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GENEVA
GENEVA
THE ALPS Painted by A. D. M’Cormick Described by Sir Martin Conway Containing 62 full-page Illustrations in Colour Price 20/- net ( Post free, price 20/6 ) MONTREUX Painted by J. Hardwicke Lewis and May Hardwicke Lewis Described by Francis H. Gribble Containing 20 full-page Illustrations in Colour and a Sketch-Map Price 7/6 net ( Post free, price 7/11 ) OUR LIFE IN THE SWISS HIGHLANDS By John Addington Symonds and his daughter Margaret With 16 full-page Illustrations in Colour by J. Hardwicke Le
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OTHER BOOKS ON SWITZERLAND
OTHER BOOKS ON SWITZERLAND
THE UPPER ENGADINE Painted by J. Hardwicke Lewis Described by S. C. Musson Containing 20 full-page Illustrations in Colour Price 6/- net ( Post free, price 6/4 ) A. AND C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON...
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GENEVA
GENEVA
PAINTED BY J. HARDWICKE LEWIS & MAY HARDWICKE LEWIS DESCRIBED BY FRANCIS GRIBBLE LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1908...
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CHAPTER I OLD GENEVA
CHAPTER I OLD GENEVA
Towns which expand too fast and become too prosperous tend to lose their individuality. Geneva has enjoyed that fortune, and has paid that price for it. Straddling the Rhone, where it issues from the bluest lake in the world, looking out upon green meadows and wooded hills, backed by the dark ridge of the Salève, with the ‘great white mountain’ visible in the distance, it has the advantage of an incomparable site; and it is, from a town surveyor’s point of view, well built. It has wide thoroughf
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CHAPTER II THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
CHAPTER II THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
In the first half of the sixteenth century occurred the two events which shaped the future of Geneva: Reformation theology was accepted; political independence was achieved. Geneva, it should be explained, was a fief of the duchy of Savoy; or so, at all events, the Dukes of Savoy maintained, though the citizens were of the contrary opinion. Their view was that they owed allegiance only to their Bishops, who were the Viceroys of the Holy Roman Emperor; and even that allegiance was limited by the
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CHAPTER III THE REFORMATION
CHAPTER III THE REFORMATION
The Reformation occurred simultaneously with the political revolution; and the informal historian, who is under no compulsion to take a side, is inevitably impressed less by the piety of the Reformers than by their uproarious behaviour. Their leader—the ringleader in their disturbances—was Farel, a hot-headed Frenchman from Gap, in Dauphiné. He hounded the people on to wreck the churches; he invaded the pulpits of other preachers without invitation, and confuted them therefrom; he once broke up
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CHAPTER IV THE EXPULSIONS OF THE NUNS
CHAPTER IV THE EXPULSIONS OF THE NUNS
The Sisters had long been exposed to annoyance by Reformers of the baser sort. One such Reformer, having occasion to call at the convent on some municipal business, had insisted on washing his hands in the holy water, and had boasted, when he got outside, that he had been privileged to kiss the nuns all round—‘a foul lie,’ says Sister Jeanne, ‘for he did not even attempt to kiss any one of us.’ Another Reformer had preached against them, declaring that they ought to be ‘turned out and compelled
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‘The Laws and Statutes of Geneva.
‘The Laws and Statutes of Geneva.
