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CHAPTER V
GIBBON AT LAUSANNE

THE next day it rained. The whole valley was filled with mist. The sudois, as they call the southwest wind, moaned about the windows. But I did not care; explorations or excursions were merely postponed. There would be plenty of time, and it was a pleasure to spend a quiet day in the library. We devoted it mainly to Gibbon and old Lausanne – that is, the Lausanne of Gibbon’s day, and, before we were tired of the subject, I think we had visualized the vain, witty, delightful, pompous, lazy, learned exile who so loved his “Fanny Lausanne,” as he liked to call the little town.

When he first arrived there from England, he was only sixteen – a nervous, impressionable, ill-educated youth. He had been converted to Roman Catholicism, and, glorying in it with all the ardour of an acolyte, he was taken seriously by the college authorities at Oxford and expelled. His father had to do something with him; he was just about to get married for the second time and, as the boy would be in his way, he decided to “rusticate” him in Lausanne.

It was arranged that young Gibbon should be put into the care of the worthy Pastor Daniel Pavilliard, a rather unusually broad-minded, sweet-tempered, and highly educated professor, the secretary and librarian of the Academy, afterwards its principal. He was then probably living in the parsonage of the First Deacon in the Rue de la Cité derrière, now a police-station, a picturesque house with high roof, with long vaulted corridors and wide galleries in the rear, from which could be seen the Alps beyond the Flon and the heights to the southeast of the city.

The plan of giving the boy a good cold bath of Presbyterianism worked better than would have been believed possible. Like a piece of hot iron dipped into ice-water he came out quite changed. He hissed and sizzled for a while, and then hardened into a free-thinker. It is odd how people can throw off a form of religion as if it were a cloak.

It was a trying experience for the lad. Madame Pavilliard, whose name was Carbonella, did not pattern after her husband. According to Gibbon she was narrow, mean and grasping, disagreeable and lacking in refinement. He could not speak French; they could not speak English. He gives a pathetic account of his misery; telling how he was obliged to exchange an elegant apartment in Magdalen College “for a narrow, gloomy street, the most infrequented of an unhandsome town, for an old inconvenient house and for a small chamber, ill-contrived and ill-furnished, which at the approach of winter, instead of a companionable fire, must be warmed by the dull, invisible heat of a stove.” His earliest entry in the diary which he kept said: – “First aspect horrid – house, slavery, ignorance, exile.” He felt that his “condition seemed as destitute of hope as it was devoid of pleasure.”

After a while, however, his natural good spirits rallied. He wrote his father: “The people here are extremely civil to strangers, and endeavor to make this town as agreeable as possible.”

He began to join the young people in making excursions, and he wrote home asking permission to take riding lessons. Pastor Pavilliard encouraged him to join in the gayeties of the town. There were dances; there were concerts with violins, harpsichords, flutes and singing.

He soon made the acquaintance of Georges Deyverdun, a young man a little older than himself, of high character and aristocratic connections. Deyverdun’s early diaries are extant and often mention walking with M. de Guiben or de Guibon. They became life-long friends. A book which had great influence on Gibbon was a “Logic” written by Professor Jean Pierre de Crousaz, who, after a life of great honours and wide experiences, had died three years before Gibbon’s arrival at Lausanne.

Voltaire wrote him: “You have made Lausanne the temple of the Muses and you have more than once caused me to say that, if I had been able to leave France, I would have withdrawn to Lausanne.”

De Crousaz’s “Logic” fortified Gibbon to engage in a battle for his faith. He had lively discussions with Pavilliard, but gradually “the various articles of the Romish creed disappeared like a dream;” and after a full conviction, on Christmas-day, 1754, he received the sacrament in the church of Lausanne.

Gibbon’s “return to the light” caused a lively joy in the Assembly which voted that the Dean should congratulate him on such a sensible act. He was examined and found “perfectly enlightened upon religion and remarkably well informed on all and each of the articles separating them from the Church of Rome.”

