HYÈRES AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD
Just off the coast road from Toulon to Hyères is the tiny town of La
Garde. The commune boasts of twenty-five hundred inhabitants, most of
whom evidently live in hillside dwellings, for the town proper has but a
few hundreds, a very few, judging from its somnolence and lack of life.
More country than town, the district abounds in lovely sweeps of
landscape. Pradet, another little village, lies toward the coast, and,
amid the dull grays of the olive-trees, gleams the white tower of a
chapel which belongs to the modern château. The chapel, which bears the
sentimental nomenclature of “La Pauline,” is filled by a wonderful lot
of sculptures from the chisel of Pradier. Decidedly it is a thing to be
seen and appreciated by lovers of sculptured art, even though its modern
château is painful in its bald, pagan architectural forms.
Beyond La Garde lies the plain of Hyères, and offshore the great Golfe
de Giens, well sheltered and surrounded by the peninsula of the same
name, one of the beauty-spots of the Mediterranean scarcely known and
still less visited by tourists. Directly off the tip end of the
peninsula of Giens is a little group of rocky isles known as the Iles
d’Hyères. They are indescribably lovely, but the seafarers of these
parts of the Mediterranean dread them in a storm as do Channel sailors
the Casquets in a fog.
The chief of these isles is Porquerolles, and it possesses a village of
the same name, which has never yet been marked down as a place of
resort. To be sure, no one, unless he were an artist attached to the
painting of marines, or an author who thought to get far from the
madding throng, would ever come here, anyway. The village is not so bad,
though, and it is as if one had entered a new world. There is an inn
where one is sure of getting a passable breakfast of fish and eggs; a
“Grande Place” which, paradoxically, is not grand at all; and a humble
little church which is not bad in its way. Two or three cafés, a
bake-shop, and a Bureau des Douanes, of course, complete the business
part of the place. Each little _maisonette_ has a terrace overshadowed
with vines, and, all in all, it is truly an idyllic little settlement.
The isle culminates in a peak five hundred feet or so high, on the top
of which is seated a fortification called Fort de la Repentance.
The entire isle, with the exception of that portion occupied by the fort
and its batteries, belongs to a M. and Madame de Roussen, who are known
to readers of French novels under the names of Pierre Ninous and Paul
d’Aigremont. The proprietors have charmingly ensconced themselves in a
delightful residence, which, if it does not rise to the dignity of a
château, has as magnificent a stage setting as the most theatrical of
the châteaux of the Loire; only, in this case, it is a seascape which
confronts one, instead of the sweep of the broad blue river of Touraine.
Two hundred and fifty inhabitants live here, but away in the west there
was formerly a colony of a thousand or more workmen engaged in the
manufacture of soda. For more reasons than one--the principal being that
the sulphurous fumes from the works were having an ill effect on the
verdure--the establishment was purchased by the present proprietors of
the isle.
The village has somewhat of the airs of its bigger brothers and sisters
elsewhere in that its streets are lighted at night; the wharves are as
animated as those of a great world-town, particularly on the arrival of
the boat from Toulon; and the market-women sit about the street corners
with their wares picturesquely displayed before them as they do in
larger communities.
Truly, Porquerolles is unspoiled as yet, and the marvel is that it has
not become an “artist’s sketching-ground” before now. It has many claims
in this respect besides its natural beauties and attractions, one, not
unappreciated by artists, being that it is not likely to be overrun by
tourists. The reason for this is that the _Courrier des Iles d’Hyères_,
as the diminutive steamer which arrives three times a week is called, is
subsidized by the ministry for war, and the captain has the right to
refuse passage to civilians when his craft is overloaded with travelling
soldiers and sailors, whom the French government, presumably from
motives of economy, prefers to move in this way from point to point
among the various forts along the coast.
[Illustration: _The Peninsula of Giens_]
Four or five other islets make up the group which geographers and
map-makers know as the Iles d’Hyères, but which the sentimental
Provençaux best like to think of as the Iles d’Or; but their
characteristics are quite the same as Porquerolles. There is here a
picturesque fort called Alicastre, derived from Castrum Ali, a souvenir,
it is said, of a Saracen chief who once entrenched himself here. Local
report has it that the Man in the Iron Mask was imprisoned here at one
time, but the nearest that history comes to this is to place his
imprisonment at Ste. Marguerite and the Château d’If.
From the sea, as one comes by boat from Toulon, the Presqu’ile de Giens
looks as though it were an island and had no connection with the land,
for the neck connecting it with the mainland is invisible, both from the
eastward and the westward, while the rocks of the tip end of the
peninsula are abruptly imposing as they rise from the sea-level to a
moderate but jagged height.
As one approaches closer he notes the capricious scallops of the
shore-line of this bizarre but beautiful jutting point, and
congratulates himself that he did not make his way overland.
A little village is in the extreme south, its whitewashed houses
shepherded by a little church and the ruins of an old fortress-château.
