As long as Bern was suzerain of Vaud, and governed it, there was small chance for Government service and this state of things led to a peculiar atmosphere – one of frivolity and pleasure-seeking. The men hadn’t anything to do except to amuse themselves and few were the years when some foreign prince was not studying here and spending any amount of money in dinners and dances.”
“Yes,” said I, “considering that Lausanne was in the very centre of Calvinism, it must have been pretty gay. I suppose the influence of France was even stronger than that of Geneva or Bern.”
By this time we had reached our own street and were climbing the flight of steps that led to the handsomely arched portal.
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
