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(etext transcriber’s note) RAMBLES ON THE RIVIERA
_WORKS OF_
_FRANCIS MILTOUN_
_The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, profusely
illustrated. $2.50_
_Rambles on the Riviera_
_Rambles in Normandy_
_Rambles in Brittany_
_The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_
_The Cathedrals of Northern France_
_The Cathedrals of Southern France_
_The Cathedrals of Italy_ (_In preparation_)
_The following, 1 vol., square octavo, cloth, gilt top, profusely
illustrated. $3.00_
_Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country_
_L. C. PAGE & COMPANY_
_New England Building, Boston, Mass._
[Illustration]
Rambles
on the
RIVIERA
BEING SOME ACCOUNT OF JOURNEYS MADE _en automobile_
AND THINGS SEEN IN THE FAIR LAND OF PROVENCE
BY FRANCIS MILTOUN
Author of “Rambles in Normandy,” “Rambles in Brittany,”
“Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine,” etc.
_With Many Illustrations_
_Reproduced from paintings made on the spot_
BY BLANCHE MCMANUS
[Illustration: colophon]
BOSTON
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
1906
_Copyright, 1906_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
First Impression, July, 1906
_COLONIAL PRESS_
_Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, U. S. A._
APOLOGIA
This book makes no pretence at being a work of historical or
archæological importance; nor yet is it a conventional book of travel or
a glorified guide-book. It is merely a record of things seen and heard,
with some personal observations on the picturesque, romantic, and
topographical aspects of one of the most varied and beautiful
touring-grounds in all the world, and is the result of many pleasant
wanderings of the author and artist, chiefly by highway and byway, in
and out of the beaten track, in preference to travel by rail.
The French Riviera proper is that region bordering upon the
Mediterranean west of the Italian frontier and east of Toulon. Nowadays,
however, many a traveller adds to the delights of a Mediterranean winter
by breaking his journey at one or all of those cities of celebrated art,
Nîmes, Arles, and Avignon; or, if he does not, he most assuredly should
do so, and know something of the glories of the past civilization of the
region which has a far more æsthetic reason for being than the florid
Casino of Monte Carlo or the latest palatial hotel along the coast.
For this reason, and because the main gateway from the north leads
directly past their doors, that wonderful group of Provençal cities and
towns, beginning with Arles and ending with Aix-en-Provence, have been
included in this book, although they are in no sense “resorts,” and are
not even popular “tourist points,” except with the French themselves.
Particularly are the byways of Old Provence unknown to the average
English and American traveller; the wonderful Pays d’Arles, with St.
Rémy and Les Baux; the Crau; that fascinating region around the Étang de
Berre; the coast between Marseilles and Toulon (and even Marseilles
itself); the Estaque; Les Maures; and the Estérel; and yet none of them
are far from the beaten track of Riviera travel.
Of the region of forests and mountains that forms the background of the
Riviera resorts themselves almost the same thing can be said. The
railway and the automobile have made it all very accessible, but ninety
per cent., doubtless, of the travellers who annually hie themselves in
increasing numbers to Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo, and Menton know nothing
of that wonderful mountain country lying but a few miles back from the
sea.
The town-tired traveller, for pleasure or edification, could not do
better than devote a part of the time that he usually gives to the
resorts of convention to the exploring of any one of a half-dozen of
these delightful _petits pays_: Avignon and Vaucluse, with memories of
Petrarch and his Laura; the pebbly Crau, south of Arles; and the fringe
of delightful little towns surrounding the Étang de Berre.
Any or all of these will furnish the genuine traveller with emotions and
sensations far more pleasurable than those to be had at the most blasé
resort that ever opened a golf-links or set up a roulette-wheel, which,
to many, are the chief attractions (and memories) of that strip of
Mediterranean coast-line known as the Riviera.
The scheme of this book had long been thought out, and much material
collected at odd visits, but at last it could be delayed no longer, and
the whole was threaded together by hundreds of miles of travel, _en
automobile_, through the highways and byways of the region.
The pictures were made “on the spot,” and, as living, tangible records
of things seen, have, perhaps, a quality of appealing interest that is
not possessed by the average illustration.
The result is here presented for the value it may have for the traveller
or the stay-at-home, it being always understood that no great thing was
attempted and little or nothing presented that another might not see or
learn for himself.
The reason for being, then, of this book is that it does give a little
different view-point of the attractions of Maritime Provence and the
Mediterranean Riviera from that to be hitherto gleaned in any single
volume on the subject, and as such it is to be hoped that it serves its
purpose sufficiently well to merit consideration.
F. M.
CHÂTEAUNEUF-LES-MARTIGUES, _January, 1906_.
[Illustration: _CONTENTS_]
CONTENTS
PAGE
APOLOGIA v
PART I.
CHAPTER
I. A PLEA FOR PROVENCE 3
II. THE PAYS D’ARLES 24
III. ST. RÉMY DE PROVENCE 42
IV. THE CRAU AND THE CAMARGUE 56
V. MARTIGUES: THE PROVENÇAL VENICE 70
VI. THE ÉTANG DE BERRE 87
VII. A SEASCAPE: FROM THE RHÔNE TO MARSEILLES 107
VIII. MARSEILLES--COSMOPOLIS 122
IX. A RAMBLE WITH DUMAS AND MONTE CRISTO 144
X. AIX-EN-PROVENCE AND ABOUT THERE 156
PART II.
I. MARSEILLES TO TOULON 177
II. OVER CAP SICIÉ 202
III. THE REAL RIVIERA 226
IV. HYÈRES AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD 239
V. ST. TROPEZ AND ITS “GOLFE” 254
VI. FRÉJUS AND THE CORNICHE D’OR 271
VII. LA NAPOULE AND CANNES 292
VIII. ANTIBES AND THE GOLFE JOUAN 305
IX. GRASSE AND ITS ENVIRONS 319
X. NICE AND CIMIEZ 330
XI. VILLEFRANCHE AND THE FORTIFICATIONS 348
XII. EZE AND LA TURBIE 359
XIII. OLD MONACO AND NEW MONTE CARLO 370
XIV. MENTON AND THE FRONTIER 398
APPENDICES 409
INDEX 431
[Illustration: _LIST of_ ILLUSTRATIONS]
PAGE
ON THE RIVIERA _Frontispiece_
“IT WAS SEPTEMBER, AND IT WAS PROVENCE” facing 8
A YOUNG ARLESIENNE facing 36
ABBEY OF MONTMAJOUR AND VINEYARD 39
BAKER’S TALLY-STICKS 48
ST. RÉMY facing 48
A PANETIÈRE 52
THE BULLS OF THE CAMARGUE 59
LES SAINTES MARIES facing 60
ÉGLISE DE LA MADELEINE, MARTIGUES facing 70
HOUSE OF M. ZIEM, MARTIGUES facing 74
MARTIGUES 77
LOUP 86
ISTRES facing 92
THE KILOMETRE WEST OF SALON 102
BOUCHES-DU-RHÔNE TO MARSEILLES (MAP) 108
FOS-SUR-MER 111
CHATEAUNEUF facing 112
ROADSIDE CHAPEL, ST. PIERRE 114
FLOWER MARKET, COURS ST. LOUIS 129
A CABANON facing 134
MARSEILLES IN 1640 (MAP) 141
NOTRE DAME DE LA GARDE AND THE HARBOUR OF
MARSEILLES facing 148
ENVIRONS OF MARSEILLES (MAP) 150
CHÂTEAU D’IF facing 150
LES PENNES facing 160
ROQUEVAIRE 166
CONVENT GARDEN, ST. ZACHARIE facing 170
MARSEILLES TO TOULON (MAP) 176
CASSIS facing 180
LA CIOTAT AND THE BEC DE L’AIGLE 185
ST. NAZAIRE-DU-VAR facing 198
FISHING-BOATS AT TAMARIS facing 208
IN TOULON’S OLD PORT facing 212
TOULON TO FRÉJUS (MAP) 220
IN LES MAURES facing 222
COMPARATIVE THEOMETRIC SCALE 230
THE TERRACE, MONTE CARLO facing 234
THE PENINSULA OF GIENS facing 242
RUINED CHAPEL NEAR ST. TROPEZ facing 258
FRÉJUS TO NICE (MAP) 277
ST. RAPHAËL facing 278
MAISON CLOSE, ST. RAPHAËL 280
ON THE CORNICHE D’OR facing 284
OFFSHORE FROM AGAY facing 286
ON THE GOLFE DE LA NAPOULE facing 292
CANNES AND ITS ENVIRONS (MAP) 301
JOUAN-LES-PINS 306
ANTIBES AND ITS ENVIRONS (MAP) 313
ST. HONORAT 317
FLOWER MARKET, GRASSE facing 322
GOURDON 328
NICE TO VINTIMILLE (MAP) 331
A NIÇOIS 334
NICE facing 338
OLIVE PICKERS IN THE VAR facing 344
ENVIRONS OF NICE (MAP) 345
CAP FERRAT facing 348
VILLA OF LEOPOLD, KING OF BELGIUM 356
EZE 360
AUGUSTAN TROPHY, LA TURBIE 364
A ROQUEBRUNE DOORWAY facing 368
MONTE CARLO AND MONACO (MAP) 371
THE GAME 383
OVERLOOKING MONACO AND MONTE CARLO facing 390
THE RAVINE OF SAINT DÉVOTE, MONTE CARLO, facing 396
PONT SAINT LOUIS 406
THE PROVINCES OF FRANCE (MAP) 409
THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF FRANCE (MAP) 411
ENSEMBLE CARTE DE TOURING CLUB DE FRANCE (MAP) 420
THE “TARIDE” MAPS 421
THREE RIVIERA ITINERARIES (MAPS) 423
COMPARATIVE METRIC SCALE (DIAGRAM) 427
THE LOG OF AN AUTOMOBILE 429
PART I.
OLD PROVENCE
RAMBLES ON THE RIVIERA
CHAPTER I.
A PLEA FOR PROVENCE
“_À Valence, le Midi commence!_” is a saying of the French, though this
Rhône-side city, the Julia-Valentia of Roman times, is in full view of
the snow-clad Alps. It is true, however, that as one descends the valley
of the torrential Rhône, from Lyons southward, he comes suddenly upon a
brilliancy of sunshine and warmth of atmosphere, to say nothing of many
differences in manners and customs, which are reminiscent only of the
southland itself. Indeed this is even more true of Orange, but a couple
of scores of miles below, whose awning-hung streets, and open-air
workshops are as brilliant and Italian in motive as Tuscany itself.
Here at Orange one has before him the most wonderful old Roman arch
outside of Italy, and an amphitheatre so great and stupendous in every
way, and so perfectly preserved, that he may well wonder if he has not
crossed some indefinite frontier and plunged into the midst of some
strange land he knew not of.
The history of Provence covers so great a period of time that no one as
yet has attempted to put it all into one volume, hence the lover of wide
reading, with Provence for a subject, will be able to give his hobby
full play.
The old Roman Provincia, and later the mediæval Provence, were prominent
in affairs of both Church and State, and many of the momentous incidents
which resulted in the founding and aggrandizing of the French nation had
their inception and earliest growth here. There may be some doubts as to
the exact location of the Fossés Mariennes of the Romans, but there is
not the slightest doubt that it was from Avignon that there went out
broadcast, through France and the Christian world of the fourteenth
century, an influence which first put France at the head of the
civilizing influences of Christendom.
The Avignon popes planned a vast cosmopolitan monarchy, of which France
should be the head, and Avignon the new Rome.
The Roman emperors exercised their influence throughout all this region
long before, and they left enduring monuments wherever they had a
foothold. At Orange, St. Rémy, Avignon, Arles, and Nîmes there were
monumental arches, theatres, and arenas, quite the equal of those of
Rome itself, not in splendour alone, but in respect as well to the
important functions which they performed.
The later middle ages somewhat dimmed the ancient glories of the
Romanesque school of monumental architecture--though it was by no means
pure, as the wonderfully preserved and dainty Greek structures at Nîmes
and Vienne plainly show--and the roofs of theatres and arenas fell in
and walls crumbled through the stress of time and weather.
In spite of all the decay that has set in, and which still goes on, a
short journey across Provence wonderfully recalls other days. The
traveller who visits Orange, and goes down the valley of the Rhône, by
Avignon, St. Rémy, Arles, Nîmes, Aix, and Marseilles, will be an
ill-informed person indeed if he cannot construct history for himself
anew when once he is in the midst of this multiplicity of ancient
shrines.
Day by day things are changing, and even old Provence is fast coming
under the influences of electric railroads and twentieth-century ideas
of progress which bid fair to change even the face of nature: Marseilles
is to have a direct communication with the Rhône and the markets of the
north by means of a canal cut through the mountains of the Estaque, and
a great port is to be made of the Étang de Berre (perhaps), and trees
are to be planted on the bare hills which encircle the Crau, with the
idea of reclaiming the pebbly, sandy plain.
No doubt the deforestation of the hillsides has had something to do, in
ages past, with the bareness of the lower river-bottom of the Rhône
which now separates Arles from the sea. Almost its whole course below
Arles is through a treeless, barren plain; but, certainly, there is no
reflection of its unproductiveness in the lives of the inhabitants.
There is no evidence in Arles or Nîmes, even to-day--when we know their
splendour has considerably faded--of a poverty or dulness due to the
bareness of the neighbouring country.
Irrigation will accomplish much in making a wilderness blossom like the
rose, and when the time and necessity for it really comes there is no
doubt but that the paternal French government will take matters into
its own hands and turn the Crau and the Camargue into something more
than a grazing-ground for live-stock. Even now one need not feel that
there is any “appalling cloud of decadence” hanging over old Provence as
some travellers have claimed.
The very best proof one could wish, that Provence is not a poor
impoverished land, is that the best of everything is grown right in her
own boundaries,--the olive, the vine, the apricot, the peach, and
vegetables of the finest quality. The mutton and beef of the Crau, the
Camargue, and the hillsides of the coast ranges are most excellent, and
the fish supply of the Mediterranean is varied and abundant; _loup_,
turbot, _thon_, mackerel, sardines, and even sole,--which is supposed to
be the exclusive specialty of England and Normandy,--with _langouste_
and _coquillages_ at all times. No cook will quarrel with the supply of
his market, if he lives anywhere south of Lyons; and Provence, of all
the ancient _gouvernements_ of France, is the land above all others
where all are good cooks,--a statement which is not original with the
author of this book, but which has come down since the days of the old
régime, when Provence was recognized as “_la patrie des grands maîtres
de cuisine_.”
“It was September, and it was Provence,” are the opening words of
Daudet’s “Port Tarascon.” What more significant words could be uttered
to awaken the memories of that fair land in the minds of any who had
previously threaded its highways and byways? From the days of Petrarch
writers of many schools have sung its praises, and the literature of the
subject is vast and varied, from that of the old geographers to the last
lays of Mistral, the present deity of Provençal letters.
[Illustration: “_It was September, and it was Provence_”]
The Loire divides France on a line running from the southeast to the
middle of the west coast, parting the territory into two great
divisions, which in the middle ages had a separate form of legislation,
of speech, and of literature. The language south of the Loire was known
as the _langue d’oc_ (an expression which gave its name to a province),
so called from the fact, say some etymologists and philologists, that
the expression of affirmation in the romance language of the south was
“_oc_” or “_hoc_.” Dialects were common enough throughout this region,
as elsewhere in France; but there was a certain grammatical resemblance
between them all which distinguished them from the speech of the
Bretons and Normans in the north. This southern language was principally
distinguished from northern French by the existence of many Latin roots,
which in the north had been eliminated. Foreign influences, curiously
enough, had not crept in in the south, and, like the Spanish and the
Italian speech, that of Languedoc (and Provence) was of a dulcet
mildness which in its survival to-day, in the chief Provençal districts,
is to be remarked by all.
Northward of the Loire the _langue d’œil_ was spoken, and this language
in its ultimate survival, with the interpolation of much that was
Germanic, came to be the French that is known to-day.
The Provençal tongue, even the more or less corrupt patois of to-day
which Mistral and the other Félibres are trying to purify, is not so bad
after all, nor so bizarre as one might think. It does not resemble
French much more than it does Italian, but it is astonishingly
reminiscent of many tongues, as the following quatrain familiar to us
all will show:
“Trento jour en Setèmbre,
Abrieu Jun, e Nouvèmbre,
De vint-e-une n’i’a qu’un
Lis autre n’an trento un.”
An Esperantist should find this easy.
The literary world in general has always been interested in the Félibres
of the land of “_la verte olive, la mure vermeille, la grappe de vie,
croissant ensemble sous un ciel d’azur_,” and they recognize the
“_littérature provençale_” as something far more worthy of being kept
alive than that of the Emerald Isle, which is mostly a fad of a few
pedants so dead to all progress that they even live their lives in the
past.
This is by no means the case with the Provençal school. The life of the
Félibres and their followers is one of a supreme gaiety; the life of a
veritable _pays de la cigale_, the symbol of a sentiment always
identified with Provence.
Of the original founders of the Félibres three names stand out as the
most prominent: Mistral, who had taken his honours at the bar,
Roumanille, a bookseller of Avignon, and Theodore Aubanal. For the love
of their _pays_ and its ancient tongue, which was fast falling into a
mere patois, they vowed to devote themselves to the perpetuation of it
and the reviving of its literature.
In 1859 “Mirèio,” Mistral’s masterpiece, appeared, and was everywhere
recognized as the chief literary novelty of the age. Mistral went to
Paris and received the plaudits of the literary and artistic world of
the capital. He and his works have since come to be recognized as “_le
miroir de la Provence_.”
The origin of the word “_félibre_” is most obscure. Mistral first met
with it in an ancient Provençal prayer, the “Oration of St. Anselm,”
“_emè li sét félibre de la léi_.”
Philologists have discussed the origin and evolution of the word, and
here the mystic seven of the Félibres again comes to the fore, as there
are seven explanations, all of them acceptable and plausible, although
the majority of authorities are in favour of the Greek word
_philabros_--“he who loves the beautiful.”
Of course the movement is caused by the local pride of the Provençaux,
and it can hardly be expected to arouse the enthusiasm of the Bretons,
the Normans, or the native sons of the Aube. In fact, there are certain
detractors of the work of the Félibres who profess regrets that the
French tongue should be thus polluted. The aspersion, however, has no
effect on the true Provençal, for to him his native land and its tongue
are first and foremost.
Truly more has been said and written of Provence that is of interest
than of any other land, from the days of Petrarch to those of Mistral,
in whose “Recollections,” recently published (1906), there is more of
the fact and romance of history of the old province set forth than in
many other writers combined.
Daudet was expressive when he said, in the opening lines of “Tartarin,”
“It was September, and it was Provence;” Thiers was definite when he
said, “At Valence the south commences;” and Felix Gras, and even Dumas,
were eloquent in their praises of this fair land and its people.
Then there was an unknown who sang:
“The vintage sun was shining
On the southern fields of France,”
and who struck the note strong and true; but again and again we turn to
Mistral, whose epic, “Mirèio,” indeed forms a mirror of Provence.
Madame de Sévigné was wrong when she said: “I prefer the gamesomeness of
the Bretons to the perfumed idleness of the Provençaux;” at least she
was wrong in her estimate of the Provençaux, for her interests and her
loves were ever in the north, at Château Grignan and elsewhere, in spite
of her familiarity with Provence. She has some hard things to say also
of the “mistral,” the name given to that dread north wind of the Rhône
valley, one of the three plagues of Provence; but again she exaggerates.
The “terrible mistral” is not always so terrible as it has been
pictured. It does not always blow, nor, when it does come, does it blow
for a long period, not even for the proverbial three, six, or nine days;
but it is, nevertheless, pretty general along the whole south coast of
France. It is the complete reverse of the sirocco of the African coast,
the wind which blows hot from the African desert and makes the coast
cities of Oran, Alger, and Constantine, and even Biskra, farther inland,
the delightful winter resorts which they are.
In summer the “mistral,” when it blows, makes the coast towns and cities
of the mouth of the Rhône, and even farther to the east and west, cool
and delightful even in the hottest summer months, and it always has a
great purifying and healthful influence.
Ordinarily the “mistral” is faithful to tradition, but for long months
in the winter of 1905-06 it only appeared at Marseilles, and then only
to disappear again immediately. The Provençal used to pray to be
preserved from Æolus, son of Jupiter, but this particular season the god
had forsaken all Provence. From the 31st of August to the 4th of
September it blew with all its wonted vigour, with a violence which
lifted roof-tiles and blew all before it, but until the first of the
following March it made only fitful attempts, many of which expired
before they were born.
There were occasions when it rose from its torpor and ruffled the waves
of the blue Mediterranean into the white horses of the poets, but it
immediately retired as if shorn of its former strength.
“_C’est humiliant_,” said the observer at the meteorological bureau at
Marseilles, as he shut up shop and went out for his _apéritif_.
All Provence was marvelling at the strange anomaly, and really seemed to
regret the absence of the “mistral,” though they always cursed it loudly
when it was present--all but the fisherfolk of the Étang de Berre and
the old men who sheltered themselves on the sunny side of a wall and
made the best use possible of the “_cheminée du Roi René_,” as the old
pipe-smokers call the glorious sun of the south, which never seems so
bright and never gives out so much warmth as when the “mistral” blows
its hardest.
A Martigaux or a Marseillais would rather have the “mistral” than the
damp humid winds from the east or northeast, which, curiously enough,
brought fog with them on this abnormal occasion. The café gossips
predicted that Marseilles, their beloved Marseilles with its Cannebière
and its Prado, was degenerating into a fog-bound city like London,
Paris, and Lyons. At Martigues the old sailors, those who had been
toilers on the deep sea in their earlier years, told weird tales of the
“pea-soup” fogs of London,--only they called them _purées_.
One thing, however, all were certain. The “mistral” was sure to drive
all this moisture-laden atmosphere away. In the words of the song they
chanted, “_On n’sait quand y’r’viendra._” “_Va-t-il prendre enfin?_”
“_Je ne sais pas_,” and so the fishermen of Martigues, and elsewhere on
the Mediterranean coast, pulled their boats up on the shore and huddled
around the café stoves and talked of the _mauvais temps_ which was
always with them. What was the use of combating against the elements?
The fish would not rise in what is thought elsewhere to be fishermen’s
weather. They required the “mistral” and plenty of it.
The Provence of the middle ages comprised a considerably more extensive
territory than that which made one of the thirty-three general
_gouvernements_ of the ancient régime. In fact it included all of the
south-central portion of Languedoc, with the exception of the Comtat
Venaissin (Avignon, Carpentras, etc.), and the Comté de Nice.
In Roman times it became customary to refer to the region simply as “the
province,” and so, in later times, it became known as “Provence,” though
officially and politically the Narbonnaise, which extended from the
Pyrenees to Lyons, somewhat hid its identity, the name Provence applying
particularly to that region lying between the Rhône and the Alps.
The Provence of to-day, and of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
is a wider region which includes the mouth of the Rhône, Marseilles, and
the Riviera. It was that portion of France which first led the Roman
legions northward, and, earlier even, gave a resting-place to the
venturesome Greeks and Phoceans who, above all, sought to colonize
wherever there was a possibility of building up great seaports. The
chief Phocean colony was Marseilles, or Massilia, which was founded
under the two successive immigrations of the years 600 and 542 B. C.
In 1150, when the Carlovingian empire was dismembered, there was formed
the Comté and Marquisat of Provence, with capitals at Avignon and Aix,
the small remaining portion becoming known as the Comté d’Orange.
Under the comtes Provence again flourished, and a brilliant civilization
was born in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which gave almost a new
literature and a new art to those glorious gems of the French Crown. The
school of Romanesque church-building of Provence, of which the most
entrancing examples are still to be seen at Aix, Arles, St. Gilles, and
Cavaillon, spread throughout Languedoc and Dauphiné, and gave an impetus
to a style of church-building which was the highest form of artistic
expression.
