What induced us to pick our way on foot from the railway carriage to the Hôtel du Parc et Bordeaux, near eleven o'clock at night, on our arrival at Lyons, I cannot possibly conceive.
It was the 3d of January that we performed this unnecessary penance; and the only explanation I can give is that we were all rather dazed by the long journey from Paris, and had forgotten that of course there was waiting at the station an omnibus to carry on the passengers. We had been silent and sleepy for some hours, when the bright lights twinkling up and down the heights of the city of Lyons, and across the bridges, and, corruscating at the station, had roused us all up, and made us exclaim at the fairy sight. I had seen it again and again; but I always look out eagerly for the first peep at that tossed-about town after night has closed in, and I know none more brilliant and picturesque. I thought we all looked rather rueful as we entered the hotel, and that it suddenly struck us we had come on foot, and might therefore look too economically inclined to suit the views of the buxom lady who advanced to meet us. I saw her cast rather a doubtful eye to the rear; but her face brightened when she found we had at least been able to afford a porter to carry such luggage as we might want for one night. We had no valid reason to give in reply to her anxious enquiries as to why we had not availed ourselves of the hotel omnibus; which very soon afterwards came rattling into the yard, quite empty, the guard and coachman viewing us indignantly. Madame, finding we had nothing to say for ourselves, compassionately furnished each with a candle, and allowed us to gather together our scattered wits in sleep.
The “we” consisted of brother Frank, sister Mary, and I; also of Ann, our maid. I suppose I must describe the party. I wish I could draw them instead. Frank is dressed all over in a gray tweed. I sometimes tell him he looks like a gray parrot; but that is absurd, because he is so extremely taciturn, which gray parrots are not. He makes a capital courier. He always knows what we poor women shall want, and how much we can do, which is a great comfort to me; because, as Mary is delicate, and we are travelling on her account, I should be so worried if Frank insisted on doing fourteen hours of railroad per diem. He is such a good fellow that he would never wish us to overtask ourselves. But then he is so strong that I know it must seem very extraordinary to him that we should be such poor creatures, and get tired out so soon. I sometimes wonder what has made Frank so tender and gentle, and so considerate. Perhaps it is the being so much with Mary. She makes everybody gentle who comes [pg 016] near her. Somehow she seems to stroke everybody's fur the right way, no matter how ruffled they were before. Poor Mary! she has for many years been a widow, after a brief and unhappy married life, and having lost both her children, a girl and a boy. She is the eldest of us three, but has a marvellous knack of looking the youngest and the brightest. She has been very beautiful, and is so still in many ways. Now I come! But how shall I describe myself? The more I think of it, the more impossible I find it. As I am the relater of our adventures, I suppose my readers will form for themselves some idea of what I am like. So I will only say that my name is Jane, and that I am an old maid, but that I do not feel old. As to my looks, I really do not know what to say. I am not always altogether dissatisfied with them; but then, on the other hand, when I am inclined to judge them leniently, the unlucky feeling comes over me that it is solely owing to my hat, or the way my hair is done, or some fortuitous circumstance upon which I cannot reckon as a permanency, and which may be gone before any one else has had the time to observe it. So that though I have my lucky moments, I have little or no capital to go on. Now, Mary, with her large, soft eyes, her exquisite mouth, and beautiful teeth, attracts strangers wherever she goes; although she is always insisting upon it she is quite an old woman. And now comes Ann. She is about my age, but does not at all consider herself an old maid, and therefore always contradicts me when I speak of myself in such disparaging terms. I generally say something in reply about the observation being six for me and half a dozen for herself. But this she does not like. Ann is a very good girl, and a capital maid. She has pretty, fuzzy black hair, and bright though small black eyes; she has a very white skin, and a neat figure. But she does not like travelling, and is especially disgusted when the scenery is very bold and magnificent. Mountains are her abhorrence, distant views her antipathy. This is far from being our first journey; and whenever we have found ourselves in the railway carriage from Dover to London Bridge, Ann invariably remarks how lovely the country is as we dash through the flat green fields and monotonous cherry gardens of simple Kent. And her admiration culminates when we pass any gentlemen's seats. The absence of striking features, the unbroken, unaccidental horizon, the universal green, and the level lines, give Ann a sensation of peace and repose; while I, who have something of an artist's soul, am feeling how very difficult it would be to get an effective subject or a “nice bit of color” out of the platitudes of dear England's quiet homesteads.
