Wintering at Mentone

by William Chambers

With little in the way of public amusement or general intercourse, Mentone and its neighbourhood offer some subjects of interesting inquiry. If employment does not come readily to hand, it may possibly be evoked by looking about. The medieval old town; the character and habits of the people; excursions on foot or donkey to the mountainous region, with its decayed castles and sun-baked villages perched thousands of feet above the sea-level; the picturesque sea-coast, with its caverns and traditions of Saracenic invasion; the mouldering tokens of Roman sway—all will yield matter for agreeable exploration. Turbia and Monaco should be deliberately seen, if not already visited; and so likewise should Ventimiglia and Bordighera—the latter for the sake of its palm-trees. I am sorry to say there is no handy local guide-book, affording that minute explicitness of detail expected from works of this nature. The native topographers write prettily, and even poetically, of the surrounding district; a guide-book, however, is not bought for fine writing, but, like an almanac, is looked to for plain trustworthy facts. The best of the books of the kind is entitled a Guide des Etrangers à Menton, by M. Pessy; it comprehends a good map, which is at all events indispensable. In the prevailing state of things, the explorer will have to rely greatly on his own powers of investigation, assisted, if it happily may be, by friends well acquainted with this outlying part of the Alpes Maritimes.

The ever present, and often noisy Mediterranean can scarcely fail to suggest historic recollections. Around it were clustered all the great nations of antiquity. It is the sea of the Bible, that on which Paul encountered misadventures. It is the sea which the Crusaders had to cross in their delirious expeditions to the Holy Land. Now, in comparison to the great oceans of modern discovery, it is only a salt-water lake, yet rich in the legends which undyingly hover about it. Physically considered, it is curious. Barred out by the Strait of Gibraltar, the tidal wave of the Atlantic operates but feebly on the Mediterranean. Residents at Mentone recognise little difference in the height to which the water flows on the beach. The sea may be twice a day a few inches higher or lower; but except in the case of winds affecting it somewhere, and causing it to dash high up on the shore, it has a monotonous uniformity of appearance. The beach consists of rounded stones and gravel, not agreeable for being walked on, and on that species of gray shingle the waves are everlastingly surging. Sometimes in the calmest days and nights, its roar is most outrageous and trying to the nerves. Suddenly, when level as a pond, it will assume an angry aspect, with white breakers in the distance. In short, it is very whimsical and incomprehensible in its varying moods; and those who dislike its more placid or its more uproarious proceedings had better live away from its shores. A distance of a hundred yards, with intervening trees or houses, will be enough.

As the sea neither ebbs nor flows to a perceptible degree, rocks on the beach are not periodically uncovered and exposed to the atmosphere, the consequence being that there is scarcely any marine vegetation—no large sea-weed, and no sea-like smell. Along the coast from Nice the beach has a rapid descent to depths ranging from three thousand to five thousand feet. So abrupt is the declivity that, unless at particular spots, bathing is somewhat hazardous. We observed preparations for bathing at Nice, in March; the wheeled machines employed being carefully tethered by a rope to the shore, lest they should dart down headlong into the depths. The occasional appearance of sharks adds another danger of which bathers need to be cautious.

The Mediterranean is said to abound in many species of fish; visitors, however, see little of them. The kinds which appear at table, and that very sparingly, are sardines, red mullet, mackerel, tunny, and whitings. Mentone has a fishing population nestling in the older part of the town, who with all their toil and patience make but a poor livelihood. Proceeding to sea in boats at an early hour of the morning, and keeping within a few miles of the shore, parties of them may be seen from nine to ten o’clock laboriously drawing in their nets to the beach. The produce is very insignificant, often not more fish than will fill a small basket, yielding perhaps three or four francs—sometimes the whole not worth a single franc. Since the railway opened, a few of the shops have begun to procure supplies of fish from distant and more productive quarters, and the selling of fresh oysters brought from the Atlantic coast, if not from the Channel, has in the winter season become a considerable trade. Amateur anglers using fishing-rods of cane try to lure a prey; the Quai Bonaparte, against which the sea is incessantly dashing, being a favourite spot. On no occasion did I ever see one of these anglers draw a fish from the water. The sport seemed to consist of a more than ordinary exercise of hope and patience.

