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The Spell of Switzerland
The Spell of Switzerland
BY Nathan Haskell Dole ILLUSTRATED from photographs and original paintings by Woldemar Ritter Publishers L. C. PAGE & COMPANY BOSTON MDCCCCXIII Copyright, 1913, by L. C. Page & Company (INCORPORATED) Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London All rights reserved First Impression, October, 1913 THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A....
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PREFACE
PREFACE
The present book is cast in the guise of fiction. The vague and flitting forms of my niece and her three children are wholly figments of the imagination. No such person as “Will Allerton” enters my doorway. The “Moto,” which does such magical service in transporting “Emile” and his admirers from place to place is as unreal as Solomon’s Carpet. After Lord Sheffield and his family had started back from a visit to Gibbon at Lausanne, his daughter, Maria T. Holroyd, wrote the historian: “I do not kn
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CHAPTER I UNCLE AND NIECE
CHAPTER I UNCLE AND NIECE
I MUST confess, I did not approve of my niece and her husband’s plan of expatriating themselves for the sake of giving their only son and heir, and their twin girls, a correct accent in speaking French. But I had the grace to hold my tongue. I wonder if my wife would have been equally discreet—supposing I possessed such a helpmeet. Probably she would not have done so, even if I had; and probably also I should not, if she had. For the very fact of my having a wife would prove that I should be dif
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CHAPTER II JUST A COMMON VOYAGE
CHAPTER II JUST A COMMON VOYAGE
I T was inevitable. I, who had always jestingly compared myself to a brachypod, fastened by Fate to my native reef, and getting contact with visitors from abroad only as they were brought by tides and currents, began to feel the irresistible impulse to grow wings and fly away. How could I detach my clinging tentacles? Every letter from Lausanne, where my dear ones had established themselves, urged me to “run over” and make them a long visit. My room was waiting for me. They depicted the view fro
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CHAPTER III A ROUNDABOUT TOUR
CHAPTER III A ROUNDABOUT TOUR
R UTH and her husband were waiting for me. Will took charge of my luggage. He sent my trunk by express to Lausanne. He even insisted on paying the duties on my cigars—several boxes of Havanas. I always smoke the best cigars, though, thank the Heavenly Powers, I am not a slave to the habit. I suppose every man says that, if for no other reason than to contradict his wife. When everything was arranged, we took our places in the handsome French touring-car, which, like a living thing instinct with
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CHAPTER IV HOME AT LAUSANNE
CHAPTER IV HOME AT LAUSANNE
T HE house stands by itself in a commanding situation on the Avenue de Collanges. It is of dark stone, with bay windows. The front door seemed to me, architecturally, unusually well-proportioned. It was reached by a long flight of steps. It belonged to an old Lausanne family who were good enough to rent it completely furnished. I noticed, in the library, shelves full of interesting books bound in vellum. Interesting? Well, I doubt if I should care to read many of them—they are in Latin for the m
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CHAPTER V GIBBON AT LAUSANNE
CHAPTER V GIBBON AT LAUSANNE
T HE next day it rained. The whole valley was filled with mist. The sudois , as they call the southwest wind, moaned about the windows. But I did not care; explorations or excursions were merely postponed. There would be plenty of time, and it was a pleasure to spend a quiet day in the library. We devoted it mainly to Gibbon and old Lausanne—that is, the Lausanne of Gibbon’s day, and, before we were tired of the subject, I think we had visualized the vain, witty, delightful, pompous, lazy, learn
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CHAPTER VI AROUND THE LAKE LEMAN
CHAPTER VI AROUND THE LAKE LEMAN
I T was a cozy and restful day and pleasant indoors, sheltered from the driving rain. I had a fine romp with the children in the nursery. I was delighted to find that the oldest, Lawrence,—a fine, manly little chap with big brown eyes—was fond of music and was already manifesting considerable talent. The twin girls, Ethel and Barbara, were as similar as two green peas; they were quick-witted enough to see that I could hardly tell them apart and they enjoyed playing little jokes on me. Toward the
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CHAPTER VII A DIGRESSION AT CHILLON
CHAPTER VII A DIGRESSION AT CHILLON
C HILLON is probably the best-known castle in Switzerland. It commands the one pass between the mountains and the lake, and there, in the old days, two horsemen could defend the passage against a host. On Mont Sonchaux, a spur of the high crags of Naye, with Mont Arval rising on the east, and torn with ravines and landslides, between the two torrents, the Veraye and the Tinère, it stands, “a mass of towers placed on a mass of rocks.” We sailed all around, from one side of the bridge to the other
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CHAPTER VIII LORD BYRON AND THE LAKE
