This was the scene of their _tete-a-tetes_, of his efforts to persuade her into his religious faith, of their ludicrous supper of biscuit and baked apples, and of his final violent outbreak with Madame Beck, when she literally thrust herself between him and his love. From this platform Crimsworth and Lucy and Charlotte Bronte herself had given instruction to pupils whose insubordination had first to be confronted and overcome. Here Paul and Heger gave lectures upon literature, and Paul delivered his spiteful tirade against the English on the morning of his _fete_-day. Upon this desk were heaped his bouquets that morning; from its smooth surface poor Lucy dislodged and fractured his spectacles; and here, seated in Paul"s chair, at Paul"s desk, we saw and were presented to Paul Emanuel himself,--M. Heger.
[Sidenote: School Scenes]
It was something more than curiosity which made us alert to note the appearance and manner of this man, who has been so nearly a.s.sociated with Miss Bronte in an intercourse which colored her subsequent life and determined her life-work, who has been made the hero of her novels and has been deemed the hero of her own heart"s romance; and yet we _were_ curious to know what manner of man it was who has been so much as suspected of being honored with the love and preference of the dainty Charlotte Bronte. During a short conversation with him we had opportunity to observe that in person this "wise, good, and religious"
man must, at the time Miss Bronte knew him, have more closely resembled Pelet of "The Professor" than any other of her pen-portraits: indeed, after the lapse of more than forty years that delineation still, for the most part, aptly applied to him. He was of middle size, of rather spare habit of body; his face was fair and the features pleasing and regular, the cheeks were thin and the mouth flexible, the eyes--somewhat sunken--were mild blue and of singularly pleasant expression. We found him aged and somewhat infirm; his finely-shaped head was fringed with white hair, and partial baldness contributed reverence to his presence and tended to enhance the intellectual effect of his wide brow. In repose his countenance showed a hint of melancholy: as Miss Bronte said, his "physiognomy was _fine et spirituelle_;" one would hardly imagine it could ever resemble the "visage of a black and sallow tiger." His voice was low and soft, his bow still "very polite, not theatrical, scarcely French," his manner _suave_ and courteous, his dress scrupulously neat.
He accosted us in the language Miss Bronte taught him forty years ago, and his accent and diction honored her instruction. He was talking with some patrons, and, as his daughter had hinted that he was averse to speaking of Miss Bronte, we soon took leave of him and were shown other parts of the school. The other cla.s.s-rooms, used for less advanced pupils, were smaller. In one of them Miss Bronte had ruled as monitress after her return from Haworth. The large dormitory of the _pensionnat_ was above the long cla.s.s-room, and in the time of the Brontes most of the boarders--about twenty in number--slept here. Their cots were arranged along either side, and the position of those occupied by the Brontes was pointed out to us at the extreme end of the room. It was here that Lucy suffered the horrors of hypochondria, so graphically portrayed in "Villette," and found the discarded costume of the spectral nun lying upon her bed, and here Miss Bronte pa.s.sed those nights of wakeful misery which Mrs. Gaskell describes. A long, narrow room in front of the cla.s.s-rooms was shown us as the _refectoire_, where the Brontes, with the other boarders, took their meals, presided over by M.
and Madame Heger, and where, during the evenings, the lessons for the ensuing days were prepared. Here were held the evening prayers which Charlotte used to avoid by escaping into the garden. This, too, was the scene of Paul"s readings to teachers and pupils, and of some of his spasms of petulance, which readers of "Villette" will remember. From the _refectoire_ we pa.s.sed again into the corridor, where we made our adieus to our affable conductress. She explained that, whereas this establishment had been both a _pensionnat_ and an _externat_, having about seventy day-pupils and twenty boarders when Miss Bronte was here, it was after the death of Madame Heger used as a day-school only,--the _pensionnat_ being in another street.
