Part 15

The place was never more animated than in the last summer of her life, when Byron and Shelley used to cross the lake to join the circle in this room. De Staël had met Byron in London during the ephemeral "Byron-madness," and now, in his social exile, her doors were freely open to him: his letters testify "she made Coppet as agreeable as society and talent can make any place on earth." Here he first saw "Glenarvon," a venomous attack upon him which seems to have served no purpose save to illustrate the aphorism about "a woman scorned," its authoress having been notoriously importunate for Byron's favor, even attempting, it was said, to enter his apartments in male attire. In this salon Mrs. Hervey, the novelist, feigned to faint at Byron's approach: from the balcony outside these windows, where de Staël and her father stood and saw Napoleon's army cross the Swiss frontier, Byron looked upon the scene which inspired some of his divinest stanzas. The château was a busy place in those years: a guest writes from here, "In every corner one is at a literary task; de Staël is writing 'Exile,' Auguste and Constant a tragedy, Sabran an opera, Sismondi his 'Republics,' Bonstetten a philosophy, and Rocca his 'Spanish War.'"

One noble chamber hung with dim tapestries is that erst occupied by Récamier: it had before been the sick-room of Madame Necker and the scene of her husband's loving care of her, which de Staël so touchingly records. The chamber of de Staël is near by, its windows overlooking her sepulchre: here she wrote the books which made her fame; here she instructed her children, their Sabbath lessons being from the devout treatises of her father and à Kempis's "Imitation of Christ," the book she read in her own dying hours. A smaller room, looking out upon the park, the terraces of Jura, and the white walls of Lausanne, was shared by Constant and Bonstetten. In the tower above have been found letters written by Gibbon to his _fiancée_, who became the mother of de Staël: they have been published by the grandson of de Staël, and show that the conduct of the great "Decliner and Faller" toward the then poor girl was thoroughly selfish and unscrupulous.

[Sidenote: Tomb of Necker and de Staël]

The rooms are renovated and the place is offered for rent, but nothing is destroyed. The formal park at the side of the château is little changed: along yonder wooded aisle and upon this _allée_ between prim patches of sward the de Staël walked with her guests in the summers of long ago; upon the seat beneath this coppice, beside this placid pool, or on the margin of yonder brooklet from the top of Jura, they lingered in brilliant converse till the stars came out one by one above the darkening mountains. These--the mute, soulless inanimates--remain, while the illustrious company that quickened and glorified them all has vanished from human ken. Some rods distant from the château, shaded by a sombre grove and bounded by a hoary wall, is the picturesque chapel in which Necker is laid with his wife, to whose tomb he, for many years, daily came to pray. In the same crypt the mortal part of de Staël rests at his feet; the portal was walled up at her burial and eye hath not since seen her sepulchre. A stone which marks the grave of her son Auguste, and lies on the threshold of that sealed portal, is fittingly inscribed, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?"

Beyond the closed gate we pause for a parting view of the scene, now flooded with sunshine, and as we leave the place we carry thence that resplendent vision embalmed in a memory that will abide with us forever. As I write these closing lines I see again that summer sky, cloudless save for the fleece floating above Jura like that which the bereaved Necker fancied was bearing the soul of his wife to paradise. I see again the glimmering water; the mountains with their tiaras of snow, sending back the sunbeams from their shining peaks like reflections from the pearly gates that enclose the Celestial City; and, amid this sublime beauty, the gleaming sycamores that sway above the tomb of "the incomparable Corinna."

INDEX

Abbotsford,--Scott,--161.

Addison, 15, 19, 30, 36, 91.

Akenside, 16, 25.

Andersen, Hans Christian, 55, 57.

Annesley Hall and Park, 71-77.

Aram, Eugene; Scenes, 111, 144-147.

Arbuthnot, 16, 36.

Arnold, Dr. and Matthew, 92.

Astell, Mary, 30.

Bacon, 21.

Baillie, Joanna, 15.

Barbauld, Mrs., 14, 16.

Besant, 15, 18.

Bolingbroke, 37.

Bolton Abbey, 143.

Bonnivard, Francis, 227.

Bowes, Dotheboys, 106.

Braddon, Miss, 38.

Brontës, The, 68; Brussels, 134, 207; Haworth, 121; Scenes and Characters of Tales, 121, 124, 126, 127, 129, 135, 207-225.

Brown, Oliver Madox, 32.

Brussels,--Villette,--Brontë Scenes, 207.

Bulwer,--Eugene Aram,--144-147.

