Francis Henry Gribble

“ Had the aim been bad, Geneva would have fallen that night beyond a doubt. But the aim was good, and the shot broke the ladders into pieces, so that no one could climb by them any more; and there was Lieutenant-General d’Albigni with his army helpless in the moat, while the storming party was caught in a trap within the walls. The citizens snatched up their weapons, and hurried down, half dressed, to give them battle in the dark. ”

“ Such old men of science as Conrad Gesner, and such modern men of science as Huxley and Tyndall, have shown us with what striking effect it can be worked. It is because de Saussure worked it so well that his writings still live, though, regarded merely as textbooks, they have long since been superseded.
The humanity of the man is continually flashing out at us in the reflections and anecdotes with which he illustrates the manners of the strange peoples in the strange places which he visited. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One finds this vein of poetry in the writings of84 most men of science—naturally, seeing that they used gifts of imagination differing from those of the poet only in being disciplined and chastened, and ready to submit to the thraldom of the established fact. Sometimes, indeed, the vein of poetry has interfered with business, as in the case of the ingenious Scheuchzer, who laid himself out to prove that there were dragons in the Alps, or, in a less degree, in the case of Buffon. But, whether it interferes with business or not, there the vein of poetry almost always is. ”

“ They carried with them faggots and hurdles to help them over the moat, ladders that could be dovetailed together to scale the rampart with, and axes and crowbars for breaking down or forcing gates. A Scotch Jesuit, named Alexander, gave them his benediction as they climbed, and handed to every man an amulet which purported to guarantee him in the first instance against being killed, and in the second instance against being damned eternally if he were killed. ”

“ Composition is his principal amusement. No author who writes for daily bread, no young poet ardent for distinction, is more assiduous with his pen, or more anxious for fresh fame, than the wealthy and applauded Seigneur of Ferney. ”

“ It was, indeed, at Geneva that Jean Jacques received from his aunt the disciplinary chastisement of which he gives such an exciting account in his ‘Confessions’; and he once returned to the city and received the Holy Communion there in later life. But that is all. Jean Jacques was not educated at Geneva, but in Savoy—at Annecy, at Turin, and at Chambéry; his books were not printed at Geneva, though one of them was publicly burnt there, but in Paris and Amsterdam; it is not to Genevan but to French literature that he belongs. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Each compromise did something to improve the position of the Uitlanders; but no compromise really removed their grievances or satisfied their claims.
This brings us to the date of the French Revolution, which, as was inevitable in the circumstances, had its very audible repercussion at Geneva. The doctrine that ‘all men are equal before the law, and ought to enjoy the same political rights,’ was seed which fell there upon a fruitful soil. ”

“ The ordinary curriculum consists of instruction in the three most excellent languages, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, not to mention the French language, which, in the opinion of the learned, is by no means to be despised. ”

“ In this field, as in the field of theology, d’Alembert, with his encyclopædia article, stirred Camerina. He said that it was a pity that comedy should be neglected in such a centre of civilization, but added that the thing that the Genevans dreaded was not the demoralizing influence of plays, but the dissolute behaviour of players. And he suggested that this difficulty be got over by means of stringent regulations as to the conduct of comedians. By this means, he said, Geneva might have both good morals and good theatres, and derive as much advantage from the one as from the other. ”

“ She is an angel sent from heaven to reveal the divine goodness127 upon earth. To make her irresistible, a pure ray of celestial light embellishes her spirit and makes her amiable from every point of view. ”

“ Rousseau had set the fashion; Ramond83 de Carbonnière, the philosopher of the Pyrenees, was ready to carry it on; de Luc and Bourrit were doing what they could. De Saussure wished to announce himself as the disciple of none of these, but as the plain man who had made a careful study of his subject, and wished to be heard because of what he had to say and not because of his manner of saying it. He hardly understood that he was, in the full sense of the word, a man of letters—a literary artist. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 to marry in accordance with the commandment of God’ ”

“ Life at Geneva being duller than he liked, M. de Beauteville adopted the suggestion. The comedians were introduced; a theatre was arranged for them; and Voltaire could chuckle again. The divines thundered. ‘Children,’ they declared, ‘will be badly brought up; domestic discords will trouble families more and more; young men and young women will occupy themselves with nothing but comedy and vainglorious display; the love of pleasure, vanity, and pride will be their favourite emotions ”

