SAINT-RAPHAEL
On the terrace of our little home at Théoule, a lover of the Riviera
read what I had written about Fréjus.
"If you have any idea of making a book out of your Riviera articles,"
she said positively, "do not think you can dismiss the Estérel and
Saint-Raphaël in so cavalier a fashion. That may be all right for
Lester Hornby and you and serve as a good introduction to a story on
Fréjus, but in your project of a book on Riviera towns--"
There is no need to say more. I looked over to the hills of the
Estérel and felt sorry I had neglected them. I thought of past
experiences, and agreed that there was something more to write about
the French end of the Riviera. And then we put our heads together over
a time table, planned to go to Agay by train, and walk on the rest of
the way to Saint-Raphaël. If the weather was good, we should climb
Mont Vinaigre, and see the Estérel from its highest point.
"I don't care whether it affords good subjects for Lester or not,"
declared my boss. "I've done the trip, and I know it will be fun--and
remember what Horatio was told!"
Humankind and human habitation had occupied the Artist and myself on
almost every day afield from, Théoule. Of course we had taken in the
scenery, sketched it and spoken about it, but only as a background or
accompaniment. From Cannes to Menton it is the human side of the
Riviera that gets you. Nature is a sort of musical accompaniment to
the song of human activity. Between Cannes and the Italian frontier,
where the railway does not skirt the coast, you have the tramway. It
is with you always, night and day, and makes itself heard at every
curve. (The road is all curves!) As a result of the tramway, or
perhaps as its cause, the Cannes-Menton stretch of the Riviera is
solidly built up. Where the towns do not run into each other, an
unbroken line of villas links them up. It is all the city--you cannot
get away from that.
The road we follow to Fréjus was opened in 1903, a gift to the nation
from the initiative and enterprise of the Touring-Club de France. The
building of a tram line was fortunately forbidden. But with the
railway and rapidly-developing use of the automobile, the little
villages of the Estérel coast are being rapidly built up. Around the
cape from Théoule, Le Trayas will soon rival Saint-Raphaël as a center
for Estérel excursions. Then we have Anthéor, Agay, and Boulouris
before reaching the long and charming villa-covered approach to
Saint-Raphaël.
But we do not need to worry yet about what is going to happen. The
blessed fact remains that the Estérel, between Théoule and
Saint-Raphaël, is not yet closely populated like the rest of the
Riviera. The tramway has not come. The railway frequently goes out of
sight, if not out of hearing, for a mile or two. You have nature all
by herself, with no houses, no human beings, no human inventions. The
interior of the Estérel is as refreshingly different from the
hinterland of the rest of the Riviera as most of the coast. There are
no cities and towns back on the hills, no railways and tramways, no
fine motor roads to make the pedestrian's progress a disagreeable and
almost continuous passage through clouds of dust. The Estérel is hills
and valleys, streams and forests and birds. You do not even have poles
and wires to remind you of the world you have left for the moment.
The only way one comes to know this country is to have a villa on its
fringe, as we did, and get lost in it every time you try to explore it.
But such good fortune does not fall to everyone--nor the time--so it is
comforting to point out that much of interest in the Estérel can be
visited by motorists from the Corniche. Between La Napoule and Agay,
the Touring-Club de France has put sign-posts at every little path
leading from the Corniche back into the interior. Some paths, also,
where the road mounts on Cap Roux, lead down to grottoes on the water's
edge or out to cliffs. Each sign gives the attraction and the
distance. In our walks from Théoule we explored most of these, but
discovered that one must not have an objective for lunch. For there is
no connection between the number of kilometers and the time you must
take. A map and compass are wise precautions. Some paths are scarcely
marked at all, and when you have to slide down the side of a volcanic
hill into a ravine and try to guess where you are supposed to go next,
a woodsman's instinct is needed. The excursions are surer because more
frequented, but none the less charming, after you have rounded the cape
and crossed the little River Agay.
Agay, the Agathon of Ptolemy, boasts of the only harbor on the Estérel.
On one side is the Pointe d'Anthéor and on the other Cap Dramont.
Right behind the harbor rises the Rastel d'Agay, a jagged mass of
copper rock a thousand feet high, climbing which is an excellent
preparation for and indication of what one may expect in Estérel
exploration. The way is not made easy for you as it is in the eastern
end of the Riviera. But unless you strike an exceptionally warm day
you have the will for pushing on afoot that is completely lacking at
Monte Carlo and Menton.
The most ambitious and most interesting excursion into the Estérel that
can be made in a day's walk is to go to Saint-Raphaël from Agay by way
of Mont Vinaigre. You must make an early start and be ready to put in
from five to six hours if you want to eat your lunch on the highest
peak of the Estérel. It took us from seven o'clock to noon, and we
kept going steadily. Crossing the railway, we struck out to the right
of the Agay through forests of pine and cork to Le Gratadis, then along
the Ravin du Pertus, pushing through the underbrush in blossom and
skirting the many walls of rock that served to indicate where the path
was not. It would have been easier to have made the round trip from
Saint-Raphaël. But we should not have the full realization of the wild
beauty of the Estérel nor that joyful feeling of reaching _astra per
aspera_. The way down to Saint-Raphaël, after descending to Le Malpey,
less than an hour from the summit, is by a carriage road.
