J. Hawksworth, Sculp.
OUTSIDE ELEVATION.
INSIDE ELEVATION.
PLAN.
THEATRE AT ORANGE.
London. Published by J & A Arch. Cornhill. March 1st. 1828.
The inside has been ornamented with columns and entablatures of white marble, of which very few vestiges remain. The whole back wall of the stage is clearly shown. It has one large doorway, corresponding with the central opening on the outside, and a very small one on each side of the larger, and no other opening; but there are two very whimsical recesses, of which the drawing will give you a better idea than any description; above, is a large niche in the centre, and on the sides, and on the return are recesses, supposed to have received mosaics, but I think, without sufficient reason. These return walls have no openings at any height. There are, in the back wall, some grooves issuing immediately above the second cornice, and below there are irregular recesses, which one may suppose made to receive beams, either of wood or stone, and it has thence been concluded that there was a roof over the stage. It is however, difficult to imagine a roof extending above 200 feet, and having a projection of 38 feet without any supports in front. The Sedili are very much injured, and greatly incumbered with houses, which were to have been removed had the reign of Napoleon continued.
They pretend at Orange to show the remains of a circus, and to point out the site of an amphitheatre, but the vestiges are somewhat obscure. The inhabitants must have been much devoted to amusements. No remains of any temple are visible, and hardly any fragments are scattered about, which could have belonged to other public buildings. We find, indeed, two or three pieces of mosaic pavement, but much inferior in number, size, and beauty, to those at Vienne.
I shall leave my Gothic till another opportunity, when I hope to be able to give you some idea of a very peculiar style of early architecture which prevailed in this country. After the rainy weather at Orange we had some very fine days. The wet gave me cold, and during the fine weather I made myself ill by exposing myself too much to the sun, while making my notes upon the theatre. By way of relaxation, I determined to go and see the great fair at Beaucaire, but on examining some voitures, which were proceeding in that direction, I found them so small that I could not sit upright. What a misfortune to be tall in a country where every body else is short! My head was too dizzy to write or draw, I therefore walked to Avignon, and found the heat much less oppressive when using moderate exercise, than when standing still. The road is shaded in some parts, but others are quite exposed to the sun. The near landscape consists of gentle hills, with meadows and cornlands, mixed with mulberry trees and vineyards, and, in the latter part of the way, with olive grounds. There is, generally, plenty of water, and one or two beautiful clear streams descend from the mountains, to join a little river which enters the Rhone above Avignon. The mulberry is of the white sort; the fruit small, sweet, and mawkish; something in taste like the yew-berry, but without its viscidity. In the back-ground, on the left, are rugged mountains, and one very high one (Mont Ventou), on the top of which was a little patch of snow. Avignon makes a fine appearance at a distance, exhibiting a great extent of walls and towers, but intending to return thither and survey it more at leisure, I hastened forward to the fair. I was told that the packet-boat would set off for Beaucaire between five and six in the morning. An old fellow came to call me at twenty minutes before five, but though I was on the quay by five, the barge was gone; I hired a little boat and followed. The Rhone is still beautiful, though a wider valley and lower hills render the scenery less striking than it is higher up. The language here is considerably different from the French, and is designated by the word patois, which seems a general term for all provincial dialects differing considerably from the language of the capital. My boatman told me that the canaille (query, who or where is this canaille) had killed his pèro, his mèra, and his frèro, meaning all the while to speak French, and not his own provincial tongue. In the verbs they usually pronounce all the letters, and mostly omit the pronouns; ‘avez du mao?’ said a little girl to me, when I accidentally had a handkerchief round my hand: and Beaucaire is with them a word of three syllables, all the vowels of the latter part of the word being distinctly pronounced. Even at Lyon, the e mute is often heard as a syllable, and they assure me here that the Parisians speak very bad French, and are hardly intelligible any where but in Paris.
Beaucaire is a small town seated at the foot of a rock, which is crowned by the ruins of an old castle. This is a very picturesque object, both in itself and in its situation. A small plain, shaded with avenues of trees, extends from the town and the rock to the Rhone. The streets seem to contain nothing but shops and warehouses, except a few inns and coffee-houses. Cloths were extended over them to keep out the sun, and as they are very narrow, not much wider than those of Orange, this object is easily accomplished. Square pieces of cloth, with the names and occupations of the traders, are hung upon ropes extended across the streets, but so close together, that in some parts, it is difficult to read any of them. The plain, from the foot of the castle rock to the Rhone, was filled with booths of all sorts and sizes. In one of these I found one of my old travelling companions from Dijon to Lyon, and his shop was so much cooler than my room in the town, under the covering of the streets, that I usually made it my resting place. The bad weather has injured the vines, and this has been extremely unfavourable to the fair, as the people of the country have no means of making purchases. Towards evening the amusements commence, and one of the earliest, which was an amusement to me, though a trade to him, was the exhibition of a quack named Charini. He assured us that he did not exercise his profession from any desire of obtaining money, for he had a clear rental of 25,000 livres, which put him quite above any wish of that sort, but for the love he bore to the good people of France, and the hope of future renown. He makes no profit of his medicines, but merely seeks to repay his expenses; a request, not only reasonable, but absolutely necessary; for he had already distributed in the course of this year, sixty thousand bottles at Montpellier, and ninety thousand at Marseille, each of which cost him thirty sous, and it would consume the fortune of a prince to support such an extended scale of beneficence. He rode about in a sort of sociable, drawn by four horses, with his preparations disposed before him, and was attended by eight musicians on horseback, a degree of style which I think you can hardly boast of in England.