On the western shore of the “Petite Mer,” on the edge of the dry, pebbly Crau, with a background of greenish-gray olive groves, is Istres, a chef-lieu not recognized by many geographers out of France, and known by still fewer tourists. Istres is in no way a remarkable place, and its inhabitants live mostly on carp taken from the Étang de l’Olivier, moules, and such poissons de mer as find their way into the “Petite Mer.” Fish diet is not bad, but it palls on one if it is too constant, and the moule is a poor substitute for the clam or oyster. Istres makes salt and soda and not much else, but it is a town as characteristic of the surrounding country as one is likely to find. It grew up from a quasi-Saracen settlement, and down through feudal times it bore some resemblance to what it is to-day, for it numbers but something like three thousand souls. There are remains of its old ramparts which, judging from their aspect, must once have borne some relationship to those of Aigues Mortes.
Truly the landscape round about is weird and strange, but it is superb in its very rudeness, although no one would have the temerity to call it magnificent. There are great hillocks of fossil shells which would delight the geologist, and there are “petits oiseaux” galore for the sportsman.
Twilight seems to be the time of day when all Istres’s strange effects are heightened,—as it is on the Nile,—and it will take no great stretch of the imagination to picture the shores of the Étang as the banks of Egypt’s river. The aspect at the close of day is strange and unforgettable, with the great plain of the Crau stretching away indefinitely, and the blue “nappe” of the Étang likewise indefinitely hazy and tranquil. In spite of its lack of twentieth-century comforts, the seeker after new sensations could do worse than spend a night and a part of a day at Istres’s Hôtel de France, and, if he is a painter, he may spend here a week, a month, or a lifetime and not get bored.
If one happens to be at Istres on the “Jour des Mortes,” in November, he may witness, in the evening, in the cypress-sheltered cemetery, one of the most weird and eerie sights possible to imagine. When Odilon, Abbot of Cluny, established the “Fête des Mortes,” in 998, he little knew the extent to which it would be observed. The “Fête des Mortes” is one thing in the royal crypt at St. Denis and quite another in the small towns and villages up and down the length of France.
It has been commonly thought that Bretagne was the most religious and devout of all the ancient provinces of France, at least that it had become so, whatever may have been its status in the past; but certainly the good folk of Istres are as devout and religious as any community extant, if the wonderfully impressive chanting and illuminating in the graveyard by its old tree-grown chapel count for anything. It is as if the night itself were hung with crêpe, and the hundreds, nay, thousands, of candles set about on the tombs and in the trees heighten the effect of solemnity and sadness to an indescribable degree. In the town the church-bells toll out their doleful knell, and the still air of the night carries the wails and chants of the mourners far out over the barren Crau. It is the same whether it rains or shines, or whether the mistral blows or not. The candles, the mourners, and the little crosses of wheat straws—a symbol of the Resurrection—are as mystical as the rites of the ancients to one who has never seen such a celebration. Decidedly, if one is in these parts on the first day of November, he should come to Istres for the night, or he will have missed an exceedingly interesting chapter from the book of pleasurable travel.
Passing from Istres to the north shore of the Étang, one comes to Miramas.
Miramas is a quaint little longshore town which makes one think of pirates, Saracens, and Moors, all of whom, in days gone by, had a foothold here, if local traditions are to be believed. Miramas and St. Chamas, which is the metropolis of the neighbourhood, though its population only about equals that of Miramas, are twin towns which are quite unlike anything else in these parts in that they are neither progressive nor somnolent, but while away their time in some inexplicable fashion, bathed in the brilliant Mediterranean sunlight reflected from off the surface of the Étang, which stretches at their feet and furnishes the seafood on which the inhabitants mostly live. The chief curiosity of the neighbourhood is the Pont Flavien, which crosses the Touloubre near by, on the “Route d’Aix.” The structure is a monument to Domnius Flavius by his executors Domnius Vena and Attius Rufus. It possesses an elegance and sobriety which many more magnificent works lack, and the classic lines of its superstructure and its great semicircular arch in the twilight carry the observer back to the days of mediævalism.
At St. Chamas one is likely to find his hotel—regardless of which of the two leading establishments he patronizes—most unique in its management, though none the less excellent, enjoyable, and amusing for that. If by chance he reaches the town on a Saturday night and comes upon a grand bal familier in the dining-room, and is himself compelled to eat his dinner at a small table in the office, he must not quarrel, but rest content that he is to be rewarded by a sight which will prove again that it is only the French bourgeois who really and truly knows how to enjoy simple pleasures. Fortnightly, at least, during the winter months this sort of thing takes place, and the young men and maidens, and young mothers and their babies in arms, and old folk, too old indeed to swing partners, form a cordon around the walls to gaze upon the less timid ones who dance with all the abandon of a southern climate until the hour of eleven,—and then to bed. It is all very primitive, the orchestra decidedly so,—a violin and a clarionette, and always a Provençal tambourine, which is not a tambourine at all, but a drum,—but an occasional glimpse of a beautiful Arlesienne will truly repay one for any discomfort to which he may have been put.
