The Spell of Switzerland

“Here is the sharp point which gives this peak the name of a tooth. It slopes down steeply and, if anything, bends inward a little; in the depths a little fir-wood valley with fine grassy meadows is shut in; directly beyond lies the valley called Valorbe, where one can see the Orbe springing from the rocks and follow in imagination its downward course under the ground to the little lake.

“The village of Valorbe also lies in this valley.

“Reluctantly we turned to descend. If we could have waited a few hours longer, until the fog in accordance with its custom should have entirely dissipated, we should have been able to distinguish the country still farther down the lake; but in order that enjoyment may be perfect there must still be something left to be desired. Looking down we had the whole valley in all distinctness before us; at Pont we mounted our horses, rode along the easterly side of the lake, came through l’Abbaye de Joux, which is now a village, but was formerly the seat of the monks to whom the whole valley belonged. About four o’clock we reached our quarters and found a meal which our hostess assured us had been good at midday but which we found tasted remarkably good.”

For their return they decided to make the ascent of the second highest peak of the Jura, the Dôle, though it was then supposed to be the highest.

“We packed a luncheon of cheese, butter, bread and wine and started away about eight o’clock. Our route took us now through the upper part of the valley under the shadow of Le Noir Mont. It was very cold; there had been a hoar frost and it had frozen; we had still an hour to ride in the Bernese territory where the chaussée, which has just been completed, comes to an end. We entered French territory, passing through a small fir forest. Here the scene abruptly changes. What first struck our attention was the bad roads. The ground is very stony; great heaps of rocks lay all about; then again for a space it is very swampy and full of springs; the forests all about are in bad condition; the houses and inhabitants have the appearance not exactly of destitution but still of very straitened circumstances. They are almost in the condition of serfs to the Canonici of Saint Claude; they are bound to the soil; many imposts are laid upon them…

“Yet this part of the valley is also a good deal built up. The natives work hard to support themselves and yet they love their country; they are in the habit of stealing the wood from the Bernese peasants and of selling it again in the country. The first district is called Le Bois d’Amont and we passed through this into the parish of Les Rousses, where we saw lying before us the little Lake des Rousses and Les Sept Moncels – seven little connected hills of varied forms, the southern boundary of the valley. We soon came to the new road which leads from the Pays de Vaud toward Paris. We followed it for a while downwards and were soon out of our valley. The bald head of La Dôle lay before us. We dismounted; our horses proceeded along the road to Saint-Cergues, and we kept on our way up La Dôle.

“It was about noon; the sun seemed hot but a cool midday wind was blowing. When, in order to get breath, we turned around to look, we had Les Sept Moncels behind us; we could still see a part of Le Lac des Rousses and built around it the scattered houses of the parish. Le Noir Mont hid from us all the rest of the valley; mounting higher we once more saw the same prospect over La Franche-Comté and nearer to us the last mountains and valleys of the Jura toward the south. We took great pains to avoid allowing some turn in the ascent to give us a prospect of the region for the sake of which we were actually climbing the mountain. I was somewhat troubled by the fog; yet I made favorable prognostications from the aspect of the sky above.

“At last we attained the topmost peak and beheld with the greatest delight that what had been denied us the day before was now vouchsafed to us. The whole Pays de Vaud and Pays de Gex lay before us like a map; all the landed estates with green hedges marked off like the beds of a parterre. We were so high that the heights and depressions of the country in the foreground did not appear. Villages, towns, châteaux, vineyards, and higher up, where forest and Alps begin, châlets, for the most part painted white and bright, shone in the sun. The fog had lifted entirely from Lake Leman; we could see the nearer shore clearly; we entirely looked over the so-called Petit Lac, where the great lake narrows and draws toward Geneva, which lay directly opposite us, and the country beyond, shutting it in, began to disclose itself. Above all, however, the prospect of the ice and snow-mountains asserted its rights.

