GRASSE AND ITS ENVIRONS
According to the French geographers, Grasse occupies a commanding site
on a “_montagne à pic_,” and this describes its situation exactly.
On the flanks of this great hill sits the town, its back yards, almost
without exception, set out with olive and orange trees, to say nothing
of the more extended plantations of the same sort seen as one reaches
the outskirts.
The whole note of Grasse is of flowers, trees, and shrubs, and the
perfume-laden air announces the fact from afar.
Above rises the “_pic_,” and, farther away, the northern boundary of the
horizon is circumscribed with an amphitheatre of wooded mountains severe
and imposing in outline.
Grasse is but a short eighteen kilometres from the Mediterranean, but
the whole topographical aspect of the country has changed. The panorama
seaward is the only intimation of the characteristics which have come to
be recognized as the special belongings of the French Riviera. The
foot-hills slope gently down to the blue “_nappe_,” which is the only
word which describes the Mediterranean when it is all of a tranquil
blue. It is an incomparable view that one has over this eighteen
kilometres of country southward, and a strong contrast to the lively
suburbs of the coast towns. Its charm and beauty are all its own, and
there is little of the modern note to be heard as one threads the
highways and byways, through the valleys and down the ravines to
sea-level. Without doubt it was a fortunate choice of the Romans when
they set their Castrum Crassense on this verdure-crowned height.
In the middle ages Grasse developed rapidly, and became the seat of a
bishop and a place dominant in the commerce of the region. The
inhabitants were reputed to be possessed of wonderful energies, and the
fact that they were twice able to repel the Moorish invaders, though
their town was practically destroyed, seems to prove this beyond a
doubt.
Richelieu gave the bishopric of this proud city to Antoine Godeau, who,
it seems, possessed hardly any qualifications for the post except family
influence and the flatteries he had showered upon the cardinal. Because
of his small stature this prelate became known as the “Nain de Julie,”
but in time he came to develop a real aptitude for his calling, and
governed his diocese with care, prudence, and judgment, and became an
Académicien through having written a history of the Church in France
during the eighteenth century.
The ecclesiastical monuments of Grasse are not many or as beautiful as
might be expected of a bishop’s seat, and at the Revolution the see was
suppressed. The old-time cathedral, as it exists to-day, is an
ungracious thing, with a _perron_, a sort of horseshoe staircase, before
it, built by Vauban, who, judging from this work, was far more of a
success as a fortress-builder than as a designer of churches.
Formerly Grasse was the seat of the Préfecture of the Département du
Var, but, with the inclusion of the Comté de Nice within the limits of
France, the honour was given to Draguignan, while that of the newly made
Département des Alpes-Maritimes was given to Nice, and Grasse became
simply a _sous-préfecture_. Shorn of its official dignities, and never
having arisen to the notoriety of being a fashionable resort, Grasse
“buckled down to business,” as one might say, and acquired a preëminence
in the manufacture of perfumes, candied fruits, and _confitures_
unequalled elsewhere in the south of France. The manufacture of soaps,
wax, oil products, and candles also form a considerable industry, and
the general aspect of Grasse is quite as prosperous, indeed more so,
than if it were dependent on the butterfly tourists of the coast towns.
The streets of the town rise and fall in bewildering fashion. They are
badly laid out, in many cases, and dark and gloomy, but they are
nevertheless picturesque to a high degree; a sort of négligé
picturesqueness, which does not necessarily mean dirty or squalid. There
are no remarkable architectural splendours in all the town, and there
are none of those archæological surprises such as one comes upon at Aix
or Fréjus.
Grasse has a fine library, containing numerous rare manuscripts and
deeds and the archives of the ancient Abbey of Lerins. In the Hôpital is
an early work of Rubens, which ranks as one of the world’s great art
treasures, and there is a further interest in the city for art-lovers
from the fact that it was the birthplace of Fragonard, to whom a fine
bust in marble has been erected in the Jardin Publique.
[Illustration: _Flower Market, Grasse_]
As before mentioned, the height above is the chief point of interest at
Grasse. It culminates in the significantly named promenade known as
the “_Jeu de Ballon_.” A sea of tree-tops surges about one on all sides,
with here and there a glimpse of the red roof-tops of the town below.
Between the town and the sea is an immense rocky wall known as Les
Ribbes, with a picturesque cascade rippling down its flank. From its
apex Napoleon, escaping from Elba, arrested his flight long enough to
turn and--in the words of his best-known historian--“_contemplate the
immense panorama which unrolled before his eyes, and salute for the last
time the Mediterranean and the mountains of La Corse, which he was never
again to see_.”
The assertion “_voir La Corse_,” in the original, was not a figure of
speech, for under certain conditions of wind and weather the same is
possible to-day.
A half a dozen kilometres to the eastward of Grasse the highroad crosses
the river Loup, and one sees a semicircular town before him known as
Villeneuve-Loubet. The town has hotels and all the faint echoes of the
watering-places of the coast. This is a pity, for it is delightful, or
was, before all this up-to-dateness came. Its château, still proudly
rearing its head above the town, was built in the twelfth century by
the Comtes de Provence.
