FRÉJUS
The ride from Théoule to St. Raphaël, by the Corniche de l'Estérel, gives
a feeling of satiety. The road along the sea is a succession of curves,
each one leading around a rocky promontory into a bay that causes you to
exclaim, "This is the best!" For thirty-five kilometers there is
constantly a new adjustment of values, until you find yourself at the
point where comparatives and superlatives are exhausted. The vehicle of
language has broken down. Recurrent adjectives become trite. When the
search for new ones is an effort, you realize that nature has imposed,
through the prodigal display of herself, a limit of capacity to enjoy.
Of copper rocks and azure sea; of mountain streams hurrying through
profusely wooded valleys; of cliffs with changing profiles; of conifers;
of enclosed parks, whose charm of undergrowth run wild and of sunlit
green tree-trunks successfully hides the controlling hand of man to the
uninitiated in forestry; of hedges and pergolas and ramblers and villas
and lighthouses and islets and yachts, we had our fill.
But at La Napoule a Roman milestone announced that we were on the road to
Forum Julii: and the very first thing that attracted us when we reached
St. Raphaël was a bit of aqueduct on the promenade. It looked singularly
out of place right by the sea, and surrounded by an iron fence quite in
keeping with those of the hotels across the street. The inscription
(Third Republic, not Roman) told us that this portion of the aqueduct
from the River Siagne to Fréjus was removed from its original emplacement
and set up here under the prefectship of Monsieur X, the subprefectship
of Monsieur Y, and the mayorship of Monsieur Z. The fishing village that
has rapidly grown into one of the most important "resorts" of the Riviera
claims distinction on historical grounds. Napoleon landed at St. Raphaël
on his return from Elba. Gounod composed Romeo and Juliet here. General
Galliéni was cultivating his vineyard here when the war of 1914 broke
out, and the call to arms sent him from his seclusion to become the
savior of Paris. But when ruins became fashionable in the last decade of
Queen Victoria, it was necessary for St. Raphaël to have an ancient
monument. An arch of the aqueduct was imported to the beach with as
little regard for congruous setting as Mr. Croesus-in-Ten-Years shows in
importing an English lawn to his front yard at Long Branch and a gallery
of ancestral portraits to his dining-room on Fifth Avenue.
The Artist looked at the ruins in silence. He tried to gnaw the ends of
his mustache. His eyes changed from amusement to contempt, and then to
interest. I was ready for his question.
"Say, where is this town Fréjus?"
The _cocher_ protested. He had bargained to take us to St. Raphaël, the
horses were tired, and anyway there was no good hotel, no food, nothing
to do at Fréjus.
"Where is Fréjus?" repeated the Artist. The _cocher_ pointed his whip
unwillingly westward along the shore. The Artist turned to me with his
famous nose-and-eyes-and-chin-up expression.
"What do you say, _mon vieux_?"
"Decidedly Fréjus," I answered.
Accustomed to American queerness, the _cocher_ resigned himself to the
reins for another five kilometers.
Since the River Argens began to flow, it has been depositing silt against
the eastern shore of the Gulf of Fréjus, at the point of which stands St
Raphaël. Consequently the road, sentineled by linden trees, crosses a
rich plain, and is more than a mile from the sea when it reaches the city
of Julius Caesar. The upper ends of the mole of the ancient port, high
and dry like ships at low tide, join the walls of the canal. You have to
look closely to distinguish the canal and the depression of the basin
into which it widens near the town. For where land has encroached upon
sea, vegetable gardens and orchards have been planted. Inland, the
arches from the aqueduct of the Siagne shed their bricks in wheat fields
and protrude from clumps of hazels. As it enters the city, the road
turns back on itself and mounts to the market-place. The sharp outward
bend of the elevation above the narrow stretch of lowland suggest that
there was a time, long before Roman days, when Fréjus, like the towns of
the Corniche de l'Estérel, was built on a promontory.
Fréjus belongs to no definite period. It is not Roman, medieval, modern.
