of only twenty-five hectares, or nearly sixty acres, a somewhat
bewildering course of study is given. The list of subjects begins well.
First, a lad is here taught his duties as the head of a family, a
citizen, and a man of business. Then come geography, history,
arithmetic, book-keeping, trigonometry, linear drawing, mechanics,
chemistry, physics, natural history, botany, geology, _agrologie_, or
the study of soils, irrigation, political economy. Whilst farming
generally is taught, the speciality of the school is fruit and flower
culture. A beautiful avenue of palm and orange trees leads from the
road to the block of buildings, the director's house standing just
outside. I was fortunate in finding this gentleman at home, and he
welcomed me with the courtesy, I may say cordiality, I have ever
received from professors of agriculture and practical farmers in France.
We immediately set out for our survey, my companion informing me, to my
surprise, that the gardens I now gazed on so admiringly formed a mere
wilderness a few years ago, that is to say, until their purchase by the
State. The palm and orange trees had been brought hither and
transplanted, everything else had sprung up on the roughly-cleared
ground. Palm trees are reared on the school lands for exportation to
Holland, there, of course, to be kept under glass; ere long the
exportation of palms and orange trees will doubtless become as
considerable as that of hothouse flowers.
I was shown magnificent palms fifteen years old, and nurseries of tiny
trees, at this stage of their existence unlovely as birch brooms.
Hitherto, majestic although its appearance, the palm of the Riviera has
not produced dates. The director is devoting much time to this subject,
and hopes ere long to gather his crop.
As we passed between the orange trees, here and there the deep green
glossy fruit turning to gold, I heard the same report as at Pessicarz.
At neither place can the lads resist helping themselves to the unripe
oranges. Sour apples and green oranges seem quite irresistible to
hobbledehoys. The trees were laden with fruit, and, unless blown off by
a storm, the crop would be heavy. An orange tree on an average produces
to the value of two hundred francs.
I was next taken to the newly-created vineyards, some consisting of
French grafts on American stock, others American plants; but vines are
capricious, and one vineyard looked sickly enough, although free from
parasites. The climate did not suit it, that was all.
But by far the most important and interesting crops here are the
hothouse flowers. I fancy few English folks think of glass-houses in
connection with the Riviera. Yet the chief business of horticulturists
during a large portion of the year is in the conservatory. Brilliant as
is the winter sun, the nights are cold and the fall of temperature
after sundown extremely rapid. Only the hardier flowers, therefore,
remain out of doors.
I was now shown the glass-houses being made ready for the winter. All
the choice flowers, roses, carnations and others, sent to Paris, London,
Berlin, St. Petersburg, are grown under glass. Roses thus cultivated
will bring four francs per dozen to the grower; I was even told of
choicest kinds sold from the conservatories at a franc each. It may
easily be conceived how profitable is this commerce, destined without
doubt to become more so as the culture of flowers improves. New
varieties are ever in demand for royal or millionaires' tables, bridal
bouquets, funeral wreaths. I was told the discoverer or creator of a
blue carnation would make his fortune. I confess this commercial aspect
of flowers takes something from their poetry. Give me a cottager's plot
of sweet-williams and columbine instead of the floral paragon evolved
for the gratification of the curious! As we strolled about we came upon
groups of students at work. All politely raised their hats when we
passed, and by their look and manner might have been taken for young
gentlemen.
