The Lake of Geneva

Front matter

FHE LAKE OF

GEN E Vi%"""

9:

Preface

4PPAiRENTLY no book in English deals— from the / % point of view of the present-day traveller — with the Lake of Geneva as a whole. One work will concern itself with the Swiss side and another with the shores of Savoy, the two countries being regarded as unassimilable. Modern facilities in travelling have made the two shores one, and, moreover, the history of the district can hardly be appreciated unless it be considered as a whole.

I have included two places — ^Abondance and Gruyeres — which are not on Lac Leman because few who come to the Lake fail to visit these ancient towns, since it is from the Lake that they are both most conveniently reached.

I am indebted to the management of the Etablissement des Bains at Evian for access to a library of over two hundred volumes dealing exclusively with the Lake and with Savoy. Extensive use has been made of the admirable Dictionnaire Historique du Canton de Vaud, the publication of which has just been completed.

FREDERICK TREVES.

Vevey, February, 1922.

Contents

4. Geneva : The Old Buildings and the Alleys

A. FROM GENEVA TO THE DRANSE

11. Two Legends of Ripaille .

II

GENEVA, when seen for the first time, should be seen from the Lake. To arrive at the railway station and be conveyed through featureless streets in an hotel omnibus is merely to gain an impression of a town that may be any town, may be Lyons or Marseilles or such other city as has the names of its streets inscribed in French,

The visitor would expect to find something very distinctive about Geneva, if he be one of those who hold that human characteristics are influenced or determined by environment. He would insist that there must be something unusual about the aspect, position or surroundings of Geneva to account for its history and its pronounced individuality. What is there in the topography of the place that can explain its ponderous gravity, its love of learning, its hatred of the trivial, its passion for reform, and its general dourness?

Geneva seems never to have had a childhood, much less a frivolous youth. It has always appeared to be old and solemn beyond its years. From its earliest days it clamoured for liberty at the time when its neighbours were quite content with their dukes and their kings. While other towns had their tournaments and courts of love, Geneva was poring over its books. While the girl of Savoy was slyly dropping rose leaves on a troubadour, the maiden of Geneva was sitting at the feet of a droning preacher. While its gates were closed to the jester and the mountebank, they were open to the fanatic and the crank; for Geneva was ever a sanctuary to the man with a grievance, to the honest rebel and to all who were oppressed. There has passed along the streets of this city as strange a company of men as ever haunted the shades of Dante's Purgatorio, wild-eyed men who went by shaking their fists at a world of wrong, men too who were aflame with the spirit of destruction and the breaking up of laws, as well as smiling men who, as they passed, muttered to themselves of a new heaven and a new earth.

What mark has all this emotion left upon Geneva, or what is there about the disposition of the town that can explain its exceptional temperament.^ The answer is : There is nothing.

Approached from the Lake, Geneva appears as a brilliant city at the end of an avenue of shining water bounded by green banks. Here the Lake terminates and here the city shuts in the scene, as if the sheet of water were a stage. The houses are drawn across from shore to shore like a dam. They form an unbroken wall and yet at some point the Rhone must be breaking through to make its escape to the sea; but of any such gap there is no sign. About the place is a sense of finality, a sense of having come to the end of things, for over the tops of the houses that close the Lake there is nothing to be seen but the sky. The dam might be built on the brink of the world and beyond it there may be nothing but space into which the Rhone drops like a waterfall.

On nearer approach the briUiancy of Geneva becomes more evident. The houses are lofty and bravely coloured and present a wide front of thousands of windows and thousands of sun-blinds. There is nothing to suggest academic solemnity or puritanical gloom. On a hillock to the left are the towers and spire of a church, but beyond this Geneva would appear to be composed of gay and magnificent hotels. In the matter of cheerfulness and worldliness it may be an inland Nice or a lake-side Monte Carlo.

