Bon soir from Lake Geneva, Switzerland (and also from just across the border in France)! From the moment I stepped off the plane in Geneva, I knew I wasn’t in Scotland anymore. This part of Europe has been affected by a heat wave for a few weeks now, and it has been over 80 or 90 degrees and humid every day. I’ve learned the hard way that, no, sheer stubbornness doesn’t work as a proper sunscreen.
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| This is the garden clock in a popular park in central Geneva. |
Geneva is ridiculously expensive, so I’m staying across the border in Gaillard, France with an airbnb host instead of in a city hostel. It’s only a twenty-minute tram ride from the city, and public transportation in the Geneva area is excellent . . . but it took me a few days to learn that! My first afternoon in Geneva was terrible; I was dehydrated and tired from traveling, I couldn’t find the bus I needed at the massive Gare Cornavin bus station, and it was about three thousand degrees outside (I’m sure of it). When I finally asked a few different people, speaking in bits of French and English, how to use the TPG (Geneva’s public transport system), I found my bus and eventually my new home. Did I almost pass out on the bus and resultingly guzzle water straight from a sink at a random business that I barged into upon leaving the bus? Absolutely not, because that’s what an unseasoned traveller would do.
My host is wonderful -- she’s a German teacher, her native language is French, and she also speaks English. We speak almost exclusively in French because she wants to help me practice, which is awfully nice of her. On my first full day in Switzerland/France, she took me with her to a precious little French town called Yvoire. I didn’t even know it existed, but it’s such a picturesque spot on the lake!
I didn't only come here for beautiful lake views and good ice cream. I'm here to study the roots of two popular monster tales: Frankenstein's monster and Dracula! It seems counterintuitive that such gruesome stories could be inspired by the clear skies and jewel-toned lake, but things were very different here two hundred years ago.
In the summer of 1816, a band of young people congregated on the shores of the lake. Mary Shelley, soon-to-be-husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairemont, poet Lord Byron, and Byron’s personal physician John Polidori rented a couple of lakeside villas in Cologny for the summer with the aim of enjoying Geneva’s beautiful weather. However, the summer of 1816 is now known as the Year Without a Summer due to a severe climate change after a massive volcano eruption in 1815. Cold temperatures, rain, and snow plagued regions that were normally sunny and hot. The stormy weather greatly influenced this scandalous entanglement of Romantic thinkers and changed the world of Gothic literature forever.
I’ll keep this short for blogging purposes, but I’d be happy to talk to you anytime about the ridiculous mess of relationships between these people. (Let’s just say that the radical, free-love ideals of Byron and P. Shelley were certainly the talk of the town in 1816.) One fateful night in 1816, when the group was spending the night at Byron’s rented lakeside villa to escape the stormy weather, Byron proposed a ghost story contest: each of them would have to write a ghost story, and the best one would win. Aided by the eerie weather and hearty doses of laudanum, the Romantics produced several significant scraps of writing during this summer, some of which were prompted by Byron’s contest. For the purposes of my project, I’m focusing on two of those fragments: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (which was soon developed into a full-length novel) and John Polidori’s short story “The Vampyre.” Polidori’s story is little-known, but it was actually a major influence on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It was arguably the first appearance of vampires as we know them today.
Thanks for sticking around for my brief lesson on an interesting chapter of literary history! I’m trying to experience Lake Geneva in ways similar to how Byron and the Shelleys experienced (or at least wanted to experience) it; taking walks, cruising on the lake, hiking the mountains, etc. However, it seems like 2017 is the Year With Too Much Summer (hello, global warming) -- most of my time in Geneva has been sunny and hot instead of rainy and gloomy, so it’s difficult for me to try to grasp Mary Shelley’s true perspective. I spent some time in the oldest part of Geneva (La Vielle-Ville), where everything is made of worn tan stones and uphill climbs. It’s a lovely area lined with cafes and tiny shops. I even stumbled upon a music festival that stretches from the old town to the local park. I guess I picked the right time to come to Geneva.