Burns; Alloway, 181; Dumfries, 164; Ellisland, 171; Grave, 165; Haunts,--Scenes of Poems,--164, 165, 166, 170, 171, 178, 181, 196, 200, 205; Heroines, 185, 190, 194; Niece, 183.

Butler, Samuel, 91.

Byron; Annesley, 71; Coppet, 250; Harrow, 69; Newstead, 80; Leman, 226-237; London, 62; Scenes of Poems, 69, 72-77, 80-90, 226, 232, 233, 251; Tomb, 70.

Caine, Hall, mentioned, 32.

Campbell, 66, 68.

Canning, 64.

Carlyle, Birthplace, 162; Homes, 33, 162, 167; Sepulchre, 163.

Chaucer, 24, 25, 50.

Chaworth, Mary Ann, 71-79.

Chelsea, 29-37.

Chillon, 233.

Clarens,--Rousseau,--232.

Coleridge, 19, 106; Grave, 22; Home, 21.

Collyer, Robert, Early Haunts, 136.

Colwick Hall,--Chaworth-Musters,--78.

Congreve, mentioned, 15, 30, 37.

Constant, 245, 246, 248, 251, 252.

Cooling,--Great Expectations,--57.

Coppet,--Madame de Staël,--244.

Coventry,--George Eliot,--102.

Coxwold,--Sterne,--113.

Crabbe, mentioned, 19, 66.

Craigenputtock,--Carlyle,--167.

Crockett, S. R., 178.

Cunningham, Allan, 164.

Davy, Sir Humphry, mentioned, 155, 159, 248.

Denham, mentioned, 40.

De Quincey, mentioned, 21, 62.

De Staël, 159, 228, 230; Home and Sepulchre, 244.

Dickens, 13, 19, 20, 24, 28, 34, 230; Gad's Hill, 49; Scenes of Tales, 18-20, 22, 24-28, 54, 57-61, 64, 106.

Donne, John, 35, 36.

Dorset,--Shaftesbury,--15, 36.

Dotheboys,--Nicholas Nickleby,--106.

Douglas, Poet of Annie Laurie, 175-179.

Du Maurier, 18, 20.

Dumfries,--Burns,--164.

Dyer, 91.

Ecclefechan,--Carlyle,--162.

Eliot, George, 31, 143; Birthplace, Early Homes, 93; Grave, 23; Scenes and Characters of Fiction, 93, 95-103.

Emerson, 34, 104, 169, 170.

Erasmus, mentioned, 36.

Fairfax, Edward, 137, 142.

Falstaff, 50, 55, 56, 58.

Ferney,--Voltaire,--238.

Fields, James T., 55, 59.

Foston,--Sydney Smith,--149.

Froude, 33.

Gad's Hill,--Dickens, Shakespeare,--49.

Gaskell, Mrs., 101, 130, 131, 215, 223.

Gay, 15, 30, 33, 34.

Geneva, 227.

Gibbon, 39, 63; On Leman, 231, 232, 249, 252.

Goldsmith, mentioned, 18.

Gray,--Scene of Elegy,--39.

Hampstead, Literary, 13.

Harridan, Mrs., 15.

Harrow,--Byron,--18, 69.

Haworth,--The Brontës,--121.

Hawthorne, 68, 71, 184.

Hazlitt, mentioned, 19, 21, 170.

Herbert, George, 36.

Heslington,--Sydney Smith,--148.

Highgate, Literary, 21.

Highland Mary,--Homes, Scenes, Grave,--195.

Hogarth, 19.

Hogg, mentioned, 161.

Hood, mentioned, 19, 68.

Hook, Theodore, 26, 37.

Hunt, Leigh, 18, 19, 21, 34, 68.

Ilkley,--Collyer, etc.,--137.

Irving, Edward, mentioned, 164, 170.

Irving, Washington, 66, 71, 72, 76, 83, 86, 89.

Jackson, Helen Hunt, mentioned, 184.

Jeanie Deans, 167.

Jeffrey, Francis, 149, 154, 155, 170.

Johnson, Dr., 15, 18, 25, 34.

Keats, 15, 16, 19, 25.

Keighley,--Brontë, Collyer,--121, 136.

Kensal Green, Graves of Literati, 68.

Kingsley, 35.

Kit-Kat Club, 15.

Lake Leman,--Literary Shrines,--226-253.

Lamb, mentioned, 19, 21.

Landon, Letitia E., 30.

Laurie, Annie, Birthplace and Homes, 172, 176; Grave, 177; Song, 180.

Lausanne,--Gibbon, Dickens, etc.,--230.

Livingstone, 81, 82, 84, 86.

