Marseilles is to-day the capital of the Mediterranean, the true commercial
metropolis of that inland sea which now once more has become a single
organic whole, after its long division by the Mohammedan conquest of North
Africa and the Levant into two distinct and hostile portions. Naples, it
is true, has a larger population; but then, a population of Neapolitan
lazzaroni, mere human drones lounging about their hive and basking in the
sunlight, does not count for much, except for the macaroni trade. What
Venice once was, that Marseilles is to-day; the chief gate of
Mediterranean traffic, the main mart of merchants who go down in ships on
the inland sea. In the Cannebière and the Old Port, she possesses, indeed,
as Edmond About once graphically phrased it, "an open door upon the
Mediterranean and the whole world." The steamers and sailing vessels that
line her quays bind together the entire Mediterranean coast into a single
organic commercial whole. Here is the packet for Barcelona and Malaga;
there, the one for Naples, Malta, and Constantinople. By this huge liner,
sunning herself at La Joliette, we can go to Athens and Alexandria; by
that, to Algiers, Cagliari, and Tunis. Nay, the Suez Canal has extended
her bounds beyond the inland sea to the Indian Ocean; and the Pillars of
Hercules no longer restrain her from free use of the great Atlantic
water-way. You may take ship, if you will, from the Quai de la Fraternité
for Bombay or Yokohama, for Rio or Buenos Ayres, for Santa Cruz,
Teneriffe, Singapore, or Melbourne. And this wide extension of her
commercial importance Marseilles owes, mainly no doubt, to her exceptional
advantages of natural position, but largely also, I venture to think, to
the Hellenic enterprise of her acute and vigorous Græco-Gaulish
population.
And what a marvelous history has she not behind her! First of all, no
doubt, a small fishing and trading station of prehistoric Gaulish or
Ligurian villagers occupied the site where now the magnificent façade of
the Bourse commemorates the names of Massalia's greatest Phocæan
navigators. Then the Phoenicians supervened upon the changeful scene, and
built those antique columns and forgotten shrines whose scanty remains
were recently unearthed in the excavations for making the Rue de la
République. Next came the early Phocæan colonists, reinforced a little
later by the whole strength of their unconquerable townsmen, who sailed
away in a body, according to the well-known legend preserved in Herodotus,
when they could no longer hold out against the besieging Persian. The
Greek town became as it were a sort of early Calcutta for the Gaulish
trade, with its own outlying colonies at Nice, Antibes, and Hyères, and
its inland "factories" (to use the old familiar Anglo-Indian word) at
Tarascon, Avignon, and many other ancient towns of the Rhône valley. Her
admirals sailed on every known sea: Euthymenes explored the coasts of
Africa as far as Senegal; Pytheas followed the European shore past Britain
and Ireland to the north of the Shetlands. Till the Roman arrived upon the
Gaulish coast with his dreaded short-sword, Massalia, in short, remained
undisputed queen of all the western Mediterranean waters.
Before the wolf of the Capitol, however, all stars paled. Yet even under
the Roman Empire Massilia (as the new conquerors called the name, with a
mere change of vowel) retained her Greek speech and manners, which she
hardly lost (if we may believe stray hints in later historians) till the
very eve of the barbarian invasion. With the period of the Crusades, the
city of Euthymenes became once more great and free, and hardly lost her
independence completely up to the age of Louis XIV. It was only after the
French Revolution, however, that she began really to supersede Venice as
the true capital of the Mediterranean. The decline of the Turkish power,
the growth of trade with Alexandria and the Levant, the final crushing of
the Barbary pirates, the conquest of Algeria, and, last of all, the
opening of the Suez Canal--a French work--all helped to increase her
commerce and population by gigantic strides in half a dozen decades. At
the present day Marseilles is the chief maritime town of France, and the
acknowledged center of Mediterranean travel and traffic.
