Rambles on the Riviera

by M. F. Mansfield

If one happens to be at Istres on the “Jour des Mortes,” in November, he may witness, in the evening, in the cypress-sheltered cemetery, one of the most weird and eerie sights possible to imagine. When Odilon, Abbot of Cluny, established the “Fête des Mortes,” in 998, he little knew the extent to which it would be observed. The “Fête des Mortes” is one thing in the royal crypt at St. Denis and quite another in the small towns and villages up and down the length of France.

It has been commonly thought that Bretagne was the most religious and devout of all the ancient provinces of France, at least that it had become so, whatever may have been its status in the past; but certainly the good folk of Istres are as devout and religious as any community extant, if the wonderfully impressive chanting and illuminating in the graveyard by its old tree-grown chapel count for anything. It is as if the night itself were hung with crêpe, and the hundreds, nay, thousands, of candles set about on the tombs and in the trees heighten the effect of solemnity and sadness to an indescribable degree. In the town the church-bells toll out their doleful knell, and the still air of the night carries the wails and chants of the mourners far out over the barren Crau. It is the same whether it rains or shines, or whether the mistral blows or not. The candles, the mourners, and the little crosses of wheat straws—a symbol of the Resurrection—are as mystical as the rites of the ancients to one who has never seen such a celebration. Decidedly, if one is in these parts on the first day of November, he should come to Istres for the night, or he will have missed an exceedingly interesting chapter from the book of pleasurable travel.

Passing from Istres to the north shore of the Étang, one comes to Miramas.

Miramas is a quaint little longshore town which makes one think of pirates, Saracens, and Moors, all of whom, in days gone by, had a foothold here, if local traditions are to be believed. Miramas and St. Chamas, which is the metropolis of the neighbourhood, though its population only about equals that of Miramas, are twin towns which are quite unlike anything else in these parts in that they are neither progressive nor somnolent, but while away their time in some inexplicable fashion, bathed in the brilliant Mediterranean sunlight reflected from off the surface of the Étang, which stretches at their feet and furnishes the seafood on which the inhabitants mostly live. The chief curiosity of the neighbourhood is the Pont Flavien, which crosses the Touloubre near by, on the “Route d’Aix.” The structure is a monument to Domnius Flavius by his executors Domnius Vena and Attius Rufus. It possesses an elegance and sobriety which many more magnificent works lack, and the classic lines of its superstructure and its great semicircular arch in the twilight carry the observer back to the days of mediævalism.

At St. Chamas one is likely to find his hotel—regardless of which of the two leading establishments he patronizes—most unique in its management, though none the less excellent, enjoyable, and amusing for that. If by chance he reaches the town on a Saturday night and comes upon a grand bal familier in the dining-room, and is himself compelled to eat his dinner at a small table in the office, he must not quarrel, but rest content that he is to be rewarded by a sight which will prove again that it is only the French bourgeois who really and truly knows how to enjoy simple pleasures. Fortnightly, at least, during the winter months this sort of thing takes place, and the young men and maidens, and young mothers and their babies in arms, and old folk, too old indeed to swing partners, form a cordon around the walls to gaze upon the less timid ones who dance with all the abandon of a southern climate until the hour of eleven,—and then to bed. It is all very primitive, the orchestra decidedly so,—a violin and a clarionette, and always a Provençal tambourine, which is not a tambourine at all, but a drum,—but an occasional glimpse of a beautiful Arlesienne will truly repay one for any discomfort to which he may have been put.

St. Chamas is renowned through Provence from the fact that commerce in the olive first came to its great proportions through the perspicuity of one of the local cultivators. It was he who first had the idea of preparing for market the “olive-picholine,” or green briny olive, which figures so universally on dining-tables throughout the world. In some respects they may not equal the “queen olives” of Spain; but the olives of Provence have a delicacy that is far more subtle, and the real enthusiast will become so addicted to eating the olive of Provence on its native heath that it will become an incurable habit, like cigarettes or golf.

From St. Chamas to Berre is scarce a dozen kilometres, but, to the traveller from the north, the journey will be full of marvels and surprises. The panorama which unfolds itself at every step is of surpassing beauty, though not so very grand or magnificent.

“La Petite Mer” is in full view, the opposite shore lost in the refulgence of a reflected glow, as if it were the open sea itself. All around its rim are the rocky hills, of which the highest, the Tête Noire, rises to perhaps fifteen hundred feet.

Everywhere there are goats, and many of them great long-haired beasts, the females of which give an unusually abundant supply of milk. For a long period, on the shores of the Étang de Berre, there were no cows, and the inhabitants depended for their milk-supply solely upon the goat, which the French properly enough call “la vache du pauvre.” Like the love of the olive, that for goat’s milk is an acquired taste.

The first apparition of the city of Berre is charming, and, like Martigues, it is a sort of a cross between Venice and Amsterdam. Its streets, like its canals and basins, are narrow and winding, though for the most part it stretches itself out along one slim thoroughfare. Its aspect, apparently, has not changed in thirty years, when Taine wrote his impressions of “ces rues d’une étroitesse étonnante.” He made a further comment which does not hold true to-day. He said that there was an infectious odour of concentrated humanity, with the dust and mud of centuries still over all. From the very paradox of the description it is not difficult to infer that he nodded, and assuredly Berre is not to-day, if it ever was, sale, comme si depuis le commencement des siècles.