“We protected ourselves from the cold blast by the shelter of the rocks and let the sun pour down directly upon us; food and drink tasted excellently good! We looked down on the fog as it gradually dispersed; each of us discovered something, or claimed to discover something. Gradually Lausanne began to show with all its châteaux; Vevey and the Castle of Chillon came out distinctly; the mountains that shut us off from sight of the entrance to Valais, sloping down into the lake; from there along the Savoy coast – Evian, Ripaille, Thonon; villages and châteaux, all clustered together; Geneva came finally out of the fog at the right; but farther toward the south, toward Le Mont Crédo and Mont Vuache, where the Fort l’Ecluse lies hidden, it still lingered.

“When we turned to the left again, then the whole country from Lausanne as far as Solothurn lay in a faint haze. The nearer mountains and heights, wherever there were white houses, could be easily recognized; some one pointed out to us the Castle of Chanvan as it lay gleaming at the left by the Lake of Neuburg, and we could make out its situation, but the castle itself we could not distinguish in the blue haze.

“Words fail to describe the magnitude and beauty of this view; at such a moment one is scarcely conscious of gazing; one only calls out the names and lofty forms of well-known cities and places and rejoices in an intoxicating recognition that those white spots before one’s eyes are the places themselves.

“And the ranges of gleaming ice-mountains kept attracting the eye and the soul. The sun turned more toward the west and illuminated their mighty sides. What black shoulders of rock, teeth, towers and walls in multifold ranks swept up from the lake before them! forming wild, monstrous, impenetrable vestibules! As they lie there in their purity and clarity, manifold in the free air, one willingly yields all pretentions to the infinite, since one can never be done with the finite in contemplation and thought (Anschauen und Gedanken).

“Before us we saw a fruitful inhabited land; the soil on which we were standing, a high, bald mountain, still bears grass, fodder for cattle, from which man draws sustenance. This the conceited Lord of the World can claim as his own; but those mountains yonder are like a holy array of virgins whom the Spirit of Heaven cherishes in inaccessible regions for himself alone in everlasting chastity.

“We stayed there, in eager rivalry, striving now with the naked eye, now with the telescope, to make out cities, mountains and localities, and we did not start to descend until the sun in its waning again allowed the fog to spread its evening breath over the lake. Just at sunset we came to the ruins of Le Fort de Saint-Cergues. Even down below in the valley our eyes were still fastened upon the ice-mountains far across. The farthest away, at the left in the Oberland, seemed to be melting in a thin fiery vapor; those nearest still stood with well-marked red sides facing us; gradually they grew white, green, grey. It looked almost disquieting. As a mighty body dies from without in toward the heart, so all of them slowly grew pale up toward Mont Blanc, whose broad bosom still glowed rosy and seemed to preserve for us a reddish glow.

“At last reluctantly now we had to take our departure. We found the horses at Saint-Cergues and, in order that there might be nothing lacking, the moon rose and gave us light on our way to Nyon, while, as we rode, our excited senses once more grew calm and assumed their wonted tone, so that we were able with fresh enjoyment to find pleasure in looking out of the windows of our inn on the wide spreading reflection of the moon in the perfectly unruffled lake.”

It makes one realize the flight of time to read a little farther on of Goethe’s visit to the illustrious De Saussure, through whose initiative the ascent of Mont Blanc was accomplished nearly seven years later. Goethe wanted to assure himself that it was feasible so late in the season to go from Geneva by way of Cluse and Salanches into the Valley of Chamonix and from there by way of Valorsine and Trient into Martinach in the Valais. De Chaussure encouraged him to do so, and in company still with the Duke Charles Augustus of Weimar he made his famous trip which included a visit to Sion and the peak of the Saint-Gothard.

Just a hundred years after Gray and sixty years after Goethe penetrated these mountains still another great poet enriched his imagination by experiences in the Alps. Curiously enough all three of them related their adventures and their sensations in the form of letters. Victor Hugo was at Geneva and at Lausanne in September. He had been at Lucerne, at Bern and upon the Rigi. He, too, was impressed by the wonders of the Alpine mists. He, too, describes a sunset: —

“At this moment the abyss was growing magnificent. The sun was going down behind the notched crest of Pilatus. Its rays rested only on the highest summits of all the mountains and its level rays lay across these monstrous pyramids like golden architraves.

