Read Ebook: Geneva Painted by J. Hardwicke Lewis & May Hardwicke Lewis. Described by Francis Gribble. by Gribble Francis Henry Lewis J Hardwicke John Hardwicke Illustrator Lewis May Hardwicke Illustrator

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THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 9

THE REFORMATION 13

THE EXPULSION OF THE NUNS 17

THE RULE OF CALVIN 23

THE TRIUMPH OF THE THEOCRACY 29

THE UNIVERSITY 33

PROFESSOR ANDREW MELVILL 39

TH?ODORE DE B?ZE 43

WAR WITH SAVOY 51

THE ESCALADE 53

AN INTERVAL OF QUIET 61

REVOLUTIONS 65

LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 71

SAUSSURE 77

MEN OF LETTERS 89

SONGS AND SQUIBS 93

RELIGIOUS REVIVAL 95

ROMANTICISM 99

LATER MEN OF LETTERS 105

VOLTAIRE 107

VOLTAIRE AND THE THEATRE 111

VISITORS TO FERNEY 119

COPPET 123

FACING PAGE 2. L'?glise de la Madeleine, Geneva. M. H. L. 6

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 Sal?ve, 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 thoroughfares, quays, and bridges; gorgeous public monuments and well-kept public gardens; handsome theatres and museums; long rows of palatial hotels; flourishing suburbs; two railway-stations, and a casino. But all this is merely the fa?ade--all of it quite modern; hardly any of it more than half a century old. The real historical Geneva--the little of it that remains--is hidden away in the background, where not every tourist troubles to look for it.

It is disappearing fast. Italian stonemasons are constantly engaged in driving lines through it. They have rebuilt, for instance, the old Corraterie, which is now the Regent Street of Geneva, famous for its confectioners' and booksellers' shops; they have destroyed, and are still destroying, other ancient slums, setting up white buildings of uniform ugliness in place of the picturesque but insanitary dwellings of the past. It is, no doubt, a very necessary reform, though one may think that it is being executed in too utilitarian a spirit. The old Geneva was malodorous, and its death-rate was high. They had more than one Great Plague there, and their Great Fires have always left some of the worst of their slums untouched. These could not be allowed to stand in an age which studies the science and practises the art of hygiene. Yet the traveller who wants to know what the old Geneva was really like must spend a morning or two rambling among them before they are pulled down.

The old Geneva, like Jerusalem, was set upon a hill, and it is towards the top of the hill that the few buildings of historical interest are to be found. There is the cathedral--a striking object from a distance, though the interior is hideously bare. There is the Town Hall, in which, for the convenience of notables carried in litters, the upper stories were reached by an inclined plane instead of a staircase. There is Calvin's old Academy, bearing more than a slight resemblance to certain of the smaller colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. There, too, are to be seen a few mural tablets, indicating the residences of past celebrities. In such a house Rousseau was born; in such another house--or in an older house, now demolished, on the same site--Calvin died. And towards these central points the steep and narrow, mean streets--in many cases streets of stairs--converge.

As one plunges into these streets one seems to pass back from the twentieth century to the fifteenth, and need not exercise one's imagination very severely in order to picture the town as it appeared in the old days before the Reformation. The present writer may claim permission to borrow his own description from the pages of 'Lake Geneva and its Literary Landmarks':

'Narrow streets predominated, though there were also a certain number of open spaces--notably at the markets, and in front of the Cathedral, where there was a traffic in those relics and rosaries which Geneva was presently to repudiate with virtuous indignation. One can form an idea of the appearance of the narrow streets by imagining the oldest houses that one has seen in Switzerland all closely packed together--houses at the most three stories high, with gabled roofs, ground-floors a step or two below the level of the roadway, and huge arched doors studded with great iron nails, and looking strong enough to resist a battering-ram. Above the doors, in the case of the better houses, were the painted escutcheons of the residents, and crests were also often blazoned on the window-panes. The shops, too, and more especially the inns, flaunted gaudy sign-boards with ingenious devices. The Good Vinegar, the Hot Knife, the Crowned Ox, were the names of some of these; their tariff is said to have been fivepence a day for man and beast.

'The streets, being narrow, were also very generally crowded, and were particularly crowded in the evenings. From the stuffy houses--and even in these days of sanitation a really old Swiss house is sometimes stuffy enough to make the stranger gasp for breath--the citizens of high as well as low degree sallied to take their pleasure in the street. The street was their drawing-room. They stood and gossiped there; they sat about on benches underneath their windows. Or some musician would strike up a lively tune, and ladies of the highest position in society--the daughters and wives of Councillors and Syndics--attired in velvets and silks and satins, would dance round-dances in the open air. For all their political anxieties, these early Genevans were, on the whole, a merry people.

'Our ecclesiastical rescript further proves that while the Genevans were a merry and a dirty, they were also an immoral, people. It records that they are unduly addicted to the game of dice, and that the outcome of this pastime is "fraud, deception, theft, rapine, lies, fights, brawls, and insults, to say nothing of damnable blasphemy"; and it ordains that any man who "swears without necessity" shall "take off his hat and kneel down in the place of his offence, and clasp his hands, and kiss the earth"--or pay a fine of three halfpence if he fail to do so. Then it proceeds to propound an elaborate scheme for the State regulation of immorality, forbidding certain indulgences "to clergymen as well as laymen"; and requiring the Social Evil to wear something in the nature of a Scarlet Letter to distinguish her from other women.'

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 terms of a Charter granted in the Holy Roman Emperor's name by Bishop Adh?mar de Fabri. All went fairly well until the Bishops began to play into the hands of the Dukes; but then there was friction, which rapidly became acute. A revolutionary party--the Eidgenossen, or Confederates--was formed. There was a Declaration of Independence and a civil war.

