William Dean Howells

“ Wild growths of vines and shrubs break the broad surfaces of the wall, and out of the shoulders of one of the towers springs a tall young fir-tree. The water at its base is intensely blue and unfathomably deep. This is what nature has done; as for men, they have hugely painted the lakeward wall of the castle with the arms of the Canton Vaud, which are nearly as ugly as the arms of Ohio; and they have wrought into the roof of the tallest tower with tiles of a paler tint the word "Chillon," so that you cannot possibly mistake it for any other castle. ”

“ I was enjoying every moment of it, only, when your boat starts, you do not want to stop for a woman to kiss her husband.
Again we were passing the wild Savoyard shore, where the yellow tops of the poplars jutted up like spires from the road-sides, and on the hill-sides tracts of dark evergreens blotted their space out of the vaster expanses of autumn foliage; back of all rose gray cliffs and crags. Now and then we met a boat of our line; otherwise the blue stretch of the water was broken only by the lateen-sails of the black-hulked lake craft. ”

“ Every house has a cherished manure heap in its back yard, symmetrically shaped, with the projecting edges of the straw neatly braided: it is a source of family pride as well as profit. But it is chiefly the odor of world-old human occupation, otherwise indescribable, that pervades the air of Villeneuve, and makes the mildest of foreign sojourners long for the application of a little dynamite to its ancient houses. Our towns are perhaps the ugliest in the world, but how open to the sun and wind they are! ”

“ I can especially recommend the Kursaal at Montreux to my brother and sister fictionists looking about for a pretty entourage. Its terrace is beaten by the billows of the restless lake, and in soft weather people sit at little tables there; otherwise they take their ices inside the café, and all the same look out on the Dent-du-Midi, and feel so bored with everybody that they are just in the humor to be interested in anybody. ”

“ This is natural in a people whose men all are or have been soldiers; and the war footing on which the little republic is obliged to keep a large force in that ridiculous army-ridden Europe must largely account for the abandonment of the peaceful industries to women. But the men are off at the mountain chalets too, and they are away in all lands, keeping hotels, and amassing from the candle-ends of the travelling public the fortune with which all Swiss hope to return home to die. ”

“ The Pays de Vaud is also the land of castles, and the visitor to Vevay should not fail to see Blonay Castle, the seat of the ancient family which, with intervals of dispossession, has possessed it ever since the Crusades. It is only a little way off, on the first rise of the hills, from which it looks over the vineyards on inexpressible glories of lake and distant mountains, and it is most nobly approached through steeps of vine and grove. ”

“ German by name and by origin, these ladies were intensely French in everything else. They felt themselves doomed to exile in their own country, they abhorred their Prussian masters, and they had no name for Bismarck that was bad enough. Our Swiss, indeed, hated him almost as bitterly. Their sympathies had been wholly with the French, and they could not repress a half-conscious dread of his principle of race nationality, which would be fatal to Switzerland, one neither in race nor religion, but hitherto indivisible in her ancient freedom. ”

“ The finish, like that of the castle of Aigle, is rude, but the whole place is wonderfully picturesque and impressive. The arched gateway is alone worth a good rent; the long corridors from which the chambers open are suitable to ghosts fond of walking exercise; the superb dining-room is round, and the floor is so old that it would shake under the foot of the lightest spectre. The répertoire of family traditions is almost inexhaustible, and doubtless one might have the use of them for a little additional money. ”

“ I think the mountains must have had something to do with hushing the people: far and near, on every hand, they rise such bulks of silence. The chief of their stately company was always the Dent-du-Midi, which alone remains perpetually snow-covered, and which, when not hooded in the rain-bearing mists of that most rainy autumn, gave back the changing light of every hour with new splendors, though of course it was most beautiful in the early sunsets. ”

“ At Geneva we had barely time to think Rousseau, to think Calvin, to think Voltaire, to drive swiftly through the town and back again to the boat, fuming and fretting to be off. There is an old town, gravely picturesque and austerely fine in its fine old burgherly, Calvinistic, exclusive way; and outside the walls there is a new town, very clean, very cold, very quiet, with horse-cars like Boston, and a new Renaissance theatre like Paris. The impression remains that Geneva is outwardly a small moralized Bostonian Paris ”

“ At the first Swiss station we quitted it to go to Berne, which was one of the three points where I was told by the London railway people that my baggage would be examined. I forget the second, but the third was Berne, and now at Delemont I looked about for the customs officers with the anxiety which the thought of them always awakens in the human heart, whether one has meant to smuggle or not. Even the good conscience may suffer from the upturning of a well-packed trunk. ”

“ He leaves his force at Chillon, and goes by night to spy out the enemy at Villeneuve, returning at dawn to his people. He came back very gayly; when they saw him so joyous, "What news?" they asked. "Fine and good," he answers; "for, by God's help, if you will behave yourselves well, the enemy is ours." To which they cried with one voice, "Seigneur, you have but to command." They fell upon the barons and the duke, and killed a gratifying number of their followers, carrying the rest back to Chillon, where Peter "used them not as prisoners, but feasted them honorably. ”

“ The trees are felled under government inspection, and the woods are never cut off wholesale. When a tree is chopped down a tree is planted, and the floods that ravage Italy from the mountains denuded of their forests are unknown to the wiser Swiss. Throughout Switzerland the State insures against fire, and inflicts penalties for neglect and carelessness from which fires may result. Education is compulsory, and there is a rigid military service, and a show of public force everywhere which is quite unknown to our unneighbored, easy-going republic. ”

