VILLEFRANCHE
During the heat of the war, shortly after the intervention of the
United States, I wrote a magazine article setting forth for American
readers the claims of France to Alsace-Lorraine and trying to explain
why the French felt as they did about Alsace-Lorraine. Of course I
spoke of Strasbourg and Mulhouse; but a copy-reader, faithfully making
all spellings conform to the Century Dictionary, changed my MS. reading
to Strassburg and Mulhaüsen. Can you imagine my horror when I saw
those awful German names staring out at me under my own signature--and
in an article espousing the side of France in the Alsace-Lorraine
controversy? Perhaps not--unless you understand the feeling of the
actual possessor and the aspirant to possession of border and other
moot territories. "By their spelling ye shall know them!" is their
cry. Later, I happened to be in America when that dear good faithful
copy-reader changed my Bizerte to the dictionary's Bizerta in an
article on Tunis, and was able to go to the mat with him. I explained
that the spelling was an essential part of the political tenor of the
article.
All this I repeated to the wife and critic combined in one delightful
but Ulster-minded person who insisted that in English Menton must be
spelled Mentone.
"You write Marseilles instead of Marseille and put the 's' on Lyon too:
I've seen you do it!" she cried. "And the French call London Londres!"
"But those cities happen not to be in _terre irredente_," I explained.
"Menton lies too near the Italian frontier for a friend of France to
call it Mentone, whatever the English usage may be. If we retain
Mentone, why have we abandoned Nizza for Nice, Eza for Éze, Roccabruna
for Roquebrune, Monte Calvo for Mont Chauve, Testa del Can for Tête du
Chien, Villa Franca for Villefranche?"
"Since you have at last arrived at Villefranche, you had better start
your chapter," was her woman's answer.
You may have a confused picture, you may even forget many places you
have visited in your travels, but Villefranche? Never! Whether you
have first seen Villefranche as you came around the corner of Montboron
from Nice or across the neck of Cap Ferrat from Beaulieu on the Petite
Corniche, as you came through the Col des Quatre Chemins on the Grande
Corniche, or as you climbed up behind Fort Montalban on the Moyenne
Corniche, the memory is equally indelible. But each _corniche_ gives a
different impression of the only natural harbor on the Riviera. The
Petite Corniche, which mounts rather high around Montboron, is the near
view. You see only the _rade_ with Cap Ferrat as a background.
Approaching in the opposite direction, Montboron is the background. On
the Moyenne Corniche the _rade_ comes gradually into your field of
vision. You are way above the sea, but the harbor still forms the
principal part of the water foreground in the picture. On the Grande
Corniche, where the Riviera coast from Cap d'Antibes to Cap Martin is
before you, and the Mediterranean rises to meet the sky, every
outstanding feature of the picture is a cape or town, fortification or
lighthouse, except at Villefranche. Here the land is the setting. The
water of the harbor, changing as you look to green and back to blue
until you are not sure which is the color, is the feature that attracts
and holds you. Montboron, the littoral and Cap Ferrat are as secondary
as the prongs and ring which hold a precious stone.
The water edge of the harbor has become conventionalized to a large
extent by the artificial stone wall built at the inner end and part-way
along the Montboron slope, to make possible railway and carriage road,
and by the quays and breakwaters. But enough of the unimproved line
remains to indicate how the harbor must have looked before the masons
got to work. The rocks of Villefranche are copper with streaks of
brown-gray that change in depth of color as the sunlight changes in
intensity. Water and rocks are not afraid to compete with flowers and
trees and mountain shades for the Artist's attention. Villefranche as
a maritime picture wins. And yet foliage and flora are no mean rivals.
Turning the point of Montboron from Nice has brought you from the
climate where many southland growths are exotic to the beginning of the
tropical portion of the Riviera which extends into Italy, with Menton
and Bordighera as its most typical spots.
Villefranche comes close after Menton--and ahead of Beaulieu and Monte
Carlo and Condamine--in the claim to a perennial touch of the south.
From Montboron to the hills east of Oneglia the mountain wall protects
from the north wind and radiates the sun. But there is no deep harbor
like that of Villefranche: and no other place has a Cap Martin to form
a windshield from strong sea breezes.