Whether Gibbon may not have had a weather eye open to material benefits at home is a question which falls with several other of his expressions of opinion. He had a wealthy aunt who was much offended by his defection from her Church. Only a month later Pastor Pavilliard wrote this Mrs. Porten: —

“I hope, Madame, that you will acquaint Mr. Gibbon with your satisfaction and restore him to your affection, which, though his errors may have shaken, they have not, I am sure, destroyed. As his father has allowed him but the bare necessities, I dare beg of you to grant him some token of your satisfaction.”

In the Autumn of 1755 Gibbon and his guardian made “a voyage” through Switzerland by way of Yverdun, Neuchâtel, Bienne, Soleure, Bâle, Baden, Zürich, Lucerne and Bern. He kept a journal of his experiences, written in not very accurate French. He was more interested in castles and history, in persons and customs than in scenery; indeed, he scarcely mentions the magnificence of the mountains, but he devotes considerable space to the linen-market of Langental and the surprising wealth of the peasantry, some, he says, having as much as six hundred thousand francs. He explained it by the profits from their linen and their cattle and especially by their great thrift. Fathers brought up their children to work and to be contented with their state in life – simple peasants; they wore fine linen and fine cloth, but wore peasants’ clothes; they had fine horses, but plowed with them; and they preferred that their daughters marry persons in their own condition rather than those who might bring them titles.

On reaching Bern he gives no description of the city but elaborately explains the curious system of government which obtained there. The inhabitants, he thought, were inclined to be proud, but he found a philosophical cause for it, and wondered that more of the natives were not guilty of that sin. He thought the environs of Bern had not a cheerful appearance, but were on the contrary rather wild.

Soon after his return began the one romantic episode in Gibbon’s life – his love affair with Suzanne Curchod, daughter of the Protestant pastor at Crassy or Crassier, a village on the lower slopes of the Jura, between Lausanne and Geneva. Gibbon himself tells what she was: “The wit, the beauty, the erudition of Mlle. Curchod were the theme of universal applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; I saw and loved. I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance.”

She had fair hair, and soft blue eyes which, when her pretty mouth smiled, lighted up with peculiar charm; she was rather tall and well proportioned; an extremely attractive girl.

The young men and women, particularly of La Cité, had formed a literary society, at first called l’Académie de la Poudrière but afterwards reorganized and renamed “from the age of its members” La Société du Printemps.

Suzanne was the president of this society. They used to discuss such questions as these: “Does an element of mystery make love more agreeable?” “Can there be a friendship between a man and a woman in the same way as between two women or two men?” and the like.

Suzanne seems to have been inclined to treat young theological students in somewhat the same way as fishermen play salmon when they are “killing” them. Her friends expostulated with her on her cruelty.

Gibbon, who had the reputation of being the son of a wealthy Englishman, caused her to forget the sighing students. At that time he must have been an attractive youth – that is, if we can put any confidence in her own description of him. After praising his beautiful hair and aristocratic hand, his air of good-breeding, and his intellectual face and his vivacity of expression, she crowns her encomium by declaring that he understood the respect due to women, and that his courtesy was easy without verging on familiarity. She adds: “He dances moderately well.”

They became affianced lovers. Years afterwards, Gibbon in his autobiography declared that he had no cause to blush at recollecting the object of his choice. “Though my love,” he says, “was disappointed of success, I am rather proud that I was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted sentiment. The personal attractions of Mademoiselle Susan Curchod were embellished by the virtues and talents of her mind. Her fortune was humble, but her family was respectable.”

He visited at her parents’ home – “happy days,” he called them – in the mountains of Burgundy, and the connection was honourably encouraged. She seems to have made it a condition of her engagement that he should always live in Switzerland. When he returned to England in 1758 he found that his father opposed the match, and evidently his love speedily cooled. The absence of letters does not necessarily prove that none were written, but certainly there was no lively correspondence, and at length, after a lapse of four years, he calmly informs the young lady that he must renounce her for ever, and he lays the blame on his father, who, he says, considered it cruelty to desert him and send him prematurely to the grave, and cowardice to trample underfoot his duty to his country.

Considering the fact that Father Gibbon was busily engaged in dissipating his fortune, and had endured his son’s absence for many years, this excuse strikes one as decidedly thin. At the end of his letter of renunciation he desires to be remembered to Suzanne’s father and mother. Pastor Curchod had been dead two years, and Suzanne was then living in Geneva, where she was supporting herself and her mother by teaching.

