The Spell of Switzerland

CHAPTER XXV

LAUSANNE AGAIN

IN going back I walked part of the way, taking in inverse order Byron’s route, which is interesting because he worked his reminiscences of it into “Manfred.” This is what Byron says, and it shows how poems crystallize: “The music of the cows’ bells (for their wealth, like the Patriarchs’, is cattle) in the pastures (which reach to a height far above any mountains in Britain) and the shepherds, shouting to us from crag to crag, and playing on their reeds where the steeps appeared almost inaccessible, with the surrounding scenery, realized all that I ever heard or imagined of a pastoral existence – much more so than Greece or Asia Minor, for there we are a little too much of the saber and musquet order; and if there is a crook in one hand, you are sure to see a gun in the other – but this was pure and unmixed – solitary, savage and patriarchal: the effect I cannot describe. As we went, they played the ‘Ranz des Vaches’ and other airs by way of farewell.”

The pipes of the shepherds he later introduced into “Manfred:”

Still in the high lands he describes threading the long, narrow valley of the Sarine then little traversed by travellers. He describes the bed of the river as very low and deep, “rapid as anger.” He thought the people looked free and happy and rich: “the cows superb; a bull nearly leaped into the charaban– agreeable companion in a post chaise – goats and sheep very thriving. A mountain with enormous glaciers to the right – the Kletsgerberg; further on, the Hockthorn – nice names – so soft! – Hockthorn, I believe, very lofty and craggy, patched with snow only; no glaciers on it, but some good epaulettes of clouds.”

As he travelled from the Canton Vaud into the Canton of Bern he crossed between the Château d’Oex and the village of Saanen, so I reversed the order. The valley then, as now, was famous for its cheese. Byron says it was famous for cheese, liberty, property and no taxes, also bad German. They passed along the valley of Simmenthal and came into the plain of Thun by its narrow entrance with high precipices wooded to the top. He crossed the river in a boat rowed by women, which caused him to remark: “Women went right for the first time in my recollection.” He visited the modern castle of Schadau at the western end of the Lake of Thun, near the mouth of the Aar. A boat took them in three hours from Castle Schadau to Neuhaus: “The lake small, but the banks fine: rocks down to the water’s edge.”

He was carried away by the splendour of the scenery beyond Interlaken. The glaciers and torrents from the Jungfrau charmed him. He lodged at the house of the curate, which stood immediately opposite the Staubbach – “nine hundred feet in height of visible descent.” He heard an avalanche fall like thunder. “A storm came on – thunder, lightning, hail; all in perfection and beautiful.” He would not let the guide carry his cane because it had a sword concealed in it and he was afraid it might attract the lightning.

He thus describes the fall: – “The torrent is in shape curving over the rock, like the tail of a white horse streaking in the wind, such as might be conceived would be that of the ‘pale horse’ on which Death is mounted in the Apocalypse. It is neither mist nor water but a something between both; its immense height (nine hundred feet) gives it a wave, a curve, a spreading here, a condensation there, wonderful and indescribable.”

Here, again, he got aliment for “Manfred:”

The rainbow was suggested by the sun shining on the lower part of the torrent, “of all colors but principally purple and gold, the bow moving as you move.”

A day later he climbed to the top of the Wengern Mountain, five thousand feet above the valley, the view comprising the whole of the Jungfrau with all her glacier, then the Dent d’Argent, “shining like truth,” the two Eigers and the Wetterhorn. He says: “I heard the avalanches falling every five minutes nearly – as if God was pelting the Devil down from Heaven with snowballs. From where we stood, on the Wengern Alp, we had all these in view on one side: on the other, the clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices like the foam of the Ocean of Hell during a Springtide – it was white and sulphury and immeasurably deep in appearance.” From the summit they “looked down upon a boiling sea of cloud, dashing against the crags on which we stood.”

The avalanches and sulphurous clouds of course became part of the décor of “Manfred:”

He saw the Grindelwald Glacier distinct, though it was twilight, and he compared it to a frozen hurricane, a figure which he put unchanged in his poem:

Passing over the Great Scheideck, Rosenlaui, the Falls of the Reichenbach (“two hundred feet high”), the Valley of Oberhasli, he reached Brienz, where four of the peasant girls of Oberhasli sang the airs of their country – “wild and original and at the same time of great sweetness.”

