_Nîmes and the Pont du Gard_
The surpassing charm of Nîmes is provided by its waters, which are the
chief feature of a garden as beautiful of its kind as is to be seen
anywhere. But these waters were considered too sacred for common use in
Roman times, and in order to provide this quite unimportant colonial
town, which is not even mentioned by classical writers, with pure
drinking water, an aqueduct was built to convey to it the waters of the
springs five and twenty miles away; and the remains of this aqueduct
are one of the wonders of the world. We will take the Pont du Gard
first, as I did on this expedition, walking from Remoulins, and then
back again by the other side of the river, and on to Nîmes.
It was a bright, hot, spring day, and the first view I had of the
famous aqueduct was through a haze of foliage which later on would
have been thick enough to hide it until one was almost underneath its
soaring arches. Taking this road to the left, which is the usual and
the shorter one, the huge structure comes as a sudden surprise; but I
am not sure that it does not provide a more interesting sight seen
over miles of olive gardens from the other road.
No detailed description of this mere fragment of a monumental and
enduring work is necessary, as I am able to give an excellent
photograph of it from a point of view that is not usually taken. But
I doubt if its immensity can be gauged from any photograph that it is
possible to take. It rises a hundred and eighty feet from the level of
the river. The huge blocks of which it is composed are put together,
and have held together, without any mortar. It has lasted for close
upon two thousand years, and looks as if it would last till the end of
the world, without much trouble being taken to keep it in repair. Its
effect, indeed, as one lingers about it, and looks at it now from the
hills above, now from the road below, now from a distance across the
plain, and tries to get some definite outstanding impression, is of a
work on such a scale that it rivals that of nature herself. It is huge
and yet it is light; it is regular in design, but irregular in detail;
its use is gone, yet it has life.
It stands in majestic solitude. The blue river with its sandy bars
flows between rocky, wooded hills, and the white road keeps it company,
but seems to be little used. There is some sort of a _café_ near it,
but it is hidden by the trees. I had the place all to myself during the
hour or so that I stayed there. The impression of something belonging
to nature more than to the art of man deepened.
[Illustration: THE PONT DU GARD]
[Illustration: THE FOUNTAINS, NÎMES]
The photograph, taken from the north bank of the river, shows the end
of the squared channel which conducted the water, and a little farther
along the roofing with which the whole length of it was covered. A
tall man can walk under it upright; but if he is inclined to be bulky
there are places where he may have to squeeze himself through. This is
because of the calcareous deposit left by the water flowing through
the channel for centuries. The thickness and hardness of this coating
must be seen to be believed. At first I could not imagine how such
enormous masses of what looked like natural rock had been raised to
the summit, and then I remembered reading something about the deposit,
and recognized it for what it was. Houses have been built of it, and a
whole church in a village not far off.
The jutting-out stones in the middle row of arches may also be noticed.
They were put there by the Romans probably to provide for scaffolding
when repairs should become necessary.
I do not know why it is that my stay in Nîmes seems in retrospect
rather depressing. The weather was fine, and what there is to see
is well worth seeing. Perhaps I was getting a little tired of being
alone; perhaps the large, dirty hotel in which I spent the night
had something to do with it. One puts up with very poor quarters
in the country, and always has some sort of intercourse with one's
fellow-creatures. But in a town it is different, and I was glad enough
to get away from Nîmes the next morning, bearing with me nothing very
fresh in the way of impressions to add to those that I had formed of
the place during an hour's visit two years before. In fact, a motorist
who stays to lunch at Nîmes, and sees the fountains, the arena and the
Maison Carée, may congratulate himself that he has tasted the full
flavour of the brew.
But these three sights, and the "Temple of Diana," by the fountains,
are by all means worth seeing. Except the Arena, which is somewhat
similar to the one at Arles, there is nothing to equal them.
The "fountains" are, as to their aspect, seventeenth century of the
happiest. How far they follow the lines of the Roman baths and washing
pools I have not troubled to enquire, nor does it very much matter.