We were off the next day by daylight, I feeling like a swallow flying south; and very soon we perceived in the clear air a warmer glow than any to be had the other side of Lyons. Even the desert region of La Crau seemed full of charms to me. The dim, gray expanse of thick-lying stones that Hercules persuaded by his prayers the angry Jove to shower down on the Ligurians, broken only by thin tufts of mint and scant rosemary, themselves also of a gray green, and leading on over thousands of acres to the blue distant hills that were blushing into rosy hues when we crossed the desert, were not without delightful “points,” which I could [pg 017] have transferred to my sketch-book had time allowed me. “La Belle Provence” is a very journalière beauty, and requires a bright sun to clothe her in sparkling jewels, and to dye her dress in blue and violet and rose-madder, to be worthy of the name that centuries have agreed to give her. When there are no lights, there is apt to be an air of desolation and barrenness. Those hills, arrayed in many tints, give back the lights from rocky and unproductive cliffs; but down in the valleys, with the exception of La Crau, the culture is rich and varied. The first stunted olive-trees as we approached Marseilles were welcome less on their own account—for they are miserable specimens—than for the association of ideas connected with their pallid leaves, and because they gave promise of the large ones that would gladden our eyes further on.
The station of Hyères is a few miles from the town. We had ordered a carriage to meet us; and all the way Mary was looking out for the large umbrella pine that she remembered so well years ago, when there was no railway so far south. It had been the great landmark on the road from Hyères to Toulon. We measured our rides and walks in that direction by the great pine. There it stood, the same as ever, and brought back all Hyères and the two winters spent there, besides other shorter visits, to our memory with one rush. All else was changed. New houses had sprung up on all sides. Mme. Susanne's old tumble-down hotel, where Mary had stopped for a few days on her wedding-tour, is changed into a magnificent building with caryatides supporting the façade like a Genoese palace; and the palms on La Place des Palmiers, which I had known in their babyhood, have grown to a size that would not disgrace Arabia. The hotel we went to stands in what used to be Le Jardin Frassinet. It had been full of orange-trees when we first knew it, as had all the other gardens in the place. But one very severe winter having greatly injured the trees, the inhabitants have given up the cultivation of oranges, and have planted peach-trees instead, much to the detriment of the beauty of Hyères. I found Mary, the day after our arrival, gazing wistfully at a group of tall cypress and one palm-tree that had marked the boundary of the gardens belonging to the house where she lived with her children the second time she came here. We missed her soon afterwards, and refrained from following her, for we knew she wanted to visit alone the scenes of some joys and many sorrows long ago passed away—so far as anything is really past which is worthy the name of joy or sorrow. She came back with her hands full of the little, dark, mottled arum and its lance-head leaves that grow so profusely on the hills and by the roadside. They are of a dingy-purple hue, shaded off into white; and we exclaimed against them as she put them in a glass, alleging that they had an unpleasant odor. “I know they have,” she answered; “but their quaint, twisted shape, and blossoms like the head of a snake, are so full of memories that I rather like the smell than otherwise.” After that we let her enjoy her arums alone, for we knew how much that meant. Doubtless she had been wandering about, recalling visions of the past: the dead—the lost, but not dead, that worse separation!—and all the tangled maze of the years that are gone. Mary's [pg 018] bouquet of arums was redeemed by a handful of the sweet white alyssum; and these two flowers, with a few of the bold-faced, unflinching daisies of Provence, so unlike our modest northern flowers, were all the wild blossoms we could hope to find in January.
We could not leave Hyères without performing a pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Consolation, the old church on a hill overlooking the coast. The ascent is marked by the Way of the Cross rudely painted in small niches of masonry by the side of the road. When we were last here, there was a daily Mass said by a hermit-priest. He had some years previously tried his vocation at the Carmelites', and had not succeeded. But the impulse to seek utter solitude was too strong to be resisted; and for a long time he had lived in the surrounding mountains, a veritable hermit, subsisting upon the poorest fare, which was brought to him at regular intervals by the peasants. Whether he had erected a hut for himself, or lived in a cave, I never learnt; but when the bishop of the diocese became aware of the fact, he thought it to be regretted that a priest should not celebrate Mass, and proposed to him that he should live in one of the small rooms of the deserted convent which is attached to the Church of Our Lady of Consolation, take care of the church, and say Mass. This offer he gladly accepted; and there he resided for some time. We used to go sometimes, on a bright spring morning, to attend his Mass. Our breakfast was packed in a basket, and hung to the pommel of my donkey's saddle, to be eaten afterwards on the top of the low, semi-circular wall which encloses a piece of ground in front of the church. I always looked with a special interest, not altogether unmingled with curiosity, at the slight, bent figure of the priest, who could not be more than forty years of age, as he emerged from the door of the sacristy, and, with eyes so cast down that they seemed closed, passed by us to the altar. Who shall say what had called up that deep thirst for utter solitude and silence which had driven him to so extreme a life? Was it some calamity, or some crime, or only—as is far more probable—that strange instinct which is implanted in the nature of some men to flee their kind, and be alone with themselves—an instinct which possibly many have felt stirring within them at odd moments, but which, when touched by divine grace, grows into a wonderful and exceptional vocation; once more common, in the early days of Christianity, when the whole world lay in pagan luxury and gilded vice, and which even our subduing, taming, commonplace civilization fails in some rare cases to smother in the soul?
