GRASSE: THE PLACE AUX AIRES.
Of the many other interesting streets of Grasse it is impossible to speak in detail, except to draw attention to the fine Romanesque windows in the Rue Mougins-Roquefort and to those picturesque streets Rue sans Peur and Rue Rêve Vieille which are more curious even than their unusual names.
Most fascinating of all is the Rue de l’Evêché. It is a street of the Middle Ages, little changed and little spoiled. It is a mystery street full of romance and suggestion. It makes one draw one’s breath. It recalls so vividly a score of tales of mediæval days; for it is just that narrow, winding, dim and haunting lane where thrilling things always happened—stabbings in the dark, pursuits with torches and the clang of arms, whisperings of cloaked conspirators, the beckoning hand and the lover with the panting lady in the hood.
The business of Grasse, as is well known, is the making of scent, soap and refined oil. It is an ancient, famous and most prosperous industry. The quantity of flowers consumed in the perfumeries is so vast as to be hard to realise.
Mr. Kaye states, in a quiet way and without concern, that four million pounds of orange blossoms and three million pounds of roses—to name no others—are swept into the iron maw of the factory every year. Weight is a little misleading when it deals with rose leaves and mimosa blossoms so Mr. Kaye explains that, as regards jasmine alone, nine billions six hundred millions of jasmine flowers are picked by hand every year to provide the world with the jasmin perfume.
“The flower harvest,” he writes, “lasts nearly the whole year round. It begins in February with the violet which lasts till April. In March and April also hyacinths and jonquils are plucked. May marks the greatest activity in the harvest of roses and orange flowers, which harvest terminates usually in June. Mignonette and carnations are also gathered in this month. The jasmine is gathered in July, and the harvest lasts generally till October 10th. The tuberose is also picked during August and September.”
As the country for miles around Grasse is given up to the cultivation of flowers it may be assumed that the town lies in a Garden of Eden, dazzling with colour and laden with the perfumes of Araby. But it realises no such vision; since flowers grown for commerce, drilled into unfeeling lines and treated like the turnip of the field, are very different from those grown for pleasure and those that blossom, by their own sweet will, in the wilds. They differ as a crate of violets knocked down to the auctioneer’s hammer at Covent Garden differs from the shy, purple flowers that fringe a scented passage through a wood.
Those who have any regard for flowers should avoid a perfume factory as they would a slaughter-house; for it is not pleasant to see a white company of soft orange blossoms lying dead at the bottom of a pit, sodden and macerated, nor to watch roses being slowly boiled alive, nor jasmine flowers crushed to death upon the rack.
Many hundreds of day-tourists pour through Grasse during the months of the winter. They come by char-à-bancs and motor-brakes. Their stay in the town is very brief, for the “excursion to Grasse” embraces much in its breathless flight. They are deposited at a scent factory by a not disinterested driver, and there they purchase soap with eagerness, as if it were the bread of life. Ninety-nine per cent. of these soap-questing pilgrims do not go beyond the factory which they appear to regard as a sort of shrine, even though its odour is not that of sanctity. To just one out of the hundred the idea may occur that soap of quite fair quality may be obtained in many places—even in Brixton in England—but that in few places can there be found an old French city so full of picturesque memories and possessed of so exquisite a cathedral as Grasse provides. From a hygienic point of view the triumph of soap over sentiment is commendable, but the hygienic attitude of mind is one of rigour and offensive superiority. The one tourist out of the hundred wanders into the ancient town, loses his way, loses his char-à-banc and returns by the tramcar, with his mind full of charming recollections but his pocket empty of soap. While he glories over the romance of mediæval by-ways his fellow-tourists gloat over a wash-hand basin or a pungent handkerchief.