THE RETURN TO MARSEILLES.
What memories crowd on me as I step into the tug which is to take me and
the rest of us, in a confused mass, stowed away amidst the luggage, to
the Custom House at Marseilles, a fine, handsome building, apparently in
the very heart of the town, with shipping of many nations all around; for
has not Marseilles in our time come to be the headquarters of all those
who, fearing the Bay of Biscay, have a mind to make their way along the
historic shores, and on the blue waters of the Mediterranean? As I leave
the Custom House, a friend says to me: ‘I have soon got out. You see,
there is nothing lost by civility. I took my luggage to one of the
officers, took off my hat to him, and he came directly and let me go
through.’ I replied to the effect that I was more successful, as I had
been out a quarter of an hour before my friend, and I never took off my
hat, but simply held out my Gladstone, which confirms me in my original
idea, which, I mention for the benefit of travellers, that the real
secret of getting one’s examination over is simply to have nothing for
the Custom House officer to search. [Picture: The New Harbour,
Marseilles. From Cassell’s ‘Cities of the World’] Not that I deprecate
civility; the more I travel in France, the more I appreciate it. We
English are a grand people—there are no better men on the face of the
earth—but we might be a little more civil to one another.
And now I am in Marseilles, a clean, handsome, flourishing city, with an
enormous population and an enormous trade; and naturally I think of the
time—now more than a century ago—when the Marseillais set out for Paris.
‘The notablest of all the moving phenomena of that time,’ writes Carlyle,
‘is that of Barbaroux’s “six hundred Marseillais who know how to die.” A
black-browed mass, full of grim fire,’ got together no one knows how—from
the _forçats_, say some. As they march through Lyons, the people shut
their shops in fear. ‘The Thought which works voiceless in this
black-browed mass, an inspired Tyrtæus, Colonel Rouget de Lille, has
translated into grim melody and rhythm; into his Hymn or March of the
Marseillaise: luckiest musical-competition ever promulgated. The sound
of which will make the blood tingle in men’s veins; and whole Armies and
Assemblages will sing it, with eyes weeping and burning, with hearts
defiant of Death, Despot, and Devil.’
Marseilles is a far nobler city than it appears to the tourist as he
rushes from the train to catch the steamer waiting to bear him far away.
High above the city, on a precipitous rock, from which you have a grand
view of the place, and the harbour, and the far-off Mediterranean, stands
the old Cathedral of Marseilles—Notre Dame de la Garde—a noble Romanesque
[Picture: Marseilles] building, with a gilt figure of the Virgin at the
top, her arms extended as if to protect the city. You reach it either by
a winding road or a hydraulic lift, for the use of which you pay a
trifle. It was there the ancient inhabitants kept watch over sea and
land. In time a chapel was erected on its site, which became a place of
pilgrimage for mariners and fishermen. The present magnificent building
was erected in 1864. If only for the view, the visitor is well repaid
for his trouble. Hardly can you enjoy a more magnificent prospect,
embracing the fair valley of the Rhone, the white houses of Marseilles
stretching up the plain, the gray mountains of Spain in the far distance,
the dazzling blue of the Gulf of Lyons, the dark towers of the fort, with
the rocky, picturesque islands, with the Château d’If, whence, according
to Dumas, Monte Cristo made his marvellous escape, beyond. In the city
itself, on a hill, whence you have also a fine view, is a grand new
cathedral of imposing form and structure. It was Sunday when I visited
it; but there were not many people in it, though more in the heart of the
city, where I tried to enter a church, it was so crowded that there
really was no standing-room. But even in Marseilles you must be cautious
when the east wind blows. It was there Dr. Punshon, the greatest
Wesleyan orator of our time, caught the cold which laid the foundation of
the illness that ultimately carried him off.
It has a very ancient history, this noble city of Marseilles. It owes
its origin to a tribe of Ionian Greeks, who, about 600 B.C., there
founded a town that ultimately became the head of a Roman province. In
the contest between Pompey and Cæsar, the town wished to remain neutral,
but Cæsar had need of gold, vessels, and harbours, and scrupled not for a
moment to lay siege to it, which was maintained against him during the
whole of his long and severe warfare with Afranius and Petreius in Spain,
and was not taken till after the capture or dispersion of their legions.