[Sidenote: The Confessional]
The genuine local color Miss Bronte gives in "Villette" enabled us to be sure that we had found the sombre old church where Lucy, arrested in pa.s.sing by the sound of the bells, knelt upon the stone pavement, pa.s.sing thence into the confessional of Pere Silas. Certain it is that this old church lies upon the route she would take in the walk from the school to the Protestant cemetery, which she had set out to do that afternoon, and the narrow streets which lie beyond the church correspond to those in which she was lost. Certain, too, it is said to be that this incident is taken from her own experience. Reid says, "During one of the long holidays, when her mind was restless and disturbed, she found sympathy, if not peace, in the counsels of a priest in the confessional, who soothed her troubled spirit without attempting to enmesh it in the folds of Romanism."
[Sidenote: The Cemetery]
Our way to the Protestant cemetery--a spot sadly familiar to Miss Bronte, and the usual termination of her walks--lay past the site of the Porte de Louvain and out to the hills beyond the old city limits. From our path we saw more than one tree-shrouded farm-house which might have been the place of Paul"s breakfast with his school, and at least one quaint mansion, with green-tufted and terraced lawns, which might have served Miss Bronte as the model for La Terra.s.se, the suburban home of the Brettons and the temporary abode of the Taylor sisters whom she visited here. From the cemetery we beheld vistas of farther lines of hills, of intervening valleys, of farms and villas, and of the great city lying below. Miss Bronte has well described this place: "Here, on pages of stone and of bra.s.s, are written names, dates, last tributes of pomp or love, in English, French, German, and Latin." There are stone crosses all about, and great thickets of roses and yews; "cypresses that stand straight and mute, and willows that hang low and still;" and there are "dim garlands of everlasting flowers." Here "The Professor" found his long-sought sweetheart kneeling at a new-made grave under the overhanging trees. And here we found the shrine of poor Charlotte Bronte"s many pilgrimages. .h.i.ther,--the burial-place of her friend and school-mate, the Jessy Yorke of "Shirley;" the spot where, under "green sod and a gray marble head-stone, cold, coffined, solitary, Jessy sleeps below."
LEMAN"S SHRINES
_Beloved of Litterateurs--Gibbon--D"Aubigne--Rousseau--Byron--Sh.e.l.ley-- d.i.c.kens, etc.--Scenes of Childe Harold--Nouvelle Helose--Prisoner of Chillon--Land of Byron._
[Sidenote: Haunts of Litterateurs]
A pilgrimage in the track of Childe Harold brings us from the sh.o.r.es of Albion, by Belgium"s capital and deadly Waterloo, along the castled Rhine and over mountain-pa.s.s to "Italia, home and grave of empires," and to the sublimer scenery of "Manfred," "Chillon," and the third canto of the pilgrim-poet"s masterpiece; to his "silver-sheeted Staubbach" and "arrowy Rhone," "soaring Jungfrau" and "bleak Mont Blanc." We linger with especial pleasure on the sh.o.r.es of "placid Leman," in an enchanting region which teems with literary shrines and is pervaded with memories and a.s.sociations--often so thrilling and vivid that they seem like veritable and sensible presences--of the brilliant number who have here had their haunts. Here Calvin wrought his Commentaries; here Voltaire polished his darts; here Rousseau laid the scenes of his impa.s.sioned tale; here d.i.c.kens, Byron, and Sh.e.l.ley loitered and wrote; here Gibbon and de Stael, Schlegel and Constant, and many another scarcely less famous, lived and wrought the treasures of their knowledge and fancy into the literature of the world. A lingering voyage round the lake, like that of Byron and Sh.e.l.ley, is a delight to be remembered through a lifetime, and affords opportunity to visit the spots consecrated by genius upon these sh.o.r.es. At Geneva we find the inn where Byron lodged and first met the author of "Queen Mab," the house in which Rousseau was born, the place where d"Aubigne wrote his history, the sometime home of John Calvin. Near by, in a house presented by the Genevese after his release from the long imprisonment suffered on their account, dwelt Bonnivard, Byron"s immortal "Prisoner of Chillon," and here he suffered from his procession of wives and finally died. Just beyond the site of the fortifications, on the east side of the city, is an eminence whose slopes are tastefully laid out with walks that wind, amid sward and shrub, to the observatory which crowns the summit and marks the site of Bonnivard"s Priory of St. Victor, lost to him by his devotion to Genevan independence. Not far away is the public library, founded by his bequest of his modest collection of books and MSS. which we see here carefully preserved. Here also is an old portrait of the prisoner, which represents him as a reckless and jolly "good fellow"
rather than a saintly hero, and accords better with his character as described by late writers than with the common conception of him.
