TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
A BOOK OF
THE RIVIERA
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
A BOOK OF CORNWALL
A BOOK OF DARTMOOR
A BOOK OF DEVON
A BOOK OF NORTH WALES
A BOOK OF SOUTH WALES
A BOOK OF THE RHINE
A BOOK OF THE PYRENEES
THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
THE TRAGEDY OF THE CÆSARS
A BOOK OF FAIRY TALES
THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW
OLD COUNTRY LIFE
A GARLAND OF COUNTRY SONG
SONGS OF THE WEST
A BOOK OF NURSERY SONGS AND RHYMES
STRANGE SURVIVALS
YORKSHIRE ODDITIES
DEVON
BRITTANY
A BARING-GOULD SELECTION READER
A BARING-GOULD CONTINUOUS READER
[Illustration: CAP ROUX, ESTÉREL]
A BOOK OF
THE RIVIERA
BY S. BARING-GOULD
“ON OLD HYEMS’ CHIN, AND ICY CROWN,
AN ODOROUS CHAPLET OF SWEET SUMMER BUDS
IS SET.”
_Midsummer Night’s Dream_, ii. 2.
WITH FORTY ILLUSTRATIONS
SECOND EDITION
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published_ _November 1905_
_Second Edition_ _December 1909_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PROVENCE 1
II. LE GAI SABER 24
III. MARSEILLES 39
IV. AIX 55
V. TOULON 72
VI. HYÈRES 84
VII. LES MONTAGNES DES MAURES 97
VIII. S. RAPHAEL AND FRÉJUS 113
IX. DRAGUIGNAN 130
X. L’ESTÉREL 147
XI. GRASSE 157
XII. CANNES 180
XIII. NICE 205
XIV. MONACO 227
XV. MENTONE 255
XVI. BORDIGHERA 264
XVII. SAN REMO 276
XVIII. ALASSIO 288
XIX. SAVONA 296
ILLUSTRATIONS
CAP ROUX, L’ESTÉREL _Frontispiece_
From a photograph by G. Richard.
GOD’S CANDELABRA _To face page_ 1
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
A PASSAGE IN THE GORGE DU LOUP ” 4
From a photograph by Neurdein frères.
PALMS AT CANNES ” 7
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
LA RADE, MARSEILLES ” 39
From a photograph by Neurdein frères.
KING RÉNÉ ” 63
From the triptych of the Burning Bush, at Aix.
OLIVE TREES ” 85
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
PINES NEAR HYÈRES ” 89
From a photograph by Neurdein frères.
A CAROB TREE ” 97
From a photograph by Neurdein frères.
GRIMAUD ” 109
From a photograph by Neurdein frères.
AN UMBRELLA PINE, S. RAPHAEL ” 113
From a photograph by Neurdein frères.
LE LION DE TERRE, S. RAPHAEL ” 115
From a photograph by A. Bandieri.
THÉOULE ” 147
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
L’ESTÉREL FROM CANNES ” 153
From a photograph by G. Richard.
GRASSE, LES BLANCHISEUSES ” 157
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
CARROS ” 167
From a photograph by Neurdein frères.
THE CASCADE OF THE LOUP ” 172
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
FALL IN THE GORGE OF THE LOUP ” 173
From a photograph by Neurdein frères.
INTERIOR OF THE CHÂTEAU SAINT HONORAT ” 180
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
THE PRISON OF THE MAN WITH THE IRON MASK ” 190
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
THE CASTLE OF S. HONORAT ” 195
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
LA NAPOULE ” 203
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
THE CASCADE OF THE CHÂTEAU, NICE ” 205
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
VILLEFRANCHE ” 225
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
THE THEATRE, MONTE CARLO ” 237
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
POSTCARDS PROHIBITED AT MONACO ” 244
THE GAMING SALOON, MONTE CARLO ” 248
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
THE CONCERT HALL, MONTE CARLO ” 252
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
DOLCE ACQUA ” 273
From a photograph by Alinari.
SAN AMPELIO, BORDIGHERA ” 274
From a photograph by Alinari.
ARCHES IN STREET, BORDIGHERA ” 276
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
CERIANA ” 279
From a photograph by G. Brogi.
BUSSANA ” 280
From a photograph by J. Giletta.
ALBENGA ” 293
From a photograph by Alinari.
SAVONA ” 301
From a photograph by Alinari.
POPE SIXTUS IV ” 304
From an old engraving.
PREFACE
THIS little book has for its object to interest the many winter
visitors to the Ligurian coast in the places that they see.
A consecutive history of Provence and Genoese Liguria was out of the
question; it would be long and tedious. I have taken a few of the
most prominent incidents in the history of the coast, and have given
short biographies of interesting personages connected with it. The
English visitor calls the entire coast—from Marseilles to Genoa—the
Riviera; but the French distinguish their portion as the Côte d’Azur,
and the Italians distinguish theirs as the Riviera di Ponente. I have
not included the whole of this latter, so as not to make the book too
bulky, but have stayed my pen at Savona.
