_Flowers and Scents_
If you look at a map of this coast, before it begins to run south from
Cagnes and Villeneuve, you will see that the hills stretch down to the
sea like the fingers of a hand spread out, and the main roads run down
between them. I should have preferred to keep away from the coast and
cross the remaining ranges by tracks and footpaths, but I wanted to see
a relative who lives at Nice. Otherwise I should never have gone near
such a place, for which I was quite unsuited, both in spirit and attire.
Contes is only fourteen miles or so from Nice by a good road, and I
thought I might pay my visit, and in the afternoon get back into the
hills again. But crowning the ridge opposite to the one I had come down
the night before was the old deserted town of Châteauneuf, and in the
soft early morning sunshine it looked so attractive that I thought I
would go up to it, and walk down to Nice along the valley on the other
side.
It was a steep and stony climb. When I got a little way up I was
already glad I had embarked upon it, for if I had gone down by the
road I should have missed the glorious view I had looking back upon
Contes, and upon Berre on its wooded height far above it. I saw now
that Contes itself was a most picturesque little town on a hill of its
own, crowned by the spire of its church, that its outlying houses ran
straggling up the higher slope down which I had come, and that the inn
at which I had slept was in another little group right at the bottom
of the hill. It was not nearly so large as it had seemed to me in the
dark, but it was wonderfully picturesque, from whatever shifting point
of view I saw it.
I sat for half an hour outside a little inn before I climbed the
last steep slope to the ruins above me. They loomed big and massive,
and I asked why the place had been deserted. Owing to lack of water,
they told me, but there was still a woman who inhabited it with her
children, and had some small "lands" to cultivate thereabouts. There
were a few little pocket handkerchiefs of terraced soil among the lower
ruined walls, and some tall cypresses growing among the scattered
stones. But it was a scene of desolation when one went along what had
been a street or lane of the village. The ruin was too far advanced
to tell many stories, and only the glorious view, which embraced the
sea to the south and all the great panorama of the hills and distant
mountains elsewhere, made the reward of the climb.
A ragged child came running towards me over the stones. I "posed" him
among the ruins which were his habitation, and asked him questions
about them, which he did not answer. I found his mother, with some
smaller children, in a dwelling not so very uncomfortable, and she
was pleasant with me, and said there was no lack of water at all in
Châteauneuf, and it was a convenient enough place to live in, and cheap.
There was not much to stay there for. The ragged child was instructed
to take me to some grotto or other which his mother said was well worth
seeing, and he did accompany me a few hundred yards on my way down the
other side of the hill; but I saw nothing of any grotto, and presently
he went back again.
A depression of spirit came upon me as I walked down the road to Nice,
which, however, was picturesque enough, passing for some distance
through a narrow gorge with a foaming river running along the bottom of
it. But there were people in carriages and motor-cars, and presently
there were tram-lines and untidy-looking buildings such as always
hang on to the skirts of a French town. I was coming into a sort of
civilization that I wanted none of at that time. I cut short the
approach by taking a tram, and I will say nothing more of Nice except
that I spent the rest of the day and the night there.
It took me a long time to get out of it the next morning, and in fact
its atmosphere seemed to hang about me all day. I walked along the
pavement of the interminable Promenade des Anglais, drank coffee at an
_auberge_ somewhere at the end of it, and then took a tram to Cagnes,
where they play golf. I must not be taken to throw scorn upon Nice
because it did not happen to be the sort of place I wanted at that
particular time. It is the chief of the pleasure cities of that sunny
flowery coast, and was so when all the rest were mere fishing villages.
It is bright and gay, and fronts its curving shore with a flaunting
elaboration of architecture that spells wealth and luxury down to the
smallest eccentric pavilion. And this wealth and luxury spreads its
influence for miles around.
It was evident in the little _café restaurant_ at which I rested early
in the afternoon, which was just off the dusty high road to Grasse,
and was continually passed by motor-cars speeding along in either
direction. It was not a place at which any of them were ever likely to
stop, but I was charged at least double prices for the mild refreshment
that I took, and when I had paid for it was requested to leave as soon
as possible, for the lady of the house wished to shut it up and go
and wash at the fountain. I was sitting outside, and could only have
carried off a chair and a table if I had been minded to carry off
anything, but I was not to be allowed to sit there a little longer. She
had got my money and wanted to see my back.