The treatment of the town was so merciless, that from thenceforward, by
Strabo’s account, it only preserved vestiges of its former prosperity and
wealth. However, Marseilles in time recovered from the blow, and chiefly
by means of the book trade. It seems to have become a miniature Athens.
France was especially distinguished by its aptitude and zeal for Roman
learning. At Marseilles there was an institution for Greek education and
literature, which was visited, even in preference to Athens, by men of
the highest rank. A large institution of the same kind existed at Autun,
and Tacitus calls that city the principal seat of Latin culture. With
respect to the book trade of Lyons, we have the testimony of the younger
Pliny, when he states that he learned, with some surprise, from a friend
that his own discourses and writings were publicly sold there.
In the time of the Crusades Marseilles became a busy place. It is now
wholly given up to trade, and flourishes accordingly. Since 1850 it has
become the head packet-station on the Mediterranean, and more and more
frequented by English passengers, who can stay at gorgeous hotels, or
more economical ones, according to the state of their finances. If they
only stop the day, they cannot do better than dine at the buffet attached
to the railway-station, unless they wish to partake of the famous
_bouillabaisse_ of which Thackeray sung, and to which my friend—my
lamented friend—George Augustus Sala, devoted many a learned paragraph in
his ‘Table Talk’ in the _Illustrated London News_ and elsewhere. Woe is
me! I quite forgot all about it till just as I had to take the train to
carry me away. I shall never cease to regret that forgetfulness on my
part. It may be that I may live to repair it!
There was a time when this delicious delicacy could be had in Paris.
Some of us can still remember Thackeray’s beautiful ballad:
‘A street there is in Paris famous,
For which no rhyme our language yields;
Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is,
The New Street of the Little Fields.
‘And here’s our wish, not rich and splendid,
But still in comfortable ease,
The which in youth I oft attended
To eat a bowl of _bouillabaise_.’
But Marseilles lives on other things than its _bouillabaisse_—a rich soup
or stew of all sorts of fish—not to be flippantly eaten, not to be
lightly forgotten. Some 2,000 vessels fill its capacious harbour. In
its lofty bonded warehouses are stored away the merchandise of many
climes, and its soap-works and sugar-refineries are on an extensive
scale. In short, it is the Liverpool of France; but, alas for the pride
of the Mersey, how much cleaner, brighter, grander! how much purer the
smokeless atmosphere! how much lovelier the outlook over sea and land!
It was there that in 1797 that great French statesman, M. Adolphe Thiers,
was born. That acute judge of men and books, Abraham Hayward, who was at
Paris before Thiers had risen, as he did at a later time, describes him,
in 1844, as ‘a little, insignificant man, till he gets animated, but
wonderfully clever.’
The one drawback to Marseilles, the only cloud in its blue sky, is the
drink; and I am glad to find that there is a good man there, Pastor
Lenoir, who has taken up temperance work, and has carried it on very
successfully. Last year, for a novelty, in Marseilles he got up a
temperance fête, which was a great success. During the last twenty years
drinking has greatly increased, and the drink-shops as well. In 1876
there were in Marseilles 2,460 drink-shops; now there are 4,205—far too
many, when we remember that the town has only 600 bakers’ shops and only
500 schools. As a consequence, Dr. Rey shows that insanity has greatly
increased, and that in the hospital of St. Pierre the proportion of
insane patients whose disease can be traced to alcohol has increased from
15 per cent. to 31 per cent. of the patients admitted. ‘The chief
factor,’ he writes, ‘of these mental diseases is alcohol, and especially
when to its intoxicating effects is added that of absinthe, and other
vegetable substances which produce epilepsy and other similar evils.’ In
this respect, Marseilles teaches us a lesson which it is well to remember
at home.
In another way Marseilles is a lesson in favour of temperance work. In
the district of Villette the drinking classes chiefly dwell. It is a
narrow, dirty court, opening on a series of alleys; in the centre runs an
open gutter—the only drainage of the place—while on either side are small
one-storied houses, called _cabanons_, let for about eight shillings a
month. They are let to the poorest of the poor, and abound with dirt and
large families and drunkenness; the three in France, as in England,
generally go hand in hand. The air is stifling, the odours
insupportable; and when the sun pours down in the middle of summer, and
the hot sirocco-like wind blows, the condition of matters is unbearable.
