Wintering at Mentone

by William Chambers

From the configuration of the coast, Hyères, Cannes, and Nice lie farther south than Mentone, but that advantage is more than counterbalanced by the superior shelter from cold winds enjoyed by Mentone; for, as has been observed, a full exposure to the south, along with shelter on the north, is worth several degrees of latitude. After all, Mentone can modestly boast of being situated in latitude 43° 45´ N., or upwards of twelve degrees south of Edinburgh. It may be deemed a conclusive proof of Dr Bennet’s appreciation of Mentone, when we know that among all the Mediterranean health-resorts he has chosen it for his habitual winter residence; and that, after ten years, he has to outward appearance overcome the malady which drove him abruptly to this species of exile. My own experiences, poor in comparison, point to Mentone as a place, all things considered, where any one not encumbered with expectations as to social intercourse, and not fastidious on a few points which will be particularised, may advantageously pass the more dreary months of winter. It is, however, not what this or that one says of a place, but the unerring testimony of Nature, as demonstrated in the contour and vegetation of the district, which decides its character. So far, as will be shewn, Mentone is highly favoured, and Art, under considerate direction, is alone needed to complete its recommendations. Unfortunately, the journey thither will to many be a serious objection as regards not only distance but expense. The easiest way it can be performed may prove too fatiguing for some invalids, but taken leisurely, there is nothing in it to deter persons who are able to bear railway travelling.

There were times, not long ago, when travelling through France was tedious and painful. Those were the days of diligences and passports, and many other things that were very disagreeable. In the present day, such has been the material and social progress of the country, that travellers will find matters not greatly different from what prevails in England. There are railways in all directions; the hotels are frequently on a scale of great splendour; at very nearly the whole of them on the main routes English is spoken; and everywhere visitors are treated with marked civility. We all know what Paris has latterly become--the finest town in the world, an attraction to strangers from all parts of the earth. So lately as twelve years since, the railway from Paris was not pushed beyond Marseilles. There it long remained, and to those who wanted to get on farther, there was no help for it but to take the diligence, or hire a carriage specially for the purpose. I can remember hiring a voiture with a pair of horses to go on to Nice, and of being nearly three days on the journey, including stoppages of two nights, one of those nights being spent at Frejus, in one of the worst and dearest hotels I ever set foot in. Now all this is changed; there is a railway from Marseilles by way of Toulon, Cannes, Nice, and Monaco to Mentone—the trains going several times night and day to suit the convenience of travellers. There are likewise telegraphic wires the whole way, by which messages can be sent in advance to bespeak accommodation at hotels along the line of route.

In making their way southwards, there are many who drive on hurriedly, never stopping night or day, as if under a vow to get to their journey’s end in the least possible time. My plan is to stop a night, or, it may be, two nights and a day, here and there, for which there are several good opportunities—as, for example, at Paris, Dijon, Lyons, Avignon, Marseilles, and Nice. The only drawback on these stoppages is the annoyance experienced at the stations as concerns luggage. After getting your ticket, you have to see your luggage weighed, paying for the same a small sum; and then on arrival at your destination, some time has to be spent in a cold salle until the whole of the luggage has been arranged, and you can claim your own. The way to avoid these wearisome detentions is to get your luggage registered and sent on by the grande vîtesse, or quick goods-train, to your final destination, be it Nice or Mentone, where it can be reclaimed. Sending it by the petite vîtesse is cheaper, but as it may not get to the end of its journey by this slow train for several weeks, the grande vîtesse should by all means be adopted as preferable. Following this plan, a traveller may take along with him into the train a portmanteau or carpet-bag sufficiently small to be accommodated under the seat, also any small bundle to be placed in the rack overhead. The torment of waiting for luggage is, I observe, driving the French into the practice of taking cumbersome articles with them into the trains; and on several occasions I have experienced personal inconvenience from their expedients. Professedly, dogs are not permitted to be taken into the carriages; but the rule on this point is not on all occasions strictly adhered to. Ladies may be seen with favourite lap-dogs, either carrying them openly, or in small baskets, without challenge. For such indulgence, much depends on the complaisance of the guard.

