Page 351 - Livre Beau Rivage Palace

followers to Montreux: ‘Here the delegates, at the suggestion of their ON THE HOTEL TERRACE plays an important role in the play by Noël Coward tellingly coincide with those of the affluent, bourgeois clientele Albert
leader, decided to halt for two or three days, to see the celebrated shores In 1861, Andersen was playing the part of literary pilgrim, entitled Private Lives (1930). In the first act, the terrace provides a Cohen depicts in Belle du Seigneur, conversing haughtily in the
of Lake Leman – particularly Chillon, and the legendary prison in following in Byron’s footsteps, and was happy to stay in the modest setting for romantic coincidence as the divorced couple Amanda hall of the Hôtel à Aigle. In this magnificent scene, gossiping
which languished the great patriot Bonivard, as related by Byron and Hôtel de l’Ancre – though he may perhaps already have regarded and Elyot, both of whom are on honeymoon with their new ladies agree with each other on their literary opinions: ‘Sacha
Delacroix.’ Due to a misunderstanding, Tartarin himself becomes the brand new Beau-Rivage with some curiosity. However, for partners, meet by chance on the hotel balcony and revive their Guitry is so witty. On the smutty side but so very French’. It would
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the ‘prisoner of Chillon’ for a night – thus fulfilling, figuratively his second stay in Ouchy in 1868 he opted for the luxurious former passion, against a backdrop of theatrical complications. seem that Sacha Guitry was indeed ‘so very French’ that he used
and for the reader’s pleasure, the dream of carving his name on Grand Hôtel. Standing on one of its impressive terraces he must This is a very amusing play to read – and yet unfortunately it exactly the same words in hotel guestbooks in Montreux. 28
these historic walls alongside those of Rousseau, Byron, Victor surely have looked out over the lake and thought of his drowned does not truly belong within the scope of this survey. This is Stefan Zweig, a tireless traveller and writer, with a more
Hugo, George Sand and Eugène Sue. deer hunter. because – despite the claims made by Nathalie de Saint-Phalle restrained character, is more equivocal about the view from his
Daudet and Twain are in agreement in their increasing In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, the in her Hôtels littéraires, Voyage autour de la terre, a very interesting window, simply expressing his enthusiasm with an exclamation
mockery of tourists’ habits in Switzerland in the last three decades unrestricted view over Lake Geneva offered by the individual but frequently inaccurate work – Private Lives takes place not in mark: ‘The view from my window!’ He writes this to his friend and
of the nineteenth century, including their mania for sights awarded hotel balcony became a literary – as much as an architectural Ouchy but in Deauville, a location which has also made frequent fellow writer Arthur Schnitzler, on a postcard from Montreux
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stars: ‘Thinking over my plans, as mapped out, I perceived that they – feature. Henry James’s Daisy Miller opens with a panoramic literary appearances from the start. The Normandy coast is also dated 21 August 1926. Apparently replying to a question, he
did not take in the Furka Pass, the Rhone Glacier, the Finsteraarhorn, architectural critique: ‘The shore of the lake presents an unbroken array the location of the Grand Hôtel – the focal point of one summer continues: ‘I’ve asked about it: bathing in the lake is not possible in
the Wetterhorn, etc. I immediately examined the guidebook to see if these of establishments of this order, of every category, from the ‘grand hotel’ of for Marcel and his grandmother in Proust’s In the Shadow of Young Montreux, only in Clarens and Ouchy’, and adds: ‘Resting here in
were important, and found they were.’ However, for the storyteller the newest fashion, with a chalk-white front, a hundred balconies, and Girls in Flower. blazing sunshine in the Hôtel Byron in Villeneuve – which is wonderfully
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Hans Christian Andersen, Baedeker remained a serious source a dozen flags flying from its roof, to the little Swiss pension of an elder The balcony of Ada and Van’s hotel room, by contrast, is peaceful –I think with great gratitude of our meeting in the mountains!’
