The chief of these isles is Porquerolles, and it possesses a village of the same name, which has never yet been marked down as a place of resort. To be sure, no one, unless he were an artist attached to the painting of marines, or an author who thought to get far from the madding throng, would ever come here, anyway. The village is not so bad, though, and it is as if one had entered a new world. There is an inn where one is sure of getting a passable breakfast of fish and eggs; a “Grande Place” which, paradoxically, is not grand at all; and a humble little church which is not bad in its way. Two or three cafés, a bake-shop, and a Bureau des Douanes, of course, complete the business part of the place. Each little maisonette has a terrace overshadowed with vines, and, all in all, it is truly an idyllic little settlement. The isle culminates in a peak five hundred feet or so high, on the top of which is seated a fortification called Fort de la Repentance.
The entire isle, with the exception of that portion occupied by the fort and its batteries, belongs to a M. and Madame de Roussen, who are known to readers of French novels under the names of Pierre Ninous and Paul d’Aigremont. The proprietors have charmingly ensconced themselves in a delightful residence, which, if it does not rise to the dignity of a château, has as magnificent a stage setting as the most theatrical of the châteaux of the Loire; only, in this case, it is a seascape which confronts one, instead of the sweep of the broad blue river of Touraine.
Two hundred and fifty inhabitants live here, but away in the west there was formerly a colony of a thousand or more workmen engaged in the manufacture of soda. For more reasons than one—the principal being that the sulphurous fumes from the works were having an ill effect on the verdure—the establishment was purchased by the present proprietors of the isle.
The village has somewhat of the airs of its bigger brothers and sisters elsewhere in that its streets are lighted at night; the wharves are as animated as those of a great world-town, particularly on the arrival of the boat from Toulon; and the market-women sit about the street corners with their wares picturesquely displayed before them as they do in larger communities.
Truly, Porquerolles is unspoiled as yet, and the marvel is that it has not become an “artist’s sketching-ground” before now. It has many claims in this respect besides its natural beauties and attractions, one, not unappreciated by artists, being that it is not likely to be overrun by tourists. The reason for this is that the Courrier des Iles d’Hyères, as the diminutive steamer which arrives three times a week is called, is subsidized by the ministry for war, and the captain has the right to refuse passage to civilians when his craft is overloaded with travelling soldiers and sailors, whom the French government, presumably from motives of economy, prefers to move in this way from point to point among the various forts along the coast.
The Peninsula of Giens
Four or five other islets make up the group which geographers and map-makers know as the Iles d’Hyères, but which the sentimental Provençaux best like to think of as the Iles d’Or; but their characteristics are quite the same as Porquerolles. There is here a picturesque fort called Alicastre, derived from Castrum Ali, a souvenir, it is said, of a Saracen chief who once entrenched himself here. Local report has it that the Man in the Iron Mask was imprisoned here at one time, but the nearest that history comes to this is to place his imprisonment at Ste. Marguerite and the Château d’If.
From the sea, as one comes by boat from Toulon, the Presqu’ile de Giens looks as though it were an island and had no connection with the land, for the neck connecting it with the mainland is invisible, both from the eastward and the westward, while the rocks of the tip end of the peninsula are abruptly imposing as they rise from the sea-level to a moderate but jagged height.