Rambles on the Riviera

by M. F. Mansfield

The town is superbly situated in the form of an amphitheatre between two tiny bays, and the country around is well watered by the torrents which flow down from the highland background.

After having been a pirate stronghold, the town became a part of the Comté of Vintimille, after the expulsion of the Saracens, and later had for its seigneurs a Genoese family by the name of Vento. In the fourteenth century it fell to the Grimaldi, and to this day its aspect, except for the rather banal hotel and villa architecture, has remained more Italian in motive than French.

Menton is not wholly an idling community like Monte Carlo and Monaco. It has a very considerable commerce in lemons, four millions annually of the fruit being sent out of the country. The industry has given rise to a species of labour by women which is a striking characteristic in these parts. Like the women who unload the Palermo and Seville orange boats at Marseilles, the “porteïris” of Menton are most picturesque. They carry their burdens always on the head, and one marvels at the skill with which they carry their loads in most awkward places. The work is hard, of course, but it does not seem to have developed any weaknesses or maladies unknown to other peasant or labouring folk, hence there seems no reason why it should not continue. Certainly the Mentonnaises have a certain grace of carriage and suppleness in their walk which the dames of fashion might well imitate.

The fishing quarter of Menton is one of the most picturesque on the whole Riviera, with its rues-escaliers, its vaulted houses, and the walls and escarpments of the old military fortification coming to light here and there. It is nothing like Martigues, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, really the most picturesque fishing-port in the world, nor is it a whit more interesting than the old Catalan quarter of Marseilles; but it is far more varied, with the life of those who conduct the petty affairs of the sea, than any other of the Mediterranean resorts.

Menton is something like Hyères, a place of villas quite as much as of hotels, though the latter are of that splendid order of things that spell modern comfort, but which are really most undesirable to live in for more than a few days at a time.

Not every one goes to the Riviera to live in a villa, but those who do cannot do better than to hunt one out at Menton. Menton is almost on the frontier of Italy and France, and that has an element of novelty in every-day happenings which would amuse an exceedingly dull person, and, if that were not enough, there is Monte Carlo itself, less than a dozen kilometres away.

When one thinks of it, a villa set on some rocky shelf on a wooded hillside overlooking the Mediterranean, with an orange-garden at the back,—as they all seem to have here at Menton,—is not so bad, and offers many advantages over hotel life, particularly as the cost need be no more. You may hire a villa for anything above a thousand francs a season, and it will be completely furnished. You will get, perhaps, five rooms and a cellar, which you fill with wood and wine to while away the long winter evenings, for they can be chill and drear, even here, from December to March.

Before you is a panorama extending from Cap Martin to Mortala-Bordighera, another palm-set haven on the Italian Riviera, which once was bare of the conventions of fashion, but which has now become as fashionable as Nice.

You can hire a servant to preside over the pots and pans for the absurdly small sum of fifty francs a month, and she will cook, and shop, and fetch and carry all day long, and will keep other robbers from molesting you, if you will only wink at her making a little commission on her marketing.

She will work cheerfully and never grumble if you entertain a flock of unexpected tourist friends who have “just dropped in from the Italian Lakes, Switzerland, or Cairo,” and will dress neatly and picturesquely, and cook fish and chickens in a heavenly fashion.