The town is as nothing, but the view is most soothing and tranquil in
its impressive beauty and quiet charm. Nothing is violent or
exaggerated, but the components of many ideal pictures are to be had for
the turning of the head. Giens is another “artist’s sketching-ground”
which has been wofully neglected.
The eastern shore is less savage and there are some attempts at
agriculture, but on the whole Giens and its peninsula are but a distant
echo of anything seen elsewhere. The quadrilateral walls of the old
château, a semaphore, and a coast-guard station form, collectively, a
beacon by sea and by land, and, as one makes his way to the mainland
along the narrow causeway, he is reminded of that sandy ligature which
binds Mont St. Michel with Pontorson, on the boundary of Brittany and
Normandy.
Hyères is no longer fashionable. One would not think this to read the
alluring advertisements of its palatial hotels, which, if not so grand
and palatial as those at Monte Carlo, are, at least, far more splendid
than those “board-walk “ abominations of the United States, or the
deadly brick Georgian façades which adorn many of the sea-fronts of the
south coast of England. The fact is, that society, or what passes for
it, flutters around the gaming-tables of Monte Carlo, though for
motives of economy or respectability they may sojourn at Nice, Menton,
or Cap Martin.
For this reason Hyères is all the more delightful. It is the most
southerly of all the Riviera resorts, and, while it is still a place of
villas and hotels, there is a restfulness about it all that many a
resort with more lurid attractions entirely lacks.
Built cosily on the southern slope of a hill, it is effectually
sheltered from the dread mistral, which, when it blows here, seems to
come to sea-level at some distance from the shore. The effect is curious
and may have been remarked before. The sea inshore will be of that
rippling blue that one associates with the Mediterranean of the poets
and painters, while perhaps a league distant it will roll up into those
choppy whitecaps which only the Mediterranean possesses in all their
disagreeableness. Truly the wind-broken surface of the Mediterranean in,
or near, the Golfe de Lyon is something to be dreaded, whether one is
aboard a liner bound for the Far East or on one of those abominable
little boats which make the passage to Corsica or Sardinia.
Hyères in one of its moods is almost tropical in its softness with its
famous avenue of palms which wave in the gentle breezes which spring up
mysteriously from nowhere and last for about an hour at midday. Its
avenues and promenades are delightful, and there is never a suggestion
of the snows which occasionally fall upon most of the Riviera resorts at
least once during a winter. The only snow one is likely to see at Hyères
is the white-capped Alps in the dim northeastern distance, and that will
be so far away that it will look like a soft fleecy cloud.
Hyères is beautiful from any point of view, even when one enters it by
railway from Marseilles, and even more so--indescribably more so, the
writer thinks--when approaching by the highroad, from Toulon or
Solliès-Pont, awheel or “_en auto_.”
Of all the historical memories of Hyères none is the equal of that
connected with St. Louis. None will be able to read without emotion the
memoirs of Joinville, giving the details of the return of Louis IX. and
his wife, Marguerite de Provence, from the Crusades. The account of
their arrival “_au port d’Yeres devant le chastel_” is most thrilling.
One readily enough locates the site to-day, though the outlines of the
old city walls and the château have sadly suffered from the stress of
time.
This was a great occasion for Hyères; the greatest it has ever known,
perhaps. “They saluted the returning sovereign with loud acclamations,
and the standard of France floated from the donjon of the castle as
witness to the fidelity of the inhabitants for the sovereign.”
The “good King René,” in a later century, had a great affection for
Hyères also, and was equally beloved by its inhabitants. One of his
legacies to Jeanne de Provence were the salt-works of Hyères, which were
even then in existence.
Hyères enjoyed a strenuous enough life through all these years, but the
saddest event in its whole career was when the traitorous Connétable de
Bourbon took the château and turned it over to France’s arch-enemy,
Charles V.
Charles IX. visited Hyères and remained five days within its walls, “his
progress having been made between two rows of fruit-bearing
orange-trees, freshly planted in the streets through which he was to
pass.” This flattery so pleased the monarch that he himself, so history,
or legend, states, carved the following inscription upon the trunk of
one of those same orange-trees, “_Caroli Regis Amplexu Glorior_.”
One of the most beautiful strips of coast-line on the whole Riviera
lies between Hyères and Fréjus. A narrow-gauge railway makes its way
almost at the water’s edge for the entire distance, and the coast road,
a great departmental highway, follows the same route. The distance is
too great--seventy-five kilometres or more--for the pedestrian, unless
he is one who keeps up old-time traditions, but nevertheless there is
but one way to enjoy this everchanging itinerary to the full, and that
is to make the journey somehow or other by highroad. The automobile, a
bicycle, or a gentle plodding burro will make the trip more enjoyable
than is otherwise conceivable, even though the striking beauties which
one sees from the slow-running little train give one a glimmer of
satisfaction. Seventy-five kilometres, scarce fifty miles! It is nothing
to an automobile, not much more to a bicycle, and only a two-days’ jaunt
for a sure-footed little donkey, which you may hire anywhere in these
parts for ten francs a day, including his keeper. No more shall be said
of this altogether delightful method of travelling this short stretch of
wonderland’s roadway, but the suggestion is thrown out for what it may
be worth to any who would taste the joys of a new experience.
