Lausanne Follow-Up

Some of your readers might like to know that Lausanne was a haunt of English and American writers (“Olympic Games’ Real Home Is in Switzerland,” Aug. 2). Young Edward Gibbon was sent there by his father to be brainwashed after he was converted to Catholicism. Years later he returned to Lausanne and stayed in the Maison de la Grotte, where he finished “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” The house was demolished to make way for the central post office.

At Ouchy, the port of Lausanne at the bottom of the funicular, is the old Auberge de l’Ancre, which is now called the Hotel d’Angelterre. Byron and Shelley stayed there. After their trip by rowboat around the lake, Byron wrote “The Prisoner of Chillon.” Tourists can visit the island fortress of Chillon and see where the prisoner, Francois de Bonivard, was chained. On one pillar, Byron carved his name.

Near the Chateau of Chillon is Vevey, which is on the boat route to Montreux from Lausanne. All literary Europeans and Americans of the 19th Century visited Vevey: Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, Henri Rousseau, Katherine Mansfield, Henry James, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Makepeace Thackeray, to name a few.

MARGARET W. ROMANI

Los Angeles