“All the mighty valleys of the Alps were filling with mists; it was the hour when eagles and Lämmergeier seek their eyries.

“I had stepped forward to the edge of the precipice above which rises the cross and from which Goldau is visible. I was alone, with my back turned toward the sunset. I know not what the others were looking at; what I saw was sublime enough for me.

“The immense cone of shadow projected by the Rigi, clearly outlined by its edges and, because of the distance, free from any visible penumbra, gradually mounted, rock by rock, tree by tree, the steep side of the Rossberg. The shadow mountain was devouring the sunlight mountain. This vast dark triangle, the base of which was lost beneath the Rigi and the apex of which was each instant coming nearer and nearer the summit of the Rossberg, has already embraced Art, Goldau, ten valleys, ten villages, half of the Lake of Zug and the whole Lake of Lowerz. Clouds of reddish copper color floated across it and changed into pewter. In the depths of the ravine Art floated in a twilight glow starred here and there by lighted windows. Already poor women were sewing down there by their lighted lamps. Art lives in the night; the sun sets for its inhabitants at two o’clock.

“A moment later the sun had disappeared, the wind blew cold, the mountains were grey. Not a cloud was in the sky. The Rigi had become solitary once more, with a boundless blue sky arching above.

“In one of my earlier letters I spoke of ‘these granite waves called Alps.’ I had no idea I had hit it so accurately. The image which came into my mind appeared to me in all its vividness on the summit of the Rigi after the sun had gone down. These mountains are really billows, but giant billows. They have all the forms of the sea; there are green, dark swells, which are the crests covered with evergreens; blond and earthy seas, which are the granite slopes gilded with lichens; on the loftiest undulations the snow is torn off and falls in masses into black ravines as the foam does. You might think you saw a mighty ocean solidified in the midst of a tempest by the breath of Jehovah.

“What would become of the horizon and the mind of man should these enormous billows be suddenly set in motion again?”

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 been a Protestant minister at Lonay, practised medicine and became famous, and in 1543 Jacques Blécheret was named médecin to the city. But all before or since were insignificant compared to the great Dr. Tissot, whom a well-known lady of his day in her enthusiasm called the god of medicine. My nephew declared that his very name carried with it a sound of infallibility – which was certainly subtle. He brought me a copy of Tissot’s famous book: “Avis au Peuple sur sa Santé.” The first edition came out in August, 1761, and it was soon translated into German, Dutch, Flemish, English, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Hungarian, Russian, Spanish and Polish. It was dedicated “Aux très-illustres, très-nobles, et magnifiques Seigneurs les Seigneurs Presidens et Conseilers de la Chambre de Santé de la Ville et Republique de Berne.”

It was a vade mecum for people who lived far from doctors. “Il faut seigner” was one of his prescriptions: in those days they resorted to heroic measures; vésicatoires– whether made with Spanish flies or not does not appear – were recommended for sore eyes; Hofmann’s drops for catarrhal fevers, stomach-cramps, colds and bronchitis. Every one talked about Tissot and his remedies. He had them drink mineral waters, especially recommending those of Rolle which he said had a styptic taste and were “bonne pour obstructions du foie et de rate, les galles, dartres, et autres maux de la peau.” He gave excellent advice about cleanliness and fresh air.

It was needed in those days, for if quackery is rampant in this our day of grace, how much more flagrant was it then. Some of the remedies were amazing. Here is a decoction warranted to restore the vital forces and animate the mind: It is made up of aloes from the island of Socotora, a gross of Zodoaire, a gross each of gentian, safran, fine rhubarb, thériaque de Venise; all which when compounded was to be powdered, sifted through a parchment sieve; then when it should have fermented nine days in the shade, shaken night and morning, it was to be put into a pint of brandy. Another doctor claimed to cure the stone by a dose of tartines de miel for breakfast and supper; that sounds more appetizing than a decoction of Italian scorpions. Madame de Sévery had an attack of nerves: Dr. Tissot gave her for this unpleasant malady a bitter bouillon made of dandelion, chicory and soapwort. But his chief recommendation was to eat slowly and chew carefully – an anticipation of Fletcherism.