St. Chamas is renowned through Provence from the fact that commerce in the olive first came to its great proportions through the perspicuity of one of the local cultivators. It was he who first had the idea of preparing for market the “olive-picholine,” or green briny olive, which figures so universally on dining-tables throughout the world. In some respects they may not equal the “queen olives” of Spain; but the olives of Provence have a delicacy that is far more subtle, and the real enthusiast will become so addicted to eating the olive of Provence on its native heath that it will become an incurable habit, like cigarettes or golf.
From St. Chamas to Berre is scarce a dozen kilometres, but, to the traveller from the north, the journey will be full of marvels and surprises. The panorama which unfolds itself at every step is of surpassing beauty, though not so very grand or magnificent.
“La Petite Mer” is in full view, the opposite shore lost in the refulgence of a reflected glow, as if it were the open sea itself. All around its rim are the rocky hills, of which the highest, the Tête Noire, rises to perhaps fifteen hundred feet.
Everywhere there are goats, and many of them great long-haired beasts, the females of which give an unusually abundant supply of milk. For a long period, on the shores of the Étang de Berre, there were no cows, and the inhabitants depended for their milk-supply solely upon the goat, which the French properly enough call “la vache du pauvre.” Like the love of the olive, that for goat’s milk is an acquired taste.
The first apparition of the city of Berre is charming, and, like Martigues, it is a sort of a cross between Venice and Amsterdam. Its streets, like its canals and basins, are narrow and winding, though for the most part it stretches itself out along one slim thoroughfare. Its aspect, apparently, has not changed in thirty years, when Taine wrote his impressions of “ces rues d’une étroitesse étonnante.” He made a further comment which does not hold true to-day. He said that there was an infectious odour of concentrated humanity, with the dust and mud of centuries still over all. From the very paradox of the description it is not difficult to infer that he nodded, and assuredly Berre is not to-day, if it ever was, sale, comme si depuis le commencement des siècles.
All the same Berre is not a progressive town, as is shown by the fact that between the two last censuses its population has fallen from eighteen hundred to fifteen. However, its trade has increased perceptibly, thanks to the salt works here, and the tiny port gave a haven, in the year past, to a hundred craft averaging a hundred tons each.
Northward from the shores of the Étang de Berre lies Salon, the most commercial of all the cities and towns between Arles and Marseilles. Differing greatly from the lowlands lying round about, Salon is the centre of a verdant garden-spot reclaimed by the monks of St. Sauveur from an ancient marshy plain. In reality the town owes its existence to Jeanne de Naples, who, forced to flee from her kingdom in 1357, dreamed of establishing another here in Provence. She actually did take up a portion of the country, and the village of Salon, through the erection of a donjon and a royal residence, took on some of the characteristics of a capital.
In spite of its royal patronage, the chief deity of Salon was Nostradamus, who was born at St. Rémy, of Jewish parents, in 1503. Destined for the medical profession, he completed his studies at Montpellier and retired to Salon to produce that curious work called “Centuries,” he having come to believe that he was possessed of the spirit of prophecy to such an extent that his mission was really to enlighten rather than cure the world.
Michael Nostradamus and his prophecies created some stir in the world, for it was a superstitious age. The Medici was doing her part in the patronizing of astrologers and necromancers, and promptly became a patron of this new seer of Provence, though never forswearing allegiance to her pet Ruggieri. It is on record that Catherine got a horoscope of the lives of her sons from Nostradamus and showed him great deference.
After this all the world of princes and seigneurs flocked to the prophet’s house at Salon, which became a veritable shrine, with a living deity to do the honours. To-day one may see his tomb in the parish church of St. Laurent.
The traffic in olives and olive-oil is very considerable at Salon; indeed, one may say that it is the centre of the industry in all Provence, for the olives known as “Bouches-du-Rhône” are the most sought for in the French market, and bring a higher price than those of the Var, or of Spain, Sicily, or Tunis.
Not far from the northern shores of the Étang de Berre, just above Salon, runs the great national highway from Paris to Antibes, branching off to Marseilles just before reaching Aix-en-Provence. The railway also passes through the heart of the same region; but, in spite of it all, only few really know the lovely country round about.
The region is historic ground, though in detail it perhaps has not the general interest of the Campagne d’Arles or Vaucluse; still it has an abounding interest for the traveller by road, and nowhere will one find a greater variety of topography or a pleasanter, milder land than in this neglected corner of Provence.