Loamshire of George Eliot, 93.

Locke, 36.

London, 13, 17, 24, 45, 62, 119, 148.

Longfellow, alluded to, 55, 142, 234.

Macaulay, 64, 155, 158, 159.

Maclise, 19, 31, 34, 55.

Marvell, 21.

Maxwelton,--Annie Laurie,--173.

Melrose,--Scott,--161.

Miller, Joaquin, 71, 83.

Milton, 39, 228.

Mitford, Miss, mentioned, 30.

Montagu, Mary Wortley, 21, 31, 62.

Moore, 64, 67.

Mulock, Miss,--John Halifax Scenes,--92.

Murray, John,--Drawing-Room,--66.

Newburgh,--Sterne,--118.

Newstead Abbey,--Byron,--80.

Nidderdale,--Eugene Aram,--143.

Niece of Burns, 183; quoted, 196, 204.

Nithsdale,--Burns, Scott, Carlyle,--164.

Nuneaton,--Milby of Eliot,--101.

Pepys, 30, 31.

Pope, 14, 15, 18, 21, 30, 37, 38.

Porter, Jane, 39.

Ramsay, Allan, 178.

Richardson, 16, 37.

Rochester,--Dickens,--54, 60, 61.

Rogers, mentioned, 15, 143.

Rokeby,--Scott,--109.

Rossetti, 23, 229; Home and Friends, 31, 32.

Rousseau, 227; Scenes of Fiction, 232, 233, 237.

Rugby,--Hughes, Arnold,--92.

Ruskin, mentioned, 34.

Schlegel, 248.

Scott; Abodes and Resorts, 64, 66, 109, 161, 172; Scenes and Characters, 109, 161, 167, 172.

Shakespeare, 25, 50, 91, 92, 93.

Shelley, 19, 21; Leman, 227, 229, 232, 237, 250.

Shepperton Church and Parsonage, 98.

Smith, Sydney, 68; Yorkshire Homes and Church, 148.

Smollett, 30, 33, 34.

Somervile, 91.

Somerville, Mrs., 29.

Southey, mentioned, 21, 106.

Southwark,--Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens,--24.

Stanley, H. M., 88, 184.

Steele, 14, 15, 19, 30, 33, 36.

Sterne, 34; Grave, 120; Home and Study, 112, 113, 115; Resorts, 113, 118.

Stoke-Pogis,--Gray,--39.

Swift, 15, 30, 36, 37.

Swinburne, 32, 33.

Tennyson, 33, 39.

Thackeray, 18, 68, 104, 120.

Turner, 37, 142, 143.

Voltaire, Château and Study, 238.

Waller, 39, 46.

Walpole, 15, 30.

Walton, mentioned, 36.

Watts, Theodore, 32.

Wilde, Oscar, 35.

Wordsworth, 15, 21, 106, 143, 161.

Wuthering Heights, 129.

York,--Sterne, etc.,--111.

Yorkshire Shrines, 106, 111, 121, 136, 148.

THE END.

LITERARY SHRINES:

THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS.

BY THEO. F. WOLFE, M.D., Ph.D.,

Author of "A Literary Pilgrimage," etc.

Illustrated with four photogravures. 12mo. Crushed buckram, gilt top, deckel edges, $1.25; half calf or half morocco, $3.00.

CONTAINS, AMONG OTHERS, CHAPTERS TREATING OF

CONCORD: A Village of Literary Shrines.

THE OLD MANSE.

THE HOMES OF EMERSON AND ALCOTT.

HAWTHORNE'S "WAYSIDE."

THE WALDEN OF THOREAU.

IN LITERARY BOSTON.

OUT OF BOSTON: Cambridge--Elmwood--Mt. Auburn--"Wayside Inn"--Brook Farm--Webster's Marshfield--Homes of Whittier, Hawthorne's Salem, etc.

IN BERKSHIRE WITH HAWTHORNE: The Graylock Region--Middle and Lower Berkshire--Haunts of Hawthorne, Thoreau, Bryant, Melville, Sedgwick, Kemble, Holmes, Longfellow, etc.

A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET.

UNIFORM WITH "A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE."

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, Publishers,

PHILADELPHIA.

BY CHARLES CONRAD ABBOTT.

THE BIRDS ABOUT US.

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TRAVELS IN A TREE-TOP.

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RECENT RAMBLES; OR, IN TOUCH WITH NATURE.

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A COLONIAL WOOING.

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J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY,

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BY ANNE HOLLINGSWORTH WHARTON.

THROUGH COLONIAL DOORWAYS.

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COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES.

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* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.