[Sidenote: Byron at Villa Diodati]
Byron loved this Leman lake, and it is said his discontented sprite still walks its margins; certain it is he remains its poetic genius; his melody seems to wake in every breeze that stirs its surface. The Villa Diodati, a plain, quadrangular, three-storied mansion of moderate dimensions, standing on the sh.o.r.e a few miles from Geneva, was the handsome "Giaour"s" first home after his separation from Lady Byron and his exile from England. It had been the residence of the Genevan Professor Diodati and the sojourn of his friend the poet Milton.
Pleasant vineyards surround the place and slope away to the water, but there is little in the spot or its near environment to commend it to the fancy of a poet. Byron"s study here was a sombre room at the back from which neither the lake nor the snowy peaks were visible, and here he wrote, besides many minor poems, "Manfred," "Prometheus," "Darkness,"
"Dream," and the third canto of "Childe Harold." Here also he wrote "Marriage of Belphegor," a tale setting forth his version of his own infelicitous marriage; but hearing that his wife was seriously ill, he burned it in his study fire. From here, by instigation of de Stael, he sent to Lady Byron ineffectual overtures for a reconciliation. His companion at the villa was an eccentric Italian physician, Polidori, who was uncle to the poet Rossetti, and who here quarrelled with Byron"s guests and wrote "The Vampire," a weird production afterward attributed to Byron. Lovers of Byron owe much to his sojourn on Leman; he found in the inspiring landscapes here, especially in the environment of mountains, a power that profoundly stirred what his wife called "the angel in him." His letters recognize an afflatus breathed upon him by the "majesty around and above," and the quality of the poems here produced shows his yielding and response to that benign influence; many a gem of poetic thought was here begotten of lake and mount and cataract, which otherwise had never been. The insincere stanzas of some of his later poems would scarcely have been written on Leman. As we muse in the spots he frequented--wandering on the entrancing margins or floating on the crystal waters--and look thence upon the snow-crowned peaks, resplendent in the sunshine or roseate in the after-glow, we aspire to not only partake of his rapture in this sublime beauty, but to appreciate the deeper feelings to which it moved him.
[Sidenote: Sh.e.l.ley]
A villa near Byron"s, and reached by a path through his grounds,--Maison Chapuis, of Mont Allegra,--was occupied that summer by the "impa.s.sioned Ariel of English verse," with Mary Sh.e.l.ley and her brunette relative Jane Clermont (the Claire of Sh.e.l.ley"s journal), who after bore to Byron a daughter called Alba by the Sh.e.l.leys, but later named by Byron Allegra, for the place where he had known the mother. At Mont Allegra "Bridge of Arve," "Intellectual Beauty," and Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley"s weird "Frankenstein" were penned. Here Byron was a daily visitant, and the Sh.e.l.leys were the usual companions of his excursions upon the lake of beauty, in a picturesque lateen-rigged boat which was the property of the poets and the counterpart of which we see moored by the Diodati sh.o.r.e, looking like a bit of the Levant transported to this tramontane water. The "white phantom" observed by telescopists on the opposite sh.o.r.e to sometimes embark with Byron, and which he gravely told Madame de Stael was his dog, was doubtless the frail Claire. The admonitions of de Stael anent his mode of life provoked Byron to take sure revenge by being attentive to her husband, which the overshadowing wife always resented as an affront upon herself. It is said the poet"s observation of this pair prompted the couplet of "Don Juan:"
"But oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual, Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?"
