Thomas Moore - Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III

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"The view from the highest points of to-day's journey comprised on one
side the greatest part of Lake Leman; on the other, the valleys and
mountain of the Canton of Fribourg, and an immense plain, with the lakes
of Neuchatel and Morat, and all which the borders of the Lake of Geneva
inherit; we had both sides of the Jura before us in one point of view,
with Alps in plenty. In passing a ravine, the guide recommended
strenuously a quickening of pace, as the stones fall with great rapidity
and occasional damage; the advice is excellent, but, like most good
advice, impracticable, the road being so rough that neither mules, nor
mankind, nor horses, can make any violent progress. Passed without
fractures or menace thereof.

"The music of the cow's bells (for their wealth, like the patriarchs',
is cattle) in the pastures, which reach to a height far above any
mountains in Britain, and the shepherds shouting to us from crag to
crag, and playing on their reeds where the steeps appeared almost
inaccessible, with the surrounding scenery, realised all that I have
ever heard or imagined of a pastoral existence:--much more so than
Greece or Asia Minor, for there we are a little too much of the sabre
and musket order, and if there is a crook in one hand, you are sure to
see a gun in the other:--but this was pure and unmixed--solitary,
savage, and patriarchal. As we went, they played the 'Rans des Vaches'
and other airs, by way of farewell. I have lately repeopled my mind with
nature.

[Footnote 111: Dent de Jaman.]

"September 20.

Up at six; off at eight. The whole of this day's journey at an average
of between from 2700 to 3000 feet above the level of the sea. This
valley, the longest, narrowest, and considered the finest of the Alps,
little traversed by travellers. Saw the bridge of La Roche. The bed of
the river very low and deep, between immense rocks, and rapid as
anger;--a man and mule said to have tumbled over without damage. The
people looked free, and happy, and _rich_ (which last implies neither of
the former); the cows superb; a bull nearly leapt into the
char-a-banc--'agreeable companion in a post-chaise;' goats and sheep
very thriving. A mountain with enormous glaciers to the right--the
Klitzgerberg; further on, the Hockthorn--nice names--so
soft!--_Stockhorn_, I believe, very lofty and scraggy, patched with snow
only; no glaciers on it, but some good epaulettes of clouds.

"Passed the boundaries, out of Vaud and into Berne canton; French
exchanged for bad German; the district famous for cheese, liberty,
property, and no taxes. Hobhouse went to fish--caught none. Strolled to
the river; saw boy and kid; kid followed him like a dog; kid could not
get over a fence, and bleated piteously; tried myself to help kid, but
nearly overset both self and kid into the river. Arrived here about six
in the evening. Nine o'clock--going to bed; not tired to day, but hope
to sleep, nevertheless.

"September 21.

"Off early. The valley of Simmenthal as before. Entrance to the plain of
Thoun very narrow; high rocks, wooded to the top; river; new mountains,
with fine glaciers. Lake of Thoun; extensive plain with a girdle of
Alps. Walked down to the Chateau de Schadau; view along the lake;
crossed the river in a boat rowed by women. Thoun a very pretty town.
The whole day's journey Alpine and proud.

"September 22.

"Left Thoun in a boat, which carried us the length of the lake in three
hours. The lake small; but the banks fine. Rocks down to the water's
edge. Landed at Newhause; passed Interlachen; entered upon a range of
scenes beyond all description or previous conception. Passed a rock;
inscription--two brothers--one murdered the other; just the place for
it. After a variety of windings came to an enormous rock. Arrived at the
foot of the mountain (the Jungfrau, that is, the Maiden); glaciers;
torrents; one of these torrents _nine hundred feet_ in height of visible
descent. Lodged at the curate's. Set out to see the valley; heard an
avalanche fall, like thunder; glaciers enormous; storm came on, thunder,
lightning, hail; all in perfection, and beautiful. I was on horseback;
guide wanted to carry my cane; I was going to give it him, when I
recollected that it was a sword-stick, and I thought the lightning might
be attracted towards him; kept it myself; a good deal encumbered with
it, as it was too heavy for a whip, and the horse was stupid, and stood
with every other peal. Got in, not very wet, the cloak being stanch.
Hobhouse wet through; Hobhouse took refuge in cottage; sent man,
umbrella, and cloak (from the curate's when I arrived) after him. Swiss
curate's house very good indeed--much better than most English
vicarages. It is immediately opposite the torrent I spoke of. The
torrent is in shape curving over the rock, like the _tail_ of a white
horse streaming in the wind, such as it might be conceived would be that
of the 'pale horse' on which Death is mounted in the Apocalypse.[112] It
is neither mist nor water, but a something between both; its immense
height (nine hundred feet) gives it a wave or curve, a spreading here or
condensation there, wonderful and indescribable. I think, upon the
whole, that this day has been better than any of this present excursion.

