AVIGNON.
Leaving Marseilles, the place at which I tarried next was Avignon, where
I had comfortable and cheap quarters at the Hôtel Grillon. It was there
I saw the only drunken man that came under my notice in France. It was
market-day, and the town was full of country-folk, many of whom came to
my hotel for the excellent _déjeuner_ provided for guests; amongst then
was an individual—not a farmer, for he did not wear a blouse—who managed,
in spite of the fact that he had had quite enough, to consume the quart
bottle of _vin ordinaire_ which, in French country hotels, every one is
supposed to take at lunch and drink. The allowance was too much for me.
The lunch in every case was so excellent and tempting that I could not
manage another heavy meal, and was glad to content myself with tea. One
thing surprised me at all the country hotels, and that was the
predominance of the military element. At every meal there were great
numbers of officers present, and, so far as I could judge by the way in
which these sons of Mars did justice to the good things provided, all in
first-rate physical condition. Avignon is full of soldiers—we met them
everywhere. All round the place the old walls seemed turned into
barracks.
I stopped at Avignon to see the burial-place of John Stuart Mill. He was
fond of Avignon, and spent a great deal of his life there. I am afraid,
on the whole, he was rather a hard, cold man. He had a sister living in
Paris, but, often as he passed through it, he never went to see her. I
suppose he had learnt a good deal from Godwin’s ‘Political Justice,’
which had a great influence at one time among superior people, I
remember, when I read it many years ago. You never see the book now.
Godwin shows how wrong is the indulgence of social and family affection.
Perhaps the philosopher’s way of looking at such things is the right one,
after all. As I was sitting with a friend, a philosopher, on board the
_Midnight Sun_, a gentleman, to whom we were neither of us particularly
attached, passed us. ‘I think I could save that man’s life,’ I said.
‘Why should you?’ he asked; ‘ought we not to think of the greatest
happiness of the greatest number?’ The reply was irresistible, and I
acquiesced. ‘Is it not the survival of the fittest,’ I asked myself,
‘that best accords with Nature’s scheme? “If,” says Godwin, “you are in
a boat with your father and a philosopher, and you meet with an accident,
you are to save the philosopher and leave your father to perish.”’
Mill’s philosophy seems to have been of a similar character. At any
rate, his sister’s husband complained much, to an acquaintance of mine,
of the philosopher’s neglect. But his worship of Mrs. Taylor, who
afterwards became his wife, was intense. They sleep together in the same
grave in the cemetery, a mile or two out of Avignon. On the tomb is the
inscription: ‘John Stuart Mill, born 20 May, 1806, died 4 May, 1873,’ and
that is all. On the surface of the tomb—a plain white flat one—is a long
eulogium of his wife, who had died before him. Her influence, the
inscription records, has been felt in many of the greatest improvements
of the age, and will be felt in time to come. Following her life, we are
told, this earth would become the type of heaven. Her death is described
as ‘an irreparable loss.’ The grave is separated by an iron rail from
the rest, and is fringed with a few evergreens. It is plain and simple,
and certainly much more in accordance with English taste than the rest.
One should visit the cemetery, if only to see what a French cemetery
is—all glitter and glass, for many of the flowers placed on the tombs are
under glass, and the place was quite dazzling in the summer—or, rather,
the autumn—sun. The ground is carefully laid out, and well planted with
trees and flowering shrubs. It seems to me of considerable extent, and
people come there every day to place fresh flowers on the graves of those
they love. It was early in the morning when I was there, yet a good many
ladies were engaged in their pious work. By most of the graves were
chairs placed for the mourners, who love to repair to such a place. It
is evident that family affection is strong in France.
Avignon, I should think, is a pleasant place in which to reside, with its
mild atmosphere and a nice country all round. There is a broad promenade
(if a short one), with a monument to a native worthy, and trees;
[Picture: The Castle of the Popes, Avignon. From Cassell’s ‘Cities of
the World.’] but away in the interior the streets are narrow and
ill-fashioned. It boasts a cathedral, a museum, and an Hôtel de Ville,
and tramcars run backward and forward all day long. In the early days of
the French Revolution it was all for union and the ‘Contrat Social’ of
the worthy Jean Jacques Rousseau; and yet it burst forth with its 15,000
brave brigands, headed by Jourdain. In 1789 the French Assembly declared
that Avignon and the Comtat were incorporated with France, and that His
Holiness the Pope should say what indemnity was reasonable.