It was at this time, too, that Provençal literature took on that
expressive form which set the fashion for the court versifiers of the
day, the troubadours and the _trouvères_ of which the old French
chronicles are so full. The speech of the Provençal troubadours was so
polished and light that it lent itself readily to verses and dialogues
which, for their motives, mostly touched on love and marriage. Avignon,
Aix, and Les Baux were very “courts of love,” presided over--said a
chivalrous French writer--by ladies of renown, who elaborated a code of
gallantry and the _droits de la femme_ which were certainly in advance
of their time.
The reign of René II. of Sicily and Anjou, called “_le bon Roi René_,”
brought all this love of letters to the highest conceivable plane and
constituted an era hitherto unapproached,--as marked, indeed, and as
brilliant, as the Renaissance itself.
The troubadours and the “courts of love” have gone for ever from
Provence, and there is only the carnival celebrations of Nice and Cannes
and the other Riviera cities to take their place. These festivities are
poor enough apologies for the splendid pageants which formerly held
forth at Marseilles and Aix, where the titled dignitary of the
celebration was known as the “Prince d’Amour,” or at Aubagne, Toulon, or
St. Tropez, where he was known as the “Capitaine de Ville.”
The carnival celebrations of to-day are all right in their way, perhaps,
but their spirit is not the same. What have flower-dressed automobiles
and hare and tortoise gymkanas got to do with romance anyway?
The pages of history are full of references to the Provence of the
middle ages. Louis XI. annexed the province to the Crown in 1481, but
Aix remained the capital, and this city was given a parliament of its
own by Louis XII. The dignity was not appreciated by the inhabitants,
for the parliamentary benches were filled with the nobility, who, as was
the custom of the time, sought to oppress their inferiors. As a result
there developed a local saying that the three plagues of Provence were
its parliament; its raging river, the stony-bedded Durance; and the
“mistral,” the cold north wind that blows with severe regularity for
three, six, or nine days, throughout the Rhône valley.
Charles V. invaded Provence in 1536, and the League and the Fronde were
disturbing influences here as elsewhere.
The Comté d’Orange was annexed by France, by virtue of the treaty of
Utrecht, in 1713, and the Comtat Venaissin was acquired from the Italian
powers in 1791.
Toulon played a great part in the later history of Provence, when it
underwent its famous siege by the troops of the Convention in 1793.
Napoleon set foot in France, for his final campaign, on the shores of
the Golfe Jouan, in 1815.
History-making then slumbered for a matter of a quarter of a century.
Then, in 1848, Menton and Roquebrune revolted against the Princes of
Monaco and came into the French fold. It was as late as 1860, however,
that the Comté de Nice was annexed.
This, in brief, is a résumé of some of the chief events since the middle
ages which have made history in Provence.
It is but a step across country from the Rhône valley to Marseilles,
that great southern gateway of modern France through which flows a
ceaseless tide of travel.
Here, in the extreme south, on the shores of the great blue, tideless
Mediterranean, all one has previously met with in Provence is further
magnified, not only by the brilliant cosmopolitanism of Marseilles
itself, but by the very antiquity of its origin. East and west of
Marseilles and the Bouches-du-Rhône is a region, French to-day,--as
French as any of those old provinces of mediæval times which go to make
up the republican solidarity of modern France,--but which in former
times was as foreign to France and things French as is modern Spain or
Italy.
To the eastward, toward Italy, was the ancient independent Comté de
Nice, and, on the west, Catalonia once included the region where are
to-day the French cities of Perpignan, Elne and Agde.
Of all the delectable regions of France, none is of more diversified
interest to the dweller in northern climes than “La Provence Maritime,”
that portion which includes what the world to-day recognizes as the
Riviera. Here may be found the whole galaxy of charms which the
present-day seeker after health, edification, and pleasure demands from
the antiquarian and historical interests of old Provence and the Roman
occupation to the frivolous gaieties of Nice and Monte Carlo.
Tourists, more than ever, keep to the beaten track. In one way this is
readily enough accounted for. Well-worn roads are much more common than
of yore and they are more accessible, and travellers like to keep “in
touch,” as they call it, with such unnecessary things as up-to-date
pharmacies, newspapers, and lending libraries, which, in the avowed
tourist resorts of the French and Italian Rivieras, are as accessible as
they are on the Rue de Rivoli. There are occasional by-paths which
radiate from even these centres of modernity which lead one off beyond
the reach of steam-cars and _fils télégraphiques_; but they are mostly
unworn roads to all except peasants who drive tiny donkeys in carts and
carry bundles on their heads.
One might think that no part of modern France was at all solitary and
unknown; but one has only to recall Stevenson’s charming “Travels with a
Donkey in the Cevennes,” to realize that then there were regions which
English readers and travellers knew not of, and the same is almost true
to-day.
Provence has been the fruitful field for antiquarians and students of
languages, manners, customs, and political and church history, of all
nationalities, for many long years; but the large numbers of travellers
who annually visit the sunny promenades of Nice or Cannes never think
for a moment of spending a winter at Martigues, the Provençal Venice, or
at Nîmes, or Arles, or Avignon, where, if the “mistral” does blow
occasionally, the surroundings are quite as brilliant as on the coast
itself, the midday sun just as warm, and the sundown chill no more
frigid than it is at either Cannes or Nice.
Truly the whole Mediterranean coast, from Barcelona to Spezzia in Italy,
together with the cities and towns immediately adjacent, forms a
touring-ground more varied and interesting even than Touraine, often
thought the touring-ground _par excellence_. The Provençal Riviera
itinerary has, moreover, the advantage of being more accessible than
Italy or Spain, the Holy Land or Egypt, and, until one has known its
charms more or less intimately, he has a prospect in store which offers
more of novelty and delightfulness than he has perhaps believed possible
so near to the well-worn track of southern travel.
CHAPTER II.
THE PAYS D’ARLES
The Pays d’Arles is one of those minor sub-divisions of undefined, or at
least ill-defined, limits that are scattered all over France. Local
feeling runs high in all of them, and the Arlesien professes a great
contempt for the Martigaux or the inhabitant of the Pays de Cavaillon,
even though their territories border on one another; though indeed all
three join hands when it comes to standing up for their beloved
Provence.
There are sixty towns and villages in the Pays d’Arles, extending from
Tarascon and Beaucaire to Les Saintes Maries, St. Mitre, and Fos-sur-Mer
on the Mediterranean, and eastward to Lambesc, the _pays_ enveloping La
Crau and the Étang de Berre within its imaginary borders. Avignon and
Vaucluse are its neighbours on the north and northeast, and, taken all
in all, it is as historic and romantic a region as may be found in all
Europe.
The literary guide-posts throughout Provence are numerous and prominent,
though they cannot all be enumerated here. One may wander with Petrarch
in and around Avignon and Vaucluse; he may coast along Dante’s highway
of the sea from the Genoese seaport to Marseilles; he may tarry with
Tartarin at Tarascon; or may follow in the footsteps of Edmond Dantes
from Marseilles to Beaucaire and Bellegarde; and in any case he will
only be in a more appreciative mood for the wonderful works of Mistral
and his fellows of the Félibres.
The troubadours and the “courts of love” have gone the way of all
mediæval institutions and nothing has quite come up to take their place,
but the memory of all the literary history of the old province is so
plentifully bestrewn through the pages of modern writers of history and
romance that no spot in the known world is more prolific in reminders of
those idyllic times than this none too well known and travelled part of
old France.
If the spirit of old romance is so dead or latent in the modern
traveller by automobile or the railway that he does not care to go back
to mediæval times, he can still turn to the pages of Daudet and find
portraiture which is so characteristic of Tarascon and the country
round about to-day that it may be recognized even by the stranger,
though the inhabitant of that most interesting Rhône-side city denies
that there is the slightest resemblance.
Then there is Felix Gras’s “Rouges du Midi,” first written in the
Provençal tongue. One must not call the tongue a patois, for the
Provençal will tell you emphatically that his is a real and pure tongue,
and that it is the Breton who speaks a patois.
From the Provençal this famous tale of Felix Gras was translated into
French and speedily became a classic. It is romance, if you like, but
most truthful, if only because it proves Carlyle and his estimates of
the celebrated “Marseilles Battalion” entirely wrong. Even in the
English translation the tale loses but little of its originality and
colour, and it remains a wonderful epitome of the traits and characters
of the Provençaux.
Dumas himself, in that time-tried (but not time-worn) romance of “Monte
Cristo,” rises to heights of topographical description and portrait
delineations which he scarcely ever excelled.
Every one has read, and supposedly has at his finger-tips, the pages of
this thrilling romance, but if he is journeying through Provence, let
him read it all again, and he will find passages of a directness and
truthfulness that have often been denied this author--by critics who
have taken only an arbitrary and prejudiced view-point.
Marseilles, the scene of the early career of Dantes and the lovely
Mercédès, stands out perhaps most clearly, but there is a wonderful
chapter which deals with the Pays d’Arles, and is as good topographical
portraiture to-day as when it was written.
Here are some lines of Dumas which no traveller down the Rhône valley
should neglect to take as his guide and mentor if he “stops off”--as he
most certainly should--at Tarascon, and makes the round of Tarascon,
Beaucaire, Bellegarde, and the Pont du Gard.
“Such of my readers as may have made a pedestrian journey to the south
of France may perhaps have noticed, midway between the town of Beaucaire
and the village of Bellegarde, a small roadside inn, from the front of
which hung, creaking and flapping in the wind, a sheet of tin covered
with a rude representation of the ancient Pont du Gard.”
There is nothing which corresponds to this ancient inn sign to be seen
to-day, but any one of a dozen humble houses by the side of the canal
which runs from Beaucaire to Aigues Mortes might have been the inn in
question, kept by the unworthy Caderousse, with whom Dantes, disguised
as the abbé, had the long parley which ultimately resulted in his
getting on the track of his former defamers.
Dumas’s further descriptions were astonishingly good, as witness the
following:
“The place boasted of what, in these parts, was called a garden,
scorched beneath the ardent sun of this latitude, with its soil giving
nourishment to a few stunted olive and dingy fig trees, around which
grew a scanty supply of tomatoes, garlic, and eschalots, with a sort of
a lone sentinel in the shape of a scrubby pine.”
If this were all that there was of Provence, the picture might be
thought an unlovely one, but there is a good deal more, though often
enough one does see--just as Dumas pictured it--this sort of habitation,
all but scorched to death by the dazzling southern sun.
At the time of which Dumas wrote, the canal between Beaucaire and Aigues
Mortes had just been opened and the traffic which once went on by road
between this vast trading-place (for the annual fair of Beaucaire, like
that of Guibray in Normandy, and to some extent like that of Nijni
Novgorod, was one of the most considerable of its kind in the known
world) and the cities and towns of the southwest came to be conducted by
barge and boat, and so Caderousse’s inn had languished from a sheer lack
of patronage.
Dumas does not forget his tribute to the women of the Pays d’Arles,
either; and here again he had a wonderfully facile pen. Of Caderousse
and his wife he says:
“Like other dwellers of the southland, Caderousse was a man of sober
habits and moderate desires, but fond of external show and display and
vain to a degree. During the days of his prosperity, not a fête or a
ceremonial took place but that he and his wife were participants. On
these occasions he dressed himself in the picturesque costume worn at
such times by the dwellers in the south of France, bearing an equal
resemblance to the style worn by Catalans and Andalusians.
“His wife displayed the charming fashion prevalent among the women of
Arles, a mode of attire borrowed equally from Greece and Arabia, with a
glorious combination of chains, necklaces, and scarves.”
The women of the Pays d’Arles have the reputation of being the most
beautiful of all the many types of beautiful women in France, and they
are faithful, always, to what is known as the costume of the _pays_,
which, it must be understood, is something more than the _coiffe_ which
usually marks the distinctive dress of a _petit pays_.
It is a common error among rhapsodizing tourists who have occasionally
stopped at Arles, _en route_ to the pleasures of the Riviera, to suppose
that the original Arlesien costume is that seen to-day. As a matter of
fact it dates back only about four generations, and it was well on in
the forties of the nineteenth century when the _ruban-diadème_ and the
Phrygian _coiffe_ came to be the caprice of the day. In this form it
has, however, endured throughout all the sixty villages and towns of the
_pays_.
The _ruban-diadème_, the _coiffe_, the _corsage_, the _fichu_, the
_jupon_, and a chain bearing, usually, a Maltese cross, all combine to
set off in a marvellous manner the loveliness of these large-eyed
beauties of Provence.
Only after they have reached their thirteenth or fourteenth year do the
young girls assume the _coiffure_,--when they have commenced to see
beyond their noses, as the saying goes in French,--when, until old age
carries them off, they are always as jauntily dressed as if they were
_toujours en fête_.
There is a romantic glamour about Arles, its arena, its theatre, its
marvellously beautiful Church of St. Trophime, and much else that is
fascinating to all travelled and much-read persons; and so Arles takes
the chief place in the galaxy of old-time Provençal towns, before even
Nîmes, Avignon, and Aix-en-Provence.
Everything is in a state of decay at Arles; far more so, at least, than
at Nîmes, where the arena is much better preserved, and the “Maison
Carrée” is a gem which far exceeds any monument of Arles in its beauty
and preservation; or at Orange, where the antique theatre is superb
beyond all others, both in its proportions and in its existing state of
preservation.
The charm of Arles lies in its former renown and in the reminders,
fragmentary though some of them be, of its past glories. In short it is
a city so rich in all that goes to make up the attributes of a “_ville
de l’art célèbre_,” that it has a special importance.
Marseilles, among the cities of modern France, has usually been
considered the most ancient; but even that existed as a city but six
hundred years before the Christian era, whereas Anibert, a “_savant
Arlésien_,” has stated that the founding of Arles dates back to fifteen
hundred years before Christ, or nine hundred years before that of
Marseilles. In the lack of any convincing evidence one way or another,
one can let his sympathies drift where they will, but Arles certainly
looks its age more than does Marseilles.
It would not be practicable here to catalogue all the monumental
attractions of the Arles of a past day which still remain to remind one
of its greatness. The best that the writer can do is to advise the
traveller to take his ease at his inn, which in this case may be either
the excellent Hôtel du Nord-Pinus--which has a part of the portico of
the ancient forum built into its façade--or across the Place du Forum at
the Hôtel du Forum. From either vantage-ground one will get a good
start, and much assistance from the obliging patrons, and a day, a week,
or a month is not too much to spend in this charming old-time capital.
Among the many sights of Arles three distinct features will particularly
impress the visitor: the proximity of the Rhône, the great arena and its
neighbouring theatre, and the Cathedral of St. Trophime.
It was in the thirteenth century that Arles first came to distinction as
one of the great Latin ports. The Rhône had for ages past bathed its
walls, and what more natural than that the river should be the highway
which should bring the city into intercourse with the outside world?
Soon it became rich and powerful and bid fair to become a ship-owning
community which should rival the coast towns themselves, and its “lion
banners” flew masthead high in all the ports of the Mediterranean.
The navigation of the Rhône at this time presented many difficulties;
the estuary was always shifting, as it does still, though the question
of navigating the river has been solved, or made the easier, by the
engineering skill of the present day.
The cargoes coming by sea were transshipped into a curious sort of craft
known as an _allege_, from which they were distributed to all the towns
along the Rhône. The carrying trade remained, however, in the hands of
the Arlesiens. The great fair of Beaucaire, renowned as it was
throughout all of Europe, contributed not a little to the traffic. For
six weeks in each year it was a great market for all the goods and
stuffs of the universe, and gave such a strong impetus to trade that
the effects were felt throughout the year in all the neighbouring cities
and towns.
The Cathedral of St. Trophime, as regards its portal and cloister, may
well rank first among the architectural delights of its class. The
decorations of its portal present a complicated drama of religious
figures and symbols, at once austere and dignified and yet fantastic in
their design and arrangement. There is nothing like it in all France,
except its near-by neighbour at St. Gilles-du-Rhône, and, in the beauty
and excellence of its carving, it far excels the splendid façades of
Amiens and Reims, even though they are more extensive and more
magnificently disposed.
The main fabric of the church, and its interior, are ordinary enough,
and are in no way different from hundreds of a similar type elsewhere;
but in the cloister, to the rear, architectural excellence again rises
to a superlative height. Here, in a justly proportioned quadrangle, are
to be seen four distinct periods and styles of architectural decoration,
from the round-headed arches of the colonnade on one side, up through
the primitive Gothic on the second, the later and more florid variety on
the third, and finally the debasement in Renaissance forms and outlines
on the fourth. The effect is most interesting and curious both to the
student of architectural art and to the lover of old churches, and is
certainly unfamiliar enough in its arrangement to warrant hazarding the
opinion that it is unique among the celebrated mediæval cloisters still
existing.
Immediately behind the cathedral are the remains of the theatre and the
arena. Less well preserved than that at Orange, the theatre of the Arles
of the Romans, a mere ruined waste to-day, gives every indication of
having been one of the most important works of its kind in Gaul,
although, judging from its present admirable state of preservation, that
of Orange was the peer of its class.
To-day there are but a scattered lot of tumbled-about remains, much of
the structure having gone to build up other edifices in the town, before
the days when proper guardianship was given to such chronicles in stone.
A great _porte_ still exists, some arcades, two lone, staring
columns,--still bearing their delicately sculptured capitals,--and
numerous ranges of rising _banquettes_.
This old _théâtre romain_ must have been ornamented with a lavish
disregard for expense, for it was in the ruins here that the celebrated
Venus d’Arles was discovered in 1651, and given to Louis XIV. in 1683.
The arena is much better preserved than the theatre. It is a splendid
and colossal monument, surpassing any other of its kind outside of Rome.
Its history is very full and complete, and writers of the olden time
have recounted many odious combats and many spectacles wherein ferocious
beasts and gladiators played a part. To-day bull-fights, with something
of an approach to the splendour of the Spanish variety, furnish the
bloodthirsty of Arles with their amusement. There is this advantage in
witnessing the sport at Arles: one sees it amid a mediæval stage setting
that is lacking in Spain.
It is in this arena that troops of wild beasts, brought from all parts
of the empire, tore into pieces the poor unfortunates who were held
captive in the prisons beneath the galleries. These dungeons are shown
to-day, with much bloodthirsty recital, by the very painstaking
guardian, who, for an appropriate, though small, fee, searches out the
keys and opens the gateway to this imposing enclosure, where formerly as
many as twenty-five thousand persons assemble to witness the cruel
sacrifices.
[Illustration: _A Young Arlesienne_]
Tiberius Nero--a name which has come to be a synonym of moral
degradation--was one of the principal colonizers of Arles, and built, it
is supposed, this arena for his savage pleasures. In its perfect state
it would have been a marvel, but the barbarians partly ruined it and
turned it into a sort of fortified camp. In a more or less damaged state
it existed until 1825, when the parasitical structures which had been
built up against its walls were removed, and it was freed to light and
air for the traveller of a later day to marvel and admire.
Modern Arles has quite another story to tell; it is typical of all the
traditions of the Provence of old, and it is that city of Provence that
best presents the present-day life of southern France.
Even to-day the well-recognized type of Arlesienne ranks among the
beautiful women of the world. Possessed of a carriage that would be
remarked even on the boulevards of Paris, and of a beauty of feature
that enables her to concede nothing to her sisters of other lands, the
Arlesienne is ever a pleasing picture. As much as anything, it is the
costume and the _coiffe_ that contributes to her beauty, for the tiny
white bonnet or cap, bound with a broad black ribbon, sets off her raven
locks in a bewitching manner. Simplicity and harmony is the key-note of
it all, and the women of Arles are not made jealous or conceited by the
changing of Paris fashions.
The contrast between what is left of ancient Arles and the commercial
aspect of the modern city is everywhere to be remarked, for Arles is the
distributing-point for all the products of the Camargue and the Crau,
and the life of the cafés and hotels is to a great extent that of the
busy merchants of the town and their clients from far and near. All this
gives Arles a certain air of metropolitanism, but it does not in the
least overshadow the memories of its past.
In the open country northwest of Arles is the ancient Benedictine abbey
of Montmajour, twice destroyed and twice reërected. Finally abandoned in
the thirteenth century, it was carefully guarded by the proprietors,
until now it ranks as one of the most remarkable of the historical
monuments of its kind in all France.
It has quite as much the appearance of a fortress as of a religious
establishment, for its great fourteenth-century tower, with its
_mâchicoulis_ and _tourelles_, suggest nothing churchly, but rather an
attribute of a warlike stronghold.
The majestic church needs little in the way of rebuilding and
restoration to assume the splendour that it must have had under its
monkish proprietors of another day. Beneath is another edifice, much
like a crypt, but which expert archæologists tell one is not a crypt in
the generally accepted sense of the term. At any rate it is much better
lighted than crypts usually are, and looks not unlike an earlier
edifice, which was simply built up and another story added.
[Illustration: _Abbey of Montmajour and Vineyard_]
The remains of the cloister are worthy to be classed in the same
category as that wonderful work of St. Trophime, but whether the one
inspired the other, or they both proceeded simultaneously, neither
history nor the local antiquaries can state.
Besides the conventional buildings proper there are a primitive chapel
and a hermitage once dedicated to the uses of St. Trophime. Since these
minor structures, if they may be so called, date from the sixth century,
they may be considered as among the oldest existing religious monuments
in France. The “_Commission des Monuments Historiques_” guards the
remains of this opulent abbey and its dependencies of a former day with
jealous care, and if any restorations are undertaken they are sure to be
carried out with taste and skill.
Near Montmajour is another religious edifice of more than passing
remark, the Chapelle Ste. Croix. Its foundation has been attributed to
Charlemagne, and again to Charles Martel, who gave to it the name which
it still bears in commemoration of his victory over the Saracens. It is
a simple but very beautiful structure, in the form of a Greek cross, and
admirably vaulted and groined. There are innumerable sepulchres
scattered about and many broken and separated funeral monuments, which
show the prominence of this little commemorative chapel among those of
its class.
Every seven years, that is to say whenever the 3d of May falls on a
Friday (the anniversary of the victory of Charles Martel), the chapel
becomes a place of pious pilgrimages for great numbers of the thankful
and devout from all parts of France.
CHAPTER III.
ST. RÉMY DE PROVENCE
St. Rémy de Provence is delightful and indescribable in its quiet charm.
It’s not so very quiet either--at times--and its great Fête de St. Rémy
in October is anything but quiet. On almost any summer Sunday, too, its
cafés and terraces, and the numerous tree-bordered squares and places,
and its Cours--the inevitable adjunct of all Provençal towns--are as gay
with the life of the town and the country round about as any local
metropolis in France.
The local merchants call St. Rémy “_toujours un pays mort_,” but in
spite of this they all eke out considerably more than what a
full-blooded Burgundian would call a good living. As a matter of fact
the population of St. Rémy live on something approaching the abundance
of good things of the Côte d’Or itself. There is perhaps nothing
remarkable about this, in the midst of a mild and pleasant land like
Provence; but it seems wise to state it here, for we know of an
Englishman who stayed three days at St. Rémy’s most excellent Grand
Hôtel de Provence and complained because he did not get beefsteaks or
ham and eggs for a single meal! He got carp from Vaucluse, _langouste_
from St. Louis-de-Rhône, the finest sort of lamb (but not plain boiled,
with cauliflower as a side dish), chickens of the real spring variety,
or a brace of little wild birds which look like sparrows and taste like
quail, but which are neither--with, as like as not, a bottle of
Châteauneuf des Papes, grapes, figs, olives, and goat’s milk cheese.
Either this, or a variation of it, was his daily menu for breakfast or
dinner, and still he pined for beefsteaks! Had our traveller been an
American he would perhaps have cried aloud for boiled codfish or pumpkin
pie!
The hotel of St. Rémy is to be highly commended in spite of all this,
though the writer has only partaken of an occasional meal there. He got
nearer the soil, living the greater part of one long bright autumn in
the household of an estimable tradesman,--a baker by trade, though
considering that he made a great accomplishment of it, it may well be
reckoned a profession.
