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THE RIVIERA OF THE
CORNICHE ROAD
[Illustration: A RIVIERA GARDEN.]
The Riviera of the
Corniche Road
BY
SIR FREDERICK TREVES, BART.
G.C.V.O., C.B., LL.D.
Serjeant-Surgeon to His Majesty the King; Author of “The
Other Side of the Lantern,” “The Cradle of the Deep,”
“The Country of the Ring and the Book,” “Highways
and By-ways of Dorset,” etc. etc.
_Illustrated by 92 Photographs by the Author_
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1921
Preface
This book deals with that part of the French Riviera which is commanded
by the Great Corniche Road—the part between Nice and Mentone—together
with such places as are within easy reach of the Road.
I am obliged to the proprietors of the _Times_ for permission to reprint
an article of mine contributed to that journal in March, 1920. It
appears as Chapter XXXVII.
I am much indebted to Dr. Hagberg Wright, of the London Library, for
invaluable help in the collecting of certain historical data.
FREDERICK TREVES.
Monte Carlo,
_Christmas, 1920_
Contents
Chapter Page
1. Early Days in the Riviera 1
2. The Corniche Road 8
3. Nice: The Promenade des Anglais 14
4. Nice: The Old Town 19
5. The Siege of Nice 29
6. Cimiez and St. Pons 36
7. How the Convent of St. Pons came to an 41
End
8. Vence, the Defender of the Faith 49
9. Vence, the Town 59
10. Grasse 67
11. A Prime Minister and Two Ladies of 80
Grasse
12. Cagnes and St. Paul du Var 97
13. Cap Ferrat and St. Hospice 104
14. The Story of Eze 118
15. The Troubadours of Eze 123
16. How Eze was Betrayed 127
17. The Town that Cannot Forget 135
18. The Harbour of Monaco 143
19. The Rock of Monaco 151
20. A Fateful Christmas Eve 161
21. Charles the Seaman 165
22. The Lucien Murder 170
23. How the Spaniards were got rid of 176
24. A Matter of Etiquette 181
25. The Monte Carlo of the Novelist 187
26. Monte Carlo 191
27. Some Diversions of Monte Carlo 195
28. An Old Roman Posting Town 206
29. The Tower of Victory 214
30. La Turbie of To-day 224
31. The Convent of Laghet 231
32. The City of Peter Pan 239
33. The Legend of Roquebrune 248
34. Some Memories of Roquebrune 252
35. Gallows Hill 259
36. Mentone 265
37. The First Visitors to the Riviera 273
38. Castillon 281
39. Sospel 286
40. Sospel and the Wild Boar 294
41. Two Queer Old Towns 297
Index 305
List of Illustrations
A Riviera Garden _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
At the Bend of the Road 8
Nice: The Old Terraces 16
Nice: Rue du Sénat 26
Nice: A Street in the Old Town 32
Cimiez: The Roman Amphitheatre 36
Cimiez: The Marble Cross 40
Cimiez: The Monastery Well 40
Vence: The East Gate and Outer Wall 52
Vence: The Church and Court of Bishop’s 58
Palace
Vence: Old House in the Place Godeau 62
Vence: Rue de la Coste 62
Grasse: The de Cabris House 68
Grasse: The Cathedral 72
Grasse: The Place aux Aires 76
Grasse: Rue de l’Evêché 80
Grasse: Rue sans Peur 90
Cagnes 96
Cagnes: The Town Gate 98
Cagnes: The Place Grimaldi 100
Cagnes: The Castle 100
St. Paul du Var 102
St. Paul du Var: The Entry 102
St. Paul du Var: The Main Gate 102
St. Paul du Var: A Side Street 104
St. Paul du Var: A Shop of the Mediæval 104
Type
Cap de St. Hospice 108
St. Hospice: The Madonna and the Tower 108
Villefranche 110
Villefranche: The Main Street 112
A Road in Beaulieu 114
Eze 120
Eze: The Main Gate 124
A Street in Eze 134
Eze: On the Way to the Castle 138
Eze: All that Remains of the Castle 138
Cap d’Ail, near Monaco 144
Monaco 148
Monaco: The Sentry Tower on the Rampe 156
Monaco: The Drawbridge Gate, 1533 156
Monaco: The Palace 162
Monaco: The Old Hôtel de Ville 168
Monaco: The Cliff Garden 172
The Gorge between Monaco and Monte Carlo 178
The Chapel of St. Dévote 184
Monte Carlo from Monaco 192
Monte Carlo: The Terrace, Christmas Day 196
Monte Carlo: The Casino Garden 202
The Roman Monument, La Turbie 206
A Corner in La Turbie 210
A Street in La Turbie 216
La Turbie: Old Window in the Rue Droite 216
La Turbie: The Old Bakehouse 224
La Turbie: La Portette 226
La Turbie: The Fortress Wall, showing 226
the Roman Stones
La Turbie: The Nice Gate 228
Laghet 232
Laghet: The Entrance 234
Laghet: One of the Cloisters 236
Roquebrune, from near Bon Voyage 240
Roquebrune: The East Gate 246
Roquebrune: The Place des Frères 246
Roquebrune: Showing the Castle 252
Roquebrune: Rue de la Fontaine 256
The Roman Milestones, “603” 258
A Piece of the Old Roman Road 258
The Roman Fountain near La Turbie 260
Gallows Hill 262
Mont Justicier: The Two Pillars of the 262
Gallows
The Chapel of St. Roch 264
Mentone: The Old Town 266
Mentone: The East Bay 268
Mentone: Rue Longue 272
Mentone: A Doorway in the Rue Longue 274
A Side Street in Mentone 276
A Side Street in Mentone 278
Mentone: Rue Mattoni 278
Castillon: (In the snow) 280
Castillon: The Entry to the Town 280
Castillon: The Main Street 282
Castillon: The Main Street and Church 284
Door
Sospel: The Old Bridge 286
Sospel: The River Front 288
Sospel: The Place St. Michel 290
A Square in Sospel 292
Sospel: The Ruins of the Convent 292
A Street in Sospel 294
Sospel: The City Wall and Gate 294
A Street in Gorbio 298
A Street in Gorbio 298
A Street in St. Agnes 300
A Street in St. Agnes 302
THE RIVIERA OF THE
CORNICHE ROAD
I
EARLY DAYS IN THE RIVIERA
THE early history of this brilliant country is very dim, as are its
shores and uplands when viewed from an on-coming barque at the dawn of
day. The historian-adventurer sailing into the past sees before him just
such an indefinite country as opens up before the eye of the mariner.