[Footnote 112: It is interesting to observe the use to which he
afterwards converted these hasty memorandums in his sublime drama of
Manfred.

"It is not noon--the sunbow's rays still arch
The torrent with the many hues of heaven,
And roll the sheeted silver's waving column
O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular,
And fling its lines of foaming light along,
_And to and fro, like the pale coursers tail,
The Giant steed, to be bestrode by Death
As told in the Apocalypse._"
]

"September 23.

"Before ascending the mountain, went to the torrent (seven in the
morning) again; the sun upon it, forming a _rainbow_ of the lower part
of all colours, but principally purple and gold; the bow moving as you
move; I never saw any thing like this; it is only in the sunshine.
Ascended the Wengen mountain; at noon reached a valley on the summit;
left the horses, took off my coat, and went to the summit, seven
thousand feet (English feet) above the level of the _sea_, and about
five thousand above the valley we left in the morning. On one side, our
view comprised the Jungfrau, with all her glaciers; then the Dent
d'Argent, shining like truth; then the Little Giant (the Kleine Eigher);
and the Great Giant (the Grosse Eigher), and last, not least, the
Wetterhorn. The height of Jungfrau is 13,000 feet above the sea, 11,000
above the valley; she is the highest of this range. Heard the avalanches
falling every five minutes nearly. From whence we stood, on the Wengen
Alp, we had all these in view on one side; on the other, the clouds rose
from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices like the
foam of the ocean of hell, during a spring tide--it was white, and
sulphury, and immeasurably deep in appearance.[113] The side we ascended
was (of course) not of so precipitous a nature; but on arriving at the
summit, we looked down upon the other side upon a boiling sea of cloud,
dashing against the crags on which we stood (these crags on one side
quite perpendicular). Stayed a quarter of an hour; begun to descend;
quite clear from cloud on that side of the mountain. In passing the
masses of snow, I made a snowball and pelted Hobhouse with it.

"Got down to our horses again; ate something; remounted; heard the
avalanches still; came to a morass; Hobhouse dismounted to get over
well; I tried to pass my horse over; the horse sunk up to the chin, and
of course he and I were in the mud together; bemired, but not hurt;
laughed, and rode on. Arrived at the Grindelwald; dined; mounted again,
and rode to the higher glacier--like _a frozen hurricane_.[114]
Starlight, beautiful, but a devil of a path! Never mind, got safe in; a
little lightning; but the whole of the day as fine in point of weather
as the day on which Paradise was made. Passed _whole woods of withered
pines, all withered_; trunks stripped and barkless, branches lifeless;
done by a single winter[115],--their appearance reminded me of me and my
family.

[Footnote 113:

"Ye _avalanches_, whom a breath draws down
In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me!
_I hear ye momently above, beneath,
Crash with a frequent conflict._ * * *
The mists boil up around the glaciers; _clouds
Rise curling_ fast beneath me, white and sulphury,
_Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell!_"
MANFRED.
]

[Footnote 114:

"O'er the savage sea,
The glassy ocean of the mountain ice,
We skim its rugged breakers, which put on
The aspect of a tumbling _tempest_'s foam,
_Frozen in a moment._"
MANFRED.
]

[Footnote 115:

"Like these _blasted pines,
Wrecks of a single winter, barkless, branchless._"
IBID.
]

"September 24.

"Set off at seven; up at five. Passed the black glacier, the mountain
Wetterhorn on the right; crossed the Scheideck mountain; came to the
_Rose_ glacier, said to be the largest and finest in Switzerland, _I_
think the Bossons glacier at Chamouni as fine; Hobhouse does not. Came
to the Reichenbach waterfall, two hundred feet high; halted to rest the
horses. Arrived in the valley of Overland; rain came on; drenched a
little; only four hours' rain, however, in eight days. Came to the lake
of Brientz, then to the town of Brientz; changed. In the evening, four
Swiss peasant girls of Oberhasli came and sang the airs of their
country; two of the voices beautiful--the tunes also: so wild and
original, and at the same time of great sweetness. The singing is over;
but below stairs I hear the notes of a fiddle, which bode no good to my
night's rest; I shall go down and see the dancing.