A fuller acquaintance with Calvin's home shows it to be a fine ambitious city, beautifully ordered and modern in every particle of its being. Geneva, like Lausanne, has long carried on a crusade against all that is old within its boundaries. Old Geneva has practically vanished, except in a few by-ways and corners; while in its place is a reformed city which is evidently determined never to put new wine into old bottles.

That Geneva is still a place of refuge may be gathered from the fact that, although the population of the Canton is 151,000, only 50,000 of this number are Genevese, while 39,000 are Swiss of other Cantons and no fewer than 62,000 are foreigners.

The passing away of old Geneva is to be deplored, as it was a town of peculiar fascination. Ruskin speaks of it as ''the most lovely spot, and the most notable, without any possible doubt, of the European universe," as " SL bird's nest of a place, the centre of religious and social thought and of physical beauty to all hving Europe."^ Happily very many prints and old accounts exist of Geneva as it ,was, so that it is possible to

1 " Praeterita." 8 reconstruct, in imagination, the city of ancient days.^ It consisted of two parts joined by a bridge over the Rhone. The part on the north side — the Quartier St. Gervais — was small and occupied a very low hillock; while the south part — the Quartier St. Pierre — was large and covered a dome-shaped hill of some height. Both parts of the town were surrounded by a wall and a moat. The wall was made formidable by many towers and pierced by many gates. Of the moat, the gates and the towers all traces have disappeared, but of the ancient walls there are still some meagre relics to be seen, as in the Rue d' Italic and the Rue de Beauregard.

Mediaeval Geneva was a small place. The confines of the south town may be indicated at the present day by the lake-side, the Rue d'ltalie, the Rue des Casemates, the foot of the Rue de la Croix Rouge and the Corraterie; and the boundaries of the smaller town by the quay, by the Rue des Terreaux du Temple, the Cornavin and the Rue de Chantepoulet.

Inside the Quartier St. Pierre there are feeble traces of even an older town, the almost forgotten Burgundian town, for after the passing away of the Romans Geneva became, in 443, the capital of the Kingdom of Burgundy. Gondebaud, the most famous and most disreputable of the early Burgundian kings, built a castle in Geneva in the Bourg-de-Four and surrounded the town with a wall. About 534 the Franks possessed the place, but at the end of the ninth century it was annexed by the new

1 " Voyage pittoresque en Suisse," par fimile Begin. Paris, 1852. " Switzerland," by Wm. Beattie. London, 1834. " Les Actes et Gestes Merveilleux de la Cite de Geneve," par A. Fromment (written in 1550). Geneva, 1854. *' Le Tour du L^man," par A. de Bougy. Paris, 1846. " Beaut^s de I'Histoire de la Savoie et de Geneve," par P. Nougaret. Paris, 1818. ** L'Ancienne Geneve," par J. Mayor. Geneva, 1896.

Burgundian kingdom under Rodolfe I. In 1038 — on the death of Rodolfe III — ^it passed into the possession of the German Empire, and thus is explained how the Imperial eagle on a yellow ground became a part of the arms of the city. The wall that enclosed the old Burgundian town ran to the east of the Cathedral and the Bourg-de-Four, followed on the north the Une of the Rue Calvin, and extended towards the Rhone as far as the Tour de Boel. Fragments of this old wall appear in the Rue du Manege, Rue de Bemont, the alleys of the Rue de la Pelisserie and the north face of the Rue Calvin.

The bridge was a remarkable feature of Geneva. It was interrupted by an island, as it is to this day. It was of wood, and was crowded with wooden houses which hung perilously over the Rhone. They did more than this. They waded out into the river on piles, some venturing as far as a hundred feet. They formed a curious medley of taverns and private houses, of shops and primitive factories, for in certain of the dwellings there was a water-wheel whirling under the ground floor. The houses were all gaily decorated, and the roadway was made brilliant by swinging shop-signs and the signboards of inns, with perhaps, now and then, the coat of arms of a noble resident. As the structure was of wood, it is no wonder that, on a certain day in 1670, the bridge and all that was on it was burned to the water's edge.

