A Book of The Riviera

“L’horreur de l’eau, l’amour du vin
Le retiendront au bord du Rhin.”

Grasse, as already said, is an admirable centre for excursions, and no excursion is finer than that up the Gorge of the Loup. It is not often that commercial enterprise adds to picturesqueness of scene; but this it has at the entrance to the Gorge. There the railway makes a bold sweep over a really beautiful viaduct, this itself an addition to the scene. But further, in order to supply electric force to Nice for its trams and lighting, a canal has been bored in the precipice on the right bank of the Loup, at a great elevation, to bring the water from an upper fall, so as, by means of a turbine, to accumulate the required power; and the falls of this stream at the opening of the ravine are of great beauty.

It is hard to decide which is most beautiful, the view of the mouth of the ravine, with the waterfall foaming down the cliff beside it, as seen from the hill-side as the train swings down from the direction of Nice, or whether from the side approached from Grasse, whence up the Gorge is obtained a glimpse of snowy peaks.

There are views one sees that never leave one, that fix themselves in the mind indelibly; and the view of the mouth of the Loup Gorge is certainly one such scene.

The ravines of the Tarn are visited by increasing numbers of tourists every year, and I know them well; but I do not think them superior to those of the Loup, the Cians, and the Var. Visitors to the Riviera are for the most part content to hug the coast and cling to the great centres of civilization, where there are shops, casinos, and theatres, and do not branch off afield. Only the day before writing this page, I heard a gentleman who had spent several winters on the Côte d’Azur remark that “After a while one gets very sick of the Riviera.” I promptly inquired whether he had penetrated any of the ravines sawn in the limestone; whether he had visited the mountain villages, such as Thouet de Bëuil; whether he had explored the Estérel. No – he knew nothing of them. In fact, through a dozen winters he had seen naught save the vulgar side of Provence.

It does not suffice to look at the mouth of the Gorge of the Loup. The ravine must be ascended, and that not by the new track, cut to accommodate the lazy, high up in the cliff, but by the footpath at the bottom. This will lead in the first place to an exquisite subject for the artist. On the farther bank is planted a little chapel with a cell once tenanted by a hermit. In mid torrent is a pile of rocks, and a light bridge of rudest construction traverses the river; above the piles of stone in the centre, against the purple gloom of the gorge, rises a crucifix, bathed in golden sunlight. Below, where it can root itself, is flowering laurestinus.

Farther up, after a succession of magnificent scenes, one drops upon a little house, where trout can be eaten, lying behind a waterfall; and to assist the visitor in reaching it, the proprietor runs out with a big umbrella to protect him from the torrent dissolved into rain. Further up the ravine come other and finer leaps of water, the main stream of the Loup, in maddest gambol of youth; and over all flash out gleams of the eternal snows.

Le Bar has a painting in the church, representing a Dance Macabre; it is, like all other such dances, of the fifteenth century. It represents Death armed with his bow among a party of dancers. Some are dying, and their souls are leaving their bodies. The picture is accompanied by a long Provençal inscription.

High above the entrance to the Gorge of the Loup stands the village of Gourdon, on the limestone terrace. The only spring water the place was supplied with came from a fountain in a cave in the face of a sheer precipice, reached by a thread of path, a foot to eighteen inches wide, along the cliff, and this, moreover, interrupted by a rift, usually crossed by a plank. But not infrequently this plank fell, or was carried away. Then those in quest of water leaped the gap, went on to the cave, filled their pitchers, and returned the same way, springing over the interval, where a false step would entail certain death.

At Mouans Sartoux, between Grasse and Cannes, stood the castle of a grim Huguenot Seigneur. The church was under the patronage of the Chapter of Grasse. The Sieur Reinaud invited two Calvinist ministers to his castle. In 1572, when the curé of Mouans had summoned a friar to help him for Christmas Day, and to preach, as he himself was a poor speaker, – just after midnight the Sieur sent armed men into the parsonage to threaten to kill the friar if he preached next day. On Christmas morning, accordingly, the frightened man abstained, and the congregation had to go without instruction on the lessons of the day. Then the Sieur broke into the church when the parishioners were communicating, along with his men-at-arms and his ministers, and made one of these latter ascend the pulpit and harangue the congregation, pour contumely on the Catholic Church, and denounce all respect for holy seasons. The fellow further told the people that their fathers and mothers were burning in hell-fire for not having revolted from the Church. Next, the Sieur renewed his threats that, should “the Cagot of a friar” venture to address the parishioners in the afternoon, he would do him to death. At vespers he again invaded the church, and set up one of his preachers to speak to the people. He did the same on the two following days. The Consuls of Mouans appealed to the Chapter of Grasse for protection, but they were incapable of affording them effectual aid.