The roads here are flat, level stretches, five, ten, or more kilometres in length, and are as straight as an arrow. There is a kilometre stretch just west of Salon that the Automobile Club de France has adjudged to be perfectly level, and there a road-devouring monster of 200 h.p. recently made a world’s record for the flying kilometre of 20¾ seconds.
Before returning to the shores of the Étang de Berre, one should make a détour to Roquefavour and Ventabren. One finds a complete change of scene and colouring, quite another atmosphere in fact, and yet it is only a scant ten kilometres off the route.
The château and aqueduct of Roquefavour are each a sermon in stone, the latter one of those engineering feats of modern times, which, unlike wire-rope bridges and sky-scrapers, have something of the elements of beauty in their make-up.
Near by, on a rocky promontory, with a base so firm that all the winds of the four quarters could never shake its foundations, is the significantly named village of Ventabren. All about are the ruins of the magnificence which had existed before, somewhat reminiscent of Les Baux, while beneath flows the river Arc, the alluvial soil of whose bed has proved so advantageous to the vine-culture hereabouts.
The aqueduct of Roquefavour has not had the benefit of six centuries of aging possessed by that similar work near Nîmes, the Pont du Gard of Agrippa; but it harmonizes wonderfully with the surrounding landscape, in spite of the fact that it is only a mid-nineteenth-century work, built to conduct water to Marseilles from far up the valley of the Durance. Overhead, and beneath the ground, for 122 kilometres, runs the canal until here, where it crosses the Arc, the monumental viaduct has proved to be a more stupendous work than any undertaken by the Romans, who, supposedly, were the master builders of aqueducts.
On returning to the Étang, and after passing several perilously perched hillside villages, one comes suddenly to Marignane, a name which is little known or recognized. The town is very contracted, and it is wofully lacking in every modern convenience, except the electric light, which, curiously enough, its more opulent neighbour, Martigues, lacks.
Marignane preserves traces of the Roman occupation, though what its status among the cities of the ancient Provincia may have been will perhaps ever remain in doubt. Principally it will be loved for its château of Renaissance times, which belonged to Mirabeau’s mother, who was of the seigneurial family of Marignane. It is not a remarkably beautiful building, but it is a satisfactory one in every way, and, though now in a state of decrepitude, it is a monumental reminder of other days and other ways. The Hôtel de Ville occupies the old château, but nothing very lively ever takes place there except the civil marriages of the commune, participants in which would, it seems, rather have the knot tied there than in any other similar edifice. Only the façade misses being a ruin, but all parts preserve the elegance—in suggestion, at least—of its former glory, and the great state chamber has been well preserved and cared for.
Formerly the town had the usual fortifications with which important mediæval cities were surrounded, but they have now disappeared, and one will have to turn his steps to Salon for any ruins that suggest feudalism.
There has ever been a contention between archæologists and historians as to the exact location of the Maritima of Pliny and Ptolemy, a designation given to a colony of Avatici, in the days when the sea power of the Greeks and Romans seemed likely never to wane. The question is still unsettled and crops up again and again.
Marignane, on the shores of the Étang de Bolmon,—an offshoot of that wonderfully fascinating Étang de Berre,—was, perhaps, the ancient Maritima Colonia Avaticorum, and Martigues, its grander and better known neighbour, may have borne the title of Maritima Colonia Anatiliorum. As a mere matter of title, it is a fine distinction anyway, but everything points to the fact that the ancients had a great port somewhere on the shores of this landlocked Étang. Just where this may have been, and what its name was, is not so clear to-day, for there is scarcely more than a dozen feet of water in the shallow parts of the Étang, and this fact of itself would seem to preclude that it was ever a rival of the great ports of the Mediterranean of other days. The speculation, at any rate, will give food for thought to any who are interested, and whether this same Étang ever becomes, as is prophesied, a great series of ports and docks which will more than rival Marseilles, does not matter in the least. To-day the Étang de Berre is quite unspoiled in all the charm and novelty of its environment and of the little salt-water towns which surround it.
CHAPTER VII.
A SEASCAPE: FROM THE RHÔNE TO MARSEILLES
THE Bouches-du-Rhône, like the delta of the Mississippi, is a great sprawling area of sandbars and currents of brackish water. For miles in any direction, as the eye turns, it is as if a bit of water-logged Holland had been transported to the Mediterranean, with sand-dunes and a scrubby growth of furze as the only recognizable characteristics.
As a great and useful waterway, the Rhône falls conspicuously from the position which it might have occupied had nature given it a more regular and dependable flow of water.
The canals from Beaucaire through the Camargue and from Arles to the Golfe de Fos are the only things that make possible water communication between the Mediterranean and the towns and cities of the mid-Rhône valley.