[Sidenote: Voltaire--Gibbon--d.i.c.kens]
Pa.s.sing for the present the shrines of Ferney and Coppet, we find in picturesque Lausanne the quaint house in which Voltaire lived several winters, and not far away the place where Secretan died a few months ago. Gibbon"s dwelling has been demolished, but we find the place of his summer-house where the great history was completed, and of his famous rose-tree where Byron gathered roses long ago. Madame de Genlis narrates this incident of the great "Decliner and Faller" at Lausanne: he was enamoured of the comely Madame Crousaz, and, finding her alone, he knelt at her feet and besought her love. He received an unfavorable reply, but remained in his humble posture until the lady, after repeatedly requesting him to arise, discovered that his weight made it impossible, and summoned a servant to a.s.sist him to regain his feet. His obesity seems to have been a standing jest among his acquaintances: a sufferer from indigestion, due to lack of exercise, was advised by a witty friend to "walk twice around Gibbon before breakfast." Several decades later another ill.u.s.trious English man of letters sojourned in Lausanne. A pretty cottage-villa, with embowered walls and flower-shaded porticos which look from a mild eminence across the crescentic lake, was, in 1846, the dwelling of d.i.c.kens, who here wrote one of the matchless Christmas stories and a part of "Dombey and Son." From the magnificent slope of Lausanne the whole lake region is visible, with the dark Juras rising to the western horizon, the Alps of Savoy, and "the monarch of mountains with a diadem of snow" upholding the sky away in the south. At the foot of this slope is the port-town of Ouchy, a resort of Byron"s in his sailing excursions; at the plain little Anchor inn near the _quai_ (Byron called it a "wretched inn") he lodged, and here, being detained two days (June 26 and 27, 1816) by a storm which overtook him on his return from Chillon and Clarens, he wrote the touching "Prisoner of Chillon." In a parsonage not far from Lausanne was reared sweet Suzanne Curchod, erst _fiancee_ of Gibbon, and later the mother of de Stael.
[Sidenote: Rousseau]
Eastward is "Clarens, birthplace of deep love," whose "air is the breath of pa.s.sionate thought, whose trees take root in love;" about it lies the charming region which Rousseau chose for his fiction and peopled with affections, and where Byron, Houghton, and Sh.e.l.ley loved to linger. Here the latter first read "Nouvelle Helose" amid the settings of its scenes; here Byron wrote many glowing lines, inspired by the beauty and romantic a.s.sociations around him. From the vine-clad terraces which cling to the heights we behold the view which enraptured the poet,--a broad expanse of lacustrine beauty and Alpine sublimity, embracing the Leman sh.o.r.es from the Rhone to the Juras of Gex, the entire width of the "_bleu impossible_" lake and Alp piled on Alp beyond. Back of Clarens we find the spot of Rousseau"s "Bosquet de Julie," and, at a little distance among embowering trees, the birthplace of a woman stranger than any fancied character of his fiction, the Madame de Warens of his "Confessions."
[Sidenote: Prison of Chillon]
Between Clarens and Villeneuve, on an isolated rock whose base is laved by Leman"s waters, which "meet and flow a thousand feet in depth below,"
stands the grim prison of Chillon, the scene of Byron"s poem. The fortress is an irregular pile of masonry, and, with its ma.s.sive walls, loop-holed towers, and white battlements, is a picturesque object seen across wide reaches of the lake. The present structure is a h.o.a.ry successor to a stronghold still more ancient: the prehistoric lake-dwellers here had a fortress and were succeeded by the Franks and Romans. Of the present structure, the Romanesque columns and the range of dungeons are known to have been in existence in 830, when Count Wala, a cousin of Charlemagne, for alluding to the wife of Louis the Debonair as "that adulterous woman," was incarcerated here. Thus Judith"s reputation was vindicated and the earliest certain date of this fortress fixed. The present superstructure remains unchanged since the thirteenth century. It is now connected with the sh.o.r.e by a wooden structure which spans the moat and replaces the ancient drawbridge.