After finally learning the ways of the public transportation system, I decided to reward myself with a beach day! You know, for research purposes. If Byron and the Shelleys had been here in 2016 instead of 1816, they probably would have done the same thing. I went to the Bains des Pacquis, a popular spot for locals and tourists alike to lie in the sun and escape the heat by swimming in the turquoise waters of the lake. This was a great idea in theory. However, after being unable to peel myself away from the area for eight hours, I realized that I had just received the worst sunburn of my entire nineteen years. I was simultaneously cold, hot, fatigued, and nauseous, and I didn’t know that those four things could happen at once. I was either on the highway to Hell or to melanoma.
Miracles do exist, though, because I woke up the next morning a less alarming shade of red. I decided to go to Cologny, the small town where the Romantics stayed. My first stop was the Musée Fondation Bodmer, which is basically a collection of rare books and manuscripts. The museum has a permanent exhibit as well as a temporary exhibit that rotates a few times per year. Last summer, in honor of the two-hundredth anniversary of the writers’ summer in Geneva, the museum featured a Frankenstein exhibit with original manuscripts. Naturally, I decided to come to Geneva on the two-hundred and first anniversary of the event, so I didn’t get to see what was sure to be an amazing exhibit. However, the museum was still incredible. I saw first-editions of works by Milton and Spenser, second-editions of Shakespeare, first-edition collections of Hume and Kant, papyri dating back to around 200 A.D., a copy of the Gutenberg Bible . . . I think my favorite was the original manuscript (!!!) of a Sherlock Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,” by Arthur Conan Doyle. There’s something about seeing the handwriting of an author, with tiny corrections visible in the text, that is simply magical.
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| The original manuscript from a Sherlock Holmes short story |
The museum also had a first-edition copy of Byron’s first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a lengthy narrative poem. Byron wrote the third canto during his time on Lake Geneva, but there was only a tiny silver plaque to commemorate the summer.
After spending a considerable amount of time here, I set out for the second part of my Cologny adventure. As much as I would love to do a full tour of the Villa Diodati, it is unfortunately private property. Maybe I’ll live there when I’m an English professor and I make seven figures per year (ha!). I decided to make do by getting as close to the house as possible. It wasn’t long before I was surrounded by mansions hidden within stone walls, wrought iron gates, and signs that proclaimed the vigilance of the 24-hour security on duty. Challenge accepted.
With each residence that I passed, beautiful hedges and gardens peeked out from behind the gates. The air smelled like flowers and money. I soon arrived at a large, grassy hill with a sign proclaiming it as the Pré Byron, or Byron Meadow. The sign told the story, in both English and French, of the Romantics’ fateful summer, noting that the Shelleys’ residence once stood there and that Byron’s Diodati was located to the left of the meadow. After admiring the beauty of the lake view and failing to catch a glimpse of the villa through the trees, I decided to get a little closer. I walked down the hill just as a car slid out from the road where I thought the mansion was located; I thought I’d try it because I had nothing to lose! I remember thinking that it was strange that the massive wrought iron gate was open if the path led to a private residence.
As soon as I entered, the gate began to close behind me. Oops! It must have been opened for the car that left as soon as I came near. If you ask me, it was fate.
I walked along the path, praying that no terrifying security guards were going to catch me, and got as close to the Villa Diodati as I could without cutting my way through very expensive hedges. I could see the top of the creamy yellow mansion and its green shutters, and I kept thinking Byron looked out of those windows! Mary Shelley hung out here and thought of Frankenstein! John Polidori lived here and penned his vampire tale!
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before a car rolled up beside me and an intimidating Swiss woman asked me where I was going. I half-hopefully told her that I wanted to see the Villa Diodati, and she *kindly* informed me that it was private property and that I could press the green button next to the gate to leave. So I pressed the green button and I left, and she didn’t turn her car around the corner until she saw the gate close behind me. Goodness! I’m a literature student, not a vandal.
I went back to the meadow and sat for a little while, and I made sure to swing by the back entrance of the mansion. I caught a glimpse of the beautiful private gardens, as well. If only someone had opened the site to the public instead of turning the mansion into a luxury apartment complex . . .
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| At this point I probably would have taken a selfie with a trash can that said "Diodati" on it. |
It was fun to see the physical place where these tales were born. Places hold a lot of meaning for me; even though the writers are long gone, I like to think that a little bit of magic still lingers. Next, I plan to see how these writings impact the culture around the lake today.