CHAPTER VIII LORD BYRON AND THE LAKE
L ORD BYRON , in 1816, landed on this very spot with his friend John Cam Hobhouse. They came over from Clarens, probably in a naue , whose name, as well as its shape, harked back to olden days. Byron wrote about it:— “I feel myself under the charm of the spirit of this country. My soul is repeopled with Nature. Scenes like this have been created for the dwelling-place of the Gods. Limpid Leman, the sail of thy barque in which I glide over the surface of thy mirror appears to me a silent wing whi
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CHAPTER IX A PRINCESS AND THE SPELL OF THE LAKE
CHAPTER IX A PRINCESS AND THE SPELL OF THE LAKE
Y EARS ago I used to know the Princess Kóltsova-Masálskaya, who under the name of Dora d’Istria wrote many stories and semi-historical works. She was a most cultivated and fascinating woman. In her book, “Au Bord des Lacs Helvétiques,” she criticizes Lord Byron’s description of Lake Leman. She says:— “When one comes in the spring to the Pays de Vaud, one does not at first see all the beauty so many times celebrated by poets and travelers. In rereading Byron and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one is incl
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CHAPTER X THE ALPS AND THE JURA
CHAPTER X THE ALPS AND THE JURA
W E spent so much time at Chillon that we decided to put in for the night at Evian; but first we circled round the Ilot de Peilz (or, as some call it, L’Ile de Paix), one of the three artificial islands of the lake, which has none of its own. It was created about the middle of the eighteenth century on the beine . It still bears the three elms which shade its seventy-seven square meters of surface. The waters at one time undermined it and it had to be repaired. Later we got a good look at the ot
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CHAPTER XI THE SOUTHERN SHORE
CHAPTER XI THE SOUTHERN SHORE
B Y a strange coincidence I found in the room where I slept that night a tattered copy of “Anne of Geierstein,” and almost the first thing I turned to the description of an Alpine castle. Now, Sir Walter Scott had never been in the Alps, but his picture of the ruin of Geierstein is quite typical and worth rereading:— “The ancient tower of Geierstein, though neither extensive nor distinguished by architectural ornament, possessed an air of terrible dignity by its position on the very verge of the
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CHAPTER XII GENEVA
CHAPTER XII GENEVA
S HORTLY after we reached the Grand Hôtel des Bergues, which is so beautifully situated on the quai of the same name, it began to rain. My room looked down on the Ile Rousseau with its clustering trees. The five tall poplars stood dignified and disdainful and only bent their heads when a gust of wind swept them; but the old chestnut-trees turned up their pallid green leaves and looked unhappy. Pradier’s bronze monument streamed with raindrops. The white swans ignored the downpour and sailed abou
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CHAPTER XIII SUNRISE AND ROUSSEAU
CHAPTER XIII SUNRISE AND ROUSSEAU
T HE weather showed unusual good humour by clearing in the night. Geneva woke up to bright sparkling sunshine. I went out before breakfast, indeed before sunrise, on the bridge, and had a most glorious view up the lake and up to the very summit of Mont Blanc. White as sugar, it lifted its aerial head into the azure—a solid cloud which looked as if it might at any moment take wings and fly away. A well-informed policeman told me the names of the other peaks: L’Aiguille du Midi, nearly a thousand
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CHAPTER XIV THE CITY OF ROUSSEAU AND CALVIN
CHAPTER XIV THE CITY OF ROUSSEAU AND CALVIN
A PPARENTLY Geneva is prouder of being the Mother of Rousseau than of having adopted Calvin. Both were exiled—Calvin by his enemies; Rousseau by his worst enemy, himself. Calvin, having settled the basis of his theology, built himself on it, never shaken; Rousseau canted and recanted and rerecanted. He was a Protestant; he was a Catholic; he was a free-thinker; he was a deist. Once, at Madame d’Epinay’s, Saint Lambert avowed himself an atheist. Rousseau exclaimed:—“If it is cowardice to allow an
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CHAPTER XV FAMOUS FOLK
CHAPTER XV FAMOUS FOLK
I MMEDIATELY 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 curiositie
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CHAPTER XVI THE ASCENT OF THE DÔLE
CHAPTER XVI THE ASCENT OF THE DÔLE
I CAN see the importance of a knowledge of geology as a basis for the study of history. How do valleys run—north and south or east and west? This inclination conditions sunlight. Where the rocks are hard and impervious there are many small streams; but in a fissured district of chalky rock as in the Jura there are few torrents. There is almost no water in the regions of the upper Jurassic rocks and no temptations for settlers. But the lower and middle Jura, rich in marl, offers excellent pastura
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CHAPTER XVII A FORMER WORKER OF SPELLS
CHAPTER XVII A FORMER WORKER OF SPELLS