[Illustration: GOD’S CANDELABRA]
THE RIVIERA
CHAPTER I
PROVENCE
Montpellier and the Riviera compared—The discovery of the Riviera
as a winter resort—A district full of historic interest—Geology of
the coast—The flora—Exotics—The original limit of the sea—The
formation of the _craus_—The Mistral—The olive and cypress—Les
Alpines—The chalk formation—The Jura limestone—Eruptive
rocks—The colouring of Provence—The towns and their narrow
streets—Early history—The Phœnicians—Arrival of the Phocœans—The
Roman province—Roman remains—Destruction of the theatre at
Arles—Visigoths and Burgundians—The Saracens—When Provence was
joined to France—Pagan customs linger on—Floral games—Carnival—The
origin of the Fauxbourdon—How part-singing came into the service of
the church—Reform in church music—Little Gothic architecture in
Provence—Choirs at the west end at Grasse and Vence.
WHEN a gambler has become bankrupt at the tables of Monte Carlo, the
Company that owns these tables furnish him with a railway ticket that
will take him home, or to any distance he likes, the further the
better, that he may hang or shoot himself anywhere else save in the
gardens of the Casino. On much the same principle, at the beginning of
last century, the physicians of England recommended their consumptive
patients to go to Montpellier, where they might die out of sight, and
not bring discredit on their doctors. As Murray well puts it:—
“It is difficult to understand how it came to be chosen by the
physicians of the North as a retreat for consumptive patients, since
nothing can be more trying to weak lungs than its variable climate,
its blazing sunshine alternating with the piercingly cold blasts of
the _mistral_. Though its sky be clear, its atmosphere is filled with
dust, which must be hurtful to the lungs.”
The discovery of a better place, with equable temperature, and
protection from the winds, was due to an accident.
In 1831, Lord Brougham, flying from the fogs and cold of England in
winter, was on his way to Italy, the classic land of sunshine, when he
was delayed on the French coast of the Mediterranean by the fussiness
of the Sardinian police, which would not suffer him to pass the
frontier without undergoing quarantine, lest he should be the means
of introducing cholera into Piedmont. As he was obliged to remain for
a considerable time on the coast, he spent it in rambling along the
Gulf of Napoule. This was to him a veritable revelation. He found the
sunshine, the climate, the flowers he was seeking at Naples where
he then was, at Napoule. He went no farther; he bought an estate at
Cannes, and there built for himself a winter residence. He talked about
his discovery. It was written about in the papers. Eventually it was
heard of by the physicians, and they ceased to recommend their patients
to go to Montpellier, but rather to try Cannes. When Lord Brougham
settled there, it was but a fishing village; in thirty years it was
transformed; and from Cannes stretches a veritable rosary of winter
resorts to Hyères on one side to Alassio on the other; as white grains
threaded on the line from Marseilles to Genoa. As this chain of villas,
hotels, casinos, and shops has sprung up so recently, the whole looks
extremely modern, and devoid of historic interest. That it is not so, I
hope to show. This modern fringe is but a fringe on an ancient garment;
but a superficial sprinkling over beds of remote antiquity rich in
story.
Sometimes it is but a glimpse we get—as at Antibes, where a monument
was dug up dedicated to the manes of a little “boy from the North, aged
twelve years, who danced and pleased” in the theatre. The name of the
poor lad is not given; but what a picture does it present! Possibly,
of a British child-slave sent to caper, with sore heart, before the
Roman nobles and ladies—and who pined and died. But often we have more
than a hint. The altar piece of the Burning Bush at Aix gives up an
authentic portrait of easy-going King Réné, the luckless wearer of many
crowns, and the possessor of not a single kingdom—Réné, the father of
the still more luckless Margaret, wife of our Henry VI.
Among the Montagnes des Maures, on a height are the cisterns and
foundations of the stronghold of the Saracens, their last stronghold on
this side of the Pyrenees, whence they swept the country, burning and
slaying, till dislodged in 972 by William, Count of Provence. Again,
the house at Draguignan of Queen Joanna, recalls her tragic story;
the wife of four husbands, the murderess of the first, she for whose
delectation Boccaccio collected his merry, immoral tales; she, who
sold Avignon to the Popes, and so brought about their migration from
Rome, the Babylonish captivity of near a hundred years; she—strangled
finally whilst at her prayers.
The Estérel, now clothed in forest, reminds us of how Charles V.
advancing through Provence to claim it as his own, hampered by peasants
in this group of mountains, set the forests on fire, and for weeks
converted the district into one great sea of flame around the blood-red
rocks.