Just ten years after his first arrival at Lausanne, Gibbon made a visit there on that memorable journey to Rome which resulted in the writing of his history. He made no attempt to see Suzanne, who seems to have deceived herself with the hope that his indifference was only imaginary. She wrote him that for five years she had sacrificed to this chimera by her “unique and inconceivable behavior.” She begged him on her knees to convince her of her madness in loving him and to end her uncertainty.

She got a letter from him that brought her to her senses. She replied that she had sacrificed her happiness not to him but, rather, to an imaginary being which could have existed only in a silly, romantic brain like hers, and, having had her eyes opened, he resumed his place as a mere man with all other men; indeed, although she had so idealized him that he seemed to be the only man she could have ever loved, he was now least attractive to her because he bore the least possible resemblance to her chimerical ideal.

Gibbon chronicled in his diary in September, 1763, the receipt of one of Suzanne’s letters, and in questionable French he called her “a dangerous and artificial girl” (“une fille dangereux et artificielle”) and adds: – “This singular affair in all its details has been very useful to me; it has opened my eyes to the character of women and will long serve as a safeguard against the seductions of love.”

Suzanne was no Cassandra, either; the very next year she married the young Genevan banker, Jacques Necker, then minister for the Republic of Geneva at Paris.

About two years later Gibbon wrote to his friend, J. B. Holroyd: —

“The Curchod (Madame Necker) I saw in Paris. She was very fond of me, and the husband particularly civil. Could they insult me more cruelly? Ask me every evening to supper; go to bed and leave me alone with his wife. What an impertinent security! It is making an old lover of mighty little consequence. She is as handsome as ever; seems pleased with her fortune rather than proud of it.”

The Platonic friendship was never again ruffled; if anything it grew more confidential and almost sentimental. The Neckers visited Gibbon in London more than once, and, when political and financial storms drove them from Paris, Gibbon found their Barony of Copet (as he spells it – he was not very strong in spelling!) a most delightful harbour, though he was too indolent to go there very often. This was in after years, when Lausanne again became his home.

He had published the first volume of his history of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” and had immediately leaped into fame. The same year Necker was made Director of the Treasury of France, and began that remarkable career of success and disappointment. Perhaps his greatest glory was his daughter, afterwards so well known as Madame de Staël, whose loyalty to him in all the vicissitudes of his life was one of her loveliest characteristics.

Gibbon was back in Lausanne again in 1783; he seems to have reckoned time in lustrums, his dates there being 1753, 1763 and 1783, and he returned to London in 1793 where he died the following year, just a century after Voltaire was born. He certainly had pleasant memories of Lausanne and, after losing his one public office, and the salary which came in so handy, he formed what his friends called the mad project of taking up his permanent residence there. This came about through his old-time friend, Georges Deyverdun, who through the death of relatives and particularly of an aristocratic old aunt, had come into possession of the estate known as La Grotte, one of the most interesting historical buildings in the town, with memories covering centuries of ecclesiastical history. He and Deyverdun formed a project whereby the two should combine their housekeeping resources and live in a sort of mutually dependent independence.

Gibbon had a very pretty wit. A year or two after he had taken this decisive step, had bade a long farewell to the “fumum et opes strepitumque Romae,” and had sold his property and moved with his books to Lausanne, the report reached London that the celebrated Mr. Gibbon, who had retired to Switzerland to finish his valuable history, was dead. Gibbon wrote his best friend, Holroyd, who was now Lord Sheffield: – “There are several weighty reasons which would incline me to believe that the intelligence may be true. Primo, It must one day be true; and therefore may very probably be so at present. Secundo, We may always depend on the impartiality, accuracy and veracity of an English newspaper.” – And so he goes on.

In another letter, after speaking of his old enemy, the gout, and assuring Sheffield that he had never regretted his exile, he pays his respects to his fellow-countrymen: “The only disagreeable circumstance,” he says, “is the increase of a race of animals with which this country has been long infested, and who are said to come from an island in the Northern Ocean. I am told, but it seems incredible, that upwards of forty thousand English, masters and servants, are now absent on the Continent.”