Probably the semi-circular basin in which rises the once sacred
spring is much the same as it was in shape. From it the waters are
led underneath pavings and bridges to the various balustraded and
ornamented pools of the central garden, and then into canals, still
of formal architecture, until they disappear somewhere at either end
of the long tree-shaded Quai. It is always fascinating to see water
flowing, and I know nothing more attractive of its sort than the way
this limpid spring comes from under the dark arches leading to the
central pool and covers a shallow stone floor recessed all the way
round in a colonnade. The photograph gives some idea of this happy
invention, but it is not possible to convey its pleasing ingenuity. The
gardens, beautifully planted, slope up in a series of bold staircases
and terraces. They show a wealth of variegated foliage that makes a
most pleasing background to the graceful architecture of the pools and
fountains, and on the lower side broad avenues of trees lead away from
the charming place quite in the best style of French garden planning.
In the garden itself are the ruins of a Roman temple, which has for
long been known as the Temple of Diana. In 1739 an inscription was
found dedicating it to the god Nemausus and the goddess Diana on behalf
of the commonwealth of Nîmes, and attributing its building to the
munificence of the Emperor Augustus.
Part of the beautiful colonnaded portico has been reconstructed. It
connected the temple with the Nymphæum, which was where the central
square basin now is. Preserved in the temple is a single tall
pillar--one of those used to support the _velarium_ under which the
Roman ladies reclined in the course of their bathing.
The architecture of this temple forms a valuable connecting link
between that of the Romans and of the later Provençal builders,
concerning which Mr. Cook has something interesting to tell us. He
is more interesting still on the subject of the Maison Carrée, for
he gives us, with a wealth of technical detail and illustration, the
curious reason for its being so supremely satisfying to the eye.
No one even with an uneducated eye for beauty can look at this little
gem of Greek architecture without a sensation of pleasure. Mr.
Baring-Gould, whose eye is not uneducated, writes of it: "It is the
best example we have in Europe of a temple that is perfectly intact.
It is _mignon_, it is cheerful, it is charming. I found myself unable
at any time to pass it without looking round over my shoulder, again
and again, and uttering some exclamation of pleasure at the sight of
it."[25]
And Mr. Henry James, in that delightful book, "A Little Tour in
France," writes in his own way:
"The first impression you receive from this delicate little building,
as you stand before it, is that you have already seen it many times.
Photographs, engravings, models, medals, have placed it definitely
in your eye, so that from the sentiment with which you regard it
curiosity and surprise are almost completely, and perhaps deplorably,
absent. Admiration remains, however,--admiration of a familiar and
even slightly patronizing kind. The Maison Carrée does not overwhelm
you; you can conceive it. It is not one of the great sensations of the
antique art; but it is perfectly felicitous, and, in spite of having
been put to all sorts of incongruous uses, marvellously preserved. Its
slender columns, its delicate proportions, its charming compactness,
seemed to bring one nearer to the century that built it than the great
superpositions of arenas and bridges, and give it the interest that
vibrates from one age to another when the note of taste is struck."
In a word, the beauty of this little temple is alive, and one of the
reasons for its being so I now proceed to extract from Mr. Cook's
discussion of a subject that he has made particularly his own.
Why is it that the Maison Carrée is so eminently pleasing to the
eye--is alive--while the Madeleine in Paris, which is a strictly
mathematical enlargement of it, is "dull and unsuccessful"? Because
the lines of the Madeleine are straight, and those of this temple, as
of all Greek architecture, are not, though they are so nearly so that
the fact was not discovered until about twenty years ago.