Hills and crags—alone unchangeable—rise against the faint light in the
sky. The sound of breakers on the beach alone can tell where the ocean
ends and where the land begins; while the slopes, the valleys and the
woods are lost in one blank impenetrable shadow.
As the daylight grows, or as our knowledge grows, the forms of men come
into view, wild creatures armed with clubs and stones. They will be
named Ligurians, just as the earlier folk of Britain were named Britons.
Later on less uncouth men, furnished with weapons of bronze or iron, can
be seen to land from boats or to be plodding along the shore as if they
had journeyed far. They will be called Phœnicians, Carthaginians or
Phocæans according to the leaning of the writer who deals with them.
There may be bartering on the beach, there may be fighting or pantomimic
love-making; but in the end those who are better armed take the place of
the old dwellers, and the rough woman in her apron of skins walks off
into the wood by the side of the man with the bronze knife and the
beads.
There is little more than this to be seen through the haze of far
distant time. The written history, such as it is, is thus part fiction,
part surmise, for the very small element of truth is based upon such
fragments of evidence as a few dry bones, a few implements, a bracelet,
a defence work, a piece of pottery.
The Ligurians or aborigines formed themselves, for purposes of defence,
into clans or tribes. They built fortified camps as places of refuge.
Relics of these forts or castra remain, and very remarkable relics they
are, for they show immense walls built of blocks of unworked stone that
the modern wall builder may view with amazement. Nowhere are these camps
found in better preservation than around Monte Carlo.
In the course of time into this savage country, marching in invincible
columns, came the stolid, orderly legions of Rome. They subdued the
hordes of hillmen, broke up their forts, and commemorated the victory by
erecting a monument on the crest of La Turbie which stands there to this
day. The Romans brought with them discipline and culture, and above all,
peace. The natives, reassured, came down from their retreats among the
heights and established themselves in the towns which were springing up
by the edge of the sea. The Condamine of Monaco, for example, was
inhabited during the first century of the present era, as is made
manifest by the relics which have been found there.
With the fall of the Roman Empire peace vanished and the whole country
lapsed again into barbarism. It was overrun from Marseilles to Genoa by
gangs of hearty ruffians whose sole preoccupation was pillage, arson and
murder. They uprooted all that the Romans had established, and left in
their fetid trail little more than a waste of burning huts and dead men.
These pernicious folk were called sometimes Vandals, sometimes Goths,
sometimes Burgundians, and sometimes Swabians. The gentry, however, who
seem to have been the most persistent and the most diligent in evil were
the Lombards. They are described as “ravishing the country” for the
immoderate period of two hundred years, namely from 574 to 775. How it
came about that any inhabitants were left after this exhausting
treatment the historian does not explain.
At the end of the eighth century there may possibly have been a few
years’ quiet along the Riviera, during which time the people would have
recovered confidence and become hopeful of the future. Now the Lombards
had always come down upon them by land, so they knew in which direction
to look for their troubles, and, moreover, they knew the Lombards and
had a quite practical experience of their habits. After a lull in alarms
and in paroxysms of outrage, and after what may even be termed a few
calm years, something still more dreadful happened to these dwellers in
a fool’s paradise. Marauders began to come, not by the hill passes, but
by sea and to land out of boats. They were marauders, too, of a
peculiarly virulent type, compared with whom the Lombards were as babes
and sucklings; for not only were their actions exceptionally violent and
their weapons unusually noxious, but they themselves were terrifying to
look at, for they were nearly black.
These alarming people were the Saracens, otherwise known as the Moors or
Arabs. They belonged to a great race of Semitic origin which had peopled
Syria, the borders of the Red Sea and the North of Africa. They
invaded—in course of time—not only this tract of coast, but also
Rhodes, Cyprus, France, Spain and Italy. They were by birth and
inheritance wanderers, fighters and congenital pirates. They spread
terror wherever they went, and their history may be soberly described as
“awful.” They probably appeared at their worst in Provence and at their
best in Spain, where they introduced ordered government, science,
literature and commerce, and left behind them the memory of elegant
manners and some of the most graceful buildings in the world.