"September 25.

"The whole town of Brientz were apparently gathered together in the
rooms below; pretty music and excellent waltzing; none but peasants; the
dancing much better than in England; the English can't waltz, never
could, never will. One man with his pipe in his mouth, but danced as
well as the others; some other dances in pairs and in fours, and very
good. I went to bed, but the revelry continued below late and early.
Brientz but a village. Rose early. Embarked on the lake of Brientz,
rowed by the women in a long boat; presently we put to shore, and
another woman jumped in. It seems it is the custom here for the boats to
be _manned_ by _women_: for of five men and three women in our bark, all
the women took an oar, and but one man.

"Got to Interlachen in three hours; pretty lake; not so large as that of
Thoun. Dined at Interlachen. Girl gave me some flowers, and made me a
speech in German, of which I know nothing; I do not know whether the
speech was pretty, but as the woman was, I hope so. Re-embarked on the
lake of Thoun; fell asleep part of the way; sent our horses round;
found people on the shore, blowing up a rock with gunpowder; they blew
it up near our boat, only telling us a minute before;--mere stupidity,
but they might have broken our noddles. Got to Thoun in the evening; the
weather has been tolerable the whole day. But as the wild part of our
tour is finished, it don't matter to us; in all the desirable part, we
have been most lucky in warmth and clearness of atmosphere.

"September 26.

"Being out of the mountains, my journal must be as flat as my journey.
From Thoun to Berne, good road, hedges, villages, industry, property,
and all sorts of tokens of insipid civilisation. From Berne to Fribourg;
different canton; Catholics; passed a field of battle; Swiss beat the
French in one of the late wars against the French republic. Bought a
dog. The greater part of this tour has been on horseback, on foot, and
on mule.

"September 28.

"Saw the tree planted in honour of the battle of Morat; three hundred
and forty years old; a good deal decayed. Left Fribourg, but first saw
the cathedral; high tower. Overtook the baggage of the nuns of La
Trappe, who are removing to Normandy; afterwards a coach, with a
quantity of nuns in it. Proceeded along the banks of the lake of
Neuchatel; very pleasing and soft, but not so mountainous--at least, the
Jura, not appearing so, after the Bernese Alps. Reached Yverdun in the
dusk; a long line of large trees on the border of the lake; fine and
sombre; the auberge nearly full--a German princess and suite; got rooms.

"September 29.

"Passed through a fine and flourishing country, but not mountainous. In
the evening reached Aubonne (the entrance and bridge something like that
of Durham), which commands by far the fairest view of the Lake of
Geneva; twilight; the moon on the lake; a grove on the height, and of
very noble trees. Here Tavernier (the eastern traveller) bought (or
built) the chateau, because the site resembled and equalled that of
_Erivan_, a frontier city of Persia; here he finished his voyages, and I
this little excursion,--for I am within a few hours of Diodati, and have
little more to see, and no more to say."

With the following melancholy passage this Journal concludes:--

"In the weather for this tour (of 13 days), I have been very
fortunate--fortunate in a companion (Mr. H.)--fortunate in our
prospects, and exempt from even the little petty accidents and delays
which often render journeys in a less wild country disappointing. I was
disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of nature and an admirer of beauty.
I can bear fatigue and welcome privation, and have seen some of the
noblest views in the world. But in all this--the recollection of
bitterness, and more especially of recent and more home desolation,
which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me here; and
neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, nor
the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have
for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to
lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the
glory, around, above, and beneath me."

* * * * *

Among the inmates at Secheron, on his arrival at Geneva, Lord Byron had
found Mr. and Mrs. Shelley, and a female relative of the latter, who had
about a fortnight before taken up their residence at this hotel. It was
the first time that Lord Byron and Mr. Shelley ever met; though, long
before, when the latter was quite a youth,--being the younger of the two
by four or five years,--he had sent to the noble poet a copy of his
Queen Mab, accompanied by a letter, in which, after detailing at full
length all the accusations he had heard brought against his character,
he added, that, should these charges not have been true, it would make
him happy to be honoured with his acquaintance. The book alone, it
appears, reached its destination,--the letter having miscarried,--and
Lord Byron was known to have expressed warm admiration of the opening
lines of the poem.