About a century ago Geneva was the delight of everyone who had eyes to see. There was no city like it, old travellers were wont to assert. Shelley was about the only visitor of note who could find ''nothing in it that can repay you the trouble of walking over its rough

lO

GENEVA: THE LAST OF THE PENTHOUSES stones."^ He complained, too, that the gates were closed at 10 p.m. (The chief gates were demolished in 1831.) To Ruskin it was always " the dear old decrepit town." He describes it, in his '' Praeterita," as '* a little town, composed of a cluster of watermills, a street of penthouses, two wooden bridges, two dozen of stone houses on a little hill, and three or four perpendicular lanes up and down the hill." He found, however, another bridge over the moat. It was '' the delicatest of filiform suspension bridges," he says, '' strong enough it looked to carry a couple of lovers over in safety, or a nursemaid and children, but nothing heavier."

Old prints and drawings (such as those of Henri Silvestre) show what an exceedingly picturesque place it was, with its untidy river banks, its piratical-looking lanes, its tumbledown mills, its ancient dwellings with their great overshadowing roofs and wooden balconies, while the river-side houses hung over the water like a line of old clothes clinging to pegs.

Perhaps the most striking and unique feature of Geneva in those days were the penthouses. They stood high up under the eaves of the dwelling, where they formed part of the fifth story. They were supported on immensely tall square pillars of wood which sprang from the street. They sheltered the houses from sun and rain. There is only one penthouse left in Geneva. It is in the Rue de la Cite (No. 5). It consists of one towering square pillar which supports a room on the fifth story. The little room, which has two windows, looks like a dovecote on a pole. I can imagine it occupied by a boy who had faith in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.

1 " History of a Six Weeks' Tour/' London, 1817. II

Those who are unmoved by new municipal buildings, palatial hotels and super-modern shops will find the most interesting part of Geneva in the Musee d'Art et Histoire, where will be seen, among a superb collection of old prints, two large models of the town as it appeared in 1815 and 1850 respectively. In the same museum also are deposited innumerable relics which have come down from the days of the lake-dweller and the Roman occupation to the sober times of the nineteenth century. Here will be seen a prehistoric boat and its paddles, old furniture, old ceilings, old tavern signs, old ironwork, as well as a medley of little things that recall the intimate life of the serious city. Notable in the collection are two street doors, one a splendid piece of woodwork of the sixteenth century from the Rue de la Pelisserie, and another from the Rue Calvin which is covered with the burnt-in stamps of various revolutionary clubs. Among these writings in red-hot iron are a heart enclosing the word " constant," the cap of liberty on a staff with the doubtfully sincere word ''pax," the frequently recurring design of two fish, and many monograms and initials.

One feature in Geneva that curiously impresses the visitor is the sight of the Rhone rushing through the town. There is some inscrutable magic in this spectacle, for I have watched a perspiring tourist tearing along the quay with guide-book in hand and with evidently not a moment to spare. I have seen him cast a glance over the parapet at the Rhone and suddenly stop, to forget his haste, and possibly his lunch, and to gaze on the river with the absorption of a mesmerized man. It is difficult to say what constitutes the fascination of this amazing stream. It is an effect compounded of many things, of the terrific speed at which the tide whirls by, of its haunting colour — a spectral blue — and of its gigantic volume, for it seems as if this outrush must empty the Lake in a day.

The sight of the Rhone at Geneva made a great impression upon Ruskin, who explains its enchantment in the following fine passage :

" For all other rivers there is a surface, and an underneath, and a vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom. But the Rhone flows like one lambent jewel ; its surface is nowhere, its ethereal self is everywhere, the iridescent rush and translucent strength of it blue to the shore, and radiant to the depth. Fifteen feet thick, of not flowing, but flying water; not water, neither, — melted glacier, rather, one should call it ; the force of the ice is with it, and the wreathing of the clouds, the gladness of the sky, and the continuance of Time. Waves of clear sea are, indeed, lovely to watch, but they are always coming or gone, never in any taken shape to be seen for a second. But here was one mighty wave that was always itself, and every fluted swirl of it, constant as the wreathing of a shell . . . the never-pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, and neverhushing whisper."

