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did this either by explaining, as Ebel did in 1795, that prices many pages of print was to present possibilities, things to see and 1. Alain Corbin, Le territoire du vide, l’Occident et le désir du rivage (1750-1840),
Aubier, Paris, 1988, p. 59.
were higher in Switzerland ‘for obvious reasons’ (Ebel, 1795, p. 29), do, boats to take, places to sleep and to make connections between 2. We also have accounts by travellers who stayed for longer periods, such as the English
but without going into any detail, or by recalling the quality of railway and hotel, between Clarens, setting of Rousseau’s Julie, or historian Edward Gibbon and the French philosopher Voltaire.
3. Daniel Roche, Humeurs vagabondes, de la circulation des hommes et de l’utilité des voyages,
service offered by the country’s inns and hotels. Here we see the New Heloise, Dumas’s bear steak and the dizzy heights of the Fayard, Paris, 2003, p. 505. See in particular the chapter entitled ‘L’hospitalité, du don
à l’économie’, pp. 479-566.
how Murray, Joanne and Baedeker were united in their praise of Gemmi Pass. We can regard travel guides as a reflection of the 4. The most marked differences could be found between busy routes and more remote places
and between the north and south of Europe. In the northern half of the continent and along
Swiss hospitality: ‘It may be laid down as a general rule, that the wants, world as it was at a particular moment, where, if we search carefully, the major roads there were plenty of inns, while in less visited areas and in the southern
half, inns were not only less frequent, they were also more likely to attract unfavourable
the tastes, and habits of the English are more carefully and successfully we can find Lausanne as it was in 1820 or 1913. However, as we criticism.
studied in the Swiss inns than even in those of Germany.’ (Murray, have seen, these reflections can amount to much more than frozen 5. One of the rare studies dealing with the more practical side of the Grand Tour is
Attilio Brilli, Quand voyager était un art, le roman du Grand Tour, Montfort, Paris, 2001,

1838, Introduction, p. xx) ‘One even comes across [inns] which are images of a bygone age. As we trace their historical development especially pp. 128-144, ‘Relais postaux, auberges et hôtels. De l’hospitalité privée
aux chambres d’hôtes.’
so clean and well kept that one is tempted to spend several days there they are revealed as more than just books providing information 6. The canopy of a four-poster bed.
7. Léopold de Berchtold, quoted by Heinrich August Ottokar Reichard, Guide des voyageurs en
to recover from one’s exertions and upon leaving one resolves to return.’ and painting pictures of places. They are a reflection of an entire Europe, vol.1, Introduction, Bureau d’Industrie, Weimar 1802, pp. LIII-LV.
8. In the interests of simplicity, the term ‘Switzerland’ will be used to describe the whole
(Joanne,1841, p. 16) ‘Switzerland perhaps has the best hotels in the era in the history of travel. area which is now Swiss territory, even though the geopolitical situation at the time was
somewhat different.
world. […] Inns of lesser standing are often very well kept; it is rare to 9. See (among others) Joseph Addison, Remarks on several parts of Italy, etc. in the years
find any that is thoroughly bad.’ (Baedeker, 1852, p. xv) 1701, 1702, 1703, London, 1705, and Albrecht de Haller, Récit du premier voyage dans les
Alpes (1728), Hausmann AG, Saint-Gall, 1948.
Although there was always the risk of occasional squabbles, 10. These include Jean-Didier Urbain, L’idiot du voyage. Histoires de touristes, Payot, Paris, 1993