The Golfe des Lions, or the Golfe de Lyon, as it is frequently called, is the great bay lying between the coast of the Narbonnaise and the headlands just to the eastward of Marseilles. It is a tempestuous body of water, when the north wind blows, and travellers by sea, in and out of Marseilles, have learned to dread it as if it were the Bay of Biscay itself.
Just eastward of the mouths of the Rhône is a smaller indentation in the coast-line, the Golfe de Fos, known to mariners as being the best anchorage between Marseilles and the Bouches-du-Rhône, and which has received a local name of “Anse du Repos” and “Mouillage d’Aigues douces.”
Surrounding the Golfe de Fos, and indeed west of the Rhône, are numerous ponds and marshy bays, similar to the great inland sea of Berre. The Golfe de Fos is generally thought to be the ancient Mer Avatique, one of whose salty arms is known as “l’Estomac,” probably a corruption of an old Provençal expression, lou stoma, or perhaps because it is the site of a colony of the Marseillais known as Stoma Limne, which was established here a century before the beginning of the Christian era.
Later the Senate of Rome designated Marius as governor of the region, and he came with his legions and established himself here at the mouth of the Rhône. He even attempted the then gigantic work of cutting a free waterway from Arles to the sea, and thus arose—on this spot, beyond a doubt, if circumstantial history counts for anything—the Port des Fossés Mariennes which for a long time has been so great a speculation to French historians.
The port became the faubourg maritime of Arles, as did the Piræus for Athens. It was at this time that the name of Lion, or Lyon, was given to the great bay which washes the coast of the ancient Narbonnaise. It grew up from the fact that the Arlesien shipping was ever in evidence on its waters, bearing aloft their flags and banners “blazoned with lions.” As the number of these ships of Arles was great, the name came gradually to be adopted. The explanation seems plausible, and the countless thousands who now traverse its waters in great steamships, coming and going from Marseilles, need no longer speculate as to the origin of the name.
The disappearance of the Roman Empire caused the decadence of the Fossis Marianis, as the name had been modified, and the invasion of the barbarians drove the inhabitants to the neighbouring heights, which they fortified. This Castrum de Fossis became in time the Château des Fossés Mariennes, and what is left of it, or at least the site, is so known to-day. In the middle ages the town became a Marquisat belonging to the Vicomtes de Marseille, but in 1393 it bought its freedom and became a communauté.
To-day the little town of Fos-sur-Mer is a queer mixture of the old and new, of indolence and industry; but the complex sky-line of its old château, seen over the marshes, is as fairylike and mediæval as old Carcassonne itself; which is saying the most that can be said of a crumbling old walled town. It is not so grand, nor indeed so well preserved, as Carcassonne, but it has all the characteristics, if in a lesser degree.
Fos has a wonderful industry in the manufacture of paper and cellulose from the alfa, a textile plant which grows in abundance on the high plateaux of Algeria. Added, in certain proportions, to the cane or bamboo of Provence, it produces a most excellent fibre for the fabrication of high-grade papers; in a measure a very good imitation of the fine vellum and parchment papers of Japan and China.
From Fos it is but a step to Port de Bouc, the more modern neighbour, and the gateway by which the products of the Fos of to-day reach the outside world.
Here, in miniature, are all the indications of a world-port. It is a picturesque waterside town, the tall chimneys of its factories, the masts and funnels of the ships at its quays, and the tall spars of the lateen-rigged “tartanes,” all producing a wonderfully serrated sky-line of the kind loved by artists; but, oh! so difficult for them to reproduce satisfactorily. Besides these features there is also the near-by fort and the lighthouse which gleams forth a sailor’s warning a dozen miles out to sea. The hum of industry and the generally imposing aspect of the port leads one to suppose, from a distance, that the town is vastly more populous than it really is; but for all that it is an interesting note in one’s itinerary along Mediterranean shores.
The whole range of hills south of Martigues, and bordering upon the Mediterranean itself, is a round of tiny hill towns, which, like St. Pierre and Chateauneuf, dot the landscape with their spires of wrought iron surmounting the belfries of their yellow stone churches and presenting a grouping quite foreign to most things seen in France. They are not Italian and they are not Spanish, neither are they any distinct French type; hence they can only be classed as exotics which have taken root from some previous importation.
One’s itinerary along the Provençal coast, from the mouths of the Rhône toward Marseilles, comes abruptly to a stop when he reaches the height of Cap Couronne, which rises just east of the entrance to the Étang de Caronte, and sees that wonderful panorama of the Golfe de Lyon, with the distant pall of smoky industry at its extreme eastern horizon.
The name Couronne is certainly apropos of this dominant headland, under whose flanks are innumerable natural shelters and anchorages. The application of the name has a more practical side, however. In Provençal the word “cairon” means limestone, and, since there have been for ages past great limestone quarries here, it is not difficult to recognize the origin of the name.