The son of this Sieur, Pompée de Grasse, was more zealous even than his father, and did not confine himself to threats. He placed sword-edge and firebrand at the disposal of the Huguenot cause. He was a terror to the whole countryside. At last, one night, when he was at Bormes, in the Maures, a party of Catholics, disguised in long cloaks, managed to get into his castle, and killed him and his brother, and set fire to the place. His widow, Susanne de Villeneuve, and her two daughters, were allowed to escape by boat to Hyères.

We are vastly mistaken if we regard the parties in the Wars of Religion as all Lamb on one side, and all Wolf on the other. As a matter of fact, except in the Cevennes, the Reform was favoured only by the lesser nobility, not out of religious conviction, but out of a spirit of turbulence bred by the long disorders of the English occupation of Aquitaine, and the riots of the Free Companies. They resented the firm hand imposed on them by the Crown, and they hoped to get pickings out of Church estates.

The people generally were not touched by the negatives of Calvinism. After that Henry IV. joined the Church, most of the nobility and country gentry followed his example – again, not from conviction, but because they saw that the game of resistance was up.

At present, in the department of Var there are 1,500 Protestants out of a population of 310,000. In Alpes Maritimes they number 1,000 out of nearly 294,000, and most of these sectaries are foreign importations. If there had been deep-rooted convictions, these would not have been dissipated so certainly. In the Cevennes, Calvinism holds on notwithstanding persecution in the past, and in Ireland is a reverse instance.

But to return to Susanne de Villeneuve.

In 1592 the Duke of Savoy was at Grasse, and resolved on chastising this Susanne as a capital influence among the Razats. Actually two women at this period fomented the fury and bloodshed of internecine strife. The Baron de Vins, head of the Leaguers, had been killed in 1589 outside Grasse. The Countess Christine de Sault, his sister-in-law, had been the headpiece, as he the arm, of the party, and it was she who, in desperate resolve to save the Catholic cause, invited Charles Emmanuel of Savoy to give his help against the king. What she was on one side, that was Susanne de Villeneuve on the other – implacable, fanatical, remorseless in hate, and with an iron will.

The Duke of Savoy besieged Susanne in her castle of Mouans, and she defended herself gallantly; but, forced to surrender through lack of food, she imposed as condition that the castle should be spared. The duke broke his word, and levelled it. She was furious, reproached him, and demanded 40,000 crowns indemnity, or she would brand him as a liar and perjurer. He promised the money, but departed without paying. She hasted after him, caught him up in the plain of Cagnes, and poured forth afresh a torrent of abuse. He spurred his horse, so as to escape it; she flung herself in the way, held the bridle, and used her woman’s tongue with such effect that Charles Emmanuel was glad to disburse the money on the spot so as to effect his escape.

The castle has disappeared to its foundations. The church stands intact, unrestored.

I have spoken of the Hotel of the Cabris family in the Cours. No. 1 is the ancient mansion of the family of Théas-Thorenc, and was built by Count François, who was engaged in the wars of Louis XV., and whose praises have been sung by Goethe. He was at the taking of Frankfort, when his commander-in-chief, the Prince of Soubise, acquired the celebrity of the epigram: —

“Soubise dit, la lanterne à la main:
‘J’ai beau chercher! où diable est mon armée?
Elle était là  pourtant, hier matin?’”

He died there August 15th, 1793.

Another Grasse worthy is Fragonard, the painter, a mercer’s son, born at Grasse in 1732. He was put as clerk to a notary in early youth, but wearied mortally of the office, and in 1748 was given to the painter Bucher to be trained as an artist.

He was in full swing of favour and success in Paris when the Revolution broke out.

“Soon events became tragic, and then began the dusk of that bright and gentle life which had to him hitherto been one long smile. Frago had no thought of flying from the storm, and republicanism always remained idealised in his mind. But sadness oppressed his heart, and his friends shared it with him. These old pensioners of the king, enriched by the aristocracy, could not see without regret the demolition of the ancien régime, and the ruin of their protectors, emigrated, imprisoned, hunted down. Without hating either royalty or Jacobinism, the little group of artists of plebeian birth and bourgeois manners suffered in silence the great revolution in which all their past went down, as the shadows of old age deepened on them. Their art was out of fashion. Their piquant scenes, their dainty subjects, were no longer possible in the midst of political and social convulsions, and a few years sufficed to convert the respect of yesterday into the contempt of to-day. Eighty years must pass before taste and justice could bring men back to love the charming French school of 1770, to understand its importance in the history of the national genius, so as to induce the digging of its relics forth from under the cinders of the Revolution, the empire, and the bourgeois royalty.”[13 - Les Grands Artistes, Fragonard, par C. Mauclair, Paris (n. d.)]