It is not a watering-place fashionable or unfashionable, a manufacturing
town prosperous or struggling, a port bustling or sleepy, a
fishing-village or a flower-gathering center. Fréjus suggests no marked
racial characteristics in architecture or inhabitants. It is neither
distinctly Midi nor distinctly Italian--as those terms are understood by
travelers. Fréjus is unique among the cities of the Cote d'Azur because
it has no unmistakable _cachet_. Fréjus suggests Rome, the Middle Ages,
the twentieth century. Fréjus embraces pleasure-seeking, industries,
fish, flowers, and soldiering. Mermaids, delightfully reminiscent of the
Lido and Abbazia in garb, dive from the end of the mole into a safe
swimming-pool; children of the proletariat in coarse black _tabliers_,
who have not left sandals and white socks on the beach behind them, fish
for crabs; naval aviators start hydroplanes from an aerodrome beside the
Roman amphitheater; fishermen, of olive Mediterranean complexion, dry
copper-tinted nets on the beach, laying them, despite the scolding of the
Senegalese guards, upon piles of granite and cement blocks with which
laborers are building a new pier.
We had come to the beach for an after-luncheon smoke, and when we were
not looking at the Senegalese and workmen, our eyes wandered from
hydroplanes and machine-gun-armed motor-boats to the mermaids on the
Roman mole. Not till we ran out of tobacco and the mole ran out of
mermaids did we realize that Fréjus was still unexplored and unsketched.
We gave ourselves a six o'clock rendezvous on the beach. The Artist
started to seek Roman ruins, while I turned towards the market-place,
cathedral bound. Sea-level villas came first, and then a quarter of
sixteenth-century houses, many of which showed on the ground floor
medieval foundations. In two places I got back to the Romans. A cross
section of thin flat bricks with generous interstices of cement in the
front wall of a greengrocer's opposite, indicated the line of the Roman
fortification. Walking around the next parallel street, I managed to get
into a garden where a long piece of the wall remained.
I came out to the St. Raphaël carriage road at a corner where arose a
huge square tower of the Norman period. Almost to its crumbling top,
houses had been built against it on two sides. The angle formed by the
alley through which I came and the main street had fortunately kept the
other two sides clear. The tower was the home of a wine and coal
merchant, who had laid in a supply of cut wood on his roof to the height
of several feet above the irregular parapet. Outside one of the narrow
vertical slits, which in ages past had served as vantage point for a
vizored knight fitting arrow to bow, hung a parrot cage. "Coco" was
chattering Marseilles sailor French.
A single gargoyle remained. It was a panther, elongated like a
dachshund. He was desecrated and humiliated by having tied around his
middle the end of the clothesline that stretched across the alley. This
proved, however, that he still held firmly his place. The panther,
ignoring change of fortune, looked down as of yore, snarling, and with
whiskers stiffened to indicate that if he had been given hind legs, they
would be ready for a spring. So worn was the gargoyle that ears and chin
and part of forehead had disappeared. But you can see the snarl just as
you can see the Sphinx's smile. When a thing is well done, it is done
for all time. If a poor workman had fashioned that gargoyle, there would
have been no panther and no snarl when it was put up there. But a master
worked the stone, and what he wrought is ineradicable. It will disappear
only with the stone itself. When we speak of ruins, we mean that a part
of the material used in expressing a conception has not resisted climate
and age and earthquake and vandalism. Armless, Venus de Milo is still
the perfect woman. Headless, Nike of Samothrace is still symbolic of the
glory of prevailing.
In the morning, before reaching St. Raphaël, we passed an African soldier
limping along the dusty road. He was dispirited even to the crumpled
look of his red fez, and the sun, shining mercilessly, glinted from his
rifle-barrel to the beads of perspiration on the back of his neck. We
were going fast, and had just time to wave gayly to cheer him up. He did
not return our salute. This struck us as strange. Fearing that he might
be ill, we made the _cocher_ turn round, and went back to pick him up.
He declared that a sprained ankle made it impossible for him to keep up
with his regiment, which had been marching since early morning. He was
grateful for the lift, and beamed when we assured him that we could take
him as far as St. Raphaël. At that time we were not thinking of going to
Fréjus, the garrison town of the African troops. When we overtook the
regiment and reached his company, we tried to intercede with the French
sergeant. The sergeant was adamant and positive.