In the place of the two bridges of Ruskin 's time there are now seven. They are all temperately ugly. In the middle of the river, as it leaves the Lake, is a pleasant little island called, in old days, the He des Bergues, or Isle of Barges. It is shaded by trees and forms a cool retreat from the whirl of traffic and the buzz of life along the quays. It is occupied by an unpretentious cafe and a pretentious statue of Rousseau, by reason of which it is called Rousseau's Island. It brings those who come here in very intimate association with the wonder of the river; since, but for the lack of movement, it might be a raft anchored in the torrent.

It is, moreover, a place frequented by sea-gulls. These birds are an agreeable feature in the life of the Lake. Their migration every year is a matter of mystery. They go ; but no one knows whither, for the nursery of the race is still a secret place. The birds are becoming demoralized. Their proper occupation is jfishing; but now that the tourists have taken to feeding them with bread they have neglected that industry. Instead of following the fish in the Lake, they prefer to follow the steamers, to haunt the quays and to subsist on the unemployment dole which is so lavishly bestowed. They will soon become, like the pigeons of Venice, a company of tourist-supported idlers.

If the average visitor were advised that there is, in a public park in Geneva, a new and recently erected monument to the Reformation he would probably express gratitude for the warning and add that there were already enough recent memorials in England and France to satisfy the most morbid craving. Yet this is a monument so remarkable and so impressive that it is worth a pilgrimage to see it.

It consists of a long stone wall of great height. At the bottom of the wall runs a stream, clear as crystal, in a channel of stone. There are lilies in flower in the stream. Above the wall rises the old city of Geneva. In the centre of the wall stand erect four gigantic figures of men. They are the four leaders of the Reformation — Farel, Calvin, Beze and Knox. They are solemn enough and grim enough; while their immense proportions give them the aspect of superhuman strength.

J

They stand, side by side, with their backs to the wall. It is, however, no mere wall ; for behind it is the curtain of the ancient bulwarks, that wall of 1543 which kept safe the town. It is the wall that faces Rome.

Along the vast screen are other figures, smaller and, by comparison, less significant. Among them are Cromwell, the courtly Coligny and plain, honest Robert Williams. There are also bas-reliefs depicting various scenes in the development of the Reformation between the years 1536 and 1602. All these are of interest, but they do not disturb the impression made by the four stern-faced men who stand with their backs to the wall that faces Rome.

Ill

THE heart of Geneva is L'lle, a little island on the Rhone, where the old bridge crossed between the two quartiers of the town. There was a bridge here before the days of Christ, for Julius Caesar found it stemming the river when he came to this part in B.C. 58. On the south of the Rhone at that date were vague people called the AUobroges, and on the north the equally vague Helvetes. Caesar had already dealt .with the AUobroges, but the Helvetes were giving trouble, were apt to swarm over the bridge and were indeed making themselves exceedingly offensive; so the Roman general caused the bridge to be broken down and thus stopped their activities. This transaction is recorded on a stone in the wall of the modern tower which now stands on the island. This tower, which is pleasing enough for a structure that has no reason for being a tower, occupies the site of a very old castle or keep which came to be, at one time, the Bastille of Geneva. Here was confined the heroic patriot Berthelier, and at the foot of the tower he was beheaded. This was in 1519, as a very theatrical statue calls to mind.

The bridge opens upon the Place Bel Air, which was at one time known as the Square of the Three Kings from a tavern of that name. Professor Doumergue

i6 states that in this spot the punishment of the pillory was administered as late as 1811.^

The Low Town is represented by a series of parallel streets which run east and west in a line with the quay. These streets were once the most picturesque in Geneva, for here were the penthouses. They have now been entirely rebuilt and are devoted to rows of ambitious shops. Even the quaint old alleys which, only a few years ago, crept between the Rue du Marche or Rue de la Croix d'Or and the Rue du Rhone have vanished or have been robbed of any interest.