[1991]; Laurent Tissot, Naissance d’une industrie touristique. Les Anglais et la Suisse au XIX e
the travel guides and the hotels appear to have reached a general siècle, Payot, Lausanne 2000; Catherine Bertho-Lavenir, La roue et le stylo, comment nous
sommes devenus touristes, Odile Jacob, Paris 1999; Daniel Nordmann, ‘Les Guides-Joanne,
agreement quite early on, despite the expectations and often very ancêtres des Guides Bleus’, in Pierre Nora (ed.), Les lieux de mémoire: la Nation,
pp. 1035-1071, Gallimard, Paris, 1986.
personal interests of either party. Since they were each targeting the 11. The author is currently writing a thesis on the subject.
12. Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey (1768) is commonly regarded as the first and one
same clientele, these two players on the travel scene in the second of the finest examples of this tendency.
half of the nineteenth century had an equal interest in seeing 13. A term coined by the historian Gilles Bertrand (Gilles Bertrand, ‘L’expérience géographique

de l’Italie dans les guides de voyage du dernier tiers du XVIII e siècle’ in Gilles Chabaud
et al., Les guides imprimés du XVI e au XX e siècle, Belin, Paris, 2000, pp. 377-389).
their businesses grow and flourish. However, unlike the heavy 14. The recommended walks are close to Place Saint-François (the southern boundary
infrastructure of the travel industry, such as buildings, roads and of the town at that time), namely Montbenon and Derrière-Bourg.
15. Henri Heidegger, Manuel pour les voyages par la Suisse, Orell, Gessner, Fuessli & Co,
railways and means of transport, guidebooks were in a much more Zurich, 1787.
16. However, they are mentioned in 1819, in the fourth edition of his guide, in which he briefly
precarious position since they regularly needed to be modified, recommends five inns by name only ‘le lion d’or, le faucon, la couronne, la balance, le cerf’.
(Henri Heidegger, Manuel du voyageur en Suisse, Orell, Fuessli & Co, Zurich, 1819, p. 207.)
corrected and updated. This made them one of the market’s most 17. Thomas Martyn, Guide du voyageur en Suisse, Jean Mourer, Lausanne 1788, 1790 and 1794.
unpredictable sectors, although the durability and fame of the 18. Laurent Tissot, Naissance d’une industrie touristique. Les Anglais et la Suisse au XIX e siècle,

Payot, Lausanne, 2000, p. 72.
publishing houses (Baedeker guides were so well known that at 19. While Baedeker only recommended five hotels in 1852, the number rose to 34 in 1913,
even 42 if Ouchy’s eight hotels are included. This was, of course, the height
the beginning of the twentieth century the very name ‘Baedeker’ of the belle époque.
20. In the 1859 edition Baedeker replaces this cultural reference with more practical
became synonymous with ‘guidebooks’) meant that they were far information: ‘*Ancre, moderate; under the outside staircase is a wine shop, pleasing to
pedestrians waiting for the steam boat’ (Karl Baedeker, La Suisse, les lacs italiens, Milan,
more than minor players. Besides, their flexibility was a strength Turin, Gênes et Nice. Manuel du voyageur, K. Baedeker, Coblenz, 1859, p. 167).
since it enabled them to adapt to change as it occurred. 23 21. To quote chronologically the list of the establishments mentioned in the guides under

review: Hôtel du Port, Villa Roseneck, Pension du Chalet, Hôtel du Château, Pension
But the guides had the distinctive feature of being mediators la Printanière, Hôtel du Parc, Hôtel Carlton, Pension Joli-Site, Savoy-Hôtel, Hôtel Royal,
Hôtel-Pension des Alpes, Pension Seiler, Pension du Château de Vidy and, after the First
and serving as a bridge between the reader and a world of World War, the Meurice, Balmoral, Windsor & Montana and the Mont-Fleuri hotels.
22. John Murray, Adolphe Joanne and Karl Baedeker each relate their own experiences in the
knowledge and excitement, as well as offering practical advice. prefaces of their first guides to Switzerland.
23. Between 1850 and 1914, a new French edition of Baedeker’s Switzerland was published
They gave travellers access to unknown territory, to information every two or three years, as were German and English editions and other guides
to other areas.
about different places and new experiences. The purpose of their
Bibliography on page 432.
This 1930s luggage label encapsulates the popular images associated with Lake
Geneva found in literature, painting and cinema – for example in Jean Choux’s 1924
silent movie La vocation d’André Carel – with the typical boat and the French shore of
the lake with the mountains in the background.
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