A great future doubtless awaits this delightfully placed Horticultural
School. Whilst the object primarily aimed at by the State is the
education of native gardeners and floriculturists, other results may be
confidently expected. No rule keeps out foreigners, and just as our
Indian candidates for the Forestry service prepare themselves at Nancy,
so intending fruit-growers in Tasmania will in time betake themselves to
Antibes. A colonial, as well as an international element is pretty sure
to be added. French subjects beyond seas will certainly avail themselves
of privileges not to be had at home, carrying away with them knowledge
of the greatest service in tropical France. Horticulture as a science
must gain greatly by such a centre, new methods being tried, improved
systems put into practice. In any case, the department may fairly be
congratulated on its recent acquisition, one, alas, we have to set
against very serious drawbacks! In these intensely hot and glaring days
of mid-October, the only way of enjoying life is to betake oneself to a
sailing-boat. Few English folks realize the torture of mosquito-invaded
nights on the Riviera. As to mosquito curtains, they afford a remedy
ofttimes worse than the disease, keeping out what little air is to be
had and admitting, here and there, one mosquito of slenderer bulk and
more indomitable temper than the rest. After two or three utterly
sleepless nights the most enthusiastic traveller will sigh for grey
English skies, pattering drops and undisturbed sleep. At sea, you may
escape both blinding glare and mosquito bites. A boat is also the only
means of realizing the beauty of the coast. Most beautiful is the
roundabout sail from Cannes to the Île St. Marguerite: I say roundabout,
because, if the wind is adverse, the boatmen have to make a circuit,
going out of their course to the length of four or five miles. Every
tourist knows the story of the Iron Mask; few are perhaps aware that in
the horrible prison in which Louis XIV kept him for seventeen years,
Protestants were also incarcerated, their only crime being that they
would not perjure themselves, in other words, feign certain beliefs to
please the tyrant.
At the present time the cells adjoining the historic dungeon of the
Masque de Fer are more cheerfully occupied. Soldiers are placed there
for slight breaches of discipline, their confinement varying from twelve
hours to a few days. We heard two or three occupants gaily whiling away
the time by singing patriotic songs, under the circumstances the best
thing they could do. Lovely indeed was the twenty minutes' sail back to
Cannes, the sea, deep indigo, the sky, intensest blue, white villas
dotting the green hills, far away the violet mountains. When we betake
ourselves to the railway or carriage road, we must make one comparison
very unfavourable to English landscape. Here building stone, as bricks
and mortar with us, is daily and hourly invading pastoral scenes, but
the hideous advertizing board is absent in France. We do not come upon
monster advertisements of antibilious pills, hair dye, or soap amid
olive groves and vineyards. Let us hope that the vulgarization
permitted among ourselves will not be imitated by our neighbours.
In 1789 Arthur Young described the stretch of country between Fréjus
and Cannes as a desert, "not one mile in twenty cultivated." Will
Europe and America, with the entire civilized world, furnish
valetudinarians in sufficient numbers to fill the hotels, villas, and
boarding houses now rising at every stage of the same way? The matter
seems problematic, yet last winter accommodation at Nice barely
sufficed for the influx of visitors.
Nice is the most beautiful city in France, I am tempted to say the most
beautiful city I ever beheld. It is the last in which I should choose to
live or even winter.
Site, sumptuosity, climate, vegetation here attain their acme; so far,
indeed, Nice may be pronounced flawless. During a certain portion of the
year, existence, considered from the physical and material point of
view, were surely here perfect. When we come to the social and moral
aspect of the most popular health resort in Europe, a very different
conclusion is forced upon us.
Blest in itself, Nice is cursed in its surroundings. So near is that
plague spot of Europe, Monte Carlo, that it may almost be regarded as a
suburb. For a few pence, in half-an-hour, you may transport yourself
from a veritable earthly Paradise to what can only be described as a
gilded Inferno. Unfortunately evil is more contagious than good. Certain
medical authorities aver that the atmosphere of Mentone used to be
impregnated with microbes of phthisis; the germs of moral disease
infecting the immediate neighbourhood of Nice are far more appalling.
Nor are symptoms wanting of the spread of that moral disease. The
municipal council of this beautiful city, like Esau, had just sold their
birthright for a mess of pottage. They had conceded the right of
gambling to the Casino, the proprietors purchasing the right by certain
outlays in the way of improvements, a new public garden, and so on. As
yet roulette and rouge-et-noir are not permitted at Nice, the gambling
at present carried on being apparently harmless. It is in reality even
more insidious, being a stepping-stone to vice, a gradual initiation
into desperate play. Just as addiction to absinthe is imbibed by potions
quite innocuous in the beginning, so the new Casino at Nice schools the
gamester from the outset, slowly and by infinitesimal degrees preparing
him for ruin, dishonour and suicide.