As early as about 800 the Saracens had made themselves masters of Eze,
La Turbie and Sant’ Agnese; while by 846 they seem to have terrorised
the whole coast from the Rhone to the Genoese Gulf, and in the first
half of the tenth century to have occupied nearly every sea-town from
Arles to Mentone. Finally, in 980, a great united effort was made to
drive the marauders out of France. It was successful. The leader of the
Ligurian forces was William of Marseilles, first Count of Provence, and
one of the most distinguished of his lieutenants was a noble Genoese
soldier by name Gibellino Grimaldi. It is in the person of this knight
that the Grimaldi name first figures in the history of the Ligurian
coast.
As soon as the Saracens had departed the powers that had combined to
drive them from the country began to fight among themselves. They fought
in a vague, confused, spasmodic way, with infinite vicissitudes and in
every available place, for over five hundred years. The siege of Nice by
the French in 1543 may be conveniently taken as the end of this
particular series of conflicts.
It was a period of petty fights in which the Counts of Provence were in
conflict with the rulers of Northern Italy, with the Duke of Milan, it
may be, or the Duke of Savoy or the Doge of Genoa. It was a time when
town fought with town, when Pisa was at war with Genoa and Genoa with
Nice, when the Count of Ventimiglia would make an onslaught on the Lord
of Eze and the ruffian who held Gorbio would plan a descent upon little
Roquebrune. This delectable part of the continent, moreover, came within
the sphere of that almost interminable war which was waged between the
Guelphs and the Ghibellines. In the present area the Grimaldi were for
the Guelphs and the Pope, and the Spinola for the Ghibellines and the
Emperor. The feud began in the twelfth century and lasted until the
French invasion in 1494.
This period of five hundred years was a time of interest that was
dramatic rather than momentous. So far as the South of France was
concerned one of the most beautiful tracts of country in Europe was the
battle-ground for bands of mediæval soldiers, burly, dare-devil men
carrying fantastic arms and dressed in the most picturesque costumes the
world has seen.
It was a period of romance, and, indeed—from a scenic point of view—of
romance in its most alluring aspect. Here were all the folk and the
incidents made famous by the writers of a hundred tales—the longbowman
in his leather jerkin, the man in the slashed doublet sloping a halberd,
the gay musketeer, the knight in armour and plumes, as well as the
little walled town, the parley before the gate, the fight for the
drawbridge and the dash up the narrow street.
It was a period when there were cavalcades on the road, glittering with
steel, with pennons and with banners, when there were ambushes and
frenzied flights, carousing of the Falstaffian type at inns, and
dreadful things done in dungeons. It was a time of noisy banquets in
vaulted halls with dogs and straw on the floor; a time of desperate
rescues, of tragic escapes, of fights on prison roofs, and of a general
and brilliant disorder. It was a delusive epoch, too, with a pretty
terminology, when the common hack was a palfrey, the footman a varlet,
and the young woman a damosel.
The men in these brawling times were, in general terms, swashbucklers
and thieves; but they had some of the traits of crude gentlemen, some
rudiments of honour, some chivalry of an emotional type, and an
unreliable reverence for the pretty woman.
It was a time to read about rather than to live in; a period that owes
its chief charm to a safe distance and to the distortion of an
artificial mirage. In any case one cannot fail to realise that these
scenes took place in spots where tramcars are now running, where the
char-à-banc rumbles along, and where the anæmic youth and the brazen
damosel dance to the jazz music of an American band.
When the five hundred years had come to an end there were still, in this
particular part of the earth, wars and rumours of wars that ceased not;
but they were ordinary wars of small interest save to the student in a
history class, for the day of the hand-to-hand combat and of the
dramatic fighting in streets had passed away.
So far as our present purpose is concerned the fact need only be noted
that the spoiled and petted Riviera has been the scene of almost
continuous disturbance and bloodshed for the substantial period of some
seventeen hundred years, and that it has now become a Garden of Peace,
calmed by a kind of agreeable dream-haunted stupor such as may befall a
convulsed man who has been put asleep by cocaine.
II
THE CORNICHE ROAD
IT is hardly necessary to call to mind the fact that there are several
Corniche roads along the Riviera. The term implies a fringing road, a
road that runs along a cornice or ledge (French, _Corniche_; Italian,
_Cornice_).
The term will, therefore, be often associated with a coast road that
runs on the edge or border of the sea or on a shelf above it.
There are the Chemin de la Corniche at Marseilles which runs as far east
as the Prado, the Corniche d’Or near Cannes, the three Corniche Roads
beyond Nice, and—inland—the Corniche de Grasse.
The bare term “The Corniche Road” is, however, generally understood to
refer to the greatest road of them all, La Grande Corniche.
[Illustration: AT THE BEND OF THE ROAD.]
Of all the great roads in Europe it is probable that La Grande
Corniche—which runs from Nice eastwards towards Italy—is the best
known and the most popular. Roads become famous in many ways, some by
reason of historical associations, some on account of the heights they
reach, and others by the engineering difficulties they have been able to
surmount. La Grande Corniche can claim none of these distinctions. It is
comparatively a modern road, it mounts to little more than 1,700 feet,
and it cannot boast of any great achievement in its making. It passes by
many towns but it avoids them all, all save one little forgotten village
outside whose walls it sweeps with some disdain.
It starts certainly from Nice, but it goes practically nowhere, since
long before Mentone is in view it drops into a quite common highway, and
thus incontinently ends. It is not even the shortest way from point to
point, being, on the contrary, the longest. It cannot pretend to be what
the Italians call a “master way,” since no road of any note either
enters it or leaves it.
