hamlet, town and healing bathThey 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