"A thousand thanks, but the man is shamming. He is lazy. He must get
out."
We had to give up our soldier. The sergeant knew his men, and justice is
the basic doctrine which guides the discipline of the French colonial
army. The regiment of Algerians must have stopped for lunch or
maneuvers. For they were just coming through the Place du Marché when I
reached there. Only the colonel was on horse. At the turn of the road,
the captains stood out of rank to watch their companies wheel. Our
soldier of the morning passed. He had forgotten his limp. The sergeant
recognized me, and pointed to the soldier. His left upper eyelid came
down with a wink, as if to say, "Don't I know them!"
There is a spirit of _camaraderie_ between officers and men in Fréjus
that one never sees in native regiments of the British army. The French
have none of our Anglo-Saxon feeling of caste and race prejudice, which
makes discipline depend upon aloofness. French officers can be severe
without being stern: and they know the difference between poise and pose.
We Anglo-Saxons need to revise radically our judgment of the French in
regard to certain traits that are the _sine qua non_ of military
efficiency. Energy, resourcefulness, coolness, persistence, endurance,
pluck--where have these pet virtues of ours been more strikingly tested,
where have they been more abundantly found, than in the French army?
The sign of the French colonial army is an anchor, and Fréjus is full of
officers who wear it. They are mostly men of the Midi, Roman Gauls every
inch of them. The Lamys, the Galliénis, the Joffres, the Fochs, the
Lyauteys were born with a genius for leadership in war. Their aptitude
for African conquest and their joy in African colonization are the
heritage of their native land. The fortunes of southern France and
northern Africa were inseparable through the ten centuries of the spread
of civilization and the Latin and Teutonic invasions in the Western
Mediterranean. The connection was unbroken from the time that Hannibal
marched his African troops through Fréjus to Italy until the Omayyads
conquered Tunis, Algeria and Morocco. It is the most natural thing in
the world to see African troops in Fréjus. They belong here now, because
since men began to sail in ships, they have always been at home here as
friends or enemies. Mediterranean Africa and Mediterranean France
received simultaneously political, social and religious institutions, and
from the same source. As the Crescent wanes, Gaul is coming back into
her own.
Fréjus shopkeepers suffer from the proximity of the upstart St. Raphaël.
Fréjus keeps the bishop, but St. Raphaël has taken the trade. There is
now only one business street. It runs from the Place du Marché through
the center of the city to the Place du Dôme. You can get from one
_place_ to the other in about five minutes. Few people were on this
street in mid-afternoon. None were going into the shops. I chose the
department store, and asked the only saleswoman in sight for a collar.
She brought down two styles, both of which were bucolic. Matched with a
beflowered tie, either would have gone perfectly around the neck of a
Polish immigrant in New York on his wedding day. I suggested that I be
shown some other styles. The saleswoman gazed at me stonily.
"A bus leaves the corner below here for St. Raphaël every hour. You are
there in twenty minutes. Or you can go by train in six minutes."
Up went the boxes to their shelf. There was nothing for me to do but get
out.
One says Place du Dôme or Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, depending upon
whether sympathies are ultramontane or anti-clerical. For cathedral and
city hall touch each other at right angles. LIBERTÉ-ÉGALITÉ-FRATERNITÉ
is the legend in large letters on the cathedral wall: the one notice
posted on the Hôtel de Ville is a warning of the last day to pay taxes.
Two beggars stand guard at the cathedral portal: Senegalese with fixed
bayonets flank the archway leading to the municipal courtyard. The Hôtel
de Ville is a modern building, typical of French official taste of the
present day: the cathedral is an edifice of several epochs, with a brick
facade reminiscent of Bologna. The episcopal palace, adjacent to the
cathedral, is part of the same structure. But it is used for government
offices, and the entrance to its upper floor is by a staircase from the
vestibule of the cathedral. The _Service de Santé Municipale_ occupies
the rooms along the portico that faces the cloister. The cure of souls
has been banished to a private house across the street.