As I write I see the people of Marseilles, in fear of the plague, will
not permit travellers from the East, under any pretence whatever, to land
there. They had much better look at home, and reform their own sanitary
arrangements in such districts as Villette. It is there the good
Protestant pastor, connected, I believe, with the McAll Mission in Paris,
labours unweariedly with a band of fellow labourers as devoted as
himself. I give the story of one of his rescued men, as an illustration
of labour-life in the fair city of Marseilles:
‘Thibaut is a strong, muscular man, who worked as a docker, and could
carry 140 kilos of wool on his shoulders from six o’clock to twelve
o’clock without taking rest. He was an inveterate drunkard, and had
on one occasion swallowed _thirty-five glasses of absinthe_, _raw_,
_in a day_. For thirty years he had never set foot in a church, and
his wife had died from the effects of his ill-treatment. Once, in a
fit of drunkenness, he threw all that was left of furniture in their
miserable home into the street, including the stove, which was
alight, and on which their bit of dinner was cooking. He dragged his
wife when ill from her bed by her hair, and threw her into the
street. The day of her death he was found drunk in a public-house,
and he followed the remains to the grave reeling. He lived in the
famous “Grand Salon,” in a miserable hut of planks, the most filthy
hovel imaginable. Thibaut was not over-scrupulous as to how he got
the drink, without which he could not exist. There are many ways in
which a docker can steal from the cargoes he discharges without being
found out. For instance, there is a way of letting fall a case of
wine or cognac, so as to break one bottle, the contents of which then
can be quickly absorbed. Like most French workmen, he wore trousers
very baggy at the top, and tied round the ankles. Such trousers can
be made to hold about four pounds of tea or coffee, or such like, and
many a time Thibaut has walked past the searchers at the dock-gates
with his stock of groceries, and has never been detected.’
He was nearly falling a victim to his drunken habits more than once.
They are now rejoicing over him at Marseilles, for he that was dead is
now alive again. The lost one is found.
If the traveller has time to spare, let him by all means pay Arles a
visit, where there is a fine Roman amphitheatre, or rather the remains of
one. Very early Arles became distinguished in Church history—I was going
to say Christian history; but, alas, at that time the bitter disputes and
dissensions in the Church bore little traces of the teachings or the
example of Christ. In A.D. 314, when, as Gibbon writes, Constantine was
the protector, rather than the proselyte of Christianity, he referred the
African controversy to the Council of Arles, in which the Bishops of
York, of Treves, of Milan, and of Carthage, met as friends and brethren
to debate, in their native tongue, on the common interests of the Latin
or Western Church. One ancient writer says there were 600 bishops there,
but this is probably an exaggerated account of their number. The
subject, of course, was the nature of the Trinity, the discussions on
which, inflamed with passion, had filled the Churches with fury, and
sedition, and schism—a fury which excites the wonder of the modern less
heated Christian Church.
It was at Arles, at a later period, Constantine repaired to celebrate in
its palace, with intemperate luxury, a vain and ostentatious triumph—his
military success against the Goths. It was at Arles, the seat at that
time of government and commerce, A.D. 418, that the Emperor Honorius, in
a solemn address, filled with the strongest assurances of that paternal
affection which, as Gibbon writes, sovereigns so often express but rarely
feel, convened an annual assembly consisting of the Pretorian Prefect of
the Gauls; of seven provincial governors, one consular and six
presidents; of the magistrates, and perhaps the bishops, of sixty cities;
and of an indefinite number of leading landed proprietors. They were
empowered to interpret the laws of their sovereign, to expose the wishes
and grievances of their constituents, to moderate the excessive or
unequal weight of taxes, and to deliberate on every subject of local and
national importance that would tend to the restoration of peace and
prosperity to the seven provinces. It was a step in the right direction.
It was a step that might have tended, if universally followed, at any
rate, to retard the decay and decline of the Roman Empire. But the
Emperor found that the people were not ready to accept the proffered
boon. A fine of three, or even five, ounces of gold was imposed on the
absent representatives. Honorius was in advance of his age—in politics
as great a blunder as being behind it. It was not till centuries of
oppression and misgovernment that the rights of man were practically won
for France, and that Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity became the
watchwords of the people.
