In Old Provence

I now finally left behind me the cosmopolitan coast, and came into the true Provence.

My objective was the old city of Aix, which lay almost due east, across country in which there are not many places standing out on the map as of any importance, but which seemed to me rather more attractive on that account.

Once at Aix, one would be in the thick of it. Avignon, NÎmes, Arles, and a score of points of interest lie within a few miles of one another. When I reached this rich and crowded corner, the adventure of walking through unknown country would take second place. But at least as long as the weather held I wanted to be on foot, and in the country that lies apart from the main tourist routes.

When I had passed beyond the sphere of the villas with their flowery gardens the road became rather lonely. The fields of blossom became rarer, but there were vines and olives everywhere. The earth was red, and looked rich, and the hills on either side of me took on all sorts of lovely shades of orange and purple and blue, as the light changed and shifted during the day. I could still see, when I turned round, some of the higher mountains from among which I had come, and the country did not sensibly change its character until I had crossed another pass later on in the day.

I walked for some miles, hoping to come across an inn where I could get something to drink. I had had nothing since the bread and coffee of the early morning, and had walked straight through Grasse, only stopping to get my letters and buy some provisions.

I believe that most people on the tramp find it enough to have one good meal at the end of the day. Some of them find it necessary to start with a stout breakfast, but that is hardly possible outside England, and for my part the coffee and roll of France or Switzerland carries me on very well for two or three hours, when I am ready for something more substantial.

You need not trust to an inn for this second collation, and if you do they will only send out to get for you what you could have got for yourself, and charge you rather more for it. They quite understand your bringing your own vivres with you, and eating them to the accompaniment of their wine. Even the wine you can buy and carry with you, but it is hardly necessary to do that as long as you are in a country where you can get it anywhere.

You go to a boulangerie and buy a crisp, newly baked loaf for a penny. Then you go to an Épicerie and buy cheese or sausage, or both; also oranges and chocolate to amuse yourself with at odd moments during the day. Here is food fit for the gods, and all you want is wine to wash it down with. My own preference is for a great deal of wine at such times, but there are some who may be content with water. I want water, too, and a great deal of that, and carry an aluminum folding cup with me, filling it almost anywhere without regard to possible germs. It may be dangerous in some places, and possibly so in Provence; but I have never taken any harm from it, there or anywhere.

It was on this morning that I realized for the first time that it was not necessary to find an inn in order to find wine. Everybody makes wine in Provence and almost anybody will sell it to you. I got my litre at a blacksmith's; they brought me out a chair under a tree, and I ate and drank to the ring of the anvil. The wine cost fourpence halfpenny—I like to present these little sums in English money—and was drinkable, but no more. I was beginning to get rather tired of the ordinary red wine of the country, though I never drank white that was not good. But it is mostly red wine that the peasants make, and it is only occasionally that it is anything more than a mere beverage.

That afternoon I came to a beautiful place. The road had been falling for some time, and at last entered a deep and narrow valley of verdant meadows through which flowed a very clear river. I had walked a long way, and it was very hot. The idea came to me to find a sheltered spot and bathe in these clear waters. Perhaps fortunately, there was an inn at the point at which the road crossed a bridge and doubled back on the other side of the gorge, and when I had refreshed myself there bathing did not seem such a reasonable undertaking. The river, though invitingly clear, was rapid, and must have been fed by snows not so very far away; and it was still early March, in spite of the hot sun.

There were motor-cars in front of this inn, and a party had finished a late and from evidence a long dÉjeuner at a table in the open. They were flushed with food and wine and other liquors, and chattered like parrots before they packed themselves into their cars and made off in the direction of the coast. I disliked them one and all, and felt vastly superior to them—a feeling which no doubt they also experienced towards me, if they took any notice of me at all. Their sensation of superiority would be based upon the fact that they were showing themselves in command of quite a lot of money, and would be heightened by the mild delirium that comes from over-feeding and being carried along swiftly in that state, with no call for bodily or mental effort. Mine arose from the pride of living frugally and feeling particularly well from having walked a good many miles and being ready to walk a good many more in about half an hour's time. I'm not sure, now that I have drawn the comparison, that the one feeling was any more laudable than the other.