The Fusterie, the Molard and the Place de Longemalle — now busy squares — were once inlets from the Lake where ships discharged their cargoes. At the Lake end of the Molard was a tower which (very much renovated) still remains. From the iron rod on the summit of its roof dangles a small key, a quite ordinary front door or cupboard key. This is still the subject of some surmise. Professor Doumergue thus comments on it : " The key may be that of the Rive Gate sent to the Duke of Savoy in 1602, concealed in a turkey, by a traitor." 2 A key, it might be added, forms a part of the arms of Geneva, but it is a large key, appropriate to a castle keep, and not to a china closet.

The High Town is reached by steep streets which all inevitably lead to the Town Hall, the Cathedral and the Bourg-de-Four. Of these streets the Rue de la Cite has probably seen more of the past hfe of Geneva than has any other. At the bottom of the street is the fountain of the Escalade, erected in 1857. It is a pleasant-look-

1 " Geneva Past and Present." Geneva. (No date. A most excellent guide-book, marred only by the lack of an index.) 2 Qp^ cit., page 21.

C ly ing monument of stone, alive with little bronze figures which are very busy in making vivid the tale they have to tell. It is placed where it is because on the night of December 11, 1602, when the attempt to seize the city was made, this small street was in the very thick of it.

Near the fountain is the sole remaining penthouse in Geneva, of which mention has been already made (page 11). In the alley No. 18 is a fine example of the old balconied house. The building has four stories above the ground floor. Each of these is provided with a deep and spacious wooden balcony with well-turned railings. The four balconies are one above the other and represent the entries to as many different residences. In another alley (No. 19) is a good specimen of the tall staircase tower which is so common in old Genevese dwellings. In the Place du Grand Mezel, higher up the street, Bonivard lived after his release from the prison of Chillon. It is now a little Place of superior private houses.

Near the top of the hill the Rue de la Cite changes its name to the Grande Rue. No. 40 in this street was the birthplace — as a tablet declares — of Jean Jacques Rousseau (June 28, 1712). The ancient house is replaced by a quite new building, belonging, appropriately enough, to a company of printers. About this point the Rue de la Pelisserie stumbles up into the Grande Rue. It is a narrow, dingy street of poor but picturesque houses, many of which are of some age. It is so steep a street that at the bottom it has recourse to a flight of steps in order to accomplish the ascent. At No. 11 is a doleful alley. It ends in a court that is mysterious and mean

i8

GENEVA : RUE CALVIN and suggestive of a trap. Here the visitor is brought suddenly face to face jvith a mass of mouldy masonry. This is a part of the old Burgundian wall very dramatically presenting itself. Near the top of the Rue de la Pelisserie is a large private house (No, 18). It is the best house in the street, possesses four stories, has a quite dignified entrance and the aspect of being well-todo. It is not old, nor has it a claim to any architectural beauty, but it was here that George Eliot stayed from October, 1849, to March, 1850. She lodged with a family named Durade, the husband being an artist. She had a bed-sitting-room, took her meals with the Durades and paid for this lodging and board 150 francs a month, including light. She was the only lodger. She hired a piano. Lunch was at 12.30, dinner at 4 and tea at 8.^

Turning out of this street is the Rue Calvin, a sober, narrow street which is making its way to the Cathedral. It ends in a tiny square where are a fountain and a tree and where people come to rest ; for it is as quiet as a convent courtyard. In a house (No. 11), near to this little square, Calvin lived. It is needless to say that the house has been pulled down.^ It is represented now by a glaring new building which announces itself as the ofiice of the Board of Health and offers to test milk and other articles of consumption as well as to inspect weights and measures. It is remarkable that no memorial of Calvin exists, if exception be made of the questionable chair in the Cathedral — " not a room, not a piece of furniture," writes Doumergue, *' not even a gravestone."