A curiously small life must have been that of these little towns under the ancien régime, when the time of warfare was over. It was made up of petty quarrels, of scandals and gossip. Even in the cathedral, the bishop and the dean and the chapter were at loggerheads over the merest trifles – whether two or three coups of the censer should be given to the bishop, whether a bow to him should extend to the hams of the canons. Perhaps the funniest quarrel was about the patronage of the diocese. The bishop issued a pastoral, in which he announced that he had constituted S. Honoratus the patron of the clergy of Grasse, and did not say “with the assent of the chapter.” Whereupon the incensed chapter cut the name of Honoratus out of their calendar, and refused to celebrate his festival. Some of the bishops were engaged in incessant strife. When one died, to him might be applied the epigram written on Clement XI.: —

“A vermibus terræ consumendus in tumulo,
A vermibus ecclesiæ jam consumptus in throno.”

“The happy little town of Grasse,” says Lenthéric, “seems to be the very home of flowers and perfumes. Its forests or olives furnish the finest and sweetest oil of Provence; its groves of oranges and lemons yield at the same time flowers in abundance and fruit in maturity. About it are roses, jessamine, mint, heliotrope, Parma violets, mignonette, cultivated over wide tracts, as are also everywhere the common pot-herbs. The transformation of these natural products into perfumery has become the predominant industry of the district; and the neighbourhood of the Alps allows of the addition to this domestic flora of a thousand wild flowers and herbs – thyme, lavender, rosemary – all to be gathered close at hand.”

CHAPTER XII

CANNES

History – Ægitna – Quintus Opimus – Admiral Matthews takes Ile Ste. Marguerite – La Californie – Climate – S. Cassien – Arluc – Legend – La Napoule – Antibes – The Terpon stone – Cult of rude stones – Utriculares – Lerins – Ste. Marguerite – The Man in the Iron Mask – Mattioli – Fabricated pedigree for Napoleon – Marshal Bazaine: his escape – S. Honorat – The stand made against Predestinarianism – S. Augustine – Lerins a home of culture – Decay – Suppressed – Springs of fresh water in the sea

CANNES does not possess much of a history. It was but a fishing village occupying a rock above a little port, built about a ruined castle and a church, when “invented” by Lord Brougham, as already related.

Its history may be summed up shortly. Old Cannes possibly occupies the site of the Ligurian town of Ægitna, destroyed B.C. 154 by the Consul Quintus Opimus. The Ligurian natives had annoyed the Greek settlers and traders on the coast, who were monopolising their delectable seats, and the Greeks complained to Rome of their ill-humour and rough deeds. Opimus was sent to their aid; he subdued the natives without much trouble, and was accorded a triumph, which meant the leading of a train of captives in chains behind his chariot through Rome, followed by the butchery of the prisoners, whose carcases were thrown down the Gemonian stairs, and drawn by hooks to the Tiber. Opimus was notorious for his riotous living, and for his brutality. He was as handsome as he was infamous – “formosus homo et famosus.” Cicero speaks of his disreputable life, and records a jest he made. The Romans gave Ægitna to the citizens of Marseilles. In the tenth century it pertained to the abbey of Lerins, and in the Middle Ages maintained incessant contest with the tyrannical abbots, in efforts to obtain municipal freedom. Not till 1788 – the year before the Revolution – did the town become free from its ecclesiastical masters.

From Cannes in 1580 the plague spread which ravaged Provence. It was brought there by a ship from the Levant. To plague succeeded war. In 1746 Cannes succumbed to the Piedmontese and German forces that had crossed the Var. After taking and sacking Cannes, where they got little beyond fishing-nets, they plundered Grasse.

A little before this Admiral Matthews, who had taken Ventimiglia, captured the Ile Ste. Marguerite. The war which led to the blockading of the Ligurian coast by the English was occasioned by a trifle.

In 1738 the English were thrown into a paroxysm of indignation by a tale that circulated, which was characterised by Burke as “The Fable of Jenkins’s Ear.” Jenkins was master of a small trading sloop in Jamaica, which seven years previously had been overhauled by a Spanish coastguard boat. The captain, disappointed at finding nothing contraband in the vessel, tore off one of Jenkins’s ears, and bade him carry it to King George, and inform his Britannic Majesty that if he should come that way he would serve him in the same manner. This ear Jenkins carried about with him wrapped up in cotton wool. For seven years Jenkins kept his ear, and produced it in taverns and to all he met, as an instance of the indignities to which freeborn Britons were exposed at the hands of Spain. Of course much correspondence took place between the two governments relative to this bit of dried ear, but not till 1737 was he called before a committee of the House of Commons, when he appeared at the bar, exhibited his ear, that looked like a dried mushroom or a truffle. War was proclaimed amidst great rejoicing among the English. Church bells were rung. Walpole said bitterly, “You are ringing your bells now; before long you will be wringing your hands.”

