great. Complex horse accidents are rendered with a precision which is
usually lacking in the mere narrative of these confusing events. Thus a
lady and gentleman are represented as lying beneath an overturned
carriage. A grotesque horse, of the type seen in pantomimes, with a
vicious grin on its face, has kicked the driver from the box. This
outraged man is standing on his head in the road, his body and legs
being sustained, by some unknown force, in the vertical position. Here
is a motor accident: the motor has plunged into a swamp. The three
dislodged occupants are kneeling together, in the middle of the highway,
praying; while the more practical chauffeur is holding his hands aloft
and is apparently crying for help.
There are many shipwrecks in which the waves, fashioned apparently of
plaster of Paris, are very terrifying. Gun accidents are numerous and
troubles arising from fireworks not uncommon. Tramcar accidents,
including the collisions of the same, are frequent. There are incidents
also of a simpler type. In one, for instance, a gentleman is represented
as slipping—probably on a banana skin—on the Rampe at Monaco. He is
falling heavily. Another shows a lady of eighty-three, nicely dressed
and with a fan in her hand, walking indiscreetly at 7 P.M. on a plank
projecting over a precipice. There is a mansion in the background from
which a man—of the same size as the houses—is running to the scene of
this imprudent act.
There are also in the collection misadventures of an unusual character.
Thus on a mountain road huge rocks are falling, in some profusion, on an
omnibus. In a painting dated 1863 a child, aged fifteen months, is being
eaten by a pig. The pig seems to have dragged the infant out of a cradle
by its ear in order to consume it with greater ease.
Some accidents may be classified as vicarious. For example a man is
shown beating a mule. He does this without inconvenience to himself; but
the resentful mule, who is evidently no discerner of persons, is kicking
another (and probably quite innocent) man very cruelly in the stomach
with its fore hoof.
[Illustration: LAGHET: ONE OF THE CLOISTERS.]
Then too there are complex happenings which must have involved a great
strain upon the invention and resource of any artist who wished to be
accurate. For instance here is a house being struck by lightning. The
house, for the sake of clearness, is shown in section, like a doll’s
house with the front open. In an upper chamber are members of the family
engaged in cooking. The lightning passes ostentatiously through the
room, leaving the occupants unharmed; but it escapes by the front door
and there kills a donkey which is lying dead on the doorstep. Then again
the average artist if asked how he would proceed to paint a picture to
illustrate “recovery from inflammation of the right jaw” might find
himself perplexed since the subject is so lacking in tangible incident.
The ingenious limner of Laghet is, however, at no loss and proceeds to
carry out the commission, with a light heart and in the following
fashion. We see a bedroom with a bed in it and a chair. There are
pictures on the wall. There is a table on which are a candle, a cup and
a species of pot. On a cane sofa sits a solitary gentleman dressed in a
frock coat and light trousers. His face is tied up in a handkerchief.
The right side of the face is swollen. He appears to be about to leap
from the sofa, his eyes being directed to a vision of the Madonna in a
cloud on the wall. The picture clearly suggests that the sufferer has
been laid up in bed; the candle hints at restless nights; the cup and
pot at medical treatment. The fact that the patient is clothed in a
frock coat shows improvement, while his apparent intention to spring
from the sofa conveys the idea that the final cure has been sudden.
There are very many sick-room scenes, complete with puzzled doctors and
weeping relations around the bedside. In certain of these illustrations
individual and unpleasant symptoms are depicted with so conscientious a
determination and so complete a disregard for the feelings of the
onlooker as fully to support the dictum that “Art is Truth.”
One picture may have puzzled the hanging committee of Laghet. It depicts
a smiling man being released from prison. The occasion is one that no
doubt evoked thankfulness on the part of the captive, but the inference
that his incarceration was an “accident” opens up a legal point of some
delicacy. Curious presents have been bestowed upon Laghet. Among them is
the gift of the Princess Maria Josephina Baptista. It consisted of a
silver leg of the same size and weight as her own leg which was happily
cured at the convent.
In certain places on the walls of this strange Cloister of Calamity hang
crutches and sticks, discarded surgical appliances, boots for deformed
feet, spinal supports and splints. They speak for themselves. The little
crutches and the little splints speak with especial eloquence; while, as
a most pathetic object amid the grosser implements of suffering, is a
small steeled shoe which must have belonged to a very tiny pilgrim
indeed.
