On the first day of December 186-, in the clear bright winter sunshine
of Provence, the startled inhabitants of Marseille witnessed the arrival
of a Teur. Never had they seen one like this before, though God knows
there is no shortage of Teurs in Marseille. The Teur, need I tell you,
was none other than Tartarin de Tarascon, who was proceeding down the
quay followed by his case of arms, his medicine chest and his preserved
foods, in search of the embarkation point of the Compagnie Touache and
the ferry-boat “Le Zouave” which was to carry him away.
His ears still ringing with the cheers of Tarascon and bemused by the
brightness of the sky and the smell of the sea, Tartarin marched along,
his rifles slung on his shoulders, gazing around in wonder at this
marvellous port of Marseille, which he was seeing for the first time and
which quite dazzled him. He almost felt that he was dreaming and that
like Sinbad he was wandering in one of the fabulous cities of the
Thousand and one Nights.
As far as the eye could see, there stretched a jumble of masts and
yards, criss-crossing in all directions. The flags of a multitude of
nations fluttering in the wind. The ships level with the quay, their
bowsprits projecting over the edge like a row of bayonets, and below
them the carved and painted wooden figureheads of nymphs, goddesses
and saintly virgins from which the ships took their names. From time to
time, between the hulls one could see a patch of sea, like a great sheet
of cloth spattered with oil, while in the entanglement of yardarms a
host of seagulls made pretty splashes of white against the blue sky.
On the quay, amid the streams which trickled from the soapworks, thick,
green, streaked with black, full of oil and soda, there was a whole
population of customs officers, shipping agents, and stevedores with
trollies drawn by little Corsican ponies. There were shops selling
strange sweetmeats. Smoke enshrouded huts where seamen were cooking.
There were merchants selling monkeys, parrots, rope, sailcloth and
fantastic collections of bric-a-brac where, heaped up pell-mell, were
old culverins, great gilded lanterns, old blocks and tackle, old rusting
anchors, old rigging, old megaphones, old telescopes, dating from the
time of Jean Bart.
There were women selling shellfish, crouched bawling beside their wares,
sailors passing, some with pots of tar, some with steaming pots of stew,
others with baskets full of squid which they were taking to wash in the
fresh water of the fountains. Everywhere prodigious heaps of merchandise
of every kind. Silks, minerals, baulks of timber, ingots of lead,
carobs, rape-seed, liquorice, sugar cane, great piles of dutch cheeses.
East and west hugger-mugger.
Here is the grain berth. Stevedores empty the sacks onto the quay from
a scaffold, the grain pours down in a golden torrent raising a cloud of
pale dust, and is loaded by men wearing red fezes into carts, which
set off followed by a regiment of women and children with brushes and
buckets for gleaning.
There is the careening basin. The huge vessels lie over on one side and
are flamed with fires of brushwood to rid them of seaweed, while their
yardarms soak in the water. There is a smell of pitch and the deafening
hammering of shipwrights lining the hulls with sheets of copper.
Sometimes, between the masts, a gap opened and Tartarin could see the
harbour mouth and the movement of ships. An English frigate leaving for
Malta, spruce and scrubbed, with officers in yellow gloves, or a big
Marseilles brig, casting off amid shouting and cursing, with, in the
bows, a fat captain in an overcoat and a top hat, supervising the
manoeuvre in broad provencal. There were ships outward bound, running
before the wind with all sails set, there were others, far out at sea,
beating their way in and seeming in the sunshine to be floating on air.
Then, all the time the most fearsome racket. The rumbling of cart
wheels, the cries of the sailors, oaths, songs, the sirens of
steam-boats, the drums and bugles of Fort St. Jean and Fort St. Nicolas,
the bells of nearby churches and, up above, the mistral, which took all
of these sounds, rolled them together, shook them up and mingled
them with its own voice to make mad, wild, heroic music, like a great
fanfare, urging one to set sail for distant lands, to spread one’s wings
and go. It was to the sound of this fine fanfare that Tartarin embarked
for the country of lions.