Byron, a third of a century later, had the same ill opinion of his fellow-countrymen: – “Switzerland,” he wrote Moore, “is a curst selfish country of brutes, placed in the most romantic regions of the world. I never could bear the inhabitants and still less their English visitors.”

In a somewhat different spirit Lord Houghton pays his respects to the throng of foreigners who find pleasure and recreation and health in Switzerland. He says: —

 
“Within the Switzer’s varied land
When Summer chases high the snow,
You’ll meet with many a youthful band
Of strangers wandering to and fro:
Through hamlet, town and healing bath
They haste and rest as chance may call;
No day without its mountain-path,
No path without its waterfall.
 
 
“They make the hours themselves repay
However well or ill be shared,
Content that they should wing their way,
Unchecked, unreckoned, uncompared:
For though the hills unshapely rise
And lie the colours poorly bright, —
They mould them by their cheerful eyes
And paint them with their spirits light.
 
 
“Strong in their youthfulness they use
The energies their souls possess;
And if some wayward scene refuse
To pay its part of loveliness, —
Onward they pass nor less enjoy
For what they leave; – and far from me
Be every thought that would destroy
A charm of that simplicity!”
 

Gibbon and Deyverdun were remarkably congenial; interested in the same studies and the same people. Which was the more indolent of the two it would be hard to say. But by this time Gibbon had grown into the comically grotesque figure which somehow adds to his fascination. He had become excessively stout; his little “potato-nose” was lost between his bulbous cheeks; his chin was bolstered up by the flying buttress of much superfluous throat. He had red hair. A contemporary poem describes him: —

 
“His person looked as funnily obese
As if a pagod, growing large as man,
Had rashly waddled off its chimney-piece,
To visit a Chinese upon a fan.
Such his exterior; curious ’twas to scan!
And oft he rapped his snuff-box, cocked his snout,
And ere his polished periods he began
Bent forward, stretching his forefinger out,
And talked in phrases round as he was round about.”
 

Early in his career Gibbon was rather careless in his dress, but he could not afford not to be in style as the lion of Lausanne, and he had any number of changes of apparel. He had a valet de chambre, a cook who was not put out if he had forty, or even fifty, guests at a dinner, and who received wages of twelve or fifteen livres a month – a little more than a dollar a week, but money went farther in those primitive days – he had a gardener, a coachman and two other men. Altogether he paid out for service a little more than eleven hundred livres a year. He spent generously, also, for various magazines and other periodicals, French and English, and he was constantly adding to his library. After the French Revolution, when many French émigrés came to Lausanne, there were loud complaints at the increased cost of living.

In 1788 Gibbon required a new maid-servant and his faithful friend, Madame de Séverin, recommended one to him in these terms: —

“She will make confitures, compotes, winter-salads, dried preserves in summer; she will take charge of the fine linen and will herself look after the kitchen service. She will keep everything neat and orderly in the minutest details. She will take care of the silver in the English fashion; she can do the ironing; she can set the table in ornamental style. You must entrust everything to her (except the wine) by count; so many candles, so many wax-tapers in fifty-pound boxes; so much tea, coffee and sugar. The oftener the counting is made, the more careful they are; three minutes every Sunday will suffice. I have excepted nothing of what can be expected of a housekeeper. She will look after the poultry-yard. She will make the ices and all the pastry and all the bonbons, if desired, but it is more economical to buy the latter.”

Gibbon was generous to others; he subscribed to various charities and he paid all the expenses of an orphan boy, Samuel Pache.

Lord Sheffield’s daughter, Maria Holroyd, could not understand why he should prefer Lausanne to London. She declared that there was not a single person there whom he could meet on a footing of equality or on his height; she thought it was a proof of the power of flattery. But there were always distinguished visitors at Lausanne, and Gibbon knew them all. His letters are full of references to the celebrities whom he is cultivating.

