Kitabı oku: «The Spell of Switzerland», sayfa 12
Gibbon wrote to Lord Sheffield: – “The terrors which might have driven me from hence have in great measure subsided. Our State prisoners are forgot; the country begins to recover its old good humor and unsuspecting confidence and the last revolution of Paris appears to have convinced almost everybody of the fatal consequences of the Democratical principles, which lead by a path of flowers into the abyss of Hell.” After Savoy became a part of France Gibbon wrote: – “My noble scenery is clouded by the Democratical aspect of twelve leagues of the opposite coast which every morning obtrude themselves on my view.” In February, 1793, he wrote again: – “The new Constitution of Geneva is slowly forming without much noise or any bloodshed and the Patriots who have staid in hopes of guiding and restraining the multitude flatter themselves that they shall be able at least to prevent their mad countrymen from giving themselves to France, the only mischief that would be absolutely irretrievable.”
He predicted that the Emperor and the French would compound for the neutrality of the Swiss. His prediction was very nearly fulfilled. But the penchant of the Genevans for France may possibly be explained by the fact that it is so Parisian in its modern brightness and gayety. That is why I like it.
CHAPTER XV
FAMOUS FOLK
IMMEDIATELY after luncheon we reembarked in the swift Hirondelle, which was impatiently waiting for us, and started Lausanneward. As in our trip down, we hugged the shore. High up on the hillside we saw the Musée Ariana in its beautiful park. Later we visited it and saw its pictures, its antiquities, – especially interesting the old Genevan pewter-ware, furniture, weapons and stained glass and its still more ancient relics of the Alemanni; nor did we forget the Alpine Garden and other curiosities of the Botanical Park. This is situated directly on the Lausanne highway.
High up also, and affording a magnificent view, stands the Château Rothschild dominating Pregny. Then we rushed by Genthod, the home of Switzerland’s most famous scientists. There was a regular nest of them there. Birds of a feather! not the least of them being the zoölogist François Jules Pictet de la Rive. I wondered what Raoul Pictet, who did good work in liquefying gases, would think of the latest developments in the use of liquid air. A professor whom I met in Lausanne informed me that it now cost only a half-cent a pound. As it is composed of two liquids, nitrogen and oxygen, which boil at different temperatures, it is easy to eliminate the nitrogen and leave pure oxygen, which, of course, is invaluable in foundries to stimulate a high temperature.
The possibility that the enormous drafts on the nitrogen of the atmosphere for manufacturing nitrates, and which have made some people conjecture that we might ultimately become so excitable through the preponderance of oxygen, need no longer bother us. The nitrogen will go into nitrates all right but the balance will be kept even by the withdrawal of oxygen for blast-furnaces, and all we need fear is that there won’t be any air left. But let us not worry; après nous le vide! The Swiss torrents offer many chances for the electrical manufacture of these liquid gases at small expense.
At Genthod also lived the De Saussures. Will suggested that from their exploits in climbing mountains they should have been named the Snowshoers, a slight change not comparable with that exemplified in his earliest known ancestor, Mongin Schouel de Saulxures, Grand Falconer to the Duke of Lorraine!
“The illustrious” Horace-Bénédict de Saussure’s father was an authority on farming in its scientific aspects as they were then understood; his mother was the sister-in-law of the naturalist Charles de Bonnet, who, until his eyesight failed him and he had to take to philosophical speculations and to controversy with Voltaire, was interested in studying parthenogenesis, the respiration of insects and leaves, and kindred abstruse subjects. After a truly Rousseauesque education, whereby he was trained to bear hardships and fatigue and all unavoidable inconveniences without complaining, Horace de Saussure became professor of philosophy at Geneva at the age of twenty-two. Two years earlier he had offered a prize to the first person who should find a practicable route to the top of Mont Blanc, though it was then, and for years afterwards, believed to be inaccessible. He had been to the peak of Le Brévent on the other side of the Valley of Chamonix – in itself no small climb for those days at least – and he looked across that tremendous chasm and up to the forbidding white dome of the monarch of mountains, towering almost twice as high, and that intense ambition to get to the top of the world came over him. He believed it could be accomplished.