What became of the hermit of Our Lady of Consolation I could never learn. Perhaps the solitude seemed incomplete when ladies could attend his Mass, and picnic afterwards on his premises. At any rate, he has been gone for many years; and Mass is only said on certain feasts, when the peasantry come in crowds, and bring flowers and offerings to the Madonna, as represented by a peculiarly ugly and dark-colored wooden statue, which has grown to be very precious to those who have obtained special favors in answer to their prayers offered here. Many years ago, Mary, in her Protestant days, had brought a lace veil, the gift of a Russian prince, who was leaving [pg 019] Hyères with a sick wife, and who wanted prayers for their safe journey; thereby producing a curious admixture of heretical, schismatical, and Catholic feeling which no doubt had each their separate value and acceptance before God, being all offered in simplicity and good faith; for it was with no unwilling hands that, mounted on one of the prie-dieux in the church, she had arranged the veil over the statue, and then knelt to say a prayer for the prince's intention.
The church is full of votive offerings. The walls are entirely covered from roof to floor. As many of them have been put up by sailors, they more or less have reference to the dangers of the deep. There is a model of a ship hanging up near the entrance, probably because its larger copy was saved from wreck. The pictures representing recovery from sickness or preservation from peril are often extremely grotesque, and might provoke a smile were it not that they carry one's thoughts direct to the faith and gratitude they represent.
I had often wandered through the deserted rooms and cells of the old convent. There is no glass left in some of the windows; but the weather is kept out by the external wooden shutters which are universal in the south. There is a lovely view from all sides. In front, the sea, with Les Isles d'Or (the Golden Islands) hemming it in as if it were a large lake, save to the left, where it opens out into the wide ocean. These islands form some of those originally called Les Larins, which name included the group before the coast of Cannes. And in most of them the first religious houses for men were established by S. Honorius, though only one island, that on which he and all his monks were martyred by the Saracens, bears his name. Les Isles d'Or, or Les Isles d'Hyères, as they are also called, are now but sparsely inhabited. Years ago, “when we were young,” we had landed on one of these islands, where stands a fort, and a few soldiers are stationed. There are also a half-dozen of cottages, inhabited by fishermen and shepherds. We were a joyous band, and had sailed from the mainland in the admiral's cutter, the French fleet riding at anchor off our coast. As we scrambled up the sandy beach, and pushed our way through the tangled undergrowth of myrtle, heath, cytisus, and leutisca, we found ourselves face to face with the solitary sentinel pacing in front of the blind walls of the low but solid-looking fort. His face broke into smiles, and, with a saucy gleam in his dark eyes, he said to the foremost gentlemen of our party, “Comment, Messieurs! vous nous en menez toutes ces belles dames? Mais vous allez révolutionner notre pauvre curé.”22 We could find no remains of monastic houses on the islands; but there are traces of walls close to the sea, on the mainland, which are said to be the remains of a convent of nuns who met with a severe punishment for an ill-timed jest. Possibly they were not all that as nuns they might have been. At any rate, they seem to have found their life occasionally dull; and when the longing for a little excitement became irrepressible, the abbess would toll the great bell of the convent, which by rights was never used save to ring the Hours and the Angelus, or to summon the neighbors for aid when any of the frequent panics about the landing of [pg 020] the marauding Saracens threatened the safety of the Sisters. The jest had been played too often, and when at length the oft-expected Saracens really came, the poor nuns rang their bell in vain. No one appeared to the rescue, and the Saracens had it all their own way, and the convent was destroyed.
