ROSES OF PROVENCE
"Ai vist la roso adematin
Tout bello e fresco espandido...."
"I have seen the morning rose expanded all beautiful and
fresh...."
ROUMANILLE.
"Sweet month of May,
So fresh, so gay,
Hast come again?
Nature awakes,
Soon morning breaks
In hawthorn glen,
The birds' refrain
Thrills forth its strain."
FROM THE PROVENÇAL OF AUBANEL.
[Illustration: BASE OF MONUMENT OF MARIUS, ST. REMY.
_By Joseph Pennell._]
What is the mysterious force in life that always makes it impossible
to linger in any place where conditions are entirely congenial? We
can stay so easily and with so much general approval in odious spots,
among exasperating companions. But let a charm attach to any scene or
circumstance and straightway every factor of one's destiny flies into
violent collision with every other factor, so that immediate flight
becomes necessary, to the farthest limits of the railway system.
Only "le violence de notre étoile," or at any rate of Barbara's "étoile,"
could drive us from these bright regions; but then her star _was_ very
violent. Our country clamoured for us. It would have seemed flattering
had we not known that it sprang chiefly from the desire that consumes
the majority of people to act as sheep-dog towards wandering members
of the community; an instinctive feeling that if they are "away" it is
high time that they should come back again.
Barbara announced that she must go in about a week or ten days; and all
that remained for us to do was to make the most of her remaining time.
Our strange little mountains, the Alpilles, still held our fancy. Why
not go to the little town at their foot, St. Remy, with its industry of
seed culture? We had read of its Roman monuments and of the cordon of
flowers which surround it in the blooming season.
"C'est le chevalier du guet,
Compagne de la majorlaine,
C'est le chevalier du guet,
Gai, gai, dessus le quai,"
runs the local rhyme.[20]
It must be beautiful here in May when the vines are yellow-green to the
tips of their young fingers. But greater beauty than now, at this late
time, is scarcely possible to believe in.
The plain is gold and brown, with splashes of crimson where the sun shines
through some eccentric spray of vine-leaves passionately red beyond its
fellows.
St. Remy is the ancient Glanum of the Romans, and has memories not
scholastic of Cæsar's Gallic Wars. Along the passes of the Alpilles,
Marius moved with his army at that stirring moment which was to decide
whether the hordes of the Cimbri and the Teutons were to overrun all
Italy and take possession of the Eternal City itself. So near a thing
it was that the barbarians insolently asked the Roman soldiers if they
had any messages for their wives and sweethearts in Rome, as they would
soon be there.
Everything hung on the strategy of the Roman general, and it is only on
the scene of that great contest that one realises what a desperate and
universal moment it was.
Had the campaign of Marius ended otherwise than it did--had he yielded an
hour too soon to the impatience of his soldiers to begin the fight--the
whole course of history would have been different in all probability,
and perhaps not one of us would have been born!
* * * * *
The railway from Tarascon to our little City of Gardens brings one into
the very heart of the country. The carriages are so small--two-storied
though they are--that one feels as if one were taking a drive in a
donkey-cart or station fly, and more than once we were almost impelled
to call out to our driver to stop and let us gather wild-flowers by
the wayside. And the wayside is so absurdly near. There is none of the
dignified aloofness of the ordinary train journey.
[Illustration: ROMAN ARCH, ST. REMY.
_By Joseph Pennell._]
The same general features of the country are, of course, as before, but
now we are intimately among its details: the vines, the low olive-bushes,
the farmsteads, the cypresses, the patches of cultivation, the plantations
of yellow canes rustling and swaying. And ever we are nearing the
Alpilles. The train stops dutifully at a dozen little stations, where no
one gets in or out. They are scarcely more than sentry-boxes; sometimes
a mere frame filled in with the stalks of the reeds. Were it not that the
mistral can blow through them, it seems impossible that these trivialities
could withstand his lightest breath.
St. Remy, once the country seat of the Counts of Provence, has no walls
of stone, but four-square leafy ramparts of plane-trees. From the door
of the _Hôtel de Provence_ one may turn to the right or left and blindly
follow the avenues round the little town till one returns to one's
starting-point, where probably a brown-eyed youth will still be grinding
coffee beside the footpath. There are almost no sounds in St. Remy, for
there are no vehicles except the hotel omnibus which trundles to and
from the station, marking the lapse of time.
The visitors all, or nearly all, come with the same intent: to negotiate
with the growers of seeds, and, at the proper season, they arrive
in great numbers from every part of the world, including America the
ever-enterprising.
Pinks and carnations and lilies, and purple acres of pansies with their
texture of velvet; flowers and flowers in multitudes, blooming and budding
and blushing--this is the sweet merchandise of St. Remy en Provence.
The hotel has the homely, spacious character of old-established inns
in country towns. One feels a sense of comfort as one enters, and
the courteous greeting of the landlord and his wife confirms one's
satisfaction. The long, dark-papered _salle-à-manger_ has a broad streak
of sunshine across the polished floor from an open window which gives
on to the regions at the back of the hotel. The waiter hastens to shut
this, but desists with a shrug and a smile at our remonstrance. If we
like to sit in draughts and endanger our lives, after all it is our own
affair. He feels with Madame de Sévigné, "Mais ce sont des Anglais!"