I crossed the bridge, which was called the Pont de la Saigne, and began the long ascent to the Colle Noire. When I had reached it the scenery began to show a change. I had left the high rugged hills behind me at last, and was dropping down into a fertile valley, which spread out into a plain. The hills, more rounded now, bounded this plain to the north, and were dotted at intervals with little towns that showed up picturesquely from a distance on their blue and purple slopes. I was making for one of them—Fayence, where I had been assured that I should find a good inn. It was still a long way off after a few hours' walk, and still hidden from me by an intervening hill, and I had walked quite far enough that day.

I sat down on the coping of a bridge as the dusk began to steal over the fields and hills. It was a peaceful, soothing scene. An old shepherd came slowly towards me with his flock following him to their night's shelter. It was like a picture by Millet. There was not enough light for a photograph, but I took one of another shepherd with his flock later on. They watch their sheep as the Swiss watch their cattle in the mountain pastures, never leaving them alone; and I never saw a flock of sheep in Provence that numbered above thirty.

When I had walked on a little farther I got a lift in a cart drawn by an old white horse that was jogging along my way. It was driven by a good-looking young man with a wonderful set of teeth and a pleasant smile. He was a sort of general carrier. He dropped a large bundle of what looked like washing at one cottage and a basket of provisions at another, and a man stopped him on the road to hand in a lantern for repair, and a woman at a railway crossing asked for medicine to be brought the next day. There was a little conversation on general topics at every stop, and the tongue was the true ProvenÇal, which he told me they all talked among themselves, though most of them talked French as well.

ProvenÇal is soft and sweet. It is not difficult to make out its meaning in print if one knows some Latin and some French, but I never succeeded in catching more than the glimmer of an idea of what was being talked about. Of ProvenÇal as a literary language there will be more to say later on.

As we rounded the hill that had hidden Fayence, there came into view a castle with two towers that stood most imposingly on a summit overlooking the valley; but as we approached it turned out to be, not an ancient ruined keep as it had seemed in the dusk, but a not very ancient unfinished chÂteau of enormous proportions. It had been built so far, my friend informed me, by a General Fabre, or Favre, and, as I afterwards learnt, about the year 1836. I made up my mind to visit it the next day, for it showed up as a most lordly pleasure house, with terraced gardens commanding the great stretch of country between the range of hills on which it stood, and the mountains of the EstÉrel and the Maures towards the sea.

Fayence lay just beyond it. My carrier was going on to Seillans, and dropped me at the foot of the hill, and I made my way slowly up a winding road to my night's shelter.

I found a good inn where they gave me an excellent dinner and a delicious white wine. The dinner consisted of pea soup, a spit upon which was impaled alternate morsels of liver and bacon, a dish of little sausages with succulent cabbage, a dish founded on beef or mutton, I forget which, cream cheese, biscuits, oranges, and nuts, and the charge for this, including the wine, of which I drank a large quantity, was two francs. My bed, in a small clean room, was also two francs, and coffee and rolls the next morning fifty centimes. This comes to about three shillings and ninepence for a day's living, apart from what one consumes upon the road; and this was the chief hotel in a town of fifteen hundred inhabitants.

Such hotels are common all over southern France, and easy enough to find in a town not too large or too small. They are not so well furnished or so comfortable as an English inn of the same class, but it would be rare indeed to find an English inn where the food would be so good. An evening meal would have to be ordered or cooked specially, and one would consider oneself charged moderately in a bill that came to no more than three times as much. In the bigger towns such hotels are more difficult to find, but they are there if one knows where to look for them, and has learnt exactly what to look for. In the smaller places to which tourists go, and there is no choice, the charges are considerably higher; but one can usually get a bath, which is an unknown luxury in the ordinary way of things.

I wish very much that I had not left these wanderings on foot over foreign countries until middle age. I can imagine no more delightful experience for a young man, either alone or in company. If I could go back to undergraduate days, I would spend some part of every spring and summer vacation on foot in this way. Ready money is apt to be scarce at that happy age, but it need cost so little.