On the cross-piece of one crutch a swallow has built a nest. The crutch
and the swallow may almost be taken as symbolic of Laghet—the crutch
the emblem of the halting cripple, the swallow of the joyous heart
winging its way through the blue of heaven.
-----
[46] “The Rivieras,” by Augustus J. Hare, London, 1897, p. 80.
XXXII
THE CITY OF PETER PAN
BETWEEN Monte Carlo and Mentone is the little town of Roquebrune. It
stands high up on the flank of that range of hills which follows the
road and which shuts out, like a wall, all sight of the world stretching
away to the north.
Certain conventional phrases are used in describing the site of a
village or small town. When it lies at the bottom of a hill it “nestles”
and when it approaches the top it “perches.” Roquebrune is distinctly
“perched” upon the hillside. Indeed it appears to cling to it as a
house-martin clings to sloping eaves and to keep its hold with some
difficulty. The town looks unsteady, as if it must inevitably slip
downwards into the road.
At some little distance behind Roquebrune is a great cliff from the foot
of which spreads a long incline. It is on a precarious ledge on this
slope that the place is lodged, like a pile of crockery on the brink of
a shelf and that shelf tilted.
An enticing feature about any town is the approach to it, the first
close sight of its walls, the glimpse of the actual entrance that leads
into the heart of it. Now the entrance to Roquebrune is strange, strange
enough to satisfy the expectation of any who, seeing the place from
afar, have wondered what it would be like near at hand. A steep path,
paved with cobble stones, mounts up between two old yellow walls and at
the end of the path is the town. It is entered by a flight of stone
steps which, passing into the shadow of a tunnelled way beneath high
houses, opens suddenly into the sunlight of the chief street of
Roquebrune.
It is a cheerful little town, clean and trim. It is undoubtedly curious
and as one penetrates further into its by-ways it becomes—as Alice in
Wonderland would remark—“curiouser and curiouser.” It is largely a town
of stairs, of straight stairs and crooked stairs, of stairs that soar
into dark holes and are seen no more, of stairs that climb up openly on
the outside of houses, of stairs bleached white, of stairs green with
speeds and of stairs that stand alone—for the place that they led to
has gone. It would seem to be a precept in Roquebrune that if a dwelling
can be entered by a range of steps it must be so approached in
preference to any other way.
[Illustration: ROQUEBRUNE, FROM NEAR BON VOYAGE.]
The streets are streets by name only, for they are mere lanes and very
narrow even for lanes. They appear to go where they like, so long as
they go uphill. They all go uphill, straggling thither by any route that
pleases them. The impression is soon gained that the people of
Roquebrune are living on a curious staircase fashioned out of the
mountain side. So far as the outer world is concerned Roquebrune would
be described as “upstairs.” The houses seem to have been tumbled on to
the giant steps as if they had been emptied out of a child’s toy-box
only that they have all fallen with the roofs uppermost. There results a
confusing irregularity that would turn the brain of a town planner.
Roquebrune has been piled up rather than built. The front doorstep of
one house may be just above the roof of the house below, with only a
lane to separate them; while two houses, standing side by side may find
themselves so strangely assorted that the kitchen and stables of the one
will be in a line with the bedrooms of the other.
The houses are old. They form a medley of all shapes and sizes, heights
and widths. They conform to no pattern or type. They can hardly be said
to have been designed. The majority are of stone. Some few are of
plaster and these are inclined to be gay in colour, to be yellow or
pink, to have little balconies and green shutters and garlands painted
on the walls.
The streets are delightful, because they are so mysterious and have so
many unexpected turns and twists, so many odd corners and so many quaint
nooks. In places they dip under houses or enter into cool, vaulted ways,
where there is an abiding twilight. There are intense contrasts of light
and shade in the by-ways of Roquebrune, floods of brilliant sunshine on
the cobble stones and the walls alternating with masses of black shadow,
each separated from the other by lines as sharp as those that mark the
divisions of a chess-board. There are suspicious-looking doors of
battered and decaying wood, stone archways, cheery entries in the wall
that open into homely sitting-rooms as well as trap-like holes that lead
into mouldy vaults.