The game played is called _Petits Chevaux_, and somewhat resembles our
nursery game of steeplechase. The stakes are only two francs, but as
there are eight to each horse, and you may take as many as you please,
it is quite easy to lose several hundred francs in one evening--or, for
the matter of that, one afternoon. Here, as at Monte Carlo, the gambling
rooms remain open from noon till midnight. The buildings are on an
imposing scale: reading rooms, a winter garden, concerts, entertainments
of various kinds blinding the uninitiated to the real attraction of the
place, namely, the miniature horses spinning around the tables.
Already--I write of October--eager crowds stood around, and we heard
the incessant chink of falling coin. This modified form of gambling is
especially dangerous to the young. Parents, who on no account would let
their children toss a five-franc piece on to the tables of Monte Carlo,
see no harm in watching them play at _petits chevaux_. They should,
first of all, make a certain ghastly pilgrimage I will now relate.
Monaco does not as yet, politically speaking, form a part of French
territory; from a geographical point of view we are obliged so to regard
it. Thus French geographers and writers of handbooks include the tiny
principality, which for the good of humanity, let us hope, may ere long
be swallowed up by an earthquake--or moralized! The traveller then is
advised to take train to Monaco, and, arrived at the little station,
whisper his errand in the cab-driver's ear, "To the suicides' cemetery."
For the matter of that, it is an easy walk enough for all who can stand
the burning sun and glare of white walls and buildings. Very lovely,
too, is the scene as we slowly wind upwards, the road bordered with
aloes and cypresses; above, handsome villas standing amid orange groves
and flowers; below, the sparkling sea.
A French cemetery, with its wreaths of beadwork and artificial violets,
has ever a most depressing appearance. That of Monaco is like any other,
we find the usual magnificence, and usual tinsel. Many beautiful trees,
shrubs, and flowers, however, relieve the gloom, and every inch is
exquisitely kept.
Quite apart from this vast burial-ground, on the other side of the main
entrance, is a small enclosure, walled in and having a gate of open
ironwork always locked. Here, in close proximity to heaps of garden
rubbish, broken bottles and other refuse, rest the suicides of Monte
Carlo, buried by the parish gravedigger, without funeral and without any
kind of religious ceremony. Each grave is marked by an upright bit of
wood, somewhat larger than that by which gardeners mark their seeds, and
on which is painted a number, nothing more. Apart from these, are
stakes driven into the ground which mark as yet unappropriated spots.
The indescribable dreariness of the scene is heightened by two
monumental stones garlanded with wreaths and surrounded by flowers. The
first records the memory of a young artisan, and was raised by his
fellow-workmen; the second commemorates brotherly and sisterly
affection. Both suicides were driven to self-murder by play. The
remainder are mere numbers. There are poor gamesters as well as rich,
and it is only or chiefly these who are put into the ground here. The
bodies of rich folks' relatives, if identified, are immediately removed,
and, by means of family influence, interred with religious rites. Many
suicides are buried at Nice and Mentone, but the larger proportion,
farther off still. Not to descant further on this grim topic, let me now
say something about Monte Carlo itself.
Never anywhere was snare more plainly set in the sight of any bird.
There is little in the way of amusement that you do not get for nothing
here, a beautiful pleasure-ground, reading-rooms as luxurious and
well-supplied as those of a West End club, one of the best orchestras in
Europe, and all without cost of a farthing.
The very lavishness arouses suspicion in the minds of the wary. Why
should we be supplied, not only with every English newspaper we ever
heard of, but with _Punch_, _Truth_, and similar publications to boot? Why
should Germans, Russians, Dutch, every other European nation, receive
treatment equally generous? Again, to be able to sit down at elegant
writing-tables and use up a quire of fine notepaper and a packet of
envelopes to match, if we chose, how is all this managed? The concerts
awaken a feeling of even intenser bewilderment. Not so much as a penny
are we allowed to pay for a programme, to say nothing of the trained
musicians. Where is the compensation of such liberality?
