the tombs of those I loved so well,
I found you, as it were, a solitary tree whose shade still covers the
desert which separates me from the first years of my life.'
And in another letter, more sentimental still, we read:
'Come back to us when you are free. The moment of your leisure ought
always to belong to her who has been _your first love and your last_.
I cannot make up my mind which of these titles is the sweeter and the
dearer to my heart.'
What are we to make of it all? Nothing, assuredly, that entitles us
to cast a stone at Madame Necker, or to express for her husband a
pity which he never felt for himself. Yet one imagines that after M.
Necker, who kept such early hours, had retired to his well-earned
repose, there must sometimes have been certain sentimental
communings, in which the old note of _persiflage_ was no longer to
be heard. One listens in fancy to the regrets of these two who never
forgot that they had once been lovers--regrets, no doubt, not openly
expressed, but only coyly hinted--for the things that might have been.
The regrets, we may take it, were tempered by the lurking
consciousness that things were really better as they were. The lovers
must have known that, if they had married on nothing a year, the one
would never have written his history and the other would never have
had her salon, but they would have been two struggling nonentities
whom the world would never have heard of. They must have felt, too,
that the success in life which they had achieved separately, but
could not possibly have achieved together, had meant much to them:
that in winning it they had fulfilled their destinies; that their
tempers would have soured if they had had to live without it. All
this they must have admitted to themselves, and even in their most
candid moments, to each other. And yet--and yet----
[Illustration: LA TOUR DE HALDIMAND, OUCHY, LAUSANNE]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Poems addressed to her by these young theologians may be found in
defunct magazines and annuals.
[3] This is not quite accurate. The letter which M. d'Haussonville
dates 1762 conveys a salutation to Pastor Curchod, who died in 1760.
It must have been written, therefore, not in 1762, but in 1758 or
1759.