The right way for the stranger to enter Marseilles is, therefore, by sea,
the old-established high road of her antique commerce. The Old Port and
the Cannebière are her front door, while the railway from Paris leads you
in at best, as it were, through shabby corridors, by a side entry. Seen
from the sea, indeed, Marseilles is superb. I hardly know whether the
whole Mediterranean has any finer approach to a great town to display
before the eyes of the artistic traveller. All round the city rises a
semicircle of arid white hills, barren and bare indeed to look upon; but
lighted up by the blue Provençal sky with a wonderful flood of borrowed
radiance, bringing out every jutting peak and crag through the clear dry
air in distinct perspective. Their sides are dotted with small square
white houses, the famous _bastides_ or country boxes of the good
Marseillais bourgeois. In front, a group of sunlit rocky isles juts out
from the bay, on one of which tower the picturesque bastions of the
Chateau d'If, so familiar to the reader of "Monte-Cristo." The foreground
is occupied by the town itself, with its forest of masts, and the new dome
of its checkered and gaudy Byzantine Cathedral, which has quite supplanted
the old cathedral of St. Lazare, of which only a few traces remain. In the
middle distance the famous old pilgrimage chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde
crowns the summit of a pyramidal hill, with its picturesque mass of
confused architecture. Away to right and left, those endless white hills
gleam on with almost wearying brightness in the sun for miles together;
but full in front, where the eye rests longest, the bustle and commotion
of a great trading town teem with varied life upon the quays and
landing-places.
If you are lucky enough to enter Marseilles for the first time by the Old
Port, you find yourself at once in the very thick of all that is most
characteristic and vivid and local in the busy city. That little oblong
basin, shut in on its outer side by projecting hills, was indeed the
making of the great town. Of course the Old Port is now utterly
insufficient for the modern wants of a first-class harbor; yet it still
survives, not only as a historical relic but as a living reality,
thronged even to-day with the crowded ships of all nations. On the quay
you may see the entire varied Mediterranean world in congress assembled.
Here Greeks from Athens and Levantines from Smyrna jostle cheek by jowl
with Italians from Genoa and Arabs or Moors from Tangier or Tunis. All
costumes and all manners are admissible. The crowd is always excited, and
always animated. A babel of tongues greets your ears as you land, in which
the true Marseillais dialect of the Provençal holds the chief place--a
graceful language, wherein the predominant Latin element has not even yet
wholly got rid of certain underlying traces of Hellenic origin. Bright
color, din, life, movement: in a moment the traveller from a northern
climate recognizes the patent fact that he has reached a new world--that
vivid, impetuous, eager southern world, which has its center to-day on the
Provençal seaboard.
[Illustration]
Go a yard or two farther into the crowded Cannebière, and the difference
between this and the chilly North will at each step be forced even more
strikingly upon you. That famous thoroughfare is firmly believed by every
good son of old Marseilles to be, in the familiar local phrase, "la plus
belle rue de l'univers." My own acquaintance with the precincts of the
universe being somewhat limited (I have never travelled myself, indeed,
beyond the narrow bounds of our own solar system), I should be loth to
endorse too literally and unreservedly this sweeping commendation of the
Marseillais mind; but as regards our modest little planet at least, I
certainly know no other street within my own experience (save Broadway,
New York) that has quite so much life and variety in it as the Cannebière.
It is not long, to be sure, but it is broad and airy, and from morning
till night its spacious _trottoirs_ are continually crowded by such a
surging throng of cosmopolitan humanity as you will hardly find elsewhere
on this side of Alexandria. For cosmopolitanism is the true key-note of
Marseilles, and the Cannebière is a road that leads in one direction
straight to Paris, but opens in the other direction full upon Algiers and
Italy, upon Egypt and India.
What a picture it offers, too, of human life, that noisy Cannebière! By
day or by night it is equally attractive. On it centers all that is alive
in Marseilles--big hotels, glittering cafés, luxurious shops, scurrying
drays, high-stepping carriage-horses, and fashionably-dressed humanity; an
endless crowd, many of them hatless and bonnetless in true southern
fashion, parade without ceasing its ringing pavements. At the end of all,
the Old Port closes the view with its serried masts, and tells you the
wherefore of this mixed society. The Cannebière, in short, is the Rue de
Rivoli of the Mediterranean, the main thoroughfare of all those teeming
shores of oil and wine, where culture still lingers by its ancient cradle.