The dusts of the great routes of travel are left behind as one climbs the gentle slope of the Estaque range from Martigues. After having passed the rock-cut village of St. Pierre and ascended the incline on the opposite side of the valley, he finds himself on the height of Cap Couronne, and the Mediterranean itself bursts all at once upon his gaze, in much the same fashion as the dawn comes up at Mandalay.
Cap Couronne plunges abruptly at one’s feet, and the shadowy outlines of the distant flat shores of the Bouches-du-Rhône lie to the westward, while directly east is the most wonderfully light rose and purple promontory that one may see outside of Capri and the Bay of Naples. It is the eastern side of Marseilles, which itself, with its spouting chimneys, accents the brilliant landscape in a manner which, if not ideal, is, at least, not offensive.
Who among our modern artists could do this view justice? The blue of the cloudless sky; the ultramarine waves; and the shabby selvage of smoke, all blending so marvellously with the pink and purple of the setting sun. Turner might have done it in times past; doubtless could have done so; and Whistler—waiting until a little later in the evening—would have made a symphony of it; but any living artist, called to mind at the moment, would have bungled it sadly. It is one of those wide-open seascapes which the art-lover must see au naturel in order to worship. Nothing on the Riviera—that cinematograph of magic panoramas—can equal or surpass the late afternoon view from Cap Couronne.
Before one descends upon Marseilles from the Estaque, he comes upon the little village of Carry.
Of the antiquity of the little fishing-port there is no question, but it is doubtful if the hordes of Marseillais who come here in summer, to eat bouillabaisse on the verandas of its restaurants and hotels, know, or care, anything of this.
As the Incarrus Posito, it had an existence long before bouillabaisse was ever thought of, at least by its present name. It was one of the advance-posts of the Massaliotes when Marseilles was the Massalia of the Greeks.
Carry, with its port, and the château of M. Philippe Jourde, a Frenchman who won his fortune on the field of commerce in the United States, is delightful, but it is not usually accounted one of the sights that is worth the while of the Riviera tourist to go out of his way to see.
Within the grounds of the château have been brought to light within recent years many monumental remains; one bearing the two following inscriptions bespeaks an antiquity contemporary with the early years of the building up of Marseilles:
| C. POMPEI PLANTEA |
AES AVC C R IANCO IP CAIII EXCL INIPSNIS SEVIR AUGUSTALIS I. S. D. |
Besides this, marbles, mosaics, pottery, coins, and even precious metals have been found. Carry may then have been something more than a fortress outpost, or a fishing-village; it may have been a Pompeii.
Almost at one’s elbow is Marseilles itself, brilliant and burning with the feverish energies of a great mart of trade, and bathed in the dark blue of the Mediterranean and the lighter blue of the skies. Beyond are the isles of the bay and the rocky promontories to the eastward, while to the northeast are the heights of the Var and the Alpes-Maritimes. Truly the kaleidoscopic first view of the “Porte de l’Orient” fully justifies any rhapsodies. There is but one other view in all France at all approaching it in splendour,—that of Rouen from the height of Bon Secours,—and that, in effect, is quite different.
One’s approach to Marseilles by rail from the north is equally a reminder of a theatrical transformation scene, such as one has when he reaches Rouen or Cologne; a sudden unfolding of new and strange beauties of prospect, which are nothing if not startling. The railway runs for many minutes in the obscurity of the Tunnel de la Nerthe before it finally debouches on the southern gorges of the Estaque Range, the same which flanks the coast all the way from Marseilles to the entrance to the Étang de Berre.
Pines and boursailles and rocky hillocks, set out here and there with olive-trees, form the immediate foreground, while that distant horizon of blue, which is everywhere along the Mediterranean, forms a background which is softer and more sympathetic than that of any other known body of water, salt or fresh, great or small.
At the base of the first foot-hills of the Estaque lies Marseilles, a city enormously alive with industry and all the cosmopolitan life of one of the most important—if not the greatest—of all world-ports. Here human industry has transformed a naturally beautiful and commodious situation into a mighty hive of affairs, where its long, straight streets only end at the water’s edge, and the basins and docks are simply great rectangular gulfs, seemingly endless in their immensity. Great towering chimney-stacks of brick punctuate the landscape here and there, and the masts of vessels and the funnels of steamships carry still further the idea of energetic restlessness.
Offshore are the innumerable rocky islets, seemingly merely moored in the sea, around which skim myriads of sailing-vessels and steamers, quite in the ceaseless manner of cinematograph pictures, while an occasional black cloud of smoke indicates the presence of a great liner from the Far East, making port with its cargo of humanity and the silks and spices of the Orient.
