CHAPTER X

ARLES

A few more turns of the kaleidoscope of life, and we find ourselves sitting in a Roman amphitheatre among a crowd of spectators.

That odious descendant of the Roman games, the bullfight, does, at certain times, carry on in a far milder form the ancient tale of agony in this very arena, but the present performance given by a troup of Laplanders is of quite another character.

The people of Arles had come in considerable crowds to see them, but what interested us was the spectators, not the Laplanders. It was Sunday, and many of the women had on their famous costume: a black skirt, white muslin or tarlatan fichu, a picturesque white cap with a band of embossed black velvet round it, which hangs gracefully at one side. The ArlÉsiennes are beautiful, and carry themselves perfectly.

A picturesque costume is popularly said to "make people look handsome;" as if the dress created a beauty that was not really there!

At Arles, by comparing the faces of those who wear the costume with those who have abandoned it for modern garb, one can clearly realise that beauty—which consists in relations of line and tint—is not made but revealed by its setting. One sees, too, how, on the other hand, it can, by the same means, be disguised and hidden, just as it would be easy to disguise the symmetry of some fine freehand design by tacking on to its outline a random selection of octahedrons or oblate spheroids. This, be it added, is too often the sort of process pursued by the designer of modern costume.

The beauty of the ArlÉsiennes is attributed to their Greek descent from the original founders of the city. Judging by appearance, one would say there was a strong touch of Saracen blood mingling with the clearer current of the classic.

The hair is generally black, the eyes dark, the features regular and often noble in character.

Arles is a place of narrow streets, of ruins, of tombs. It stands in a wilderness of vast lagoons at the mouths of the Rhone, and in ancient times it could only be reached by water, for the land was all covered with these meres to the foot of the Alpilles. In the time of the Romans and during the Middle Ages these great waters were navigated by the utriculares, or raftsmen, whose flat craft were made of extended skins.

Merchandise from Central Gaul had to come to Arles to be transshipped on its way to the East or elsewhere, vi the Mediterranean. The raftsmen carried it over the shallow water round the city, and plied a roaring local trade as well.

At Arles all interested in architecture will be apt to linger before the very remarkable church of St. Trophime.

The interest lies in the characteristic ProvenÇal blending of the pure Roman style with its offshoot, the Romanesque, an architecture which forms a curious analogue to the Romance languages, formed during the same period when things Roman were falling to pieces, yet were still the only standards and models, the type of all possible achievements in human life and art.

The Romanesque is the patois of the classic architecture (with a history singularly analogous to that of the language), developing finally into the eloquent Gothic of our great cathedrals. But it was in the north, not in the south—just as in the language—that the more evolved form established itself. That leaves to the southern speech and architecture a primitive charm all their own.

Of the porch of St. Trophime the engaged pillars are classic as to their capitals, Romanesque in the half barbaric carving of their bases. The figures in the niches formed by the pillars are Roman in general type, yet with a touch of Byzantine, which may be described as the architectural Romance dialect of the East.

The interior was a surprise. The half-barbaric richness of the porch had disappeared. The choir had something of the northern Gothic, but the nave was severe, and indeed rigid in character, yet with none of the massiveness that makes the Norman version of Romanesque so fine. In another country one would have concluded that the interior was of earlier date than the highly decorated porch; but in Provence this rigid manner belongs to the second period of architecture, when the Cistercians—afraid, apparently, lest imaginative decoration might make things too pleasant and beautiful for sinful mortals—introduced a new style in which such irrelevancies were sternly banished: hence even the piers of the nave are merely square blocks of masonry. One must hope that the worshippers of St. Trophime received commensurate spiritual benefit for the deprivation thus imposed upon them.

The church gives one a sense of chill, of hardness; an atmosphere from which all the inspiration and intuition of religious feeling has been driven out, and only the intolerance and cold-blooded pieties remain.

It is exceedingly interesting none the less, for it is so fine an example of the emotionless Cistercian style of the twelfth century—the twelfth century, strange to relate, when the troubadours were singing their loudest and best, when the great castles were overflowing with gaiety, and all the land was full of dance and song.

The cloisters belong to the earlier and richer period, the pillars being carved with real Romanesque beasts and birds of the most aggrieved and untamed character, with vigorous foliage and volutes, and every variety of ornament; yet all balanced with that perfect instinct of the mediÆval carver, never afraid to let himself go, to plunge into a profusion almost riotous, while always some sane inner guidance builds up the richness into a beautiful whole, wherein the quality of reserve which seemed so recklessly broken down in the spendthrift detail reappears as by miracle to bind all into one. There is no lack of emotion here. It informs every rampant beast and indignant bird, every living curve of leaf and swirl of volute; but it is like the clamour of tumultuous music, all welded together into harmony.

In this city of the lagoons there are endless associations of Roman days and of days far earlier, as well as tangible relics of those dim ages that, at best, remain so profound a mystery even to the most learned. Of the Greek colony a few marbles remain, and a few words. The ProvenÇal herdsmen in the mountains call their bread arto, from the Greek a?t??. The sea also is pelagre (pe?a???), and there are a few more as obviously or more indirectly derived.