There was, therefore, on their present meeting at Geneva, no want of
disposition towards acquaintance on either side, and an intimacy almost
immediately sprung up between them. Among the tastes common to both,
that for boating was not the least strong; and in this beautiful region
they had more than ordinary temptations to indulge in it. Every evening,
during their residence under the same roof at Secheron, they embarked,
accompanied by the ladies and Polidori, on the Lake; and to the feelings
and fancies inspired by these excursions, which were not unfrequently
prolonged into the hours of moonlight, we are indebted for some of those
enchanting stanzas[116] in which the poet has given way to his
passionate love of Nature so fervidly.

"There breathes a living fragrance from the shore
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drips the light drop of the suspended oar.
* * * * *
At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
But that is fancy,--for the starlight dews
All silently their tears of love instil,
Weeping themselves away."

A person who was of these parties has thus described to me one of their
evenings:--"When the _bise_ or north-east wind blows, the waters of the
Lake are driven towards the town, and with the stream of the Rhone,
which sets strongly in the same direction, combine to make a very rapid
current towards the harbour. Carelessly, one evening, we had yielded to
its course, till we found ourselves almost driven on the piles; and it
required all our rowers' strength to master the tide. The waves were
high and inspiriting--we were all animated by our contest with the
elements. 'I will sing you an Albanian song,' cried Lord Byron; 'now, be
sentimental and give me all your attention.' It was a strange, wild
howl that he gave forth; but such as, he declared, was an exact
imitation of the savage Albanian mode,--laughing, the while, at our
disappointment, who had expected a wild Eastern melody."

Sometimes the party landed, for a walk upon the shore, and, on such
occasions, Lord Byron would loiter behind the rest, lazily trailing his
sword-stick along, and moulding, as he went, his thronging thoughts into
shape. Often too, when in the boat, he would lean abstractedly over the
side, and surrender himself up, in silence, to the same absorbing task.

The conversation of Mr. Shelley, from the extent of his poetic reading,
and the strange, mystic speculations into which his system of philosophy
led him, was of a nature strongly to arrest and interest the attention
of Lord Byron, and to turn him away from worldly associations and topics
into more abstract and untrodden ways of thought. As far as contrast,
indeed, is an enlivening ingredient of such intercourse, it would be
difficult to find two persons more formed to whet each other's faculties
by discussion, as on few points of common interest between them did
their opinions agree; and that this difference had its root deep in the
conformation of their respective minds needs but a glance through the
rich, glittering labyrinth of Mr. Shelley's pages to assure us.

In Lord Byron, the real was never forgotten in the fanciful. However
Imagination had placed her whole realm at his disposal, he was no less a
man of this world than a ruler of hers; and, accordingly, through the
airiest and most subtile creations of his brain still the life-blood of
truth and reality circulates. With Shelley it was far otherwise;--his
fancy (and he had sufficient for a whole generation of poets) was the
medium through which he saw all things, his facts as well as his
theories; and not only the greater part of his poetry, but the political
and philosophical speculations in which he indulged, were all distilled
through the same over-refining and unrealising alembic. Having started
as a teacher and reformer of the world, at an age when he could know
nothing of the world but from fancy, the persecution he met with on the
threshold of this boyish enterprise but confirmed him in his first
paradoxical views of human ills and their remedies; and, instead of
waiting to take lessons of authority and experience, he, with a courage,
admirable had it been but wisely directed, made war upon both. From this
sort of self-willed start in the world, an impulse was at once given to
his opinions and powers directly contrary, it would seem, to their
natural bias, and from which his life was too short to allow him time to
recover. With a mind, by nature, fervidly pious, he yet refused to
acknowledge a Supreme Providence, and substituted some airy abstraction
of "Universal Love" in its place. An aristocrat by birth and, as I
understand, also in appearance and manners, he was yet a leveller in
politics, and to such an Utopian extent as to be, seriously, the
advocate of a community of property. With a delicacy and even romance of
sentiment, which lends such grace to some of his lesser poems, he could
notwithstanding contemplate a change in the relations of the sexes,
which would have led to results fully as gross as his arguments for it
were fastidious and refined; and though benevolent and generous to an
extent that seemed to exclude all idea of selfishness, he yet scrupled
not, in the pride of system, to disturb wantonly the faith of his
fellowmen, and, without substituting any equivalent good in its place,
to rob the wretched of a hope, which, even if false, would be worth all
this world's best truths.