The preferable route from London is by Folkestone and Boulogne, and it will save trouble if tickets are taken at Charing-Cross station direct for Paris, getting luggage ticketed accordingly. The steam-boats between Folkestone and Boulogne, though well managed, are certainly poor in comparison to what they might and ought to be; but there is nothing superior in the Channel service, and all we can do in the meantime is to make the best of them. At the railway terminus at Boulogne there is an excellent restaurant, where travellers have a choice of refreshments, tastefully served, and with a composure which pleasantly contrasts with the hurry and confusion which prevail on the English side of the Channel. Any one, going or coming, who has occasion to stop for a night at Boulogne, may be safely recommended to the Hôtel Christol, a comfortable and well-conducted establishment not far from the railway terminus. On each of my recent trips, I spent two nights in Paris at the Grand Hôtel du Louvre; a night at Lyons in the Hôtel de l’Univers (good, and near the station); and two nights at Marseilles in the Grand Hôtel du Louvre et de la Paix. The reason why I remained more than a single night in Marseilles was to note the extraordinary improvements which have taken place within the last few years. If we except Paris, no city in France has been so much changed for the better as Marseilles. Its new streets and boulevards are a sight worth seeing, and so is its new port of Joliette, constructed at a great cost with much engineering skill. The most surprising novelty, however, is the system of water-supply, effected by bringing the waters of the river Durance a distance of sixty miles by means of tunnels and aqueducts, at an expense of fifty-two millions of francs. One of the aqueducts, that of Roquefavour, measures as much as four hundred mètres in length by eighty-two in height—a gigantic work, creditable to French engineering, which may compare favourably with some of the grandest of recent undertakings in Great Britain.

Quitting England towards the end of October, and pursuing the journey across France to the shores of the Mediterranean, a visible change of climate usually occurs about half-way between Lyons and Marseilles. We leave the cloudy northern skies, and get gradually into the serene sunshine of the south. The sensation of warmth increases during the day, and at night a lustrous planet shines almost like a moon in the star-spangled heavens. The vegetable world assumes new forms. The mulberry-groves remind us of silk-worms and the tasteful industries of Lyons and St Etienne. Approaching Marseilles, tracts are covered with almond-trees, which, on our return journey in spring, are seen to clothe the country with a mantle of delicate purple blossom. Passing onward, the aloe and prickly pear grow by the wayside, and are planted as hedges; and we observe that in the fields the small tufted plant producing the yellow Immortelles (a species of Helichrysum) is cultivated as a branch of husbandry. The railway from Marseilles, though only a single line, has been a costly and remarkable undertaking, for it is carried through numerous tunnels and along heavy embankments near the sea-shore. No doubt, we lose the picturesque scenery of the Estrelles by this modern method of transit; but yet we are afforded glimpses of many beautiful valleys and rocky mounts, garnished with fig and orange trees, these last coming prominently into notice on crossing the Var and getting into the vicinity of Nice. The olive, first seen as a shrub in Provence, now attains to the dimensions of a tree, which, planted profusely on hill-sides, imparts a greenness to the landscape even in winter.

