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ROMANTIC CITIES OF PROVENCE


[Illustration: CLOISTERS OF ST. TROPHINE, ARLES.
_By E. M. Synge._]


ROMANTIC CITIES OF PROVENCE

by

MONA CAIRD

Illustrated from Sketches by
Joseph Pennell and Edward M. Synge






New York: Charles Scribner's Sons
London: T. Fisher Unwin




   TO
   MARGUERITE HAMILTON SYNGE


[All rights reserved.]




Preface


This volume can hardly be said to have been written: it came about. The
little tour in the South of France which is responsible for its existence,
happened some years ago, and was undertaken for various reasons, health
and rest among others, and the very last idea which served as a motive
for the journey was that of writing about the country whose history is
so voluminous and so incalculably ancient. Nobody but a historian and a
scholar already deeply versed in the subject could dream of attempting
to treat it in any serious or complete fashion. But this fact did
not prevent the country from instantly making a profound and singular
impression upon a mind entirely unprepared by special study or knowledge
to be thus stirred. The vividness of the impression, therefore, was not
to be accounted for by associations of facts and scenes already formed
in the imagination. True, many an incident of history and romance now
found its scene and background, but before these corresponding parts
of the puzzle had been fitted together the potent charm had penetrated,
giving that strange, baffling sense of home-coming which certain lands
and places have for certain minds, remaining for ever mysterious, yet
for ever familiar as some haunt of early childhood.

An experience of that sort will not, as a rule, allow itself to be set
aside. It works and troubles and urges, until, sooner or later, some
form of transmutation must take place, some condensing into form of the
formless, some passing of impulse into expression, be it what it may.

And thus the first stray notes and sketches were made without ultimate
intention. But the charm imposed itself, and the notes grew and grew.
Then a more definite curiosity awoke and gradually the scene widened:
history and imagination took sisterly hands and whispered suggestions,
explanations of the secret of the extraordinary magic, till finally the
desultory sketches began to demand something of order in their undrilled
ranks. The real toil then began.

The subject, once touched upon, however slightly, is so unendingly
vast and many-sided, so entangled with scholarly controversy, that the
few words possible to say in a volume of this kind seem but to cause
obscurity, and worst of all, to falsify the general balance of impression
because of the innumerable other things that must perforce be left
unsaid. An uneasy struggle is set up in the mind to avoid, if possible,
that most fatal sort of misrepresentation, viz., that which contains a
certain proportion of truth.

And how to choose among varying accounts and theories, one contradicting
the other? Authorities differ on important points as radically and as
surely as they differ about the spelling of the names of persons and
places. There is conflict even as to the names in use at the present
day, as, for instance, the little mountain range of the Alpilles, which
some writers persistently spell _Alpines_, out of pure pigheadedness or
desire to make themselves conspicuous, as it seems to the weary seeker
after textual consistency. Where doctors disagree what can one do who is
not a doctor, but try to give a general impression of the whole matter
and leave the rest to the gods?

As for dates----!

Now there are two things with which no one who has not been marked out by
Providence by a special and triumphant gift ought to dream of attempting
to deal, namely, dates and keys--between which evanescent, elusive and
fundamentally absurd entities there is a subtle and deep-seated affinity.
If meddled with at all, they must be treated in a large spirit: no
meticulous analysis; no pursuit of a pettifogging date sharpening the
point of accuracy down to a paltry twelve months. And correspondingly,
as regards the smaller kind of keys, no one who values length of days
should ever touch them! They are the vehicles of demoniac powers. Of
course the good, quiet, well-developed cellar or stable-door key is
another matter; and thus (to pursue the parallel) dates can be dealt with
in a broadly synthetic fashion, in centuries and group of centuries, so
that while the author gains in peace of mind, the reader is spared the
painful experience of being stalked and hunted from page to page, and
confronted round every corner by quartets of dreary figures, minutely
defining moments of time which are about as much to him as they are to
Hecuba!

The chronology in this volume, therefore, may be described as frugal
rather than generous in character, but what there is of it is handled
in the "grand manner."

Such, then, is the history of the volume which still retains the character
of its irregular origin. Historically it attempts nothing but the roughest
outline of the salient points of the story about which a traveller
interested in the subject at all is at once curious for information.
The one thing on which it lays stress is the quality of the country as
distinguished from its outward features. For to many (for example, to
our severe critic whose impressions are recorded in Chapter III.) these
external features are devoid of all attraction. It is necessary to keep
this fact in mind.