In so far as it evades all towns it is unlike the usual great highway.
It passes through no cobbled, wondering street; breaks into no quiet,
fountained square; crosses no market-place alive with chattering folk;
receives no blessing from the shadow of a church. Nowhere is its coming
heralded by an avenue of obsequious trees, it forces its way through no
vaulted gateway, it lingers by no village green, it knows not the scent
of a garden nor the luscious green of a cultivated field. Neither the
farmer’s cart nor the lumbering diligence will be met with on this
unamiable road, nor will its quiet be disturbed by the patter of a flock
of sheep nor by a company of merry villagers on their way to the fair.
La Grande Corniche is, in fact, a modern military road built by the
French under Napoleon I in 1806. It was made with murderous intent. It
was constructed to carry arms and men, guns and munitions and the
implements of war. It was a road of destruction designed to convey
bloodshed and desolation into Italy and beyond. He who conceived it had
in his mind the picture of a road alive, from end to end, with columns
of fighting men marching eastwards under a cloud of angry dust with the
banner of France in the van; had in his ears the merciless tramp of ten
thousand feet, the clatter of sweating cavalry, the rumble of unending
cannon wheels. It was a picture, he thought, worthy of the heart-racking
labour that the making of the road involved.
But yet, in spite of all this, the popularity of the road is readily to
be understood. It is cut out, as a mere thread, upon the side of a
mountain range which is thrown into as many drooping folds as is a vast
curtain gathered up into a fraction of its width. It is never
monotonous, never, indeed, even straight. It winds in and out of many a
valley, it skirts many a fearful gorge, it clings to the flank of many a
treacherous slope. Here it creeps beneath a jutting crag, there it
mounts in the sunlight over a radiant hill or dips into the silence of a
rocky glen.
It has followed in its making any level ledge that gave a foothold to
man or beast. It has used the goat track; it has used the path of the
mountaineer; while at one point it has taken to itself a stretch of the
ancient Roman road. It is a daring, determined highway, headstrong and
self-confident, hesitating before no difficulty and daunted by no
alarms, heeding nothing, respecting nothing, and obedient only to the
call “onwards to Italy at any cost!”
From its eyrie it looks down upon a scene of amazing enchantment, upon
the foundations of the everlasting hills, upon a sea glistening like
opal, upon a coast with every fantastic variation of crag and cliff, of
rounded bay and sparkling beach, of wooded glen and fern-decked,
murmuring chine. Here are bright villas by the water’s edge, a white
road that wanders as aimlessly along as a dreaming child, a town or two,
and a broad harbour lined with trees. Far away are daring capes, two
little islands, and a line of hills so faint as to be almost unreal. It
is true, indeed, as the writer of a well known guide book has said, that
“the Corniche Road is one of the most beautiful roads in Europe.”
Moreover, it passes through a land which is a Vanity Fair to the
frivolous, a paradise to the philanderer, and a garden of peace to all
who would escape the turmoil of the world. It is a lazy, careless
country, free from obtrusive evidence of toil and labour, for there are
neither works nor factories within its confines. Here the voice of the
agitator is not heard, while the roar of political dispute falls upon
the contented ear as the sound of a distant sea.
The Grand Corniche is now a road devoted to the seeker after pleasure.
People traverse it, not with the object of arriving at any particular
destination, but for the delight of the road itself, of the joy it gives
to the eye and to the imagination. Its only traffic is what the
transport agent would call “holiday traffic”; for when the idle season
ends the highway is deserted. In earlier days there would rumble along
the road the carriage and four of the traveller of great means; then
came the humbler vehicle hired from the town; then the sleek motor; and
finally, as a sign of democratic progress, the char-à-banc, the omnibus,
and the motor-brake.
No visitor to the Riviera of any self-respect can leave without
traversing the Corniche Road. Mark Twain says that “there are many
sights in the Bermudas, but they are easily avoided.” This particular
road cannot be avoided. The traveller who returns to his home without
having “done” La Grande Corniche may as well leave Rome without seeing
the Forum.
The most picturesque section of the road is that between Nice and Eze.
Starting from Nice it winds up along the sides of Mont Vinaigrier and
Mont Gros which here form the eastern bank of the Paillon valley. The
hills are covered with pine and olive trees, vines and oaks. There is
soon attained a perfect view over the whole town of Nice, when it will
be seen how commanding is the position occupied by the Castle Hill.
Across the valley are Cimiez and St. Pons. At the first bend, as the
height is climbed, is a tablet to mark the spot where two racing
motorists were killed. When the road turns round the northern end of
Mont Gros a fine view of the Paillon valley is displayed. This valley is
much more attractive at a distance than near at hand. By the river’s
bank on one side is St. André with its seventeenth-century château;
while on the other side is the Roman station of La Trinité-Victor, a
little place of a few houses and a church, where the old Roman road
comes down from Laghet. High up above St. André, at the height of nearly
1,000 feet, is the curious village of Falicon. Far away, at a distance
of some seven miles, is Peille, a patch of grey in a cup among the
mountains. Northwards the Paillon river is lost to view at Drap.