The gambling tables, crowded even at three o'clock on an October
afternoon, answer our question. The season begins later, but gamblers
cannot wait. "Faites le jeu, messieurs; messieurs, faites le jeu," is
already heard from noon to midnight, and the faster people ruin
themselves and send a pistol shot through their heads, the faster others
take their place. It is indeed melancholy to reflect how many once
respectable lives, heads of families, even wives and mothers, are being
gradually lured on to bankruptcy and suicide.
In cruellest contrast to the moral degradation fostered below, is the
enormous cathedral, at the time of my visit in course of erection
directly above the gambling rooms. The millions of francs expended on
this sumptuous basilica were supplied by the proprietors of the Casino
and the Prince of Monaco. Nothing can strike the stranger with a
stronger sense of incongruity--a church rising from the very heart of a
Pandemonium!
Monaco is a pretty, toy-like, Lilliputian kingdom compared with which
the smallest German principality of former days was enormous. Curiously
enough, whilst Monte Carlo is peopled with gamesters, the only tenants
of Monaco seem to be priests, nuns and their pupils. The miniature
capital, state and kingdom in one, consists chiefly of convents and
seminaries, and wherever you go you come upon these Jesuit fathers with
their carefully-guarded troops of lads in uniform. A survey of the
entire principality of Monaco, Monte Carlo included, requires about a
quarter of an hour. Nowhere, surely, on the face of the civilized globe
is so much mischief contained in so small a space. Fortunately, the
poisonous atmosphere of the Casino does not seem to affect the native
poor. Everywhere we are struck by the thrifty, sober, hard-working
population; beggars or ragged, wretched-looking creatures are very rare.
If the authorities of the Alpes Maritimes have set themselves to put
down vagrancy, they have certainly succeeded.
Nice is a home for the millionaire and the working man. The intermediate
class is not wanted. Visitors are expected to have money, are welcomed
on that account, and if they have to look to pounds, shillings, and
pence, had much better remain at home.
Woe betide the needy invalid sent thither in search of sunshine!
Sunshine is indeed a far more expensive luxury on the Riviera than we
imagine, seeing that only rooms with a north aspect are cheap, and a
sunless room is much more comfortless and unwholesome than a well-warmed
one, no matter its aspect, in England. The only cheap commodity, one
unfortunately we cannot live upon, is the bouquet. In October, that is
to say, before the arrival of winter visitors, flowers are to be had for
the asking; on the market-place an enormous bouquet of tuberoses,
violets, carnations, myrtle, priced at two or three francs, the price in
Paris being twenty. Fruit also I found cheap, figs fourpence a dozen,
and other kinds in proportion. This market is the great sight of Nice,
and seen on a cloudless day--indeed it would be difficult to see it on
any other--is a glory of colour of which it is impossible to give the
remotest notion. I was somewhat taken aback to find Sunday less
observed here as a day of rest than in any other French town I know, and
not many French towns are unknown to me. The flower and fruit markets
were crowded, drapers', grocers', booksellers' shops open all day long,
traffic unbroken as usual. I should have imagined that a city, for
generations taken possession of by English visitors, would by this time
have fallen into our habit of respecting Sunday alike in the interests
of man and beast. Of churches, both English and American, there is no
lack. Let us hope that the Protestant clergy will turn their attention
to this subject. Let us hope also that the entire English-speaking
community will second their efforts in this direction. Further, I will
put in a good word for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals founded at Nice some years since, and sadly in need of funds.
The Society is backed up by the Government in accordance with the
admirable Loi Grammont, but, as is the case with local societies in
England, requires extraneous help. Surely rich English valetudinarians
will not let this humane work stand still, seeing, as they must do
daily, the urgent necessity of such interference! From the windows of a
beautiful villa on the road to Villefranche, I saw baskets of chickens
brought in from Italy, the half of which were dead or dying from
suffocation. As the owner of the villa said, "Not even self-interest
teaches this Italian humanity." By packing his fowls so as to afford
them breathing space, he would double his gains. The habit of cruelty is
too inveterate. My host assured me that large numbers of poultry sent
across the frontier are suffocated on the way.