For fifteen years no serious attempt was made to win the prize. Then four peasants thought they might do it in a day, but dared not spend the night on the ice and so they came down. In 1783 three chamois hunters spent the night at the Montagne de la Côte, and the following morning started up over the icy slope, but one of them grew sleepy, and as it was regarded as dangerous to sleep on ice and they were afraid of sunstroke they also relinquished the task. One of them told De Saussure that if he tried it again all he would take with him would be a parasol and a bottle of smelling salts! In 1787 De Saussure caused a hut to be built near the Glacier of Bionnassay and tried to win the prize for himself. But it was too late in the season and he had to give it up.
The next attempt was made in August, 1788, by Marc-Théodore Bourrit, called “the Historian of the Alps.” He was a miniature painter. He was also precentor of the Cathedral at Geneva. There was a tradition that it was possible to cross the Alps from Geneva to Turin in thirty-eight hours. Bourrit provided himself with a fourteen-foot ladder, a couple of hatchets, ropes and staves, and started with a small party. They had a terrible time among the crevasses but reached Courmayeur at ten p. m. He was the first to discover the Col du Géant. He believed Mont Blanc to be inaccessible. He tried it, however, a second time with his son, an Englishman named Woodley and a Dutchman named Kampfer. They had twenty-two guides, nineteen of whom were overcome. He claimed that he got beyond the Camel’s Humps within ten minutes of the top but was prevented by a hurricane from actually reaching it. He gave himself away by declaring that he could see the Mediterranean. He would have had to see it not only through a snow-storm but also through the top. It is now believed that he did not get above the Rochers Rouges. M. Auldjo traced the limitation of vision by a map and showed it was impossible to see the Mediterranean.
The next year partisans of two different routes tried in rivalry to go up from opposite sides. Each party was made up of three men; a fourth, named Jacques Balmat, attached himself to one of them, and, when they deserted him, he continued alone, and by digging steps in the ice along the crest of the Rochers Rouges got within less than three hundred meters of the summit. He realized that if he went alone no one would believe him; when he managed to retrace his steps and reached the Grand Plateau he was overcome by snow-blindness. He kept his eyes shut for half an hour and his sight returned, but it was growing dark. He was obliged to spend the night where he was. He burrowed into the snow and kept alive.
When he reached Chamonix the next day he was so worn out that he slept twenty-four hours at a stretch. Then he went to the doctor of Chamonix, Michel Paccard, and told him his secret. They determined to try it. They started August 8, 1786, not together but one taking the right bank, the other the left bank of the Arve, so as not to awaken suspicion of their purpose. They camped on the Montagne de la Côte, and the next day attained Les Petits Mulets, about a hundred meters below the tip-top. Here they were nearly blown off the crest by a fierce gust of icy wind. The doctor refused to take another step. People were watching them from the village with a telescope. Balmat went alone to the top, and wigwagged a greeting to the villagers, who answered it. Then he went down and got the doctor by main force to the top. Balmat had practically to drag him down to the valley; the poor man was completely blinded and half frozen to death.
The next year De Saussure, with Balmat as guide, and a large party, bearing scientific apparatus, successfully reached the summit – the professor dressed in a long-tailed silk coat with huge buttons, which is preserved as a mute witness of the achievement in the De Saussure house at Genthod. Balmat lived to be an old man and was proud of the patent of nobility which the King of Sardinia conferred on him in honour of his feat.
Later, Dr. Paccard forgot what Balmat had done for him and how generously he had shared with him the honour of first conquering the proud monarch, and he began to claim all the credit of the enterprise. He issued a prospectus of a book, which should bring him a reward for his exertions. He promised to give a short history of previous attempts, an account of his own success, and a description of the stones and rocks, the insects, the rare plants, as well as his physical and medical observations, and all necessary notions for those who might wish to visit the glaciers. The subscription price was to be six livres de France for copies on fine paper and four livres, ten sols for copies on ordinary paper. He very cordially invited persons of a higher class who might desire to join in giving the author a prize for this conquest, and they also were promised a share in some of the curiosities found on Mont Blanc. He succeeded by this means in securing a number of subscribers.
De Saussure did not climb the Alpine mountains for sentimental reasons; his purpose was purely scientific, but occasionally in his writings there are passages of charming freshness and humanity. Once he camped out on the bleak Col du Géant for more than two weeks. He thus describes the last evening: —
“The sixteenth and last evening which we spent on the Col du Géant was ravishingly beautiful. It seemed as if all those lofty summits desired that we should not depart from them without regret. The icy wind which had made the most of the nights so uncomfortable did not blow. The peaks which looked down upon us and the snows lying between them took on the most beautiful tints of rose and of carmine. The whole Italian horizon seemed to wear a zone and the full moon came rising above this zone with queenly majesty and glowing with the most exquisite vermilion. The atmosphere about us had that purity and that crystalline limidity which Homer attributes to that of Olympus, while the valleys, filled with mists condensing there, seemed the dwelling-place of gloomy shadows.