My own experiences, for various reasons, are no particular guide, but Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who is pastmaster in the art of seeing fresh country, is worth quoting on the subject. He wrote to me when I asked him for advice before setting out on this expedition:

"I think the thing is quite easy if one only remembers that the conditions, upon the Western Continent at least, that is, in France, Italy and Spain, are so different from those in England that no one asks questions and no one dreams of interfering with one's liberty. The rule is as simple as possible. Any inn whatsoever in France and almost any inn north of Naples in Italy gives you a tolerable bed, and on entering it you ask the price of a room and of coffee the next morning. They are accustomed to the process and bargain with you. I have been to dozens of places where I was charged no more than a franc.

"For your mid-day meal you will be wise to carry a leather bottle which the French call a Gourde and the Spaniards a Bota, holding wine, which again you must have filled in shops where wine is sold retail. You will again do well to ask before it is filled at what price the wine is sold. I have carried a half-gallon gourde of this kind over many journeys. It is slung from the shoulders by a strap and is purchasable in all the mountain countries. Bread is purchasable everywhere, and that kind of sausage which the French call by various names, which the Spaniards call 'Salpicon' and the Italians 'Salami' is common to all countries and is with cheese the accompaniment of the meal. Your night meal you must make the principal meal of the day, and if you wish to save money eat it at some place different from the place where you sleep. Thus accoutred you can live indefinitely at a rate of five francs a day and see all that there is to be seen. Always carry upon your person in such countries one good 'piece,' as they call it, for identification, the best of which is a passport issued by the British authorities wherever you are. Be careful to have it visÉd by the consul of the countries where you are to travel. It is the visa that counts more than the passport. For instance, if you are starting from Switzerland get such a document visÉd by the consul in some principal towns of France, Italy and Spain, then you have nothing to fear.

"Remember that telegrams or letters sent to you at one place poste restante do not tie you to going to that place. You have but to send a message to the post office to have them forwarded to another, and it will be done. But you cannot get your letters, still less your registered letters, at a poste restante without some such 'piece' as I mentioned.

"It is a good rule not to carry personal luggage except in the smallest amount in your sack, and to buy things as you need them. It is cheaper in the long run."

Now five francs a day is not quite thirty shillings a week, and for the price of a few days' revel "in town" an enterprising youngster might spend a fortnight walking through almost any beautiful stretch of country in nearer Europe, including his journey there and back to England. However it may have been in the past, it is now possible to travel third class on the Continent in no more discomfort than in England, and indeed in the holiday season third class is apt to be a good deal less crowded than second, on the fast trains in which third-class passengers are carried. They are not carried, of course, in all trains; but where the saving of shillings is an object it is no particular hardship to spend a few hours more on the way, and unless the journey is a very long one the time lost is small and the money saved considerable.

The burden to be carried is a more debatable matter. Mr. Belloc's advice is worth a good deal more than mine, but his early training in arms must have used him to a less fearful regard of discomfort than is possible with most of us. The less you carry the easier your walking will be, and I would never hamper myself with any protection against rain. Unless you can keep your legs as well as your body protected you must occasionally expect to be under the necessity of having something dried before a fire, and while you are about it you may as well go to bed and have everything dried. But I should not care to be without a spare shirt, at least one pair of spare socks, and a pair of light felt slippers, and with other small necessaries for comfort and a reasonable degree of cleanliness this already makes up a fair weight. Let every one choose for himself. My experience is that one very quickly gets used to a moderate pack strapped upon one's shoulders, and hardly notices it, except for a time after one may have taken a day off and walked about carrying nothing.

I took a day off at Fayence. It was Sunday, although I had no idea of it until well on into the morning.

I came down at about half past seven, and found that the three commis voyageurs in whose company I had dined the night before had already finished their breakfast and gone out; but two of them came in again as I was finishing mine, and transacted serious business with some townspeople whom they brought with them. They keep early hours in France.

I walked up to the top of the hill upon which the town is built, and found an old and very solid tower with a clock in its face and a bell in a cage of wrought iron on the top of it. The clock had a date on it—1908—and I took some little trouble to discover whether it could be seen from any part of the town except by climbing up to it as I had done. I found that it could not. Then I made my way to the ChÂteau du Puy.