The summer was drawing to an end. I had got somewhat tired of excursions, and was content to settle down to a regular course of reading. I suppose if it had not been for my beloved relatives I might have been tempted to plan for a winter in Rome, which had for years seemed to me a desirable place to visit. If it had not been for these same dear ones, there were a dozen places in Switzerland which would have attracted me. I detest the cold, and Montreux, which has been called the Riviera of Helvetia, offered a climate tempered against the pernicious bise. We ran up to the Tour d’Aï one afternoon and I was fascinated with the place.

Will and I made a walking trip through the Bernese Oberland and we both liked Thun. He suggested that it was because we, or I, happened to be musical. I vowed that I would, in some way, get possession of the Twelfth-Century Castle of Zähringen-Kyburg, have it refitted with all American conveniences and live there the rest of my days – provided I could find the right kind of a housekeeper. Seriously, is there any more magnificent view in all Switzerland than from the environs of Thun and from the lake? I trow not. But perhaps one would weary of too grandiose views; after all, for human nature’s daily food, human society is preferable to mountains, and the fact that the tamer lakes, such as Leman and Constance, seem to attract for regular residence more congenial personages than I could find dwelt at Thun might make one pause in one’s plan to oust the museum and turn public property into a selfish private possession. I could not follow Voltaire’s example and buy every château I saw and liked!

So I was contented enough with Lausanne as a home. I do not propose to inflict on my friends an account of every excursion that I took. That through the Oberland perhaps more than any other made me realize how completely I was subjected to that peculiar hypnotic influence which we agree to call a spell.

It is a curious thing that in many of the high mountain passes, where desolation of barrenness reigns, there is a lake said to have been formed by the tears of Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew. For instance, when he first came to the Grimsel pass, between Bern and Valais, it was radiant with fertile beauty; the climate was warm; it supported a happy population; but he passed like a desolating breath, and when, years later, he came again, in that never-ceasing round, all was changed. He wept and his tears formed “The Lake of the Dead” – Der Totensee. In it lie the bones of those who perished in that terrible struggle between the Austrians and the French in 1799. There are all sorts of wonderful legends which one might collect. For instance, how came the Grindelwald to be so wide? – not that it is so wide, – but still it is wider than it once was! Well, Saint Martin came there and was not satisfied with its appearance, so he pried the valley walls apart. The prints of his feet are visible. On the way to the Grimsel we spent a long time at the Handeck Fall, which is regarded as the finest in Europe; the Aar with considerable volume of water falls into an abyss about twenty-three meters higher than Niagara.

I followed Byron’s footsteps in following Rousseau’s – only much more deliberately. It is rather difficult now, for many of the houses which sheltered Rousseau and his fair mistress have been destroyed; that one which belonged to Madame de Warens’s father, J. B. de la Tour, “Baron de l’Empire,” was taken down in 1889. The daughter was educated at Lausanne and married Noble Sebastien-Isaac de Loys, son of the Seigneur de Villardin, and a soldier who had fought in the Swedish service. As M. de Loys possessed a seigneurie in a neighbouring village he took the name of it and called himself Vuarens, which the Bernese made into Warens. I sympathized with poor M. de Warens. He tells the story of his marital troubles in a letter which is a volume and breathes sincerity. But there is a good deal of comedy about the whole affair, and only Madame de Warens’s pathetic ending, in poverty and neglect, makes one feel sorry for her.

In 1762 the Comte d’Escheray – a young man of twenty-nine – happened to be living in a little house at Motiers-Travers, in a delightful valley, spending his time in the cultivation of literature and music, in walking and in hunting. Rousseau was there also, and the count gives a lively narrative of his acquaintance with the philosopher; his dinners, his conversations, his evening walks in the woods, singing duets. One day he and Rousseau walked from Colombier to Les Brenets – six leagues – stopping every little while to study the wild places. The count says: “I consider this little portion of the Jura, enclosed in the boundaries of Neuchâtel, as one of the most curious countries in the world for the philosopher, the physician, the geologist, the artist and the mechanician to study.” They finally came to the residence of M. du Peyron, a rich, charitable American. Rousseau took kindly to him and they botanized together.

It was a pleasant excursion to pick out Rousseau’s tracks in this expedition.