The view of the waterside and offshore Marseilles, with the harmonious Mediterranean blue blending into all, is transplendent in its loveliness. Nothing is green or gray, as it is at Bordeaux, or Nantes, or Le Havre; and none of the fog or smoke of the great cities of mid-France, of Paris, of Lyons, or of St. Étienne is here visible; instead all is brilliant—garishly brilliant, if you like, but still harmoniously so—in a blend that compels admiration.
Marseilles is a great conglomerate city made up by the intermingling of the neighbouring villages, bourgs, and petites villes until they have quite lost their own identity in the communion of the greater.
Some day the Rhône will empty itself into the great Bassins of the port of Marseilles; that is, if the moving of the traffic of the port to the Étang de Berre at Martigues and Berre does not take place, which is unlikely. When the chalands and péniches du nord can come from Le Havre, from Rouen, from Antwerp, and from Paris direct to the quays of Marseilles, by way of the canals and the Rhône, an additional prosperity will have come to this greatest of all Mediterranean ports. No more will it be a struggle with Genoa and Triest; and Marseilles will grow still grander and more lively and cosmopolitan.
In her efforts in this direction Marseilles has found an ardent ally in Lyons, whose Chamber of Commerce has ever lent its aid toward this end, burying all jealousies as to which shall become the second city of France. Lyons, be it understood, great and industrious as it is, is at a distinct disadvantage in transportation matters by reason of its geographical position, although it already possesses at Port St. Louis, at the mouth of the Grand Rhône, a port of transhipment for all cumbersome goods which proceed by way of the towed convoys of the Rhône canals. With direct communication with Marseilles one handling will be saved and much money, hence all Lyonnais pray for this new state of affairs to be speedily brought about. The day when the chalands of the Seine can meet the navaires of La Joliette, Marseilles will surpass Antwerp and Hamburg, say the Marseillais.
CHAPTER VIII.
MARSEILLES—COSMOPOLIS
MARSEILLES has more than once been called the Babylon of the south, and with truth, for such a babel of many tongues is to be heard in no Latin or Teuton city in the known world.
At Marseilles all is tumultuous and gay, and the Cannebière is the gayest of all. Mèry perpetuated its fame, or at any rate spread it far and wide, when he said, “Si Paris avait une Cannebière, ce serait un petit Marseille.” It is not a long thoroughfare, this Cannebière, in spite of its extension in the Rue de Noailles, but its animation and its gaiety give it an incontestable air of grandeur which many more pretentious thoroughfares entirely lack. Lyons has more beautiful streets, and Paris has avenues and boulevards more densely thronged, but the Cannebière has a character that is all its own, and a reputation for worldliness which it lives up to in every particular. In reality the Cannebière is Marseilles, the palpitating heart of the second city of France. One does not need to go far away, however, before he comes to the tranquillity and convention of the average provincial capital, and for this reason this great street of luxurious shops and grand hotels is the more remarkable, and the contrast the more absolute. By ten o’clock the whole city of convention sleeps, but the Cannebière and its cafés are as full of light and noise as ever, and remain so until one or two in the morning.
Not only does the Cannebière captivate the stranger, but each of the various quartiers does the same, until one realizes that the life of Marseilles unrolls itself as does no other in provincial France. The arts, science, industry, commerce, and the shipping all have their separate and distinct quarters, where the life of their own affairs is ceaseless and brings a content which only comes from industry. Twenty-five centuries have rolled by since the foundations of the present prosperity of Marseilles were laid, and nowhere has the star of progress burned more brilliantly.
Fortunate among all other great cities, Marseilles has preserved all the essential elements of its former glory and opulence, and even added to them with the advance of ages, remaining meanwhile “encore jeune, souriante, robuste, comme si le temps ne pouvait rien sur sa force sereine, sur sa triomphante beauté.”
Save the Byzance of antiquity, no seaport of history has enjoyed a rôle so brilliant or so extended as Marseilles. The great maritime cities of antiquity have disappeared, but Marseilles goes on aggrandizing itself for ever, with—in spite of very general transformation—the impress of the successive epochs, Greek, Roman, Frankish, and feudal, still in evidence, here and there where the memory of some quaint and bygone custom is unearthed or some mediæval monument is brought to light.
By no means is all of the butterfly order here in the Mediterranean metropolis. “Les affaires” are very serious affairs, and profitable ones to those engaged in their pursuit, and the Marseillais business man is as keen as his fellows anywhere. There is also a life redolent of science and art, as vivid as that of the capital itself, and the press of Marseilles is one of the most literary in a nation of literary newspapers. Taine slandered Marseilles when he said that it was wholly given up to “la grosse joie,” as he did also when he said that the pleasure of its inhabitants was to make money out of breadstuffs or gamble in oil, or some such words. And Taine was a Marseillais, too.
