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temple of the Muses and you have more than once caused me to say that, if I had been able to leave France, I would have withdrawn to Lausanne.”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 Poudrière but afterwards reorganized and renamed “from the age of its members” La Société du Printemps.
Suzanne was the president of this society. They used to discuss such questions as these: “Does an element of mystery make love more agreeable?” “Can there be a friendship between a man and a woman in the same way as between two women or two men?” and the like.
Suzanne seems to have been inclined to treat young theological students in somewhat the same way as fishermen play salmon when they are “killing” them. Her friends expostulated with her on her cruelty.
Gibbon, who had the reputation of being the son of a wealthy Englishman, caused her to forget the sighing students. At that time he must have been an attractive youth – that is, if we can put any confidence in her own description of him. After praising his beautiful hair and aristocratic hand, his air of good-breeding, and his intellectual face and his vivacity of expression, she crowns her encomium by declaring that he understood the respect due to women, and that his courtesy was easy without verging on familiarity. She adds: “He dances moderately well.”
They became affianced lovers. Years afterwards, Gibbon in his autobiography declared that he had no cause to blush at recollecting the object of his choice. “Though my love,” he says, “was disappointed of success, I am rather proud that I was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted sentiment. The personal attractions of Mademoiselle Susan Curchod were embellished by the virtues and talents of her mind. Her fortune was humble, but her family was respectable.”
He visited at her parents’ home – “happy days,” he called them – in the mountains of Burgundy, and the connection was honourably encouraged. She seems to have made it a condition of her engagement that he should always live in Switzerland. When he returned to England in 1758 he found that his father opposed the match, and evidently his love speedily cooled. The absence of letters does not necessarily prove that none were written, but certainly there was no lively correspondence, and at length, after a lapse of four years, he calmly informs the young lady that he must renounce her for ever, and he lays the blame on his father, who, he says, considered it cruelty to desert him and send him prematurely to the grave, and cowardice to trample underfoot his duty to his country.
Considering the fact that Father Gibbon was busily engaged in dissipating his fortune, and had endured his son’s absence for many years, this excuse strikes one as decidedly thin. At the end of his letter of renunciation he desires to be remembered to Suzanne’s father and mother. Pastor Curchod had been dead two years, and Suzanne was then living in Geneva, where she was supporting herself and her mother by teaching.
Just ten years after his first arrival at Lausanne, Gibbon made a visit there on that memorable journey to Rome which resulted in the writing of his history. He made no attempt to see Suzanne, who seems to have deceived herself with the hope that his indifference was only imaginary. She wrote him that for five years she had sacrificed to this chimera by her “unique and inconceivable behavior.” She begged him on her knees to convince her of her madness in loving him and to end her uncertainty.
She got a letter from him that brought her to her senses. She replied that she had sacrificed her happiness not to him but, rather, to an imaginary being which could have existed only in a silly, romantic brain like hers, and, having had her eyes opened, he resumed his place as a mere man with all other men; indeed, although she had so idealized him that he seemed to be the only man she could have ever loved, he was now least attractive to her because he bore the least possible resemblance to her chimerical ideal.
Gibbon chronicled in his diary in September, 1763, the receipt of one of Suzanne’s letters, and in questionable French he called her “a dangerous and artificial girl” (“une fille dangereux et artificielle”) and adds: – “This singular affair in all its details has been very useful to me; it has opened my eyes to the character of women and will long serve as a safeguard against the seductions of love.”
Suzanne was no Cassandra, either; the very next year she married the young Genevan banker, Jacques Necker, then minister for the Republic of Geneva at Paris.
About two years later Gibbon wrote to his friend, J. B. Holroyd: —
“The Curchod (Madame Necker) I saw in Paris. She was very fond of me, and the husband particularly civil. Could they insult me more cruelly? Ask me every evening to supper; go to bed and