The cathedral quarter is wholly Louis XVI and First Empire. If I had
begun my ramble there, I should have found much to admire. But I had
been spoiled by the Louis XIII quarter nearer the sea. Travel
impressions are largely dependent upon itinerary. I am often able to
surprise a compatriot whose knowledge of Europe is limited to one
"bang-up trip, and there wasn't much we missed, y'know," by being able to
tell him the order in which he visited places. It is an easy thing to
do. You simply have to notice how the tourist compares cities and other
"sights." He is blissfully ignorant of the fact that his positive
judgments, his unhesitating preferences are accidental. They do not
express at all his real tastes and his real appreciation of values.
However cultivated and intelligent an observer he may be, unless he has
carefully weighed and made proper allowance for the influence of
itinerary, his judgments and preferences are not to be taken seriously.
For years I honestly believed that the Rue de la Porte Rosette was one of
the finest streets in the world. I told my friends of it. But when
Alexandria was revisited, the Rue de la Porte Rosette was a shabby
thoroughfare. After a year in the interior of Asia Minor, the Rue de la
Porte Rosette was the first street through which I drove in coming back
to European civilization. The next time I saw it I was fresh from years
of constant residence in Paris. In my memory, Sofia is a gem of an
up-to-date city, while Bucharest is a poor imitation of the occidental
municipality. The chances are more than even that my comparative
estimate of the two Balkan capitals is wholly wrong. For each time I
have visited Sofia, it was in coming from Turkey, while stops at
Bucharest have followed immediately after Buda-Pest and Odessa.
I wandered through the cathedral quarter with less enthusiasm than was
its due, and soon decided to rejoin the Artist. He was not in the
neighborhood of any of the Roman ruins. He was not sitting behind an
_apéritif_ on a café terrace. He was not watching soldiers play football
in the courtyard of the barracks. He was not sketching the Norman tower.
He was not exploring alleys of the medieval quarter. He was not looking
at hydroplanes over the fence of the aerodrome. My quest had led me
unconsciously back to the beach. There was still an hour before our
rendezvous. But where we had stretched in the sand after lunch was a
delightful spot, and I had remembered to have my pouch filled at a tabac.
I was not going to feel bored waiting for him. Where the laborers were
working on the pier, the black soldier guards called out to me to beware
of danger. Not being skilled in dodging construction machinery I gave it
a wide berth. The place of our siesta had to be reached by going through
ruins and climbing over a dune. The Artist was there.
"You know," he explained, ignoring with the sweep of his hand the Roman
mole where a new bevy of mermaids had appeared, "the progress of aviation
has fascinated me ever since that July day at Rheims when Wright went up
and stayed up. Just look what those fellows are doing!"
Hydroplanes were appearing from the aerodrome. When they struck the
water there was a hiss, which grew in volume and acuity as they skimmed
the waves. After a few hundred yards, the machines rose as easily as
from land, circled up to the clouds and into them. Coming down, the
aviators practiced dipping and swerving by following and avoiding the
purposely irregular course of motor-boats. An officer, who spoke to us
to find out, I suppose, who we were and why we were there, remarked that
the aviators were beginners. We were astonished. If this was learning
to fly, what was flying?
"Our boys need little teaching to learn to fly," he explained. "That
comes naturally. What they are learning is how to use their machines for
fighting. Science and training and practice come in there. A world-old
game is before you. It is only the medium that is new."
Words of wisdom. A bit of aqueduct led us to Fréjus in the hope of
tasting the charm of a more ancient past than we had found in other
Riviera cities. We were not disappointed. The charm was there. But we
would not have found it, had we tried to dissociate it from the present,
had we ignored or deplored its setting. Nothing that lives assimilates
what is foreign to its nature: nothing that lives survives dissection.
We took Fréjus as Fréjus was, and not as we wanted it to be or thought it
must be. We took the aerodrome with the hippodrome, the coal merchant
with the Norman tower, the parrot with the gargoyle, the Hôtel de Ville
with the cathedral, and the mermaids with the mole.