Marseilles recalls the horrors of the Revolution, and the roar of that
song, smelling of blood, to which it gave its name. At Toulon, Napoleon
first drew attention to his military abilities; at S. Raphael he landed
on his return from Egypt, on his way to Paris, to the 18th Brumaire, to
the Consulate, to the Empire; and here also he embarked for Elba after
the battle of Leipzig.
But leaving history, let us look at what Nature affords of interest.
Geologically that coast is a great picture book of successions
of deposits and of convulsions. There are to be found recent
conglomerates, chalk, limestone, porphyry, new red sandstone, mica
schist, granite. The Estérel porphyry is red as if on fire, seen in
the evening sun. The mica schist of the Montagnes des Maures strews
about its dust, so shining, so golden, that in 1792 a representative
of the Department went up to Paris with a handful, to exhibit to the
Convention as a token of the ineptitude of the Administration of Var,
that trampled under foot treasures sufficient to defray the cost of a
war against all the kings of the earth.
The masses of limestone are cleft with _clus_, gorges through which the
rivers thunder, and _foux_ springs of living water bursting out of the
bowels of the mountains.
[Illustration: THE GORGE OF THE LOUP]
Consider what the variety of geologic formation implies: an almost
infinite variety of plants; moreover, owing to the difference of
altitudes, the flora reaches in a chromatic scale from the fringe
of the Alpine snows to the burning sands by the seas. In one little
commune, it is estimated that there are more varieties to be found than
in the whole of Ireland.
But the visitor to the seaboard—the French Côte d’azur and the Italian
Riviera—returns home after a winter sojourn there with his mind stored
with pictures of palms, lemons, oranges, agaves, aloes, umbrella pines,
eucalyptus, mimosa, carob-trees, and olives. This is the vegetation
that characterises the Riviera, that distinguishes it from vegetation
elsewhere; but, although these trees and shrubs abound, and do form a
dominant feature in the scenery, yet every one of them is a foreign
importation, and the indigenous plants must be sought in mountain
districts, away from towns, and high-roads, and railways.
These strangers from Africa, Asia, Australia and South America have
occupied the best land and the warmest corners, just as of old the
Greek and Roman colonists shouldered out the native tribes, and forced
them to withdraw amidst the mountains.
The traveller approaching the Riviera by the line from Lyons, after
passing Valence, enters a valley that narrows, through which rolls the
turbid flood of the Rhone. Presently the sides become steeper, higher,
more rocky, and draw closer; on the right appears Viviers, dominated
by its cathedral and tower, square below, octagonal above, and here
the Rhone becomes more rapid as it enters the _Robinet de Donzère_,
between calcareous rocks full of caves and rifts. Then, all at once,
the line passes out of the rocky portal, and the traveller enters on
another scene altogether, the vast triangular plain limited by the Alps
on one side and the Cevennes on the other, and has the Mediterranean
as its base. To this point at one time extended a mighty gulf, seventy
miles from the present coast-line at the mouth of the Rhone. Against
the friable limestone cliffs, the waves lapped and leaped. But at some
unknown time a cataclysm occurred. The Alps were shaken, as we shake a
tree to bring down its fruit, and the Rhone and the Durance, swollen
to an enormous volume, rolled down masses of débris into this gulf and
choked it. The Durance formed its own little _crau_ along the north
of the chain of the Alpines, and the Rhone the far larger _crau_ of
Arles, the pebbles of which all come from the Alps, in which the river
takes it rise. But, in fact, the present _craus_ represent but a small
portion of the vast mass of rubbish brought down. They are just that
part which in historic times was not overlaid with soil.
[Illustration: PALMS, CANNES]
When this period was passed, the rivers relaxed their force, and
repented of the waste they had made, and proceeded to chew into mud
the pebbles they rolled along, and, rambling over the level stretches
of rubble, to deposit upon it a fertilising epidermis. Then, in modern
times, the engineers came and banked in the Rhone, to restrain its
vagaries, so that now it pours its precious mud into the sea, and
yearly projects its ugly muzzle further forwards. When we passed the
rocky portal, we passed also from the climate of the North into that
of the South, but not to that climate without hesitations. For the sun
beating on the level land heats the pebble bed, so that the air above
it quivers as over a lime-kiln, and, rising, is replaced by a rush of
icy winds from the Alps. This downrush is the dreaded Mistral. It was a
saying of old:—
“Parlement, Mistral, et Durance
Sont les trois fléaux de Provence.”
The Parliament is gone, but the Mistral still rages, and the Durance
still overflows and devastates.