Auguste Tissot, of an old Italian family which came to Vaud in 1400, was born at Grancy in March, 1728. He was educated at l’Isle by his uncle, a Protestant pastor. Then he studied medicine at Montpellier, and early won a reputation by his skill in curing smallpox. He was a pronounced advocate of inoculation and wrote a book about it. He became a professor at Lausanne in 1766 and both the King of Poland and Maria Theresa tried in vain to woo him away to be their court physician. George III wanted him in England. Napoleon wrote him about his gouty uncle. He attended Frederic the Great in his last illness. Venice offered him a chair in the University of Padua. Finally, through the friendly offices of the Emperor Joseph II, whom he had cured, he was induced to become a professor in Pavia, where he gave lectures in Latin for two years and then resigned to return to his beloved Lausanne. After his death in 1797 the Pavians erected a monument to him. Angelica Kauffman at Rome painted the portrait of him which is still at the Château de Crissier. The picture portrays him with gallooned buttons; he holds a pen in his hand and his mouth is slightly parted. Under an engraved portrait of him is this stanza: —

“Son cœur chérit l’humanité,Son esprit le guide et l’éclaire;Profond dans ses secrets, en instruisant la terreIl vole à l’immortalité.”

He married a daughter of the learned Professor d’Apples de Charrière, who brought him only four thousand livres.

Tissot was the magnet that attracted the magnates. They came from all lands and were of every rank: – “the Englishes” came, haughty lords and ladies of high degree; French financiers, to say nothing of ducs and vicomtes; German princes and kings and emperors in state or incog. The streets, narrow, and not at that time well fitted for carriages, were often blocked, and lively scenes took place; postilions would be swearing in every known tongue, children squealing, horses falling and threatening to roll down to Ouchy, whips cracking, and, as always, the small boy taking great delight in the excitement. One day an Irish prelate came in an equipage of three six-horse coaches, preceded by many lackeys; then arrived a Russian princess with hard face, witty and cultivated, speaking all languages. Some one tried to point out to her the beauty of the view; elle méprisait tout.

Another of his patients was la Comtesse de Brionne, widow of the Prince Louis de Lorraine, beloved by the Duc de Choiseul; she stayed in Lausanne a long time with her son, the Prince de Lambesc. Another was the Countess Potocka, regarded as the loveliest woman in the world and rousing wonder and admiration by her extraordinary head-dresses, one of which was compared to the beautiful city of Lausanne – with its three hills, la cité en aigrette, La Rue du Pré represented by the parting in the middle, the Faubourgs de Saint-François and d’Estraz by the two papillons or butterfly arrangements and the Rue de Bourg by a ribbon.

In 1792 the Princess Alexander Liubomirska came. Her maître d’hôtel was overheard uttering some impertinences about the government and the bailiff had him arrested and put into jail. The princess was wrathful and uttered worse impertinences, declaring that the country was governed by tyrants. M. d’Erlach, who was really a great wit and quite broad-minded, remarked that in a tête-à-tête he could bear any sort of reproaches from a pretty woman but devant le monde– that was another matter.

He gave the princess orders to leave town within twenty-four hours. She hastened to Paris vowing that she would raise an army and come back to avenge herself and her outraged maître d’hôtel.

Prince Gregory Orlof, the favourite of Catharine the Great, came with a suite of twenty-one, and his wife, the Princess Orlova-Zinovieva, who in spite of the doctor’s remedies died there and was buried in the Cathedral. In 1782 the Duke of Gloucester, brother to George III, came with a numerous suite and the asthma. He swore he would give an arm or a leg to be free of it. He was very ill-favoured but good-natured. His morganatic wife was with him – a tall, handsome, cold-looking lady – also a little girl of nine and as a companion to her a Lady Carpenter who was also haughty and handsome, with a mouthful of superb teeth which she liked to show when she laughed. The Grand Duke Paul of Russia came as Comte du Nord and put up at the Lion d’Or Inn with his wife Marya Feodorovna, Princesse de Würtemberg. As a special favour it was permitted to see them eat. That was a part of the menagerie of royalty. They went up to Le Signal where they had luncheon like ordinary mortals, and they slept at Vevey. In 1782 the Princesse de Courland, first wife of the much married Pierre de Courland, died at Mon Repos, much regretted for her charity and the lavish expenditure in which she indulged. She, too, was buried in the Cathedral. Another of Dr. Tissot’s patients was the terrible dandy Baron Auget de Montyon, intendant to the Duc d’Auvergne. Years afterwards he founded the Montyon prizes for a virtue which he did not possess. Of course Dr. Tissot was frequently called in to assuage the discomforts caused by Gibbon’s “ebullitions” of the gout.