Up at three in the morning, he, with the assistance of a small
boy,--some day destined to be his successor,--puts in his artistic
touches on the patting and shaping of the various loaves, ultimately
sliding them into the great low-ceiled brick oven with a sort of
elongated snow-shovel such as bakers use the world over.
It was in his manipulating of things that the art of it all came in.
Frenchmen will not all eat bread fashioned in the same form, and the
cottage loaf is unknown in France. One may have a preference for a
“_pain mouffle_,” a long sort of a roll; or, if he likes a crusty
morsel, nothing but a “_pistolet_” or a “_baton_” will do him. Others
will eat nothing but a great circular washer of bread--“_comme un rond
de cuir_”--or a “_tresse_,” which is three plaited strands, also crusty.
A favourite with toothless old veterans of the Crimea or beldames who
have seen seventy or eighty summers is the “_chapeau de gendarme_,” a
three-cornered sort of an affair with no crust to speak of.
By midday the baker-host had become the merchant of the town and had
dressed himself in a garb more or less approaching city fashions, and
seated himself in a sort of back parlour to the shop in front, which,
however, served as a kitchen and a dining-room as well.
Many and bountiful and excellent were the meals eaten _en famille_ in
the room back of the shop, often enough in company with a _beau-frère_,
who came frequently from Cavaillon, and a niece and her husband, who was
an attorney, and who lived in a great Renaissance stone house opposite
the fountain of Nostradamus, St. Rémy’s chief titular deity.
These were the occasions when eating and drinking was as superlative an
expression of the joy of life as one is likely to have experienced in
these degenerate days when we are mostly nourished by means of patent
foods and automatic buffets.
“My brother has a pretty taste in wine,” says the _beau-frère_ from
Cavaillon, as he opens another bottle of the wine of St. Rémy, grown on
the hillside just overlooking “_les antiquités_.” Those relics of the
Roman occupation are the pride of the citizen, who never tires of
strolling up the road with a stranger, and pointing out the beauties of
these really charming historical monuments. Truly M. Farges did have a
pretty taste in wine, and he had a cellar as well stocked in quantity
and variety as that of a Riviera hotel-keeper.
Not the least of the attractions of M. Farges’s board was the grace with
which his Arlesienne wife presided over the good things of the casserole
and the spit, that long skewer which, when loaded with a chicken, or a
duck, or a dozen small birds, turned slowly by clockwork before a fire
of olive-tree roots on the open hearth, or rather, on top of the
_fourneau_, which was only used itself for certain operations. Baked
meats and _rôti_ are two vastly different things in France.
“Marcel, he bakes the bread, and I cook for him,” says the jauntily
coiffed, buxom little lady, whose partner Marcel had been for some
thirty years. In spite of the passing of time, both were still young, or
looked it, though they were of that ample girth which betokens good
living, and, what is quite as important, good cooking; and madame’s
taste in cookery was as “pretty” as her husband’s for bread-making and
wine.
Given a casserole half-full of boiling oil (also a product of St.
Rémy’s; real olive-oil, with no dilution of cottonseed to flatten out
the taste) and anything whatever eatable to drop in it, and Madame
Farges will work wonders with her deftness and skill, and, like all good
cooks, do it, apparently, by guesswork.
It is a marvel to the writer that some one has not written a book
devoted to the little every-day happenings of the French middle classes.
Manifestly the trades of the butcher, the baker, and the
candlestick-maker have the same ends in view in France as elsewhere, but
their procedure is so different, so very different.
It strikes the foreigner as strange that your baker here gives you a
tally-stick, even to-day, when pass-books and all sorts of automatic
calculators are everywhere to be found. It is a fact, however, that your
baker does this at St. Rémy; and regulates the length of your credit by
the length of the stick, a plan which has many advantages for all
concerned over other methods.
You arrange as to what your daily loaf shall be, and for every one
delivered a notch is cut in the stick, which you guard as you would your
purse; that is, you guard your half of it, for it has been split down
the middle, and the worthy baker has a whole battery of these split
sticks strung along the dashboard of his cart. The two separate halves
are put together when the notch is cut across the joint, and there you
have undisputable evidence of delivery. It’s very much simpler than the
old backwoods system of keeping accounts on a slate, and wiping off the
slate when they were paid, and it’s safer for all concerned. When you
pay your baker at St. Rémy, he steps inside your kitchen and puts the
two sticks on the fire, and together you see them go up in smoke.
[Illustration: _Baker’s Tally-sticks_]
[Illustration: _St. Rémy_]
St. Rémy itself is a historic shrine, sitting jauntily beneath the
jagged profile of the Alpines, from whose crest one gets one of those
wonderful vistas of a rocky gorge which is, in a small way, only
comparable to the cañon of the Colorado. It is indeed a splendid view
that one gets just as he rises over the crest of this not very ample or
very lofty mountain range, and it has all the elements of grandeur and
brilliancy which are possessed by its more famous prototypes. It is
quite indescribable, hence the illustration herewith must be left to
tell its own story.
Below, in the ample plain in which St. Rémy sits, is a wonderful garden
of fruits and flowers. St. Rémy is a great centre for commerce in
olives, olive-oil, vegetables, and fruit which is put up into tins and
exported to the ends of the earth.
Not every one likes olive-trees as a picturesque note in a landscape any
more than every one likes olives to eat. But for all that the
grayish-green tones of the flat-topped _oliviers_ of these parts are
just the sort of things that artists love, and a plantation of them,
viewed from a hill above, has as much variety of tone, and shade, and
colour as a field of heather or a poppy-strewn prairie.
The inhabitants of most of the old-time provinces of France have
generally some special heirloom of which they are exceedingly fond; but
not so fond but that they will part with it for a price. The Breton has
his great closed-in bed, the Norman his _armoire_, and the Provençal his
“grandfather’s clock,” or, at least, a great, tall, curiously wrought
affair, which we outsiders have come to designate as such.
Not all of these great timepieces which are found in the peasant homes
round about St. Rémy are ancient; indeed, few of them are, but all have
a certain impressiveness about them which a household god ought to have,
whether it is a real antique or a gaudily painted thing with much
brasswork and, above all, a gong that strikes at painfully frequent
intervals with a vociferousness which would wake the Seven Sleepers if
they hadn’t been asleep so long.
The traffic in these tall, coffin-like clocks--though they are not by
any means sombre in hue--is considerable at St. Rémy. The local
clock-maker (he doesn’t really make them) buys the cases ready-made from
St. Claude, or some other wood-carving town in the Jura or Switzerland,
and the works in Germany, and assembles them in his shop, and stencils
his name in bold letters on the face of the thing as maker. This is
deception, if you like, but there is no great wrong in it, and, since
the clock and watch trade the world over does the same thing, it is one
of the immoralities which custom has made moral.
They are not dear, these great clocks of Provence, which more than one
tourist has carried away with him before now as a genuine “antique.”
Forty or fifty francs will buy one, the price depending on the amount of
chasing on the brasswork of its great pendulum.
Six feet tall they stand, in rows, all painted as gaudily as a circus
wagon, waiting for some peasant to come along and make his selection.
When it does arrive at some humble cottage in the Alpines, or in the
marshy vineyard plain beside the Rhône, there is a sort of house-warming
and much feasting, which costs the peasant another fifty francs as a
christening fee.
The clocks of St. Rémy and the _panetières_ which hang on the wall and
hold the household supply of bread open to the drying influences of the
air, and yet away from rats and mice, are the chief and most distinctive
house-furnishings of the homes of the countryside. For the rest the
Provençal peasant is as likely to buy himself a wickerwork chair, or a
German or American sewing-machine, with which to decorate his home, as
anything else. One thing he will not have foreign to his environment,
and that is his cooking utensils. His “_batterie de cuisine_” may not be
as ample as that of the great hotels, but every one knows that the
casseroles of commerce, whether one sees them in San Francisco, Buenos
Ayres, or Soho, are a Provençal production, and that there is a certain
little town, not many hundred miles from St. Rémy, which is devoted
almost exclusively to the making of this all-useful cooking utensil.
[Illustration: _A Panetière_]
The _panetières_, like the clocks, have a great fascination for the
tourist, and the desire to possess one has been known to have been so
great as to warrant an offer of two hundred and fifty francs for an
article which the present proprietor probably bought for twenty not many
months before.
St. Rémy’s next-door neighbour, just across the ridge of the Alpines, is
Les Baux.
Every traveller in Provence who may have heard of Les Baux has had a
desire to know more of it based on a personal acquaintance.
To-day it is nothing but a scrappy, tumble-down ruin of a once proud
city of four thousand inhabitants. Its foundation dates back to the
fifth century, and five hundred years later its seigneurs possessed the
rights over more than sixty neighbouring towns. It was only saved in
recent years from total destruction by the foresight of the French
government, which has stepped in and passed a decree that henceforth it
is to rank as one of those “_monuments historiques_” over which it has
spread its guardian wing.
Les Baux of the present day is nothing but a squalid hamlet, and from
the sternness of the topography round about one wonders how its present
small population gains its livelihood, unless it be that they live on
goat’s milk and goat’s meat, each of them a little strong for a general
diet. As a picture paradise for artists, however, Les Baux is the peer
of anything of its class in all France; but that indeed is another
story.
The historical and architectural attractions of Les Baux are many,
though, without exception, they are in a ruinous state. The Château des
Baux was founded on the site of an _oppidum gaulois_ in the fifth
century, and in successive centuries was enlarged, modified, and
aggrandized for its seigneurs, who bore successively the titles of
Prince d’Orange, Comte de Provence, Roi d’Arles et de Vienne, and
Empereur de Constantinople.
One of the chief monuments is the Église St. Vincent, dating from the
twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, and containing the tombs of many of
the Seigneurs of Baux.
There is, too, a ragged old ruin of a Protestant temple, with a series
of remarkable carvings, and the motto “_Post tenebras lux_” graven above
its portal. The Palais des Porcelets, now the “communal” school, and the
Église St. Claude, which has three distinct architectural styles all
plainly to be seen, complete the near-by sights and scenes, all of
which are of a weather-worn grimness, which has its charms in spite of
its sadness of aspect.
Not far distant is the Grotte des Fées, known in the Provençal tongue as
“Lou Trau di Fado,” a great cavern some five hundred or more feet in
length, the same in which Mistral placed one of the most pathetic scenes
of “Mirèio.” Of it and its history, and of the great Christmas fête with
its midnight climax, nothing can be said here; it needs a book to
itself, and, as the French say, “_c’est un chose à voir_.”
CHAPTER IV.
THE CRAU AND THE CAMARGUE
When the Rhône enters that _département_ of modern France which bears
the name Bouches-du-Rhône, it has already accomplished eight hundred and
seventy kilometres of its torrential course, and there remain but
eighty-five more before, through the many mouths of the Grand and Petit
Rhône, it finally mingles the Alpine waters of its source with those of
the Mediterranean.
Its flow is enormous when compared with the other inland waterways of
France, and, though navigable only in a small way compared to the Seine,
the traffic on it from the Mediterranean to Lyons, by great towed barges
and canal-boats, and between Lyons and Avignon, in the summer months, by
steamboat, is, after all, considerable. Queer-looking barges and
towboats, great powerful craft that will tow anything that has got an
end to it, as the river folk will tell you, and “_bateaux longs_,” make
up the craft which one sees as the mighty river enters Provence.
The boatmen of the Rhône still call the right bank _Riaume_ (Royaume)
and the left _Empi_ (Saint Empire), the names being a survival of the
days when the kingdom of France controlled the traffic on one side, and
the papal power, so safely ensconced for seventy years at Avignon, on
the other.
The fall of the Rhône, which is the principal cause of its rapid
current, averages something over six hundred millimetres to the
kilometre until it reaches Avignon, when, for the rest of its course,
considerably under a hundred kilometres, the fall is but twenty metres,
something like sixty-five feet.
This state of affairs has given rise to a remarkable alluvial
development, so that the plains of the Crau and the Camargue, and the
lowlands of the estuary, appear like “made land” to all who have ever
seen them. There is an appreciable growth of stunted trees and bushes
and what not, but the barrenness of the Camargue has not sensibly
changed in centuries, and it remains still not unlike a desert patch of
Far-Western America.
Wiry grass, and another variety particularly suited to the raising and
grazing of live stock, has kept the region from being one of absolute
poverty; but, unless one is interested in raising little horses (who
look as though they might be related to the broncos of the Western
plains), or beef or mutton, he will have no excuse for ever coming to
the Camargue to settle.
These little half-savage horses of the Camargue are thought to be the
descendants of those brought from the Orient in ages past, and they
probably are, for the Saracens were for long masters of the _pays_.
The difference between the Camargue and the Crau is that the former has
an almost entire absence of those cairns of pebbles which make the Crau
look like a pagan cemetery.
Like the horses, the cattle of the Camargue seem to be a distinct and
indigenous variety, with long pointed horns, and generally white or
cream coloured, like the oxen of the Allier. When the mistral blows,
these cattle of the Camargue, instead of turning their backs upon it,
face it, calmly chewing their cud. The herdsmen of the cattle have a
laborious occupation, tracking and herding day and night, in much the
same manner as the Gauchos of the Pampas and the cowboys of the Far
West. They resemble the toreadors of Spain, too, and, in many of their
feats, are quite as skilful and intrepid as are the Manuels and Pedros
of the bull-ring.
[Illustration: _The Bulls of Camargue_]
As one approaches the sea the aspect of the Camargue changes; the
hamlets become less and less frequent, and outside of these there are
few signs of life except the guardians of cattle and sheep which one
meets here, there, and everywhere.
The flat, monotonous marsh is only relieved by the delicate tints of the
sky and clouds overhead, and the reflected rays of the setting sun, and
the glitter of the waves of the sea itself.
Suddenly, as one reads in Mistral’s “Mirèio,” Chant X., “_sur la mer
lointaine et clapoteuse, comme un vaisseau qui cingle vers le rivage_,”
one sees a great church arising almost alone. It is the church of Les
Saintes Maries.
Formerly the little town of Les Saintes Maries, or village rather, for
there are but some six hundred souls within its confines to-day, was on
an island quite separated from the mainland. Here, history tells, was an
ancient temple to Diana, but no ruins are left to make it a place of
pilgrimage for worshippers at pagan shrines; instead Christians flock
here in great numbers, on the 24th of May and the 22d of October in each
year, from all over Provence and Languedoc, as they have since Bible
times, to pray at the shrine of the three Marys in the fortress-church
of Les Saintes Maries: Mary, the sister of the Virgin Mary, the mother
of the apostles James and John, and Mary Magdalen.
[Illustration: _Les Saintes Maries_]
The village of Les Saintes, as it is commonly called, is a sad, dull
town, with no trees, no gardens, no “Place,” no market, and no port;
nothing but one long, straight and narrow street, with short culs-de-sac
leading from it, and one of the grandest and most singular church
edifices to be seen in all France. Like the cathedrals at Albi and
Rodez, it looks as much like a fortress as it does a church, and here it
has not even the embellishments of a later decorative period to set off
the grimness of its walls.
As one approaches, the aspect of this bizarre edifice is indeed
surprising, rising abruptly, though not to a very imposing height, from
the flat, sandy, marshy plain at its feet. The foundation of the church
here was due to the appearance of Christianity among the Gauls at a very
early period; but, like the pagan temple of an earlier day, all vestiges
of this first Christian monument have disappeared, destroyed, it is
said, by the Saracens. A noble--whose name appears to have been
forgotten--built a new church here in the tenth century, which took the
form of a citadel as a protection against further piratical invasion. At
the same time a few houses were built around the haunches of the
fortress-church, for the inhabitants of this part of the Camargue were
only too glad to avail themselves of the shelter and protection which it
offered.
In a short time a _petite ville_ had been created and was given the name
of Notre Dame de la Barque, in honour of the arrival in Gaul at this
point of “..._les saintes femmes Marie Magdeleine, Marie Jacobé, Marie
Salomé, Marthe et son frère Lazare, ainsi que de plusieurs disciples du
Sauveur_.” They were the same who had been set adrift in an open boat
off the shores of Judea, and who, without sails, oars, or nourishment,
in some miraculous manner, had drifted here. The tradition has been well
guarded by the religious and civic authorities alike, the arms of the
town bearing a representation of a shipwrecked craft supported by female
figures and the legend “_Navis in Pelago_.”
On the occasion of the fête, on the 24th of May, there are to be
witnessed many moving scenes among the pilgrims of all ages who have
made the journey, many of them on foot, from all over Provence. Like the
pardons of Brittany, the fête here has much the same significance and
procedure. There is much processioning, and praying, and exhorting, and
burning of incense and of candles, and afterward a _défilé_ to the sands
of the seashore, some two kilometres away, and a “_bénédiction des
troupeaux_,” which means simply that the blessings that are so commonly
bestowed upon humanity by the clergy are extended on these occasions to
take in the animal kind of the Camargue plain, on whom so many of the
peasants depend for their livelihood. It seems a wise and thoughtful
thing to do, and smacks no more of superstition than many traditional
customs.
After the religious ceremonies are over, the “_fête profane_” commences,
and then there are many things done which might well enough be frowned
down; bull-baiting, for instance. The entire spectacle is unique in
these parts, and every whit as interesting as the most spectacular
pardon of Finistère.
At the actual mouth of the Rhône is Port St. Louis, from which the
economists expect great things in the development of mid-France,
particularly of those cities which lie in the Rhône valley. The idea is
not quite so chimerical as that advanced in regard to the possibility of
moving all the great traffic of Marseilles to the Étang de Berre; but it
will be some years before Port St. Louis is another Lorient or Le Havre.
In spite of this, Port St. Louis has grown from a population of eight
hundred to that of a couple of thousands in a generation, which is an
astonishing growth for a small town in France.
The aspect of the place is not inspiring. A signal-tower, a lighthouse,
a Hôtel de Ville,--which looks as though it might be the court-house of
some backwoods community in Missouri,--and the rather ordinary houses
which shelter St. Louis’s two thousand souls, are about all the tangible
features of the place which impress themselves upon one at first glance.
Besides this there is a very excellent little hotel, a veritable _hôtel
du pays_, where you will get the fish of the Mediterranean as fresh as
the hour they were caught; and the _mouton de la Camargue_, which is the
most excellent mutton in all the world (when cooked by a Provençal
_maître_); potatoes, of course, which most likely came in a trading
Catalan bark from Algeria; and tomatoes and dates from the same place;
to say nothing of melons--home-grown. It’s all very simple, but the
marvel is that such a town in embryo as Port St. Louis really is can do
it so well, and for this reason alone the visitor will, in most cases,
think the journey from Arles worth making, particularly if he does it
_en auto_, for the fifty odd kilometres are like a sanded, hardwood
floor or a cinder path, and the landscape, though flat, is by no means
deadly dull. Furthermore there is no one to say him nay if the driver
chooses to make the journey _en pleine vitesse_.
Bordering upon the Camargue, just the other side of the Rhône, is
another similar tract: the Crau, a great, pebbly plain, supposed to have
come into being many centuries before the beginning of our era. The
hypotheses as to its formation are numerous, the chief being that it was
the work of that mythological Hercules who cut the Strait of Gibraltar
between the Mounts Calpe and Abyle (this, be it noted, is the French
version of the legend). Not content with this wonder, he turned the
Durance from its bed, as it flowed down from the Alps of Savoie, and a
shower of stones fell from the sky and covered the land for miles
around, turning it into a barren waste. For some centuries the tract
preserved the name of “Champs Herculéen.” The reclaiming of the tract
will be a task of a magnitude not far below that which brought it into
being.
At all events no part of Gaul has as little changed its topography since
ages past, and the strange aspect of the Crau is the marvel of all who
see it. The pebbles are of all sizes larger than a grain of sand, and
occasionally one has been found as big as one’s head. When such a
treasure is discovered, it is put up in some conspicuous place for the
native and the stranger to marvel at.
Many other conjectures have been made as to the origin of this strange
land. Aristotle thought that an earthquake had pulverized a mountain;
Posidonius, that it was the bottom of a dried-out lake; and Strabon that
the pebbly surface was due to large particles of rock having been rolled
about and smoothed by the winds; but none have the elements of legend so
well defined as that which attributes it as the work of Hercules.
The Crau, like the Camargue, is a district quite indescribable. All
around is a lone, strange land, the only living things being the flocks
of sheep and the herds of great, long-horned cattle which are raised for
local consumption and for the bull-ring at Arles.
It is indeed a weird and strange country, as level as the proverbial
billiard-table, and its few inhabitants are of that sturdy
weather-beaten race that knows not fear of man or beast. There is an old
saying that the native of the Crau and the Camargue must learn to fly
instead of fight, for there is nothing for him to put his back against.
Far to the northward and eastward is a chain of mountains, the
foot-hills of the mighty Alps, while on the horizon to the south there
is a vista of a patch of blue sea which somewhere or other, not many
leagues away, borders upon fragrant gardens and flourishing seaports;
but in these pebbly, sandy plains all is level and monotonous, with only
an occasional oasis of trees and houses.
The Crau was never known as a political division, but its topographical
aspect was commented on by geographers like Strabon, who also remarked
that it was strewn with a scant herbage which grew up between its
pebbles hardly sufficient to nourish a _taureau_. Things have not
changed much in all these long years, but there is, as a matter of fact,
nourishment for thousands of sheep and cattle. St. Césaire, Bishop of
Arles, also left a written record of pastures which he owned in the
midst of a _campo lapidio_ (presumably the Crau), and again, in the
tenth and eleventh centuries, numerous old charters make mention of
_Posena in Cravo_. All this points to the fact that the topographical
aspect of this barren, pebbly land--which may or may not be some day
reclaimed--has ever been what it is to-day. Approximately twenty-five
thousand hectares of this pasturage nourish some fifty thousand sheep
in the winter months. In the summer these flocks of sheep migrate to
Alpine pasturage, making the journey by highroad and nibbling their
nourishment where they find it. It seems a remarkable trip to which to
subject the docile creatures,--some five hundred kilometres out and
back. They go in flocks of two or three hundred, being guarded by a
couple of shepherds called “_bayles_,” whose effects are piled in
saddle-bags on donkey-back, quite in the same way that the peasants of
Albania travel. The shepherds of the Crau are a very good imitation of
the Bedouin of the desert in their habits and their picturesque costume.
Always with the flock are found a pair of those discerning but
nondescript dogs known as “sheep-dogs.” The doubt is cast upon the
legitimacy of their pedigree from the fact that, out of some hundreds
met with by the author on the highroads of Europe, no two seemed to be
of the same breed. Almost any old dog with shaggy hair seemingly
answered the purpose well.
The custom of sending the sheep to the mountains of Dauphiné for the
summer months still goes on, but as often as not they are to-day sent by
train instead of by road. The ancient practice is apparently another
reminiscence of the wandering flocks and herds of the Orient.
If it is ever reclaimed, the Crau will lose something in picturesqueness
of aspect, and of manners and customs; but it will undoubtedly prove to
the increased prosperity of the neighbourhood. The thing has been well
thought out, though whether it ever comes to maturity or not is a
question.
It was Lord Brougham--“_le fervent étudiant de la Provence_,” the French
call him--who said: “Herodotus called Egypt a gift of the Nile to
posterity, but the Durance can make of _la Crau une petite Egypte aux
portes de Marseilles_.” From this one gathers that the region has only
to be plentifully watered to become a luxuriant and productive
river-bottom.
CHAPTER V.
MARTIGUES: THE PROVENÇAL VENICE
We arrived at Martigues in the early morning hours affected by
automobilists, having spent the night a dozen miles or so away in the
château of a friend. Our host made an early start on a shooting
expedition, already planned before we put in an appearance, so we took
the road at the witching hour of five A. M., and descended upon the
Hôtel Chabas at Martigues before the servants were up. Some one had
overslept.
However, we gave the great door of the stable a gentle shake; it opened
slowly, but silently, and we drove the automobile noisily inside. Two
horses stampeded, a dog barked, a cock crowed, and sleepy-headed old
Pierre appeared, saying that they had no room, forgetful that another
day was born, and that he had allowed two fat commercial travellers, who
were to have left by the early train, to over-sleep.
