The Lake of Geneva

by Joseph E. Morris

NYON CASTLE, LOOKING ACROSS THE LAKE TO MONT BLANC.

From Ferney we return to Switzerland, and the shores of the lake, at Versoix, which impresses one disagreeably as dusty and untidy, though the Duc de Choiseul in the eighteenth century destined it as a rival to Geneva. "A pier was built," says Murray, "a Grand' Place laid down, streets running at right angles were marked out; but beyond this the plan was never carried into execution. Hence the verses of Voltaire:

"'A Versoix nous avons des rues,
Et nous n'avons point de maisons.'"

Probably the streets have been long since grassed up; certainly one does not note them in merely passing through as one notes the streets of Winchelsea (where the town, however, was built, though it since has largely perished). At Coppet, which comes next in succession, but before reaching which the Canton of Geneva is exchanged for Canton Vaud, the village, in pleasant contrast, is entirely delightful, with a little church that faces directly on the street, and that has a picturesque flamboyant west front and a delightful little bell-turret. This sleepy little village is the second literary shrine that we encounter on our pilgrimage along the northern shore of Lac Leman; for here, in the ancient château on the slope above the lake, was the home for many years (between 1790 and 1804) of the famous Monsieur Necker, Minister of Finance to Louis XVI., and the occasional home, both then and later, of his still more famous daughter, the Baroness de Staël. Necker, of course, was Genevois by birth, though German by descent, and even Anglo-Irish. According to Carlyle, he was a man of boundless vanity: "Her father is Minister, and one of the gala personages; to his own eyes the chief one ... 'as Malebranche saw all things in God, so M. Necker sees all things in Necker'—a theorem that will not hold." Madame de Staël is perhaps now best remembered for her letters; but it is worth recalling at this moment, when the German genius has again been weighed in the balance and found wanting, that it was her book of German eulogy ("De l'Allemagne," published in London in 1813) that did for the German genius in France something of the same sort of friendly office that Carlyle himself performed for it in England. She is remarkable, too, indirectly, as the subject of an epigram, as neat in its way, and as cutting, as that which we have cited of her father. Napoleon, when he banished her, summed up her talents in a line (it may well have been unjust): "la manie qu'elle a d'écrire sur tout et à propos de rien." She died at Paris in 1817, and is buried here at Coppet; but I have not sought her grave. The château, at any rate, may be easily found, for it stands high above the town, a picturesque old pile, with the delightful mellow colouring—white walls, with gay green blinds, and vast slopes of soft brown roof—that for some odd reason unexplored is never found in England, but obtrudes itself at every turn in Switzerland, or Italy, or France. It is built round a courtyard, the entrance to which is framed outside with masses of wistaria.

From Coppet on to Nyon the way is well enough, with the azure levels of the lake for companion on the right, and with Jura, of a darker blue, like a rampart on the left. Nyon, placed pleasantly just short of the point where the lake broadens suddenly from about three to about seven miles by a huge expansion to the south, and thus at the termination of the so-called Petit Lac, whose littoral we have hitherto followed from Versoix, and less closely from Geneva, is one of those delightful old towns—Rolle and Morges belong to the same category—that lend such grace and character to the Swiss shore of the lake, and have such delightful inland parallels at Aubonne, Morat, and Moudon. Morat, I suppose, though it lacks the glorious lake, and the majestic distant snows, here still visible, of Mont Blanc, must carry away the palm as a triumph of pure mediævalism; but, Morat put aside, there is hardly another small town in Switzerland so wholly delightful as this (the Roman Noviodunum) in its charm of situation, or so rich in varied combination of artificial and natural grace. High above the quays rises the old sixteenth-century castle, the residence of the Bernese bailiffs at a time when Canton Vaud was a mere appanage of Berne, though Geneva still succeeded in maintaining her independence. You may reach it from the shore by a multiplicity of ways—directly, by one of the narrow lanes that climb steeply from the lake; or, less painfully, by the broad terrace walk that rises gradually westward below the old town wall, through avenues of tortured plane-trees of the familiar foreign type, to the pleasant Promenade des Maronniers, with its growth of vigorous chestnuts, and its splendid prospect of lake and mountain. From here, or from the sister terrace that lies to the south of the château, the opposite hills of Chablais are now become noble objects: not merely Mont Blanc himself, always and insistently a king, but lesser rocky heights that lack only summer snow—the Dent d'Oche beyond Evian, the Pointe de Grange and the Cornette de Bise (curiously enough, according to some maps—and anyhow there is only a difference of a mètre—both exactly of the same height, and each of them, still more curiously, just exactly 8,000 feet high) on either side of Abondance, and the pinnacled Roc d'Enfer—to justify as attendant squires to their great and peerless king. On the way between the two terraces is passed the parish church, in part, I think, of the fifteenth century, but with traces of Romanesque. The castle itself, on its sovereign brow, is picturesque enough, with its round towers at the corners (but one is octagonal), and its extinguisher, or pepper-pot, turrets—which are found again in Scotland, who borrowed so industriously from France, but never, I think, in England—and with its curious wooden galleries in an additional courtyard to the east. Inside is the town museum, with some lake village antiquities of the Bronze Age, in addition to the usual banalities of stuffed animals and birds: it is perhaps just worth visiting when the door is open, but hardly when you have to get the key.