Here, as in many others of the old-world cities of France, are streets so narrow that a cart may not turn around in them, all busy with the little affairs of the lower classes, full of taverns, bars and débits de vin, cheap cafés-chantants,—from which the stranger had best keep out,—and from one end to the other full of straggling sailors of all nationalities and tongues under the sun.
This population of sailors and dock-labourers is of a certain doubtful social probity, but all the same the spectacle is unique, and far more edifying to witness than a midnight ramble through San Francisco’s Chinatown, though perhaps more fraught with danger to one’s person.
The Rue de la République has pushed its way through this old quartier, but it has brought with it none of the modern life of the newer parts of the town, and the narrow, tortuous streets around and about the “Hôtel Dieu” are as brutally uncouth as any old-time quarter of a great city peopled by the poorer classes; with this difference, that at Marseilles everything, good, bad, and indifferent, is exaggerated.
It is here in this old quarter that one finds the true type of the Marseillais as he was in other days, if one knows where to look for him, and what he looks like when he meets him, for Marseilles is so full of strange men and women that the bird of passage is likely enough to confound Greek with Jew and Lascar with Arab, to say nothing of the difficulty of putting the Maltese and Portuguese in their proper places in the medley. When it comes to distinguishing the Provençal from the Marseillais and the Niçois from the Catalan, the task is more difficult still.
The Marseillais pur sang (except that it has been many centuries since he has been pur sang) is a unique type among the inhabitants of France, the product of many successive immigrations from most of the Mediterranean countries. He is indeed an extraordinary development, though in no way outré or unsympathetic, in spite of being a bloodthirsty-looking individual. To describe him were impossible. The Marseillais is a Marseillais by his dark complexion, by his svelte figure, and by the exuberance of his gestures and his voice. Always ready for adventure or pleasure, he is the very stuff of which the sea-rovers of another day were made.
The Marseillais has been portrayed by many a French writer, and his virtues have been lauded and his faults exposed. Mèry, a Marseillais himself, has traced an amusing character, while Edmond About and Taine were both struck by the Marseillais love of lucre and violent amusements. Alexandre Dumas has drawn more or less idyllic portraits of him.
The topographical transformation of Marseilles in recent times has been great. It was the first among the great cities of France to cut new streets and build sumptuous modern palaces devoted to civic affairs. The Rue de la République, if still lined in part with inferior houses, is nevertheless one of the fine thoroughfares of the world. Its laying out was a colossal task, cutting through the most solidly built and most ancient quarter of the city. Neither the aristocratic nor the bourgeois population have ever come to it for business or residence, but it serves the conduct of affairs in a way which the tortuous streets of the old régime would not have done. Many of the great avenues of the city are as grand in their way as the best and most aristocratic of those in Paris, and the world of commerce, of the Bourse, and of the liberal professions, lives surrounded by as much sumptuousness and good taste as the same classes in the capital itself. In other words, “la société Marseillais” is no less endowed with good taste and the love of luxurious appointments and surroundings than is the most Parisian of Parisian circles,—a term which has come to mean much in the refinements of modern life. “Des plaisirs bruyants et grossiers” may have struck the Taines of a former day, but the twentieth-century student of men and affairs will not place the Marseillais and the things of his household very far down in the social scale, provided he is possessed of a mind which is trained to make just estimates.
Le Prado is another of the fine streets of Marseilles. It is a majestic boulevard, the continuation of the Rue de Rome, beyond the Place Castellane. Practically it is a great tree-bordered avenue, which is lined with the gardens of handsome villas. It is as attractive as Unter den Linden or the Champs Élysées.
Marseilles has many specialities. Bouillabaisse is one of them; flowers, which you buy at a ridiculous low price at those curious little pulpits which line the Cours St. Louis, are another; and a third are the strawberries, which are here brought to one’s door and sold in all the perfection of fresh picked fruit. They are sold in “pots” of porous stone, covered with a peculiar gray paper, and the size and capacity of the “pots” is regulated by a municipal decree. The “grand pot” must contain four hundred grammes, and the “petit pot” two hundred. All of which is vastly more satisfactory for the purchaser than the false-bottomed box of America or the underweighted scales of the greengrocer in England.
This “pot-à-fraise” of Marseilles is a commodity strictly local, and no fresh fruit is more in demand in season than the strawberries of Roquevaire, Beaudinard, and Aubagne. The season’s consumption of strawberries at Marseilles is 350,000 litres.
The street cries of Marseilles may not be as famous as those of London, but they are many and lively nevertheless. Fish, fruit, and many other things form the burden of the cries one hears at Marseilles in these days; but, like most of the picturesque old customs, this is being crowded out. The itinerant vitrier still makes his round, however, and you may hear him any day:
Voici le vitrier qui passe....”