[Illustration: _Église de la Madeleine, Martigues_]
As there was likely to be room shortly, we convinced Pierre (whose name
was really Pietro, he being an Italian) of the propriety of making us
some coffee, and then had leisure to realize that at last we were at
Martigues--“La Venise Provençale.”
Martigues is a paradise for artists. So far as its canals and quays go,
it is Venice without the pomp and glory of great palaces; and the life
of its fishermen and women is quite as picturesque as that of the
Giudecca itself.
Wonderful indeed are the sunsets of a May evening, on Martigues’s Canal
and Quai des Bourdigues, or from the ungainly bridge which crosses to
the Ferrières quarter, with the sky-scraping masts of the _tartanes_
across the face of the sinking sun like prison bars.
Great ungainly tubs are the boats of the fisherfolk of Martigues (all
except the _tartanes_, which are graceful white-winged birds). The
motor-boat has not come to take the picturesqueness away from the
slow-moving _bêtes_, which are more like the dory of the Gloucester
fishermen, without its buoyancy, than anything else afloat.
Before the town, though two or three kilometres away, is the
Mediterranean, and back of it the Étang de Berre, known locally as “La
Petite Mer de Berre.”
Here is a little corner of France not yet overrun by tourists, and
perhaps it never will be. Hardly out of sight from the beaten track of
tourist travel to the south of France, and within twenty odd miles of
Marseilles, it is a veritable “darkest Africa” to most travellers. To be
sure, French and American artists know it well, or at least know the
lovely little triplet town of Martigues, through the pictures of Ziem
and Galliardini and some others; but the seekers after the diversions of
the “Côte d’Azur” know it not, and there are no tea-rooms and no “_bière
anglaise_” in the bars or cafés of the whole circuit of towns and
villages which surround this little inland sea.
The aspect of this little-known section of Provence is not wholly as
soft and agreeable as, in his mind’s eye, one pictures the country
adjacent to the Mediterranean to be. The hills and the shores of the
“Petite Mer” are sombre and severe in outline, but not sad or ugly by
any means, for there is an almost tropical glamour over all, though the
olive and fig trees, umbrella-pines and gnarled, dwarf cypresses, with
juts and crops of bare gray stone rising up through the thin soil, are
quite in contrast with the palms and aloes of the Riviera proper.
At the entrance to the “Petite Mer,” or, to give it its official name,
the Étang de Berre, is a little port which bears the vague name of Port
de Bouc.
Port de Bouc itself is on the great Golfe de Fos, where the sun sets in
a blaze of colour for quite three hundred days in the year, and in a
manner unapproached elsewhere outside of Turner’s landscapes. Perhaps it
is for this reason that the town has become a sort of watering-place for
the people of Nîmes, Arles, and Avignon. There is nothing of the
conventional resort about it, however, and the inhabitants of it, and
the neighbouring town of Fos, are mostly engaged in making bricks,
paper, and salt, refining petrol, and drying the codfish which are
landed at its wharves by great “_trois-mâts_,” which have come in from
the banks of Terre Neuve during the early winter months. There is a
great ship-building establishment here which at times gives employment
to as many as a thousand men, and accordingly Port de Bouc and
Fos-sur-Mer, though their names are hardly known outside of their own
neighbourhoods, form something of a metropolis to-day, as they did when
the latter was a fortified _cité romaine_.
The region round about has many of the characteristics of the Crau, a
land half-terrestrial and half-aquatic, formed by the alluvial deposits
of the mighty Rhône and the torrential rivers of its watershed.
At Venice one finds superb marble palaces, and a history of sovereigns
and prelates, and much art and architecture of an excellence and
grandeur which perhaps exceeds that at any other popular tourist point.
Martigues resembles Venice only as regards its water-surrounded
situation, its canal-like streets and the general air of Mediterranean
picturesqueness of the life of its fisherfolk and seafarers.
Martigues has an advantage over the “Queen of the Adriatic” in that none
of its canals are slimy or evil-smelling, and because there is an utter
absence of theatrical effect and, what is more to the point, an almost
unappreciable number of tourists.
[Illustration: _House of M. Ziem, Martigues_]
It is true that Galliardini and Ziem have made the fame of Martigues as
an “artists’ sketching-ground,” and as such its reputation has been
wide-spread. Artists of all nationalities come and go in twos and threes
throughout the year, but it has not yet been overrun at any time by
tourists. None except the Marseillais seem to have made it a resort, and
they only come out on bicycles or _en auto_ to eat “_bouillabaisse_” of
a special variety which has made Martigues famous.
Ziem seems to have been one of the pioneers of the new school,
high-coloured paintings which are now so greatly the vogue. This is not
saying that for that reason they are any the less truthful
representations of the things they are supposed to present; probably
they are not; but if some one would explain why M. Ziem laid out an
artificial pond in the gardens of his house at Martigues, put up
Venetian lantern-poles, and anchored a gondola therein, and in another
corner built a mosque, or whatever it may be,--a thing of minarets and
towers and Moorish arches,--it would allay some suspicions which the
writer has regarding “the artist’s way of working.”
It does not necessarily mean that Ziem did not go to Africa for his Arab
or Moorish compositions, or to Venice for his Venetian boatmen and his
palace backgrounds. Probably he merely used the properties as
accessories in an open-air studio, which is certainly as legitimate as
“working-up” one’s pictures in a sky-lighted atelier up five flights of
stairs; and the chances are this is just where Ziem’s brilliant
colouring comes from.
Martigues in its manners and customs is undoubtedly one of the most
curious of all the coast towns of France. It is truly a gay little city,
or rather it is three of them, known as Les Martigues, though the sum
total of their inhabitants does not exceed six thousand souls all told.
Martigues at first glance appears to be mostly peopled by sailors and
fishermen, and there is little of the super-civilization of a great
metropolis to be seen, except that “all the world and his wife” dines at
the fashionable hour of eight, and before, and after, and at all times,
patronizes the Café de Commerce to an extent which is the wonder of the
stranger and the great profit of the patron.
[Illustration: _Martigues_]
No café in any small town in France is so crowded at the hour of the
“_apéritif_,” and all the frequenters of Martigues’s most popular
establishment have their own special bottle of whatever of the varnishy
drinks they prefer from among those which go to make up the list of the
Frenchman’s “_apéritifs_.” It is most remarkable that the cafés of
Martigues should be so well patronized, and they are no mere longshore
_cabarets_, either, but have walls of plate glass, and as many
varieties of absinthe as you will find in a boulevard resort in Paris.
The Provençal historians state that Les Martigues did not exist as such
until the middle of the thirteenth century, and that up to that time it
consisted merely of a few families of fisherfolk living in huts upon the
ruins of a former settlement, which may have been Roman, or perhaps
Greek. This first settlement was on the Ile St. Geniez, which now forms
the official quarter of the triple town.
Martigues is all but indescribable, its three _quartiers_ are so widely
diversified in interest and each so characteristic in the life which
goes on within its confines,--Jonquières, with its shady Cours and
narrow cobblestoned streets; the Ile, surrounded by its canals and
fishing-boats, and Ferrières, a more or less fastidious faubourg backed
up against the hillside, crowned by an old Capucin convent.
For a matter of fifteen hundred years there has been communication
between the Étang de Berre and the Mediterranean, and the Martigaux have
ever been alive to keeping the channel open. Through this canal the fish
which give industry and prosperity to Martigues make their way with an
almost inexplicable regularity. A migration takes place from the
Mediterranean to the Étang from February to July, and from July to
February they pass in the opposite direction.
Their capture in deep water is difficult, and the Martigaux have
ingeniously built narrow waterways ending in a cul-de-sac, through which
the fish must naturally pass on their passage between the Étang and the
sea. The taking of the fish under such conditions is a sort of automatic
process, so efficacious and simple that it would seem as though the plan
might be tried elsewhere.
The name given to the sluices or fish thoroughfares is _bourdigues_, and
the fishermen are known as _bourdigaliers_, a title which is not known
or recognized elsewhere.
The _bourdigue_ fishery is a monopoly, however, and many have been the
attempts to break down the “vested interests” of the proprietors.
Originally these rights belonged to the Archbishop of Arles, and later
to the Seigneurs de Gallifet, Princes of Martigues, when the town was
made a principality by Henri IV. It has continued to be a private
enterprise unto to-day, and has been sanctioned by the courts, so there
appears no immediate probability of the general populace of Martigues
being able to participate in it.
There is a delicate fancy evolved from the connection of Martigues’s
three sister faubourgs or _quartiers_. In the old days each had a
separate entity and government, and each had a flag of its own; that of
Jonquières was blue; the Ile, white; and Ferrières, red. There was an
intense rivalry between the inhabitants of the three faubourgs; a
rivalry which led to the beating of each other with oars and
fishing-tackle, and other boisterous horse-play whenever they met one
another in the canals or on the wharves. The warring factions of the
three _quartiers_ of Martigues, however, finally came to an
understanding whereby the blue, white, and red banners of Jonquières,
the Ile and Ferrières were united in one general flag. The adoption of
the tricolour by the French nation was thus antedated, curiously enough,
by two hundred years, and the tricolour of France may be considered a
Martigues institution.
In the Quartier de Ferrières are moored the _tartanes_ and
_balancelles_, those great white-winged, lateen-rigged craft which are
the natural component of a Mediterranean scene. Those hailing from
Martigues are the aristocrats of their class, usually gaudily painted
and flying high at the masthead a red and yellow striped pennant
distinctive of their home port.
In the fish-market of Martigues the traveller from the north will
probably make his first acquaintance with the tunny-fish or _thon_ of
the Mediterranean. He is something like the tarpon of the Mexican Gulf,
and is a gamy sort of a fellow, or would be if one ever got him on the
end of a line, which, however, is not the manner of taking him. He is
caught by the gills in great nets of cord, as thick and heavy as a
clothes-line, scores and hundreds at a time, and it takes the strength
of many boatloads of men to draw the nets.
The _thon_ is the most unfishlike fish that one ever cast eyes upon. He
looks like a cross between a porpoise and a mackerel in shape, and is
the size of the former. It is the most beautifully modelled fish
imaginable; round and plump, with smoothly fashioned head and tail, it
looks as if it were expressly designed to slip rapidly through the
water, which in reality it does at an astonishing rate. Its proportions
are not graceful or delicately fashioned at all; they are rather clumsy;
but it is perfectly smooth and scaleless, and looks, and feels too, as
if it were made of hard rubber.
In short the _thon_ is the most unemotional-looking thing in the whole
fish and animal world, with no more realism to it than if it were
whittled out of a log of wood and covered with stove-polish. Caught,
killed, and cured (by being cut into cubes and packed in oil in little
tins), the _thon_ forms a great delicacy among the assortment of
_hors-d’œuvres_ which the Paris and Marseilles restaurant-keepers put
before one.
One of the great features of Martigues is its cookery, its fish cookery
in particular, for the _bouillabaisse_ of Martigues leads the world. It
is far better than that which is supplied to “stop-over” tourists at
Marseilles, _en route_ to Egypt, the East, or the Riviera.
Thackeray sang the praises of _bouillabaisse_ most enthusiastically in
his “Ballad of the Bouillabaisse,” but then he ate it at a restaurant
“on a street in Paris,” and he knew not the real thing as Chabas dishes
it up at Martigues’s “Grand Hôtel.”
Chabas is known for fifty miles around. He is not a Martigaux, but comes
from Cavaillon, the home of all good cooks, or at least one may say
unreservedly that all the people of Cavaillon are good cooks: “_les
maîtres de la cuisine Provençale_” they are known to all
_bons-vivants_.
Neither is madame a Martigaux; she is an Arlesienne (and wears the
Arlesienne coiffe at all times); Arles is a town as celebrated for its
fair women as is Cavaillon for its cooks.
Together M. and Madame Chabas hold a big daily reception in the
_cuisine_ of the hotel, formerly the kitchen of an old convent. M. Paul
is a “handy man;” he cooks easily and naturally, and carries on a
running conversation with all who drop in for a chat. Most cooks are
irascible and cranky individuals, but not so M. Paul; the more, the
merrier with him, and not a drop too much oil (or too little), not a
taste too much of garlic, nor too much saffron in the _bouillabaisse_,
nor too much salt or pepper on the _rôti_ or the _légumes_. It’s all
chance apparently with him, for like all good cooks he never measures
anything, but the wonder is that he doesn’t get rattled and forget, with
the mixed crew of _pensionnaires_ and neighbours always at his elbow,
warming themselves before the same fire that heats his pots and pans and
furnishes the flame for the great _broche_ on which sizzle the
well-basted _petits oiseaux_.
_Bouillabaisse_ is always the _plat-du-jour_ at the “Grand Hôtel,” and
it’s the most wonderfully savoury dish that one can imagine--as Chabas
cooks it.
Outside a Provençal cookery-book one would hardly expect to find a
recipe for _bouillabaisse_ that one could accept with confidence, but on
the other hand no writer could possibly have the temerity to write of
Provence and not have his say about the wonderful fish stew known to
lovers of good-living the world over. It is more or less a risky
proceeding, but to omit it altogether would be equally so, so the
attempt is here made.
“_La bouillabaisse_,” of which poets have sung, has its variations and
its intermittent excellencies, and sometimes it is better than at
others; but always it is a dish which gives off an aroma which is the
very spirit of Provence, an unmistakable reminiscence of Martigues,
where it is at its best.
When the _bouillabaisse_ is made according to the _vieilles règles_, it
is as exquisite a thing to eat as is to be found among all the famous
dishes of famous places. One goes to Burgundy to eat _escargots_, to
Rouen for _caneton_, and to Marguery’s for soles, but he puts the memory
of all these things behind him and far away when he first tastes
_bouillabaisse_ in the place of its birth.
Here is the recipe in its native tongue so that there may be no
mistaking it:
“_Poisson de la Méditerranée fraîchement pêché, avec les huiles vierges
de la Provence. Thon, dorade, mulet, rouget, rascasses, parfumés par le
fenouil et de laurier, telles sont les bases de cette soupe, colorée par
le safran, que toutes les ménagères de la littoral de Provence
s’entendent à merveille à préparer._”
As before said, not many tourists (English or American) frequent
Martigues, and those who do come all have leanings toward art. Now and
then a real “carryall and guide-book traveller” drifts in, gets a whiff
of the mistral, (which often blows with deadly fury across the Étang)
and, thinking that it is always like that, leaves by the first train,
after having bought a half-dozen picture post-cards and eaten a bowl of
_bouillabaisse_.
The type exists elsewhere in France, in large numbers, in Normandy and
Brittany for instance, but he is a _rara avis_ at Martigues, and only
comes over from his favourite tea-drinking Riviera resort (he tells you)
“out of curiosity.”
Martigues is practically the gateway to all the attractions of the
wonderful region lying around the Étang de Berre, and of the littoral
between Marseilles and the mouths of the Rhône. It is not very
accessible by rail, however, and a good hard walker could get there
from Marseilles almost as quickly on foot as by train.
The ridiculous little train of double-decked, antiquated cars, and a
still more antiquated locomotive, takes nearly an hour to make the
journey from Pas-de-Lanciers. Some day the dreaded mistral will blow
this apology for rapid transit off into the sea, and then there will
come an electric line, which will make the journey from Marseilles in
less than an hour, instead of the three or four that it now takes.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI.
THE ÉTANG DE BERRE
Martigues is the metropolis of the towns and villages which fringe the
shore of the Étang de Berre, a sort of an inland sea, with all the
attributes of both a salt and fresh water lake.
Around Martigues, in the spring-time, all is verdant and full of colour,
and the air is laden with the odours of aromatic buds and blossoms. At
this time, when the sun has not yet dried out and yellowed the
hillsides, the spectacle of the background panorama is most ravishing.
Almond, peach, and apricot trees, all covered with a rosy snow of
blossoms, are everywhere, and their like is not to be seen elsewhere,
for in addition there is here a contrasting frame of greenish-gray
olive-trees and punctuating accents of red and yellow wild flowers that
is reminiscent of California.
Surrounding the “Petite Mer de Berre” are a half-dozen of unspoiled
little towns and villages which are most telling in their beauty and
charms: St. Mitre, crowning a hill with a picturesquely roofed Capucin
convent for a near neighbour, and with some very substantial remains of
its old Saracen walls and gates, is the very ideal of a mediæval hill
town; Istres, with its tree-grown chapel, its fortress-like church and
its “classic landscape,” is as unlike anything that one sees elsewhere
in France as could be imagined; while Miramas, St. Chamas, and Berre, on
the north shores of the Étang, though their names even are not known to
most travellers, are delightful old towns where it is still possible to
live a life unspoiled by twentieth-century inventions and influences.
If the mistral is not blowing, one may make the passage across the
Étang, from Martigues to Berre, in one of the local craft known as a
“_bête_,” a name which sounds significant, but which really means
nothing. If the north wind is blowing, the journey should be made by
train, around the Étang via Marignane. The latter route is cheaper, and
one may be saved an uncomfortable, not to say dangerous, experience.
One great and distinct feature of the countryside within a short radius
of Marseilles, within which charmed circle lie Martigues and all the
surrounding towns of the Étang de Berre, are the _cabanons_, the modest
villas (_sic_) of these parts, seen wherever there is an outlook upon
the sea or a valleyed vista. They cling perilously to the hillsides,
wherever enough level ground can be found to plant their foundations,
and their gaudy colouring is an ever present feature in the landscape of
hill and vale.
The _cabanon_ is really the _maison de campagne_ of the _petit
bourgeois_ of the cities and towns. It is like nothing ever seen before,
though in the Var, east of Marseilles, the “_bastide_” is somewhat
similar. In its proportions it resembles the log cabin of the Canadian
backwoods more than it does the East Indian bungalow, though it is
hardly more comfortable or roomy than the wigwam of the red man. Indeed,
how could it be, when it consists of but four walls, forming a rectangle
of perhaps a dozen feet square, and a roof of red tiles?
If, like the Japanese, the inhabitant of the _cabanon_ likes to carry
his household gods about with him, why, then it is quite another thing,
and there is some justice in the claim of its occupant that he is
enjoying life _en villégiature_.
“_Le cabanon: c’est unique et affreux!_” said Taine, and, though he was
a great grumbler when it came to travel talk, and the above is an unfair
criticism of a most intolerant kind, the _cabanon_ really is ludicrous,
though often picturesque.
The simple stone hut, with the stones themselves roughly covered with
pink or blue stucco, sits, always, facing the south. Before it is a tiny
terrace and, since there are often no windows, the general housekeeping
is done under an awning, or a lean-to, or a “_tonnelle_.”
It is not a wholly unlovely thing, a _cabanon_, but it gets the full
benefit of the glaring sunlight on its crude outlines, and, though
sylvan in its surroundings, it is seldom cool or shady, as a country
house, of whatever proportions or dimensions, ought to be.
Some figures concerning the Étang de Berre are an inevitable outcome of
a close observation, so the following are given and vouched for as
correct. It is large enough to shelter all the commercial fleet of the
Mediterranean and all the French navy as well. For an area of over three
thousand hectares, there is a depth of water closely approximating forty
feet. Between the Étang and the Mediterranean are the Montagnes de
l’Estaque, which for a length of eight kilometres range in height from
three hundred to fifteen hundred feet, and would form almost an
impenetrable barrier to a fleet which might attack the ships of commerce
or war which one day may take shelter in the Étang de Berre. This, if
the naval powers-that-be have their way, will some day come to pass. All
this is a prophecy, of course, but Elisée Reclus has said that the
non-utilization of the Étang de Berre was a _scandale économique_, which
doubtless it is.
In spite of the name “Étang,” the “Petite Mer de Berre” is a veritable
inland harbour or _rade_, closed against all outside attack by its
narrow entrance through the elongated Étang de Caronte. That its
strategic value to France is fully recognized is evident from the fact
that frequently it is overrun by a practising torpedo-boat fleet. What
its future may be, and that of the delightful little towns and cities on
its shores, is not very clear. There is the possibility of making it the
chief harbour on the south coast of France, but hitherto the influences
of Marseilles have been too strong; and so this vast basin is as
tranquil and deserted as if it were some inlet on the coast of Borneo,
and, except for the little lateen-rigged fishing-boats which dot its
surface day in and day out throughout the year, not a mast of a
_goélette_ and not a funnel of a steamship ever crosses its
horizon,--except the manœuvring torpedo-boats.
The Marseillais know this “Petite Mer” and its curious border towns and
villages full well. They come to Martigues to eat _bouillabaisse_ of
even a more pungent variety than they get at home, and they go to
Marignane for _la chasse_,--though it is only “_petits oiseaux_” and
“_plongeurs_” that they bag,--and they go to St. Chamas and Berre for
the fishing, until the whole region has become a Sunday meeting-place
for the Marseillais who affect what they call “_le sport_.”
[Illustration: _Istres_]
On the western shore of the “Petite Mer,” on the edge of the dry, pebbly
Crau, with a background of greenish-gray olive groves, is Istres, a
_chef-lieu_ not recognized by many geographers out of France, and known
by still fewer tourists. Istres is in no way a remarkable place, and its
inhabitants live mostly on carp taken from the Étang de l’Olivier,
_moules_, and such _poissons de mer_ as find their way into the “Petite
Mer.” Fish diet is not bad, but it palls on one if it is too constant,
and the _moule_ is a poor substitute for the clam or oyster. Istres
makes salt and soda and not much else, but it is a town as
characteristic of the surrounding country as one is likely to find. It
grew up from a quasi-Saracen settlement, and down through feudal times
it bore some resemblance to what it is to-day, for it numbers but
something like three thousand souls. There are remains of its old
ramparts which, judging from their aspect, must once have borne some
relationship to those of Aigues Mortes.
Truly the landscape round about is weird and strange, but it is superb
in its very rudeness, although no one would have the temerity to call it
magnificent. There are great hillocks of fossil shells which would
delight the geologist, and there are “_petits oiseaux_” galore for the
sportsman.
Twilight seems to be the time of day when all Istres’s strange effects
are heightened,--as it is on the Nile,--and it will take no great
stretch of the imagination to picture the shores of the Étang as the
banks of Egypt’s river. The aspect at the close of day is strange and
unforgettable, with the great plain of the Crau stretching away
indefinitely, and the blue “_nappe_” of the Étang likewise indefinitely
hazy and tranquil. In spite of its lack of twentieth-century comforts,
the seeker after new sensations could do worse than spend a night and a
part of a day at Istres’s Hôtel de France, and, if he is a painter, he
may spend here a week, a month, or a lifetime and not get bored.
If one happens to be at Istres on the “Jour des Mortes,” in November, he
may witness, in the evening, in the cypress-sheltered cemetery, one of
the most weird and eerie sights possible to imagine. When Odilon, Abbot
of Cluny, established the “Fête des Mortes,” in 998, he little knew the
extent to which it would be observed. The “Fête des Mortes” is one thing
in the royal crypt at St. Denis and quite another in the small towns and
villages up and down the length of France.
It has been commonly thought that Bretagne was the most religious and
devout of all the ancient provinces of France, at least that it had
become so, whatever may have been its status in the past; but certainly
the good folk of Istres are as devout and religious as any community
extant, if the wonderfully impressive chanting and illuminating in the
graveyard by its old tree-grown chapel count for anything. It is as if
the night itself were hung with crêpe, and the hundreds, nay, thousands,
of candles set about on the tombs and in the trees heighten the effect
of solemnity and sadness to an indescribable degree. In the town the
church-bells toll out their doleful knell, and the still air of the
night carries the wails and chants of the mourners far out over the
barren Crau. It is the same whether it rains or shines, or whether the
mistral blows or not. The candles, the mourners, and the little crosses
of wheat straws--a symbol of the Resurrection--are as mystical as the
rites of the ancients to one who has never seen such a celebration.
Decidedly, if one is in these parts on the first day of November, he
should come to Istres for the night, or he will have missed an
exceedingly interesting chapter from the book of pleasurable travel.
Passing from Istres to the north shore of the Étang, one comes to
Miramas.