A wide plain bounded by mountains of moderate height and an insignificant
chain of bare limestone hills (the Alpilles); cities ancient indeed, but
small, shabby, not too clean, with dingy old hotels, and no particular
advantages of situation--such a description of Provence would be accurate
for those who are not among its enthusiasts. To traverse the country
in an express train, especially with the eyes still full of the more
obvious beauties of the Pyrenees and the Alps, is to see all the wonder
of the land of the troubadours reduced to the mere flatness of a map.
In a few minutes the "rapide" had darted past some of its most ancient
and romantic cities--quiet and simple they stand, merged into the very
soil, with no large or striking features to catch the eye; only a patch
of grey masonry in the landscape and a few towers upon the horizon,
easily missed in the quick rush of the train.

A deeper sound in the rumble of the flying wheels for a couple of minutes
announces the crossing of some river: long stretches of waste land,
covered for miles and miles with sunburnt stones, and again stretches
of country, low-lying, God-forsaken, scarcely cultivated, with a few
stunted, melancholy trees, a farmstead on the outskirts here and there:
these are the "features of the country," as they might be described
without departure from bare, literal, all-deceiving fact.

How many travellers of the thousands who pass along this line every year
are interested in such a scene or guess its profound and multitudinous
experiences? How many realise as they rattle past, that in this arid land
of the vine and the cypress were born and fostered the sentiments, the
unwritten laws and traditions on which is built all that we understand
by civilised life? How many say to themselves as they pass: "But for
the men and women who dreamt and sang and suffered in this Cradle of
Chivalry, the world that I live in would never have been born, the
thoughts I think and the emotions to which I am heir would never have
arisen out of the darkness?"

But, indeed, the strange, many-sided country gives little aid or
suggestion for such realisations: it has reticently covered itself with
a mantle; it seems to crouch down out of sight while the monster engine
thunders by with its freight of preoccupied passengers.

A bare, flat, sun-scorched land.

Yes, these are the "facts," but ah! how different from the magic truth!

With facts, therefore, this volume has only incidentally to do. It
is a "true and veracious history," but by no means a literal one. As
to the mere accidents of travel, these are treated lightly. Exactly
in which order the cities were visited no reader need count upon
certainly knowing--and indeed it concerns him nothing--when and where
the observations were made by "Barbara," or the "severe critic," or the
landlady of the Hotel de Provence and so forth, the following pages may
or may not accurately inform him (with the exception, indeed, of the
curious, self-revelation of Raphael of Tarascon, which is given almost
word for word as it occurred, for here accident and essence chanced to
coincide); but he may be sure that though Barbara possibly did not speak
or act as represented then and there, she did or might have so spoken
or acted elsewhere and at another time. The irrelevancies of chance and
incident have been ignored in the interests of the essential. Barbara
may not recognise all her observations when she sees them. _Tant pis
pour Barbara!_ They are true in the spirit if not in the letter. And so
throughout.

From the moment that the original "notes" began to be written, the one and
sole impulse and desire has been to suggest, to hint to the imagination
that which can never be really told of the poetry, the idealism, the
glory, the sadness, and the great joy of this wondrous land of Sun and
Wind and Dream.