“But how shall I depict the night that followed this lovely evening, when after the twilight the moon, shining alone in the sky, poured forth the waves of her silvery light over the vast pile of snow and rock surrounding our cabin? What an astonishing and delicious spectacle under the gentle radiance of the luminary of night was made by those very slopes of snow and ice the sight of which is unendurable in the sunlight. What a magnificent contrast those granite crags, darkened and hewed out with so much precision and boldness, made against these glittering snows! What a moment for meditation! How many trials and privations find compensation in such moments! The soul is elevated, the mind seems to cover a wider outlook, and in the midst of this majestic silence you may believe you hear the voice of Nature and become the secret witness of her most hidden works.”
De Saussure’s “Voyages dans les Alpes” are still well worth reading. He was acquainted with most of the great men of his day; Goethe sought him out to ask his advice; the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, explorer of glaciers, Buffon, David Garrick, Sir William Hamilton and dozens of others were proud of his friendship. In a way, he was the father of modern mountain-climbing. He crossed the Alps by eight different passes and penetrated to parts of the mountains never deemed accessible before his day.
Women began quite early to have aspirations to get to the top of the mountain. In August, 1823, a Mrs. Campbell of London, with her daughter, got to the Col du Géant and tried to reach the summit but failed. In September, 1838, Mlle. Henriette d’Angeville, no longer young, succeeded. It was then regarded as an extraordinary feat. She says she “looked out toward those superb mountains which lifted above the plains and mediocrities of the earth their brows adorned with an eternal splendor;” she was “attracted by their solitude where she might breathe the free pure air of the mighty Alpestrian Nature;” she was bound to climb “on the white carpet of the spotless snows to those glittering peaks which are like luminous altars, the sojourn of joy, of sweetness, of infinite serenity.” Her relatives and friends tried to restrain her but she cried: “If I suffocate, take my body to the top and leave it there.” She started with seven guides and two porters, and succeeded.
Afterwards she confessed: – “If we had started from the Grands Mulets at four o’clock instead of at two, the ascension would have been a failure and we should have got caught in the tempest; if we had gone back without reaching the summit, they would have made sport of us; if one of my guides had perished I should have been stoned and if I had perished it would have been said: ‘Too bad, but what business had she to get into such a scrape?’”
She has been called “the Bride of Mont Blanc” and it is said of her that “her name shines with fiery brilliancy in the firmament of Alpinism.”
Undoubtedly, if she were living now, she would be the first woman to cross the Alps in an aeroplane, for in 1838 she proposed to go to London to make an ascension in Charles Green’s balloon.
In the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris are three volumes containing fourteen narratives by those travellers who successfully reached the summit between 1786 and 1838, including an account of the supposed discovery of the valley of Chamonix and a history of the Priory, accompanied by a series of pictures, portraits and original letters, collected by Markham Sherwill, who was the first to put an end to the legend of the discovery of the valley by Windham and Pococke.
The sight of Coppet of course instantly brought to mind Gibbon’s early love and her later residence with her unhappy husband (“the past, the present and the future all odious to him”) and their strong-minded daughter, Madame de Staël. In one of Gibbon’s letters he tells of the report that the Necker had purchased the barony of “Copet” and had found the buildings in great disrepair. He added: – “They have now a very troublesome charge … the disposal of a Baroness. Mademoiselle Necker, one of the greatest heiresses in Europe, is now about eighteen, wild, vain but good-natured and with a much larger provision of wit than beauty; what encreases their difficulties is their religious obstinacy of marrying her only to a Protestant.”
She had chance to display her wit, for their house, whether at Paris or in Switzerland, was always frequented by distinguished public men and writers. In one of her youthful essays speaking of “La Nouvelle Héloïse” she criticizes Julie for continually lecturing Saint-Preux: “A guilty woman may love virtue,” she says, “but she should not prate about it.”