Miramas is a quaint little longshore town which makes one think of
pirates, Saracens, and Moors, all of whom, in days gone by, had a
foothold here, if local traditions are to be believed. Miramas and St.
Chamas, which is the metropolis of the neighbourhood, though its
population only about equals that of Miramas, are twin towns which are
quite unlike anything else in these parts in that they are neither
progressive nor somnolent, but while away their time in some
inexplicable fashion, bathed in the brilliant Mediterranean sunlight
reflected from off the surface of the Étang, which stretches at their
feet and furnishes the seafood on which the inhabitants mostly live. The
chief curiosity of the neighbourhood is the Pont Flavien, which crosses
the Touloubre near by, on the “Route d’Aix.” The structure is a monument
to Domnius Flavius by his executors Domnius Vena and Attius Rufus. It
possesses an elegance and sobriety which many more magnificent works
lack, and the classic lines of its superstructure and its great
semicircular arch in the twilight carry the observer back to the days of
mediævalism.
At St. Chamas one is likely to find his hotel--regardless of which of
the two leading establishments he patronizes--most unique in its
management, though none the less excellent, enjoyable, and amusing for
that. If by chance he reaches the town on a Saturday night and comes
upon a _grand bal familier_ in the dining-room, and is himself compelled
to eat his dinner at a small table in the office, he must not quarrel,
but rest content that he is to be rewarded by a sight which will prove
again that it is only the French bourgeois who really and truly knows
how to enjoy simple pleasures. Fortnightly, at least, during the winter
months this sort of thing takes place, and the young men and maidens,
and young mothers and their babies in arms, and old folk, too old
indeed to swing partners, form a cordon around the walls to gaze upon
the less timid ones who dance with all the abandon of a southern climate
until the hour of eleven,--and then to bed. It is all very primitive,
the orchestra decidedly so,--a violin and a clarionette, and always a
Provençal tambourine, which is not a tambourine at all, but a drum,--but
an occasional glimpse of a beautiful Arlesienne will truly repay one for
any discomfort to which he may have been put.
St. Chamas is renowned through Provence from the fact that commerce in
the olive first came to its great proportions through the perspicuity of
one of the local cultivators. It was he who first had the idea of
preparing for market the “_olive-picholine_,” or green briny olive,
which figures so universally on dining-tables throughout the world. In
some respects they may not equal the “queen olives” of Spain; but the
olives of Provence have a delicacy that is far more subtle, and the real
enthusiast will become so addicted to eating the olive of Provence on
its native heath that it will become an incurable habit, like cigarettes
or golf.
From St. Chamas to Berre is scarce a dozen kilometres, but, to the
traveller from the north, the journey will be full of marvels and
surprises. The panorama which unfolds itself at every step is of
surpassing beauty, though not so very grand or magnificent.
“La Petite Mer” is in full view, the opposite shore lost in the
refulgence of a reflected glow, as if it were the open sea itself. All
around its rim are the rocky hills, of which the highest, the Tête
Noire, rises to perhaps fifteen hundred feet.
Everywhere there are goats, and many of them great long-haired beasts,
the females of which give an unusually abundant supply of milk. For a
long period, on the shores of the Étang de Berre, there were no cows,
and the inhabitants depended for their milk-supply solely upon the goat,
which the French properly enough call “_la vache du pauvre_.” Like the
love of the olive, that for goat’s milk is an acquired taste.
The first apparition of the city of Berre is charming, and, like
Martigues, it is a sort of a cross between Venice and Amsterdam. Its
streets, like its canals and basins, are narrow and winding, though for
the most part it stretches itself out along one slim thoroughfare. Its
aspect, apparently, has not changed in thirty years, when Taine wrote
his impressions of “_ces rues d’une étroitesse étonnante_.” He made a
further comment which does not hold true to-day. He said that there was
an infectious odour of concentrated humanity, with the dust and mud of
centuries still over all. From the very paradox of the description it is
not difficult to infer that he nodded, and assuredly Berre is not
to-day, if it ever was, _sale, comme si depuis le commencement des
siècles_.
All the same Berre is not a progressive town, as is shown by the fact
that between the two last censuses its population has fallen from
eighteen hundred to fifteen. However, its trade has increased
perceptibly, thanks to the salt works here, and the tiny port gave a
haven, in the year past, to a hundred craft averaging a hundred tons
each.
Northward from the shores of the Étang de Berre lies Salon, the most
commercial of all the cities and towns between Arles and Marseilles.
Differing greatly from the lowlands lying round about, Salon is the
centre of a verdant garden-spot reclaimed by the monks of St. Sauveur
from an ancient marshy plain. In reality the town owes its existence to
Jeanne de Naples, who, forced to flee from her kingdom in 1357, dreamed
of establishing another here in Provence. She actually did take up a
portion of the country, and the village of Salon, through the erection
of a donjon and a royal residence, took on some of the characteristics
of a capital.
In spite of its royal patronage, the chief deity of Salon was
Nostradamus, who was born at St. Rémy, of Jewish parents, in 1503.
Destined for the medical profession, he completed his studies at
Montpellier and retired to Salon to produce that curious work called
“Centuries,” he having come to believe that he was possessed of the
spirit of prophecy to such an extent that his mission was really to
enlighten rather than cure the world.
Michael Nostradamus and his prophecies created some stir in the world,
for it was a superstitious age. The Medici was doing her part in the
patronizing of astrologers and necromancers, and promptly became a
patron of this new seer of Provence, though never forswearing allegiance
to her pet Ruggieri. It is on record that Catherine got a horoscope of
the lives of her sons from Nostradamus and showed him great deference.
After this all the world of princes and seigneurs flocked to the
prophet’s house at Salon, which became a veritable shrine, with a
living deity to do the honours. To-day one may see his tomb in the
parish church of St. Laurent.
The traffic in olives and olive-oil is very considerable at Salon;
indeed, one may say that it is the centre of the industry in all
Provence, for the olives known as “Bouches-du-Rhône” are the most sought
for in the French market, and bring a higher price than those of the
Var, or of Spain, Sicily, or Tunis.
Not far from the northern shores of the Étang de Berre, just above
Salon, runs the great national highway from Paris to Antibes, branching
off to Marseilles just before reaching Aix-en-Provence. The railway also
passes through the heart of the same region; but, in spite of it all,
only few really know the lovely country round about.
The region is historic ground, though in detail it perhaps has not the
general interest of the Campagne d’Arles or Vaucluse; still it has an
abounding interest for the traveller by road, and nowhere will one find
a greater variety of topography or a pleasanter, milder land than in
this neglected corner of Provence.
The roads here are flat, level stretches, five, ten, or more kilometres
in length, and are as straight as an arrow. There is a kilometre
stretch just west of Salon that the Automobile Club de France has
adjudged to be perfectly level, and there a road-devouring monster of
200 h.p. recently made a world’s record for the flying kilometre of 20¾
seconds.
[Illustration: _The Kilometre West of Salon_]
Before returning to the shores of the Étang de Berre, one should make a
détour to Roquefavour and Ventabren. One finds a complete change of
scene and colouring, quite another atmosphere in fact, and yet it is
only a scant ten kilometres off the route.
The château and aqueduct of Roquefavour are each a sermon in stone, the
latter one of those engineering feats of modern times, which, unlike
wire-rope bridges and sky-scrapers, have something of the elements of
beauty in their make-up.
Near by, on a rocky promontory, with a base so firm that all the winds
of the four quarters could never shake its foundations, is the
significantly named village of Ventabren. All about are the ruins of the
magnificence which had existed before, somewhat reminiscent of Les Baux,
while beneath flows the river Arc, the alluvial soil of whose bed has
proved so advantageous to the vine-culture hereabouts.
The aqueduct of Roquefavour has not had the benefit of six centuries of
aging possessed by that similar work near Nîmes, the Pont du Gard of
Agrippa; but it harmonizes wonderfully with the surrounding landscape,
in spite of the fact that it is only a mid-nineteenth-century work,
built to conduct water to Marseilles from far up the valley of the
Durance. Overhead, and beneath the ground, for 122 kilometres, runs the
canal until here, where it crosses the Arc, the monumental viaduct has
proved to be a more stupendous work than any undertaken by the Romans,
who, supposedly, were the master builders of aqueducts.
On returning to the Étang, and after passing several perilously perched
hillside villages, one comes suddenly to Marignane, a name which is
little known or recognized. The town is very contracted, and it is
wofully lacking in every modern convenience, except the electric light,
which, curiously enough, its more opulent neighbour, Martigues, lacks.
Marignane preserves traces of the Roman occupation, though what its
status among the cities of the ancient Provincia may have been will
perhaps ever remain in doubt. Principally it will be loved for its
château of Renaissance times, which belonged to Mirabeau’s mother, who
was of the seigneurial family of Marignane. It is not a remarkably
beautiful building, but it is a satisfactory one in every way, and,
though now in a state of decrepitude, it is a monumental reminder of
other days and other ways. The Hôtel de Ville occupies the old château,
but nothing very lively ever takes place there except the civil
marriages of the commune, participants in which would, it seems, rather
have the knot tied there than in any other similar edifice. Only the
façade misses being a ruin, but all parts preserve the elegance--in
suggestion, at least--of its former glory, and the great state chamber
has been well preserved and cared for.
Formerly the town had the usual fortifications with which important
mediæval cities were surrounded, but they have now disappeared, and one
will have to turn his steps to Salon for any ruins that suggest
feudalism.
There has ever been a contention between archæologists and historians as
to the exact location of the Maritima of Pliny and Ptolemy, a
designation given to a colony of Avatici, in the days when the sea power
of the Greeks and Romans seemed likely never to wane. The question is
still unsettled and crops up again and again.
Marignane, on the shores of the Étang de Bolmon,--an offshoot of that
wonderfully fascinating Étang de Berre,--was, perhaps, the ancient
Maritima Colonia Avaticorum, and Martigues, its grander and better known
neighbour, may have borne the title of Maritima Colonia Anatiliorum. As
a mere matter of title, it is a fine distinction anyway, but everything
points to the fact that the ancients had a great port somewhere on the
shores of this landlocked Étang. Just where this may have been, and what
its name was, is not so clear to-day, for there is scarcely more than a
dozen feet of water in the shallow parts of the Étang, and this fact of
itself would seem to preclude that it was ever a rival of the great
ports of the Mediterranean of other days. The speculation, at any rate,
will give food for thought to any who are interested, and whether this
same Étang ever becomes, as is prophesied, a great series of ports and
docks which will more than rival Marseilles, does not matter in the
least. To-day the Étang de Berre is quite unspoiled in all the charm and
novelty of its environment and of the little salt-water towns which
surround it.
CHAPTER VII.
A SEASCAPE: FROM THE RHÔNE TO MARSEILLES
The Bouches-du-Rhône, like the delta of the Mississippi, is a great
sprawling area of sandbars and currents of brackish water. For miles in
any direction, as the eye turns, it is as if a bit of water-logged
Holland had been transported to the Mediterranean, with sand-dunes and a
scrubby growth of furze as the only recognizable characteristics.
As a great and useful waterway, the Rhône falls conspicuously from the
position which it might have occupied had nature given it a more regular
and dependable flow of water.
The canals from Beaucaire through the Camargue and from Arles to the
Golfe de Fos are the only things that make possible water communication
between the Mediterranean and the towns and cities of the mid-Rhône
valley.
[Illustration: _Bouches-du-Rhône to Marseilles_]
The Golfe des Lions, or the Golfe de Lyon, as it is frequently called,
is the great bay lying between the coast of the Narbonnaise and the
headlands just to the eastward of Marseilles. It is a tempestuous body
of water, when the north wind blows, and travellers by sea, in and out
of Marseilles, have learned to dread it as if it were the Bay of Biscay
itself.
Just eastward of the mouths of the Rhône is a smaller indentation in the
coast-line, the Golfe de Fos, known to mariners as being the best
anchorage between Marseilles and the Bouches-du-Rhône, and which has
received a local name of “Anse du Repos” and “Mouillage d’Aigues
douces.”
Surrounding the Golfe de Fos, and indeed west of the Rhône, are numerous
ponds and marshy bays, similar to the great inland sea of Berre. The
Golfe de Fos is generally thought to be the ancient Mer Avatique, one of
whose salty arms is known as “l’Estomac,” probably a corruption of an
old Provençal expression, _lou stoma_, or perhaps because it is the site
of a colony of the Marseillais known as Stoma Limne, which was
established here a century before the beginning of the Christian era.
Later the Senate of Rome designated Marius as governor of the region,
and he came with his legions and established himself here at the mouth
of the Rhône. He even attempted the then gigantic work of cutting a
free waterway from Arles to the sea, and thus arose--on this spot,
beyond a doubt, if circumstantial history counts for anything--the Port
des Fossés Mariennes which for a long time has been so great a
speculation to French historians.
The port became the _faubourg maritime_ of Arles, as did the Piræus for
Athens. It was at this time that the name of Lion, or Lyon, was given to
the great bay which washes the coast of the ancient Narbonnaise. It grew
up from the fact that the Arlesien shipping was ever in evidence on its
waters, bearing aloft their flags and banners “blazoned with lions.” As
the number of these ships of Arles was great, the name came gradually to
be adopted. The explanation seems plausible, and the countless thousands
who now traverse its waters in great steamships, coming and going from
Marseilles, need no longer speculate as to the origin of the name.
The disappearance of the Roman Empire caused the decadence of the Fossis
Marianis, as the name had been modified, and the invasion of the
barbarians drove the inhabitants to the neighbouring heights, which they
fortified. This Castrum de Fossis became in time the Château des Fossés
Mariennes, and what is left of it, or at least the site, is so known
to-day. In the middle ages the town became a Marquisat belonging to the
Vicomtes de Marseille, but in 1393 it bought its freedom and became a
_communauté_.
[Illustration: _Fos-sur-Mer_]
To-day the little town of Fos-sur-Mer is a queer mixture of the old and
new, of indolence and industry; but the complex sky-line of its old
château, seen over the marshes, is as fairylike and mediæval as old
Carcassonne itself; which is saying the most that can be said of a
crumbling old walled town. It is not so grand, nor indeed so well
preserved, as Carcassonne, but it has all the characteristics, if in a
lesser degree.
Fos has a wonderful industry in the manufacture of paper and cellulose
from the alfa, a textile plant which grows in abundance on the high
plateaux of Algeria. Added, in certain proportions, to the cane or
bamboo of Provence, it produces a most excellent fibre for the
fabrication of high-grade papers; in a measure a very good imitation of
the fine vellum and parchment papers of Japan and China.
From Fos it is but a step to Port de Bouc, the more modern neighbour,
and the gateway by which the products of the Fos of to-day reach the
outside world.
Here, in miniature, are all the indications of a world-port. It is a
picturesque waterside town, the tall chimneys of its factories, the
masts and funnels of the ships at its quays, and the tall spars of the
lateen-rigged “_tartanes_,” all producing a wonderfully serrated
sky-line of the kind loved by artists; but, oh! so difficult for them to
reproduce satisfactorily. Besides these features there is also the
near-by fort and the lighthouse which gleams forth a sailor’s warning a
dozen miles out to sea. The hum of industry and the generally imposing
aspect of the port leads one to suppose, from a distance, that the town
is vastly more populous than it really is; but for all that it is an
interesting note in one’s itinerary along Mediterranean shores.
The whole range of hills south of Martigues, and bordering upon the
Mediterranean itself, is a round of tiny hill towns, which, like St.
Pierre and Chateauneuf, dot the landscape with their spires of wrought
iron surmounting the belfries of their yellow stone churches and
presenting a grouping quite foreign to most things seen in France. They
are not Italian and they are not Spanish, neither are they any distinct
French type; hence they can only be classed as exotics which have taken
root from some previous importation.
One’s itinerary along the Provençal coast, from the mouths of the Rhône
toward Marseilles, comes abruptly to a stop when he reaches the height
of Cap Couronne, which rises just east of the entrance to the Étang de
Caronte, and sees that wonderful panorama of the Golfe de Lyon, with the
distant pall of smoky industry at its extreme eastern horizon.
[Illustration: _Roadside Chapel, St. Pierre_]
The name Couronne is certainly apropos of this dominant headland, under
whose flanks are innumerable natural shelters and anchorages. The
application of the name has a more practical side, however. In Provençal
the word “_cairon_” means limestone, and, since there have been for
ages past great limestone quarries here, it is not difficult to
recognize the origin of the name.
The dusts of the great routes of travel are left behind as one climbs
the gentle slope of the Estaque range from Martigues. After having
passed the rock-cut village of St. Pierre and ascended the incline on
the opposite side of the valley, he finds himself on the height of Cap
Couronne, and the Mediterranean itself bursts all at once upon his gaze,
in much the same fashion as the dawn comes up at Mandalay.
Cap Couronne plunges abruptly at one’s feet, and the shadowy outlines of
the distant flat shores of the Bouches-du-Rhône lie to the westward,
while directly east is the most wonderfully light rose and purple
promontory that one may see outside of Capri and the Bay of Naples. It
is the eastern side of Marseilles, which itself, with its spouting
chimneys, accents the brilliant landscape in a manner which, if not
ideal, is, at least, not offensive.
Who among our modern artists could do this view justice? The blue of the
cloudless sky; the ultramarine waves; and the shabby selvage of smoke,
all blending so marvellously with the pink and purple of the setting
sun. Turner might have done it in times past; doubtless could have done
so; and Whistler--waiting until a little later in the evening--would
have made a symphony of it; but any living artist, called to mind at the
moment, would have bungled it sadly. It is one of those wide-open
seascapes which the art-lover must see _au naturel_ in order to worship.
Nothing on the Riviera--that cinematograph of magic panoramas--can equal
or surpass the late afternoon view from Cap Couronne.
Before one descends upon Marseilles from the Estaque, he comes upon the
little village of Carry.
Of the antiquity of the little fishing-port there is no question, but it
is doubtful if the hordes of Marseillais who come here in summer, to eat
_bouillabaisse_ on the verandas of its restaurants and hotels, know, or
care, anything of this.
As the Incarrus Posito, it had an existence long before _bouillabaisse_
was ever thought of, at least by its present name. It was one of the
advance-posts of the Massaliotes when Marseilles was the Massalia of the
Greeks.
Carry, with its port, and the château of M. Philippe Jourde, a Frenchman
who won his fortune on the field of commerce in the United States, is
delightful, but it is not usually accounted one of the sights that is
worth the while of the Riviera tourist to go out of his way to see.
Within the grounds of the château have been brought to light within
recent years many monumental remains; one bearing the two following
inscriptions bespeaks an antiquity contemporary with the early years of
the building up of Marseilles:
+-----------------+
+-----------+ | |
| | | AES AVC |
| C. POMPEI | |C R IANCO |
| PLANTEA | |IP CAIII |
| | |EXCL INIPSNIS |
| | |SEVIR AUGUSTALIS |
| | | |
| | | I. S. D.|
+-----------+ | |
+-----------------+
Besides this, marbles, mosaics, pottery, coins, and even precious metals
have been found. Carry may then have been something more than a fortress
outpost, or a fishing-village; it may have been a Pompeii.
Almost at one’s elbow is Marseilles itself, brilliant and burning with
the feverish energies of a great mart of trade, and bathed in the dark
blue of the Mediterranean and the lighter blue of the skies. Beyond are
the isles of the bay and the rocky promontories to the eastward, while
to the northeast are the heights of the Var and the Alpes-Maritimes.
Truly the kaleidoscopic first view of the “_Porte de l’Orient_” fully
justifies any rhapsodies. There is but one other view in all France at
all approaching it in splendour,--that of Rouen from the height of Bon
Secours,--and that, in effect, is quite different.
One’s approach to Marseilles by rail from the north is equally a
reminder of a theatrical transformation scene, such as one has when he
reaches Rouen or Cologne; a sudden unfolding of new and strange beauties
of prospect, which are nothing if not startling. The railway runs for
many minutes in the obscurity of the Tunnel de la Nerthe before it
finally debouches on the southern gorges of the Estaque Range, the same
which flanks the coast all the way from Marseilles to the entrance to
the Étang de Berre.
Pines and _boursailles_ and rocky hillocks, set out here and there with
olive-trees, form the immediate foreground, while that distant horizon
of blue, which is everywhere along the Mediterranean, forms a background
which is softer and more sympathetic than that of any other known body
of water, salt or fresh, great or small.
At the base of the first foot-hills of the Estaque lies Marseilles, a
city enormously alive with industry and all the cosmopolitan life of one
of the most important--if not the greatest--of all world-ports. Here
human industry has transformed a naturally beautiful and commodious
situation into a mighty hive of affairs, where its long, straight
streets only end at the water’s edge, and the basins and docks are
simply great rectangular gulfs, seemingly endless in their immensity.
Great towering chimney-stacks of brick punctuate the landscape here and
there, and the masts of vessels and the funnels of steamships carry
still further the idea of energetic restlessness.
Offshore are the innumerable rocky islets, seemingly merely moored in
the sea, around which skim myriads of sailing-vessels and steamers,
quite in the ceaseless manner of cinematograph pictures, while an
occasional black cloud of smoke indicates the presence of a great liner
from the Far East, making port with its cargo of humanity and the silks
and spices of the Orient.
The view of the waterside and offshore Marseilles, with the harmonious
Mediterranean blue blending into all, is transplendent in its
loveliness. Nothing is green or gray, as it is at Bordeaux, or Nantes,
or Le Havre; and none of the fog or smoke of the great cities of
mid-France, of Paris, of Lyons, or of St. Étienne is here visible;
instead all is brilliant--garishly brilliant, if you like, but still
harmoniously so--in a blend that compels admiration.
Marseilles is a great conglomerate city made up by the intermingling of
the neighbouring villages, bourgs, and _petites villes_ until they have
quite lost their own identity in the communion of the greater.
Some day the Rhône will empty itself into the great _Bassins_ of the
port of Marseilles; that is, if the moving of the traffic of the port to
the Étang de Berre at Martigues and Berre does not take place, which is
unlikely. When the _chalands_ and _péniches du nord_ can come from Le
Havre, from Rouen, from Antwerp, and from Paris direct to the quays of
Marseilles, by way of the canals and the Rhône, an additional prosperity
will have come to this greatest of all Mediterranean ports. No more will
it be a struggle with Genoa and Triest; and Marseilles will grow still
grander and more lively and cosmopolitan.
In her efforts in this direction Marseilles has found an ardent ally in
Lyons, whose Chamber of Commerce has ever lent its aid toward this end,
burying all jealousies as to which shall become the second city of
France. Lyons, be it understood, great and industrious as it is, is at a
distinct disadvantage in transportation matters by reason of its
geographical position, although it already possesses at Port St. Louis,
at the mouth of the Grand Rhône, a port of transhipment for all
cumbersome goods which proceed by way of the towed convoys of the Rhône
canals. With direct communication with Marseilles one handling will be
saved and much money, hence all Lyonnais pray for this new state of
affairs to be speedily brought about. The day when the _chalands_ of the
Seine can meet the _navaires_ of La Joliette, Marseilles will surpass
Antwerp and Hamburg, say the Marseillais.
CHAPTER VIII.
MARSEILLES--COSMOPOLIS
Marseilles has more than once been called the Babylon of the south, and
with truth, for such a babel of many tongues is to be heard in no Latin
or Teuton city in the known world.
At Marseilles all is tumultuous and gay, and the Cannebière is the
gayest of all. Mèry perpetuated its fame, or at any rate spread it far
and wide, when he said, “_Si Paris avait une Cannebière, ce serait un
petit Marseille_.” It is not a long thoroughfare, this Cannebière, in
spite of its extension in the Rue de Noailles, but its animation and its
gaiety give it an incontestable air of grandeur which many more
pretentious thoroughfares entirely lack. Lyons has more beautiful
streets, and Paris has avenues and boulevards more densely thronged, but
the Cannebière has a character that is all its own, and a reputation for
worldliness which it lives up to in every particular. In reality the
Cannebière is Marseilles, the palpitating heart of the second city of
France. One does not need to go far away, however, before he comes to
the tranquillity and convention of the average provincial capital, and
for this reason this great street of luxurious shops and grand hotels is
the more remarkable, and the contrast the more absolute. By ten o’clock
the whole city of convention sleeps, but the Cannebière and its cafés
are as full of light and noise as ever, and remain so until one or two
in the morning.