The sea must have encroached since those days, for the waters wash over the scanty ruins, and I have picked my way along the foundations with little salt lakes lying between. Far to the left lie Les Salines, where they evaporize the sea-water in shallow square spaces, and thus obtain a coarse gray salt. They say that sometimes flamingoes may be shot among this marshy land; but I could never obtain one, though I know it abounds in wild fowl of every description. The deep orange-colored boughs of the large willow-trees give a peculiar charm to the distant landscape in the winter when the leaves are off; and close upon the edge of the shore is a fine wood of umbrella pines, whereof three giants, standing apart from the rest, had been great favorites of ours. We had looked out eagerly on our arrival for our three pines. Alas! one was missing. Years ago these three solitary, magnificent trees had had a strange fascination for me. I wanted to find my way to where they stood; but it was beyond the marshes, and near the salines. There was no direct road, and no one could tell me how to get there; not even the young French naval officers, who used to come often and spend the evening with us, and who must have landed not so very far from where they stood. The craving to see my three pines face to face grew, however, too strong to be resisted; and so one day I set off on donkey-back, taking Ann with me, and resolved that I would not return till I had accomplished my end. Great were our difficulties. We had to thread our way along narrow raised paths through the marshes, just wide enough for our donkeys to tread; and as, of course, we dared not leave these paths, which did not wind, but turned at right angles, we as often seemed to be going away from the pines as the reverse. At one moment we were pursued by a couple of savage dogs, who tore after us from the open yard of a farm-house, and who were so very angry at our intrusion that escape along our narrow way, and with our leisurely steeds, seemed questionable. At length I found myself at the base of a high sand-bank, on which the yellow sea-thistle, with its glaucous leaves, found a scanty subsistence and a doubtful root-hold. This I had to scramble up, while for every ten inches I made in advance I slid back six. At last I was at my long-desired goal, and my three giants were really magnificent to behold. It was on my fourth visit to Hyères, with intervals of years between, that I accomplished this feat, and I had always looked at my pines the first thing in the morning, when the strip of sea between the mainland and the isles was still lying gray in the early light. Then, again, I watched for the red glow of the setting sun on their smooth stems, painted, as it were, in burnt sienna. Again, on moonlit nights I had looked for their broad, deep black crests, falling like an ink-spot on the silver sea. And now at last, when they had almost become to me like some mystery, meaning more than met the eye, I could throw my arms [pg 021] about them, and lay my hot cheek on their noble trunks.
It was not till then I knew how tired I was. I could not delay long with my old friends. I do not remember anything about the getting home, save that the dogs who had so guarded my garden of the Hesperides, and stood between me and the fulfilment of my desire, now that I had accomplished the feat, let me return in silence. I was very weary; but I was thoroughly contented and satisfied. And now one of my old friends was laid low! How he came to his end I know not. But I felt that he had died, not that he had been cut down; and for a moment a strange, weird melancholy stole over me at finding I had outlived a noble tree. It seemed as if I must be very old to have done that, and that it was hardly natural. I remember I asked myself then, at the very time of my culte of the pine-trees, and I have repeated the question since, whether there was not in my feelings something of that dim instinct which binds man in an obscure affinity with all nature, down to its lower strata and its primeval developments. As man contains something of all in his own being, so must he have a sympathy with all; for, as has been wisely said, man is a universe in himself, with another universe to wait on him. Most people have a special attraction to some race of animals. Some have a love for, and a power over, the horse and the dog greater than others; and this not always nor only as the results of habit, but as a natural gift. Certain flowers have a peculiar attraction for many people, in preference to others equal in beauty and perfume. All these preferences may point to hidden laws of affinity, of which we know very little more than the bare fact that all in creation finds its portion in each man, and that in his own single self he is chemical, vegetable, animal, and spiritual. I am afraid to say any more, lest my readers should think I believe we are in general descended from the little open-mouthed sea-squirts called ascidians, but that I claim for myself in particular some higher origin in the shape of a conifer great-grandfather. I assure them it is nothing of the kind. With regard to my sympathy with animals, of course, being an old maid, I ought to prefer cats and gray parrots. On the contrary, I prefer dogs, and Frank is the only gray parrot I ever thought of loving.