The primitive town was called Loubet, a corruption of the name of the
river which bathes its walls. Before even the days of the occupation of
the Comtes de Provence, as early as the seventh century, there was a
monastery here known by the name of Notre Dame la Dorée, of which scanty
remains are visible even to-day. Owing to various Mussulman incursions,
the occupants of the monastery were forced to flee to the protection of
the château, and soon the “_Ville-neuve_” was created, ultimately
forming the hyphenated name by which the place is known to-day.
Still onward, on the road to Nice, is Cagnes, a sort of economical
overflow from the more aristocratic resort, with few advantages to-day
as an abiding-place, and most of the disadvantages of the larger city.
There are tooting trams, automobile garages, and shops for the sale of
many of the minor wants of life, which in former times one had to walk
the ten or a dozen kilometres into Nice to get. The automobile is a very
good thing for touring, but, as a perambulator in which to “run down to
the village,” it is much overrated and a confirmed nuisance to every
one; and Cannes suffers from this more than any other place in France,
unless it be Giverny on the Seine, the most overautomobiled town in the
world,--one to every score of inhabitants.
Once Cagnes bid fair to become an artists’ resort, but it became overrun
with “tea and toast” tourists, and so it just missed becoming a Pont
Aven or a Barbizon. For all that, it is a picturesque enough place
to-day; indeed, it is delightful, and if it were not for the automobiles
everywhere about, and that awful tram, it would be even more so.
However, its little artists’ hotel was, and is, able to make up for a
good deal that is otherwise lacking, and the sawmills, brick-works, and
distilleries of the neighbourhood are not offensive enough to take away
all of its sylvan charm.
In earlier times Cagnes was both a place of military importance and a
sort of a city of pleasure, something after the Pompeiian order, one
fancies, from the Roman remains which have been found here.
There is an ancient château of the Grimaldi family, still very much in
evidence, though it has become the property of a German. In many
respects it is a beautiful Renaissance work and is accordingly an
architectural monument of rank.
Directly inland from Cagnes is Vence, an ancient episcopal city which
was shorn of its ecclesiastical rights at the Revolution. In spite of
this the memories and the very substantial reminders of other days,
still to be seen within the precincts of the one-time cathedral, give it
rank as an ecclesiastical shrine quite out of the ordinary. The church
itself is built upon the site, and in part out of, an ancient temple to
Cybele, and the fortifications, erected when the Saracens had possession
of the city, are still readily traced. It is a most picturesquely
disposed little city, and well worth more attention than is generally
bestowed upon it.
Between Grasse and Nice lies the valley of the Loup, a stream of some
sixty kilometres in length emptying into the Mediterranean, and which
has the reputation of being the most torrential waterway in France, in
this respect far exceeding the more important streams, such as the
Rhône, the Durance, and the Touloubre. Its course is so sinuous, as it
comes down from its source in the Alpes-Maritimes, that it is known
locally as “_le serpent_.” With all violence it rolls down its rapidly
sloping bed, amid rock-cut gorges and wooded ravines, in quite the
manner of the scenic waterfalls of the geographies that one scans at
school. It does not resemble Niagara in any manner, nor is it a slim,
narrow cascade at any point; but throughout its whole length it is a
series of tiny waterfalls which, in a photograph, do indeed look like
miniature Niagaras. All along its course are numerous centres of
population, though none of them reach to the dignity of a town and
hardly that of a village, if one excepts Le Bar, the chief point of
departure for excursions in the gorges.
Le Bar is reminiscent of the Saracens, who were for long masters of the
neighbouring country. The walls of the houses and barriers are of that
warm, rosy, mud-baked tint that one associates mostly with the Orient,
and no artist’s palette is too rich in colour to depict them as they
are. The Saracens called the place “_Al-Bar_,” which came later, by an
easy process of evolution, to _Albarnum_, and finally Le Bar.
It was an important place under the Roman domination, and, in time, when
the town came to be a valued possession of the Comtés de Provence, the
cross succeeded the crescent. In the tiny church of the town there is a
remarkable ancient painting picturing a “_danse macabre_,” supposed to
be of the fifteenth century.
[Illustration: _Gourdon_]
Above Le Bar is the aerial village of Gourdon, fantastic in name,
situation, and all its elements. At its feet rushes the restless Loup,
and tears its way through one of those curious rock-walls which one only
sees in these parts. To the westward is the curious and imposing
outline of Grasse, the metropolis of the neighbourhood.
Near by the railway crosses the ravine on an imposing and really
beautiful modern viaduct of seven arches, each twelve metres in
height--nearly forty feet.
Up the ravine toward the source, or downward to the sea, the charms
multiply themselves like the glasses of the kaleidoscope until one, as a
result of a first visit to this much neglected scenic spectacle, is
quite of the mind that it resembles nothing so much as a miniature
Yellowstone.