Close to the Quai, and at the entrance of the Cannebière, stands the
central point of business in new Marseilles, the Bourse, where the filial
piety of the modern Phocæans has done ample homage to the sacred memory of
their ancient Hellenic ancestors. For in the place of honor on the façade
of that great palace of commerce the chief post has been given, as was
due, to the statues of the old Massaliote admirals, Pytheas and
Euthymenes. It is this constant consciousness of historical continuity
that adds so much interest to Mediterranean towns. One feels as one stands
before those two stone figures in the crowded Cannebière, that after all
humanity is one, and that the Phocæans themselves are still, in the
persons of their sons, among us.
The Cannebière runs nearly east and west, and is of no great length, under
its own name at least; but under the transparent alias of the Rue de
Noailles it continues on in a straight line till it widens out at last
into the Allées de Meilhan, the favorite haunt of all the gossips and
quidnuncs of Marseilles. The Allées de Meilhan, indeed, form the _beau
idéal_ of the formal and fashionable French promenade. Broad avenues of
plane trees cast a mellow shade over its well-kept walks, and the neatest
of nurses in marvelous caps and long silk streamers dandle the laciest and
fluffiest of babies, in exquisite costumes, with ostentatious care, upon
their bountiful laps. The stone seats on either side buzz with the latest
news of the town; the Zouave flirts serenely with the bonnetless
shop-girls; the sergeant-de-ville stalks proudly down the midst, and
barely deigns to notice such human weaknesses. These Allées are the
favorite haunt of all idle Marseilles, below the rank of "carriage
company," and it is probable that Satan finds as much mischief still for
its hands to do here as in any other part of that easy-going city.
At right angles to the main central artery thus constituted by the
Cannebière, the Rue de Noailles, and the Allées de Meilhan runs the second
chief stream of Marseillais life, down a channel which begins as the Rue
d'Aix and the Cours Belzunce, and ends, after various intermediate
disguises, as the Rue de Rome and the Prado. Just where it crosses the
current of the Cannebière, this polyonymous street rejoices in the title
of the Cours St. Louis. Close by is the place where the flower-women sit
perched up quaintly in their funny little pulpits, whence they hand down
great bunches of fresh dewy violets or pinky-white rosebuds, with
persuasive eloquence to the obdurate passer-by. This flower-market is one
of the sights of Marseilles, and I know no other anywhere--not even at
Nice--so picturesque or so old-world. It keeps up something of the true
Provençal flavor, and reminds one that here, in this Greek colony, we are
still in the midst of the land of roses and of Good King René, the land of
troubadours, and gold and flowers, and that it is the land of sun and
summer sunshine.
As the Rue de Rome emerges from the town and gains the suburb, it clothes
itself in overhanging shade of plane-trees, and becomes known forthwith as
the Prado--that famous Prado, more sacred to the loves and joys of the
Marseillais than the Champs Elysées are to the born Parisian. For the
Prado is the afternoon-drive of Marseilles, the Rotten Row of local
equestrianism, the rallying-place and lounge of all that is fashionable in
the Phocæan city as the Allées de Meilhan are of all that is bourgeois or
frankly popular. Of course the Prado does not differ much from all other
promenades of its sort in France: the upper-crust of the world has grown
painfully tame and monotonous everywhere within the last twenty-five
years: all flavor and savor of national costume or national manners has
died out of it in the lump, and left us only in provincial centers the
insipid graces of London and Paris, badly imitated. Still, the Prado is
undoubtedly lively; a broad avenue bordered with magnificent villas of the
meretricious Haussmannesque order of architecture; and it possesses a
certain great advantage over every other similar promenade I know of in
the world--it ends at last in one of the most beautiful and picturesque
sea-drives in all Europe.