The plain, where cultivated, is lined and cross-lined as with Indian
ink. These lines, and cross-lines, are formed of cypress, veritable
walls of defence, thrown up against the wind. When the Mistral rages,
they bow as whips, and the water of the lagoons is licked up and spat
at the walls of the sparsely scattered villages. Here and there rises
the olive, like smoke from a lowly cottage. It shrinks from the bite of
the frost and the lash of the wind, and attains its proper height and
vigour only as we near the sea; and is in the utmost luxuriance between
Solliès Pont and Le Luc, growing on the rich new red sandstone, that
skirts the Montagnes des Maures.
Presently we come on the lemon, the orange, glowing golden, oleanders
in every gully, aloes (“God’s candelabra”), figs, mulberries, pines
with outspread heads, like extended umbrellas, as the cypress
represents one folded; cork trees, palms with tufted heads; all seen
through an atmosphere of marvellous clearness, over-arched by a sky as
blue as that of Italy, and with—as horizon—the deeper, the indigo
blue, of the sea.
On leaving Arles, the train takes the bit between its teeth and races
over the _crau_, straight as an arrow, between lines of cypresses. It
is just possible to catch glimpses to the north, between the cypresses,
of a chain of hills of opalescent hue. That chain, Les Alpines, gives
its direction to the Durance. This river lent its aid to Brother Rhone
to form this rubble plain, the _Campus lapideus_ of the Romans, the
modern _crau_. This was a desert over which the mirage alternated with
the Mistral, till Adam de Craponne, in the sixteenth century, brought a
canal from the Durance to water the stony land, and since then, little
by little, the desert is being reclaimed. This vast stony plain was a
puzzle to the ancients, and Æschylus, who flourished B.C. 472, tells
us that Heracles, arriving at this plain to fight the Ligurians, and
being without weapons, Heaven came to his aid and poured down great
stones out of the sky against his foes. This is much like the account
in Joshua of the battle against the Kings in the plain of Esdraelon.
At length, at Miramas, we escape from between the espalier cypresses
and see that the distant chain has drawn nearer, that it has lost its
mother-of-pearl tints, and has assumed a ghastly whiteness. Then we
dash among these cretaceous rocks, desolate, forbidding and dead. They
will attend us from Marseilles to Toulon.
The cretaceous sea bed, that once occupied so vast an area, has
been lifted into downs and mountains, and stretched from Dorset and
Wiltshire to Dover. We catch a glimpse of it at Amiens. A nodule
that has defied erosion sustains the town and cathedral of Laon.
It underlies the Champagne country. It asserts itself sullenly and
resolutely in Provence, where it overlies the Jura limestone, and is
almost indistinguishable from it at the junction, for it has the same
inclination, the same fossils, and the same mineralogical constituents.
In England we are accustomed to the soft skin of thymy turf that covers
the chalk on our downs. Of this there is none in Provence. The fierce
sun forbids it. Consequently the rock is naked and cadaverously white,
but scantily sprinkled over with stunted pines.
The Jura limestone is the great _pièce de resistance_ in Provence:
it is sweeter in colour than the chalk, ranging from cream white to
buff and salmon; it has not the dead pallor of the chalk. Any one who
has gone down the Cañon of the Tarn knows what exquisite gradations
and harmonies of tone are to be found in Jura limestone. Here this
formation stands up as a wall to the North, a mighty screen, sheltering
the Riviera from the boreal winds. It rises precipitously to a plateau
that is bald and desolate, but which is rent by ravines of great
majesty and beauty, through which rush the waters from the snowy Alps.
The chalk and the limestone are fissured, and allow the water flowing
over their surface to filter down and issue forth in the valleys,
rendering these fertile and green, whereas the plateaux are bare. The
plateaux rise to the height of 3,000 or 4,500 feet.
The tract between the mountain wall of limestone and the sea is made
up of a molass of rolled fragments of the rock in a paste of mud. This
forms hills of considerable height, and this also is sawn through here
and there by rills, or washed out by rivers.
Altogether different in character is the mass of the Montagnes des
Maures, which is an uplifted body of granite and schist.
Altogether different again is the Estérel, a protruded region of red
porphyry.
About these protruded masses may be seen the new red sandstone.
When we have mastered this—and it is simple enough to remember—we
know the character of the geology from the mouths of the Rhone to
Albenga.
“The colouring of Provence,” says Mr. Hammerton, “is pretty in spring,
when the fields are still green and the mulberry trees are in leaf,
and the dark cypress and grey olive are only graver notes in the
brightness, while the desolation of the stony hills is prevented from
becoming oppressive by the freshness of the foreground; but when the
hot sun and the dry wind have scorched every remnant of verdure, when
any grass that remains is merely ungathered hay, and you have nothing
but flying dust and blinding light, then the great truth is borne in
upon you that it is Rain which is the true colour magician, though he
may veil himself in a vesture of grey cloud.”
In winter and early spring it is that the coast is enjoyable. In
winter there is the evergreen of the palms, the olive, the ilex, the
cork tree, the carob, the orange and lemon and myrtle. Indeed, in the
Montagnes des Maures and in the Estérel, it is always spring.