Horrible also is the pigeon-shooting at Monte Carlo. Hundreds of these
wretched birds are killed for sport every day during the winter. The
wounded or escaped fly back after a while to be shot at next day.
The word "villa" calls for comment. Such a designation is appropriate
here. The palatial villas of Nice, standing amid orangeries and palm
groves, are worthy of their Roman forerunners. For the future I shall
resent the term as applied in England to eight-roomed, semi-detached
constructions, poorly built, and with a square yard of flower-bed in
front. Many of the Niçois villas are veritable palaces, and what adds to
their sumptuousness is the indoor greenery, dwarf palms, india-rubber
trees, and other handsome evergreens decorating corridor and
landing-places. The English misnomer has, nevertheless, compensations in
snug little kitchen and decent servant's bedroom. I looked over a
handsome villa here, type, I imagine, of the rest. The servants'
bedrooms were mere closets with openings on to a dark corridor, no
windows, fireplace, cupboard, or any convenience. The kitchen was a
long, narrow room, after the manner of French kitchens, with space by
the window for two or three chairs. I ventured to ask the mistress of
the house where the servants sat when work was done. Her answer was
suggestive--
"They have no time to sit anywhere."
It will be seen that our grey skies and mean-looking dwellings have
compensations.
XIII
GUEST OF FARMER AND MILLER
"Nine hours' rolling at anchor" was Arthur Young's experience of a
Channel passage in 1787, and on the return journey he was compelled to
wait three days for a wind. Two years later, what is in our own time a
delightful little pleasure cruise of one hour and a quarter, the journey
from Dover to Calais occupied fourteen hours.
We might suppose from the hundreds of thousands of English travellers
who yearly cross the Manche, that Picardy, Artois, and French Flanders
would overflow with them, that we should hear English speech wherever we
go, and find ourselves amid more distinctly English surroundings than
even in Switzerland or Norway; but no such thing. From the moment I
quitted Boulogne to that of my departure from Calais, having made the
round by way of Hesdin, Arras, Vitry-en-Artois, Douai, Lille, St. Omer,
I no more encountered an English tourist than on the Causses of the
Lozère a few years before. Many years later, on going over much of the
same ground, with a halt at Étaples and Le Touquet, it was much the
same. Yet such a tour, costing so little as regards money, time and
fatigue, teems with interest of very varied and unlooked-for kind.
Every inch of ground is historic to begin with, and has contributed its
page to Anglo-French annals or English romance. We may take the little
railway from Hesdin to Abbeville, traversing the forest of Crécy, and
drive across the cornfields to Agincourt. We may stop at Montreuil,
which now looks well, not only "on the map," but from the railway
carriage, reviving our recollections of Tristram Shandy. At Douai we
find eighty English boys playing cricket and football under the eye of
English Benedictine monks--their college being a survival of the
persecutions of Good Queen Bess.
And to come down from history and romance to astounding prose, we find,
a few years ago, Roubaix, a town of 114,000 souls, that is to say, a
fourth of the population of Lyons--a town whose financial transactions
with the Bank of France exceed those of Rheims, Nîmes, Toulouse, or
Montpellier, represented by a man of the people, the important functions
of mayor being filled by the proprietor of a humble _estaminet_ and
vendor of newspapers, character and convictions only having raised the
Socialist leader to such a post!
In rural districts there is also much to learn. Peasant property exists
more or less in every part of France, but we are here more especially in
presence of agriculture on a large scale. In the Pas-de-Calais and the
Nord we find high farming in right good earnest, holdings of from ten to
fifteen hundred acres conducted on the footing of large industrial
concerns, capital, science and enterprise being alike brought to bear
upon the cultivation of the soil and by private individuals.
I travelled from Boulogne to Hesdin, in time for the first beautiful
effect of spring-tide flower and foliage. The blackthorn and pear trees
were already in full blossom, and the elm, poplar and chestnut just
bursting into leaf. Everything was very advanced, and around the
one-storeyed, white-washed cottages the lilacs showed masses of bloom,
field and garden being a month ahead of less favoured years.
* * * * *