Through a ma.s.sive gate-way we enter a roughly-paved court, whence a bluff Savoyard conducts us through the romantic pile. Among the apartments of the ducal family we see the banqueting-hall where the dukes held roistering wa.s.sail; the kitchen on whose great hearth oxen were roasted whole; the Chamber of Inquisition where hapless prisoners were tortured to extort confession, this room being near the chamber of the d.u.c.h.ess, into which--despite its thick wall--the shrieks of the tortured must have sometimes penetrated and disturbed Her Serene Highness. Outside her door is a post to which the wretches were bound, and it is scored by marks of the irons which cauterized their flesh; in a near corner stood a rack which rent them limb from limb. The crypt beneath, with its low arched vaults and its graceful pillars rising out of the rock, is the most interesting portion of the fortress. Referring to their architectural perfection, Longfellow once said these were the "most delightful dungeons he ever saw," but as we stand in their twilight gloom the horrors of their history weigh heavily on the heart.
During this century the castle has been used as an a.r.s.enal, but occasionally also as a prison, and Byron found some of these "chambers of sorrow" tenanted at the time of his visits. One contracted cell is that in which the condemned pa.s.sed their last night of life chained upon a rock, near the beam upon which they were strangled and the opening through which their bodies were thrust into the lake. Another vault contains a pit or well, with a spiral stair down which poor dupes stepped into a yawning depth and--eternity. A third chamber, so dark that its grotesque carvings are scarcely discernible and no missal could be read by daylight, was the chapel of the fortress. Traversing the succession of dungeons, we come to the last and largest, and reverently stand beside the column where Byron"s prisoner was chained. This "dungeon deep and old" lies not beneath the level of the lake, as Byron believed, yet it is sufficiently dank and dismal to be the appropriate scene of the touching and tragic story which he located here. It is a long, crypt-like apartment, whose vaulted roof of rock is upheld by the "seven pillars of Gothic mould" aligned along the middle. It is dimly lighted by loop-holes pierced in the ponderous walls for the feudal bowmen; through these narrow apertures, where the prisoner "felt the winter"s spray wash through the bars when winds were high," we look out, as did he, upon the distant town, "the lake with its white sails," the "mountains high," and the little Isle de Paix--"scarce broader than the dungeon floor"--gleaming like an emerald from a setting of amethyst.
Here is Bonnivard"s chain, scarce four feet long, and in the central pillar the ring which held it. The light, falling aslant "through the cleft of the thick wall" upon the floor, shows us the pathway worn in the rock by the pacing of the prisoner during the weary years, and reveals--graven on the column-stone by the poet"s hand--the name Byron.
At Chillon we are in the midst of a region pervaded by the sentiment of the pilgrim-poet. The Byron path leads from the sh.o.r.e to the broad terraces of the Hotel Byron, whence we behold as in a picture the romantic scene his poetry portrays,--the "mountains with their thousand years of snow," the shimmering water of "the wide long lake," the dark slopes of the Juras terraced to their summits, the "white-walled towns"
upon the nearer hill-sides. Directly before us--bearing its three tall trees--"the little isle, the only one in view," smiles in our faces from the bosom of the water; on the right we see sweet Clarens and the picturesque battlements of Chillon; on the left, the glittering peaks of Dent du Midi and the Alps of Savoy, with the "Rhone in fullest flow"
between the rocky heights; while from the farther sh.o.r.e rise the cliffs of Meillerie, at whose base Byron and Sh.e.l.ley, clinging to their frail boat, narrowly escaped a watery grave on the very spot where St. Preux and Julia of "Nouvelle Helose" were rescued from the same fate.