I approached it along a sort of drive, and stood in a doorway looking down three stories deep into the stone-built husks of enormous rooms, and up into three or four stories more. There was a series of great halls, one above the other, in the main part of the building, and many rooms opening out of them in both wings, which were carried up into imposing towers; and there were lateral extensions besides. The house seemed to have been designed for the accommodation of a regiment rather than one solitary general.

The gardens to the south of it were on a level two stories lower, and the gate to them was locked; but by a little scrambling I reached them. The terraces had been laid out on a grand scale, and gardening had been begun at some date or other. There were overgrown beds of iris getting ready to flower, and in one corner a piÈce d'eau, without which no French garden is complete. A tall palm grew in one corner, and there were fig-trees and bushes of hibiscus. In an extension of the main building there were signs of habitation, and an orange-tree bright with fruit grew in the middle of a chicken-run. Olives and almonds had been planted where the ordered garden should have been, and most of the ground had been made use of.

I had been able to get no information about the building of this great pile; the tradition seemed to have departed. I do not know whether it had been stopped by the death of the owner, or, as seems not improbable, by a lack of money to go on. I imagined him, as I sat and smoked in the deserted garden, as having thought continually of this glorious site in his native country, and coming back to it when his fighting was done to build himself the finest house for many miles around. I think he must have enjoyed himself enormously while it was in the building, but not without some doubts as to the way in which it was to be lived in when it should at last be finished.

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His site must have given him continual pleasure. From his terraced garden the wide fertile plain was spread out before him, in front and on either side. As I saw it, it was all browns and greens, threaded with white roads, and punctuated by dark cypress spires. Miles away it was bounded by pine-clad mountain slopes, beyond which lay the sea. At the back of the house the little town of Tourettes showed its huddle of old roofs and walls a mile away, and behind it the hills rose until snow could be seen on distant summits. From the little side garden with the fish pond, Fayence could be seen on its own hillside, and a range of blue and purple hills beyond it. The sun came out as I sat there, and the shadows of clouds played all over the beautiful scene. It was the true Provence, which gets into the blood of those who are born in it, and makes them think that no country in the world is fairer.

I walked back to the town and went into the church, a large eighteenth century structure of some dignity, with an unornamented tower that looks much older. The curÉ came in as I was looking about me. He was as handsome and dignified as his church, with his white hair and portly presence, and reminded me of Parson Irvine in "Adam Bede." He was inclined to deprecate my admiration of his church. It was large, yes, not particularly fine, he thought. But I was judging by other standards. A church as large as this would hardly have been built in England in the eighteenth century for a thriving town; for one of the size of Fayence the idea of it would have been laughed at.

It would hardly have been built in Fayence a few years later. When I had gone out on to the little place in front of it, where there were busy market stalls under a row of giant planes, and a view past the ChÂteau du Puy to the rich plain and the mountains beyond it, I went back into the church and watched the congregation arrive for Mass. It was not until then that I made it out to be Sunday. One enjoys a blessed disregard of the calendar on such expeditions as mine, walking on from day to day.

Women and children—they filled about a quarter of the seats provided, and these filled hardly more than half the church. There were two old men besides, and one middle-aged one, who came in with his family with an air of importance. The rest of the male population of Fayence was buying and selling outside in the market, or in the shops, or talking together on the terrace steps above the place, or in the cafÉs, or walking up and down the steep streets.

In the late afternoon I walked over to Seillans, and saw the populace of that town enjoying themselves on a fine promenade that they have on the edge of their hill. It is planted with the ubiquitous shady plane, and overlooks the magnificent view to the south.

A good many of the men were playing their game of boule, which needs only a few yards of hard ground, and some wooden balls about the size of a cricket ball, studded closely with nails. They throw a "jack" about fifteen or twenty yards and then follow closely the rules of our game of bowls. But they throw the ball with the back of the hand up, and give it a spin which makes it run on after it has fallen. When all of them do no more than this the game is dull enough, at least to watch, although the inequalities of the ground give it some interest to the players. But the good players will aim at coming right down upon an adversary's ball and punching it away out of danger. They bend down very low with the right leg curiously crooked, and then run forward fast and spin the ball in the air. It looks a most difficult shot, but I saw it brought off many times by these players at Seillans.