but the _enceinte_ has been broken in many places by casual windows of
recent date and even by doors. Still, the walls of Vence—as viewed from
the north of the town—have an aspect which has altered but little
during the last four hundred years. They have aged, of course, but the
gates are there and the towers still stand.
It is on the southern side of Vence that the hand of the town-improver
has fallen most heavily, but even here the ruin wrought by
“reconstruction” has not obliterated the ancient landmarks. The
Boulevard Marcelin-Maurel, where the tramways run, follows the course of
the southern ramparts. The wall on this side has been battered in to
provide up-to-date houses and up-to-date shops, but yet the line of the
old _enceinte_ remains unshaken, for the hustling, irreverent tram is
compelled to humbly follow the curve of the town wall as laid down six
centuries ago.
On reaching Vence by the Nice road the first gate that is come upon is
the Signadour Gate, which stands almost on the tramlines. It is a gate
of the fourteenth century, with a pointed arch, and it opens at the base
of a rough, old tower. Some way to the right of it is the East Gate,
which is much more ample, has a rounded arch, and passes directly
through the outer wall into the mysterious shadows of the town. It is
credited to the eighteenth century.[13] At the opposite end of Vence is
the Portail du Peyra, guarded by a very massive square tower of great
height. The gate belongs to the days of the good King René, who died in
1480, and the tower to the seventeenth century. The gate has evidently
been much restored and, indeed, reconstructed. It leads into the Place
du Peyra, a quiet square shaded by a chestnut tree and charmed by the
babble of a fountain in the form of a vase, from which issues four
streams. The name of this ancient lounging place has been recently (and
rather precipitately) changed to Place Wilson. A very picturesque little
gate, called the Portail Levis, opens on to the ramparts towards the
north. It has a pointed arch of the fourteenth century and a channel in
the masonry for a portcullis. It leads into the Rue de la Coste, one of
the oldest of the old lanes of the town. In the Boulevard
Marcelin-Maurel (which, as already stated, is laid on the site of the
mediæval ramparts) is a modern gate, with the date 1863. It has been
driven through the houses which here form the _enceinte_ of the town and
opens almost directly into the church square.
The church at Vence has many peculiarities, not the least being the way
in which it has hidden itself from the eyes of the world. It is so
surrounded by parasitic buildings that nothing of it can be seen from
the outside except a gable end, which projects fortuitously into another
square. Indeed, the only outward and visible sign of the church is a
door, surmounted by an image of the Virgin, jammed in between a café and
a blank wall. The blank wall belongs to a seminary, one of the buildings
with which the church is encrusted. This building directly faces the new
_mairie_, a very startling and effusive erection which stands where once
stood a wing of the bishop’s palace. Between the schoolhouse and the
exuberant _mairie_ are two dark, picturesque arches under a house. They
represent what remains of the court of the palace, while the building
above them is a part of the palace itself. The other side of this old
house, having been left undisfigured, serves to show how stately a
structure was this _évêché_ of the fifteenth century.
Now, on that wall of the seminary which immediately faces the unblushing
_mairie_ will be found the Roman inscriptions to which reference has
been made in the previous chapter (inscriptions dealing with the
Taurobolium and with Valerianus and his wife Vibia). Here also are
preserved certain carved tablets showing an interlacement of grapes and
roses, mingled with confused birds; while above is a smaller stone on
which is depicted an archaic eagle of doubtful anatomy. These carvings
are generally described as Merovingian (A.D. 500-750), but the author of
the Vence Handbook inclines to the view that they are Romano-Byzantine,
and suggests that they may have belonged to a church that stood on this
spot in the fifth century.
A Christian church of some kind has existed at Vence since the fourth
century, for the first bishop of Vence, St. Eusebius, held office in the
year 374. The present church dates from the tenth century, although that
which now stands belongs to a period between the twelfth and the
fifteenth. On entering the building there is at once a sense of being in
a place of great antiquity. No church in this part of France conveys so
striking an impression of old age. It is dark and crypt-like and, above
all, primitive. On each side of the nave are immense square pillars
supporting round arches. The pillars are without capitals and without a
trace of ornament. There are two side aisles roofed over by a wide
gallery which looks into the nave through the line of arches. The
galleries were erected in the fifteenth century to accommodate an
increasing congregation. On each side of these aisles is still another
aisle, which is narrow and dark and in which are the chapels. The
church, therefore, is represented by a nave and four aisles.
