LEMAN'S SHRINES
Beloved of Littérateurs—Gibbon—D'Aubigné—Rousseau—Byron—Shelley—Dickens, etc.—Scenes of Childe Harold—Nouvelle Heloïse—Prisoner of Chillon—Land of Byron.
A PILGRIMAGE in the track of Childe Harold brings us from the shores of Albion, by Belgium's capital and deadly Waterloo, along the castled Rhine and over mountain-pass to "Italia, home and grave of empires," and to the sublimer scenery of "Manfred," "Chillon," and the third canto of the pilgrim-poet's masterpiece; to his "silver-sheeted Staubbach" and "arrowy Rhone," "soaring Jungfrau" and "bleak Mont Blanc." We linger with especial pleasure on the shores of "placid Leman," in an enchanting region which teems with literary shrines and is pervaded with memories and associations—often so thrilling and vivid that they seem like veritable and sensible presences—of the brilliant number who have here had their haunts.Haunts of Littérateurs Here Calvin wrought his Commentaries; here Voltaire polished his darts; here Rousseau laid the scenes of his impassioned tale; here Dickens, Byron, and Shelley loitered and wrote; here Gibbon and de Staël, Schlegel and Constant, and many another scarcely less famous, lived and wrought the treasures of their knowledge and fancy into the literature of the world. A lingering voyage round the lake, like that of Byron and Shelley, is a delight to be remembered through a lifetime, and affords opportunity to visit the spots consecrated by genius upon these shores. At Geneva we find the inn where Byron lodged and first met the author of "Queen Mab," the house in which Rousseau was born, the place where d'Aubigné wrote his history, the sometime home of John Calvin. Near by, in a house presented by the Genevese after his release from the long imprisonment suffered on their account, dwelt Bonnivard, Byron's immortal "Prisoner of Chillon," and here he suffered from his procession of wives and finally died. Just beyond the site of the fortifications, on the east side of the city, is an eminence whose slopes are tastefully laid out with walks that wind, amid sward and shrub, to the observatory which crowns the summit and marks the site of Bonnivard's Priory of St. Victor, lost to him by his devotion to Genevan independence. Not far away is the public library, founded by his bequest of his modest collection of books and MSS. which we see here carefully preserved. Here also is an old portrait of the prisoner, which represents him as a reckless and jolly "good fellow" rather than a saintly hero, and accords better with his character as described by late writers than with the common conception of him.
Byron at Villa Diodati
Byron loved this Leman lake, and it is said his discontented sprite still walks its margins; certain it is he remains its poetic genius; his melody seems to wake in every breeze that stirs its surface. The Villa Diodati, a plain, quadrangular, three-storied mansion of moderate dimensions, standing on the shore a few miles from Geneva, was the handsome "Giaour's" first home after his separation from Lady Byron and his exile from England. It had been the residence of the Genevan Professor Diodati and the sojourn of his friend the poet Milton. Pleasant vineyards surround the place and slope away to the water, but there is little in the spot or its near environment to commend it to the fancy of a poet. Byron's study here was a sombre room at the back from which neither the lake nor the snowy peaks were visible, and here he wrote, besides many minor poems, "Manfred," "Prometheus," "Darkness," "Dream," and the third canto of "Childe Harold." Here also he wrote "Marriage of Belphegor," a tale setting forth his version of his own infelicitous marriage; but hearing that his wife was seriously ill, he burned it in his study fire. From here, by instigation of de Stael, he sent to Lady Byron ineffectual overtures for a reconciliation. His companion at the villa was an eccentric Italian physician, Polidori, who was uncle to the poet Rossetti, and who here quarrelled with Byron's guests and wrote "The Vampire," a weird production afterward attributed to Byron. Lovers of Byron owe much to his sojourn on Leman; he found in the inspiring landscapes here, especially in the environment of mountains, a power that profoundly stirred what his wife called "the angel in him." His letters recognize an afflatus breathed upon him by the "majesty around and above," and the quality of the poems here produced shows his yielding and response to that benign influence; many a gem of poetic thought was here begotten of lake and mount and cataract, which otherwise had never been. The insincere stanzas of some of his later poems would scarcely have been written on Leman. As we muse in the spots he frequented—wandering on the entrancing margins or floating on the crystal waters—and look thence upon the snow-crowned peaks, resplendent in the sunshine or roseate in the after-glow, we aspire to not only partake of his rapture in this sublime beauty, but to appreciate the deeper feelings to which it moved him.
Shelley
A villa near Byron's, and reached by a path through his grounds,—Maison Chapuis, of Mont Allegra,—was occupied that summer by the "impassioned Ariel of English verse," with Mary Shelley and her brunette relative Jane Clermont (the Claire of Shelley's journal), who after bore to Byron a daughter called Alba by the Shelleys, but later named by Byron Allegra, for the place where he had known the mother. At Mont Allegra "Bridge of Arve," "Intellectual Beauty," and Mrs. Shelley's weird "Frankenstein" were penned. Here Byron was a daily visitant, and the Shelleys were the usual companions of his excursions upon the lake of beauty, in a picturesque lateen-rigged boat which was the property of the poets and the counterpart of which we see moored by the Diodati shore, looking like a bit of the Levant transported to this tramontane water. The "white phantom" observed by telescopists on the opposite shore to sometimes embark with Byron, and which he gravely told Madame de Staël was his dog, was doubtless the frail Claire. The admonitions of de Staël anent his mode of life provoked Byron to take sure revenge by being attentive to her husband, which the overshadowing wife always resented as an affront upon herself. It is said the poet's observation of this pair prompted the couplet of "Don Juan:"
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"But oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual, Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?" |