When the road has skirted the eastern side of Mont Vinaigrier the Col
des Quatre Chemins is reached (1,131 feet). Here are an inn and a
ridiculous monument to General Massena. The hills that border on the
road are now bleak and bare. Just beyond the col is a fascinating view
of Cap Ferrat and Cap de St. Hospice. The peninsula is spread out upon
the sea like a model in dark green wax on a sheet of blue. The road now
skirts the bare Monts Pacanaglia and Fourche and reaches the Col d’Eze
(1,694 feet), where is unfolded the grandest panorama that the Corniche
can provide. The coast can be followed from the Tête de Chien to St.
Tropez. The wizened town of Eze comes into sight, and below it is the
beautiful Bay of Eze, with the Pointe de Cabuel stretched out at the
foot of Le Sueil.
The view inland over the Alps and far away to the snows is superb. To
the left are Vence and Les Gorges du Loup, together with the town of St.
Jeannet placed at the foot of that mighty precipice, the Baou de St.
Jeannet, which attaining, as it does, a height of 2,736 feet is the
great landmark of the country round. Almost facing the spectator are
Mont Chauve de Tourette (2,365 feet) and Mont Macaron. The former is to
be recognised by the fort on its summit. They are distant about five
miles. To the right is Mont Agel with its familiar scar of bare stones.
Some two kilometres beyond Eze the Capitaine is reached, the point at
which the Corniche Road attains its greatest height, that of 1,777 feet.
The track now very slowly descends. When La Turbie (1,574 feet) is
passed a splendid view is opened up of Monaco and Monte Carlo, of the
Pointe de la Vieille, of Cap Martin, and of the coast of Italy as far as
Bordighera. Roquebrune—which can be seen at its best from the
Corniche—is passed below the town, and almost at once the road joins
the sober highway that leads to Mentone and ends its romantic career on
a tramline.
III
NICE: THE PROMENADE DES ANGLAIS
NICE is a somewhat gross, modern seaside town which is beautiful in its
situation but in little else. It lies at the mouth of a majestic valley
and on the shores of a generous bay, open to the sun, but exposed at the
same time to every villainous wind that blows. It is an unimaginative
town with most excellent shops and a complete, if noisy, tramway system.
It is crowded, and apparently for that reason popular. It is proud of
its fine sea front and of the bright and ambitious buildings which are
ranged there, as if for inspection and to show Nice at its best.
The body of the town is made up of a vast collection of houses and
streets of a standard French pattern and little individuality. Viewed
from any one of the heights that rise above it, Nice is picturesque and
makes a glorious, widely diffused display of colour; but as it is
approached the charm diminishes, the dull suburbs damp enthusiasm, and
the bustling, noisy, central streets complete the disillusion. On its
outskirts is a crescent of pretty villas and luxuriant gardens which
encircle it as a garland may surround a plain, prosaic face. The country
in the neighbourhood of this capital of the Alpes Maritimes is
singularly charming, and, therefore, the abiding desire of the visitor
to Nice is to get out of it.
Along the sea front is the much-photographed Promenade des Anglais with
its line of palm trees. It is marked with a star and with capital
letters in the guide books and it is quite worthy of this distinction.
It appears to have been founded just one hundred years ago to provide
work for the unemployed. To judge from the crowd that frequents it, it
is still the Promenade of the Unemployed.
The Promenade has great dignity. It is spacious and, above all, it is
simple. As a promenade it is indeed ideal. It is free from the robust
vulgarity, the intrusions, and the restlessness of the parade in an
English popular seaside resort. There are no penny-in-the-slot machines,
no bathing-houses daubed over with advertisements, no minstrels, no
entertainments on the beach, no importunate boatmen, no persistent
photographers. If it gives the French the idea that it is a model of a
promenade of the English, it will lead to an awakening when the
Frenchman visits certain much-frequented seaside towns in England.
A little pier—the Jetée-Promenade—steps off from the main parade. On
it is a casino which provides varied and excellent attractions. The
building belongs to the Bank Holiday Period of architecture and is
accepted without demur as exactly the type of structure that a
joy-dispensing pier should produce. It is, however, rather disturbing to
learn that this fragile casino, with its music-hall and its refreshment
bars, is a copy of St. Sophia in Constantinople. That mosque is one of
the most impressive and most inspiring ecclesiastical edifices in the
world, as well as one of the most stupendous. Those who know
Constantinople and have been struck by the lordly magnificence of its
great religious fane will turn from this dreadful travesty with horror.
It is a burlesque that hurts, as would the “Hallelujah Chorus” played on
a penny whistle.
It is along the Promenade des Anglais—the Promenade of the
Unemployed—that the great event of the Carnival of Nice, the Battle of
Flowers, is held every year. The Carnival began probably as the modest
festa of a village community, a picturesque expression of the religion
of the time, a reverent homage to the country and to the flowers that
made it beautiful. It seems to have been always associated with flowers
and one can imagine the passing by of a procession of boys and girls
with their elders, all decked with flowers, as a spectacle both gracious
and beautiful.
It has developed now with the advancing ugliness of the times. The
simple maiden, clad in white, with her garland of wild flowers, has
grown into a coarse, unseemly monster, blatant and indecorous,
surrounded by a raucous mob carrying along with it the dust of a
cyclone. The humble village fête has become a means of making money and
an opportunity for clamour, licence and display. Reverence of any kind
or for anything is not a notable attribute of the modern mind; while
with the advance of a pushing democracy gentle manners inevitably fade
away.
