Rambles on the Riviera

by M. F. Mansfield

“Like other dwellers of the southland, Caderousse was a man of sober habits and moderate desires, but fond of external show and display and vain to a degree. During the days of his prosperity, not a fête or a ceremonial took place but that he and his wife were participants. On these occasions he dressed himself in the picturesque costume worn at such times by the dwellers in the south of France, bearing an equal resemblance to the style worn by Catalans and Andalusians.

“His wife displayed the charming fashion prevalent among the women of Arles, a mode of attire borrowed equally from Greece and Arabia, with a glorious combination of chains, necklaces, and scarves.”

The women of the Pays d’Arles have the reputation of being the most beautiful of all the many types of beautiful women in France, and they are faithful, always, to what is known as the costume of the pays, which, it must be understood, is something more than the coiffe which usually marks the distinctive dress of a petit pays.

It is a common error among rhapsodizing tourists who have occasionally stopped at Arles, en route to the pleasures of the Riviera, to suppose that the original Arlesien costume is that seen to-day. As a matter of fact it dates back only about four generations, and it was well on in the forties of the nineteenth century when the ruban-diadème and the Phrygian coiffe came to be the caprice of the day. In this form it has, however, endured throughout all the sixty villages and towns of the pays.

The ruban-diadème, the coiffe, the corsage, the fichu, the jupon, and a chain bearing, usually, a Maltese cross, all combine to set off in a marvellous manner the loveliness of these large-eyed beauties of Provence.

Only after they have reached their thirteenth or fourteenth year do the young girls assume the coiffure,—when they have commenced to see beyond their noses, as the saying goes in French,—when, until old age carries them off, they are always as jauntily dressed as if they were toujours en fête.

There is a romantic glamour about Arles, its arena, its theatre, its marvellously beautiful Church of St. Trophime, and much else that is fascinating to all travelled and much-read persons; and so Arles takes the chief place in the galaxy of old-time Provençal towns, before even Nîmes, Avignon, and Aix-en-Provence.

Everything is in a state of decay at Arles; far more so, at least, than at Nîmes, where the arena is much better preserved, and the “Maison Carrée” is a gem which far exceeds any monument of Arles in its beauty and preservation; or at Orange, where the antique theatre is superb beyond all others, both in its proportions and in its existing state of preservation.

The charm of Arles lies in its former renown and in the reminders, fragmentary though some of them be, of its past glories. In short it is a city so rich in all that goes to make up the attributes of a “ville de l’art célèbre,” that it has a special importance.

Marseilles, among the cities of modern France, has usually been considered the most ancient; but even that existed as a city but six hundred years before the Christian era, whereas Anibert, a “savant Arlésien,” has stated that the founding of Arles dates back to fifteen hundred years before Christ, or nine hundred years before that of Marseilles. In the lack of any convincing evidence one way or another, one can let his sympathies drift where they will, but Arles certainly looks its age more than does Marseilles.