Before leaving Hyères, I made a sketch from the top of the hill (which in my younger days, for want of knowing better, I used to call the mountain) on which stand the picturesque ruins of the old château which formerly belonged to the French branch of the huge family of Fox; who, varying their name, if not their nature, according to the sky under which they flourished, had taken root in England, France, and Germany in the old feudal times. They possessed certainly a magnificent abode at Hyères, and probably kept all the neighborhood in awe. It is a glorious situation. It overlooks a long stretch of the road to Toulon as that winds through the fertile, well-cultivated valley; and to the right rises the rocky summit of Le Coudon, the point of land that first strikes the sailor's eye as he leaves the coast of Africa, and which on exceptionally clear days is dimly visible even from the coast itself. Next to it comes Le Phare Pharon, a lower mountain crowned by a fort. I know few views which [pg 022] combine such an exquisite variety of form and color as this. The small cork-trees and the stunted oaks, equally beautiful, whether wearing their russet leaves through the brief winter, or almost matching the cork-trees in dark-green foliage; the olives, here of a very respectable size, with their gnarled trunks and fantastic shapes; and then the patches of vivid-green corn, winter peas, and the green artichokes; the undulation of the land, assuming every shade from deep violet to light red—make altogether one of the loveliest views I know anywhere. But then, I am bound to acknowledge that there are not many such in the neighborhood of our much-loved Hyères, and that, on the whole, the simple little place has far less beauty to recommend it than many of the towns along the Riviera. Its great merit for invalids arises from the air being a good deal softer than at most of the sea-coast resorts of the sick. Mary could sit out for hours in the open air at Hyères, when at Cannes, and even at San Remo, she could only have driven in a close carriage; for, in spite of the brilliant sunshine in those places, the air is apt to be too exciting both for irritable lungs and susceptible nerves. One reason—probably the principal reason—for this is that Hyères is three miles from the sea, and more in the mountains than are the towns of the Riviera generally.
We had a lovely afternoon journey from Hyères to Cannes; passing numerous little bays and creeks where the blue waters lay in deep repose, or fringed with tiny wavelets that but kissed the shingly shore, and died in a gleam of light. As you looked down on them from the railway-carriage, you felt you might have seen a mermaid combing her sea-green hair, or a cupid astride a dolphin, as quite an expected vision. The intense blue sky and deeper blue sea, the various-tinted rocks, and perhaps a solitary pine hanging over, and near by a group of the same, with their dense crowns of ever-murmuring boughs, through which the evening air sings like the hum of winged insects, were each so full of harmonious and yet gorgeous color that they leave on the mind the impression of a Greek idyl, full of serene beauty—mere beauty, it may be—but intense, placid, and eternal. There are scenes in nature that are like the forms in Greek art. They are one; and they are typical. No wide view, albeit glorious, can produce this effect, however much it may appeal to the imagination. But a rock-bound cove on the Mediterranean, with its sparse vegetation and its depth of color, is as suggestive of thoughts beyond itself as is the pure grace of a Greek statue. It belongs to another world than ours, and to a region of thought rarely lighted on in these times, and then by a few only. When I question myself of the “why,” I am at a loss to answer. Perhaps it lies in the fact that, to produce this abstract effect on the mind, the objects in nature must be few, simple, and perfectly beautiful of their kind. Then they recall Greek art, in which there is no multiplicity, no overlaying, but which represents as absolutely a pure idea as it is possible for art to do. It is without subtlety, as it is without crowding. It can be felt better than described, for the feeling is too deep for words. Nothing in English scenery, no accidental combination of beauty, has ever brought the Greek geist before my mind. Never for a second, amid [pg 023] the birchen groves and flower-fringed lanes of my own land, had I thought of old Greece and the old Greek feeling. Pantheism would not be the natural religion of our northern skies. Never had I so strongly felt the tie between nature and art, and, as a necessary sequence, between nature and Grecian thought, till I had wandered on the pale sands by the calm blue waters of the tideless sea. It is like a floating essence, too intangible for words. If I could express it, the expression would perforce be brief and veiled. I would sing my idyl to a three-stringed lute, or paint my white nymph against a whiter sky.
It was essential to Mary not to live close to the sea, therefore we engaged apartments at Cannes in one of the hotels situated among the hills, and full a mile and a half from the coast. It so happened that nearly all the people whom we met at the table-d'hôte were English like ourselves, or rather British, for some came from the Emerald Isle; and amongst these a family of three charming girls, full of the spirit and humor of the race. They had with them an elderly maid, who had been their nurse, and whose quaint sayings afforded us much amusement while we were there. She had joined them only just before we arrived, bringing out the third sister, who had shown symptoms of delicacy like the second, and both were under the supreme care of the elder sister. Mrs. O'Brien had managed her journey in foreign parts very cleverly, though making every inch of the way under protest at the heathenish customs and abominable practices of these “foreigners,” as she deigned to call the French in their own land.