I also made a study of Voltaire’s life, and read a great deal of his writings. I prepared an article on his theatrical ventures. One of his châteaux was Monrion (which means mons rotundus) on the crest between Lausanne and the lake. It was a square two-story building with high attic and L-shaped wings. It had twenty-four rooms with superb views. He did not live in it long, and it passed into the hands of Dr. Tissot. Voltaire moved into a house in Lausanne, 6, Rue du Grand Chêne, and here he gave theatrical entertainments. He also organized them at Monrepos, a château then owned by the Marquis de Langalérie. The stage was in the barn but the spectators were in the house. He wrote his friends about the success of them: “I play the old man, Lusignan… I assure you, without vanity, that I am the best old fool to be found in any company.” To his friend Thiriot: “I wish that you had passed the winter with me at Lausanne. You would have seen new pieces performed by excellent actors, strangers coming from thirty leagues around, and my beautiful shores of Lake Leman become the home of art, of pleasure, and of taste.” To his niece, Madame de Fontaine: “The idlers of Paris think that Switzerland is a savage country; they would be very much astonished if they saw ‘Zaire’ better played at Lausanne than it is played at Paris; they would be still more surprised to see two hundred spectators as good judges as there are in Europe… I have made tears flow from all the Swiss eyes.” When he moved to Geneva, and especially when he bought the château of Ferney, so that he might be a thorn in the flesh of Genevese sanctimoniousness, he was older, but still played his parts.

In 176 °Catherine de Chandieu, then a girl of nineteen, was at Geneva and saw Voltaire’s play “Fanime,” given extremely well by Madame Denis, Madame Constant-Pictet, Mademoiselle de Basincourt and Voltaire himself. She describes him thus: “Voltaire was dressed in a way which was enough to make one choke with amusement; he wore huge culottes which came down to his ankles, a little vest of red silk embroidered with gold; over this vest a very large vest of magnificent material, white embroidered in gold and silver; it was open at one side so as to show the undervest and on the other it came down below the knee; his culottes were of satin cramoisi; over his great vest he wore a kind of coat of satin with silver, and over the whole a blue mantle doublé de cramoisi galooned with gold and superb; when he appeared on the stage many people began to laugh and I was one of them; he had a huge white beard which he had to readjust several times, and a certain comic look even in the most tragic passages.”

Madame de Genlis went to Geneva on purpose to call on M. de Voltaire, though she had no letter to him. He invited her to dinner, and, by a mistake, she arrived too early. She gives a very entertaining account of her experiences. One little passage is characteristic:

“What an effect the presence of such a man as Voltaire must have had on the pious Genevans may be imagined when this story was told of him. Shortly after the publication of ‘Emile,’ Voltaire was discussing Rousseau’s marvellous picture of the sunrise. ‘I must try it,’ said he. ‘I, too, will go some morning on the top of a mountain; I should like to know if one is really compelled to adore the Creator at daybreak.’ The necessary preparations were made; they set out at night and reached just before dawn the Col de la Faucille in the Jura. The sunrise was splendid… Voltaire knelt down, gazed in silence and then said: ‘Yes, Creator of heaven and earth, I adore you before the magnificence of your works.’ … Then getting up, he rubbed his knees and cried: ‘Mais quant à monsieur votre fils et à madame sa mère, je ne les connais pas!’

“When Rousseau heard that he became pensive and then said, ‘Oh, that man, that man, he would make me hate the page of my works which I like best.’

“When the earthquake at Lisbon shocked the whole world Pastor Vernes preached a celebrated sermon which led Voltaire to write: ‘Sir, it is said you have written such a beautiful sermon on the event that it would have been really unfortunate had Lisbon not been destroyed, for we should have been deprived of a magnificent discourse.’”

Another plan which occupied me in the hours which I consecrated to regular work was for an article on the village festivals of Switzerland: – The charming Narcissus Festival of Montreux, celebrated in May, the great Fête of the Abbé des Vignerons, so fascinatingly described by Juste Olivier and so cleverly worked by James Fenimore Cooper into his novel, “The Headsman.” It would include processions through picturesque streets and the rejoicings at the return of the cows from the Alp with the Ranz des Vaches: —

I gathered any quantity of material about Swiss authors and composers: Jacques Hoffmann, Johanna Spyri, Töpfer, Amiel, Olivier, – none, perhaps, stars of the first magnitude – unless the Painter Böcklin – but all interesting.

When winter came we went to see the winter sports at Saint-Moritz – the skiing where it was not uncommon for some of the French and Norwegian champions to leap almost thirty meters. Indeed, one man flew through the air forty-six meters, but could not keep his balance when he struck far down the slope. I was not tempted to try it.

Switzerland in winter is even more beautiful than in summer. The uniform blanket of dazzling snow, though its curves are filled with vivid tints of violet and blue, may be hard on the eyes. The mercury may go low but the purity of the atmosphere and its exhilaration atone for the discomfort of cold. In the house we kept warm and cozy. The children were well and happy and I stayed on and on: I could not resist the Spell.