[Sidenote: Rousseau and Byron scenes]
Our farewell view of this Land of Byron is taken on a cloudless summer night, when the radiance of the harvest moon exalts and glorifies all the scene; the grim prison of Bonnivard is transformed into a snowy palace of peaceful delights, the white mountain-peaks gleam with the chaste l.u.s.tre of pearls, the vine-embowered village on the sh.o.r.e seems an Aidenn of purity and light, and the sheen of the tremulous water is that of a sea of molten silver. Surely, on all her round, "Luna lights no spot more fair."
CHaTEAUX OF FERNEY AND COPPET
_Voltaire"s Home, Church, Study, Garden, Relics--Literary Court of de Stael--Mementos--Famous Rooms, Guests--Schlegel--Sh.e.l.ley-- Constant--Byron--Davy, etc.--De Stael"s Tomb._
A literary pilgrimage on Leman"s sh.o.r.es that did not include Ferney among its shrines would be obviously incomplete. No matter how widely we may dissent from his opinions or how much we may deplore some of his utterances, the brilliant philosopher who for so many years inhabited that spot and made it the intellectual capital of the world commands a place in letters which we may neither gainsay nor ignore, and the Chateau Voltaire is to many visitors one of the chief objects of interest in the neighborhood of Geneva.
[Sidenote: Voltaire"s Church--Mansion]
Beneath a summer sky a delightful jaunt of a few miles, among orchards and vineyards and past the ancestral home of Albert Gallatin, brings us to Voltaire"s domain in Gex. The mansion and town of Ferney were alike the creation of the _genius loci_; he was architect and builder of both.
The town and its factories were erected to give shelter and employment to hundreds of artisans who appealed to him against oppressive employers at Geneva. The place has obviously degenerated since his time; an air of shabbiness and thriftlessness prevails, and ancient smells by no means suggestive of "the odors of Araby the blest" obtrude upon the pilgrim. At the public fountain stout-armed women were washing family linen manifestly long unused to such manipulation. Near by dwell descendants of Voltaire"s secretary Wagniere. Upon a verdant plateau farther away, in the heart of one of the most beautiful regions of earth, "girdled by eighty leagues of mountains that pierce the sky," was Voltaire"s last home. By its gate is the little church he built, bearing upon its gable his inscription "Deo Erexit Voltaire." Here he attended ma.s.s with his niece, and, as _seigneur_, was always incensed by the priest; here he gave in marriage his adopted daughters; here he preached a homily against theft; and here he built for himself a tomb, projecting into the side of the church,--"neither within nor without," as he explained to a guest,--where he hoped to be buried. The church was long used as a tenement, later it has been a storage- and tool-house. The chateau is a s.p.a.cious and dignified three-storied structure of Italian style, attractive in appearance and well suited to one of Voltaire"s tastes and occupations. The exterior has been somewhat altered, but the apartments of the philosopher are essentially unchanged. The late proprietor preserved the study and bedroom nearly as Voltaire left them when he started upon his fatal visit to Paris. They are small, with high ceilings, quaint carvings, faded tapestries, and are obviously planned to facilitate the work of the busiest author the world has known, who here, after the age of threescore, wrote a hundred and sixty works. Many of these a.s.sailed the church authorities, who had shown themselves capable of punishing mere difference of opinion by the rack and the stake, but "the religion of the Sermon on the Mount and the character of men of good and consistent lives" they did not attack: some of the books were cursed at Rome, some at Geneva, others were burned at both places.