Upon no point were the opposite tendencies of the two friends,--to
long-established opinions and matter of fact on one side, and to all
that was most innovating and visionary on the other,--more observable
than in their notions on philosophical subjects; Lord Byron being, with
the great bulk of mankind, a believer in the existence of Matter and
Evil, while Shelley so far refined upon the theory of Berkeley as not
only to resolve the whole of Creation into spirit, but to add also to
this immaterial system some pervading principle, some abstract
non-entity of Love and Beauty, of which--as a substitute, at least, for
Deity--the philosophic bishop had never dreamed. On such subjects, and
on poetry, their conversation generally turned; and, as might be
expected, from Lord Byron's facility in receiving new impressions, the
opinions of his companion were not altogether without some influence on
his mind. Here and there, among those fine bursts of passion and
description that abound in the third Canto of Childe Harold, may be
discovered traces of that mysticism of meaning,--that sublimity, losing
itself in its own vagueness,--which so much characterised the writings
of his extraordinary friend; and in one of the notes we find Shelley's
favourite Pantheism of Love thus glanced at:--"But this is not all: the
feeling with which all around Clarens and the opposite rocks of
Meillerie is invested, is of a still higher and more comprehensive order
than the mere sympathy with individual passion; it is a sense of the
existence of love in its most extended and sublime capacity, and of our
own participation of its good and of its glory: it is the great
principle of the universe, which is there more condensed, but not less
manifested; and of which, though knowing ourselves a part, we lose our
individuality, and mingle in the beauty of the whole."

Another proof of the ductility with which he fell into his new friend's
tastes and predilections, appears in the tinge, if not something deeper,
of the manner and cast of thinking of Mr. Wordsworth, which is traceable
through so many of his most beautiful stanzas. Being naturally, from his
love of the abstract and imaginative, an admirer of the great poet of
the Lakes, Mr. Shelley omitted no opportunity of bringing the beauties
of his favourite writer under the notice of Lord Byron; and it is not
surprising that, once persuaded into a fair perusal, the mind of the
noble poet should--in spite of some personal and political prejudices
which unluckily survived this short access of admiration--not only feel
the influence but, in some degree, even reflect the hues of one of the
very few real and original poets that this age (fertile as it is in
rhymers _quales ego et Cluvienus_) has had the glory of producing.

When Polidori was of their party, (which, till he found attractions
elsewhere, was generally the case,) their more elevated subjects of
conversation were almost always put to flight by the strange sallies of
this eccentric young man, whose vanity made him a constant butt for Lord
Byron's sarcasm and merriment. The son of a highly respectable Italian
gentleman, who was in early life, I understand, the secretary of
Alfieri, Polidori seems to have possessed both talents and dispositions
which, had he lived, might have rendered him a useful member of his
profession and of society. At the time, however, of which we are
speaking, his ambition of distinction far outwent both his powers and
opportunities of attaining it. His mind, accordingly, between ardour and
weakness, was kept in a constant hectic of vanity, and he seems to have
alternately provoked and amused his noble employer, leaving him seldom
any escape from anger but in laughter. Among other pretensions, he had
set his heart upon shining as an author, and one evening at Mr.
Shelley's, producing a tragedy of his own writing, insisted that they
should undergo the operation of hearing it. To lighten the infliction,
Lord Byron took upon himself the task of reader; and the whole scene,
from the description I have heard of it, must have been not a little
trying to gravity. In spite of the jealous watch kept upon every
countenance by the author, it was impossible to withstand the smile
lurking in the eye of the reader, whose only resource against the
outbreak of his own laughter lay in lauding, from time to time, most
vehemently, the sublimity of the verses;--particularly some that began
"'Tis thus the goiter'd idiot of the Alps,'--and then adding, at the
close of every such eulogy, "I assure you when I was in the Drury Lane
Committee, much worse things were offered to us."

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