‘Item, that none shall play or run idly in the streets during the time of Sermons on Sundays, nor days of prayer, nor to open their shops during the sermon time under pain without any favour.’ ‘Item, that no man, of what estate, quality, or condition soever he be, dareth be so hardy to make, or cause to be made, or wear hosen or doublets, cut, jagged, embroidered, or lined with silk, upon pain to forfeit.’ ‘Item, that no Citizen, Burger, or Inhabitant of this City dareth be so hardy to go from h
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CHAPTER VI THE TRIUMPH OF THE THEOCRACY
CHAPTER VI THE TRIUMPH OF THE THEOCRACY
Such was the constitution in theory; and, if we want to see it at work, we have only to turn to the Register of the Consistory, in which we may read how the citizens were punished for peccadilloes. One woman, we find, got into trouble for saying her prayers in Latin, and another for wearing her hair hanging down her back. One man was punished for wearing baggy knickerbockers in the street; a second for offering his snuff-box to a friend during the sermon; a third for talking business to a neighb
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CHAPTER VII THE UNIVERSITY
CHAPTER VII THE UNIVERSITY
In Old Geneva education had been neglected. Emperor Charles IV. had offered the citizens a University in the fourteenth century, and the offer had been rejected for fear, it was alleged, lest the students should behave uproariously. The first public school was not opened in the town until 1429. It lasted for about a hundred years, and then fell upon evil times during an epidemic of the plague. The head master ran away from the contagion, and the City Council ordered the building to be closed, on
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CHAPTER VIII PROFESSOR ANDREW MELVILL
CHAPTER VIII PROFESSOR ANDREW MELVILL
It does not appear that the fustigations at first formed brilliant scholars. The University was, for a long time, more famous for its professors than for its pupils. Few learned men, at that period, were regarded as prophets in their own countries; and a goodly proportion of those who were so regarded had to emigrate for fear of being stoned. Many of the fugitives settled at Geneva, and taught there; and the readiness of the welcome accorded to the men who were considered suitable may be illustr
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CHAPTER IX THÉODORE DE BÈZE
CHAPTER IX THÉODORE DE BÈZE
Calvin died and was buried with his fathers—not before it was time, in the opinion of a good many of his critics—and was succeeded in the dictatorship by Théodore de Bèze, whose name is commonly latinized as Beza. The two men had always worked well together; but they differed widely both in their antecedents and in their dispositions. Calvin, a theologian from his earliest years, had had no hot youth, no unregenerate days. Monsieur de Bèze, born of a good old Burgundian family, had been a man of
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CHAPTER X WAR WITH SAVOY
CHAPTER X WAR WITH SAVOY
The situation righted itself by degrees, with the help of subscriptions from other Swiss cities; but then there was another deadly peril to be faced. The pretensions of Savoy were not yet extinguished. The Duke was still determined to capture Geneva, whether by violence or by stealth, believing that the act would be equally advantageous to the Church and to himself. Two attempts to ‘rush’ the town in time of peace—once by means of soldiers who were to enter concealed in barges laden with wood, a
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CHAPTER XI THE ESCALADE
CHAPTER XI THE ESCALADE
The time was December, 1602. Duke Charles Emmanuel had secretly crossed the mountains, and established his head-quarters at Etrembières; a sufficient army had been quietly mobilized; there were 800 Savoyards, 1,000 Spaniards, 400 Neapolitans, and 4,000 Piedmontese at Bonne, La Roche, Bonneville, and other places near Geneva. The Duke had also been at pains to allay suspicion by assuring the Genevans, through his agents, that he desired nothing more than to be on friendly terms with them. But at
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CHAPTER XII AN INTERVAL OF QUIET
CHAPTER XII AN INTERVAL OF QUIET
M. de Bèze was succeeded in the Presidency of the Venerable Company of Pastors by Simon Goulart—the warrior whom we have seen excusing himself for not fighting against the Duke of Savoy on the ground that he had no coat of mail. In his new office, however, Simon needed no armour, for the period from the Escalade of 1603 to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 was quiet and uneventful. The great name of the epoch was that of Jean Diodati, Milton’s friend, the theologian who pulverized th
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CHAPTER XIII REVOLUTIONS
CHAPTER XIII REVOLUTIONS
The Transvaal troubles which culminated in the South African War may furnish an analogy which will help to make the situation clear; the story being, in fact, a long story of acrimonious relations between Burghers and Uitlanders. The Burghers were, in the main, the descendants of the families already possessed of the rights of citizenship in the half-century following the Reformation; the Uitlanders were the descendants of immigrants who had settled in the city since that period. The Burghers en
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CHAPTER XIV LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
CHAPTER XIV LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
It has been remarked as curious that the Age of Revolution at Geneva was also the Golden Age—if not of Genevan literature, which has never really had any Golden Age, at least of Genevan science, which was of world-wide renown. The explanation probably is that these Genevan revolutions, over which the Genevan historians have spilt such a quantity of ink, were not such very important matters after all. So far as one can make out, the graver of them were hardly more grave than the Peterloo massacre