THE SAVOY ALPS IN SUMMER. FROM VILLENEUVE.

From Nyon on to Rolle we still keep closely to the lake, though never on its margin, past unfenced woods at intervals that invite us to step aside to hunt for lily-of-the-valley and Solomon's seal in their "green of the forests' night." Always across the water are the solemn, splendid summits of Savoy: always on our left the level line of Jura, which after Rolle, however, retires from the lake to give place to the central plain of Switzerland, which here debouches on the waters till we meet the Alps beyond Lausanne. Rolle is another quaint old town, consisting chiefly of one long, old-fashioned street, with another typical castle placed at its farther end; but in this case both town and castle are built wholly on the level, on the margin of the lake. The Dent-du-Midi is now visible to the right of the Pointe de Grange, but has not yet assumed the isolated supremacy that it wears presently in the landscape, being partly merged for the moment in the company of hills. A little beyond Rolle a turning to the left mounts slowly up the hill past a lonely little burial-ground, and through the rich vineyards of La Côte, to the upland town of Aubonne. I took this road myself on a mild evening towards the close of April, chiefly because I was drawn to Aubonne by what Byron wrote of it in his Journal under date September 29, 1816. "In the evening reached Aubonne (the entrance and bridge something like that of Durham), which commands by far the finest view of the Lake of Geneva; twilight; the moon on the lake; a grove on the height, and of very noble trees. Here Tavernier (the Eastern traveller) bought (or built) the château, because the site resembled and equalled that of Erivan, a frontier city of Persia; here he finished his voyages, and I this little excursion,—for I am within a few hours of Diodati, and have little more to see, and no more to say." I am not sorry that I took this road, for, ever mounting higher, it commands ever wider and wider views of the crescent lake, whose centre we now approach, in both directions, with the glorious Chablais mountains embraced in its noble curve. Aubonne, however, is no more like Durham—I speak, of course, of my own impressions: Byron saw it with different eyes—than any other old town that is perched on the edge of a winding ravine, with a river and bridge at the bottom. Certainly any resemblance it has—I do not admit any—is due to natural situation, and not at all to artificial charm. The parish church, which contains, however, the grave of the great Admiral Duquesne, who is commemorated by a statue in the market square of his native town of Dieppe, is apparently of little architectural interest (I did not get inside), and the castle is of no account at all. Durham to my ignorance has only one real rival, where the great red-brick cathedral and castle of Albi are piled above the Tarn like Durham above the Wear. It is worth your while, however, to make this digression to Aubonne (quite a pretty little town) for the sake of the long ascent from Rolle, through miles of purple vineyard, and for the sake of the journey back to Morges, where we regain the margin of the lake and the main highroad from Geneva to Lausanne. The descent, by way of contrast, is through continuous apple-orchard and meadow, the pink and white blossom floating freely round your shoulders as you pursue the unfenced road in middle spring.