[Sidenote: His Rooms--Furniture]
Disposed in Voltaire"s rooms we have seen his heavy furniture; his study-chair standing by the table upon which he wrote half of each day; his beautiful porcelain stove, a gift from Frederick the Great; a draped mausoleum bearing an inscription by Voltaire and designed by his _protege_ to contain his heart; many paintings presented by royal admirers,--Albani"s "Toilet of Venus," t.i.tian"s "Venus and Love," a picture of Voltaire"s chimney-sweep, portrait of Lekain who acted so many of Voltaire"s tragedies, portraits of that philosopher, a fanciful deification of him by Duplessis; on the same wall, coa.r.s.e engravings of Washington and Franklin. Franklin was the firm friend of Voltaire, and it was his letters which first brought to Ferney news of the Declaration of Independence. The discolored embroidery of Voltaire"s bed and arm-chair was wrought by his niece Madame Denis, "the little fat woman round as a ball." Habitually complaining of illness in his last years, he spent more than half his time in this quaint bed. He had a desk, containing writing materials, suspended above the bed so that he could write here day or night, and the amount of work he thus accomplished is astounding: in the last four years of feeble life he wrote thirty works varying in size from a pamphlet to a ponderous tome. His breakfast was served in bed, and here he habitually attended to his correspondence, which included most of the sovereigns of Europe and the learned and great of all climes. In this bed he once lay for weeks feigning mortal illness, and thus induced the priest to give him the _viatic.u.m_. This bedroom, too, was the scene of many quarrels with his niece regarding her extravagances, but as we sit in his chair by his bedside we prefer to recall more pleasing incidents the room has witnessed; here he dictated to Marie Corneille the ardent words which brought reparation to many a cruelly wronged family; this was the scene of his many pleasantries with the house-keeper "Baba," and of the loving ministrations of his sweet ward "Belle et Bonne."
Many of Voltaire"s belongings have been removed and his estate has been shorn of its vast dimensions, but much remains to remind us of the genius of the place. Here are the gardens, lawns, and shrubberies he planted; on this turf-grown terrace beneath his study windows he paced as he planned his compositions, and here, at the age of eighty-three, he evolved "Irene" and parts of "Agathocles;" near by are his fount, his arbored promenade, the shaded spot where he wrote in summer days, the place of the lightning-rod made for him by Franklin. Long reaches of the hedge were rooted by him, many of the trees are from the nursery he cultured, the cedars were raised from seeds sent to him by the Empress Catherine. A venerable tree in the park was planted by Voltaire"s own hands: when we point to a blemish upon its trunk and ask our guide, whose family have dwelt on the estate since the time of Voltaire, if that is the effect of lightning, as has been averred, he indignantly declares the only damage the tree ever sustained has been from visitors who, to secure souvenirs of the ill.u.s.trious philosopher, would destroy the whole tree were he not alert to protect it.
[Sidenote: An Intellectual Capital--Reminiscences]
For twenty years this home of Voltaire was the centre and pharos of the intellectual world. To this court kings sent couriers with proffers of honors and a.s.surances of esteem; hither came legions of _litterateurs_, academicians, politicians, eager to hail the savant or to secure his commendation. "All roads then led to Ferney as they once did to Rome,"
and the hospitalities of the chateau were so taxed that Voltaire declared he was innkeeper for all Europe. He habitually complained of the climate here, "Lapland in winter, Naples in summer;" during some seasons "thirty leagues of snow were visible from his windows;" but on the July day of our visit the atmosphere is exquisitely delightful and Voltaire"s "desert" seems a paradise. Behind us rise the vine-clad slopes of Jura, below lies the lake like an amethystine sea, afar gleam the snow-crowned peaks, and about us in the old gardens are the golden sunshine, the incense of flowers, the twitter of birds, and all the charm of sweet summer-time. As we linger in the spots he loved it is pleasant to recall the good that mingled in the oddly composite nature of the daring old man who inhabited this beautiful scene and created much of its beauty; to remember that dumb creatures loved him and fed from his hand; that the dest.i.tute and oppressed never vainly applied to him for succor or protection; that in varying phrase he solemnly averred, in letters of counsel to youthful admirers in his own and other lands, "We are in the world only for the good we can do."