This sea-drive has been christened by the Marseillais, with pardonable
pride, the Chemin de la Corniche, in humble imitation of that other great
Corniche road which winds its tortuous way by long, slow gradients over
the ramping heights of the Turbia between Nice and Mentone. And a "ledge
road" it is in good earnest, carved like a shelf out of the solid
limestone. When I first knew Marseilles there was no Corniche: the Prado,
a long flat drive through a marshy plain, ended then abruptly on the
sea-front; and the hardy pedestrian who wished to return to town by way of
the cliffs had to clamber along a doubtful and rocky path, always
difficult, often dangerous, and much obstructed by the attentions of the
prowling _douanier_, ever ready to arrest him as a suspected smuggler.
Nowadays, however, all that is changed. The French engineers--always
famous for their roads--have hewn a broad and handsome carriage-drive out
of the rugged rock, here hanging on a shelf sheer above the sea; there
supported from below by heavy buttresses of excellent masonwork; and have
given the Marseillais one of the most exquisite promenades to be found
anywhere on the seaboard of the Continent. It somewhat resembles the new
highway from Villefranche to Monte Carlo; but the islands with which the
sea is here studded recall rather Cannes or the neighborhood of Sorrento.
The seaward views are everywhere delicious; and when sunset lights up the
bare white rocks with pink and purple, no richer coloring against the
emerald green bay, can possibly be imagined in art or nature. It is as
good as Torquay; and how can cosmopolitan say better?
On the Corniche, too, is the proper place nowadays to eat that famous old
Marseillais dish, immortalized by Thackeray, and known as _bouillabaisse_.
The Réserve de Roubion in particular prides itself on the manufacture of
this strictly national Provençal dainty, which proves, however, a little
too rich and a little too mixed in its company for the fastidious taste of
most English gourmets. Greater exclusiveness and a more delicate
eclecticism in matters of cookery please our countrymen better than such
catholic comprehensiveness. I once asked a white-capped Provençal _chef_
what were the precise ingredients of his boasted _bouillabaisse_; and the
good man opened his palms expansively before him as he answered with a
shrug, "Que voulez-vous? Fish to start with; and then--a handful of
anything that happens to be lying about loose in the kitchen."
Near the end of the Prado, at its junction with the Corniche, modern
Marseilles rejoices also in its park or Public Garden. Though laid out on
a flat and uninteresting plain, with none of the natural advantages of the
Bois de Boulogne or of the beautiful Central Park at New York, these
pretty grounds are nevertheless interesting to the northern visitor, who
makes his first acquaintance with the Mediterranean here, by their curious
and novel southern vegetation. The rich types of the south are everywhere
apparent. Clumps of bamboo in feathery clusters overhang the ornamental
waters; cypresses and araucarias shade the gravel walks; the eucalyptus
showers down its fluffy flowers upon the grass below; the quaint
Salisburia covers the ground in autumn with its pretty and curious
maidenhair-shaped foliage. Yuccas and cactuses flourish vigorously in the
open air, and even fan-palms manage to thrive the year round in cosy
corners. It is an introduction to the glories of Rivieran vegetation, and
a faint echo of the magnificent tones of the North African flora.
As we wind in and out on our way back to Marseilles by the Corniche road,
with the water ever dashing white from the blue against the solid crags,
whose corners we turn at every tiny headland, the most conspicuous object
in the nearer view is the Château d'If, with the neighboring islets of
Pomègues and Ratonneau. Who knows not the Château d'If, by name at least,
has wasted his boyhood. The castle is not indeed of any great
antiquity--it was built by order of François I--nor can it lay much claim
to picturesqueness of outline or beauty of architecture; but in historical
and romantic associations it is peculiarly rich, and its situation is
bold, interesting, and striking. It was here that Mirabeau was imprisoned
under a _lettre de cachet_ obtained by his father, the friend of man; and
it was here, to pass from history to romance, that Monte-Cristo went
through those marvelous and somewhat incredible adventures which will keep
a hundred generations of school-boys in breathless suspense long after
Walter Scott is dead and forgotten.