He writes to Lady Sheffield to tell her how he “walked on our terrace” with Mr. Tissot, the celebrated physician; Mr. Mercier, the author of the “Tableau de Paris;” the Abbé Raynal, author of “L’Histoire Philosophique des Etablissements et du Commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes,” the clever free-thinker with whom Dr. Johnson refused to shake hands because he was an infidel; M. and Mme. Necker; the Abbé de Bourbon, a natural son of Louis XV; the hereditary Prince of Brunswick; Prince Henry of Prussia; “and a dozen counts, barons and extraordinary persons, among whom was a natural son of the Empress of Russia.”

In London, great as he was (even though he was a Lieutenant Colonel Commandant and Member of Parliament), he had found himself eclipsed by larger and brighter planets; in Lausanne he was the bright particular star. “I expected,” he says, “to have enjoyed, with more freedom and solitude, myself, my friend, my books and this delicious paradise; but my position and character make me here a sort of public character and oblige me to see and be seen.”

He used to give great dinners. Thus, in 1792, the beautiful and witty Duchess of Devonshire made a visit to Lausanne and Gibbon gave her a dinner with fourteen covers. The year before he gave a ball at which at midnight one hundred and fifty guests sat down to supper. He was well pleased with it and boasted that “the music was good, the lights splendid, the refreshments abundant.” He himself went to bed at two o’clock in the morning and left the others to dance till seven. It was as common in those days, even in Calvinistic Lausanne, to dance all night as it is now in stylish society. He had assemblies every Sunday evening, and rarely did a day pass without his either dining out or entertaining guests at his own hospitable board.

In a pleasure-loving community like that of Lausanne eating was one of the chief employments of life. On their menus they had all kinds of game, for hunting was one of the recreations of the gentry of the lake shore, and they brought home hares, partridges, quails, wood-cock from the Jura, heath-hens, roe-bucks and that royal game, the wild-boar, not to speak of the red foxes and an occasional wolf or bear.

A party would leave one house and drive or ride out into the country and come in upon some baronial family which would be hard put to it to accommodate so many – ladies and gentlemen and their valets and maids. On such occasions they would have to send out and borrow porcelain plates, glass compote dishes, silverware of every kind. How they managed the cooking for such large dinner-parties is a mystery. On one occasion my Lord Bruce gave a ball in honour of the Queen of England’s birthday. There were between one and two hundred people invited. Fifty sat down in the big room of the Redout, twenty in the Green Room. On an earlier occasion the genial Prince of Würtemberg gave a ball and eighty sat down to a supper costing fifteen louis d’or for each person.

On less formal evenings the guests, after eating their dinner, would go to some other house and have a “veillé,” where they played such games as “Twelve Questions” or “Commerce” or “Loto” or took part in acting charades.

One season La Générale de Charrière wrote a little play in verse entitled “L’Oiseau vert” – “The Green Bird.” This mythical creature personated Truth, just as Maeterlinck’s “Blue Bird” personates Happiness. The Green Bird is consulted by various characters and replies in piquant verse. Mr. Gibbon, who is represented as “un gros homme de très bonne façon,” asks the bird to indicate his country, and the bird replies that, by his gentle and polished mien, he would be taken for a Frenchman; by his knowledge, his energy, his writings and his success, his wit, his philosophy, the depth of his genius, it might be suspected that he was an Englishman; but his real country is that to which his heart had brought him, where he is loved, and they tell him so, and where he must spend his life. Gibbon used to speak of himself as a Swiss —nous autres Suisses– until the French Revolution broke out; that scared him.

They also had musicales. Deyverdun liked to play the spinet. One evening the Saxon Comte de Cellemberg, being present at the house of the Saint-Cierges’, “sang delicious airs and played the clavecin like a great master.” On another occasion Madame de Waalwyck, daughter-in-law to Madame d’Orges, gave a concert at which all the chief musicians of Lausanne, more than twenty in number, took part. Again, Benjamin Constant de Rebecque, who afterwards won fame by calling Napoleon a Genghis Khan, – he was one of the great men of his day, – made his appearance as a musician, and a Herr Köppen, in the service of the Duchesse de Courland, played the flute and made up such horrible faces and grimaces that people could not help laughing.