The resident in winter can hardly understand the structure of the
towns, with streets at widest nine feet, and the houses running up
to five and six storeys; but this is due to necessity. The object is
double: by making the streets so narrow, the sun is excluded, and the
sun in Provence is not sought as with us in England; and secondly,
these narrow thoroughfares induce a draught down them. In almost
every town the contrast between the new and the old is most marked,
for the occupants of the new town reside there for the winter only,
and therefore court the sun; whereas the inhabitants of the old town
dwell in it all the year round, and consequently endeavour to obtain
all protection possible from the sun. But this shyness of basking in
the sun was not the sole reason why the streets were made so narrow.
The old towns and even villages were crowded within walls; a girdle of
bulwark surrounded them, they had no space for expansion except upwards.
What Mr. Hammerton says of French towns applies especially to those of
Provence:—
“France has an immense advantage over England in the better harmony
between her cities and towns, and the country where they are placed.
In England it rarely happens that a town adds to the beauty of a
landscape; in France it often does so. In England there are many towns
that are quite absolutely and hideously destructive of landscape
beauty; in France there are very few. The consequence is that in
France a lover of landscape does not feel that dislike to human
interference which he so easily acquires in England, and which in some
of our best writers, who feel most intensely and acutely, has become
positive hatred and exasperation.”
It was fear of the Moors and the pirates of the Mediterranean which
drove the inhabitants of the sea-coast to build their towns on the
rocks, high uplifted, walled about and dominated by towers.
I will now give a hasty sketch of the early history of Provence—so far
as goes to explain the nature of its population.
The earliest occupants of the seaboard named in history are the
Ligurians. The Gulf of Lyons takes its name from them, in a contracted
form. Who these Ligurians were, to what stock they belonged, is not
known; but as there are megalithic monuments in the country, covered
avenues at Castelet, near Arles, dolmens at Draguignan and Saint
Vallier, a menhir at Cabasse, we may perhaps conclude with some
probability that they were a branch of that great Ivernian race which
has covered all Western Europe with these mysterious remains. At an
early period, the Phœnicians established trading depôts at Marseilles,
Nice, and elsewhere along the coast. Monaco was dedicated to their god,
Melkarth, whose equivalent was the Greek Heracles, the Roman Hercules.
The story of Heracles fighting the gigantic Ligurians on the _crau_,
assisted by Zeus pouring down a hail of pebbles from heaven, is merely
a fabulous rendering of the historic fact that the Phœnician settlers
had to fight the Ligurians, represented as giants, not because they
were of monstrous size, but because of their huge stone monuments.
The Phœnicians drew a belt of colonies and trading stations along the
Mediterranean, and were masters of the commerce. The tin of Britain,
the amber of the Baltic, passed through their hands, and their great
emporium was Marseilles. It was they who constructed the Heraclean
Road, afterwards restored and regulated by the Romans, that connected
all their settlements from the Italian frontier to the Straits of
Gibraltar. They have left traces of their sojourn in place names; in
their time, Saint Gilles, then Heraclea, was a port at the mouth of the
Rhone; now it is thirty miles inland. Herculea Caccabaria, now Saint
Tropez, recalls Kaccabe, the earliest name of Carthage. One of the
islets outside the harbour of Marseilles bore the name of Phœnice.
This energetic people conveyed the ivory of Africa to Europe, worked
the lead mines of the Eastern Pyrenees, and sent the coral and purple
of the Mediterranean and the bronze of the Po basin over Northern
Europe. The prosperity of Tyre depended on its trade.
“Inventors of alphabetical writing, of calculation, and of astronomy,
essential to them in their distant navigations, skilful architects,
gold-workers, jewellers, engravers, weavers, dyers, miners, founders,
glass-workers, coiners, past-masters of all industries, wonderful
sailors, intrepid tradesmen, the Phœnicians, by their incomparable
activity, held the old world in their grip; and from the Persian Gulf
to the Isles of Britain, either by their caravans or by their ships,
were everywhere present as buyers or sellers.”[1]
Archæological discoveries come to substantiate the conclusions
arrived at from scanty allusions by the ancients. The Carthaginians
had succeeded to the trade of Tyre; but Carthage was a daughter of
Tyre. At Marseilles have been found forty-seven little stone chapels
or shrines of Melkarth, seated under an arch, either with his hands
raised, sustaining the arch, or with them resting on his knees; and
these are identical in character with others found at Tyre, Sidon, and
Carthage. Nor is this all. An inscription has been unearthed, also at
Marseilles, containing a veritable Levitical code for the worship of
Baal, regulating the emoluments of his priests.