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CHAPTER XV SAUSSURE
CHAPTER XV SAUSSURE
Horace Benedict de Saussure, who, like so many eminent Genevans, was of French extraction, was born in 1740. Nominally, his work in life, entered upon at the age of twenty-two, was that of Professor of Philosophy at the Geneva University; but his real work, continued almost until his death, was that of the explorer, student, and exponent of the mountains. Some time before the end he was able to boast that he had crossed the Alps by eight different passes, made sixteen other excursions to the cen
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CHAPTER XVI MEN OF LETTERS
CHAPTER XVI MEN OF LETTERS
We have spoken of the literature of science. In the literature which is an art, and an end in itself, Geneva never excelled; and if we look for reasons, we can find several. The first difficulty was with the language. French came to the Genevans as a foreign tongue at a time when their men of learning wrote Latin and their populace spoke a Savoyard patois; and, even to the present day, few of them avoid a certain provincial awkwardness in the handling of it. Anyone who wishes to see the proof ha
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CHAPTER XVII SONGS AND SQUIBS
CHAPTER XVII SONGS AND SQUIBS
Perhaps it is in song and satire that Geneva has done best. ‘Roulez, tambours,’ is not the only Genevan song that has passed the Genevan frontier; and Geneva, in fact, has always been ready to burst into song, whether serious or sarcastic, in connection with the topics of the day. The Reformation itself was heralded by satirical verses. A species of burlesque entitled a ‘sottie’ was, in those days, a favourite form of entertainment. The general character of these compositions may be gathered fro
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CHAPTER XVIII RELIGIOUS REVIVAL
CHAPTER XVIII RELIGIOUS REVIVAL
‘Réveil’ is Swiss for Revivalism. The movement was the Genevan analogue of our Wesleyan Methodism, though it did not begin till more than five-and-twenty years after John Wesley’s death. The originator of it was the Scotch evangelist, Robert Haldane. He came to Geneva, made the acquaintance of the theological students, and was surprised and shocked. ‘Had they been trained,’ he writes, ‘in the schools of Socrates or Plato, and enjoyed no other means of instruction, they could scarcely have been m
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CHAPTER XIX ROMANTICISM
CHAPTER XIX ROMANTICISM
About 1830 the Caveau Genevois broke up. Some of its members were dead, some had left Geneva, some were growing too old for poetry, and some were going in for politics. But as the old school faded away, a new school—the Romantic School—was dawning. Poets arose who acknowledged Lamartine for their father and Victor Hugo for their elder brother. They are not really important, but Marc Monnier, in ‘Genève et ses Poètes,’ has made them intensely interesting. The greatest poet among them was Etienne
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CHAPTER XX LATER MEN OF LETTERS
CHAPTER XX LATER MEN OF LETTERS
One would be tempted, if space permitted, to say something of the later literary luminaries of Geneva: of Amiel, the ‘virtuous Don Juan,’ as his friends called him, who, after living rather a futile life, acquired posthumous fame through his ‘Journal’; of Cherbuliez, the novelist, once very popular, though now somewhat out of fashion; of Marc Monnier, the sparkling and versatile father of Dr. Philippe Monnier who has inherited his wit; of Toepfer, author of ‘Nouvelles Genevoises,’ described by o
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CHAPTER XXI VOLTAIRE
CHAPTER XXI VOLTAIRE
Voltaire was sixty years of age when he settled on the shores of the lake, where he was to remain for another four-and-twenty years; and he did not go there for his pleasure. He would have preferred to live in Paris, but was afraid of being locked up in the Bastille. As the great majority of the men of letters of the reign of Louis XV. were, at one time or another, locked up in the Bastille, his fears were probably well founded. Moreover, notes of warning had reached his ears. ‘I dare not ask yo
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CHAPTER XXII VOLTAIRE AND THE THEATRE
CHAPTER XXII VOLTAIRE AND THE THEATRE
Another bone of contention was found in Voltaire’s passionate devotion to the theatre. His tastes were shared by the ‘advanced’ set at Geneva; but the divines, in spite of their broad views on matters of dogmatic theology, still held narrow views on the subject of the drama. Dramatic performances, whether public or private, were not allowed upon Genevan soil; while performances given close to the frontier, on the territory of Savoy or France, caused the ministers many searchings of heart. There
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CHAPTER XXIII VISITORS TO FERNEY
CHAPTER XXIII VISITORS TO FERNEY
While Voltaire was vexing the citizens of Geneva, he was also enjoying the veneration of all educated Europe, and even of educated America. He corresponded regularly with at least four reigning sovereigns, to say nothing of men of letters, Cardinals, and Marshals of France; and he kept open house for travellers of mark from every country in the world. Those of the travellers who wrote books never failed to devote a chapter to an account of a visit to Ferney; and from the mass of such description
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CHAPTER XXIV COPPETT
CHAPTER XXIV COPPETT
A word, in conclusion, about Coppet! Necker bought the property from his old banking partner, Thelusson, for 500,000 livres in French money, and retired to live there when the French Revolution drove him out of politics. His daughter, Madame de Staël, inherited it from him, and made it famous. Not that she loved Switzerland; it would be more true to say that she detested Switzerland. Swiss scenery meant nothing to her. When she was taken for an excursion to the glaciers, she asked what the crime
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