[Illustration: VENCE: OLD HOUSE IN THE PLACE GODEAU.]
[Illustration: VENCE: RUE DE LA COSTE.]
The side chapels are all old and beautifully decorated. One chapel
contains the body of St. Veran, who died in 492. The tomb—which forms
also the altar—is a Roman sarcophagus. It presents some mysterious
carving which is thus described in the Vence Handbook: In the centre are
the busts of a man and a young woman enclosed in a large sea-shell.
Below is a bird and three naked children playing. The rest of the
surface is occupied by the waves of the sea. It may be conjectured that
it was the last resting-place of a lover of the sea, who would wish to
sleep with the waves about him, with a bird in the blue and with
children at play on the sand. The high altar is of marble of many
colours and the tabernacle is surmounted by angels’ heads in white. By
the altar are the tombs of the Villeneuves, the Lords of Vence.
The west end of the church presents a very large gallery or _tribune_,
which was placed there at the close of the fifteenth century. Here are
the famous choir stalls which were transferred from the choir at the
same period. These stalls, fifty-one in number, are of dark oak and are
most elaborately wrought. Besides much architectural detail there are
innumerable carvings of animals and plants, of human figures and of
vague incidents. Some details, as the writer of the Handbook says, are
serious, others are amusing, and a few are not “_très convenables_.”
These exquisite stalls were the work of Jacques Bellot of Grasse. He
commenced the work, according to Mr. Kaye,[14] in 1455, when he was
twenty-five years of age, and completed it in 1495. He was, therefore,
twenty-five when the work began and sixty-five when it was finished.
In this gallery also is a very fine lectern, which is claimed to be even
an earlier work than the stalls. In one of the chapels of the church
(the Chapelle des Saints-Anges) is the wondrously carved door of the
_prévôté_ or chapter house. This work is older than the stalls and is
generally ascribed to the artist who fashioned the lectern. Certain
Roman figures or statuettes are to be found in the church, one let into
the pillar before the chapel of St. Veran, and another, that of a
senator, in the wall between this chapel and that of the Sacred Heart.
Behind the church is a poor, distracted-looking square, once the
cemetery, now the Place Godeau. It is shaded by three large chestnut
trees and contains some ancient houses, one notably with a two-arched
Romanesque window and another with the date 1524 carved above the
doorway. In the centre is a disconsolate column of bluish granite to
which is ignominiously fixed a brass water-tap. This column seems to
have wandered from some museum and to have lost both its way and its
label. There are those who affirm that it was a gift of the Phocæans to
the ancient town, others that it came from the temple of Mars; while
those who range less far believe it to be a Roman boundary stone or
_borne_. From this Place can be seen the great watch tower of Vence,
often called the tower of the castle. It is square and very severely
plain, and contains the belfry and a too modern clock. The tower belongs
to the fifteenth century, or to even an earlier period. From this square
can also be seen a little lancet window of the church which is perhaps
the oldest of its present lights.
The town of old Vence is small and cramped. Around the church, crushed
in between it and the city wall, is a maze of small streets. They still
maintain the lines they followed long before the day when—in
England—Elizabeth was queen. They are narrow, of course, and dark and
crowded with houses of great age, houses of such antiquity that no
modern mask can hide the hollow eyes or the shrunken cheeks. There are
among them handsome windows and fine entries, good mason’s work and some
decoration pitiable in its playfulness.
The place is almost empty. Certain houses are deserted; a few are
ruinous, and in these the black, blank windows glare like the
eye-sockets of a skull. Many show the tottering deformities of age and
have become crippled, wizened and bent.
This almost silent city once held seven thousand people. Its streets
were then crowded, full of life and colour, of fair women and stalwart
men. The wayfarer would need squeeze himself into a doorway to allow the
lady in a litter to pass by, or to make room for a company of young
gallants rollicking along arm in arm, or for the wedding party on its
way to the cathedral close. The place is now hushed like a house of
mourning, while in many a lane there may be no one to be seen.