It had been with the greatest difficulty that she had, on leaving Ireland, been prevented from taking with her a large boxful of household stores, which, as she expressed it, would be such a comfort to “those poor darlints, just starvin' in foreign parts, with nothing but kickshaws and gimcracks to keep the life in them.” In spite of all the remonstrances of her master, she had actually succeeded in so far cheating the custom-house that she had smuggled “jist a nice little hand of pork, salted down at home,” among the young ladies' linen. Norah flew into our room, amid fits of laughter, to show it to us, and to consult upon how we could possibly get it boiled. We could not insult the hotel by asking that it might appear at the table-d'hôte; and a hand of pork was rather a peculiar dish for three young ladies to keep up in their bedroom for private eating. On the other hand, Mrs. O'Brien would never recover it if her eleemosynary offering were discarded. It ended in my explaining the state of the case, under seal of secrecy, to the landlady; and then we actually held a supernumerary feast in our drawing-room, at a late hour, all to show Mrs. O'Brien that her kindness was appreciated. We did not sleep particularly well that night, and the rest was made into sandwiches and eaten on our next excursion up the mountains.
Mary and Mrs. O'Brien became great friends; for Mary's sympathetic nature and marvellous control of countenance at once drew the old lady out, and prevented her discovering how intensely amused her listener was. Amongst other topics, she was very eloquent upon the subject of the Prince of Wales' recovery from his serious illness, [pg 024] declaring how she, “as is a nurse myself, know well what a fine healthy man he must have been born ever to have got over the like of that. And now, sure, we must pray that nothing may happen to the blessed, darlint prince; for if he were to be taken, the country would be just ruined, and nothing left us but the constitution!”
She would talk by the hour of her “darlint” young ladies, sometimes blaming their conduct, sometimes extolling them to the skies. Occasionally, to tease her, they would pretend to walk lame, and tell her that was all the fashion, and was called the Alexandra limp. “Och! now, honeys, you, with straight limbs as God has made you, mocking at the darlint princess, as may be isn't lame at all. If I saw you mocking at me, as is no princess, but is blind, and me groping round the table, don't you think, honeys, as I should feel it?” Then turning to Mary: “Ah! your honor, they was always as wild as a litter o' pigs on a windy day, good luck to them. I've seen them all come into the world, bless their hearts, one after the other, pretty nigh as fast as nature would let them. And a nice handful I've had wid them, too, bringing the most of them up by hand like a weaned calf. Children's stomachs is just like sponges. But if you overdo the binding, may be you'll give them obdurate bowels.” Mary bore even this without a smile; but we all laughed together when the morning after her arrival she found the nice little boy Celestin, who brought in the lamp and the basket of wood, and helped in the house generally, and who could not have been above fifteen, innocently aiding Marie, the housemaid, in making the beds. She could not understand a word of French, and of course he knew no English; but she seized him by the collar, and ejected him violently from the room, exclaiming, “Get out o' that, you young varmint!” and protesting that he should never touch one of her “darlints' sheets in this heathenish land, where they made no difference between a man and a woman, but put the men to make the beds and the women to tend the cattle.” The end of it was that she took the bed-making into her own hands, though she never got reconciled to the mattresses stuffed with the outer sheaths of the Indian corn, or the pillows with wool. “That pillow is as hard as a dog's head, and won't do for my young lady; and the other's as limp as a dead cat,” she remarked aloud to herself one day that Elina was going to bed early with a bad headache.
By degrees we became rather well acquainted with the other visitors at the hotel, which arose, no doubt, from the fact of our all being fellow-countrymen. For a long time Mary was the only married woman of the party; and with the exception of the three merry Irish girls, the ladies were all old maids like myself. Frank found Cannes rather slow, as he expressed it, and spent the greater part of the six weeks we were there in making excursions in the neighborhood, stopping away three or four days at a time. It was long before we got thoroughly comfortable with any of our fellow-sojourners in a strange land. In the first place, we were the only Catholics, and most of the others were very decided Protestants, and so rather shunned us at first. Some of them especially objected to Mary, and seemed to think that her good looks and her accurate French pronunciation were [pg 025] rather offensive than otherwise. It made no sort of difference to her, and I am sure she never even found it out. One day, as I was coming down-stairs, Miss Marygold was crossing the wide passage which went from the entrance to the dining-room door. As I passed her, she tossed her head, and said, “I have just met your sister, Miss Jane, going out for a walk, and looking about five-and-twenty. I must say I think it must be very inconvenient not to show one's age better than that.” “At any rate,” said I, “it is an inconvenience, Miss Marygold, that many would be happy to share with her.” And I swept along the wide passage lined with oleanders, myrtle, and cypress in large pots, sat down to the piano in the public salon, and dashed through the overture of “Robert le Diable” with much brilliancy of execution. I afterwards found out that both the Miss Marygolds strongly objected to a little red bow which Mary was apt to fasten in her hair when we went down to dinner. Their own coiffures resembled either a doll's apron stuck on the top of her head, or a small “dress-improver” of stiff lace. I suppose they thought there was some virtue in wearing what was at once ugly and ridiculous.