One small street, the Rue Pié, appears to have lost all control over
itself, for it dives insanely under another street—houses, road and
all—and then rushes down hill in the dark to apparent destruction.
There is one lane that is especially picturesque. It is a secretive kind
of way, bearing the romance-suggesting name of the Rue Mongollet. It is
very steep, as it needs must be. It is dim, for it passes under
buildings, like a heading in a mine. It winds about just as the alley in
a story ought to wind and finally bursts out into the light in an
unexpected place. It is to some extent cut through rock, so that in
places it is hard to tell which is house and which is rock.
There is a piazza in Roquebrune, a real public square, a _place_, with
the name of the Place des Frères. It lies at the edge of the cliff where
it is protected by a parapet from which stretches a superb view of the
green slope to the road and, beyond the road, of Cap Martin and the sea.
It is a peculiar square, for on two sides there are only bald
precipices. In one corner are a café and a fountain, while on the third
side is a school. The piazza is, no doubt, used for occasions of
ceremony, for speech making and receptions by the mayor; but on all but
high days and holidays it is a playground for a crowd of busy children.
The church is placed near a point where the sea-path makes its entry
into Roquebrune. It is comparatively modern and of no special interest.
On the wall of a house near by is a stone on which is carved a monogram
of Christ with a “torsade” or twisted border. This is said to be a relic
of an ancient church which stood upon the site of the existing building.
There is, however, a delightful and unexpected feature about the present
church. A door opens suddenly from the sombre aisle into the sunshine of
a wondrous garden—wondrous but very small. The garden skirts the rim of
the rock upon which the church stands. It is a more fitting adjunct to
the church than any pillared cloister or monastic court could be. It is
a simple, affectionate little place and is always spoken of by those who
come upon it as “the dear little garden.” There are many roses in it, a
palm tree or two and beds bright with iris and hyacinth, narcissus and
candytuft and with just such contented flowers as are found about an old
thatched cottage. There is a well in the garden and a shady bench with a
far view over the Mediterranean. Old houses and the church make a
background; while many birds fill the place with their singing. In this
retreat will often be found the curé of Roquebrune. He is as picturesque
as his garden, as simple and as charming.
On the crown of Roquebrune stands the old castle of the Lascaris. It
still commands and dominates the town, as it has done for long centuries
in the past. It is disposed of by Baedeker in the following words “adm.
25c.; fine view.” It is a good example of a mediæval fortress and is
much less ruinous than are so many of its time. It is placed on the bare
rock which forms the top of the town and is surrounded by great walls.
It is a veritable strong place, with a fine square tower, tall, massive
and imposing. It is covered on one side with ivy and has thus lost much
of its ancient grimness, while about its feet cluster, in a curious
medley, the red, grey and brown roofs of the faithful town.
Within the keep are a great hall, many vaulted rooms and a vaulted stair
which leads to the summit of the castle. Those with an active
imagination will find among the ruins the guard-room, the justice
chamber, the ladies’ quarters and the dungeons, but the lines which
indicate such places have become exceedingly faint. Certain trumpery
“restorations” have been carried out in this lordly old ruin which would
discredit even a suburban tea-garden. The only apology that could be
offered for them is that they would not deceive a child of five.
It is impossible to regard Roquebrune seriously or to think of it as an
old frontier stronghold that has had a place in history. Roquebrune, as
a town, belongs to the country of the story book. It is a town for boys
and girls to play in. It is just the town they love to read about and
dream about and to make the scene of the doings of their heroes and
heroines and their other queer people. From a modern point of view this
happy little town is quite ridiculous. It is full of funny places, of
whimsical streets and of those odd houses that children draw on slates
when one of them has made the rapturous suggestion—“let us draw a
street.” It has an odd well too—a real well with real water—but it is
bewitched and haunted by real witches. At least the people about are so
convinced they are real that they are afraid to come to the well for
water. Now a well of this kind is never met with in an ordinary town.
There are walled places in Roquebrune where oranges and lemons are
growing side by side and where both lavender and rosemary are blooming.
The garden of the church is a child’s garden, for the paths are narrow
and roundabout and the flowers are children’s flowers such as are found
on nursery tables, while the whole place bears that pleasant form of
untidiness which is only to be found where children are the gardeners.