In the year B.C. 542 a fleet of Phocœans came from Asia Minor, flying
from the Medes; and the citizens of Phocœa, abandoning their ancient
homes, settled along the coast of the Riviera. Arles, Marseilles,
Nice—all the towns became Greek. It was they who introduced into the
land of their adoption the vine and the olive. They acquired the trade
of the Mediterranean after the fall of Carthage, B.C. 146.
The Greeks of the coast kept on good terms with Rome. They it was who
warned Rome of the approach of Hannibal; and when the Ambrons and
Teutons poured down a mighty host with purpose to devastate Italy, the
Phocœan city of Marseilles furnished Marius with a contingent, and
provisioned his camp at the junction of the Durance with the Rhone.
The Romans were desirous of maintaining good relations with the Greek
colonies, and when the native Ligurians menaced Nice and Antibes, they
sent an army to their aid, and having defeated the barbarians, gave up
the conquered territory to the Greeks.
In B.C. 125, Lucius Sextius Calvinus attacked the native tribes in
their fastness, defeated them, and founded the town of Aquæ Sextiæ,
about the hot springs that rise there—now Aix. The Ligurians were
driven to the mountains and not suffered to approach the sea coast,
which was handed over entirely to the Greeks of Marseilles.
So highly stood the credit of Marseilles, that when, after the
conclusion of the Asiatic War, the Senate of Rome had decreed the
destruction of Phocœa, they listened to a deputation from Marseilles,
pleading for the mother city, and revoked the sentence. Meanwhile, the
Gauls had been pressing south, and the unfortunate Ligurians, limited
to the stony plateaux and the slopes of the Alps, were nipped between
them and the Greeks and Romans along the coast. They made terms with
the Gauls and formed a Celto-Ligurian league. They were defeated, and
the Senate of Rome decreed the annexation of all the territory from the
Rhone to the Alps, to constitute thereof a province. Thenceforth the
cities and slopes of the coast became places of residence for wealthy
Romans, who had there villas and gardens. The towns were supplied
with amphitheatres and baths. Theatres they possessed before, under
the Greeks; but the brutal pleasures of the slaughter of men was an
introduction by the Romans. The remains of these structures at Nîmes,
Arles, Fréjus, Cimiez, testify to the crowds that must have delighted
in these horrible spectacles. That of Nîmes would contain from 17,000
to 23,000 spectators; that of Arles 25,000; that of Fréjus an equal
number.
Wherever the Roman empire extended, there may be seen the same huge
structures, almost invariable in plan, and all devoted to pleasure and
luxury. The forum, the temples, sink into insignificance beside the
amphitheatre, the baths, and the circus. Citizens of the empire lived
for their ease and amusements, and concerned themselves little about
public business. In the old days of the Republic, the interests, the
contests, of the people were forensic. The forum was their place of
assembly. But with the empire all was changed. Public transaction of
business ceased, the despotic Cæsar provided for, directed, governed
all, Roman citizens and subject peoples alike. They were left with
nothing to occupy them, and they rushed to orgies of blood. Thus these
vast erections tell us, more than the words of any historian, how great
was the depravity of the Roman character.
But with the fifth century this condition of affairs came to an end.
The last time that the circus of Arles was used for races was in 462.
The theatre there was wrecked by a deacon called Cyril in 446. At the
head of a mob he burst into it, and smashed the loveliest statues of
the Greek chisel, and mutilated every article of decoration therein.
The stage was garnished with elegant colonnets; all were thrown down
and broken, except a few that were carried off to decorate churches.
All the marble casing was ripped away, the bas-reliefs were broken
up, and the fragments heaped in the pit. There was some excuse for
this iconoclasm. The stage had become licentious to the last degree,
and there was no drawing the people from the spectacles. “If,” says
Salvian, “as often happens, the public games coincide with a festival
of the Church, where will the crowd be? In the house of God, or in the
amphitheatre?”
During that fifth century the Visigoths and the Burgundians threatened
Provence. When these entered Gaul they were the most humanised of the
barbarians; they had acquired some aptitude for order, some love of
the discipline of civil life. They did not devastate the cities, they
suffered them to retain their old laws, their religion, and their
customs. With the sixth century the domination of the Visigoths was
transferred beyond the Pyrenees, and the Burgundians had ceased to be
an independent nation; the Franks remained masters over almost the
whole of Gaul.
In 711 the Saracens, or Moors, crossed over at Gibraltar and invaded
Spain. They possessed themselves as well of Sicily, Sardinia, and the
Balearic Isles. Not content with this, they cast covetous eyes on Gaul.