Of the galaxy of _litterateurs_ who had home or haunt by Leman"s margins Madame de Stael, by her long residence and many incidents of her career, seems most closely a.s.sociated with this region of delights. The chateau of Coppet has for two centuries belonged to her family; here some portion of her girlhood was pa.s.sed; here she found asylum from the horrors of the French Revolution and residence when Napoleon banished her from his capital. Later her son Auguste dwelt here, and the place is now the property of her great-granddaughter. Literary and social a.s.sociations render this mediaeval chateau one of the most interesting spots on earth. Exiled from the society of Paris, de Stael erected here a court which became the centre of intellectual Europe. Coppet was in itself a l.u.s.trous microcosm whose attraction was the conversation of its hostess and queen, which allured the wit and wisdom of a continent, making this court not only a literary centre, but a political power of which Napoleon, by his proscriptions, proclaimed his fear. The great number of ill.u.s.trious courtiers who came to Coppet caused the priestess of its hospitalities to aver she needed "a cook whose heels were winged."
[Sidenote: Home of de Stael]
The darkly-verdured terraces of Jura on the one hand, the blue waters and the farther snowy peaks on the other, fitly environ the enchanting scene in the midst of which was set the abode of the greatest woman of her time. From Geneva a charming sail along the lake conveys us to her home and sepulchre. We approach the chateau between rows of venerable trees beneath which de Stael loitered with her guests. The stately edifice rises from three sides of a court, whence we are admitted to a large hall on the lower floor which she used as a theatre. These walls, which give back only the echo of our foot-falls, have resounded with the applause of fastidious auditors when the queen of Coppet, with her children and Recamier, de Sabran, Werner, Jenner, Constant, Von Vought, or Ida Brun acted upon a stage at yonder end of the room. The composition of plays for this theatre was sometime de Stael"s princ.i.p.al recreation: these have been published as "Essais Dramatiques." But more ambitious dramas were presented; the matchless Juliette acted here with Sabran and de Stael in "Semiramis;" Werner a.s.sisted in the first presentation of "Attila," which was written here; Constant"s "Wallenstein" was composed here and first produced on this stage, as was also Oehlenschlager"s "Hakon Jarl." De Stael was an efficient actress, her l.u.s.trous eyes, superb arms, and strong and flexible voice compensating for deficiencies of training. A broad stair leads from the silent theatre to the princ.i.p.al apartments, among which we find the library where Necker wrote his "Politics and Finance," the grand salon and reception-rooms,--all of imposing dimensions and having parquetted floors. Arranged in these rooms are many mementos of the daughter of genius who once inhabited them,--hangings of tapestry; antique spindle-legged furniture carved and gilded in quaint fashion; the cherub-bedecked clock that stood above her desk; her books and inkstand; the desk upon which "Necker," "Ten Years of Exile," "Allemagne," and many minor treatises were written. Upon the wall is her portrait, by David, which pictures her with bare arms and shoulders, her head crowned by a nimbus of yellow turban which she wore when costumed as "Corinne:"
the features are not cla.s.sical, but the brunette face, with its splendid dark eyes, is comely as well as intellectual, and obviously contradicts Byron"s declaration, "She is so ugly I wonder how the best intellect of France could have taken up such a residence." Schaffer"s portrait of her daughter hangs near by, displaying a face of striking beauty, and a picture of Madame Necker, de Stael"s mother, represents a sweet-faced woman who smiles upon the visitor despite the discomfort of a painfully tight-fitting dress of white satin. Here also are portraits of Necker, of de Stael"s first husband, of her son Auguste, of Schlegel, and of other literary _confreres_, a statue of her father, by Tieck, and a bust of Rocca, her youthful second husband. The latter represents a finely-shaped head and a winning face. Byron thought Rocca notably handsome, and Frederica Brun testified, "he had the most magnificent head I ever saw." He was so slender that one of de Stael"s courtiers wondered "how his many wounds found a place upon him:" these wounds, received in the Peninsula, won for him the sympathy of de Stael, which deepened into love.
[Sidenote: Memorable Rooms--Mementos]