The window allows one to pass out into a nondescript territory where
boots are cleaned, firewood is stacked, and the omnibus is regularly
put to bed and tucked in after its day's work.
To the left, a magnificent plane-tree spreads golden foliage far and
wide, brimming up to our bedroom windows just overhead. And a little
further from the house, on this side of a sombre row of cypresses, with
an ethereal view to the left of palest mountain peaks--a Provençal rose
garden!
"But gather, gather, Mesdames," invites our kind host, "gather as many
as you will." He smiles at our amazed delight, and waves a hospitable
hand towards the masses of blossom, radiantly fresh and fair.
Roses of Provence!
The sun draws out the fragrance and shines through the petals till they
gleam like gemmed enamel. We linger entranced.
In the narrow path we are elbow high in roses. And everything seems to
stand still and wait in the hot sun. Nothing moves on. There is only
a tiny floating back and forwards of a thread of cobweb between rose
and rose; and very slowly now and again a broad swathe of plane-foliage
heaves up and down on a little swell of air which the tree has all to
itself in the shade-dappled precincts that it rules.
Looking across the roses from this spot we can see the rich tapestry
of blossom against the cypresses, tall, grave warders of the Garden of
Pleasure.
And still nothing moves forward. The flies come out and make drowsy,
foolish noises in the warmth. But they return upon their paths and make
buzzing circuits. A particular spasmodic burnished insect that darts
suddenly to a distance and then remains thunderstruck before the heart
of a flower, keeps on doing the same ridiculous thing all round the
garden, and only adds to the impression of changelessness. It is as if
the world had really come to a pause, and time and trouble had ceased
their eternal pulse-beat.
And we gather our roses--while we may.
"Mais Mesdames, vous n'avez choisi que les roses les plus communes;
tenez Mesdames." And Monsieur the landlord plunges into the bushes and
cuts bloom after bloom of the most exquisite sorts: red and yellow and
creamy white, till his generous hand can grasp no more. He stands smiling
discreetly while we bury our faces in the flowers, and hold them at
arm's length to admire them the more.
"Elles vous rendent heureuses, les roses, Mesdames," he says, with a
little smile and a bow; "alors vous rendez heureuses les roses--et votre
serviteur."
We try to make a co-operative bow (bowing was not Barbara's strong
point), and to indicate as well as we can that only in this delightful
country had we ever met with such lovely roses or such kind people.
* * * * *
The first part of the day was occupied in wandering over the open
country that surrounds this placid little town of the Romans. The plain
is wide--immense in its spaces, marked with the inevitable walls of
cypresses and dotted with shrubs and farms as far as the eye can follow.
The strange, almost grotesque outline of the Alpilles closes in this
view to the South, and between these mountains and the town there are
endless rough tracks and paths among the hollows and risings of the land,
quaint cuttings in the soil which lead the eye to the blue of the hills.
[Illustration: LA CROIX DE VERTU, ST. REMY.
_By E. M. Synge._]
Here and there would be a small dwelling, here and there a field enclosed
for pasture, but this was rare. The greater part was wild, rough country,
owing little to the care of man.
In one of the highest spots of this singular district stands a curious
stone cross, called by the people _La Croix de Vertu_, why it is
impossible to discover. It is a monolith supporting a small iron cross,
which is doubtless of much later date than its support.
It is approached from four sides and occupies the highest ground at
which the four paths meet.
A strange, little lonely mysterious monument, whereby, doubtless, hangs
many an ancient tale!
We spent the rest of the day in visiting the Roman remains--two
well-preserved relics of Imperial days--a triumphal arch and a tall
monument which is said to have been built to celebrate the great victory
of Marius over the Teutons.
They stand lonely and singularly unspoiled, at the foot of the Alpilles,
and before them stretches a wide plain over which the light is growing
soft and warm, the few shadows of olives and low bushes beginning to
lengthen.
And we sit down on the dry grass near the monuments and are silent.
The agitated figures on the bas-relief of the triumphal edifice stand
out well in the glowing light. They are fighting and struggling in some
unknown contest which they take, poor things, so very seriously, and
which really matters so very little after all! The broad, long lines of
the landscape speak eloquently of the folly of that old death-struggle.
It is strange to think of those stone warriors fighting on century after
century as the seasons go by, always there and always fighting when
the sun touches them in the morning, when the white moon peers over the
jagged outline of the little mountains just behind, and finds them at
it still! Do they not even rest when there is neither sun nor moon but
only a great wide darkness over the land and the mountains are blotted
out?
It seems as if there were a waking up rather than a resting as the night
approaches.
We linger till the air is dim and mysterious, and the exquisite wreath of
leaves on the archi-vault of the triumphal arch begins to get blurred,
clean-cut and fresh though it is. But something seems to creep up out
of the earth, to swarm round out of the mountains till there might be
seen or felt a shadowy throng--inchoate presences that stream through
the arch and crowd round the foot of the unresting monument.
Barbara judiciously looks at her watch. And we rise and walk slowly back
to our hotel along the white road, silent, and perhaps rather sad.