He who strolls alone through the city of Vence may find himself carried
back into the past by some nightmare witchery, and imagine that he
wanders in a strange country, amid the scenes of a half-forgotten tale.
There is about the streets the faint, musty smell that clings to the
leaves of an ancient missal or that hovers about the worm-eaten chest
stuffed with lumber. To read the life of the town as it was in earlier
times is like the turning over of a bundle of old letters that are
fragmentary and partly illegible, that are strange in both the wording
and the script, but that show now and then a sudden light that illumines
the figure of a man or a woman who stands out amidst the gloom—alive.
-----
[13] “Vence,” by J. D., sold for the benefit of the Church and published
at Vence in 1914. It is referred to in the text as “The Vence Handbook.”
[14] “Grasse and its Vicinity,” by Walter J. Kaye, 1912.
X
GRASSE
GRASSE lies on a green slope at the foot of sheltering hills and in full
view of the sea. From its height of one thousand feet a glorious stretch
of undulating country sweeps down to the Mediterranean, some seven or
eight miles to the south. The position of the town is suggestive of
great ease. It is comparable to that of a man stretched out on a bank in
the sun, with his hands under his head, his hat tilted over his eyes and
with a rock behind him to ward away unkindly winds. It is a gentle and
contented place, quiet and yet busy in its own peculiar way.
The history of Grasse is modest and unemotional. It has always been a
shy town, glad to be left alone and to keep itself untroubled by the
world. It does not pretend to be very old. It is said that Roman coins
have been discovered in Grasse, but this means little, for that
imperious but careless people appear to have dropped money here and
there all over the country. One wonders whether, when England is dug up
by archæologists two thousand years hence, half-crowns and coppers will
be found among the ruins of its towns in anything like the profusion
with which the currency of Rome was scattered.
Grasse appears to emerge into the light of history some time in the
twelfth century in association with Raymond Berenger and his famous
seneschal Romée de Villeneuve. Its reputation has been largely
commercial. Terrin in the “Précis de l’Histoire de Provence”[15] says
that “this town in the twelfth century supplied the whole of France,
Italy and Spain with its famous leather, soap and oil skilfully
purified”; while another author goes further and affirms “that the whole
of Europe obtained its soap from Grasse.”
Grasse began its career in the twelfth century as a little republic in
alliance—for purposes of mutual protection—with Pisa. This form of
government was maintained until 1226. When wars were raging in the
country around and towns were being besieged, looted or burnt, Grasse
remained unmoved. It looked on from a distance, lifted its hands in
horror and went on with its soap-making. It was never a quarrelsome town
and never ambitious of power. It was more keenly concerned with the
purity of its oils and the sweetness of its scents. It took a motherly
interest in its unfortunate neighbours and became a place of refuge for
troubled people along the ever-troubled coast.
[Illustration: GRASSE: THE DE CABRIS HOUSE.]
It was fortified, but not in too serious or too aggressive a way. It was
besieged, but always in a comparatively gentle manner, without
unnecessary noise and battering of walls and doors and with casualties
that may almost be called complimentary. One siege in November, 1589, is
very fully described in the diary of a besieged resident, a certain
Monsieur Rocomare. Mr. Kaye quotes this record at some length. The
attacking general appears to have been wounded early in the fray and to
have “fallen into convulsions.” “Whereby,” says M. Rocomare, “the whole
camp was thrown into confusion.” The siege proceeded in spite of the
general’s fit. When things were not going well with the town the people
of Grasse proposed—as they always did—a treaty. It was accepted. By
this agreement the men-at-arms of Grasse and as many townsfolk as wished
were allowed to leave the city with the honours of war and with all
their baggage. Unfortunately the attacking army, demoralised, it may be,
by the sight of their general in convulsions, broke their compact,
seized all the baggage and horses and killed no fewer than seventeen
persons. The besiegers occupied the town and M. Rocomare had billeted
upon him a cornet, six soldiers, ten serving men, some horses and a
mule. This forced entertainment cost him 260 golden crowns; but, worst
of all, the ungrateful cornet, on taking leave of his host, robbed him
of his cattle and of “other things.”