In Eynard’s “Life of Tissot” there is an amusing account of Gibbon’s dancing the minuet: —

“A German highly educated, but naturally ardent and enthusiastic, presented himself, furnished with excellent letters of recommendation, to one of our professors at Lausanne, and expressed to him his desire to make the acquaintance of the immortal author of the ‘Avis au Peuple.’ The professor was going that evening to visit Madame de Chavrière, who received the most agreeable people of Lausanne. He proposed to the gentleman to introduce him there; it was in the country.

“At the moment when they arrived at Madame de Chavrière’s the company had just been playing games and were paying the forfeits. One of the company was playing on a violin, while a gentleman of remarkable corpulence appeared to be searching the room for something he could not find. At length the violin gave forth louder sounds, and the stout gentleman – it was no less a personage than the illustrious Gibbon – came and took the hand of M. Tissot, whose figure, tall, dignified, and cold, formed the most complete contrast with his own. But this was not enough; the violin continued to play, and they were both obliged to dance several figures of a minuet, to the great delight of the whole assemblage. It was the payment of a forfeit due from Gibbon, whose jovial temperament readily lent itself to this form of pleasantry.

“But the German whose sensibility and emotion at this spectacle had been plainly visible did not realize what it meant. The following year there was great astonishment at Lausanne to learn that he had taken it all seriously and that in the account of his travels which he had just printed, he cited as one of the most remarkable of his experiences the advantage of having seen the celebrated historian of Rome and the illustrious philanthropist, the benefactor of humanity, intertwining dances and harmonious steps, thus recalling the beautiful days of Arcadia, all whose antique virtues and simplicity they possessed.”

It is evident that Tissot was not only the physician to all these great people; they were proud to own him as a friend. And since most of his friends and patients were rich his rivals charged him with being a charlatan and occupied only in making money. He did make money, and some of his titled patients sent him splendid presents.

Among the most interesting of M. Tissot’s fair consultants was the lively and piquante Madame de Genlis who arrived at Lausanne with her father-in-law. She spent nearly a fortnight under his care, but the fêtes, the balls, the concerts at which she displayed her charming voice, and played the harp, the sails on the lake, the trips across to La Meillerie, and a multitude of other dissipations might well have undone all the doctor’s prescriptions. But they were for her mother not for her. Madame de Genlis had long sworn by his medical book. She tells in her memoirs how she practised, in an amateur way, on or among the villagers. M. Racine, the barber, always came to consult with her whenever any one was ill.

“We went together to visit them,” she says. “My prescriptions were confined to simple teas and broths which I usually sent from the château. I was at least instrumental in moderating the zeal of M. Racine for the emetics which he prescribed for almost every ill. I had perfected myself in the art of bleeding; the peasants often came and asked me to bleed them which I did; but as it was known that I always gave them from twenty-four to thirty sous after a bleeding, I soon had a great number of patients and I suspected that they were attracted by the thirty sous.”

She gives an entertaining account of her arrival at Lausanne, where, as she was sitting in her carriage, wearily waiting for her servant to find lodgings, the young Prince of Holstein recognized her and introduced her to Madame de Crousaz, the authoress, who procured for her at the house of her father-in-law, M. de Crousaz, “charming rooms with an enchanting view of the Lake of Geneva.”

CHAPTER XVIII

TO CHAMONIX

WHILE 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?