Steamer Calabrese, January 17th.--If I had remained at Marseilles, I
might have found many peculiarities and characteristics of that Southern
city to notice; but I fear that these will not be recorded if I leave
them till I touch the soil of Italy. Indeed, I doubt whether there be
anything really worth recording in the little distinctions between one
nation and another; at any rate, after the first novelty is over, new
things seem equally commonplace with the old. There is but one little
interval when the mind is in such a state that it can catch the fleeting
aroma of a new scene. And it is always so much pleasanter to enjoy this
delicious newness than to attempt arresting it, that it requires great
force of will to insist with one's self upon sitting down to write. I
can do nothing with Marseilles, especially here on the Mediterranean,
long after nightfall, and when the steamer is pitching in a pretty lively
way.
(Later.)--I walked out with J----- yesterday morning, and reached the
outskirts of the city, whence we could see the bold and picturesque
heights that surround Marseilles as with a semicircular wall. They rise
into peaks, and the town, being on their lower slope, descends from them
towards the sea with a gradual sweep. Adown the streets that descend
these declivities come little rivulets, running along over the pavement,
close to the sidewalks, as over a pebbly bed; and though they look vastly
like kennels, I saw women washing linen in these streams, and others
dipping up the water for household purposes. The women appear very much
in public at Marseilles. In the squares and places you see half a dozen
of them together, sitting in a social circle on the bottoms of upturned
baskets, knitting, talking, and enjoying the public sunshine, as if it
were their own household fire. Not one in a thousand of them, probably,
ever has a household fire for the purpose of keeping themselves warm, but
only to do their little cookery; and when there is sunshine they take
advantage of it, and in the short season of rain and frost they shrug
their shoulders, put on what warm garments they have, and get through the
winter somewhat as grasshoppers and butterflies do,--being summer insects
like then. This certainly is a very keen and cutting air, sharp as a
razor, and I saw ice along the borders of the little rivulets almost at
noonday. To be sure, it is midwinter, and yet in the sunshine I found
myself uncomfortably warm, but in the shade the air was like the touch of
death itself. I do not like the climate.
There are a great number of public places in Marseilles, several of
which are adorned with statues or fountains, or triumphal arches or
columns, and set out with trees, and otherwise furnished as a kind of
drawing-rooms, where the populace may meet together and gossip. I never
before heard from human lips anything like this bustle and babble, this
thousand-fold talk which you hear all round about you in the crowd of a
public square; so entirely different is it from the dulness of a crowd in
England, where, as a rule, everybody is silent, and hardly half a dozen
monosyllables will come from the lips of a thousand people. In
Marseilles, on the contrary, a stream of unbroken talk seems to bubble
from the lips of every individual. A great many interesting scenes take
place in these squares. From the window of our hotel (which looked into
the Place Royale) I saw a juggler displaying his art to a crowd, who
stood in a regular square about him, none pretending to press nearer than
the prescribed limit. While the juggler wrought his miracles his wife
supplied him with his magic materials out of a box; and when the
exhibition was over she packed up the white cloth with which his table
was covered, together with cups, cards, balls, and whatever else, and
they took their departure.
I have been struck with the idle curiosity, and, at the same time, the
courtesy and kindness of the populace of Marseilles, and I meant to
exemplify it by recording how Miss S------ and I attracted their notice,
and became the centre of a crowd of at least fifty of them while doing no
more remarkable thing than settling with a cab-driver. But really this
pitch and swell is getting too bad, and I shall go to bed, as the best
chance of keeping myself in an equable state.