They poured through the defiles of the Pyrenees and spread over the
rich plains of Aquitaine and of Narbonne. Into this latter city the
Calif Omar II. broke in 720, massacred every male, and reduced the
women to slavery. Béziers, Saint Gilles, Arles, were devastated; Nîmes
opened to them her gates. The horde mounted the valley of the Rhone
and penetrated to the heart of France. Autun was taken and burnt in
725. All Provence to the Alps was theirs. Then in 732 came the most
terrible of their invasions. More than 500,000 men, according to the
chroniclers, led by Abdel-Raman, crossed the Pyrenees, took the road to
Bordeaux, which they destroyed, and ascended the coast till they were
met and annihilated by Charles Martel on the field of Poitiers.
From this moment the struggle changed its character. The Christians
assumed the offensive. Charles Martel pursued the retreating host, and
took from them the port of Maguelonne; and when a crowd of refugees
sought shelter in the amphitheatre of Arles, he set fire to it and
hurled them back into the flames as they attempted to escape. Their
last stronghold was Narbonne, where they held out for seven years, and
then in 759 that also fell, and the Moorish power for evil in France
was at an end; but all the south, from the Alps to the ocean, was
strewn with ruins.
They were not, however, wholly discouraged. Not again, indeed, did
they venture across the Pyrenees in a great host; but they harassed
the towns on the coast, and intercepted the trade. When the empire of
Charlemagne was dismembered, Provence was separated from France and
constituted a kingdom, under the administration of one Boso, who was
crowned at Arles in 879. This was the point of departure of successive
changes, which shall be touched on in the sequel. The German kings
and emperors laid claim to Provence as a vassal state, and it was not
till 1481 that it was annexed to the Crown of France. Avignon and the
Venaissin were not united to France till 1791.
In no part of Europe probably did pagan customs linger on with such
persistence as in this favoured land of Provence, among a people of
mixed blood—Ligurian, Phœnician, Greek, Roman, Saracen. Each current
of uniting blood brought with it some superstition, some vicious
propensity, or some strain of fancy. In the very first mention we
have of the Greek settlers, allusion is made to the Floral Games. The
Battle of Flowers, that draws so many visitors to Nice, Mentone, and
Cannes, is a direct descendant from them; but it has acquired a decent
character comparatively recently.
At Arles, the Feast of Pentecost was celebrated throughout the Middle
Ages by games ending with races of girls, stark naked, and the city
magistrates presided over them, and distributed the prizes, which were
defrayed out of the town chest. It was not till the sixteenth century,
owing to the remonstrances of a Capuchin friar, that the exhibition was
discontinued. Precisely the same took place at Beaucaire. At Grasse,
every Thursday in Lent saw the performance in the public _place_ of
dances and obscene games, and these were not abolished till 1706 by
the energy of the bishop, who threatened to excommunicate every person
convicted of taking part in the disgusting exhibition of “Les Jouvines.”
A native of Tours visited Provence in the seventeenth century, and
was so scandalised at what he saw there, that he wrote, in 1645, a
letter of remonstrance to his friend Gassendi. Here is what he says
of the manner in which the festival of S. Lazarus was celebrated at
Marseilles:—
“The town celebrates this feast by dances that have the appearance
of theatrical representations, through the multitude and variety of
the figures performed. All the inhabitants assemble, men and women
alike, wear grotesque masks, and go through extravagant capers. One
would think they were satyrs fooling with nymphs. They hold hands,
and race through the town, preceded by flutes and violins. They form
an unbroken chain, which winds and wriggles in and out among the
streets, and this they call _le Grand Branle_. But why this should be
done in honour of S. Lazarus is a mystery to me, as indeed are a host
of other extravagances of which Provence is full, and to which the
people are so attached, that if any one refuses to take part in them,
they will devastate his crops and his belongings.”
The carnival and micarême have taken the place of this exhibition; and
no one who has seen the revelries at these by night can say that this
sort of fooling is nearing its end. Now these exhibitions have become
a source of profit to the towns, as drawing foreigners to them, and
enormous sums are lavished by the municipalities upon them annually.
The people of the place enter into them with as much zest as in the
centuries that have gone by.
Dancing in churches and churchyards lasted throughout the Middle Ages.
The clergy in vain attempted to put it down, and, unable to effect
this, preceded these choric performances by a sermon, to deter the
people from falling into excesses of extravagance and vice. At Limoges,
not indeed in Provence, the congregation was wont to intervene in the
celebration of the feast of their apostle, S. Martial, by breaking out
into song in the psalms, “Saint Martial pray for us, and we will dance
for you!” Whereupon they joined hands and spun round in the church.[2]
This leads to the mention of what is of no small interest in the
history of the origin of part-singing. Anyone familiar with vespers,
as performed in French churches, is aware that psalms and canticles
are sung in one or other fashion: either alternate verses alone are
chanted, and the gap is filled in by the organ going through astounding
musical frolics; or else one verse is chanted in plain-song, and the
next in _fauxbourdon_—that is to say, the tenor holds on to the
plain-song, whilst treble and alto gambol at a higher strain a melody
different, but harmonious with the plain-song. In Provence at high mass
the Gloria and Credo are divided into paragraphs, and in like manner
are sung alternately in plain-song and _fauxbourdon_. The origin of
this part-singing is very curious. The congregation, loving to hear
their own voices, and not particularly interested in, or knowing the
Latin words, broke out into folk-song at intervals, in the same “mode”
as that of the tone sung by the clergy. They chirped out some love
ballad or dance tune, whilst the officiants in the choir droned the
Latin of the liturgy. Even so late as 1645, the Provençals at Christmas
were wont to sing in the _Magnificat_ a vulgar song—
“Que ne vous requinquez-vous, Vielle,
Que ne vous requinquez, donc?”