We wished we could have seen the stars from Mont Vinaigre. There was a
belvedere, and if we had only brought our blankets! But however warm
the day, the nights are cool, especially two thousand feet up. Only
those who have slept out at night in Mediterranean countries know how
cold it can get. The top of Mont Vinaigre, almost in the center of the
Estérel, affords a view of the ensemble of volcanic hills crowded
together by themselves that makes you realize why it is so easy to get
lost in the valleys between them. The forests are thick and the
ravines go every which way. Inland the Estérel is separated from the
foothills of the Maritime Alps by the valleys of the Riou Blanc and
Siagne through which runs the main road to Grasse, with a branch down
the Siagne to Mandelieu. On the northern slope of the mountain is the
road from Fréjus to Cannes, which leaves the Estérel at Mandelieu. It
is one of the oldest roads in France. Several Roman milestones have
recently been unearthed here. In these hills the Romans found coal and
copper, and from the quarries along the coast at Boulouris and on Cap
Dramont the quarries of blue porphyry are still worked.
In mining possibilities the whole region is as rich as it was twenty
centuries ago; but, as in many other parts of France, little has been
done to take advantage of them. Some years ago an American friend of
mine, motoring with his wife from Fréjus to Cannes, discovered coal
fields, formed a company, and is now drawing a revenue from hills whose
former owners knew them only as preserves for shooting wild boar and
other wild game. Within her own boundaries France has coal enough for
all her needs if only she would mine it. But the French love to put
their money into safe bonds of their own and foreign governments. The
woolen stocking does not give up its hoarded coins for such enterprises
as mines and domestic industries. Daughter's _dot_ must be in a form
acceptable to the prospective bridegroom's family. And then the French
do not breed the new generation sufficiently large to furnish laborers
for developing the natural resources of the country. They are hostile
to immigration. When the war came Asia and Africa were called upon to
man munition plants.
After the lesson of the war the French have tried to make their own
country give up more of its wealth. However, though they are now more
skeptical than ever of investing abroad, they still pursue an
aggressive foreign policy to open up and protect fields of capital far
from home. On the edge of the Estérel, a dozen miles away, at Fréjus,
Saint-Raphaël and Cannes, the people have lost much money in Russian
and Turkish bonds, Brazilian railways and coffee plantations. Their
sons go to Algeria and Morocco to seek a fortune. Is this why only the
coming of tourists and residents from a less hospitable clime has
wrought any change in the country during the nineteenth century? From
the standpoint of natural production the Riviera is relatively less
important, less self-supporting than before the railway came.
By the forester's house of Le Malpey, after an hour's descent, we
strike the carriage road. An hour and a half brings us to Valescure,
an English colony built in pine woods. Another half hour and we are at
Saint-Raphaël.
The next morning we discovered that Saint-Raphaël had its Old Town,
which escaped us on our trip to Fréjus. Only the new name of the main
street--Rue Gambetta--indicated that we were in France of the Third
Republic. But, as in Grasse, we felt that we were really in France of
all the centuries. There was none of that unmistakably Italian
atmosphere that still makes itself felt in Nice, once you wander into
quarters east of the Place Masséna. The thick walls of the old
church--far too massive for its size--bear witness to the period when
Mediterranean coast town church was sanctuary more than in name. To
the church the people fled when the Saracen pirates came, and while the
priests prayed they acted on the adage that God helps those who help
themselves, pouring molten lead from the roof and shooting arbalests
through _meurtrières_ that can still be distinguished despite bricks
and plaster. This is the Saint-Raphaël that Napoleon knew when he
returned from Egypt and, fifteen years later, sailed for his first
exile at Elba.
But we found much that was attractive in the new Saint-Raphaël, which
is as French as the old. The English keep themselves mostly at
Valescure. Tourists come on _chars-à-bancs_ for lunch, and hurry back
to Nice. Saint-Raphaël has developed as a French watering place. It
does not have the protection of the high wall of the Maritime Alps.
When the mistral, bane of the Midi, is not blowing, however, you wonder
whether the native-born have not picked out for a seashore resort a
more delightful bit of the Riviera coast than foreigners. A Frenchman
once told me that Saint-Raphaël was the logical Riviera town for the
French simply because the night train from Paris landed a traveler
there in time for noon lunch.
"This fact alone," he declared to me, "would induce me to choose
Saint-Raphaël in preference to Cannes and Nice. You know that when
twelve o'clock has struck the day is ruined for a Frenchman if he is
not reasonably sure of being able to sit down pretty soon to a good hot
meal. The P.-L.-M. put Cannes and Nice just a little bit beyond our
limit."
As you emerge from the Old Town, at the harbor, you pass by a large
modern church in Byzantine style, whose portal shows to excellent
advantage six porphyry columns from the nearby Boulouris quarries.
Along the sea is the Boulevard Felix-Martin, which runs into the
Corniche de l'Estérel. For several miles you feel that there is
nothing to detract from the spell of the sea. Elsewhere on the Riviera
you have promenades embellished by great buildings and monuments and
forts and exotic trees. You have coves and capes and villa-clad hills
with the Alpine background. You climb cliffs and see the Mediterranean
at bends, through trees and across luxurious gardens. Panorama after
panorama with distractions galore react on you like a picture gallery.
But at Saint-Raphaël the sea dominates. The Mediterranean alone holds
you.
This is why you cannot endorse the bald statement flung at you by the
famous sundial of the Rue de France at Nice:
"Io vado e vengo ogni giorno,
Ma tu andrai senza ritorno."
It may be true enough of Nice that you will not go back. One has the
confusion of human activities everywhere and tires of it everywhere.
But just the sea alone is always new. Of course in the end the
immortal sun has the better of you. But as long as life does last the
effort will be made to get back to the Boulevard Felix-Martin at
Saint-Raphaël. For there, better than anywhere else on the Riviera,
one can look at the sea.