Not only does the Cannebière captivate the stranger, but each of the
various _quartiers_ does the same, until one realizes that the life of
Marseilles unrolls itself as does no other in provincial France. The
arts, science, industry, commerce, and the shipping all have their
separate and distinct quarters, where the life of their own affairs is
ceaseless and brings a content which only comes from industry.
Twenty-five centuries have rolled by since the foundations of the
present prosperity of Marseilles were laid, and nowhere has the star of
progress burned more brilliantly.
Fortunate among all other great cities, Marseilles has preserved all the
essential elements of its former glory and opulence, and even added to
them with the advance of ages, remaining meanwhile “_encore jeune,
souriante, robuste, comme si le temps ne pouvait rien sur sa force
sereine, sur sa triomphante beauté_.”
Save the Byzance of antiquity, no seaport of history has enjoyed a rôle
so brilliant or so extended as Marseilles. The great maritime cities of
antiquity have disappeared, but Marseilles goes on aggrandizing itself
for ever, with--in spite of very general transformation--the impress of
the successive epochs, Greek, Roman, Frankish, and feudal, still in
evidence, here and there where the memory of some quaint and bygone
custom is unearthed or some mediæval monument is brought to light.
By no means is all of the butterfly order here in the Mediterranean
metropolis. “_Les affaires_” are very serious affairs, and profitable
ones to those engaged in their pursuit, and the Marseillais business man
is as keen as his fellows anywhere. There is also a life redolent of
science and art, as vivid as that of the capital itself, and the press
of Marseilles is one of the most literary in a nation of literary
newspapers. Taine slandered Marseilles when he said that it was wholly
given up to “_la grosse joie_,” as he did also when he said that the
pleasure of its inhabitants was to make money out of breadstuffs or
gamble in oil, or some such words. And Taine was a Marseillais, too.
Here, as in many others of the old-world cities of France, are streets
so narrow that a cart may not turn around in them, all busy with the
little affairs of the lower classes, full of taverns, bars and _débits
de vin_, cheap _cafés-chantants_,--from which the stranger had best keep
out,--and from one end to the other full of straggling sailors of all
nationalities and tongues under the sun.
This population of sailors and dock-labourers is of a certain doubtful
social probity, but all the same the spectacle is unique, and far more
edifying to witness than a midnight ramble through San Francisco’s
Chinatown, though perhaps more fraught with danger to one’s person.
The Rue de la République has pushed its way through this old _quartier_,
but it has brought with it none of the modern life of the newer parts of
the town, and the narrow, tortuous streets around and about the “Hôtel
Dieu” are as brutally uncouth as any old-time quarter of a great city
peopled by the poorer classes; with this difference, that at Marseilles
everything, good, bad, and indifferent, is exaggerated.
It is here in this old quarter that one finds the true type of the
Marseillais as he was in other days, if one knows where to look for him,
and what he looks like when he meets him, for Marseilles is so full of
strange men and women that the bird of passage is likely enough to
confound Greek with Jew and Lascar with Arab, to say nothing of the
difficulty of putting the Maltese and Portuguese in their proper places
in the medley. When it comes to distinguishing the Provençal from the
Marseillais and the Niçois from the Catalan, the task is more difficult
still.
The Marseillais _pur sang_ (except that it has been many centuries since
he has been _pur sang_) is a unique type among the inhabitants of
France, the product of many successive immigrations from most of the
Mediterranean countries. He is indeed an extraordinary development,
though in no way outré or unsympathetic, in spite of being a
bloodthirsty-looking individual. To describe him were impossible. The
Marseillais is a Marseillais by his dark complexion, by his svelte
figure, and by the exuberance of his gestures and his voice. Always
ready for adventure or pleasure, he is the very stuff of which the
sea-rovers of another day were made.
The Marseillais has been portrayed by many a French writer, and his
virtues have been lauded and his faults exposed. Mèry, a Marseillais
himself, has traced an amusing character, while Edmond About and Taine
were both struck by the Marseillais love of lucre and violent
amusements. Alexandre Dumas has drawn more or less idyllic portraits of
him.
The topographical transformation of Marseilles in recent times has been
great. It was the first among the great cities of France to cut new
streets and build sumptuous modern palaces devoted to civic affairs. The
Rue de la République, if still lined in part with inferior houses, is
nevertheless one of the fine thoroughfares of the world. Its laying out
was a colossal task, cutting through the most solidly built and most
ancient quarter of the city. Neither the aristocratic nor the bourgeois
population have ever come to it for business or residence, but it serves
the conduct of affairs in a way which the tortuous streets of the old
régime would not have done. Many of the great avenues of the city are as
grand in their way as the best and most aristocratic of those in Paris,
and the world of commerce, of the Bourse, and of the liberal
professions, lives surrounded by as much sumptuousness and good taste as
the same classes in the capital itself. In other words, “_la société
Marseillais_” is no less endowed with good taste and the love of
luxurious appointments and surroundings than is the most Parisian of
Parisian circles,--a term which has come to mean much in the refinements
of modern life. “_Des plaisirs bruyants et grossiers_” may have struck
the Taines of a former day, but the twentieth-century student of men and
affairs will not place the Marseillais and the things of his household
very far down in the social scale, provided he is possessed of a mind
which is trained to make just estimates.
Le Prado is another of the fine streets of Marseilles. It is a majestic
boulevard, the continuation of the Rue de Rome, beyond the Place
Castellane. Practically it is a great tree-bordered avenue, which is
lined with the gardens of handsome villas. It is as attractive as Unter
den Linden or the Champs Élysées.
Marseilles has many specialities. _Bouillabaisse_ is one of them;
flowers, which you buy at a ridiculous low price at those curious little
pulpits which line the Cours St. Louis, are another; and a third are the
strawberries, which are here brought to one’s door and sold in all the
perfection of fresh picked fruit. They are sold in “pots” of porous
stone, covered with a peculiar gray paper, and the size and capacity of
the “pots” is regulated by a municipal decree. The “_grand pot_” must
contain four hundred grammes, and the “_petit pot_” two hundred. All of
which is vastly more satisfactory for the purchaser than the
false-bottomed box of America or the underweighted scales of the
greengrocer in England.
[Illustration: _Flower Market, Cours St. Louis_]
This “_pot-à-fraise_” of Marseilles is a commodity strictly local, and
no fresh fruit is more in demand in season than the strawberries of
Roquevaire, Beaudinard, and Aubagne. The season’s consumption of
strawberries at Marseilles is 350,000 litres.
The street cries of Marseilles may not be as famous as those of London,
but they are many and lively nevertheless. Fish, fruit, and many other
things form the burden of the cries one hears at Marseilles in these
days; but, like most of the picturesque old customs, this is being
crowded out. The itinerant _vitrier_ still makes his round, however, and
you may hear him any day:
“Encore un carreau cassé
Voici le vitrier qui passe....”
In this connection it is interesting to recall that all glass made in
Provence in the thirteenth century was by authorization of the Bishop of
Marseilles, and that the industry was entirely in the hands of the
Chartreux monks. Only in the fifteenth century, at the hands of the good
King René, did the trade receive any extension.
The fishing industry has ever been prominent in the minor affairs of
Marseilles. The ancient Provençal government guaranteed the fishing
rights to certain “_patrons pêcheurs_,” and, when the province was
united with the Crown of France, in 1481, the Grand Seneschal confirmed
the privileges in the name of Louis XI. They were again confirmed, in
1536, by François I., and in 1557 by Henri II.
By letters patent, in December, 1607, Henri IV. gave a permit to the
_pêcheurs_ of Marseilles which allowed them to sell their fish in all
_villes de mer_ that they might choose, and to be free from paying any
tax for the privilege. Thus it is seen that from the very earliest times
the traffic was one which was bound to prosper and add to the city’s
wealth and independence.
Louis XIII. was even more liberal. He extended the right of control of
the fishing, even by strangers, to the “_Prud’hommes de Marseilles_” (a
sort of a fishing guild, which endures even unto to-day), and forbade
any taking of fish between Cap Couronne and Cap de l’Aigle, except with
their permission.
Louis XIV., on a certain occasion, when he was passing through
Marseilles, confirmed all that his predecessors had granted, and further
accorded them 3,500 minots of salt, at a price of eleven livres per
minot.
The “_Prud’hommes_” formed a sort of court or tribunal which regulated
all disputes between members. To open a case one merely had to deposit
two _sols_ in a box, the contents of which were destined for the poor
(the other side contributing also), and four of the chosen number of
the “_Prud’hommes_” sat in judgment upon the question at issue. The
loser was addressed in the short and explicit formula, “_La loi vous
condamne_,” and forthwith he either had to pay up, or his boats and nets
were seized. “Never was there a law so efficacious,” says the historian
of this interesting guild; and all will be inclined to agree with him.
The “_Prud’hommes_” of Marseilles still exist as an institution, but
their picturesque costume of other days has, it is needless to say,
disappeared. The old-time “_Prud’homme_,” with a Henri Quatre mantle, a
velvet toque for a hat, and a two-handed sword, would be a strange
figure on the streets of up-to-date Marseilles.
The amateur fisherman in France is not the minor factor that English
Nimrods would have one believe, though the mere taking of fish is a side
issue with him. Not always does he make of it a solitary occupation. At
Marseilles he has his “fishing excursions” and his “chowder-parties,”
and the deep-sea fishing bouts held off the Provençal coast would do
credit to a Rockaway skipper.
Read the following announcement of the banquet of “La Société de Pêche
la Girelle” of Marseilles, culled from a morning paper:
“Members will meet at six o’clock in the morning, and will leave for
the Planier (Marseilles’ great far-reaching light) grounds ‘_sur le
bateau à vapeur le Cannois_;’ the overflow in small boats. To return at
noon for a grand banquet _chez_ Mistral. _Bouillabaisse et toute le
reste_.”
Another great passion of the Marseillais, of all classes, is for the
“_campagne_.” The wealthy _commerçant_ has his sumptuous villa--always
gaily built, but a sad thing from an architectural point of view--in the
valley of the Huveaune, or on the slopes of the “Corniche” overlooking
the Mediterranean. The _petit bourgeois_, the shopkeeper or the man of
small affairs, contents himself with a _cabanon_, but it is his _maison
de campagne_ just the same. It is merely a stone hut with a tiny terrace
fronting it on the sunny side, sheltered by a _tonnelle_, and that is
all. The proprietor of this grand affair spends his Sundays and his
fête-days throughout the year here on the slope of some rocky hill
overlooking the sea, sleeps on a camp bedstead, and goes out early in
the morning _pour la pêche_, in the hope of taking fish enough to make
his _bouillabaisse_. Probably he will catch nothing, but he will have
his _bouillabaisse_ just the same, even if he has to go back to town to
get it in a quayside restaurant. This is a simple and healthful enough
way to spend one’s time assuredly, so why cavil at it, in spite of its
ludicrous and juvenile side,--a sort of playing at housekeeping.
The _cabanons_ are numerous for miles around Marseilles in every
direction, above all on the hills overlooking the sea and in the valleys
of the Oriol, the Berger, and the Huveaune, in fact, in any ravine where
one may gain a foothold and hire a _pied-de-terre_ for fifty to a
hundred francs a year.
The real traveller of enthusiasm, the kind that Sterne wrote for when he
said “let us go to France,” will not be content merely to know
Marseilles, the town, but will wander afield to Estaque, to Allauch, to
Les Aygalades, and to any and all of the scores of excursion points
which the Marseillais, more than the inhabitants of any other city in
France, are so fond of visiting. Then, and then only, will one know the
real life of the Marseillais.
The tour of the shores of the _golfe_ alone will occupy a week of one’s
time very profitably, be he poet or painter.
At Les Aygalades are the remains of a Carmelite chapel, which came under
the special patronage of King René of Anjou, also a château constructed
for the Maréchal de Villars.
[Illustration: _A Cabanon_]
Back of the Bassin d’Arenc is a hamlet, now virtually a part of
Marseilles itself, perched high upon a hill, from which one gets a
marvellous panorama of all the life of the great seaport.
Seon-Saint-André was formerly a suburb composed entirely of vineyards,
where picturesque peasants worked and sang as they do in opera, and
spent their evenings rejoicing over the one great meal of the day.
To-day all suggestion of this rural and sylvan life has disappeared, and
brick-yards and soap-factories furnish an entirely different colour
scheme for one’s canvas.
At St. Julien Cæsar had one of his many camps which he so plentifully
scattered over Gaul, and, as usual, he selected it with judgment;
certainly nothing but modern engines of war could ever have successfully
attacked his intrenchments from land or sea.
All the country immediately back of Marseilles to the eastward was, in a
former day, covered with a dense forest. A breach was made in it by
Charles IX., who had not the least notion of what the preservation of
the kingdom’s resources meant, though another monarch, René d’Anjou,
came here frequently to the tiny chapel of St. Marguerite--the remains
of which still exist in the suburb of the same name--to pray that he
might be favoured by capturing “the deer of many horns.” From this
latter fact it may be inferred that he was a true lover and preserver of
forests, like the later François of Renaissance times.
Offshore the islands of the bay contain much of historic interest,
including the Château d’If with all its array of fact and romance, the
Iles Pomegue and Rattonneau, and the Ile de Riou. The latter lies just
eastward of the Planier and is so small as to be hardly recognizable on
the map, and yet prolific in the remains of a civilization of another
day. It was only within the present year (1905) that an engraved silex
was discovered buried in its sandy soil. This stone was identical with
those inscribed stones found in Egypt from time to time, and dating from
a period long previous to any recorded history of that country.
This sermon in stone was presented to the French Academy of
Inscriptions, and by them thought to prove that the Egyptians, even as
far back as prehistoric times, had already learned the art of navigation
by small craft (for they were then ignorant of working in metal), and in
some considerable body had settled here in the neighbourhood of
Marseilles long before the Phoceans. This is all conjecture of course,
as the stone may have been a fragment of a larger morsel which formed
the anchor of some fishing-boat, or a piece of ballast taken aboard off
the Egyptian coast, which ultimately found a resting-place here on Riou.
It may be, even, that some “collector” of ages ago brought the stone
here as a curio; in short, it may have been transported by any one of a
hundred ways and at almost any time. At any rate, it is all guesswork,
regardless of the sensation which the finding of it made among
archæologists; but it proves that all is not yet known of ancient
history.
It is a remarkable view, looking landwards, that one gets from the
height of the donjon of the Château d’If. Back of the city, which itself
is but a short three miles distant, is a wonderful framing of
mountainous rocks and gray hills set about with olive and fig trees,
while in the immediate foreground is a forest of masts and belching,
smoky chimneys which give a distance and transparency to the view which
is almost too picturesque to be true. It is no dream, however, and there
is nothing of illusion about it, and soon a tiny steamboat will have
brought one back to shore and all the excitable diversions of the
Cannebière. One makes his way to shore around and behind innumerable
bales, boxes, and baskets, coils of rope, _charrettes_ and _camions_,
and treads gingerly over sleeping roustabouts and sailors.
The docks and quays of Marseilles will have a surprise for those
familiar only with the ports of La Manche and the western ocean. High or
low water there makes a considerable economic and picturesque
difference, but in the Mediterranean there is always a regular depth of
water; its level is always practically the same, and fishing-boats and
great Eastern liners alike come and go without thought of tides or
dock-gates.
The commerce of Marseilles is, as might be expected, highly varied, and
the flags of all the great and small commercial nations are at one time
or another within its port, whose importations--not counting the orange
boats--greatly exceed the exports. Nearly a third of the imports are
made up of cereals, Marseilles being by far the greatest port of entry
in France for this class of product. Russia, Turkey, Algeria, the
Indies, and America send their wheat, Piedmont and Asia their rice,
Algeria, Tunis, and Russia their barley, while beans are sent in great
quantities from the ports of the Black Sea.
Marseilles is the centre, the most important in all France, for the
production of all manner of oils, vegetable, mineral, and animal.
Petroleum, cotton-seed, the olive, and many kindred fruits and berries
all go to make possible a vast industry which is famous throughout the
world.
Sugar-refining, too, is of great proportions here, and the trade of
importing and exporting the raw and refined sugars amounts to over one
hundred millions of kilos per year. Of the raw sugar imported, more than
two-thirds comes from the French colonies, so that, with the enormous
production of beet-sugar as well, France alone, of all European nations,
has the sugar question solved.
Coffee forms a considerable part of the trade of Marseilles, sixteen to
twenty thousand tons being handled in one year. This of course
demonstrates that the French are great coffee-drinkers, though the palm
goes to Holland for the greatest consumption per capita. Cocoa and
coffee come to France in large quantities from Brazil, and pepper from
Indo-China.
It is an interesting fact to record that the receipts of cotton in the
port of Marseilles are steadily on the decrease, by far the largest
bulk now being delivered at Le Havre and Rouen by reason of their
proximity to the great cotton-manufacturing centres in Normandy, while
the mills in the east of France choose to bring their supplies through
the gateway of Antwerp. The traffic at Marseilles has fallen,
accordingly, from 125,000 bales in 1876 to less than 50,000 at the
present day. On the other hand, the importation of the cocoons of the
silkworm finds its natural gateway at Marseilles, this being the most
direct route from China, Japan, Turkey, Greece, and Austria to the
factories of Lyons.
Marseilles is the centre of the soap industry of the world, situated as
it is in the very heart of the region of the olive, which makes not only
the olive-oil of commerce but the best of common soaps as well,
including the famous Castile soap, which has deserted Castile for
Marseilles. One hundred and twenty-one million kilos of soap are made
here every year, of which a fifth part, at least, is exported to all
corners of the globe, the bulk being taken by the French colonies.
[Illustration: _Marseilles in 1640_]
The passenger traffic of the great liners which come and go from this,
the chief port of the south of Europe, is vast. The movement of
_paquebots_ and _courriers_ is incessant, not only those that go to the
Mediterranean ports of Algeria, Spain, Tunis, Corsica, Italy, Greece,
Turkey, the Black Sea, and all those queer and little known ports of the
near East as well, but also the great liners, French, English, German,
Dutch, and Italian, which make the round voyages to the Far East and
Australia with the regularity of Atlantic liners, but with vastly more
romance about them, for the death-dealing pace of twenty-two or
twenty-three knots an hour is unknown under the sunny skies of the
Mediterranean and Indian Ocean.
The old and new parts of Marseilles are one of the chief attractions for
the stranger to this fascinating city. The Port Vieux and the new
Bassins de la Joliette are separated by a peninsula which comprises the
chief part of old Marseilles; indeed it is the site of the primitive
city of the Phoceans, who came, it is undeniably asserted, six hundred
years before Christ.
If the new ports of Marseilles have not the same picturesqueness as the
Port Vieux, they at least overtop it in their intensity of action and
the fever of commercialism. Here, too, hundreds of sailing-vessels (but
of an entirely different species from those of the old port) come and
go without cessation, bringing the diverse products of the Mediterranean
shores to the markets of the world by way of Marseilles: piles of golden
oranges from the Balearic Isles, figs from Smyrna, wool from Algeria,
rice from Piedmont, _arachides_ from Senegal, dyestuffs from Central
America, pine from Sweden and Norway, and marbles from Italy. All this,
and more, greets the eye at every turn, and the very sight of the varied
cargoes tells a story which is fascinating and romantic even in these
worldly times.
Take the orange cargoes for example; the mere handling of them between
the ship and the shore is as picturesque as one could possibly imagine.
The unloading is done by women called _porteiris_, all of whom it is
said are Genoese, although why this should be is difficult for the tyro
to understand, and the master longshoreman under whom they work
apparently does not know either. The oranges are brought on shore in
great baskets, which are poured out in a steady stream into the cars on
the quay. During the process all is gay with song and laughter, it being
one of the principal tenets of the creed of the southern labourers, men
or women, that they must not be dull at their work.
CHAPTER IX.
A RAMBLE WITH DUMAS AND MONTE CRISTO
One day, something like four hundred years ago, a little colony of
Catalans quitted Spain and, sailing across the terrible Gulf of Lions,
came to Marseilles and begged the privilege of settling on that jutting
tongue of land to the left of Marseilles’s Vieux Port, known even to-day
as the Pointe des Catalans.
To reach the Pointe and Quartier des Catalans one follows along the
quays of the old port and climbs the height to the left. Of course one
should walk; no genuine literary pilgrim ever takes a car, though there
is one leaving the Cannebière, marked “Catalans,” every few minutes.
Dantes’s Mercédès was a Catalane of the Catalans, and is the most
lovable figure in all the Dumas portrait gallery. Descended from the
early settlers of the colony at Marseilles, Mercédès, the betrothed of
the ambitious Dantes, was indeed lovely, that is, if we accept Dumas’s
picture of her, and the author’s portraiture was always exceedingly
good, whatever may have been his errors when dealing with historical
fact.
Half-Moorish, half-Spanish, and with a very little Provençal blood, the
Catalans kept their distinct characteristics, while the other settlers
of Marseilles developed into the type well known and recognized to-day
as the Marseillais.
Their looks, manners, and customs, their houses and their clothes were
faithful--and are still, to no small extent--to the early traditions of
the race, and, by intermarrying, the type was kept comparatively pure,
so that in this twentieth century the Catalan women of Marseilles are as
distinct a species of beautiful women as the Niçoise or the Arlesienne,
both types distinct from their French sisters, and each of great repute
among the world’s beautiful women.
Dumas was not very explicit with regard to the geography of this Catalan
quarter of Marseilles, though his references to it were numerous in that
most famous of all his romances, “Monte Cristo.”
At the time of which Dumas wrote (1815) its topographical aspect had
probably changed but little from what it had been for a matter of three
or four centuries, and the sea-birds then, even as now, hovered about
the jutting promontory and winged their way backwards and forwards
across the mouth of the old harbour, where the ugly but useful Pont
Transbordeur now stretches its five hundred metres of wire ropes.
Around the Anse and the Pointe des Catalans were--and are still--grouped
the habitations of the Catalan fisher and sailor folk. One sees to-day,
among the men and women alike, the same distinction of type which Dumas
took for his ideal, and one has only to climb any of the narrow
stairlike streets which wind up from the sea-level to see the
counterpart of Dantes’s Mercédès sitting or standing by some open
doorway.
For a detailed, but not too lengthy, description of the manners and
customs of the Catalans of Marseilles, one can not do better than turn
to the pages of Dumas and read for himself what the great romancer wrote
of the lovely Mercédès and her kind.
There are at least a half-dozen chapters of “Monte Cristo” which, if
re-read, would form a very interesting commentary on the Marseilles of
other days.
The opening lines of Dumas’s romance gives the key-note of old
Marseilles: “On the 28th of February, 1815, the watch-tower of Notre
Dame de la Garde signalled the ‘_trois-mâts_’ _Pharaon_, from Smyrna,
Triest, and Naples.”
The functions of Notre Dame de la Garde have changed somewhat since that
time, but it is still the dominant note and beacon by land and sea, from
which sailors and landsmen alike take their bearings, and it is the best
of starting-points for one who would review the past history of this
most cosmopolitan of all European cities.
High up, overlooking the Château du Pharo, now a Pasteur Hospital; above
the old Abbey of St. Victor, now a barracks; and above the Fort St.
Nicholas, which guards one side of the entrance to Marseilles port, is
the fort and sanctuary of Notre Dame de la Garde. The fort was one of
the first erections of its class by François Premier, who had something
of a reputation as a fortress-builder as well as a designer of châteaux
and a winner of women’s hearts. Originally the fortress-château enfolded
within its walls an ancient chapel to Ste. Marie, and an old tower which
dated from the tenth century. This old tower, overlooking the town as
well as the harbour, was given the name of La Garde, which in turn was
taken by the château which ultimately grew up on the same site.