‘Papal Avignon,’ writes Carlyle, in his wonderful ‘French Revolution,’
‘with its castle rising sheer over the Rhone-stream; beautifullest town,
with its purple vines and gold-orange groves; why must foolish old
rhyming Réné, the last sovereign of Provence, bequeath it to the Pope and
gold tiara—not rather to Louis XI. with the Leaden Virgin in his hatband?
For good and for evil! Popes, Antipopes, with their pomp, have dwelt in
the Castle of Avignon rising sheer over the Rhone-stream; there Laura de
Sade went to hear Mass; her Petrarch twanging and singing by the Fountain
of Vaucluse hard by, surely in a most melancholy manner.’
Speaking of Petrarch, naturally one’s thoughts turn to Rienzi, the
Italian liberator, who fell because the Roman people were not at that
time prepared for freedom. ‘When,’ writes Lord Lytton, in his splendid
novel, ‘Rienzi,’ ‘the capital of the Cæsars witnessed the triumph of
Petrarch, the scholastic fame of the young Rienzi had attracted the
friendship of the poet—a friendship that continued, with a slight
exception, to the last.’
Rienzi was one of the Roman deputies who had been sent to Avignon to
supplicate Clement VI. to remove the Holy See back to Rome. It was on
this mission that Rienzi for the first time gave indication of his
extraordinary power of eloquence and persuasion. The pontiff, indeed,
more desirous of ease than glory, was not convinced by the arguments, but
he was enchanted with the pleader, and Rienzi returned to Rome laden with
honours and clothed with the dignity of high and responsible office. No
longer the inactive scholar, the gay companion, he rose at once to
pre-eminence amongst all his fellow-citizens. Never before had authority
been borne with so austere an integrity, so uncorrupt a zeal. He had
thought to impregnate his colleagues with the same loftiness of
principle, but in this respect he had failed. Now, secure in his
footing, he had begun openly to appeal to the people, and already a new
spirit seemed to animate the populace of Rome. According to modern
historians, Petrarch and Rienzi went to Avignon together, but, says Lord
Lytton, it was more probable that Rienzi’s mission was posterior to that
of Petrarch. However that may be, it was at Avignon that Petrarch and
Rienzi became most intimate, as Petrarch observes in one of his letters.
Perhaps it would have been better for Italy and better for the Roman
Catholic Church had they never returned to Rome. If the reader doubts
this, let him read Zola’s ‘Rome.’ It was in 1309 that Clement moved his
Court thither, and for sixty-eight years, until 1377, Avignon continued
to be the Papal residence. The six successors of Clement V., all of them
Frenchmen, like himself, were regarded by the Italians with feelings of
dislike and contempt. They were little more than the ecclesiastical
agents of the French monarchy.
The climax in the history of Avignon was reached when, in 1309, Clement
V. removed thither from Rome, and made Avignon the seat of the Roman
Pontiff and the metropolis of Christendom. By land, by sea, by the
Rhone—the position of Avignon, writes Gibbon, was at all times
accessible—the southern provinces of France do not yield to Italy itself;
new palaces arose for the accommodation of the Pope and Cardinals, and
the arts of luxury were soon attracted by the treasures of the Church. A
part of the adjoining country had long belonged to the Popes, and the
sovereignty of Avignon was purchased from the youth and distress of Jane,
the first Queen of Naples and Countess of Provence.
Under the shadow of the French monarchy, amidst an obedient people, the
Popes enjoyed a tranquillity to which they had long been strangers.
Italy deplored their loss, but the Sacred College was filled with French
Cardinals, who regarded Rome and Italy with abhorrence and contempt.
What remains of the Papal Palace is now turned into barracks, of which
you get a good view from the station as you leave for Lyons or Paris.
Dr. Arnold, who paid it a passing visit, was struck with horror by the
sight of its dungeons. From Avignon the Pope prosecuted a bitter
persecution of his neighbours, the Waldenses. The King of France was
alarmed, and sent an officer to inquire into the matter. The report was
favourable. ‘Then,’ said the King, ‘they are much better Christians than
myself or Catholic subjects, and therefore they shall not be persecuted.’
He was as good as his word, and the Pope at Avignon had for a time to
forbear, or Avignon might have had as bloody a record as Rome itself.
But at Avignon they do not think of these things. All round the old city
are the mulberry trees and the silkworms; and the farmers want protection
for their native industry, and to keep foreign raw silk out of the
market.