Although hitherto styled a sea-port, Mentone has little pretension to that character. The few small craft that belong to it are, along with the fishing-boats, drawn up high and dry at an open space adjoining the beach. After being in a primitive way delivered of their cargoes—barrels of wine, for instance, being lowered overboard and floated to dry land—the vessels are tugged up the ascent to their resting-place by a windlass, at which men, women, and children lend their assistance. Last winter, the French government commenced to form a harbour with landing quays; the first step taken being to lay down a tramway along the beach for conveyance of blocks of stone from Cap Martin. The tramway was so insufficiently executed that the greater part was washed away by the storm on the night of the 21st of December. It was replaced on a better footing, and the works were begun. Whether they will endure the impetuous battering of the heavy rolling waves may be gravely doubted. The spot selected adjoins the old martello tower, which remains invulnerable on the ledge of rocks in front of that medieval old town of which it was once the protector.

Possessing in some degree a resemblance to the steep and crowded lanes of the older parts of Edinburgh, I made this ancient town a kind of study. Originally walled for defence, it consists, as has been said, of a dense cluster of tall tenements, rising pile above pile from the sea-shore to the summit of one of those low hills which stand out in advance of the higher mountains. From the modern street, forming part of the thoroughfare of the Corniche, we ascend into this strange mass of buildings by steep paved lanes, which turn and wind in different directions, until we reach the top, where, on the site of the ancient castle, is found the cemetery of the town, from which there is an extensive prospect over sea and land.

At the foot of the ascent, wheeled carriages are left behind. The lanes, though dignified with the name of streets, are accessible only to foot-passengers or donkeys. The principal one is the Rue Longue, noticed as having been an ancient thoroughfare, protected at each end by a vaulted gateway and guardhouse. The gates have been long since removed, leaving free access to all who feel any interest in perambulating the narrow passage, now sunk into the character of a back street. Being paved with small rounded stones, with an inclination to a central gutter, and environed with tall antique buildings, you feel pretty much as if walking along the bottom of a drain; but there the resemblance ends, for, to do the inhabitants justice, the road is remarkably clean, which is more than can be said for some of the pretentious thoroughfares. The massive tenements, five or six stories in height, are laid out in separate dwellings, reached by narrow common stairs. In the lower floor were the shops, consisting of dingy vaults with round-topped doorways, some down and others up a step, and a good deal of irregularity throughout. The Quai Bonaparte having drawn away all general traffic, the Rue Longue has, in a business sense, correspondingly declined. You see vaults which had been great shops in their day, sorrowfully shut up, their clumsy old-fashioned doors dreadfully in want of paint, fastened with queer-looking decayed padlocks. As, however, there must still be a demand in the crowded floors above for the essentials of existence, the street is not without some traces of commerce. When grand concerns disappear, hucksters step in to occupy the field, just as when some imposing order of forest trees is swept to destruction, shrubs of various species start beneficently into existence. In the Rue Longue, accordingly, you will not be surprised, but rather on the whole gratified, to see a certain class of dealers—old women selling bread, oranges, and candles, modestly exhibited on a slip of shelf outside the door, with meal and flour in a small way in bags inside the threshold, along with possibly cheap cuts of salt fish in steep to meet demands on Fridays; establishments purporting to be a Débit de Vin; a Boucherie, authorised to sell bœuf, agneau et de veau au 2^me qualité; or a respectable middle-aged spinster retailing a miscellany of tapes and other small wares. Dull and composed even at mid-day, the long Rue has an air of solitude. There is little stirring. The only sound heard is that of a shoemaker, who, seated outside his door for the sake of light, is industriously hammering his leather; besides which spectacle of activity you will have the satisfaction of observing a wrinkled old crone airing herself on the outside step of a doorway, and spinning with the distaff—a picture for your sketch-book, if artistically inclined.

What traditions of historical events and distinguished personages could be told of the Rue and its surroundings! Some of the houses, the backs of which overlook the East Bay, and in old times reached down to the water’s edge, have still a wonderfully aristocratic aspect; and it might be safely affirmed at a venture that they had been the residence of dukes and counts in the stirring bygone times. A mansion of this kind, with tall windows and heavy cornices at the eaves, is pointed out as having been the dwelling of the Princes of Monaco. It is said to have been built by Honore II. in the early part of the seventeenth century. This prince, one of the best of the Grimaldis, rendered himself popular by causing the reconstruction of the church of St Michael, a puissant archangel in whom all classes of the Mentonians have ever in their emergencies placed great confidence; and it is a matter of no little pride to them that the handsome spire of the church under his invocation dominates over every other edifice. It is further said of Honore II. that he erected the martello tower or bastion on the ledge of rocks at the port. This would place the date of that conspicuous structure at about 1620. From appearances, I am inclined to think it is of greater antiquity, and that the prince only caused it to be repaired in the shape in which it has latterly remained.