This was long before the days of the present gorgeous edifice, which was
not consecrated until 1864.
The château bore the familiar escutcheon of the Roi-Chevalier, the
symbolical salamander, but as a fortress it never attained any great
repute, as witness the following poetical satire:
“C’est Notre Dame de la Garde,
Gouvernement commode et beau,
A qui suffit pour toute garde
Un Suisse, avec sa hallebarde,
Peint sur la port du château.”
The reference was to a painted figure of a Swiss on the entrance-door,
and whatever the irony or cynicism may have been, it was simply a
forerunner of the time when the fortress became no longer a place to be
depended upon in time of war, though at the time of which Dumas wrote it
was still a signal-station whence ships coming into Marseilles were
first reported.
[Illustration: _Notre Dame de la Garde and the Harbour of Marseilles_]
The modern church, in the Byzantine style, which now occupies this
commanding site, is warm in the affections of the sailor-folk of
Marseilles; besides which it is visited incessantly by pilgrims from
all parts of the world and for all manner of reasons; some to bring a
votive offering of a tiny ship and say a prayer or two for some dear one
travelling by sea; another to place at the foot of the statue of “_La
Bonne Mère_” a golden heart, as a talisman of a firm affection; and
others to leave little ivory replicas of a foot or an arm which had
miraculously recovered from some crippling accident. Add to these the
curious, and those who come for the view, and the numbers who ascend to
this commanding height by the narrow streets of steps, or the
_funiculaire_, are many indeed. As an enterprise for the purpose of
vending photographic souvenirs, the whole combination takes on huge
proportions. The church is really a most ornate and luxurious work,
built of the marbles of Carrara and Africa, on the pure Byzantine plan,
and surmounted with an enormous gilded statue of the Virgin nearly fifty
feet in height.
This great beacon by land and sea, rising as it does to a height of
considerably over five hundred feet, is the point of departure of that
great deep-sea traffic which goes on so continually from the great port
of Marseilles. An enthusiastic and imaginative Frenchman puts it as
follows--and it can hardly be improved upon: “_Adieu! tu gardes
jalousement ta couronne de reine de la mer._”
[Illustration: _Environs of Marseilles_]
Of all the points of sentimental and romantic interest at Marseilles and
in its neighbourhood, the Château d’If will perhaps most strongly
impress itself upon the mind and memory. The Quartier des Catalans and
the Château d’If are indeed the chief recollections which most people
have of the city of the Phoceans, as well as of the romance of “Monte
Cristo.”
[Illustration: _Château d’If_]
The descriptions in the first pages of this wonderful romance could not
be improved upon in the idea they convey of what this grim fortress was
like in the days when the great Napoleon was languishing at Elba.
Little is changed to-day so far as the general outlines are concerned.
The little islet lies off the harbour’s mouth scarce the proverbial
stone’s throw, and visitors come and go and poke their heads in and out
of the sombre galleries and dungeons, asking the guardian, meanwhile, if
they are really those of which Dumas wrote. History defines it all with
even more accuracy than does romance, for one may recall that the prison
was one time the cage of the notorious Marquis de la Valette, the “Man
of the Iron Mask,” and many others.
One’s mind always turns to Dantes and the gentle Abbé Faria, however,
and your cicerone with great coolness tells you glibly, and with perfect
conviction, just what apartments they occupied. You may take his word,
or you may not, but it is well to recall that the Abbé Faria was no
mythical character, though he never was an occupant of the island prison
in which Dumas placed him.
The real Abbé Faria was a metaphysicist and a hypnotist of the first
rank in his day, and one feels that there is more than a suggestion of
this--or of some somnambulistic foresight or prophecy--in the last
speech which Dumas gives him when addressing Dantes: “_Surtout n’oubliez
pas Monte Cristo, n’oubliez pas le trésor!_”
Dumas’s own accounts of the Château d’If are indeed wonderful
word-pictures, descriptive and narrative alike. It is romance and
history combined in that wonderful manner of which Dumas alone was the
master. The best guide, undoubtedly, to Château d’If is to be found in
Chapters XIV., XV., XVII., and XX. of Dumas’s romance, though, truth to
tell, the action of his plot was mostly imaginative and his scenario
more or less artificial.
As it rounded the Château d’If, a pilot boarded Dantes’s vessel, the
_Pharaon_, between Cap Morgion and the Ile de Riou. “Immediately, the
platform of Fort St. Jean was covered with onlookers, for it always was
an event at Marseilles for a ship to come into port.”
To-day the whole topography of the romance, so far as it refers to
Marseilles, is all spread out for the enthusiast in brilliant relief;
all as if one were himself a participant in the joyousness of the
home-coming of the good ship _Pharaon_.
The old port from whose basin runs the far-famed Cannebière was the
Lacydon of antiquity, and was during many centuries the glory and
fortune of the town. To-day the old-time traffic has quite forsaken it,
but it is none the less the most picturesque seaport on the
Mediterranean. It is to-day, even as it was of yore, thronged with all
the paraphernalia of ships and shipping of the old-school order. It is
always lively and brilliant, with flags flung to the breeze and much
cordage, and fishing-tackle, and what not belonging to the little
sailing-craft which to-day have appropriated it for their own, leaving
the great liners and their kind to go to the newer basins and docks to
the westward.
Virtually the Vieux Port is a museum of the old marine, for, except the
great white-hulled, ocean-going yachts, which seem always to be at
anchor there, scarce a steam-vessel of any sort is to be seen, save,
once and again, a fussy little towboat. Most of the ships of the Vieux
Port are those indescribably beautiful craft known as _navaires à voiles
de la Mediterranée_, which in other words are simply great
lateen-rigged, piratical-looking craft, which, regardless of the fact
that they are evidently best suited for the seafaring of these parts,
invariably give the stranger the idea that they are something of an
exotic nature which has come down to us through the makers of school
histories. They are as strange-looking to-day as would be the caravels
of Columbus or the viking ships of the Northmen.
All the Mediterranean types of sailing craft are found here, and their
very nomenclature is picturesque--_bricks_, _goelettes_, _balancelles_,
_tartanes_ and _barques de pêche_ of a variety too great for them all to
have names. For the most part they all retain the slim, sharp prow,
frequently ornamented with the conventional figurehead of the old days,
a bust, or a three-quarters or full-length female figure, or perhaps a
_guirlande dorée_.
One’s impression of Marseilles, when he is on the eve of departure, will
be as varied as the temperament of individuals; but one thing is
certain--its like is to be found nowhere else in the known and travelled
world. Port Said is quite as cosmopolitan, but it is not grand or even
picturesque; New York is as much of a mixture of nationalities and
“colonies,” from those of the Syrians and Greeks on the lower East Side
to those of the Hungarians, Poles, and Slavs on the West, but they have
not yet become firmly enough established to have become
picturesque,--they are simply squalid and dirty, and no one has ever yet
expressed the opinion that the waterside life of New York’s wharves and
locks has anything of the colour and life of the Mediterranean about it;
Paris is gay, brilliant, and withal cosmopolitan, but there is a
conventionality about it that does not exist in the great port of
Marseilles, where each reviving and declining day brings a whole new
arrangement of the mirror of life.
Marseilles is, indeed, “_la plus florissante et la plus magnifique des
villes latines_.”
CHAPTER X.
AIX-EN-PROVENCE AND ABOUT THERE
Much sentimental and historic interest centres around the world-famed
ancient capital of Aix-en-Provence.
To-day its position, if subordinate to that of Marseilles in commercial
matters, is still omnipotent, so far as concerns the affairs of society
and state. To-day it is the _chef-lieu_ of the Arrondissement of the
same name in the Département des Bouches du Rhône; the seat of an
archbishopric; of the Cour d’Appel; and of the Académie, with its
faculties of law and letters.
Aix-en-Provence, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Aix-les-Bains are all confused in
the minds of the readers of the Anglo-Parisian newspapers. There is
little reason for this, but it is so. Aix-la-Chapelle is the shrine of
Charlemagne; Aix-les-Bains, of the god of baccarat--and in a later day
bridge and automobile-boat races; but Aix-en-Provence is still prominent
as the brilliant capital of the beauty-loving court of the middle ages.
The remains of this past existence are still numerous, and assuredly
they appeal most profoundly to all who have ever once come within their
spell, from that wonderfully ornate portal of the Église de St. Sauveur
to King René’s “Book of Hours” in the Bibliothèque Méjanes.
Three times has Aix changed its location. The ancient _ville gauloise_,
whose name appears to be lost in the darkness of the ages, was some
three kilometres to the north, and the _ville romaine_ of Aquæ-Sextiæ
was some distance to the westward of the present city of
Aix-en-Provence.
The part played in history by Aix-en-Provence was great and important,
not only as regards its own career, but because of the aid which it gave
to other cities of Provence. For the assistance which she gave
Marseilles, when that city was besieged by the Spanish, Aix was given
the right to bear upon her blazoned shield the arms of the Counts of
Anjou (the quarterings of Anjou, Sicily, and Jerusalem). This accounts
for the complex and familiar emblems seen to-day on the city arms.
René d’Anjou was much revered in Aix, in which town he made his
residence. It was but natural that the city should in a later day
honour him with a statue bearing the inscription, “_Au bon roi René,
dont la mémoire sera toujours chère aux Provençaux_.”
There were times when sadness befell Aix, but on the whole its career
was one of gladsome pleasure. To René, poet of imagination as well as
king, was due the founding of the celebrated Fête-Dieu. In one form or
another it was intermittently continued up to the middle of the
nineteenth century. Originally it was a curious bizarre affair, with
angels, apostles, disciples, and the whole list of Biblical characters
personated by the citizens. The “Fête de la Reine de Saba,” the “Danse
des Olivettes,” and the “Danse des Épées” were other processional fêtes
which contributed not a little to the gay life here in the middle ages
and account for the survival to-day of many local customs.
Nostradamus, the prophet of Salon, gives the following flattering
picture of “Le Prince d’Amour,” the title given to the head of the
mediæval Courts of Love which nowhere flourished so gorgeously as here:
“He marched always at the head of the parade, alone and richly clad.
Behind were his lieutenants, his nobles, his standard-bearers, and a
great escort of horsemen, all costumed at his expense.”
It was Louis XIV. who decided to suppress the function, and a royal
declaration to that effect was made on the 16th June, 1668.
Aix met the decree by deciding that the “Prince d’Amour” should be
replaced by a “Lieutenant,” to whom should be allowed an annual pension
of eight hundred livres. Apparently this was none too much, as one of
the aspirants for the honour expended something like two thousand livres
during his one year in office.
The costume officially prescribed for a “Lieutenant” or a “Prince
d’Amour” was as follows:
“A corselet and breeches ‘_à la romaine_,’ of white moiré with silver
trimmings, a mantle trimmed with silver, black silk stockings, low shoes
tied with ribbons, and a plumed hat, together with ‘knee-ribbons,’ a
sword-knot and a bouquet, also with streamers of ribbon.”
All this bespeaks a certain gorgeousness which was only accomplished at
considerable personal expense on the part of him on whom the honour
fell.
In one form or another this sort of thing went on at Aix until
Revolutionary times, when the pageant was abolished as smacking too
much of royal procedure and too little of republicanism.
Avignon and Arles are intimately associated with the modern exponents of
Provençal literature, but Aix will ever stand as the home of Provençal
letters of a past time, Aix the nursery of the ancient troubadours.
As a touring-ground little exploited as yet, the region for fifty
kilometres around Aix-en-Provence offers so much of novelty and charm
that it may not be likened to any other region in France.
Off to the southwest is Les Pennes, one of those picturesque
cliff-towns, scattered here and there about Europe, which makes the
artist murmur: “I must have that in my portfolio,”--as if one could
really capture its scintillating beauty and grandeur.
Les Pennes will be difficult to find unless one makes a halt at Aix,
Marseilles, or Martigues, for it appears not to be known, even by name,
outside of its own intimate radius.
[Illustration: _Les Pennes_]
It shall not further be eulogized here, for fear it may become
“spoiled,” though there is absolutely no attraction, within or without
its walls, for the traveller who wants the capricious delights of
Monte Carlo or the amusements of a city like Aix or Marseilles.
On the “Route Nationale” between Aix and Marseilles is the little town
of Gardanne, only interesting because it is a typical small town of
Provence. It has for its chief industries the manufacture of aluminium
and nougat, widely dissimilar though they be.
Just to the southward rises majestically the mountain chain of the Pilon
du Roi, whose peak climbs skyward for 710 metres, overshadowing the
towns of Simiane, with its remains of a Romanesque chapel and a
thirteenth-century donjon, and Septèmes, with the ruins of its Louis
XIV. fortifications, and Notre Dame des Anges, which was erected upon
the remains of the ancient chapel of an old-time monastery.
From the platform of Notre Dame des Anges is to be had a remarkable view
of the foot-hills, of the coast-line, and of the sea beyond, the whole
landscape dotted here and there with yellow-gray hamlets and
olive-trees, and little trickling streams. It suggests nothing so much
as the artificial spectacular compositions which most artists paint when
they attempt to depict these wide-open views, and which it is the
fashion to condemn as not being true to nature. This may sometimes be
the case; but often they are as true a map of the country as the
average topographical survey, and far more true than the best
“bird’s-eye” photograph that was ever taken.
The Pilon du Roi, so named from its resemblance to a great ruined or
unfinished tower, rises two hundred or more metres above the platform of
the church, and to climb its precipitous sides will prove an adventure
as thrilling as the most foolhardy Alpinist could desire.
There is a little corner of this region, lying between Marseilles and
Gardanne, which, in spite of the overhead brilliancy, will remind one of
the grimness and austerity of Flanders. One comes brusquely upon a lusty
and growing coal-mining industry as he descends the southern slope of
the Chaîne du Pilon du Roi, and, while all around are umbrella-pines,
olive-trees, cypress, and all the characteristics of a southern
landscape, there are occasional glimpses of tall, belching chimneys and
the sound of the trolleys carrying the coal down to a lower level. Here
and there, too, one finds a black mountain of débris, sooty and grimy,
against a background of the purest tints of the artist’s palette. The
contrast is too horrible for even contemplation, in spite of the
importance of the industry to the metropolis of Marseilles and the
neighbouring Provençal cities.
At Auriol is another “_exploitation houillère_,” which is the French way
of describing a coal-mine. To the tourist and lover of the beautiful
this is a small thing. He will be more interested in the vineyards and
olive orchards and the flower-gardens surrounding the little townlet,
which here bloom with a luxuriance at which one can but marvel. The town
is a “_ville industrielle_,” if there ever was one, since all of its
inhabitants seem to be engaged in, or connected with, the coal-mining
industry in one way or another. In spite of this, however, the real
old-time flavour has been well preserved in the narrow streets, the
sixteenth-century belfry, and the ruins of the old château, which still
rise proudly above the little red-roofed houses of Auriol’s twenty-five
hundred inhabitants. To-day there is no more fear of a Saracen
invasion,--as there was when the château was built,--but there is the
ever present danger that some yawning pit’s mouth will be opened beneath
its walls, and that the old donjon tower will fall before the invasion
of progress, as has been the fate of so many other great historic
monuments elsewhere.
In the little vineyard country there are to be heard innumerable
proverbs all connected with the soil, although, like the proverbs of
Spain, they are applicable to any condition of life, as for instance:
“Buy your house already finished and your vines planted,” or “Have few
vines, but cultivate them well.”
There is a crop which is gathered in Provence which is not generally
known or recognized by outsiders, that of the caper, which, like the
champignon and the truffle, is to the “_cuisine française_” what paprika
is to Hungarian cooking.
Without doubt, like many other good things of the table in the south of
France, the caper was an importation from the Levant. It is a curious
plant growing up beside a wall, or in the crevice of a rocky soil, and
giving a bountiful harvest. In the early days of May the “_boutons_”
appear, and the smaller they are when they are gathered,--so long as
they are not microscopic,--the better, and the better price they bring.
They must be put up in bottles or tins as soon as picked or they cannot
be made use of, so rapidly do they deteriorate after they have been
gathered.
The crop is gathered by women at the rate of five _sous_ a kilo, which,
considering that they can gather twenty or more kilos a day, is not at
all bad pay for what must be a very pleasant occupation. The buyer--he
who prepares the capers for market--pays seventy-five centimes a kilo,
and after passing through his hands, by a process which merely adds a
little vinegar (though it has all to be most carefully done), the price
has doubled or perhaps trebled.
Like the olive and the caper, the apricot is a great source of revenue
in the Var, particularly in the neighbourhood of Roquevaire, midway
between Aix and Marseilles. Slopes and plains and valley bottoms are all
given over, apparently indiscriminately, to the culture. Near by are
great factories which slice the fruit, dry it, or make it into
preserves. Formerly the growers sold direct to the factories; but now,
having formed a sort of middleman’s association, they have united their
forces with the idea of commanding better prices. This is a procedure
greatly in favour with many of the agricultural industries of France.
The growers of plums in Touraine do the same thing; so do the growers of
cider-apples in Normandy; the vineyard proprietors of the Cognac region,
and the cheese-makers of Brie and Gournay; and the plan works well and
for the advantage of all concerned.
[Illustration: _Roquevaire_]
The apricots of the Var, in their natural state, formerly brought but
five or six centimes a kilo, but by the new order of things the price
has been raised to ten.
In the season as many as five hundred thousand kilos of apricots are
peeled and stoned in a day by one establishment alone, employing perhaps
two hundred women and young girls. From this twenty-five thousand kilos
of stones or _noyaux_ result, which, in turn, are sold to make _orgeat_
and _pâte d’amande_,--which fact may be a surprise to many; it was to
the writer.
Forty to forty-five centimes a kilo is the price the fruit brings when
it is turned over to the canning establishment, where the process does
not differ greatly from that in similar trades in America or Australia,
though the “_abricots conservés_” of Roquevaire-en-Provence lead the
world for excellence.
Roquevaire’s next-door neighbour is Aubagne, in the valley of the
Huveaune. It might well be called a suburb and dependency of the
metropolis of Marseilles, except that the little town claims an
antiquity equal to that of Marseilles itself. To-day, lying in the
fertile plain of Baudinard, and surrounded by innumerable plantations
devoted to the growing of fruits, principally strawberries, it is noted
chiefly as the place from which Marseilles draws its principal supplies
of early garden fruits or _primeurs_, which is a French word with which
foreigners should familiarize themselves. It is believed that Aubagne
was the Albania of mediæval times, and it was so named on the chart of
Provence made in the tenth century by Boson, Comte de Provence, by whom
it was united with the Vicomté de Marseilles, and its civil and
religious rights vested in the monks of the Abbey of St. Victor.
There is nothing of dulness here, and, while in no sense a manufacturing
town, such as Gardanne, there are innumerable petty industries which
have grown up from the agricultural occupations, such as the putting up
of _confitures_, the distilling of those sweet, syrupy concoctions which
the French of all parts, be they on the boulevards at Paris or at sea on
board a Messageries liner, drink continually, no variety more than the
_grenadine_, which is produced at its best here.
The little river Huveaune flows southwest till it drops down to the sea
through the hills forming the immediate background of Marseilles, and
gives to the aspect of nature what artists absolutely refuse to call by
any other name than _character_.
On the horizon one sees a great cross, planted on the summit of a height
known as the Gardelaban. Beneath it is a great hole burrowed into the
rock and anciently supposed to be of some religious significance, just
what no one seems to know or care.
A few generations ago gold was supposed to be buried there; but, as no
gold was found, this was one of the superstitions which soon died out.
The new Eldorado was not to be found there, though a self-styled expert
once gave the opinion (in print, and solicited subscriptions on the
strength of the claim) that the ground was full of “_des amas de fer
hydraté, contenant des pyrites au reflet doré_.” The claim proved false
and so it was dropped.
Running northeasterly from Marseilles, at some little distance from the
city, but near enough to be in full view from the height of Notre Dame
de la Garde, is the mass of the Saint Pilon range, with Sainte Baume, a
little to the southward, rising skyward 999 metres, which height makes
it quite a mountain when it is considered that it rises abruptly almost
from the sea-level.
The Forêt de Sainte Baume is one of those unspoiled wildwoods scattered
about France which do much to make travel by road interesting and
varied. To be sure Sainte Baume is on the road to nowhere; but it makes
a pleasant excursion to go by train from Marseilles to Auriol, and
thence by carriage to St. Zacharie and Sainte Baume. It will prove one
of the most delightful trips in a delightful itinerary, and furthermore
has the advantage of not being overrun with tourists.
St. Zacharie, like many other of the tiny hill towns of Provence, looks
like a bit of transplanted Italy. The village is small, almost to minute
proportions, but it has a pottery industry which is renowned for the
beauty of its wares. There is also a church which was built in the tenth
century, and moreover there is a most excellent hotel, the Lion d’Or.
The surrounding hills are either thickly wooded or absolutely bare, and
accordingly the scenic contrast is most remarkable, from the point of
view of the lover of the unconventionally picturesque.
[Illustration: _Convent Garden, St. Zacharie_]
As for the Forêt de Sainte Baume itself, it is thickly grown with great
oaks, poplars, aspens, lichen-grown beeches, sycamores, cypresses,
pines, and all the characteristic undergrowth of a virgin forest, which
this virtually is, for no forest tract in France has been less spoiled
or better cared for. In addition nearly all the medicinal plants of
the pharmacopœia are also found, and such exotics as mistletoe and
orchids as would delight the heart of a botanist jaded with the
commonplaces of a northern forest.
At the entrance to the wood is the Hôtellerie de la Sainte Baume, served
by monks and nuns, who will cater for visitors in a most satisfactory
manner--the women on one side and men on the other--and give them
veritable monastic fare, a little preserved fish, an omelette, rice,
perhaps, cooked in olive-oil, and a full-bodied red or white wine _ad
lib._, and all for a ridiculously small sum.
The grotto of Sainte Baume, well within the forest, was, according to
tradition, the resting-place for thirty-three years of Mary Magdalen,
and accordingly it has become a place of pilgrimage for the faithful at
Pentecost, la Fête Dieu, and the Fête de Ste. Madeleine (22d July). The
grotto (from which the name comes, _baume_ being the Provençal for
_baoumo_, meaning grotto) has a length of some twenty metres and a width
of twenty-five with a height of perhaps six or seven.
It is a damp, dark sort of a cave, with water always trickling from the
roof, though a cistern on the floor never seems to run over. The
falling drops make an uncanny sound, if one wanders about by himself,
and he marvels at the fact that it has become a religious shrine so
famous as to have been visited by Louis and Marguerite de Provence,
Louise de Savoie, Claude de France, Marguerite, Duchesse d’Alençon, and
a whole galaxy of royal personages, including Louis XIV., and Gaston
d’Orleans.
On the Monday of Pentecost all Provence, it would seem, comes to make
its devotions at this shrine of Mary Magdalen,--men, women, and
children, and above all the young couples of the year, this pilgrimage
being frequently stipulated in the Provençal marriage contract.
Above the grotto, on a rocky peak, are the remains of a convent founded
by Charles II., Comte de Provence. The view from its platform is one of
dazzling beauty. Off to the southwest lies Marseilles, with the great
golden statue of Notre Dame de la Garde well defined against the blue of
the sea; the Étang de Berre scintillates directly to the westward, like
a great fiery opal, and still farther off are the mountains of
Languedoc.
For many reasons the journey to Sainte Baume should be made by all
visitors to Aix or Marseilles who have the time, and inclination, to
know something of the countryside as well as of the towns.
PART II.
THE REAL RIVIERA
[Illustration: MARSEILLES TO TOULON]
CHAPTER I.
MARSEILLES TO TOULON
The coast just east of Marseilles is quite unknown to the general
Riviera traveller, although it is accessible, varied, and an admirable
foretaste of the beauties of the Riviera itself.
Just over the great bald-faced peak of Mount Carpiagne lie Cassis and
the Bec de l’Aigle, the virtual beginning of the wonderful scenic
panorama of the Riviera.