She might have been the wife of William Pitt; the Comte de Guibert (to whom Mademoiselle de l’Espinasse wrote such glowing love-letters and whose marriage to another lady broke her heart) was also regarded as a possibility. But finally the choice fell on the Swedish Baron de Staël-Holstein, who was, in consequence of her dowry, raised to the rank of ambassador, but was more heavily laden with debts than with intellect.
At Coppet, while in exile from her beloved Paris, she wrote her romance “Corinne,” and at Coppet she managed to gather about her that circle of wits and admirers which was so essential to her happiness. The German poet and romanticist, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, lived at Madame de Staël’s château for about fourteen years. Byron visited her there; so did George Ticknor of Boston. But Switzerland exercised no spell on Madame de Staël and interesting as her love-affairs are, especially her long liaison with Benjamin Constant de Rebecque, whose cant name was “La Fausseté,” just as Madame de Montolieu’s was “Le Tourbillon” and Gibbon’s was “Neptune” or her secret marriage with the handsome youth Albert de Rocca, she was only, as it were, a prisoner in sight of the Alps and yearning for her beloved Paris.
Sainte-Beuve, who was for a time a professor at Lausanne, gives a brilliant account of the society which gathered in her salon. He says: —
“What the sojourn at Ferney was for Voltaire, the life at Coppet was for Madame de Staël, but with a more romantic halo round her, it seems to us, more of the grandeur and pomp of life. Both reigned in their exile; Voltaire, in his low flat plain, his secluded, poverty-stricken castle, with a view of despoiled, unshaded gardens, scorned and derided. The influence of Coppet is quite different; it is that of Jean-Jacques continued, ennobled, installed, and reigning amid the same associations as his rival. Coppet counterbalances Ferney, half dethrones it.
“We also, of this younger generation, judge Ferney by comparing it with Coppet, coming down from Coppet. The beauty of its site, the woods which shadow it, the sex of its poet, the air of enthusiasm we breathe there, the elegant company, the glorious names, the walks by the lake, the mornings in the park, the mysteries and the inevitable storms which we surmise, all contribute to idealize the place for us. Coppet is the Elysium which every disciple of Jean-Jacques would gladly give to the mistress of his dreams…
“The literary and philosophical conversations, always high-toned, clever and witty, began as early as eleven in the morning, when all met at breakfast; and were carried on again at dinner, and in the interval between dinner and supper, which was at eleven at night, and often as late as midnight. Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël engrossed the conversation… Their intellects were in accord; they always understood each other.
“But we must not suppose that everyone there was always either sentimental or solemn; very often they were simply gay; Corinne had days of abandon, when she resembled the signora Fantastici. Plays were often acted at Coppet, dramas and tragedies, or the chivalric pieces of Voltaire, ‘Zaïre’ and ‘Tancrède,’ favourites of Madame de Staël’s; or plays composed expressly by her or her friends. These latter were sometimes printed at Paris, so that the parts might more easily be learned; the interest taken in such messages was very keen; and when in the interval some important correction was thought of, a courier was hurried off, and sometimes a second to catch him up, and modify the correction already en route. The poetry of Europe was represented at Coppet by many celebrated men. Zacharias Werner, one of the originators of that court, whose ‘Attila’ and other dramas were played with a considerable addition of German ladies, wrote about this time (1809) to Counsellor Schneffer: —
“‘Madame de Staël is a queen, and all the intelligent men who live in her circle are unable to leave it, for she holds them by a magic spell. They are not all, as is foolishly believed in Germany, occupied in forming her literary character; on the contrary, they receive a social education at her hands. She possesses to admiration the secret of uniting the most unlikely elements, and all who come near her, however different their opinions may be, agree in adoring this idol. Madame de Staël is of middling height, and, without possessing the elegance of a nymph, is of noble proportions… She is healthy, a brunette, and her face is not exactly beautiful; but this is not observed, for at sight of her eyes all else is forgotten; they are superb; a great soul not only shines in them, but shoots forth flame and fire. And when, as so often happens, she speaks straight from her heart, we see how this noble heart is hedged round by all that is great and profound in her mind, and then one must adore her, as do my friends A. W. Schlegel and Benjamin Constant.’
“It is not difficult to imagine to oneself the sprightly author of this picture. Werner, in his uncouth dress, purposely besmeared with snuff, furnished as he was with an enormous snuff-box, which he used plentifully during his long, erotic, and platonic digressions on androgyne; his fate was, he said, to be dragged hither and thither in fruitless search for that other half of himself, and from one attempt to another, from divorce after divorce, he never despaired of, in the end, reconstituting his original self.
