Rambles on the Riviera

Rambles on the Riviera by M. F. Mansfield RAMBLES ON THE RIVIERA CHAPTER I. A PLEA FOR PROVENCE “À Valence, le Midi commence!” is a saying of the French, though this Rhône-side city, the Julia-Valentia of Roman times, is in full view of the snow-clad Alps. It is true, however, that as one descends the valley of the torrential Rhône, from Lyons southward, he comes suddenly upon a brilliancy of sunshine and warmth of atmosphere, to say nothing of many differences in manners and customs, which are reminiscent only of the southland itself. Indeed this is even more true of Orange, but a couple of scores of miles below, whose awning-hung streets, and open-air workshops are as brilliant and Italian in motive as Tuscany itself. Here at Orange one has before him the most wonderful old Roman arch outside of Italy, and an amphitheatre so great and stupendous in every way, and so perfectly preserved, that he may well wonder if he has not crossed some indefinite frontier and plunged into the midst of some strange land he knew not of. The history of Provence covers so great a period of time that no one as yet has attempted to put it all into one volume, hence the lover of wide reading, with Provence for a subject, will be able to give his hobby full play. The old Roman Provincia, and later the mediæval Provence, were prominent in affairs of both Church and State, and many of the momentous incidents which resulted in the founding and aggrandizing of the French nation had their inception and earliest growth here. There may be some doubts as to the exact location of the Fossés Mariennes of the Romans, but there is not the slightest doubt that it was from Avignon that there went out broadcast, through France and the Christian world of the fourteenth century, an influence which first put France at the head of the civilizing influences of Christendom. The Avignon popes planned a vast cosmopolitan monarchy, of which France should be the head, and Avignon the new Rome. The Roman emperors exercised their influence throughout all this region long before, and they left enduring monuments wherever they had a foothold. At Orange, St. Rémy, Avignon, Arles, and Nîmes there were monumental arches, theatres, and arenas, quite the equal of those of Rome itself, not in splendour alone, but in respect as well to the important functions which they performed. The later middle ages somewhat dimmed the ancient glories of the Romanesque school of monumental architecture—though it was by no means pure, as the wonderfully preserved and dainty Greek structures at Nîmes and Vienne plainly show—and the roofs of theatres and arenas fell in and walls crumbled through the stress of time and weather. In spite of all the decay that has set in, and which still goes on, a short journey across Provence wonderfully recalls other days. The traveller who visits Orange, and goes down the valley of the Rhône, by Avignon, St. Rémy, Arles, Nîmes, Aix, and Marseilles, will be an ill- informed person indeed if he cannot construct history for himself anew when once he is in the midst of this multiplicity of ancient shrines. Day by day things are changing, and even old Provence is fast coming under the influences of electric railroads and twentieth-century ideas of progress which bid fair to change even the face of nature: Marseilles is to have a direct communication with the Rhône and the markets of the north by means of a canal cut through the mountains of the Estaque, and a great port is to be made of the Étang de Berre (perhaps), and trees are to be planted on the bare hills which encircle the Crau, with the idea of reclaiming the pebbly, sandy plain. No doubt the deforestation of the hillsides has had something to do, in ages past, with the bareness of the lower river-bottom of the Rhône which now separates Arles from the sea. Almost its whole course below Arles is through a treeless, barren plain; but, certainly, there is no reflection of its unproductiveness in the lives of the inhabitants. There is no evidence in Arles or Nîmes, even to-day—when we know their splendour has considerably faded—of a poverty or dulness due to the bareness of the neighbouring country. Irrigation will accomplish much in making a wilderness blossom like the rose, and when the time and necessity for it really comes there is no doubt but that the paternal French government will take matters into its own hands and turn the Crau and the Camargue into something more than a grazing-ground for live-stock. Even now one need not feel that there is any “appalling cloud of decadence” hanging over old Provence as some travellers have claimed. The very best proof one could wish, that Provence is not a poor impoverished land, is that the best of everything is grown right in her own boundaries,—the olive, the vine, the apricot, the peach, and vegetables of the finest quality. The mutton and beef of the Crau, the Camargue, and the hillsides of the coast ranges are most excellent, and the fish supply of the Mediterranean is varied and abundant; loup, turbot, thon, mackerel, sardines, and even sole,—which is supposed to be the exclusive specialty of England and Normandy,—with langouste and coquillages at all times. No cook will quarrel with the supply of his market, if he lives anywhere south of Lyons; and Provence, of all the ancientgouvernements of France, is the land above all others where all are good cooks,—a statement which is not original with the author of this book, but which has come down since the days of the old régime, when Provence was recognized as “la patrie des grands maîtres de cuisine.” “It was September, and it was Provence,” are the opening words of Daudet’s “Port Tarascon.” What more significant words could be uttered to awaken the memories of that fair land in the minds of any who had previously threaded its highways and byways? From the days of Petrarch writers of many schools have sung its praises, and the literature of the subject is vast and varied, from that of the old geographers to the last lays of Mistral, the present deity of Provençal letters. The Loire divides France on a line running from the southeast to the middle of the west coast, parting the territory into two great divisions, which in the middle ages had a separate form of legislation, of speech, and of literature. The language south of the Loire was known as the langue d’oc (an expression which gave its name to a province), so called from the fact, say some etymologists and philologists, that the expression of affirmation in the romance language of the south was “oc” or “hoc.” Dialects were common enough throughout this region, as elsewhere in France; but there was a certain grammatical resemblance between them all which distinguished them from the speech of the Bretons and Normans in the north. This southern language was principally distinguished from northern French by the existence of many Latin roots, which in the north had been eliminated. Foreign influences, curiously enough, had not crept in in the south, and, like the Spanish and the Italian speech, that of Languedoc (and Provence) was of a dulcet mildness which in its survival to-day, in the chief Provençal districts, is to be remarked by all. Northward of the Loire the langue d’œil was spoken, and this language in its ultimate survival, with the interpolation of much that was Germanic, came to be the French that is known to-day. The Provençal tongue, even the more or less corrupt patois of to-day which Mistral and the other Félibres are trying to purify, is not so bad after all, nor so bizarre as one might think. It does not resemble French much more than it does Italian, but it is astonishingly reminiscent of many tongues, as the following quatrain familiar to us all will show: “Trento jour en Setèmbre, Abrieu Jun, e Nouvèmbre, De vint-e-une n’i’a qu’un Lis autre n’an trento un.” An Esperantist should find this easy. The literary world in general has always been interested in the Félibres of the land of “la verte olive, la mure vermeille, la grappe de vie, croissant ensemble sous un ciel d’azur,” and they recognize the “littérature provençale” as something far more worthy of being kept alive than that of the Emerald Isle, which is mostly a fad of a few pedants so dead to all progress that they even live their lives in the past. This is by no means the case with the Provençal school. The life of the Félibres and their followers is one of a supreme gaiety; the life of a veritable pays de la cigale, the symbol of a sentiment always identified with Provence. Of the original founders of the Félibres three names stand out as the most prominent: Mistral, who had taken his honours at the bar, Roumanille, a bookseller of Avignon, and Theodore Aubanal. For the love of their pays and its ancient tongue, which was fast falling into a mere patois, they vowed to devote themselves to the perpetuation of it and the reviving of its literature. In 1859 “Mirèio,” Mistral’s masterpiece, appeared, and was everywhere recognized as the chief literary novelty of the age. Mistral went to Paris and received the plaudits of the literary and artistic world of the capital.

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