Part 2 (2/2)
He was an Englishman named Colonel Williams, who in 1799 was in service with the Zurich government and commandeered a small fleet on Lake Zurich, having orders to oppose with it the French army. When the French, under Ma.s.sena, completely routed the allied armies of Austria and Russia, Colonel Williams calmly watched the battle from the lake.
Then, enraged at his own inaction, he discharged his crews, scuttled his vessels, and took to flight.
CHAPTER V
SOME LITERARY a.s.sOCIATIONS
Switzerland has not produced much native literary genius. The literary a.s.sociations of the land are mostly concerned with strangers who went to it as a land of refuge or as visitors. True, in the thirteenth century Zurich was famous for its poets, for its share in the making of the Nibelungen and the Minnelieder, and for the ”Codex Manesse”--the collection of the works of 150 German and Swiss poets of the day. Again in the days of Rousseau--perhaps the most famous of Swiss writers--there was quite a herd of sentimental novelists at Lausanne. But, on the whole, it cannot be said that the Swiss have shown themselves conspicuously a people of imagination. In war they have a magnificent record: in science and in philosophy a record above the average: in poetry and romance they have little to show. But if colonists and visitors who a.s.sociated themselves strongly with Swiss life be taken into account, then Switzerland becomes one of the most interesting literary centres of Europe.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE STATUE OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU ON THE ISLAND IN THE RHONE, GENEVA.]
From Madame de Stael and her _salon_ at Coppet (to cite one example) what invitations crowd to literary pilgrimages! Madame de Stael was destined by birth for that literary limelight which she loved so well.
Her mother, Mademoiselle Curchod, afterwards Madame Necker, was the charming young Swiss who inspired a discreet pa.s.sion in the stately bosom of Gibbon, the historian of _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. Gibbon had been sent to Switzerland by his father because he had shown leanings towards the Roman Catholic faith. The robust Protestantism of Lausanne was prescribed as a cure for a religious feeling which was not welcome to his family. The cure was complete, so complete that Gibbon was left with hardly any Christian faith at all.
Whether because that left an empty place in his heart, or in the natural order of things, Gibbon took refuge in a love affair, a very discreet, cold-blooded affair on his part; but, judging by the correspondence which has survived, a more serious matter to the girl whose affections he engaged.
Gibbon tells the story of his early love himself, in a letter which is full of unconscious humour, since he writes of it without a tremor and with all the decorous stateliness which he gave to the narrative of a Diocletian:
I need not blush at recollecting the object of my choice; and though my love was disappointed of success, I am rather proud that I was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted sentiment. The personal attractions of Mademoiselle Susan Curchod were embellished by the virtues and talents of the mind. Her fortune was humble, but her family was respectable.
Her mother, a native of France, had preferred her religion to her country. The profession of her father did not extinguish the moderation and philosophy of his temper, and he lived content with a small salary and laborious duty in the obscure lot of minister of Cra.s.sy, in the mountains that separate the Pays de Vaud from the county of Burgundy. In the solitude of a sequestered village he bestowed a liberal, and even learned, education on his only daughter. She surpa.s.sed his hopes by her proficiency in the sciences and languages; and in her short visits to some relations at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; I saw and loved. I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance. She permitted me to make two or three visits at her father's house. I pa.s.sed some happy days there, in the mountains of Burgundy, and her parents honourably encouraged the connection. In a calm retirement the gay vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom, and I might presume to hope that I had made some impression on a virtuous heart. At Cra.s.sy and Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity; but on my return to England I soon discovered that my father would not hear of this strange alliance, and that without his consent I was myself dest.i.tute and helpless. After a painful struggle I yielded to my fate; I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son: my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life. My cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself, and my love subsided in friends.h.i.+p and esteem.
Gibbon was a very pompous gentleman, but a gentleman. He might otherwise, without departing from the truth, have shown that the little Swiss beauty was far more in love with him than he with her, and her tranquillity and cheerfulness in giving him up were of hard earning. She contrived in time to forget the lover who probably would have made her more famous than happy, and married a Mr. Necker, a rich banker of her own country. (Berne at that time was one of the chief financial centres of Europe.) To him she bore the girl who was to be Madame de Stael, as pompous in mind as Gibbon, but somewhat warmer in temperament.