A SMALL boulder rolling down into a river may quite change its course. The sand begins immediately to bank up against it; the current is insensibly turned away toward the other side, and from where the boulder began to build a whole new area of intervale may in time spread its bright green pasturage. Such a boulder was Dr. Tissot in Swiss life. He was not by any means the first Lausanne physician to attract patients from abroad. In the Sixteenth Century a Jean Volat de Chambéry, after having bee
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CHAPTER XVIII TO CHAMONIX
CHAPTER XVIII TO CHAMONIX
W HILE I was reading about Madame de Genlis after breakfast one morning, Ruth came into the library and we talked about the advantage of foreign travel. Does the broadening effect come from seeing new scenes or does it proceed from the intercourse which it favours with men and women of entirely different habits and modes of thought? I said that my belief was that a person living in an isolated country town, by reading books of travel, especially those furnished with illustrations, and by attendi
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CHAPTER XIX A DETOUR TO ZERMATT
CHAPTER XIX A DETOUR TO ZERMATT
W HOM should we meet at the hotel at Sion but my friend, Lady Q. She immediately recognized me, and I had the pleasure of presenting to her my niece and her husband. She was on her way to Zermatt and she advised us to leave the car at Visp and take the State Railway over to the region of the Matterhorn. That name amused Will. He asked Lady Q. if we should not be permitted to see the original Vill of the Visp there. Of course Lady Q., being English, saw his joke in a second and thought it very ba
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CHAPTER XX THE VALE OF CHAMONIX
CHAPTER XX THE VALE OF CHAMONIX
W E saw everything that there was to see at Zermatt—the relics of the early climbers in the little museum; the pathetic graveyard where the victims of their mad ambition are commemorated, and the Imfeld relief-maps of the surrounding region. Here I had my first experience in what one might call mountain-climbing by proxy; we took the electric train up to the Gornergrat. Sir John Lubbock says:— “It is impossible to give any idea in words of the beauty of these high snow-fields. The gently curving
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CHAPTER XXI HANNIBAL IN SWITZERLAND
CHAPTER XXI HANNIBAL IN SWITZERLAND
A FEW days later Will and I got to talking about the ancient passages of the Alps. Hannibal’s was the first. We got out a copy of Polybius and read the simple narrative of that almost incredible expedition. Polybius, who was present at the destruction of Carthage, had probably a fairly accurate knowledge of his subject; but to this day it has not been absolutely decided where the great Carthaginian crossed the Alps. One man believes he went by the Little Mont Cenis; a Frenchman argued that he de
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CHAPTER XXII ZÜRICH
CHAPTER XXII ZÜRICH
O NE morning Ruth brought me my mail. Among the letters was one with the postmark Zürich. The superscription was written in a very individual hand, every letter carefully formed. There is a great deal in the claim made that handwriting is an index of character. Preciseness shows in it; the artistic temperament is betrayed by little flourishes; sincerity, craftiness, other virtues, other weaknesses. I knew in a moment that this letter was from my steamer-friend, Professor Landoldt. It was written
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CHAPTER XXIII AT ZÜRICH WITH THE PROFESSOR
CHAPTER XXIII AT ZÜRICH WITH THE PROFESSOR
E ARLY the following morning I started for Zürich by the way of Lucerne. I shall say nothing about that gem of cities now; for, in the first place, it was raining when I arrived there, and, in the second place, I had later an opportunity to spend a fortnight there, or rather in the vicinity, with a college classmate who was occupying a handsome villa situated high up above the lake and affording a marvellous gallery of views from every side. I met him by accident in the railway station and he in
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CHAPTER XXIV ON THE SHORES OF LAKE LUCERNE
CHAPTER XXIV ON THE SHORES OF LAKE LUCERNE
M Y classmate, Ned Allen, was always a dilettante; if he had been obliged to work, he might have accomplished great things; but, though he may have had ambitions, the days of his young manhood slipped away while he travelled all over the world. Then he became disgusted with what he considered unjust taxation, and, converting all his property into income-bearing bonds, so that he had no care or worry, he came to Europe and lived part of the time in his villa on the Lake of the Four Cantons and pa
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CHAPTER XXV LAUSANNE AGAIN
CHAPTER XXV LAUSANNE AGAIN
I N 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 inaccess
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abraham, George D. : The Complete Mountaineer Abraham, George D. : Mountain Adventures at Home and Abroad Agassiz, Louis : A Journey to Switzerland and Pedestrian Tours in that Country Anteisser, Roland : Altschweizerische Baukunst Auvigne, Edmund B. d’ : Switzerland in Sunshine and Snow Bauden, Henry : Villas et Maisons de Campagne en Suisse Bernowilli, A. : Balci Descriptio Helvetiae Bonstetten, Albrecht von : Editor Descriptio Helvetiae Burnet, Gilbert : Bishop of Salisbury. Travels or Letter
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