There is in the town—as everybody knows—a Place des Frères and with
little doubt there is also, somewhere on the rock, a Place des Sœurs
which is prettier and which only a favoured few would know about or
could find their way to.
Nothing that happens in any story book would seem out of place in
Roquebrune. Indeed one is surprised in wandering through its curious
ways to find it occupied by ordinary people, men with bowler hats and
women who are obviously not princesses. One expects to come upon blind
pedlars, old women in scarlet capes and pointed hats, mendicants who are
really of royal blood, hags—especially hags with sticks—ladies wrapped
in cloaks which just fail to conceal their golden hair, servants
carrying heavy boxes with great secrecy and mariners from excessively
foreign parts.
There is a steep, cobble-paved lane in Roquebrune up which Jack and Jill
must assuredly have climbed when they went to fetch the pail of water
which led to the regrettable accident. Indeed it is hardly possible for
a child, burdened with a bucket, not to tumble down in Roquebrune. By
the parapet in the Place des Frères there is a stone upon which Little
Boy Blue must have stood when he blew his horn; for no place could be
conceived more appropriate for that exercise. There are walls too
without number, walls both high and low, some bare, some green with
ferns, which would satisfy the passion for sitting upon walls of a
hundred Humpty Dumpties.
The town itself is—I feel assured—the kind of town that Jack reached
when he climbed to the top of the Beanstalk, for the entrance to
Roquebrune is precisely the sort of entrance one would expect a
beanstalk to lead to. In one kitchen full of brown shadows, in a side
street near the Rue Pié, is an ancient cupboard in which, almost without
question, Old Mother Hubbard kept that hypothetical bone which caused
the poor dog such unnecessary distress of mind; while in a wicker cage
in the window of a child’s bedroom was the Blue Bird, singing as only
that bird can sing.
As there are still wolves in the woods about Roquebrune and as red hoods
are still fashionable in the Place des Frères it is practically certain
that Little Red Riding Hood lived here since it is difficult to imagine
a town that would have suited her better. As for Jack the Giant Killer
it is beyond dispute that he came to Roquebrune, for the very castle he
approached is still standing, the very gate is there from which he
hurled defiance to the giant as well as the very stair he ascended.
Moreover there is a room or hall in the castle—or at least the remains
of it—which obviously no one but a giant could have occupied.
As time goes on archæologists will certainly prove, after due research,
that Roquebrune is the City of Peter Pan. There is no town he would love
so well; none so adapted to his particular tastes and habits, nor so
convenient for the display of those domestic virtues which Wendy
possessed. No one should grow up in this queer city, just as no place in
a nursery tale should grow old.
[Illustration: ROQUEBRUNE: THE EAST GATE.]
[Illustration: ROQUEBRUNE: THE PLACE DES FRÈRES.]
Peter Pan is not adapted to the cold, drear climate of England. He
stands, as a figure in bronze, in Kensington Gardens with perhaps snow
on his curly head or with rain dripping from the edge of his scanty
shirt. He should be always in the sun, within sight of a sea which is
ever blue and among hills which are deep in green. He could stride down
a street in Roquebrune clad—as the sculptor shows him—only in his
shirt without exciting more than a pleasant nod, but in the Bayswater
Road he would attract attention. He is out of place in a London park in
a waste of tired grass dotted with iron chairs which are let out at a
penny apiece. Those delightful little people and those inquisitive
animals who are peeping out of the crevices in the bronze rock upon
which he stands would flourish in this sunny hill town, for there are
rocks in the very streets among which they could make their homes.
Then again Captain Hook would enjoy Roquebrune. It is so full of really
horrible places and there are so many half-hidden windows out of which
he could scream to the terror of honest folk. The pirates too would be
more comfortable in this irregular city, for it is near the sea and
close to that kind of cave without which no pirate is ever quite at
ease. Moreover the Serpentine affords but limited scope to those whose
hearts are really devoted to the pursuit of piracy and buccaneering.