which may be rendered—
“Why do you trick yourself out, old woman?
O why do you trick yourself so?”
In order to stop this sort of thing the clergy had recourse to
“farcing” the canticles, _i.e._ translating each verse into the
vernacular, and interlarding the Latin with the translation, in hopes
that the people, if sing they would, would adopt these words; but the
farced canticles were not to the popular taste, and they continued to
roar out lustily their folk-songs, often indelicate, always unsuitable.
This came to such a pass that either the organ was introduced to
bellow the people down, or else the system was accepted and regulated;
and to this is due the _fauxbourdon_. But in Italy and in the South of
France it passed for a while beyond regulation. The musicians accepted
it, and actually composed masses, in which the tenor alone sang the
sacred words and the other parts performed folk-songs.
As Mr. Addington Symonds says:—
“The singers were allowed innumerable licences. Whilst the tenor
sustained the Gregorian melody, the other voices indulged in
extempore descant, regardless of the style of the main composition,
violating time, and setting even the fundamental tone at defiance.
The composers, to advance another step in the analysis of this
strange medley, took particular delight in combining different
sets of words, melodies of widely diverse character, antagonistic
rhythms, and divergent systems of accentuation, in a single piece.
They assigned these several ingredients to several parts, and for the
further exhibition of their perverse skill, went even to the length
of coupling themes in the major and the minor. The most obvious
result of such practice was that it became impossible to understand
what was being sung, and that instead of concord and order in the
choir, a confused discord and anarchy of dinning sounds prevailed.
What made the matter, from an ecclesiastical point of view, still
worse, was that these scholastically artificial compositions were
frequently based on trivial and vulgar tunes, suggesting the tavern,
the dancing-room, or even worse places, to worshippers assembled
for the celebration of a Sacrament. Masses bore titles adopted from
the popular airs on which they were founded; such, for example, as
_Adieu, mes amours_, _À l’ombre d’un buissonnet_, _Baise moi_, _Le
vilain jaloux_. Even the words of love ditties and obscene ballads
were being squalled out by the tenor (treble?) while the bass
(tenor?) gave utterance to an _Agnus Dei_ or a _Benedictus_, and the
soprano (alto?) was engaged upon the verses of a Latin hymn. Baini,
who examined hundreds of the masses and motetts in MS., says that the
words imported into them from vulgar sources ‘make one’s flesh creep,
and one’s hair stand on end.’ He does not venture to do more than
indicate a few of the more decent of these interloping verses. As an
augmentation of this indecency, numbers from a mass which started with
the grave rhythm of a Gregorian tone were brought to their conclusion
on the dance measure of a popular _ballata_, so that _Incarnatus est_
or _Kyrie eleison_ went jigging off into suggestions of Masetto and
Zerlina at a village ball.”[3]
The musicians who composed these masses simply accepted what was
customary, and all they did was to endeavour to reduce the hideous
discords to harmony. But it was this superposing of folk-songs on
Gregorian tones that gave the start to polyphonic singing. The state
of confusion into which ecclesiastical music had fallen by this means
rendered it necessary that a reformation should be undertaken, and
the Council of Trent (Sept. 17, 1562) enjoined on the Ordinaries to
“exclude from churches all such music as, whether through the organ or
the singing, introduces anything impure or lascivious, in order that
the house of God may truly be seen to answer to its name, A House of
Prayer.” Indeed, all concerted and part music was like to have been
wholly banished from the service of the church, had not Palestrina
saved it by the composition of the “Mass of Pope Marcellus.”
A visitor to Provence will look almost in vain for churches in the
Gothic style. A good many were built after Lombard models. There
remained too many relics of Roman structures for the Provençals to
take kindly to the pointed arch. The sun had not to be invited to pour
into the naves, but was excluded as much as might be, consequently the
richly traceried windows of northern France find no place here. The
only purely Gothic church of any size is that of S. Maximin in Var.
That having been a conventual church, imported its architects from the
north.
One curious and indeed unique feature is found in the Provençal
cathedral churches: the choir for the bishop and chapter is at the west
end, in the gallery, over the narthex or porch. This was so at Grasse;
it remains intact at Vence.