“ 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 centre of the range, and travelled in the Jura, the Vosges, and the mountains of Dauphiné. His marriage—he married young—by no means hindered him from climbing. ”

“ Our business here, however, is not with the politician, but with the traveller and the man of science. His widest celebrity is no doubt due to his famous ascent of Mont Blanc. If he was not the first man to climb that mountain, he was, at any rate, the first to believe that it could be80 climbed. Bourrit, as late as 1773, had written of ‘the absolute impossibility of attaining to its summit.’ De Saussure, as early as 1760, had offered a reward to anyone who could find a way to the top, and undertaken to pay a day’s wages to anyone who tried and failed. ”

“ Jean Jacques is115 ‘valet to Diogenes,’ who ‘has played in vain the part of an addle-pated idiot’; if Jean Jacques comes to Ferney, he shall be stuffed into a barrel, and presumably rolled downhill—which proves, even if it proves nothing else, that, when philosophers fall out, they are apt to wrangle in much the same language as less intellectual people.
Yet, on the whole, Voltaire was steadily winning the victory. The Council, it is true, forbade the citizens to attend his theatre ”

“ It was proposed that a deputation should wait upon the magistrates ‘to inform them how scantily they provide for their clergy in times when everything is dear, the fact being that even ministers with no families but only wives to support are absolutely unable to live upon their salaries.’ But the proposal was rejected on the ground that the magistrates were already aware of the distress of the clergy, and could do little to help them, and that it would never do for it to be said that the clergy had applied for increased emoluments at a time of general impoverishment. ”

“ Religion there—unless it be among the common people—is reduced to the worship of one God; a certain respect for Jesus Christ and the Scriptures is, perhaps, the only thing that distinguishes the Christianity of Geneva from pure Deism.’
This in the city of Calvin. It was as though the encyclopædist had stirred a hornets’ nest. To change the metaphor, the fat was in the fire, and the flame blazed up at once. ”

“ He lives in a very hospitable manner, and takes care always to have a good cook. He generally has two or three visitors from Paris, who stay with him a month or six weeks at a time. When they go, their places are soon supplied, so that there is a constant rotation of society at Ferney. These, with Voltaire’s own family and his visitors from Geneva, compose a company of twelve or fourteen people, who dine daily at his table, whether he appears or not.... All who bring recommendations from his friends may depend upon being received, if he be not really indisposed. ”

“ Those who gave short measure in the market, and those who spoke evil of the magistrates, were alike mulcted in the interests of learning; the heaviest contribution was that exacted from a bookseller convicted of having charged an excessive price for a copy of the Psalms of David. A second method consisted in summoning all the notaries of the town before the Council, and instructing them, when any citizen called them in to make his will, to impress upon the testator the desirability of bequeathing something to the University ”

“ They were truly fugitives rather than immigrants; that is to say, they had fled empty-handed, travelled in hourly terror of their lives, and arrived in a state of utter destitution. Let it be added that there were 2,300 of them, and that contemporary statistics show that there were in Geneva, at that period, only 1,200 householders. Imagining the sudden influx of 2,300 paupers into a town of the size of Sandwich, one begins to realize the economic situation thus created. To realize it completely one must further remember that Geneva was already on the verge of bankruptcy ”

“ The Burghers enjoyed political rights, and the Uitlanders did not; the gulf between the two classes was only occasionally passed by an exceptional Uitlander whom the Burghers considered ‘fit.’ By degrees, however, the Uitlanders became more numerous than the Burghers, and a form of government which had been a democracy became an oligarchy, in which many of the most intelligent and reputable citizens had no voice. ”

“ THE STATUE OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU ON THE ISLAND IN THE RHONE, GENEVA, FROM HOTEL DES BERGUES
The name of which the Genevans are proudest is91 probably that of Rousseau, who has sometimes been spoken of as ‘the austere citizen of Geneva.’ But ‘austere’ is a strange epithet to apply to the philosopher who endowed the Foundling Hospital with five illegitimate children; and Geneva cannot claim a great share in a citizen who ran away from the town in his boyhood to avoid being thrashed for stealing apples. ”