“ Entrance to Villeneuve IV
But one must not be altogether unreasonable. When we first came in sight of the lake the rain lifted, and the afternoon sun gushed out upon a world of vineyards. In other words, the vines clothe all the little levels and vast slopes of the mountain-sides as far up as the cold will let the grapes grow. There is literally almost no other cultivation, and it is a very pretty sight. On top of the mountains are the chalets with their kine, and at a certain elevation the milk and the wine meet, while below is the water of the lake, so good to mix with both. ”

“ It leaves you little ground for classifying Bonivard with the great reformers, but it leaves you still less for identifying him historically with Byron's great melodramatic Prisoner of Chillon. If the Majority have somewhere that personal consciousness without which they are the Nonentity, one can fancy the liberal scholar, the humorous philosopher, meeting the romantic poet, and protesting against the second earthly captivity that he has delivered him over to. Nothing could be more alien to Bonivard than the character of Byron's prisoner ”

“ That a grown man, much more imposingly uniformed than an American general, should blow it to start a real train of cars was the source of patriotic sarcasm whenever its plaintive, reedy note was heard. We had come straight through from London, taking the sleeping-car at Calais, and rolling and bounding over the road towards Basle in a fashion that provoked scornful comparisons with the Pullman that had carried us so smoothly from Boston to Buffalo. ”

“ One morning the most enterprising spirit of our party kindled such a mighty blaze on our chamber hearth that she set the chimney on fire, thus threatening the Swiss republic with the loss of the insurance, and involving mademoiselle in I know not what penalties for having a chimney that could be set on fire. By the blessing of Heaven, the vigor of mademoiselle, and the activity of Louis and Alexis the farmer, the flames were subdued and the house saved. ”

“ The Swiss make their social distinctions as we do; and in Geneva and Lausanne I understood that a more than American exclusivism prevailed in families that held themselves to be peculiarly good, and believed themselves very old.
Our excursions into society at Villeneuve were confined to a single tea at the pasteur's, where we went with mademoiselle one evening. He lived in a certain Villa Garibaldi, which had belonged to an Italian refugee, now long repatriated, and which stood at the foot of the nearest mountain. ”

“ However, the Swiss still keep their old school law, under which each canton taxes itself for education, as our States do, though all share in the advantages of the universities, which are part of the public-school system.
The parties in Switzerland are fortunately not divided by questions of race or religion, but the pasteur owned that the Catholics were a difficult element, and had to be carefully managed. They include the whole population of the Italian cantons, and part of the French and German. ”

“ It is not strange that the native prefers to doze away the night bolt-upright, or crouched into the corners of his repellently padded carriage, rather than toss upon the expensive pallet of the sleeping-car, which seems hung rather with a view to affording involuntary exercise than promoting dear-bought slumber. ”

“ As he trod that vionnet out of the stone he meditated upon his reading, his travels, the state of the Church and its reform, politics, the origin of evil. "His reflections often lifted him above men and their imperfect works; often, too, they were marked by that scepticism which knowledge of the human heart inspires. 'When one considers things well,' he said, 'one finds that it is easier to destroy the evil than to construct the good. ”

“ I believe we are coming to think now that the American schools are better than the Swiss; but till we have organized something like the Swiss school excursions, and have learned to mix more open air with our instruction, I doubt if the Swiss would agree with us. ”

“ They are not pretty to look at, and apparently not pleasant; and it is said that the Swiss, who digest them along with the rest of us, do not like them. In fact, the Germans seem everywhere to take their new national consequence ungraciously.
Besides the foreigners, there is not much to see at Montreux, though one must not miss the ancient church which looks out from its lofty place over the lake, and offers the visitor many seats on its terrace for the enjoyment of the same view. ”

“ The winter and the vintage come on together at Villeneuve, and when the snows had well covered the mountains around, the grapes in the valley were declared ripe by an act of the Commune. There had been so much rain and so little sun that their ripeness was hardly attested otherwise. Fully two-thirds of the crop had blackened with blight; the imperfect clusters, where they did not hang sodden and mildewed on the vines, were small and sour. ”

“ At least they seemed as honest as we were, and that is saying a great deal. What struck us from the beginning was the surliness of the men and the industry of the women; and I am persuaded that the Swiss Government is really carried on by the house-keeping sex. At any rate, the postmaster of Villeneuve was a woman; her little girl brought the mail up from the railway station in a hand-cart, and her old mother helped her to understand my French. ”

“ Two or three centuries later—how quickly all those stupid, cruel, weary years pass under the pen!—the spirit of liberty and protestantism began to stir in the heads and hearts of the burghers of Berne and of Geneva. A Savoyard, Francis de Bonivard, prior of St. Victor, sympathized with them. He was noble, accomplished, high-placed, but he loved freedom of thought and act. Yet when a deputation of reformers came to him for advice, he said: "It is to be wished, without doubt, that the evil should be cast out of our midst, provided that the good enters. You burn to reform our Church ”

“ Castle of Aigle
In the mean time the people in our pension, who were so intelligent and well informed about other things, bore witness to the real security of the State, and the tranquillity of the Swiss mind generally concerning politics, by their ignorance of the name of their existing President. They believed he was a man of the name of Schultz; but it appeared that his name was not at all Schultz, when we referred the matter to our pasteur. ”