The English fleet in the Mediterranean blockaded the ports of Spain. But the death of Charles of Austria in the following year led to a general scramble to get hold of portions of his vast possessions, and the war assumed a more complicated character. The Spaniards, assisted by the French, landed on the Italian coasts, and Admiral Matthews was sent to drive them thence.

The story of Jenkins and his ear had roused all England. Pulteney declared that England needed no allies – that Jenkins’s story alone would raise volunteers anywhere. It was, however, more than hinted at the time, that Jenkins had lost his ear in the pillory, and not through the violence of a Spanish custom-house officer.

The war fizzled out. Matthews was badly served with men and ships from England, and the Ile of Ste. Marguerite was speedily abandoned.

Compared with Nice, Cannes enjoys certain advantages. It is less towny and commercial. It does not savour of Monte Carlo. It possesses on the east the wooded height of La Californie, studded with hotels and villas, commanding one of the most beautiful evening views in Europe. When the sun goes down beyond the Estérel range, standing up in royal purple against an amber sky, it may well be thought that this is a scene of unsurpassable beauty.

Nice has to the East Mont Boron and Mont Alban, but they do not serve for a residential suburb, as does La Californie. They are cut off from Nice by the port, and they do not command so incomparable a view.

For the depth of winter, in gloom and cold, then no place for shelter can be compared with Beaulieu, or Mentone, or Alassio. But when the months of December and January are passed, then Cannes. Lastly, to cool off before encountering the chills of spring in England, S. Raphael. Cannes further has at its door, for a run of a day, Estérel, easily reached, and never to be exhausted or forgotten. Then, again, from Cannes, also accessible, the isles of Lerins, where the fresh breezes blow.

“Verily,” says Leuthéric, “no country in the world possesses a climate comparable to that of Cannes. There no extremes of temperature are known, as in other parts of Provence. The belt of hills which enclose the gulf form a screen intervening between the bay and the towering mountains; and when the cold winds blow down from the Alps, they sweep over the littoral, which lies always sheltered. Thanks to this natural protection, they fall at some distance out to sea, and one can mark the ruffle of the surface on the horizon, whilst that near the beach gently undulates like the face of a tranquil lake. The nightly loss of heat, favoured by the limpidity of a sky always cloudless, is compensated for by the proximity of the sea, always slow to give up its heat, and which bathes this coast with an atmosphere ever temperate. The mean temperature is superior to those of Nice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Rome, and even of Naples; it never falls below freezing point, and never rises as high as in most of the towns of Europe.

“This equilibrium of temperature is manifest in the simultaneous development of vegetations apparently contradictory. At Cannes, above every spot on the coast of Provence, the vegetations of opposite climes melt into one another in an admirable promiscuity. The landscape is veritably unique, and one feels there as if one were transported into a vast conservatory, in which artificially are united growths, the most different in character. The plain is covered with oranges and lemons, from among which shoot up at intervals the fans of palms trees and the spikes of aloes. The hills are crowned with umbrella pines, whose majestic heads recall classic sites in the Roman campagna. In the background of the picture are dark and dense forests of pines, like a gloomy drapery above which rise the pure and gleaming heights of the Alps in their eternal snows. Thus, as in a single framework, one can see grouped together the great conifers of the north, the olives of Provence, the golden fruits of the Balearic Isles, the oleanders of Asia Minor, and the thorny vegetation of the Algerian Tell.”

I must, however, in all fairness, add, as a qualification to this picture, that in the early months of 1905, frost and hail did so smite and blast the oranges, the lemons, the eucalyptus of the plain of the Siagne, that the glory of the glossy leaves was gone, the country had assumed the aspect of a withered orchard. The golden fruit were shed, and the leaves were bleached and pendant.

If Cannes has gone up in the world, her neighbours have gone down. About four miles from Cannes, in the Plain of the Siagne, is an outcrop of the Estérel red sandstone, crowned by magnificent pines, cypresses, cork trees and ilexes, that embower a chapel of S. Cassien and a farm. Here, till recently, lived a hermit. These gentry are becoming scarce. Possibly the prognostication of M. Anselme Benoît, in Jules Fabre’s novel Mon Oncle Celestin, is accomplishing itself:

“Va au diable avec tes médailles et tes chapelets. Je te le prédis depuis longtemps: à force d’embrasser les filles, tu finiras par embrasser les gendarmes au detour de quelque chemin.”

In 1661 Bishop Godeau found a vagabond hermit at S. Jeanette, and tried in vain to dislodge him; but the man hung on, and Godeau found him still there in 1667.

These men pick up a subsistence by the sale of sacred medals, pictures, scapulars, rosaries; sometimes manufacturing the latter themselves. Very often they are simply lazy loons who can subsist on such sales and occasional alms; but some have been as great scamps as Jacopo Rusca in Fabre’s delightful story – which is a graphic picture of country life and country people in the South, full of delicious word painting.