In the bitter religious wars of the time which rent and racked the whole
adjacent country, Grasse took but little part. It was appropriately
shocked at the spectacle of Christians fighting and then went on with
its soap-making. The people of Grasse, however, had their local
religious quarrels which seem to have been concerned not with matters of
doctrine, but rather with questions of fees and emoluments and
especially with burial fees. In these disputes over money “the clergy,”
as Mr. Kaye remarks, “seemed strangely to have forgotten their high
calling,” for they actually fought for the possession of coffins
containing the dead, and there must have been regrettable scenes in the
graveyard when the clerics and their subordinates were engaged in what
was practically a tug-of-war over a coffin.
The more direct afflictions of Grasse arose from the passage through the
town of foreign troops. Over and over again the Cours or the Place Neuve
was occupied by bodies of armed men, who, although they had no especial
reason for hostile action against Grasse, yet behaved in a very trying
and unseemly manner. They would march up to the town and, without
adequate explanation, would demand a war bonus of as much as 36,000
livres or more. They would billet themselves in the town, would smash
windows, break tiles and carry off doors. For what purpose an army on
the march should need doors is not made clear; but that the intruders
should cause a rise in the cost of living is intelligible. A writer who
was in the town on the occasion of one of these visits says, with
disgust, that wine cost 40 centimes a pint, brown bread 25 centimes a
pound, and eggs actually 15 centimes each. He adds a remark which shows
how, even in little things, history may be anticipated, for he says:
“All our fruit trees have been burned save a few olive trees which have
been saved from the violence of the Germans.”
The old town of Grasse is very picturesque and abounding in interest.
Being placed upon a slope, it comes to pass that its ways are steep. The
houses are tall and the lanes are narrow, so the place is full of
shadows. The streets ramble and wind about in that leisurely manner
which is characteristic of Grasse, until they become a veritable tangle.
The stranger wandering through Grasse is apt, after traversing many
streets, to find himself in the exact spot whence he started. It is not
wise to ask one’s way in Grasse, but merely to drift about, from lane to
lane, until the object sought is stumbled on. It will be met with in
time. There are various old houses to be seen which appertain to many
periods. Some of them are disguised by modern plaster and paint, some
have been “restored” to the point of extinction, while not a few are
represented only by fragments. They illustrate the effect of putting new
wine into old bottles: “the bottles break and the wine runneth out and
the bottles perish.”
Of the old ramparts which surrounded the town in the fourteenth century
but a trace or two remain, although the line they pursued can still be
followed. The Boulevard du Jeu de Ballon represents the western side of
the _enceinte_, and the Passage Mirabeau its southern part. Where the
two met was the Porte du Cours. The eastern flank is indicated by the
Place Neuve and La Roque and the rounded northern end by the Rue des
Cordeliers and the Avenue Maximin Isnard. Of the seven original gates
two only survive—the Porte Neuve (rebuilt in 1793) and the Porte de la
Roque.
The chief feature of Grasse is the Cours, a charming promenade just
outside the confines of the old town. It is here that the band plays and
here that the idler can enjoy the superb view which opens out to the sea
and admire—if he will—the statue to Fragonard which adorns the spot.
Leading down from the Cours into the old town is the Rue du Cours, a
narrow lane of little shops. The first house in this street—a corner
house, No. 2—was the town mansion of the Marquis de Cabris and his
startling wife Louise. Some account of this mercurial lady is given in
the chapter which follows. The de Cabris came from the delightful
village of Cabris, five miles from Grasse. There stands what remains of
their castle, which was reduced to a heap of ruins at the time of the
Revolution.
The house in the Rue du Cours is a plain building of four stories,
rising from a base of stone. It is of considerable size and the back of
it forms a large block in the Passage Mirabeau. Its portal is prim and
severe and in a strict classical style. So dull is this entry that it is
hard to picture the frivolous and beautiful Louise standing on the door
step, buttoning up her gloves and meditating some fresh devilment. It is
a house that no one could associate with the thrilling scandal which
buzzed about it when the mocking laughter of the little marquise could
be heard ringing from the solemn windows. The house is now occupied by
offices and flats of the gravest respectability. As if some odour of old
days still clung to it, the walls, I noticed, were blazing with red and
yellow posters vaunting the attractions of a play dealing with the
allurement of women.