1 " George Eliot's Life," by J. W. Cross, London, 1885.

2 It was demolished in 1706.

In the Rue du Puits St. Pierre, leading out of the Rue Calvin, is the famous Tavel house (No. 6). This is one of the most perfect of the old city houses. It is a square, solid building, supported at one corner by a round tower with a conical roof. The windows have been modernized, although their original outlines are still evident ; but there is one little slit of a window with a pointed arch which seems to have been overlooked. There is a series of very curious heads projecting from the wall of the house, which has besides a fine courtyard with a winding stair and some admirable ironwork in the forms of a fanlight and a balcony.

Before the Rue de la Cite finally reaches the Bourg-de-Four it changes its name for the second time and becomes the Rue de THotel de Vflle. In this street (No. 8) is the Turrettini house, which claims, vrith the Tavel house, to be one of the few remaining specimens of the great houses of Geneva. It dates from 1620. The Turrettini were Italians who came to Geneva as Protestant refugees and who, in their new home, raised themselves to positions of dignity and repute. The house is built of stone in the classical style and is impressive by its fine proportions and its great simplicity.

Two other streets of interest clamber up from the Low Town to that common meeting-place, the Bourg-de-Four. They are the Rue Verdaine and the Rue de la Fontaine. At No. 15 Rue Verdaine, Henri Amiel passed the closing days of his life. He was that strange, lonely and melancholy man who poured forth the dreariness of his soul in the Journal Intime.^ It is a morbid, egotistical and unwholesome work which would have

1 " Amiel's Journal." Translated by Mrs. Humphry Ward. London, 1889.

GENEVA : BOURG DE FOUR been better left where it was found — locked up in a box. The house, which has not the merit of age, is now a warehouse. It looks towards the Cathedral (which stands above it) and faces that remarkable passage, the Degres de Poule or Hen Steps. The Hen Steps are entered through a rounded archway and mount up to the Cathedral. The steps, which form a stair as steep as a ladder, pass underneath some ancient buildings which were formerly stables and granaries. The Hen Steps date from 1554.

At No. 32 Rue de la Fontaine is an old entry with a rounded arch that leads into an alley. The arch pierces the fragment of a wall as ancient as the doorway. The guide-book states that this wall belonged to the palace of the Bishop and that by this exit Pierre de la Baume, the last Bishop of Geneva, quitted the city on July 14, 1533.

The Bourg-de-Four is an irregularly shaped place on the summit of the town, surrounded by equally irregularly shaped houses. It has a modest fountain, is shaded by some old trees and is altogether an agreeable and picturesque part of the city. Here stood the ancient Burgundian castle which was destroyed by the Count of Savoy in 1320. The Bourg was for centuries the social and business centre of Geneva, and a very pleasant rallying point it must have been. It was the place where the fairs were held and where the chief inns were located. There are still some of the old inscriptions remaining, such as the Pomme d'Or 1734, and some old signs, such as that of the Sea Shell and the Black Horse. From the last-named it would appear that it offered " bon logis " as long ago as 1563.

IV Geneva : The Old Buildings And The Alleys

THE Town Hall, near to the Bourg-de-Four, possesses considerable interest. Its history is very fully recorded in Professor Doumergue's work. Externally the building offers little attraction. It looks comparatively modern and presents the features of the municipal offices of any large provincial town. It has, however, an entry — built in 1617 — of greater dignity than the average municipal office attains ; while all along its front is a stone bench fit for Roman senators to sit on. In the wall to the left of the main entrance is a bronze tablet set up in 1892 to record a certain political achievement. It is in itself of no moment, but it replaced a tablet erected in 1558 in honour of the Reformation. This bronze is now in the north aisle of the Cathedral. In front of the tablet stood the pillory, and here too was a raised seat from which, as late as 1829, criminal sentences were read out.