“As for portraits of Madame de Staël, we see how all who try to limn her agree in the chief points, from M. de Guibert to [OE]hlenschlæger and Werner. Two faithful and trustworthy portraits from the brush allow us to dispense with literary word-painting, – the portrait painted by Madame Lebrun in 1807, which presents Madame de Staël to us as Corinne, bare-headed, her hair in curls, a lyre in her hand; and the picture by Gérard, painted after her death, but from perfect, unerring remembrance. However, in collecting together several sketches from various contemporaneous pens, we think we have not done a useless thing; one is never weary of harmonizing many reminiscences of those beloved and admired ones who are no more.
“English poetry, which, during the Continental wars, was unrepresented at this long congress of thought of which Coppet was the abiding-place, appeared there in 1816, in the persons of Lewis and Byron. The latter has spoken of Madame de Staël in his Memoirs in an affectionate and admiring manner, despite a certain levity the oracle indulges in. Blasé as he is, he admits that she has made Coppet the most pleasant place in the world, through the society she chooses to receive there, and which her own talent animates. On her side, she pronounced him to be the most seductive man in England, always adding: ‘I credit him with just sufficient tenderness to destroy the happiness of a woman.’”
Higher and higher grow the shores of the lake. We left Coppet and its memories of that brilliant and unhappy genius behind and were soon skirting Nyon, which the Romans knew as Noviodunum. Now that name is most interesting. It contains in it the noun dun which as a Saxon word means a hill and is seen in its simplest form in the expression, sand-dunes; it also appears as “downs;” but it is also a Keltic word and means a fortified hill; both Saxon and Keltic words are etymologically the same as ton or town. Cæsar made it a garrison forty-five years before Christ and called it Colonia Equestris.
There is often a wonderful germ of history hidden away in proper names. Who would ever dream that the little town of Gstaad which, of course, is the same as Gestade, meaning shore or bank, represents its ancient Latin name of Ripa Barbarorum? In the same way the Roman Mons Saccarum was pronounced by the Germans Masox or Meysachs, the Rhetii called it Misanc and from that came the name of the Barons of Misaucus who inhabited a magnificent castle built before the middle of the Tenth Century. The Germans call the Italian the Wälsche, which is the same as calling them Welch, meaning strangers; that name is seen in the town of Wahlenstadt and in the people Walloons. Vaud itself means Valli, which is Walli, the same as Welch. So Montigl is monticulus, a little mountain; Rinegg is Rheni angulum, a bend of the Rhine; Gräppelen comes from c zappa longa, meaning long rocks.
There is a pretty little French characterization of Nyon in four lines. It reads: —
“A Nyon, la riante ville
Qui se dresse sur son coteau,
Avec ses murs, son vieux château,
Le lac est bleu d’un bleu tranquille.”
We passed under it, but could see its stately castle crowned with a multitude of spiry towers. From its terrace there is a splendid view across to the pearly pyramid of Mont Blanc. The castle has walls ten feet thick, but is now used as a museum. Next we catch a glimpse of the Château de Prangins, where Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s oldest brother, lived, caring more for a scholarly and agricultural life than to be king of turbulent Spaniards. The two torrents rushing down from the Jura, the Promenthoux and the Aubonne, have thrust their cones out into the lake and given room for pretty villages.
Byron, returning from a walking expedition, stopped at Aubonne “which,” he says, “commands by far the fairest view of the Lake of Geneva; twilight; the Moon on the Lake; a grove on the height, and of very noble trees. Here Tavernier (the Eastern traveler) bought (or built) the Château, because the site resembled and equalled that of Erivan (a frontier city of Persia); and here he finished his voyages.”
There is a lovely bay between the two “cones” and the shore bears the distinctive name of La Côte; it is famous for its delicious grapes and excellent white wine. The now distant shore of Savoy swims in a delicate haze; over the water, just ruffled by a gentle breeze, curl those curious smooth-looking streaks which are called “fontaines” and are supposed to be caused by minute particles of oil, though some attribute them to subterranean springs.
It was growing late in the afternoon and the shores of the lake are not so interesting, that is not so bold, after passing Rolle and its precious island, and we cut across from Saint-Prex to Saint Sulpice, leaving Morges for another time, though its old castle looked enticing from the distance.
It was pleasant to get home again.
