The name of which the Genevans are proudest is 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 can not claim a great share in a citizen who ran away from the town of his boyhood to avoid being thrashed for stealing apples. 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, tho' one of them was publicly burned there, but in Paris and Amsterdam; it is not to Genevan but to French literature that he belongs.
We must visit Voltaire at Ferney, and Madame de Staël at Coppet. Let the patriarch come first. Voltaire was sixty years of age when he settled on the shores of the lake, where he was to remain for another four-and-twenty years; and he did not go there for his pleasure. He would have preferred to live in Paris, but was afraid of being locked up in the Bastille. As the great majority of the men of letters of the reign of Louis XV. were, at one time or another, locked up in the Bastille, his fears were probably well founded.
Moreover, notes of warning had reached his ears. "I dare not ask you to dine," a relative said to him, "because you are in bad odor at Court." So he betook himself to Geneva, as so many Frenchmen, illustrious and otherwise, had done before, and acquired various properties—at Prangins, at Lausanne, at Saint-Jean (near Geneva), at Ferney, at Tournay, and elsewhere.
He was welcomed cordially. Dr. Tronchin, the eminent physician, cooperated in the legal fictions necessary to enable him to become a landowner in the republic. Cramer, the publisher, made a proposal for the issue of a complete and authorized edition of his works. All the best people called. "It is very pleasant," he was able to write, "to live in a country where rulers borrow your carriage to come to dinner with you."
Voltaire 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 travelers of mark from every country in the world. Those of the travelers who wrote books never failed to devote a chapter to an account of a visit to Ferney; and from the mass of such descriptions we may select for quotation that written, in the stately style of the period, by Dr. John Moore, author of "Zeluco," then making the grand tour as tutor to the Duke of Hamilton.
"The most piercing eyes I ever beheld," the doctor writes, "are those of Voltaire, now in his eightieth year. His whole countenance is expressive of genius, observation, and extreme sensibility. In the morning he has a look of anxiety and discontent; but this gradually wears off, and after dinner he seems cheerful; yet an air of irony never entirely forsakes his face, but may always be observed lurking in his features whether he frowns or smiles. 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. 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. He often presents himself to the strangers who assemble every afternoon in his ante-chamber, altho they bring no particular recommendation."
It might have been added that when an interesting stranger who carried no introduction was passing through the town, Voltaire sometimes sent for him; but this experiment was not always a success, and failed most ludicrously in the case of Claude Gay, the Philadelphian Quaker, author of some theological works now forgotten, but then of note. The meeting was only arranged with difficulty on the philosopher's undertaking to put a bridle on his tongue, and say nothing flippant about holy things. He tried to keep his promise, but the temptation was too strong for him. After a while he entangled his guest in a controversy concerning the proceedings of the patriarchs and the evidences of Christianity, and lost his temper on finding that his sarcasms failed to make their usual impression. The member of the Society of Friends, however, was not disconcerted. He rose from his place at the dinner-table, and replied: "Friend Voltaire! perhaps thou mayst come to understand these matters rightly; in the meantime, finding I can do thee no good, I leave thee, and so fare thee well."
And so saying, he walked out and walked back to Geneva, while Voltaire retired in dudgeon to his room, and the company sat expecting something terrible to happen.
A word, in conclusion, about Coppet!
Necker[63] bought the property from his old banking partner, Thelusson,
for 500,000 livres in French money, and retired to live there when the
French Revolution drove him out of politics. His daughter, Madame de
Staël, inherited it from him, and made it famous.