One would have expected that as time went on Carsicus Portus of the
Romans, the present Cassis, would have exceeded Marseilles in magnitude,
for its situation was much in its favour. Great treasure-laden ships
from the Orient would have avoided doubling the rocky promontory which
stretches seaward between Marseilles and Cassis, and thereby saved the
worry of many ever-present dangers. This was not to be, however, and
Marseilles has grown at the expense of its better situated rival.
Cassis, however, was a port of refuge to ships coming from the East,
and on more than one occasion they put in here and landed their cargoes,
which were sent overland to the already firmly established trading
colony at Marseilles.
The origin of the name is doubtful. It seems plausible enough that it
may have come from the old Provençal _classis_, a _filet_ or net, from
the use of this in the fishing which was carried on here extensively in
times past.
Some supposedly ancient quays, which may have dated from Roman times,
were discovered in the eighteenth century, but the present port and its
quays were constructed under the orders of Louis XIII.
The present fishing industry of Cassis is not very considerable, it
being far less than that of Martigues or Port de Bouc. At Cassis there
are but half a hundred men engaged, and the returns, as given in a
recent year, were scarcely over eleven hundred francs per capita, which
is not a great wage for a toiler of the sea.
Another harvest of the sea, little practised to-day, but formerly much
more remunerative, is the gathering of a variety of coral which quite
equals that of Italy or Dalmatia. This industry has of late grown less
and less important here, as elsewhere, for the Italians, Greeks, and
Maltese have so scraped over the bottom of the Mediterranean with their
great hooked tridents that but little coral is now found.
Cassis figures in a story connected with the great plague or pest which
befell Marseilles in the eighteenth century. Pope Clement XI. had sent
to the Monseigneur de Belsunce a cargo of wheat to be distributed among
the famished of Marseilles or elsewhere, “_comme il le jugerait à
propos_.” In December, 1720, a fleet of _tartanes_,--the same
lateen-rigged ships which one sees engaged to-day in the open-sea
fishing industry of Martigues,--bringing the wheat to the stricken city,
was forced to anchor in the Golfe des Lèques, just offshore from the
little port of Cassis, “_par suite de la violente mistral qui balayait
la mer_.” The same mistral sweeps the seas around Marseilles to-day, and
works all sorts of disaster to small craft if they do not take shelter.
When the _tartanes_ were discovered off Cassis, the famishing
sailor-folk of the town hesitated not a moment to put off and board
them. The papal _tartane_ attempted to parley with them, but every
vessel in the fleet was attacked in true Barbary-pirate fashion and
captured; and the entire consignment was seized and distributed among
the distressed people of Cassis and the surrounding country. The
“pirates,” however, paid the Archbishop of Marseilles the full value of
the shipment, “_comme c’était justice_.” Mgr. de Belsunce, “coming to
Cassis on donkey-back,” brought back the money and founded a school for
both sexes with the capital, besides giving to the poor of the town an
annual sum equal to the interest on the principal. Whether this was a
case of “heaping coals of fire” on the delinquent heads, or not, history
does not say.
Cassis is the native city of the Abbé Barthélémy, a savant who, amid the
constant study of ancient and modern Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac,
Chaldean, and Arabic, found time to write the “_Voyage du Jeune
Anacharsis en Grèce_,” a work which has placed his name high in the roll
of writers who have produced epoch-making literature.
[Illustration: _Cassis_]
Cassis is the perfect type of the small Mediterranean port. High above
the houses of its nineteen hundred inhabitants, on the apex of a wooded,
red-rock hill, are the ruins of a château. To the east is the grim and
gray Cap, a mountain of considerable pretensions, while to the west is
Pointe Pin, a height of perhaps fifteen hundred metres sloping gently
down to the sea, and covered with scrub-pines save for occasional
granite outcrops.
Cassis is a highly industrious little town, now mostly given over to the
manufacture of cement, the coastwise shipping of which gives a perpetual
liveliness to the port. The fishing, too, though, as before said, not
very considerable, results in a constant traffic with the wharves of
Marseilles, where the product is sold.
The white wine of Cassis, a “_vrai vin parfumé_,” which in another day
was produced much more extensively than now, is as much the proper thing
to drink with _bouillabaisse_ and _les coquillages_ as in the north are
Chablis and Graves with oysters and lobsters.
The _vin de Cassis_ is like the wine of which Keats wrote:
“So fine that it fills one’s mouth with gushing freshness,--that goes
down cool and feverless, and does not quarrel with your liver, lying as
quiet as it did in the grape.”
The sheltering headland which rises high above Cassis is known as Le
Gibel. On its highest peak the poet Mistral has placed the retreat of
the heroine Esteulle in his poem “Calandau.” Black and menacing, Cap
Canaille continues Le Gibel out toward the sea, and its sheer rise
above the Mediterranean approximates five hundred metres.
On the opposite bank of a little bay, called in Provençal a _calanque_,
rises the ruined towers and walls of a feudal château, of no interest
except that it forms a grim contrasting note with the blue background of
sky above and sea below.
A little farther on, sheltered at the head of a _calanque_, is Port
Miou, which has a legend that has made it a popular place of pilgrimage
for the Marseillais. The little port is well sheltered in the bay, with
the entrance nearly closed by a great sentinel rock, which is, at times,
wholly submerged by the waves. It is this which has given rise to the
legend that a Genoese fisherman, surprised by a tempest and being unable
to control his craft, abandoned the tiller and would have hurled himself
into the sea if his son, obeying a sudden inspiration, had not steered
the boat through the narrow strait and came to a safe harbour within.
The father at once fell upon the boy, killing him with a blow; but,
Providence taking no revenge, the boat drifted on to a safe anchorage.
The story is not a new one; the same legend, with variations, is heard
in many parts of western Europe and as far north as Norway, but it is
potent enough here to draw crowds of Sunday holiday-makers, in the
summer months, from Marseilles.
In 1377 Pope Gregory XI., who desired to reëstablish the papacy at Rome
after its seventy years at Avignon, took ship at Marseilles, but was
held back by contrary winds and seas and hovered about the little
archipelago of islands at the harbour’s mouth, until finally, when he
had at last got well started on his way, a furious tempest arose and the
vessel forced to anchor in the _calanque_ of Port Miou, called by the
historian of the voyage Portus Milonis.
Beyond Cassis, eastward, are still to be traced the outlines of the old
Roman road which led into Gaul from Rome, via Pisa and Genoa, until it
finally passes Ceyreste, the ancient Citharista. The name was originally
given to the site because of the chain of hills at the back, which
formed a sort of a tiara (_citharista_ signifying tiara or crown), of
which the little city formed the bright particular jewel. It must have
been one of the first health resorts of the Mediterranean shore, for
Cæsar founded here a hospital for sick soldiers. Since that day it
appears to have been neglected by the invalids (real and fancied), for
they go to Monte Carlo to live the same life of social diversion that
goes on at Paris, Vienna, or New York.
Another explanation of the origin of the city’s name is that it was
dedicated to Apollo, the god of music, and that its name came from the
_cithare_, or zither, which, according to those learned in mythology,
the god always bore.
Ceyreste, at all events, was of Grecian origin as to its name, and was
perhaps the patrician suburb of La Ciotat, the city of sailors and
merchants. Unlike most plutocratic towns, Ceyreste appears always to
have had a due regard for the proprieties, for a French historian has
written: “_Il est de notoriété publique que jamais aucun Ceyrestéen n’a
subi de peine infamante, ni même afflictive. Jamais aucun crime n’a été
commis dans la commune!_”
Ceyreste must console itself with these memories of a glorious past, for
to-day it is but a minute commune of but a few hundred souls, most of
whom have attached themselves in their daily pursuits to the busy
industrial La Ciotat.
The railway issues from the Tunnel de Cassis, through olive-groves and
great sculptured rocks, on the shores of the wonderful Baie de la
Ciotat, flanked on one side by a rocky promontory and on the other, the
west, by the Bec de l’Aigle, a queer beak-shaped projection which well
lives up to its name.
[Illustration: _La Ciotat and the Bec de l’Aigle_]
The bay of La Ciotat is the first radiant vision which one has of a
Mediterranean _golfe_, as he comes from the north or east. Things have
changed to-day, and the considerable commerce of former times has
already shrunk to infinitesimal proportions, though to take its place
the port has become the location of the vast ship-building works of the
“Cie. des Messageries-Maritimes,” whose three or four thousand workmen
have taken away most of the local Mediterranean wealth of colour which
many a less progressive place has in abundance. Accordingly La Ciotat is
no place to tarry, though unquestionably it is a place to visit, if
only for the sake of that wonderful first impression that one gets of
its bay.
It was a fortunate day for the prosperity of La Ciotat when the
engineers and directors of the great steamship company founded its vast
workshops here. To be sure they do not add much to the romantic aspect
of this charmingly situated coast town; but men must live, and great
ocean liners must be built somewhere near salt water.
The prosperity of La Ciotat, the _ville des ouvriers_, has grown up
mostly from its traffic by sea, the railway stopping at an elevation of
some two hundred feet above the level of the quays. The traveller makes
his way by a little branch train, but heavy merchandise for the
ship-building yards is still brought first to Marseilles and then
transhipped by boat.
Ship-building was one of the ancient occupations of the people of La
Ciotat, hence it is natural enough to hear some old workman, who has
become incapacitated by time, say: “_N’est-il pas naturel que La Ciotat
soutienne son antique réputation en construisant de bons bateaux?_”
For a long time it was the grand ship-building yard of the Marseillais,
who obtained here all their ships to “_faire la caravane_,” as the
voyage to the Levant was called in olden times.
La Ciotat was perhaps the Burgus Civitatis of the itinerary of Antony,
but in time it came to be known--in the Catalan tongue--as _Bort de
Nostre Cieuta_, and it is so given in an ancient charter which conceded
certain rights to the Marseillais.
In 1365 La Ciotat passed to the monks of the Abbey of St. Victor, but
for a short time it was in the possession of the Catalans, who were the
partisans of the Antipope Pierre de Luna. Few towns of its size in all
France have had so varied a career as La Ciotat, until it finally
settled down to the more or less prosaic affairs of later years. Forty
families formed its first population, but, in the reign of François I.,
its population was twelve thousand or more, a number which has not
perceptibly increased since.
During the pest of 1720, which fell so hard upon Marseilles, and indeed
upon nearly all of the ports of maritime Provence, La Ciotat was saved
from the affection by the observance of a stringent quarantine. To a
great extent this was due to the prudence and fearlessness of the women.
All entrance to the city was rigorously refused to strangers, and, when
the troops from the garrison at Marseilles were sent here that they
might be quartered in a place of safety, the women armed themselves with
sticks and stones and formed a barrier, _dehors des murs_, and drove the
soldiery off as if they had been an attacking foe. This is one of those
Amazonian feats which prove the valour of the women of other days.
La Ciotat was frequently attacked by the Barbary pirates before these
vermin were swept from the seas by the intervention of the two great
republics, France and the United States. The English, too, attacked the
intrepid little town, and there are brave tales of the valour of the
inhabitants when bombarded by the guns of the _Seahorse_ in 1818.
Directly in front of La Ciotat, at the foot of the Côte de Saint Cyr, on
the eastern shore of the bay, was an old Greek colony known to
geographers as Tauroentum. Rich and powerful in its own right,
Tauroentum rivalled its neighbour Marseilles, but the fleets of Pompey
and Cæsar had one of those old-time sea-fights off its quays, and the
city, having suffered greatly at the time, never recovered its
prosperity, and the more opulent and powerful Marseilles became the
metropolis for all time. The monumental remains to be observed to-day
are mostly covered with the sands of time, and only the antiquarian and
archæologist will get pleasure or satisfaction from any fragmentary
evidences which may be unearthed. The subject is a vast and most
interesting one, no doubt, but the enthusiast in such matters is
referred to Lentheric’s great work on “La Provence Maritime.”
La Ciotat, with its workmen’s houses and its shipyard, will not detain
one long. One will be more interested in making his way eastward along
the coast, when every kilometre will open up new splendours of
landscape.
Opposite La Ciotat is the hamlet of Les Lèques, well sheltered in the
bay of the same name. Lamartine, _en route_ for the Orient, compared it
with enthusiasm to the Bay of Naples, a simile which has been used with
regard to many another similar spot, but hardly with as much of
appropriateness as here. Said Lamartine: “_C’est un de ces nombreux
chefs-d’œuvre que Dieu a répandus partout_.”
From Les Lèques it is but a step to Bandol, a place not mentioned in the
note-books of many travellers, though to the French it is already
recognized as a “_station hivernale et de bains de mer_.” This is a
pity, for it will soon go the way of the other resorts.
Bandol is a small town of the Var, possessed of a remarkably beautiful
and sheltered site, and, since it numbers but a trifle over two thousand
souls, and has no palace hotels as yet, it may well be accounted as one
of the places on the beaten track of Riviera travel which has not yet
become wholly spoiled.
Bandol’s principal business is the growing of immortelles and
artichokes, with enough of the fishing industry to give a liveliness and
picturesqueness to the wharves of the little port.
It is a wonderfully warm corner of the littoral, here in the immediate
environs of Bandol, and palms, banana-trees, the eucalyptus, and many
other subtropical shrubs and plants thrive exceedingly. There is nothing
of the rigour of winter to blight this warm little corner; only the
mistral--which is everywhere (Monaco perhaps excepted)--or its equally
wicked brother, _le vent d’est_, ever makes disagreeable a visit to this
warm-welcoming little coast town.
A clock-tower, or belfry, an old château,--the construction of
Vauban,--and a jetty, which throws out its long tentacle-like arm to
sea, make up the chief architectural monuments of the town.
Not so theatrical or stagy as Monte Carlo or even Hyères, or as overrun
with “swallows” as Nice or Menton, Bandol has much that these places
lack, and lacks a great deal that they have, but which one is glad to be
without if he wants to hibernate amid new and unruffling surroundings.
Very good wines are made from the grapes which grow on the neighbouring
hillsides; rich red wines, most of which are sold as Port to not too
inquisitive buyers. The industry is not as flourishing as it once was,
though the inhabitants--some two hundred or more--who used to be engaged
in the coopering trade, still hope that, phœnix-like, it will rise again
to prosperity. What the culture once was, and what picturesque elements
it possessed, art-lovers, and others, may judge for themselves by the
contemplation of the celebrated canvas by Joseph Vernet, now in the
Louvre at Paris.
The fishermen of Bandol find the industry more profitable than do many
others in the small towns to the eastward of Marseilles, and,
accordingly, they are more prominent in the daily life which goes on in
the markets and on the quays. Their catch runs the whole gamut of the
_poissons de Mediterranée_, including a unique species called the St.
Pierre, whose bones somewhat resemble the instruments of the Passion.
Three thousand cases of immortelles are gathered each year from the
hillsides and shipped to all parts, the crop having a value of more than
a hundred thousand francs.
Bandol is the centre of the manufacture of _couronnes d’immortelles_ in
France. The little yellow flowers literally clog the narrow streets of
the town away from the waterside. The warm zone in which Bandol is
situated is most favourable to the growth of the plant, which, according
to the botanists, originally came from Crete and Malta. The natives of
Bandol say that it originated with them, or at least with their _pays_.
A hot, dry soil is necessary to their growth, and they are at their best
in June and July, when their golden yellow tufts literally cover the
hillsides; that is, all that are not covered by narcissi. The flora of
Bandol is most varied and abundant, but these two flowers predominate.
The culture of the immortelle is simple. In February or March the plants
are set in the ground, from small roots, and the gathering commences in
July of the second season, after which the poor, stripped stalks look
anything but immortal. Each plant grows three or four score of stems,
each stem bearing ten to twenty flowers.
Curiously enough there seems to be a diversity of opinion as to the
colour that a crown of immortelles shall take. Not all of them are sent
out in the golden colour nature gave them. Some are dyed purple and
others black, and then, indeed, all their beauty has departed. The
natives think so, too, but dealers in funeral supplies in Paris, Lyons,
and Marseilles--who have about the worst artistic sense of any class of
Frenchmen who ever lived--have got the idea that their clients like
variety, and that bright yellow is too gay for a symbol of mourning.
Bandol sits in a great amphitheatre surrounded by wooded hillsides set
out here and there with plantations of olive and mulberry trees and
vines.
Harvest loads of grapes and olives form the chief characteristics of the
traffic by the highways and byways throughout Provence, but in no
section are they more brilliant and gay with colour than along the coast
from Marseilles to Hyères.
Bandol is thought to have been one of those numerous nameless ports
referred to by the Roman historians, but it is necessary to arrive at
the end of the sixteenth century to find any mention of it by name.
Nostradamus recounts that a certain Capitaine Boyer of Ollioules, who
had rendered great service to the king during the troubles with the
League, was given “_en fief et à paye-morte, à luy et à sa postérité, le
fort de Bendort (Bandol), situé au bord de la mer_.”
Later this same Boyer was appointed governor of the Château de la Garde
at Marseilles, and received, in addition, certain valuable rights
connected with the tunny fishing on the Provençal coasts, which
enterprise ultimately placed him in a position of great affluence.
The old château of Bandol, built on a bed of basalt, has the following
pleasant _mot_ connected with it:
“Le gouverneur de cette roche,
Retournant un jour par le coche,
A, depuis environ quinze ans,
Emporté la clé dans sa poche.”
Ten kilometres beyond Bandol is Ollioules, which is mentioned in the
guide-books as being the gateway to the celebrated Gorges d’Ollioules,
which, like most gorges and cañons, is of surprising spectacular beauty.
This is a classic excursion for the residents of Toulon, who on Sunday
flock to the site of this tortuous savage gorge, and breathe in some of
those same delights which a mountaineer finds in a deep-cut cañon in the
Rockies. There is nothing so very stupendous about this gorge, but it
looks well in a photograph, and satisfies the Toulonais to their highest
expectations, and altogether is a very satisfactory sort of a ravine, if
one does not care for the beauties of the coast-line itself,--which is
what most of us come to the Mediterranean for.
Ollioules itself is of far more attraction, to the lover of picturesque
old streets and houses and crumbling historical monuments, than its
gorge. The town bears still the true stamp of the middle ages, though
the inhabitants will tell you that it has great hopes of becoming some
day a popular resort like Nice, this being the future to which all the
small Riviera towns aspire.
Old vaulted streets, leaning porched houses, with enormous gables and
delicately sculptured corbels and window-frames, give quite the effect
of mediævalism to Ollioules, though a hooting tram from Toulon makes a
false note which is for ever sounding in one’s ears.
All the same, Ollioules, with the débris of its thirteenth-century
château, its very considerable remains of city wall, and its _Place_,
tree-shaded by high-growing palms, is a town to be loved, by one jaded
with the round of resorts, for its many and varied old-world
attractions.
Ollioules is built in the open air, at the end of the defile or gorge,
in the midst of a country glowing with all the splendour and beauty of
endless beds of hyacinths and narcissi, flowers which rank among the
most beautiful in all the world, and which here, in this corner of old
Provence, grow as luxuriantly as heather on the hills of Scotland or
tulips in Holland. Violets, poppies, the mimosa, and tuberoses are also
here in abundance.
Two hundred and fifty hectares, or more, in the immediate vicinity of
Ollioules, are devoted to the culture of bulbs, and five million bulbs
form an average crop, most of which is sent away by rail to Belgium,
Holland (tell it not to a Dutchman), and England.
The origin of the name of the town is peculiar, as indeed is the
derivation of many place-names. Savants think that it comes from
olearium, meaning a place where oil was made and stored. This may be so,
but olive-oil does not figure any more among the products of this
particular _petit pays_.
Not only the rock-bound gorge but the whole basin of Ollioules is a
wonderland of exotic and rare natural beauties. On one side, to the
north, rise the volcanic heights of Evenos, crowned to-day with ruins
which may be Saracenic, or _gallo-romain_, or prehistoric, perhaps,--it
is impossible to tell.
George Sand has written with great appreciation of the whole
neighbouring region in “Tamaris,” but even her graphic pen has not been
able to reproduce the charming and distinguished characteristics of a
region which, even to-day, is little or not at all known to the great
mass of tourists who annually rush to the Riviera resorts from all parts
of America and Europe. “_Tant pis_,” then, as Sterne said, but the way
is here made plain for any who would go slowly over this well-worn road
of history and cast a glance up and down the cross-roads as he comes to
them.
The distance is not great from Marseilles to Hyères, but eighty
kilometres, a little over fifty miles; but there is a wealth of interest
to be had from a silent threading of the roadways of this delightful
corner of maritime Provence which the partakers of conventional tours
know nothing of.
Here in the environs of Ollioules, on the hillsides flanking its
celebrated gorge, is found in profusion the _fleur d’or_, famed in the
verses of Provençal poets. François Delille, one of the followers of the
Félibres, in his “_Fleur de Provence_,” has sung its praises in
unapproachable fashion, and there are some other fragment verses by a
poet whose name has been forgotten, which seem worth quoting, since they
recount an incident which may happen to any one who journeys by road
along the coast of Provence:
_Le Voyageur au Voiturin._
“Arrête ton cheval, saute à bas, mon vieux faune:
Et va, bon voiturin, du côte de la mer;
Sur le bord de cette anse où le flot est si clair,
Coupe, dans les rochers, coupe cette fleur jaune.”
_Le Voiturin._
“C’est une fleur sauvage, O seigneur étranger.
La-bas nous trouverons des bouquets d’oranger.”
_Le Voyageur._
“Non! laisse l’oranger embaumer le rivage,
Pour ces parfums si doux je suis barbare encore,
Mais sur ma terre aussi poussent les landiers d’or
Et j’aime la senteur de cette fleur sauvage!”
Such is the charm of the _ajonc_, “_la fleur d’or de Provence_.”
[Illustration: _St. Nazaire-du-Var_]
Beyond Ollioules is St. Nazaire-du-Var, a tiny port which resembles in
many ways that of Bandol. It has some of the aspects of a _station
des bains_, in the summer months, for it has a fine beach. The railways
and the guide-books apparently have little knowledge of St. Nazaire for
they call it Sanary, after the old Provençal name. The present
authorities of the really attractive little town are doing their best to
keep pace with the march of progress, and there are hotels, more or less
grand, electric lights, and tram-cars.
The little port is exceedingly picturesque, and its quays are always
animated with the comings and goings of a hundred or more fishing-boats,
which of themselves smack nothing of modernity. The motor-boat has not
yet taken the picturesqueness out of the life of these hardy fishermen
of yore, though it is slowly making its way in some parts.
In reality St. Nazaire-du-Var exists no more. The development of St.
Nazaire-de-Bretagne overshadowed its less opulent namesake and took most
of the mail-matter addressed to the little Provençal port. The
inhabitants of the latter protested and addressed who ever has the
making and changing of place-names in France to be allowed to adopt its
ancient patronymic of Sanary.
Some day a “Club Privé,” and “Promenades,” and “Places,” and “Squares”
will come, and an effort will be made to stop the flood of English and
American and German tourists, who are appropriating nearly every
beauty-spot on the Riviera where there is a post-office and a telegraph
station.
Above, on a hill to the eastward, is a chapel dedicated to Nôtre Dame de
Pitié, greatly venerated by the fishermen and sailors of the town, but
mostly remembered by travellers for the very remarkable outlook which is
to be had from the platform of its great square tower. With its
rectangular little houses glistening white in the sunlight, and red
roofs, and great towering palms and eucalyptus, St. Nazaire resembles a
great flowering bouquet, and when the simile is carried further, and the
bouquet is tied up with a waving ribbon of yellow sand, and placed in a
broad blue vase of the sea, the picture is one which, once seen, will be
unforgettable.
Toward the horizon is seen a cone which bears the enigmatical name of
Six-Fours. More majestic is Cap Sicié, which breaks the waves of the
Mediterranean into myriads of flakes, and gives a warning to the ships
lying in the basins at Marseilles that the sea is rising, and that one
of those intermittent tempests, for which the Golfe de Lyon is noted,
is due. Cap Nègre lies farther in, a black basalt wall which gives an
accent of sombreness to the otherwise gay picture.