Arles was very early peopled by a colony from Central Italy, and very
remarkable is the physique of its inhabitants. The late Lord Malmesbury,
Lord Derby’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, writes: ‘The women are
remarkably handsome, but entirely of the Etruscan type, with magnificent
dark hair and eyes, good teeth, and fair complexions. They have
beautiful round throats, set on fine shoulders and busts, but their legs
are much too short for their general build.’ I am, of course, not a
judge of such matters, and I prefer to copy from Lord Malmesbury, who, as
a Foreign Minister and a frequent guest both at the Courts of England and
France, and a high-born aristocrat as well, had opportunities for the
pleasing study of woman far superior to any possessed by an ordinary
scribe. He had a good opportunity of seeing the population, as it was a
fête day when he favoured the city with his presence. He continues:
‘There were games in the square, such as climbing a greased pole for a
leg of mutton placed at the top, which no one succeeded in winning. The
women were all in costume, with black veils, worn like the mantilla. I
noticed that the men were remarkably plain, sallow, under-sized and
narrow-chested—in every way a remarkable contrast to the women.’ As
indeed they are, or ought to be, all the world over.
In the neighbourhood is a hermit’s cell, very curiously contrived in the
rock, where there was a secret way of escaping to the deeper recesses and
hiding in case of danger. There was the stone bed of the hermit who is
said to have been the first to introduce Christianity into the province.
His name is held in high esteem and a church is dedicated to his memory.
It was upon the plains adjoining that Charles Martel gained his final
victory over the Saracens. The Roman amphitheatre in Arles is in a fine
state of preservation, with towers added in the Middle Ages.
Soldiers have a mission hall to themselves in Marseilles, which is full
of them, and to the hall many come for peace and light. The aggregate
attendance is set down at nearly 6,000. The hall offers them a warm,
comfortable room, well lighted, with books, games, newspapers, and other
conveniences. A lady gives them elementary lessons in French,
arithmetic, reading, and writing. When the soldiers sailed to Madagascar
they took with them, in spite of the priests, 3,000 copies of the New
Testament. The labours of the agents of the McAll Mission are numerous
and persevering. Last year they held about 500 meetings for adults.
They have five schools for children, besides two sewing schools for
girls. There are three mothers’ meetings, with a fair attendance, and a
mission choir does good work.
Of more recent formation, and perhaps less well known, is the Society of
Christian Endeavour. It has given proof of its existence in various
ways. It was the Endeavourers who organized four series of lectures, of
three each, which were given in the halls of the Grand Chemin de Toulon
and the Boulevard de Strasbourg. Friends were much encouraged to see
each time a large and attentive audience; the lectures had been announced
by means of handbills distributed in profusion throughout the district.
The society takes charge also of the visitation of the sick, and the
distribution of tracts in the suburbs, at the gates of the factories and
workshops, etc. Some of the sisters have taken to heart the work among
fallen women, and in one case, at least, they have been able to snatch
one of these poor creatures from her life of sin, and place her in a
neighbouring refuge. And so good work gets done, quietly and
unobtrusively.
There were put in circulation last year through the Librairie Evangélique
12,000 almanacks, 4,500 Bibles and Testaments, 1,000 tracts, 1,000 books
of various kinds, and 600 copies of the _Relévement_. Open Bibles and
Testaments are constantly displayed also in the large shop-window, where
the passers-by can stop and read at their leisure—a thing which a goodly
number of them do not fail to do. Nor are the Italians, of whom there
are many in the town, overlooked. But I pass on
‘To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign,
I turn, and France displays her bright domain;
Gay, sprightly land of mirth and social ease,
Pleased with thyself whom all the world can please.’
And pleasant recollections come to us of Oliver Goldsmith, who, as he
tells us, oft led
‘The sportive choir
With tuneless pipe beside the murmuring Loire.’
The traveller who does as the writer did—leaves the train at Marseilles,
and travels home slowly, will find as much pleasure in that little trip
as in any part of his pilgrimage to the East.