No one, on first arriving at Cannes, can form any idea of the exquisite beauty that will be within their easy reach as soon as they get beyond the long, straight street parallel with the flat coast. The town itself has no pretensions to beauty, except from the picturesque, fortified old church, standing high above the town, and whose mouldering walls assume so many different tints against the dark-violet background of the Estrelle; that beautiful line of mountains that runs far out into the sea, and forms the most prominent object of the scenery. The market is held down the one long street, where it opens on the small garden and esplanade by the shore. This is planted with magnificent plane-trees, and nothing can be more picturesque than the groups of peasant-women, with their bright-colored kerchiefs crossed over their shoulders, and their thick woollen skirts, sitting each at her little booth of cakes, or sweets, or household utensils, and especially the charming little crocks, pots, and pans of native manufacture. At a short distance from Cannes, at Valory, there is a very fine establishment of pottery works, well worthy of a visit. The native clay produces the most beautiful colors; and as the numerous visitors at Cannes have taken pains to supply the manufactory with very good models taken from the antique and from some of the best specimens of Minton and Staffordshire china, the result is most satisfactory. We found that they are in the habit of sending very large crates of garden-vases, besides smaller and more delicate articles, all over Europe. The road along the coast towards Antibes is bordered by beautiful villas with gardens running down towards the sea, and generally laid out in terraces. Even now, in the month of January, they were full of roses, geraniums, ageratum, and violets in bloom. Part of this picturesque spot is called California, on account of the bright yellow blossom of the mimosa, which, when fully out, is truly “a dropping well of gold.” The light, feathery flower covers the whole tree, and there is scarcely a leaf to be seen. The beautiful eucalyptus, or blue gum-tree, is [pg 026] much cultivated here. The peculiar variety of its foliage, the lower and older leaves being almost heart-shaped, and the upper ones often a foot in length, and hardly two inches wide, makes it very remarkable. The lower leaves are of a blue green, shading off into deep bronze, and the new shoots are almost yellow. It is quite recently that this beautiful tree has been transplanted from Australia to Europe; but as it makes twenty feet in a year, there are already magnificent specimens. It has a highly aromatic gum; and it is supposed that in time it will greatly supersede the use of quinine, having medicinal properties which resemble that invaluable remedy, while it will be less expensive. When Mary is suffering from one of her neuralgic headaches, nothing relieves her so much as steeping the long leaves of the eucalyptus in hot water, and holding her head over the perfumed steam. A branch hung near the bed is also, they say, conducive to sleep.
The beauties of the position of Cannes are far outdone by that of the little town of Cannet, distant about three miles, and built among the mountains, and where the air is softer. Nothing can exceed the loveliness of the view from the Place, shaded by splendid plane-trees, of the half-deserted little town, or the same view seen from the terrace of the one Pension, where we found every preparation for receiving guests, but which was locked up and entirely empty. You overlook numerous orange-gardens of the most vivid green, the starry blossoms and golden fruit gleaming amid the foliage. Then, far down the valley, and clothing an amphitheatre of hills and mountains, are groves of olives, with their soft velvet folds, mass overlapping mass of tender, dim green, shimmering all over with silver touches, as the air stirred the branches, and turned upwards the inner lining of the leaves—after which all other foliage is apt to look crude and hard. The blue sea lies beyond, and the sharp, purple outline of the Estrelle; while to the right the mountains fade off further and further, ending in snow-capt heights.
From amid the dense, soft shadows of the valley rise the old tower of the church and the picturesque cupolas of the strange Moorish villa where poor Rachel, the famous French tragedian, breathed her last, and which is fast falling to decay. It is no longer let to strangers; but we made our way through the tangled gardens and wilderness of orange-trees. Everything looked tumbling to pieces. The house itself is in ruin; and being painted in bright colors externally, and chiefly built of wood, at least in the ornamental parts, it looks like the cast-off decorations of a dismal theatre. Two white pigeons were picking up the scattered grain in the little, untidy court. A few mutilated plaster figures of gods and goddesses near the entrance added to the tawdry and unreal aspect of the whole. It was as if the poor actress had selected it to die in for its scenic effect, and so had closed her life on a mute and deserted stage. I fancied I could see her lithe form and her sinuous glide (for she never seemed to walk like a common mortal) along the veranda. I could recall the intense passion of her matchless voice as she thrilled you through with the words:
And then she came here, alone, to die! As I turned away from the place, so beautiful even in its desolation, I wondered if the rumor might be true which was prevalent at the time—that her maid, a French Catholic, seeing her poor mistress in a state of coma just before her death, had dared to baptize her—and thus give us a large-hearted hope for the woman and the Jewess.