It was to Arles, among other ProvenÇal places, that St. Martha came to convert the people to Christianity. With a little company of saints, she arrived one day in the gay pagan city just when they were all celebrating the festival of Venus. And forthwith St. Trophimus—the beloved friend of St. Paul—lifted up his voice and addressed the laughing, dancing crowd, and suddenly, with a great crash, the statue of the goddess fell to the earth, and the people were converted. Encouraged by this rapid discomfiture of one of the most powerful of the Olympians, the little band dispersed through the country—St. Eutropius to Orange, St. Saturnin to Toulouse, and St. Martha to Tarascon to reform the Tarasque, with what success we shall presently know.

Perhaps it was because the weather had lost its brilliance that Arles seemed to us a little sad. Its beautiful, poplar-bordered Aliscamps, the famous avenue of tombs, was scarcely a cheering place to loiter in at the close of a winter afternoon. It brought home too clearly the Roman idea of death: sombre, cold, grim, merciless. Sometimes, not very often, the tombs revealed regret for the dead that appeared more than conventional; sometimes one seemed to discern, breathing out of the damp-stained marble, a passion of grief that was unbearably hopeless; human love beating, beating for ever, with bleeding hands, against a hateful, unyielding doorway. One had to hurry past those tombs....

This avenue is the sole remains of what was once a very large Roman cemetery, destroyed when the railway came to the city. Among the tombs was found one of Julia, daughter of Lucius Tyrannus, proudly representing in sculpture all the musical instruments on which she could play, among them an organ, said to be the earliest example known. Marble sarcophagi are ranged in rows beneath the poplars, leading the eye along the solemn glade to the church of St. Honorat, another fine example of ProvenÇal Romanesque, with a bell tower built on lines almost purely Roman.

St. Virgilius, under whose direction it was erected, had no little trouble at the beginning of his work. The pillars of the church had arrived, and were just going to be set up, when the workmen found that they could not get them lifted, do what they would. The reason was obvious. They found sitting solidly on the columns a very small but very determined demon, and budge he would not. He sat there square and firm, resolved that the obnoxious church should never be completed if he had any say in the matter. At last, in despair, they had to send for St. Virgilius, who was Bishop of Arles, and with holy-water and various exorcisms the obstructive demon was driven away and the columns triumphantly hoisted into their places, where one can see them to this day. It seemed to us that that demon had not altogether departed from the church. The place was gloomy, uncanny, damp, and unwholesome, but undoubtedly a fine example of its style.

St. Virgilius, no doubt on account of his saintship, was much beset by demons and false appearances—a very discouraging feature in the lives of the saints.

He was one night looking out over the lagoons, when he saw a phantom ship, and a voice called out saying that the crew was bound for Jerusalem and had come to take St. Virgilius with them. But the wary saint replied, "No, thank you; not until I know who you are!" And he made the sign of the cross, and instantly the ship became a drift of mist, and rolled away across the water.

This is said to be a version of the legend of the "Flying Dutchman."

It is not surprising that Arles should have had so many splendid Roman buildings, for not only did it become a Roman colony,[10] but it was the residence of Roman emperors, and was nicknamed the Rome of Gaul—Gallula Roma, Arelas.

The museum was rich in relics of the Imperial occupation. There is a beautiful bust of the Empress Livia among the treasures, and one exquisite little head of a boy, son of one of the CÆsars, a delicate, pathetic little face, evidently an individual, not a type.

The collection also boasts a Phoenician tomb which looks as if it were made yesterday, and some fine reliefs of dancing figures, decorated foliage, instinct with that quality of beauty, lightness, magic that the Gods have bestowed upon the art of Greece. This quality comes into strong evidence in this museum, where there are Pagan and Christian sarcophagi side by side in large numbers. Fine as are the earlier Christian sculptures (that is, on tombs before the withdrawal of protection from Christian cemeteries),[11] they are not to be compared with the pure pagan work; and the later tombs of Christian origin are "rude and childish in design and execution."

One can spend hours wandering about the nooks and corners of the city, loitering by the river-side, where there are the wretched remains, worse than ruined, of a palace of Constantine; lingering about the silent theatre where the famous Venus of Arles was found.

Cyril, an enthusiastic deacon, had the building destroyed, knocked down all the statues and all the noble pillars, of which only two sad ones are now standing above the ruin.

One might sit for hours unmolested on some fragment of the seats once so gaily filled with fashionable citizens of the Empire, for though the ruins are surrounded by houses on three sides there is little sign of life in those quiet and ancient dwellings of the citizens of Arles. The fine tower of St. Trophime rises conspicuously behind them, a true southern tower, square and solid, with the three stories marked with flat arcading and round-topped windows: simple, characteristic, with a grave charm which is almost impossible to define, yet very obvious.

ARLES FROM THE RIVER.
By Joseph Pennell.