Nice, ‘the Queen of the Mediterranean,’ has suddenly risen into beauty and importance. Facing the south, close on the sea-shore, with a fringe of verdant hills on the north, its situation has raised it to a high rank as a winter health-resort, and its reputation in this respect has been augmented by vigorous efforts, public and private, to render it attractive to strangers. Formerly, visiting the town while it belonged to Italy, there appeared to be a general stagnation. Great endeavours had stopped short, and there was obviously much half-done work. In the hands of the French, a new spirit has been infused into the place. Streets just begun have been completed, and handsome quays with boulevards stretch along both sides of the Paillon, over which several new bridges have been thrown. One of these deserves to be styled something more than a bridge. It is so broad as to afford space for a public garden, in the centre of which is erected a statue of Masséna, a native of whom, as of Garibaldi, the Nizzards are justly proud. Nominally, the Paillon is a torrent, but it usually is little else than a bed of dry gravel; the only water in it being a few puddles, in which numbers of women are seen washing clothes in the ordinary continental style. The Paillon offers a fair specimen of one of those numerous torrents in the Riviera that are flooded only on the occasion of snows melting, or heavy rains falling in the mountains, when, rushing impetuously down, the tumultuous waters bear all before them.

Promenade des Anglais, looking westward; Jardin Public on right.

Looking to its crowds of fashionable loungers, who come to it professedly for health, but seemingly as much for amusement, Nice may be styled the continental Brighton. One thing, as at Brighton, has greatly added to its fascinations. This is the Promenade des Anglais, stretching a mile along the shore, and forming from morning to night the place of concourse for throngs of idlers. The spacious promenade for pedestrians is divided by a row of sub-tropical plants, including specimens of the pepper-tree and date-palm, from a broad drive, where ladies in the fantastic dresses of the period, with a taste for fast living and public exhibition, indulge in driving backwards and forwards with a fury not usual with their sex in our more sober-minded country. To do them justice, they leave the lashing of the ponies to the driver, who sits behind them with a long whip, with which he seems to have much pleasure in inflicting pain on the poor animals. This species of cruelty meets with no reprobation from the onlookers; and from the immunity shewn to the practice, I should infer that in France there is no law repressive of cruelty to animals. I regretted to observe that these fast young ladies were generally English. With its promenades, drives, balls, cercle, Jardin Public, musical band, theatres, shops of various kinds where every luxury may be obtained, and abundance of street carriages, Nice offers a choice of attractions, independently of its fine air and sunshine. Besides the cathedral and numerous other Roman Catholic churches, the town now possesses an English and a Scotch church, both handsome new buildings. At kiosks on the Quai Masséna, several Paris daily newspapers may be purchased. Letters and papers from England are delivered twice a day, Sunday included. For persons studiously inclined, there is a large public Bibliothèque supported by the commune, where books (of course in French literature) may be freely consulted or read by strangers as well as natives. There are likewise two good circulating libraries with English books—that of Visconti a really excellent collection, associated with a capital reading-room. To accommodate the numerous fashionable visitors, as also the more steady order of winter sojourners, there are now divers hotels of huge dimensions, and every succeeding year seems to increase the number. They are for the greater part situated on the quays overlooking the Paillon, also in the Jardin Public, and in the terrace-like line of street along the Promenade des Anglais. The house which after sundry trials I found preferable was the Hôtel d’Angleterre, in the Jardin Public, kept by M. Steinbrück, who speaks English and is married to an Englishwoman; both are most vigilant in attending to the comfort of their guests. All the hotels have omnibuses which wait the arrival and attend the departure of the trains.

Although Nice is now a French town, the humbler classes remain essentially Italian of the old Savoy type. The dresses of the women are picturesque, and their favourite mode of carrying things is to poise them on the top of the head. The peculiar costumes of the district are well represented in the wooden mosaics which form a remarkable local manufacture. I have never returned home from Nice without purchasing specimens of these beautiful mosaïques en bois, at the shop of the brothers Mignon, in the Rue Paradis. On the last occasion, I received an interesting account of how they were prepared. The pictorial effects are, it is said, wholly a result of the varying tints of different kinds of wood grown in the neighbourhood; all being ingeniously shaped and put together without any aid from artificial colouring. As the intrinsic value of the small pieces of wood employed must be insignificant—a pennyworth probably being wrought up in a mosaic which will sell for a couple of napoleons—we have here a striking instance of how national wealth may be increased by exerting artistic ability on materials which are, of themselves, worthless.