They also had elaborate picnics on the shores of the lake, or in the glorious forest back of the city. Their favourite place was the grove of Saint-Sulpice. There they would spread a great table under the trees and have chocolate, coffee, good butter, and thick cream at noon. To one of these festivities came the Duchess of Würtemberg in grand style, in a coach drawn by six horses, and dressed in a taffetas robe and a tremendous hat. The real picnic dinner followed and all had huge appetites, fostered by the open air. Then appeared in the distance a great boat accompanied by musicians. Young girls, dressed like shepherds, presented baskets of flowers. A touch of distinction was added by the arrival of the bishop. Every one was gay and happy. Déjardin and his musicians played. They had country dances, allemandes and rondes. It was a pretty sight – the gay equipages and liveries, the pretty girls. The people of Saint-Sulpice clustered around. The rustic touch was communicated by sheep and cows. Merry children were there to take an interest in the festivity. The duchess sat in an armchair, holding a white parasol over her head. More or less damage was done to the property of the inhabitants, and they made it up by taking a collection which, when counted, amounted to forty crowns. At this same Saint-Sulpice, Napoleon, when First Consul, in 1800 reviewed the army that was to fight later at Marengo.

It must not be supposed, however, that Gibbon’s laziness and his dislike of exercise prevented him from working. Delightful invitations could not allure him from his work. Often, as his History neared completion, he had to spend not only the mornings but also the evenings in his library. The fourth volume was completed in June, 1784, the fifth in May, 1786, and the last on June 27, 1787.

The year after the last volume was published his friend Deyverdun, who had been for some time in failing health, passed away. He bequeathed to Gibbon for life the furniture in the apartment which he occupied. There is no known inventory of it, but we know what gave distinction to the grand salon – tapestried armchairs, tall pier-glass, marble and gilt console table, crystal lustres, bronze candelabras, a fine, old clock in carved and gilded black wood, and other luxurious articles. He left him also the entire and complete use and possession of La Grotte, its dependencies, and the tools and utensils for caring for it. He was to make all repairs and changes necessary and pay his legal heir, Major Georges de Molin de Montagny, the sum of four thousand francs, and an annuity of thirty louis neufs or, if he desired, he might purchase the property for thirty-five thousand francs. Gibbon was in London at the time, superintending the publication of his History; he had to come back to Lausanne and to a quite different existence. He entered into amicable relations with Major de Montagny. He lent him money and was entirely willing to take La Grotte in accordance with the will. He began to make improvements in the estate and he tells how he had arranged his library, or rather his two libraries – “book-closets,” they used to be called – and their antechamber so that he could shut the solid wooden doors of the twenty-seven bookcases in such a way that it seemed like a bookless apartment.

He boasts of his increasing love for Nature:

“The glories of the landscape I have always enjoyed; but Deyverdun has almost given me a taste for minute observation, and I can now dwell with pleasure on the shape and color of the leaves, the various hues of the blossoms, and the successive progress of vegetation. These pleasures are not without cares; and there is a white acacia just under the windows of my library which, in my opinion, was too closely pruned last Autumn, and whose recovery is the daily subject of anxiety and conversation.

“My romantic wishes led sometimes to an idea which was impracticable in England, the possession of an house and garden, which should unite the society of town with the beauties and freedom of the country. This idea is now realized in a degree of perfection to which I never aspired, and if I could convey in words a just picture of my library, apartments, terrace, wilderness, vineyard, with the prospect of land and water terminated by the mountains; and this position at the gate of a populous and lively town where I have some friends and many acquaintances, you would envy or rather applaud the singular propriety of my choice.”

He says further on in the same letter:

“The habits of female conversation have sometimes tempted me to acquire the piece of furniture, a wife, and could I unite in a single woman, the virtues and accomplishments of half a dozen of my acquaintance, I would instantly pay my addresses to the Constellations.”

The requirements were that one should be as a mistress; the second, a lively entertaining acquaintance; the third, a sincere good-natured friend; the fourth should preside with grace and dignity at the head of his table and family; the fifth, an excellent economist and housekeeper; the sixth, a very useful nurse!

It was suggested to him by Madame Necker that he might do well to marry, though she assured him, with, perhaps a bit of malice, that to marry happily one must marry young. He thus expressed himself regarding the state of celibacy: —