Contents


                                                                  PAGE

     PREFACE                                                         7


     CHAPTER

     I. THE SPELL OF PROVENCE                                       17

     II. AVIGNON                                                    29

     III. A SEVERE CRITIC--UZÈS AND BARBENTANE                      49

     IV. PETRARCH AND LAURA                                         67

     V. THE CITIES OF THE LAGOONS                                   81

     VI. THE BIRTH OF CHIVALRY                                      93

     VII. THE GAY SCIENCE                                          111

     VIII. ORANGE AND MARTIGUES                                    131

     IX. ROMANTIC LOVE                                             143

     X. ARLES                                                      159

     XI. SONG, DANCE, AND LEGEND                                   171

     XII. TARASCON                                                 189

     XIII. THE PONT DU GARD                                        209

     XIV. A HUMAN DOCUMENT                                         219

     XV. BEAUCAIRE AND ITS LOVE-STORY                              229

     XVI. CARCASSONNE, THE ALBIGENSES AND PIERRE VIDAL             241

     XVII. MAGUELONNE                                              261

     XVIII. THE SPIRIT OF THE WILDERNESS                           269

     XIX. ROSES OF PROVENCE                                        283

     XX. AN INN PARLOUR                                            295

     XXI. LES BAUX                                                 307

     XXII. RAIMBAUT DE VACQUEIRAS AND GUILHELM DES
           BAUX                                                    321

     XXIII. THE SORCERESS OF THE ALPILLES                          335

     XXIV. ACROSS THE AGES                                         349

     XXV. THE SONG OF THE RHONE                                    373

     XXVI. THE CAMARGUE                                            385

     XXVII. "ARTISTS IN HAPPINESS"                                 401




List of Illustrations


     CLOISTERS OF ST. TROPHINE, ARLES  (_E. M. Synge_)  _Frontispiece_

                                                                  PAGE

     A PROVENÇAL ROAD                  (_Joseph Pennell_)           19

     PONT DE ST. BENÉZET, AVIGNON      (_E. M. Synge_)              32

     PALACE OF THE POPES AND CATHEDRAL        "                     35

     CHARTREUSE DU VAL-DE-BÉNÉDICTION,
         VILLENEUVE-LES-AVIGNON               "                     43

     CASTLE OF ST. ANDRÉ,
         VILLENEUVE-LES-AVIGNON               "                     45

     CHATEAUNEUF, NEAR AVIGNON                "                     53

     RIENZI'S TOWER, AVIGNON                  "                     57

     STREET AT UZÈS                           "                     61

     GATEWAY, BARBENTANE                      "                     63

     VALE AND SOURCE OF THE SORGUE, VAUCLUSE  "                     71

     MILL IN VALE OF THE SORGUE AT VAUCLUSE   "                     78

     ON THE DURANCE                           "                     85

     AIGUES MORTES FROM THE CAMARGUE          "                     86

     AT THE PORT OF AIGUES MORTES             "                     96

     CHURCH AT BARBENTANE              (_E. M. Synge_)             101

     CASTLE OF MONTMAJOUR, ARLES              "                    106

     VIEW FROM ST. GILLES, IN THE CAMARGUE    "                    115

     FAÇADE OF CHURCH, ST. GILLES      (_Joseph Pennell_)          117

     OUTSIDE THE CHURCH, SAINTES MARIES       "                    119

     THE CHURCH OF LES SAINTES MARIES AT
         NIGHT                                "                    122

     FARM IN PROVENCE                         "                    126

     ROMAN GATEWAY AT ORANGE (ON THE
         LYONS ROAD)                          "                    134

     LOOKING DOWN THE GRANDE RUE, MARTIGUES   "                    135

     ON THE GRAND CANAL, MARTIGUES            "                    137

     CHURCH AT MARTIGUES                      "                    138

     BOATS, MARTIGUES                         "                    139

     THE PORTAL OF THE CHURCH, MARTIGUES      "                    140

     A SQUARE AT NIMES                        "                    145

     IN THE CAMARGUE, FROM THE RAILWAY (_E. M. Synge_)             149

     OLD BRIDGE AT ST. GILLES                 "                    155

     ST. TROPHIME, ARLES               (_Joseph Pennell_)          161

     LES ALISCAMPS, ARLES                     "                    166

     ARLES FROM THE RIVER                     "                    169

     ROMAN THEATRE, ARLES              (_E. M. Synge_)             170

     TARASCON FROM BEAUCAIRE, SHOWING KING RENÉ'S
         CASTLE                               "                    192

     THE CHÂTEAU OF KING RENÉ,
         TARASCON                      (_Joseph Pennell_)          198

     ENTRANCE TO KING RENÉ'S CASTLE,
         TARASCON                      (_E. M. Synge_)             205

     THE PONT DU GARD                  (_E. M. Synge_)             213

     THE ROMAN TOUR MAGNE, NIMES, FROM THE
         FOUNTAIN GARDEN               (_Joseph Pennell_)          215

     VIEW FROM VISIGOTH TOWER,
         BEAUCAIRE                     (_E. M. Synge_)             232

     VISIGOTH TOWER, CASTLE OF BEAUCAIRE      "                    235

     BEAUCAIRE FROM TARASCON           (_Joseph Pennell_)          238

     ROMAN FOUNTAIN AT NIMES                  "                    244

     ENTRANCE TOWERS, CARCASSONNE      (_E. M. Synge_)             247

     THE R