It is pitiable that the Carnival has to do with flowers and that it is
through them that it seeks to give expression to its loud and flamboyant
taste. It is sad to see flowers put to base and meretricious uses,
treated as mere dabs of paint, forced into unwonted forms, made up as
anchors or crowns and mangled in millions. The festival is not so much a
battle of flowers as a Massacre of Flowers, a veritable St.
Bartholomew’s Day for buds and blossoms.
[Illustration: NICE: THE OLD TERRACES.]
The author of a French guide book suggests that the visitor should
attend the Carnival “at least once.” He makes this proposal with evident
diffidence. He owns that the affair is one of _animation incroyable_,
that the streets are occupied by _une cohue de gens en délire_ and
recommends the pleasure seeker to carry no valuables, to wear no clothes
that are capable of being spoiled, no hat that would suffer from being
bashed in, and to remember always that the dust is _énorme_.
Those who like a rollicking crowd, hustling through streets a-flutter
with a thousand flags and hung with festoons by the kilometre, and those
who have a passion for throwing things at other people might go even
more than once. They will see in the procession much that is ludicrous,
grotesque and puerile, an exaggerated combination of a circus car parade
and a native war dance, as well as a display of misapplied decoration of
extreme ingenuity.
On the other hand, the flower lover should escape to the mountains and
hide until the days of the Carnival are over, and with him might go any
who would prefer a chaplet of violets on the head of a girl to a laundry
basket full of peonies on the bonnet of a motor.
On that side of the old town which borders upon the sea are relics which
illustrate the more frivolous mood of Nice as it was expressed before
the building of the Promenade des Anglais. These relics show in what
manner the visitor to Nice in those far days sought joy in life.
Parallel to the beach is the Cours Saleya, a long, narrow, open space
shaded by trees. It was at one time a fashionable promenade, comparable
to the Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells. It is now a flower and vegetable
market. On the ocean side of this Cours are two lines of shops, very
humble and very low. The roofs of these squat houses are level and
continuous and so form two terraces running side by side and extending
for a distance of 800 feet.
These are the famous _Terrasses_ where the beaus and the beauties of
Nice promenaded, simpered, curtsied or bowed, and when this walk by the
shore was vowed to be “monstrous fine, egad.”[1] The terraces are now
deserted, are paved with vulgar asphalt and edged by a disorderly row of
tin chimneys. On one side, however, of this once crowded and fashionable
walk are a number of stone benches, on which the ladies sat, received
their friends, and displayed their Paris frocks. The terrace is as
uninviting as a laundry drying ground and these grey, melancholy benches
alone recall the fact that the place once rippled with colour and
sparkled with life as if it were the enclosure at Ascot.
-----
[1] The first of these terraces was completed in 1780 and the second one
in 1844.
IV
NICE: THE OLD TOWN
LOOKING down upon the city from Mont Boron it is easy to distinguish
Nice the Illustrious from Nice the Parvenu. There is by the sea an
isolated green hill with precipitous flanks. This is the height upon
which once stood the ancient citadel. On one side is a natural
harbour—the old port—while on the other side is a jumble of
weather-stained roofs and narrow lanes which represent the old town. The
port, the castle hill, with the little cluster of houses at its foot,
form the real Nice, the Nice of history.
Radiating from this modest centre, like the petals of a sunflower
spreading from its small brown disc, are the long, straight streets, the
yellow and white houses and the red roofs of modern Nice. This new town
appears from afar as an immense expanse of bright biscuit-yellow spread
between the blue of the bay and the deep green of the uplands. It
presents certain abrupt excrescences on its surface, like isolated warts
on a pale face. These are the famous hotels. This city of to-day is of
little interest. It commends itself merely as a very modern and very
prosperous seaside resort. Within the narrow circuit of the old town, on
the other hand, there is much that is worthy to be seen and to be
pondered over.
It is said that Nice was founded by the Phocæans about the year 350
B.C., and that the name of the place, Nicæa, the city of victory,
records the victory of these very obscure people over the still more
obscure Ligurians. The Romans paid little heed to Nice. They passed it
by and founded their own city, Cemenelum (now Cimiez), on higher ground
away from the sea. Nice was then merely the port, the poor suburb, the
fishers’ town. After Cimiez came to an end Nice began to grow and
flourish. It was, in the natural course of events, duly sacked or burned
by barbarous hordes and by Saracens, and was besieged as soon as it had
walls and was besiegable. It took part in the local wars, now on this
side, now on that. It had, in common with nearly every town in Europe,
its periods of pestilence and its years of famine.
In the thirteenth century it fell into the hands of the Counts of
Provence, and at the end of the fourteenth century it came under the
protection of the Dukes of Savoy. Like many a worthier place it was
shifted to and fro like a pawn on a chess-board. It had for years a
strong navy and the reputation of being a terror to the Barbary pirates.
These tiresome men from Barbary interfered with the pursuits of Nice,
which consisted largely of robbery on the high seas. Nice did not object
to the Barbary men as pirates but as poachers on the Nice grounds. The
picture drawn by one writer who represents Nice in the guise of an
indignant moralist repressing piracy because of its wickedness, may be
compared with the conception of Satan rebuking sin. In 1250 Charles of
Anjou, Prince of Provence, built a naval arsenal at Nice. It occupied
the area now covered by the Cours Saleya but was entirely swept away by
a storm in 1516.