[Illustration: GRASSE: THE CATHEDRAL.]
Almost opposite to the de Cabris mansion, and at the extreme end of the
Boulevard du Jeu de Ballon, is the ancient house of the de Pontevès
family. It is a huge, square building, severely plain and free from any
pretence at decoration. It has on one side a little walled garden which
abuts on the Cours. The house has had a gloomy history. It was at one
time the headquarters of the executive council of Var. During the time
of the Terror (1793-4) it became the seat of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
It has sheltered Fréron—he who had the audacity to seek the hand of
Pauline Bonaparte—as well as Robespierre, who was himself guillotined
in 1794. In its salon the wretched victims denounced by the Revolution
were tried, cursed at, and condemned, and through its gate they were
marched to their death by the guillotine. The guillotine stood in the
Cours on the spot now occupied by the statue to Fragonard. The prisoners
who looked out of the west windows of the house would see this fearful
instrument only a few yards distant and would see also the howling,
savage mob that surged around it. Yet between the condemned and their
place of death was the comfort of the little quiet garden shut in with
its high wall. Thirty people in all were guillotined at Grasse during
the Terror, and among them a poor nun over seventy years of age, whose
name, by a strange coincidence, was de Pontevès.
When peace was restored to France the Hôtel de Pontevès became the
municipal library and later on (in 1811) it was swept and garnished and
made ready to receive the Princess Pauline Bonaparte, the sister of
Napoleon I. This beautiful woman, the “Venus victrix” of Canova, was at
the moment forlorn and unhappy. She had been deserted by her second
husband, the Prince Borghese, and banished from the Court by her brother
on account of her disrespectful bearing towards the Empress. She was,
moreover, ill and weary both in body and mind, and yet she was only
thirty-one. “Out of consideration for the distinguished invalid the
silence of the early morning was disturbed neither by the ringing of
bells nor by the cries of milk-sellers in the streets; even the mules
went without their tinkling _sonnailles_.”[16] One may imagine that
Pauline sat often in the little garden with the high wall, and that her
sedan chair would now and then be carried to the Cours so that she might
by chance get a glimpse of the beloved island of Corsica where she was
born.
Near the Cours is the Boulevard Fragonard. In the house (No. 4) of the
Marquis de Villeneuve-Bargemon will be seen the beautiful carved door
that came from the old hotel of the Marquis de Gourdon. It was by the
removal of the Gourdon mansion in 1858 that the present Place du Marché
was made. No. 15 Boulevard Fragonard—with its curious iron window
cages—was the residence of the famous painter after whom the Boulevard
is named. The place of his birth was No. 2 Rue de la Font Neuve.
Turning out of the Rue du Cours is the Rue Tracastel with its vaulted
arch beneath an old tower. It is by way of this lane that the cathedral
square may be reached. The church, which is the most beautiful building
in Grasse, was completed in the twelfth century. It is small and low and
its western façade, which looks upon the square, is very simple. The
large pointed doorway is approached by an exquisite double flight of
steps with a white balustrade. The doors themselves are finely carved
and bear the date 1722. There are two lancet windows on this front and
traces of two doors of the same date as the principal one. The walls are
of light yellow-grey stone. The church within is as gracious as its
western front. The nave is surmounted by a handsome groined roof with
square ribs, supported by heavy pillars without capitals. The arches of
the nave are occupied by galleries with marble railings which are quite
modern and painfully out of keeping with the rest of the building. The
south transept is occupied by the chapel of the Holy Sacrament, which is
said to have existed since 1448. It is a beautiful chapel, but a little
marred by the too elaborate ornament of a later date. There are many
pictures of interest in the church, the most notable being Fragonard’s
“Washing of the Disciples’ Feet,” painted in 1754.
The church contains numerous treasures among which is a reliquary of St.
Honorat, shaped like a house and carved out of a solid block of walnut
some three feet in length. It dates from the middle of the fifteenth
century.[17]