So far I do not happen to have met with a pirate of Captain Hook’s type
within the walls of Roquebrune; but, late one afternoon when the place
was lonely I saw a bent man plodding up in the shadows of the Rue
Mongollet. He was a sinewy creature with brown, hairy legs. I could not
see his face because he bore on his shoulders a large and flabby burden,
but I am convinced that he was Sindbad the Sailor, toiling up from the
beach and carrying on his back the Old Man of the Sea.
XXXIII
THE LEGEND OF ROQUEBRUNE
THE position of Roquebrune high up on the hillside appears—as has
already been stated—to be precarious. It seems as if the little city
were sliding down towards the sea and would, indeed, make that descent
if it were not for an inconsiderable ledge that stands in its way. It
can scarcely be a matter of surprise, therefore, that there is a legend
to the effect that Roquebrune once stood much higher up the hill, that
the side of the mountain broke away, laying bare the cliff and carrying
the town down with it to its present site, where the opportune ledge
stayed its further movement.
Like other legendary landslips this convulsion of nature is said to have
taken place at night and to have been conducted with such delicacy and
precision that the inhabitants were unaware of the “move.” They were not
even awakened from sleep: no stool was overturned: no door swung open:
the mug of wine left overnight by the drowsy reveller stood unspilled on
the table: no neurotic dog burst into barking, nor did a cock crow, as
is the custom of that bird when untoward events are in progress. Next
morning the early riser, strolling into the street with a yawn, found
that his native town had made quite a journey downhill towards the sea
and had merely left behind it a wide scar in the earth which would make
a most convenient site for a garden. Unhappily landslips are no longer
carried out with this considerate decorum, so the gratitude of
Roquebrune should endure for ever.
This is one legend; but there is another which is a little more stirring
and which has besides a certain botanical interest. At a period which
would be more clearly defined as “once upon a time” the folk of
Roquebrune were startled by a sudden horrible rumbling in the ground
beneath their feet, followed by a fearful and sickly tremor which spread
through the astonished town.
Everybody, clad or unclad, young or old, rushed into the street
screaming, “An earthquake!” It was an earthquake; because every house in
the place was trembling like a man with ague, but it was more than an
earthquake for the awful fact became evident that Roquebrune was
beginning to glide towards the sea.
People tore down the streets to the open square, to the Place des
Frères, which stands on the seaward edge of the town. The stampede was
hideous, for the street was unsteady and uneven. The very road—the
hard, cobbled road—was thrown into moving waves, such as pass along a
shaken strip of carpet. To walk was impossible. Some fell headlong down
the street; others crawled down on all fours or slid down in the sitting
position; but the majority rolled down, either one by one or in clumps,
all clinging together.
The noise was fearful. It was a din made up of the cracking of
splintered rock, the falling of chimneys, the rattle of windows and
doors, the banging to and fro of loose furniture, the crashing of the
church bells, mingled with the shouts of men, the prayers of women and
the screams of children. A man thrown downstairs and clinging to the
heaving floor could hear beneath him the grinding of the foundations of
his house against the rock as the building slid on.
The houses rocked from side to side like a labouring ship. As a street
heeled over one way the crockery and pots and pans would pour out of the
doors like water and rattle down the streets with the slithering knot of
prostrate people.
Clouds of dust filled the air, together with fumes of sulphur from the
riven cliff. Worst of all was an avalanche of boulders which dropped
upon the town like bombs in an air raid.
The people who clung to the crumbling parapet of the Place des Frères
saw most; for they were in a position which would correspond to the
front seat of a vehicle. They could feel and see the town (castle,
church and all) skidding downhill like some awful machine, out of
control and with every shrieking and howling brake jammed on.
They could see the precipice ahead over which they must soon tumble.
Probably they did not notice that at the very edge of the cliff,
standing quite alone, was a little bush of broom covered with yellow
flowers.
The town slid on; but when the foremost wall reached the bush the bush
did not budge. It might have been a boss of brass. It stopped the town
as a stone may stop a wagon. The avalanche of rocks ceased and, in a
moment, all was peace.
The inhabitants disentangled themselves, stood up, looked for their
hats, dusted their clothes and walked back, with unwonted steadiness, to
their respective homes, grumbling, no doubt, at the carelessness of the
Town Council.
They showed some lack of gratitude for I notice that a bush of broom has
no place on the coat of arms of Roquebrune.
XXXIV
SOME MEMORIES OF ROQUEBRUNE