Close under the frowning height of Les Maures runs the coast road, for
quite its whole length up to Fréjus, while on the opposite side, and
beneath, are the surging, restless waves of the Mediterranean.
First one passes the Salines de Hyères, one of those great governmental
salt-works which line the Mediterranean coast, and soon reaches La
Londe, famous for its lead mines and the rude gaiety of its seven or
eight hundred workmen, who on a Sunday go back to primitive conditions
and eat, drink, and make merry in rather a Gargantuan manner. This will
not have much interest for the lover of the beautiful, but up to this
point he will have regaled himself with a promenade along a beautiful
sea-bordered roadway, whose opposite side has been flanked with
rose-laurel, palms, orange-trees, and many exotic plants and shrubs of
semi-tropical lands.
From La Londe and its sordid industrialism one has twenty straight
kilometres ahead of him until he reaches Bormes, a town which has been
considered as a possible rival to Nice and Cannes, but which has never
got beyond the outlining of sumptuous streets and boulevards and the
erecting of two great hotels to which visitors do not come. It is an
exquisite little town, the old bourg parallelled with the tracery of
the new streets and avenues. Take it all in all, the site is about one
of the best in the south for a winter station, though the non-proximity
of the sea--a strong five kilometres away--may account for the slow
growth of Bormes as a popular resort.
The old town is most picturesque, its tortuous, sloping streets ever
mounting and descending and making vistas of doorways and window
balconies which would make a scene-painter green with envy, everything
is so theatrical. Like some of the little hill-towns of the country to
the westward of Aix, Bormes is a reflection of Italy, although it has
its own characteristics of manners and customs.
The country immediately around this little town of less than seven
hundred souls is of an incomparable splendour. There is nothing exactly
like it to be seen in the whole of Provence. In every direction are seen
little scattered hamlets, or a group of two or three little houses
hidden away amid groves of eucalyptus and thickets of mimosa, while the
flanking panorama of Les Maures on one side, and the Mediterranean on
the other, gives it all a setting which has a grandeur with nothing of
the pretentious or spectacular about it. It is all focussed so finely,
and it is so delicately coloured and outlined that it can only be
compared to a pastel.
The Rade de Bormes, though it really has nothing to do with Bormes, a
half a dozen kilometres distant, is another of those delightful bays
which are scattered all along the Mediterranean shore. It has all the
beauty which one’s fancy pictures, and the maker of high-coloured
pictures would find his paradise along its banks, for there is a
brilliancy about its ensemble that seems almost unnatural.
In 1482 St. François de Paule, called to France by the death of Louis
XI., landed here. At the time Bormes was stricken with a plague or pest,
and all intercourse with strangers was forbidden. But, when the saint
demanded aid and refreshment after his long voyage, it was necessary to
draw the cordon and open the gates of the town. In return for this
hospitality, it is said by tradition, the holy man cured miraculously
the sick of the town. The popular devotion to St. François de Paule
exists at Bormes even up to the present day, in remembrance of this
fortunate event.
The old town itself is built on the sloping bank of a sort of natural
amphitheatre, in spite of which it is well shaded and shadowed by
numerous great banks of trees, while in every open plot may be seen
aloes, cactus, agavas, immense geraniums, and the Barbary fig.
The ruins of the feudal château of Bormes recall the memory of the
Baroness Suzanne de Villeneuve, of Grasse and Bormes, who, in the
sixteenth century, so steadfastly sought to avenge the assassination of
her husband.
Bormes possesses one other historic monument in the Hermitage of Notre
Dame de Constance, which, on a still higher hill, dominates the town,
and everything else within the boundary of a distant horizon, in a
startling fashion.
Below, on the outskirts, is an old chapel and its surrounding cemetery,
which, more than anything else in all France, looks Italian to every
stone.
One other shrine, this time an artistic one as well as a religious one,
gives Bormes a high rank in the regard of worshippers of modern art and
artists. On the little Place de la Liberté is the Chapelle St. François
de Paule, where is interred the remains of the painter Cazin.
In spite of the fact that it is far from the sea, Bormes has its
“_faubourg maritime_,” a little port which has an exceedingly active
commerce for its size. In reality the word _port_ is excessive; it is
hardly more than a beach where the fishermen’s boats are hauled up like
the dories of down-east fishermen in New England. There is an apology
for a dike or mole, but it is unusable. This will be the future _ville
de bains_ if Bormes ever really does become a resort of note. Its
assured success is not yet in sight, and accordingly Bormes is still
tranquil, and there are no noisy trams and hooting train-loads of
excursionists breaking the stillness of its tranquil life.