The divergences are surprisingly small, and in fact this great secret
of the ancient builders--Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine and Gothic, as well
as Greek--was not suspected until it was proved on the Parthenon in the
middle of the last century. "In the Parthenon the curve is under four
inches in two hundred and twenty-eight feet. At Nîmes it is nearly five
inches in less than a hundred feet."[26]
These skilful curves can be traced in Gothic cathedrals. The walls in
the nave of Westminster Abbey "are bent inwards at about the height of
the keystones of the arches and outwards above and below this point,
and they are structurally sound unto this day."[27]
Mr. Cook explains the difference caused by following this principle
"as something of the difference between an architectural drawing done
with compass and rulers, and an artist's painting of the same building
done with a free hand and with just those 'inaccuracies' which give it
life and beauty." It is "an essential principle which, known to Greece,
and known to the builders of the Maison Carrée, is one of the chief
reasons why this little temple is the greatest treasure of classical
architecture north of the Alps."[28]
[Illustration: THE MAISON CARRÉE]
[Illustration: THE AMPHITHEATRE, NÎMES]
The Maison Carrée has been at various times a kind of Hôtel de Ville, a
private dwelling, a stable, a church, a granary, and a public market,
and it is surprising that with all the structural changes it has
undergone there is anything of it left. But fortunately its exterior
was never much interfered with, and now its interior has been cleared
out, and is used as an antiquarian museum.
The amphitheatre at Nîmes is very slightly smaller than that at Arles,
but it is rather better preserved. In fact, it is the best preserved
of any of the Roman amphitheatres--far better than the Coliseum, for
instance. Its seating accommodation was about twenty-two thousand, as
against ninety thousand of the Coliseum, but the area of the arena was
in the proportion of about seven to twelve, so that this provincial
city was very well off in this respect, as compared with the capital of
the world.
The photograph will show what a noble building this was, and will
incidentally provide an example of the manner in which the French treat
their ancient monuments. You may imagine from it an ellipse of about
four hundred and thirty feet by three hundred and thirty, all of it in
much the same state. It will be seen that where the original structure
is strong enough it has been left, where it needs repair the old work
has been copied, and here and there--as in the balustrading beneath
the upper row of arches--features have been restored not absolutely
necessary to the support of the building. There are those who object
to this sort of restoration. I suppose it is a matter of knowledge and
imagination; but ordinary persons, of whom in questions of architecture
and archæology I am one, may be grateful for a system that shows
plainly what an ancient building really looked like, and what purposes
it served, while he is nowhere invited to take the new for the old.
As the original seating accommodation of the amphitheatre would provide
for more than a quarter of the present inhabitants of Nîmes--that at
Arles would take some thousands more than there are now people in
Arles--it has not been necessary to restore all the tiers of seats for
the uses to which the arena is put. Consequently, it is possible to see
the ingenious plan on which it was constructed, so as to give ample
means of ingress and egress, and to divide up the spectators according
to their rank. There were thirty-four tiers of them--four for the
senators, ten for the knights, ten for the freedmen, and ten for the
slaves and menials--and everybody had an uninterrupted view of what
went on in the arena. The holes for the masts supporting the gigantic
awning that sheltered the spectators can be seen here and there in the
topmost circle; but the moderns do without that luxury, and watch their
bull-fights in the full glare of the Southern sun.
I cannot describe a Provençal bull-fight, as the season had not begun
when I was in the country, though preparations were being made for a
spectacle on the following Sunday. It is an ancient sport with the
Provençaux, but, as Mr. Henry James says, "the thing is shabbily and
imperfectly done. The bulls are rarely killed, and indeed often are
bulls only in the Irish sense of the term,--being domestic and motherly
cows." But the "Grande Tauromachie" is creeping in. Large bills were
posted about the amphitheatre announcing events in which Spanish
matadors and toréadors would compete for the favour of the populace,
and the organizers of the sport were full of self-commendation of the
noble struggle they were making over the innovation. It seemed to be
almost a matter of conscience with them. They spoke of their loyalty
and simplicity, of their scrupulous honesty and untiring good-will, and
of the inexhaustible force of energy that they would bring to bear in
this contest against discouraging circumstance.
Mises à Mort they call their Spanish bull-fights, and to judge by a
picture postcard that I bought of one in progress, in which every
seat in the amphitheatre is occupied, and dense masses of people are
standing where there are no seats, they are taking very kindly to the
pastime.