But though the Prado and the Corniche are alive with carriages on sunny
afternoons, it is on the quays themselves, and around the docks and
basins, that the true vivacious Marseillais life must be seen in all its
full flow and eagerness. The quick southern temperament, the bronzed
faces, the open-air existence, the hurry and bustle of a great seaport
town, display themselves there to the best advantage. And the ports of
Marseilles are many and varied: their name is legion, and their shipping
manifold. As long ago as 1850, the old square port, the Phocæan harbor,
was felt to have become wholly insufficient for the needs of modern
commerce in Marseilles. From that day to this, the accommodation for
vessels has gone on increasing with that incredible rapidity which marks
the great boom of modern times. Never, surely, since the spacious days of
great Elizabeth, has the world so rapidly widened its borders as in these
latter days in which we are all living. The Pacific and the Indian Ocean
have joined the Atlantic. In 1853 the Port de la Joliette was added,
therefore, to the Old Harbor, and people thought Marseilles had met all
the utmost demands of its growing commerce. But the Bassin du Lazaret and
the Bassin d'Arenc were added shortly after; and then, in 1856, came the
further need for yet another port, the Bassin National. In 1872 the Bassin
de la Gare Maritime was finally executed; and now the Marseillais are
crying out again that the ships know not where to turn in the harbor.
Everywhere the world seems to cosmopolitanize itself and to extend its
limits: the day of small things has passed away for ever; the day of vast
ports, huge concerns, gigantic undertakings is full upon us.
Curiously enough, however, in spite of all this rapid and immense
development, it is still to a great extent the Greek merchants who hold in
their hands--even in our own time--the entire commerce and wealth of the
old Phocæan city. A large Hellenic colony of recent importation still
inhabits and exploits Marseilles. Among the richly-dressed crowd of
southern ladies that throngs the Prado on a sunny afternoon in full
season, no small proportion of the proudest and best equipped who loll
back in their carriages were born at Athens or in the Ionic Archipelago.
For even to this day, these modern Greeks hang together wonderfully with
old Greek persistence. Their creed keeps them apart from the Catholic
French, in whose midst they live, and trade, and thrive; for, of course,
they are all members of the "Orthodox" Church, and they retain their
orthodoxy in spite of the ocean of Latin Christianity which girds them
round with its flood on every side. The Greek community, in fact, dwells
apart, marries apart, worships apart, and thinks apart. The way the
marriages, in particular, are most frequently managed, differs to a very
curious extent from our notions of matrimonial proprieties. The system--as
duly explained to me one day under the shady plane-trees of the Allées de
Meilhan, in very choice modern Greek, by a Hellenic merchant of
Marseilles, who himself had been "arranged for" in this very manner--is
both simple and mercantile to the highest degree yet practised in any
civilized country. It is "marriage by purchase" pure and simple; only
here, instead of the husband buying the wife, it is the wife who
practically buys the husband.
A trader or ship-owner of Marseilles, let us say, has two sons, partners
in his concern, who he desires to marry. It is important, however, that
the wives he selects for them should not clash with the orthodoxy of the
Hellenic community. Our merchant, therefore, anxious to do the best in
both worlds at once, writes to his correspondents of the great Greek
houses in Smyrna, Constantinople, Beyrout, and Alexandria; nay, perhaps
even in London, Manchester, New York, and Rio, stating his desire to
settle his sons in life, and the amount of _dot_ they would respectively
require from the ladies upon whom they decided to bestow their name and
affections. The correspondents reply by return of post, recommending to
the favorable attention of the happy swains certain Greek young ladies in
the town of their adoption, whose _dot_ and whose orthodoxy can be
equally guaranteed as beyond suspicion. Photographs and lawyers' letters
are promptly exchanged; settlements are drawn up to the mutual
satisfaction of both the high contracting parties; and when all the
business portion of the transaction has been thoroughly sifted, the young
ladies are consigned, with the figs and dates, as per bill of lading, to
the port of entry, where their lords await them, and are duly married, on
the morning of their arrival, at the Greek church in the Rue de la Grande
Armée, by the reverend archimandrite. The Greeks are an eminently
commercial people, and they find this idyllic mode of conducting a
courtship not only preserves the purity of the orthodox faith and the
Hellenic blood, but also saves an immense amount of time which might
otherwise be wasted on the composition of useless love-letters.