In 1548 Nice—then a town of Savoy—was attacked by the French and
sustained a very memorable siege, which is dealt with in the chapter
which follows. After this it became quite a habit with the French to
besiege Nice; for they set upon it, with varying success, in 1600, again
in 1691, in 1706, and again in 1744. Finally, after changes of ownership
too complex to mention, Nice was annexed to France, together with Savoy,
in the year 1860.
In Bosio’s interesting work[2] there is a plan of the city of Nice
published in 1610. Although bearing the date named it represents the
disposition of the city as it existed at a much earlier period. It shows
that the town was situated on the left or east bank of the Paillon and
that it was divided into two parts, the High Town and the Low Town. The
former occupied the summit of the Castle Hill, was strongly fortified
and surrounded by substantial walls. On this plateau were the castle of
the governor, the cathedral, the bishop’s palace, the Hôtel de Ville,
and the residences of certain nobles. The Low Town, at the foot of the
hill, was occupied by the houses and shops of merchants, by private
residences, and the humbler dwellings of sailors, artisans and poor
folk. In the earliest days the High Town, or Haute Ville, alone existed;
for Nice was then a settlement on an isolated hill as difficult of
access as Monaco. In the fifteenth century the castle was represented
only by the old keep or donjon, a structure, no doubt, massive enough
but not adapted for other than a small garrison. It was Nicode de
Menthon who enlarged the fortress of Nice and greatly increased the
defences of the town during the century named.
As years progressed the military needs of the time caused the High Town,
as a place of habitation, to cease to exist; for the whole of the top of
the hill was given up to fortifications, bastions, gun emplacements,
magazines, armouries and barracks. It is said by Bosio that the private
houses and public buildings within the walls of the High Town were
abandoned in 1518 to be replaced by the military works just named. The
whole of these works were finally levelled to the ground in the year
1706 by order of Louis XIV.
The Low Town, la Ville Basse, was bounded on the south by the sea, on
the east by the Castle Hill, and on the west by a line running from the
shore to the Paillon and roughly represented in position and direction
by the present Rue de la Terrasse. To the north the town extended as far
as the Boulevard du Pont Vieux. The town was surrounded by ramparts and
bastions. On the ruins of the bastions Sincaire and Païroliera the Place
Victor[3] (now the Place Garibaldi) was constructed in 1780. The
position of the two bastions on the north is indicated roughly by the
present Rue Sincaire and Rue Pairollière. On one side of the Rue
Sincaire there still stands, against the flank of the hill, a solid and
lofty mass of masonry which is a relic of the defences of old days.
There were four gates to the old town, Porte de la Marine, Porte St.
Eloi, Porte St. Antoine, and the Païroliera Gate. The St. Eloi and the
Païroliera gates were broken down during the great siege of 1543, and
the others have since been cleared away. Of these various gates that of
St. Antoine was the most important. It was at this gate that criminals
were pilloried. A faint trace of the old walls is still to be seen near
the end of the Fish Market.
The Bellanda Tower was built in 1517 by de Bellegarde, the then Governor
of Nice. It served to protect the city from the sea. The tower now
exists as a low round work which has been incorporated in the grounds of
an hotel and converted into a “belvedere.” It might, however, be readily
mistaken for a stone water-tank. There was another tower, called the
Malavicina, which was constructed to defend the town upon the land side;
but of this erection no trace remains. A little suburb, or small
borough, existed just outside the old town and on the other side of the
river. It was called St. Jean Baptiste, and was connected with the town
by a bridge in front of the St. Antoine Gate. Its position is indicated
by the present Quai St. Jean Baptiste.
The old town of Nice is small and well circumscribed. It occupies a damp
and dingy corner at the foot of the Castle Hill. It seems as if it had
been pushed into this corner by the over-assertive new town. Its lanes
are so compressed and its houses, by comparison, so tall that it gives
the idea of having been squeezed and one may imagine that with a little
more force the houses on the two sides of a street would touch. It is
traversed from end to end by an alley called the Rue Droite. This was
the Oxford Street of the ancient city. A series of narrower lanes cross
the Rue Droite; those on one side mount uphill towards the castle rock,
those on the other incline towards the river.
The lanes are dark, dirty and dissolute-looking. The town is such a one
as Gustave Doré loved to depict or such as would be fitting to the tales
of Rabelais. One hardly expects to find it peopled by modern mechanics,
tram conductors, newspaper boys and honest housewives; nor do electric
lights seem to be in keeping with the place. Its furtive ways would be
better suited to men in cloaks and slouched hats carrying rapiers, and
at night to muffled folk groping about with lanterns. One expects rather
to see quaint signboards swinging over shops and women with strange
headgear looking out of lattice windows. In the place of all this is
modern respectability—the bowler hat, the stiff collar and the
gramophone.
The only thing that has not changed is the smell. It may be fainter than
it was, but it must be centuries old. It is a complex smell—a mingling
of cheese and stale wine, of salt fish and bad health, a mouldy and
melancholy smell that is hard to bear even though it be so very old. The
ancient practice of throwing all refuse into the street has drawbacks,
but it at least lacks the insincere delicacy of the modern dustbin.
Strange and interesting industries are carried on in doorways and on the
footpath. Intimate affairs of domestic life are pursued with unblushing
frankness in the open and with a singular absence of restraint. Each
street, besides being a public way, is also a laundry, a play-room for
children and a fowl run.