I walked on, into the land of flowers--flowers grown not for their
beauty but for their scent, and grown in terraced fields, just like any
other crop. Grasse, the centre of the industry, draws supplies for its
scents and soaps, pomades and oils, from miles of country around it,
and I was getting near to Grasse.
There were great plantations of roses, all carefully pruned and
trained on low trellises, but not yet in flower. Sometimes the rows
were interspersed with vines, and many of the fields were bordered
with mulberries. There were ledges covered with the green foliage of
violets, and great double heads of purple, scented bloom peeping out of
it. There were fields of jasmine, of tuberoses; terraces of lavender,
of lilies of the valley, carnations, mignonette; gardens of orange
trees, grown more for their flowers than for their fruit; and of course
groves of olives, of which the oil forms so important a part in the
local manufactures. This day and the next day I walked for miles with
the scent of flowers all about me.
I climbed up to another Châteauneuf; there must be a round dozen of
them in Provence alone, and they are all very old. This was another
most picturesque hill town, and again I thought I might get a bed
there. But I could get no such thing, and after sitting for half an
hour on a terrace and enjoying the wide view I set out again as the sun
sank behind the hills to walk to Grasse.
I had come up by a wide sweeping road, and took a short cut down
through the olive groves to where I thought I should strike it again.
But my sense of direction, never very strong, failed me altogether, and
I don't know where I might have wandered to if I had not frequently
caught sight of the lights of Grasse in the distance. Presently I
seemed to be going right away from them, but between me and them there
was a deep valley, and I knew that the road which I ought to have
taken, or found again, kept to the level on my right. So I turned, to
round the slope of the hill which would take me on to it.
I wandered for an hour up paths and down paths and along the edges of
terraces where there were no paths, but keeping my face generally to
the right quarter. The lights of Grasse shone more and more plainly
between the tree-trunks, but were still a very long way off. Sometimes
I came across little secluded farms, and in the garden of one of them
a great stretch of yellow jonquil shone in the dusk like a square of
sunshine left behind from the departed day, and its fragrance followed
me for a long way. From another a dog barked and somewhat alarmed me,
for dogs are not to be lightly regarded in this country. Later on I
should have been more alarmed still, for reasons which will presently
appear. But this dog did no more than bark savagely, and bye and bye,
when it was quite dark, I came out onto the road, not so very far from
Châteauneuf, round which I had walked almost in full circle.
I was still four miles or so from Grasse, but had no wish to walk there
if I could find my dinner and bed closer at hand, and just beyond where
I had come out onto the road there was an inn, in which I got both. I
think this place was called Pré du Lac, but am not sure.
I dined in the _café_, which was so large as to take up nearly the
whole of the ground floor. There was a billiard table in it, but it was
in a corner and seemed to make small impression on the floor space.
As I sat at my table against a wall, the people of the inn dined at
another one, pushed up against an iron stove, and at such a distance
from mine that we had to raise our voices in talking to one another.
They were an interesting group, but I had some difficulty in making out
their relationship. There was a woman at the head of things, bustling
and voluble, who brought me one special dish, which she said was a
_plat du pays_, and not given to every guest. I have forgotten all
about it, except that it was good. There was a man with one eye who may
have been her husband, but I think he was only a friend of the family.
There was a married daughter, rather handsome, with a small child who
went to sleep over his macaroni. These sat at the table. But there were
besides, a son, who was to be off on his military service the next day,
and a girl who may have been a younger daughter. She wore a boy's cloth
cap and a black skirt, and looked very much like a Kentish hop-picker.
These two hovered about the scene. There were also people coming in now
and then, to bring something or to take something away, and they all
stayed for a word or two before going out into the night, and slamming
the door.
One man, who had just cut his beard very short, or else had not shaved
for a week, came to fill a bottle with wine. He stood for a minute or
two by the table, talking loudly, and then made for the door, still
talking. By the time he reached it he had found something to say that
took him back to the table, where he stayed for another two or three
minutes. Then he went to the door again, stood there as before, and
came back. He did this six or seven times. He first came in as I
finished my soup, and finally left us as I was peeling my orange, and
I am quite sure that he pictured himself as having stopped just to say
a word, and told his wife so when he got home with the wine for their
meal.
