I
Fancy you've journeyed down the Rhone,
Fancy you've passed Vienne, Valence,
Fancy you've skirted Avignon--
And so are come _en pleine_ Provence.
Fancy a mistral cutting keen
Across the sunlit wintry fields,
Fancy brown vines, and olives green,
And blustered, swaying, cypress shields.
Fancy a widely opened door,
Fancy an eager outstretched hand,
Fancy--nor need you ask for more--
A heart-sped welcome to our land.
Fancy the peal of Christmas chimes,
Fancy that some long-buried year
Is born again of ancient times--
And in Provence take Christmas cheer!
In my own case, this journey and this welcome were not fancies but
realities. I had come to keep Christmas with my old friend Monsieur de
Vielmur according to the traditional Provencal rites and ceremonies in
his own entirely Provencal home: an ancient dwelling which stands high
up on the westward slope of the Alpilles, overlooking Arles and Tarascon
and within sight of Avignon, near the Rhone margin of Provence.
The Vidame--such is Monsieur de Vielmur's ancient title: dating from the
vigorous days when every proper bishop, himself not averse to taking a
breather with sword and battle-axe should fighting matters become
serious, had his _vice dominus_ to lead his forces in the field--is an
old-school country gentleman who is amiably at odds with modern times.
While tolerant of those who have yielded to the new order, he himself is
a great stickler for the preservation of antique forms and ceremonies:
sometimes, indeed, pushing his fancies to lengths that fairly would lay
him open to the charge of whimsicality, were not even the most
extravagant of his crotchets touched and mellowed by his natural
goodness of heart. In the earlier stages of our acquaintance I was
disposed to regard him as an eccentric; but a wider knowledge of
Provencal matters has convinced me that he is a type. Under his genial
guidance it has been my privilege to see much of the inner life of the
Provencaux, and his explanations have enabled me to understand what I
have seen: the Vidame being of an antiquarian and bookish temper, and
never better pleased than when I set him to rummaging in his memory or
his library for the information which I require to make clear to me some
curious phase of Provencal manners or ways.
The Chateau de Vielmur has remained so intimately a part of the Middle
Ages that the subtle essence of that romantic period still pervades it,
and gives to all that goes on there a quaintly archaic tone. The donjon,
a prodigiously strong square tower dating from the twelfth century,
partly is surrounded by a dwelling in the florid style of two hundred
years back--the architectural flippancies of which have been so tousled
by time and weather as to give it the look of an old beau caught
unawares by age and grizzled in the midst of his affected youth.
In the rear of these oddly coupled structures is a farm-house with a
dependent rambling collection of farm-buildings; the whole enclosing a
large open court to which access is had by a vaulted passage-way, that
on occasion may be closed by a double set of ancient iron-clamped doors.
As the few exterior windows of the farm-house are grated heavily, and as
from each of the rear corners of the square there projects a crusty
tourelle from which a raking fire could be kept up along the walls, the
place has quite the air of a testy little fortress--and a fortress it
was meant to be when it was built three hundred years and more ago (the
date, 1561, is carved on the keystone of the arched entrance) in the
time of the religious wars.
But now the iron-clamped doors stand open on rusty hinges, and the
court-yard has that look of placid cheerfulness which goes with the
varied peaceful activities of farm labour and farm life. Chickens and
ducks wander about it chattering complacently, an aged goat of a
melancholy humour stands usually in one corner lost in misanthropic
thought, and a great flock of extraordinarily tame pigeons flutters back
and forth between the stone dove-cote rising in a square tower above
the farm-house and the farm well.
[Illustration: AT THE WELL]
This well--enclosed in a stone well-house surmounted by a very ancient
crucifix--is in the centre of the court-yard, and it also is the centre
of a little domestic world. To its kerb come the farm animals three
times daily; while as frequently, though less regularly, most of the
members of the two households come there too; and there do the
humans--notably, I have observed, if they be of different sexes--find it
convenient to rest for a while together and take a dish of friendly
talk. From the low-toned chattering and the soft laughter that I have
heard now and then of an evening I have inferred that these nominally
chance encounters are not confined wholly to the day.
By simple machinery (of which the motive-power is an aged patient horse,
who is started and left then to his own devices; and who works quite
honestly, save that now and then he stops in his round and indulges
himself in a little doze) the well-water is raised continuously into a
long stone trough. Thence the overflow is led away to irrigate the
garden of the Chateau: an old-fashioned garden, on a slope declining
southward and westward, abounding in balustraded terraces and stone
benches stiffly ornate, and having here and there stone nymphs and
goddesses over which in summer climbing roses kindly (and discreetly)
throw a blushing veil.
The dependent estate is a large one: lying partly on the flanks of the
Alpilles, and extending far outward from the base of the range over the
level region where the Rhone valley widens and merges into the valley of
the Durance. On its highest slopes are straggling rows of almond trees,
which in the early spring time belt the grey mountains with a broad
girdle of delicate pink blossoms; a little lower are terraced
olive-orchards, a pale shimmering green the year round--the olive
continuously casting and renewing its leaves; and the lowest level, the
wide fertile plain, is given over to vineyards and wheat-fields and
fields of vegetables (grown for the Paris market), broken by plantations
of fruit-trees and by the long lines of green-black cypress which run
due east and west across the landscape and shield the tender growing
things from the north wind, the mistral.
The Chateau stands, as I have said, well up on the mountain-side; and on
the very spot (I must observe that I am here quoting its owner) where
was the camp in which Marius lay with his legions until the time was
ripe for him to strike the blow that secured Southern Gaul to Rome. This
matter of Marius is a ticklish subject to touch on with the Vidame:
since the fact must be admitted that other antiquaries are not less firm
in their convictions, nor less hot in presenting them, that the camp of
the Roman general was variously elsewhere--and all of them, I regret to
add, display a lamentable acerbity of temper in scouting each other's
views. Indeed, the subject is of so irritating a complexion that the
mere mention of it almost surely will throw my old friend--who in
matters not antiquarian has a sweetness of nature rarely equalled--into
a veritable fuming rage.
But even the antiquaries are agreed that, long before the coming of the
Romans, many earlier races successively made on this mountain
promontory overlooking the Rhone delta their fortified home: for here,
as on scores of other defensible heights throughout Provence, the merest
scratching of the soil brings to light flints and potshards which tell
of varied human occupancy in very far back times. And the antiquaries
still farther are agreed that precisely as these material relics (only a
little hidden beneath the present surface of the soil) tell of diverse
ancient dwellers here, so do the surviving fragments of creeds and
customs (only a little hidden beneath the surface of Provencal daily
life) tell in a more sublimate fashion of those same vanished races
which marched on into Eternity in the shadowy morning of Time.
For this is an old land, where many peoples have lived their spans out
and gone onward--yet have not passed utterly away. Far down in the
popular heart remnants of the beliefs and of the habits of those
ancients survive, entranced: yet not so numbed but that, on occasion,
they may be aroused into a life that still in part is real. Even now,
when the touch-stone is applied--when the thrilling of some nerve of
memory or of instinct brings the present into close association with
the past--there will flash into view still quick particles of seemingly
long-dead creeds or customs rooted in a deep antiquity: the faiths and
usages which of old were cherished by the Kelto-Ligurians, Phoenicians,
Grecians, Romans, Goths, Saracens, whose blood and whose beliefs are
blended in the Christian race which inhabits Provence to-day.