The houses are of no particular interest, for, with a few exceptions,
they have been monotonously modernised. The lanes are so pinched that
the dwellings are hard to see as a whole. If the visitor throws back his
head and looks in the direction in which he believes the sky to be, he
will be aware of dingy walls in blurred tints of pink or yellow, grey or
blue with green sun-shutters which are swinging open at all angles. From
any one of the windows may protrude a mattress—like a white or red
tongue—or a pole may appear from which hang clothes to dry, or, more
commonly still, a female head will project. Women talk to one another
from windows all day long. Indeed, social intercourse in old Nice is
largely conducted from windows. If one looks along a lane, these dark
heads projecting at various levels from the houses are like hobnails on
the sole of a boot. The sun-shutters, it may be explained, are not for
the purpose of keeping out the sun, but serve as a protection from the
far more piercing ray of the neighbour’s eye.
A picturesque street is the Rue du Malonat. It mounts up to the foot of
the Castle Hill by wide, low steps like those on a mule-path. Poor as
the street may be, there is in it an old stone doorway, finely carved,
which is of no little dignity. At the bottom of the lane is a corner
house with three windows furnished with grilles. This is said to have
been at one time the residence of the Governor of Nice. The house in the
Rue de la Préfecture (No. 20) where Paganini died is featureless but for
its old stone entry, and its ground floor has become a shop where
knitted goods are sold.[4]
In the Rue Droite (No. 15) is an amazing house which one would never
expect to find in a mean street. It is the palace of the great Lascaris
family. Theodore Lascaris, the founder of the family, is said to have
been driven from his Byzantine throne in 1261 and to have taken refuge
in Nice. There he built himself a palace. It could not have been erected
in the Rue Droite, as so many writers repeat, since the Lower Town as a
retreat for ex-emperors, had no existence at this period. The
descendants of the exile, however, continued to live in Nice for some
centuries, and the present building dates, with little doubt, from the
early part of the seventeenth century.
The street is so narrow that it is difficult to appreciate the fine
façade of this palace; but by assuming the attitude of a star-gazer it
is possible to see that the great house of four stories would look
illustrious even in Piccadilly. It has a very finely carved stone
doorway which leads into a vaulted hall. In the road outside the door
are heaps of vegetable refuse, a pyramid of mouldy lemons and a pile of
pea husks. From the upper windows hang bedding and clothes to dry. It is
quite evident that the exposed garments do not belong to the family of
an ex-emperor. On the main floor, or _piano nobile_, are seven large and
ornate windows, each provided with a balcony.
From the hall a stone staircase ascends in many flights. It has a
vaulted ceiling, supported by large stone columns. On the wall are
niches containing busts of indefinite men and some elaborate work in
plaster. The staircase on one side is open to a well all the way and so
the lights and shadows that cross it are very fascinating. Still more
fascinating is it to recall for a moment the people who have passed up
and down the stair and upon whom these lights and shadows have fallen
during the last three hundred years. Among them would be the old count
on his way to the justice room, the faltering bride whose hand has
rested on this very balustrade, the tired child crawling up to bed with
a frightened glance at the fearsome busts upon the wall.[5]
The rooms on the _piano nobile_ have domed ceilings, which are either
covered with frescoes or are richly ornamented by plaster work. There is
a great display on the walls of gilt panelling and bold mouldings. The
rooms are dark and empty and so dirty that they have apparently not been
cleaned since the Lascaris family took their departure. Apart from the
filth and the neglect the place provides a vivid realisation of the town
house of a nobleman of Nice in the olden days.
[Illustration: NICE: RUE DU SENAT.]
A stroll through the town will reveal many reminiscences of the past,
which, although trivial enough, are still very pleasant to come upon
amidst squalid surroundings. For instance over the doorway of a house in
the Rue Centrale are carved, in a very boyish fashion, the letters
I.H.S. with beneath them the sacred heart, the date 1648 and the
initials of the owner of the building. Then again in the Rue Droite (No.
1), high up on the plain, deadly-modern wall of a wine-shop, is one very
exquisite little window whose three arches are supported by two graceful
columns. It is as unexpected as a plaque by Della Robbia on the outside
of a gasometer.
There are several churches in the old town but they cannot claim to be
notable. The cathedral of Sainte Réparate stands in an obscure and
meagre square. It became a cathedral in 1531 but was reconstructed in
1737 and its interior “restored” in 1901. Outside it is quite mediocre,
but within it is so ablaze with crude colours, so laden with extravagant
and restless ornament, so profuse in its fussy and irritating decoration
that it is not, in any sense, a sanctuary of peace. The old town hall of
Nice in the Place St. François is a small, simple building in the
Renaissance style which can claim to be worthy of the Nice that was.
There are two objects outside the old town which the visitor will
assuredly see—the Pont Vieux and the Croix de Marbre. The former which
dates from 1531 is a weary-looking old bridge of three arches, worn and
patched. Any charm it may have possessed is destroyed by the uncouth
structure of wood and iron which serves to widen its narrow mediæval
way. The cross stands in the district once occupied by the convent of
Sainte Croix which was destroyed during the siege of 1543. The monument
serves to commemorate the meeting of peace held in 1538 by Pope Paul
III, François I and the Emperor Charles V. The cross, which is very
simple, rises under a canopy of old, grey stone, supported by pillars
with very primitive capitals. The cross was hidden away during the
Revolution but was replaced in 1806 by the then Countess de Villeneuve.
The venerable monument, standing as it does in a busy street through
which the tramcars rumble, looks singularly forlorn and out of place.