Climate as much as the safe anchorage attracted pirates. From the
Caliph Omar to the last of the Deys of Algiers, Mohammedan corsairs
swept the Mediterranean. Because the Maritime Alps deprived the
inhabitants of the Riviera of retreat to or succor from the hinterland,
this coast was the joy of Saracens and Moors, Berbers and Turks. It is
hard to believe that up to a hundred years ago the Riverains--the
inhabitants of all the Mediterranean littoral, in fact, from Gibraltar
to Messina--were constantly in danger of corsair raids just as our
American pioneer ancestors were of Indian raids. The lay of the land
and the lack of a powerful suzerain state to defend them made the
Riverains facile prey. Villefranche afforded the easiest landing. Try
to climb up from Villefranche over crags and through stone-paved and
rock-lined ravines to the Moyenne Corniche, and then on to the higher
mountain-slopes, and you can imagine how difficult it was to get away
from raiders, and why the Barbary pirates took a full bag of luckless
Riverains on every raid. You comprehend the raison d'être of the
fortified hill towns, and Éze, perched on her cliff, has a new meaning
as you look down on Villefranche. This fastness was held by the
Saracens long after the crescent yielded elsewhere to the cross--and
then became a frequent refuge for the descendants of the victors in the
medieval struggle.
From the moment the French entered Algiers at the beginning of the July
Monarchy, they felt that their claim to the gratitude of the Riverains
justified the annexation of a portion of the Riviera. The treaty that
extended French sovereignty to beyond Menton was signed at
Villefranche, and immediately the little harbor was transformed into a
French naval port. Until warships became floating fortresses
Villefranche was useful to France. Now it sees only torpedo-boats and
destroyers, and the lack of direct communication with the interior has
prevented its commercial development. Better an artificial breakwater
with no Alps behind than a natural harbor with a Cap Ferrat.
Occasionally a huge ocean liner, chartered by an American tourist
agency for an Eastern Mediterranean tour, drops into Villefranche
roadstead. These chance visits, to give the tourists a day at Nice and
Monte Carlo, demonstrate that Villefranche could be a port of call for
the leviathans, commercial and naval, of the twentieth century. How
much easier it would be to go to the Riviera directly from London and
New York, instead of having a wearisome train journey added to the
ocean voyage! But freights pay a large part of passenger rates, and
the routing from great port to great port is as rigid and unalterable
as the fact that a straight line is not the shortest distance between
two points on land. Trains and ships must pass by way of great centers
of population.
A naval cemetery is the memorial of Villefranche's naval past in the
last brilliant decade of the Second Empire and the early years of the
Third Republic. A little American corner, which our Paris Memorial Day
Committee never forgets, bears witness to the period when the American
flag was known everywhere in the Mediterranean. We used to have the
lion's share of the carrying trade, and Villefranche was a frequent
port of call for American warships. Now we have rarely even single
warships or freighters in the Mediterranean. The only American
passenger line that serves Mediterranean ports is the old Turkish Hadji
Daoud Line of five small and dirty Levantine ships, which ply along the
coast of Asia Minor and in and out of the Greek islands, camouflaged
under our flag.
The old town of Villefranche is on the western side of the harbor
between the Petite Corniche and the water. Like all Riviera towns on a
main road it has grown rapidly and medieval streets and buildings have
almost disappeared, giving way to the banal architecture of the end of
the nineteenth century. The garish brick villas of the head of the
gulf are excrescences in their lovely garden setting. But after one
has reached the eastern side of the harbor and gone through Font Saint
Jean, the tramway road, with its noise and dust and variegated
bourgeois fantasies, can be abandoned.
[Illustration: Medieval streets and buildings have almost disappeared.]
If we except Cap Martin, no Riviera walks are lovelier than those of
Cap Ferrat. On the Villefranche side, until you have passed through
Saint Jean, the alternative to the tramway road is an inhospitable
though tantalizing lane. For large estates, shut off by walls and
hedges, are between you and the harbor. Unless you are lucky enough to
know one of the owners, you will not see the harbor of Villefranche
from the best of the lower vantage points. This side of Villefranche
is so sheltered that one resident, an American, has been able to
transform his garden into a bit of old Japan where the cherry trees
blossom in Nippon profusion and colors.
It is best to pass across the cape, not turning in at the tramway
bifurcation, until you reach the Promenade Maurice-Rouvier, which
skirts the Anse des Fourmis along the sea from Beaulieu to Saint Jean.
After you have reached Saint Jean the peninsula is before you. A maze
of superb roads tempt you, circling the fort several hundred feet above
sea level, crossing the peninsula on the slopes of the fort, and
following the sea. Returning to Saint Jean, there is still another
walk directly ahead of you to the east. The Cap du Saint Hospice is
pine-clad, with a sixteenth-century tower at its end.
The Artist and I made a mistake of twelve hours in our visit to Saint
Hospice. We should have come in the morning for the sunrise. To
remedy the error we decided to spend the night at the Hôtel du Pare
Saint Jean. But the sun got up long before we did.
"Our usual luck," said the Artist with a grin that had nothing of
regret in it.