So long as the Genevans stood alone, the Duke was too strong for them. He marched into the town in the style of a conqueror, and wreaked his vengeance on as many of his enemies as he could catch. He cut off the head of Philibert Berthelier, to whom there stands a memorial on the island in the Rhone; he caused Jean Pecolat to be hung up in an absurd posture in his banqueting-hall, in order that he might mock at his discomfort while he dined; he executed, with or without preliminary torture, several less conspicuous patriots. Happily, however, some of the patriots--notably Besan?on Hugues--got safely away, and succeeded in concluding treaties of alliance between Geneva and the cantons of Berne and Fribourg. The men of Fribourg marched to Geneva, and the Duke retired. The citizens passed a resolution that he should never be allowed to enter the town again, seeing that he 'never came there without playing the citizens some dirty trick or other'; and, the more effectually to prevent him from coming, they pulled down their suburbs and repaired their ramparts, one member of every household being required to lend a hand for the purpose.

Presently, owing to religious dissensions, Fribourg withdrew from the alliance. Berne, however, adhered to it, and, in due course, responded to the appeal for help by setting an army of seven thousand men in motion. The route of the seven thousand lay through the canton of Vaud, then a portion of the Duke's dominions, governed from the Castle of Chillon. Meeting with no resistance save at Yverdon, they annexed the territory, placing governors of their own in its various strongholds. The Governor of Chillon fled, leaving his garrison to surrender; and in its deepest dungeon was found the famous prisoner of Chillon, Fran?ois de Bonivard. From that time forward Geneva was a free republic, owing allegiance to no higher power.

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 Dauphin?. 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 an ecclesiastical procession, and, snatching an image out of the priest's hand, threw it over the bridge into the river. Moreover, as was natural, he included among his devoted followers many evangelists whose zeal was, like his own, conspicuously in excess of their discretion. Of one of them, Pastor Malingre of Yverdon, it is recorded by a contemporary chronicler that 'his methods were not very evangelical--he used to crown the Roman Catholic priests with cow-dung.'

Reform was already in the air when Farel came to Geneva to preach. The new doctrine had been bruited abroad by pedlars from Nuremberg, who ate meat on Fridays, and expressed the opinion that 'the members of the religious Orders ought to be set to work in the fields, that the saints were dead and done for, and that it was nonsense to pray to them, seeing that they could render no assistance.' So we read in Bonivard's 'Chronicle'; but, even so, Geneva was not quite prepared to receive Farel with open arms. He was haled before an ecclesiastical court, and accused of preaching the Gospel in an inappropriate costume--'got up like a gendarme or a brigand.' One burly monk gave him a 'coup de pied, quelque part,' and the monks collectively proposed to throw him into the Rhone; and, though the laity protected him from clerical violence, the Syndic ordered him to quit the town within six hours, as an alternative to being burnt alive. He went, and three years passed before he returned and triumphed in a theological disputation held in the great hall of the Couvent de la Rive.

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 to marry in accordance with the commandment of God'; and the congregation had been so impressed by the discourse that the younger men among the worshippers had climbed up on to the convent wall, and sat there singing amorous songs for the edification of the inmates.

No official action was taken, however, until after the conclusion of the disputation above referred to, though then it followed quickly. Fifteen Reformers, including Farel and Viret, called at the convent, declined the invitation to say what they had to say through the grating, but threatened to force the door if they were not admitted. The door was opened to them, therefore, and all the Sisters being summoned before them in the chapter-house, Farel 'spoke in terms of vituperation of the holy cloister, of religion, of chastity, and of virginity, in a way that went to the hearts of the poor Sisters.' The others kept silence, but M?re Vicaire protested, interrupted, and screamed. Our narrative proceeds:

'She stationed herself between the Sisters and the young men, saying:

'"Since your preacher is such a holy man, why don't you treat him with respect and obedience? You're a pack of young rascals, but you won't make any progress here."

'Whereat they were all indignant, and exclaimed:

'"What the devil is the matter with the woman? Are you mad? Go back to your place."

'"I won't," she said, "until these young men leave the Sisters alone!"'

So M?re Vicaire was put out of the room; and the preacher resumed his discourse on the institution of matrimony. We read that 'when he referred to the corruption of the flesh, the Sisters began to scream'; and that when he spoke of the advantages of married life, the M?re Vicaire, who was listening at the key-hole, began to batter at the panels, exclaiming: 'Don't you listen to him, my sisters; don't you listen to him.' So, after labouring at the conversion of the Sisters from ten o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the afternoon, the Reformers retired discomfited. A crowd of three hundred persons was waiting for them outside the gate, prepared to offer marriage to any nun whom they might have persuaded to accompany them; but they came forth alone, the last to leave being thumped on the back by a nun who desired to hurry his departure.

It transpired, however, that one of the Sisters--'the ill-advised Sister Blasine'--had been converted by the Reformers' arguments. The other nuns tried to detain her, but the citizens broke into the convent and fetched her out in triumph, and also insisted that the convent should provide her with a dowry and pay her damages for the disciplinary whippings inflicted upon her during her membership of the Order. It was the culminating outrage. The nuns decided to leave Geneva, and the Lady Superior applied to the Syndic for an armed escort. The request was granted, and the 'dolorous departure' began. Three hundred soldiers were turned out to see the Sisters safely across the bridge over the Arve, where the territory of Geneva ended. It was the first time since their taking of the veil that they had been outside the convent walls, and some of them had spent all their lives in the cloister and grown old there, so that they were in no fit state to travel thus on foot. Let Sister Jeanne tell us what befell them:

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