In this connection it is interesting to recall that all glass made in Provence in the thirteenth century was by authorization of the Bishop of Marseilles, and that the industry was entirely in the hands of the Chartreux monks. Only in the fifteenth century, at the hands of the good King René, did the trade receive any extension.
The fishing industry has ever been prominent in the minor affairs of Marseilles. The ancient Provençal government guaranteed the fishing rights to certain “patrons pêcheurs,” and, when the province was united with the Crown of France, in 1481, the Grand Seneschal confirmed the privileges in the name of Louis XI. They were again confirmed, in 1536, by François I., and in 1557 by Henri II.
By letters patent, in December, 1607, Henri IV. gave a permit to the pêcheurs of Marseilles which allowed them to sell their fish in all villes de mer that they might choose, and to be free from paying any tax for the privilege. Thus it is seen that from the very earliest times the traffic was one which was bound to prosper and add to the city’s wealth and independence.
Louis XIII. was even more liberal. He extended the right of control of the fishing, even by strangers, to the “Prud’hommes de Marseilles” (a sort of a fishing guild, which endures even unto to-day), and forbade any taking of fish between Cap Couronne and Cap de l’Aigle, except with their permission.
Louis XIV., on a certain occasion, when he was passing through Marseilles, confirmed all that his predecessors had granted, and further accorded them 3,500 minots of salt, at a price of eleven livres per minot.
The “Prud’hommes” formed a sort of court or tribunal which regulated all disputes between members. To open a case one merely had to deposit two sols in a box, the contents of which were destined for the poor (the other side contributing also), and four of the chosen number of the “Prud’hommes” sat in judgment upon the question at issue. The loser was addressed in the short and explicit formula, “La loi vous condamne,” and forthwith he either had to pay up, or his boats and nets were seized. “Never was there a law so efficacious,” says the historian of this interesting guild; and all will be inclined to agree with him.
The “Prud’hommes” of Marseilles still exist as an institution, but their picturesque costume of other days has, it is needless to say, disappeared. The old-time “Prud’homme,” with a Henri Quatre mantle, a velvet toque for a hat, and a two-handed sword, would be a strange figure on the streets of up-to-date Marseilles.
The amateur fisherman in France is not the minor factor that English Nimrods would have one believe, though the mere taking of fish is a side issue with him. Not always does he make of it a solitary occupation. At Marseilles he has his “fishing excursions” and his “chowder-parties,” and the deep-sea fishing bouts held off the Provençal coast would do credit to a Rockaway skipper.
Read the following announcement of the banquet of “La Société de Pêche la Girelle” of Marseilles, culled from a morning paper:
“Members will meet at six o’clock in the morning, and will leave for the Planier (Marseilles’ great far-reaching light) grounds ‘sur le bateau à vapeur le Cannois;’ the overflow in small boats. To return at noon for a grand banquet chez Mistral. Bouillabaisse et toute le reste.”
Another great passion of the Marseillais, of all classes, is for the “campagne.” The wealthy commerçant has his sumptuous villa—always gaily built, but a sad thing from an architectural point of view—in the valley of the Huveaune, or on the slopes of the “Corniche” overlooking the Mediterranean. The petit bourgeois, the shopkeeper or the man of small affairs, contents himself with a cabanon, but it is his maison de campagne just the same. It is merely a stone hut with a tiny terrace fronting it on the sunny side, sheltered by a tonnelle, and that is all. The proprietor of this grand affair spends his Sundays and his fête-days throughout the year here on the slope of some rocky hill overlooking the sea, sleeps on a camp bedstead, and goes out early in the morning pour la pêche, in the hope of taking fish enough to make his bouillabaisse. Probably he will catch nothing, but he will have his bouillabaisse just the same, even if he has to go back to town to get it in a quayside restaurant. This is a simple and healthful enough way to spend one’s time assuredly, so why cavil at it, in spite of its ludicrous and juvenile side,—a sort of playing at housekeeping.
The cabanons are numerous for miles around Marseilles in every direction, above all on the hills overlooking the sea and in the valleys of the Oriol, the Berger, and the Huveaune, in fact, in any ravine where one may gain a foothold and hire a pied-de-terre for fifty to a hundred francs a year.
The real traveller of enthusiasm, the kind that Sterne wrote for when he said “let us go to France,” will not be content merely to know Marseilles, the town, but will wander afield to Estaque, to Allauch, to Les Aygalades, and to any and all of the scores of excursion points which the Marseillais, more than the inhabitants of any other city in France, are so fond of visiting. Then, and then only, will one know the real life of the Marseillais.
The tour of the shores of the golfe alone will occupy a week of one’s time very profitably, be he poet or painter.
At Les Aygalades are the remains of a Carmelite chapel, which came under the special patronage of King René of Anjou, also a château constructed for the Maréchal de Villars.