“ We find persons burnt alive for witchcraft at the beginning of the period, but not towards the end of it; we hear of doubts diffusing themselves as to the efficacy of torture in extracting the truth from witnesses; and we find even heresy dealt with less rigorously than of old. ”

“ The people who wanted to live dissolute lives allied themselves with the people who wanted unleavened bread to be used for the Holy Communion; and the coalition was powerful enough to get Calvin and Farel first forbidden to meddle with politics, and then ordered to leave the town within three days. ”

“ C Madame de Staël’s daughter, afterwards Duchesse de Broglie.
‘Your sublime friend looks and gives life to everything. She imparts intelligence to those around her. In every corner of the house some one is engaged in composing a great work.... Corinne is writing her delightful letters about Germany, which will no doubt prove to be the best thing she has ever done.
‘The “Shunamitish Widow,” an Oriental melodrama which she has just finished, will be played in October; it is charming. Coppet will be flooded with tears. Constant and Auguste are both composing tragedies ”

“ In spite of discomfort, however, hard work was the order of the day. A letter has been preserved from M. de Bèze, the Rector of the University, to37 the parent of a pupil, in which he says: ‘I fear I shall be able to make nothing of your son, for, in spite of my entreaties, he refuses to work more than fourteen hours a day.’ The ordinary curriculum did not call for quite such persistent application as that, but was, none the less, sufficiently severe. ”

“ The Chapter complains that too many citizens dispose of their slops by carelessly throwing them out of window, and establish refuse-heaps outside their front-doors—a noisome practice which still prevails in many of the Swiss villages, though no longer in any of the Swiss towns. It is also complained that nearly every man has a pig-sty, and lets his pigs run loose in the streets for exercise, and that there is an undue prevalence of such unsavoury industries as the melting of tallow6 and the burning of the horns of cattle. ”

“ Andrew Melvill had been teaching in a college at Poictiers, and the town had been besieged by the Huguenots. Then—
‘The siege of the town being raised, he left Poictiers, and accompanied by a Frenchman, he took journey to Geneva, leaving books and all40 there, and carried nothing with him but a little Hebrew Bible in his belt. So he came to Geneva, all upon foot, and as he had done before from Dieppe to Paris, and from that to Poictiers; for he was small and light of body, but full of spirits, vigorous, and courageous. ”

“ THE GLACIERS DES BOSSONS, CHAMONIX
‘Resolved,’ runs the entry, ‘to hand them over to M. de Bèze, that he may cause them to be given such a fustigation as will prevent them from doing it again.’
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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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Charles Bonnet, the entomologist; Bérenger and Picot, the historians; Tronchin, the physician; Trembley and Jallabert, the mathematicians; Dentan, minister and Alpine explorer; Pictet, the editor of the Bibliothèque Universelle, still the leading Swiss literary review; and Odier, who taught Geneva the virtue of vaccination.
It is obviously impossible to dwell at length upon the careers of all these eminent men. As well might one attempt, in a survey on the same scale of English literature, to discuss in detail the careers of all the celebrities of the age of Anne. ”

“ Andrew, perceiving that they had no wish for poor folks, being already overlaid therewith, said:
‘“No, no; we are not poor! We have as much as will pay for all we take as long as we tarry. We have letters from his acquaintance to Monsieur de Bèze; let us deliver those, we crave no further.”
‘And so, being convoyed to Beza and then to their lodging, Beza perceiving him a scholar, and they having need of a Professor of Humanity in the College, put him within two or three days to trial in Virgil and Homer ”

“ A worthy woman, who was making soup for an early breakfast, flung the scalding fluid, saucepan and all, out of window on to the heads of the intruders. Other missiles were showered upon them from other windows; while the number of armed men who faced them in the open steadily increased. In the end, after inflicting upon the Genevans a loss of seventeen killed and twenty wounded, they were swept back into the moat, leaving many dead and thirteen prisoners behind them.
A Simon Goulart (1543–1628) was a Frenchman, who accepted the Reformation in 1565, and came to Geneva in 1566. ”