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of inspiration. He adapted a note recounting the tragic fate of a day, with its name inscribed in German-looking lettering upon a pink or clearly located on the shores of Lake Geneva, in a landscape Zweig’s stay in ‘Villeneuve-la-paisible’ was clearly inspiring: this was
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young married couple on a small island very close to Chillon yellow wall, and an awkward summer-house in the angle of the garden.’ steeped in eroticism: ‘and on the opposite shore of Leman, Leman to be the location for his story ‘The Runaway’, written ten years
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to create the story called ‘The Ice Maiden’. Andersen also blurs Initially, these ‘fashionable’ grand hotels were regarded as rather meaning Lover, loomed the crest of Sex (Scex) Noir, Black Rock’. later, and which explores the theme of the view of the distant
the boundary between fiction and reality at the end of his story, showy because of their size – yet soon they too would be part of Aware of their precarious situation, the lovers are careful to ‘strictly shore. Like Guitry, the story’s protagonist – a Russian deserter
when he notes that foreigners were moved to read of the couple’s the natural landscape travellers spied from the window of their avoid equivocal exposure on their lakeside balcony which was visible to who has managed to get as far as the shore of Lake Geneva, in
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misfortunes in ‘their red guidebooks’. coupé: ‘Through the steaming windows they could see the names of every yellow or mauve flowerhead on the platbands of the promenade’. 1918 – can think only of his homeland: ‘Now his tale grew confused.
‘The Ice Maiden’ was published in 1861, one year after Andersen’s the stations, Clarens, Vevey, Lausanne; the red chalets, the gardens of rare Vladimir Nabokov himself, meanwhile, was very happy to be He was a Siberian peasant; his home was close to Lake Baikal; he could
first stay in Lausanne. Staying in the former Hôtel de l’Ancre, today shrubs – all lying under a damp veil, which dropped from the branches of photographed on the little terrace belonging to his suite in the make out the other shore of Lake Geneva, and he fancied that it must be
the Hôtel d’Angleterre, he proudly records that he slept just a few the trees, the roofs of the houses, and the terraces of the hotels.’ 22 Montreux Palace. He never grew tired of this rented view of Russia.’ Disillusioned by his mistake, the fugitive plunges into
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rooms away from the one where Byron conceived his masterpiece, The balcony – the ultimate transitional space, midway the lake, replying pragmatically to the journalist who asked him the water from which he had been saved the day before.
The Prisoner of Chillon. This delicious, atmospheric proximity to between privacy and public life, an extension of the hotel room why he lived in a hotel on Lake Geneva: ‘It simplifies postal matters,
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the famous poet probably inspired these lines: ‘This is one of the allowing for intimate conversation, while at the same time putting it eliminates the nuisance of private ownership, it confirms me in my HOTEL AS EXILE
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coasts that are sung of by the poets. Here sat Byron, by the deep bluish- its occupants on display, as illustrated by the above examples – favourite habit – the habit of freedom.’ The view into the distance at night is very often filled with
green lake, under the walnut trees and wrote his melodious verses upon the initially appears in the literature merely as an architectural feature. For the young Nabokov, exiled from his Russian home hope – because nothing is known as yet of the reality behind the
prisoner of the deep sombre castle of Chillon. Here, where Clarens with It is only from the 1930s onwards that the hotel’s potential and always ill at ease in furnished rooms and hotels, the view seductively sparkling lights. Thus Nicole, the young heroine of F.
its weeping willows, mirrored itself in the waters, once wandered Rousseau as a literary backdrop is fully exploited – at a time when it is over the lake means freedom of thought, beyond the limitations Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night (1933), is happy in her love
and dreamed of Heloïse.’ In any event, his story of Rudy the bold increasingly seen as a place of refuge or exile; now it is no longer of patriotism; for Sacha Guitry, by contrast, as his inscription for Dick and in her situation in the Hôtel de Caux, far above life’s
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chamois hunter and Babette the miller’s daughter is another idyll primarily the theatre of public life but the refuge of solitary figures, in the Beau-Rivage guestbook reveals, it means seeing the realities: ‘Two thousand feet below she saw the necklace and bracelet
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that merits a star. exiles and secret lovers. The hotel terrace, a private exterior space, most beautiful thing of all: France. Here his tastes undoubtedly of lights that were Montreux and Vevey, beyond them a dim pendant

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