I watched them as they sat and stood there, talking vociferously, and
frequently all at the same time, and thought how different they were
from our northern peasantry. They live far better; the poorest of
them have well-cooked food and wholesome natural wine as a matter of
course. Their ideas flow more freely, and they take a great delight in
imparting them. They are not so much under the domination of richer
men. One could not, in England, walk through the country and drop down
to the way of life of the peasantry without a conscious and possibly
irksome process of self-adjustment--as irksome to them as to oneself.
There one lives exactly as they do, and lives better than in most
middle-class houses in England; and they will talk to you freely, and
interest you.
I went over and sat at their table, while the one-eyed man and the
married daughter played a game of cards, which they explained to me
but I did not understand, and offered me most fragrant coffee, from
the stove at the lady's elbow. The _patronne_ came in, and gave me a
liqueur glass of rum, which she said would be good for me. A handsome
young man in the clothes of a plasterer came in and watched the card
game, and another rather older man joined the circle, together with the
son and the girl in the cloth cap, who had carried off the sleeping
child and put him to bed. She was smoking a cigarette. I suggested that
the rum should go round to my order, but only the _patronne_ herself,
the one-eyed man and the young plasterer accepted it. The budding
soldier would have done so, but his mother forbade him.
The talk was of military service, as it had been throughout the
evening. They all disliked the new three years' law, except the
one-eyed man, who said that soldiering was all fun and no work, and
you saw the world. But they cried out at him that he had never done
military service, and he subsided and helped himself largely to
counters out of the pool.
They were all as genial as possible with me, looked at my map with
interest, and suggested various places that I might visit. The
conscript presently showed me up to my room, which was bare but clean,
and asked me how many handkerchiefs I had with me. I thought it was
rather a personal question, but showed them to him, and he deluged
each one with a different scent. He said they were the best scents
that could be obtained in or around Grasse, and they were certainly
very strong. For some days thereafter my "essences turned the live
air sick," and one of the handkerchiefs now, after several washings,
retains a faint commemorative odour. But the attention I valued, though
the scent I came to dislike extremely.
They were nice people, all of them, though a little greedy, as next
morning's settling up showed. But I was still on the high road between
Nice and Grasse, and I suppose was fair game.
The weather was still lovely as I set out early in the morning, and
Grasse was a sight to see, with its towers and roofs lit up by the sun,
as it stood on its dominating height over the wide valley, in which the
light mists still lingered.
I walked right through the town, but if I had not already seen
something of the processes by which the scents from the miles of
flowery fields through which I was passing are extracted and hoarded,
I think I should have stayed to do so. For I am so constituted that
every manufacturing process remains a complete and insoluble mystery to
me until I have seen it, and yet arouses my curiosity and my willing
interest.
It was about this time of the year that I had visited one of the light,
airy factories of Grasse. I remember a huge, scented mass of the
heads of violets heaped up on a white sheet on one of the upstairs
floors. It was half as high as I was, and smelt divinely. These were
the only flowers in evidence, for the full harvest, when all the great
space of this chamber would be covered with gathered blossoms, was
not yet. But there were sacks of lavender there besides, and bundles
of sweet-scented roots--orris, and patchouli, and _vétiver_--which
can be turned into essences as sweet as those taken from the flowers
themselves.
I remember in other rooms boiling vats, very clean, and bright copper
vessels, and great stills; and casks full of the fine grease which is
used to catch and hold the distilled essences. It is spread on sheets
of glass, framed in wood, like school slates, which are stacked in
tiers; and other tiers hold the wooden trays for the flower-heads ready
to be treated. And of course there were great stores of attractive
flasks and bottles, all labelled and ribboned, and ready to take their
places in the shops of Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, and every
other place where there is a market for them.
There was a room, too, with machinery for turning out scented soap. You
saw a soft fat pink deliciously-smelling roll squeezed out of a press,
and in no time sections were cut off and stamped in another press into
cakes ready for the toilet table.
I must confess that I have only the dimmest idea now as to the actual
details of the various processes by which the scent of the flowers is
stoppered up into the aristocratic bottles, but I have seen it all
done, and the impression remains on my mind that any scent that bears
a label from Grasse does come from the flowers themselves, and with no
adulteration that I could see anywhere.