We drove through the narrow, sharp-angled streets of the little town of Cannet to the church in the valley. The streets were so narrow, and the turnings were so sharp, that it always seemed that our horses were in one street while we and the carriage were in another. Three little children, with bright, dark eyes and tangled hair, hung over a wall, each with a rose in its mouth. They looked as if they would drop the flowers, and themselves after, into our laps. The church was very clean and well cared for; full of tawdry decorations, but fresh and neat, as if all were often renewed by loving hearts, if not by cultivated taste. M. le Curé is very old, and has not sufficient help for the wants of so large a parish; and there are no Sisters to teach the children. They seem a simple people; and if only there were a habitable house, what pleasure might be found in living in this earthly paradise, and working amongst them!
It is said that the Englishman carries Bass' pale ale and Warren's blacking with him where-ever he goes, to say nothing of Harvey's sauce. At any rate, he has established his own special amusements at Cannes, with no apparent consciousness of their incongruity with the scene around them. Of course we took our share, though denouncing and protesting all the way at the horrors of pigeon-shooting. We drove over sandy lanes close to the shore, through groups of pine-trees on either side; a glorious panorama of mountains and snow-clad peaks beyond, the dark-blue sea, and the purple Estrelle. There was a vulgar booth and a shed, and some rickety benches like those at a country fair. We sat down, facing three boxes, in which the innocent birds were concealed until the moment—unknown, of course, to the sportsman himself—when, bursting open, the pigeons spread their wings at liberty, to be perchance instantly killed by a clever shot. I acknowledge that I tried not to look, and that my heart gave a spasmodic leap every time I heard the clap of the lid of the box and then the sharp shot. I looked at the pine-trees and the far-off mountains, with the many-tinted, undulating middle distances, and tried to forget the coarseness and cruelty of the scene I was supposed to have come to as an amusement. The nuts and the ginger-bread were wanting, and Aunt Sally was distinguished by her absence; but there was nevertheless a milder reflection of everything that might have graced this same kind of scene in England; and so the English gentleman of the XIXth century, brought by fortuitous circumstances into a new and exquisitely beautiful land, was doing his best to make himself “at home,” and to inspire the natives and foreigners with his own tastes. I am fond of sport, though I am but an old maid; but somehow this does not strike me as being sport in the true acceptation of the word. And I sat wondering how long it will be before [pg 028] my own brave countrymen, who are already addicted to battues, will build one-storied, round summer-houses in their woods, painted inside with arabesques, Cupids, Venus, and Diana, and having six or eight small windows all round it; then, seated in a large gilt fauteuil, with a bottle of choice Chambertin by his side, he will languidly pop his short gun at the thrushes or the finches as they flutter from bough to bough before him; and so, at the end of a couple of hours, saunter home with a bagful of “game,” wearied with the exertions of la chasse au tire, like the gentlemen in France in the times of La Régence.
The Duc de P. was there, and the Duc de C., and the Duke of H., and actually one of the men—what may they be called?—who preside over the pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham, and who had been got over to ensure everything being en règle. What more could any one want? I wondered to myself whether the extraordinary beauty and sublime majesty of the surrounding scene had anything to do with enhancing the pleasure of the pigeon-shooters; whether, in short, the successful slaughter of the poor birds was rendered more enjoyable by the fact of its taking place under a sky and in a spot fraught with exquisite beauty; noble and serene, vast and varied.
And if not, why did they not stop among the cockney flats of Hurlingham? When all was over and we returned home, I actually found myself semi-conscious of a sort of pride that the best shot, in this decidedly trying proof of skill, was an Englishman! So much for the inconsistency of human, especially of female, nature.
We are in the land of perfumes. Acres of roses, violets, and other scented flowers are cultivated solely for the perfume manufactories at Grasse, a few miles from Cannes. Of course, this is not the time of year to benefit by this exceptional form of farming; but in the spring it must be lovely.
We are preparing to leave Cannes, and, as I write these lines, Frank silently lays a sheet of paper by my side. And I see—a Sonnet.
The Olive-Tree.