Many years after the romance had died, when Madame Necker was a happy matron, Gibbon, still a bachelor, decided to make Switzerland his permanent home. Motives of economy, not of romance, dictated this choice. In 1783 he moved to Lausanne, where he completed his history, established a literary _salon_, and enjoyed life in spite of somewhat serious attacks of gout. M., Mdme., and Mslle. Necker (the last to become Madame de Stael) were frequent visitors, and he attached himself to Madame Necker by the bonds of a close but strictly Platonic friends.h.i.+p. In 1787 Gibbon completed his famous history, and seems to have contemplated afterwards a marriage ”for companions.h.i.+p sake.” But he never fixed on a lady, and died a bachelor six years after.
During Gibbon's life the Neckers had established their country-seat at Coppet, near Geneva, which was afterwards the seat of Madame de Stael's court. Though born Swiss, Madame de Stael was altogether French in sympathy, detested Switzerland, and was impatient at any talk of its natural beauties. ”I would rather go miles to hear a clever man talk than open the windows of my rooms at Naples to see the beauties of the Gulf,” she said once. Napoleon, as the greatest man of the age, of course, attracted her. I suspect that she would have been a most ardent Napoleonist if he had made love to her. ”Tell me,” she said to Napoleon once, ”whom do you think is the greatest woman in France to-day?” And Napoleon answered, ”The woman who bears most sons for the army.” It was not an ingratiating reply. But Napoleon, who detested the idea of petticoat government and was never inclined to chain himself by any bonds to an interfering and ambitious woman, disliked Madame de Stael: and she in time learned to hate him, and intrigued against the man whom she could not intrigue with. The upshot was exile for her. She was turned out of Paris, much to her rage. On several occasions she sought to return. But Napoleon was inexorable.
She replied to his enmity by industry as a conspirator. Fouche, who speaks of her as ”the intriguing daughter of Necker,” credits Madame de Stael with having been regarded by Napoleon as ”an implacable enemy,” of having been the focus of the Senate conspiracy against Napoleon in 1802, and of being ”the life and soul” of the opposition to him in 1812. It was certainly a remarkable woman who could thus stand up against Napoleon.
Madame de Stael's _salon_ at Coppet became a centre famous over all Europe. Her powers of intrigue supplemented her literary fame, and that was very great and well deserved. As an essayist she has a clear and warm style, and as a writer she could be betrayed into forgetting her personal rancours. There is, for example, no more true criticism of the literary style of Napoleon (who wrote newspaper ”leaders” in his day) than that it was, as de Stael wrote, so vigorous that you could see that the writer ”wished to put in blows instead of words.”
An American traveller who paid a pilgrimage to the shrine of Madame de Stael at Coppet gives this picture of the lady:
Her features were good, but her complexion bad. She had a certain roundness and amplitude of form. She was never at a loss for the happiest expressions; but _deviated into anecdotes that might be an offence to American ears_!
Baron de Voght, who seemingly had not an American Puritanism of ear, wrote more warmly about the famous lady to a mutual friend, Madame Recamier:
It is to you that I owe my most amiable reception at Coppet. It is no doubt to the favourable expectations aroused by your friends.h.i.+p that I owe my intimate acquaintance with this remarkable woman. I might have met her without your a.s.sistance--some casual acquaintance would no doubt have introduced me--but I should never have penetrated to the intimacy of this sublime and beautiful soul, and should never have known how much better she is than her reputation. _She is an angel sent from heaven to reveal the divine goodness upon earth._ To make her irresistible, a pure ray of celestial light embellishes her spirit and makes her amiable from every point of view.
At once profound and light, whether she is discovering a mysterious secret of the soul or grasping the lightest shadow of a sentiment, her genius s.h.i.+nes without dazzling, and when the orb of light has disappeared, it leaves a pleasant twilight to follow it.... No doubt a few faults, a few weaknesses, occasionally veil this celestial apparition; even the initiated must sometimes be troubled by these eclipses, which the Genevan astronomers in vain endeavour to predict.
Still another pen picture of the same lady, from Benjamin Constant, who was her lover for many years and found the burden of maintaining an affection to match hers too great:
Yes, certainly I am more anxious than ever to break it off. She is the most egoistical, the most excitable, the most ungrateful, the most vain, and the most vindictive of women.
Why didn't I break it off long ago? She is odious and intolerable to me. I must have done with her or die. She is more volcanic than all the volcanoes in the world put together.
She is like an old _procureur_, with serpents in her hair, demanding the fulfilment of a contract in Alexandrine verse.
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