The much-vaunted Riviera seemed to this young Picarde at first extremely dull. In her Voyage autour du Grand Pin, a book published in 1863, she writes: “I loathe travelling. I love the things I know, old books, old friends, familiar landscapes, familiar melodies, familiar enthusiasms.... I feel much worse at Cannes than I did at Paris, and I can’t forgive the people who are for ever praising Provence.... What has happened to the sun? I have been asking. I am told that it will soon come out. I wait. If you have heard any news of Phœbus do be kind enough to send me a telegram. I fear that some accident may have befallen him. Perhaps a seal may have devoured him over there at the back of the sea, where he is said to set in this country.”
But it was as she had been told, she had not long to wait, Phœbus Apollo soon rose radiant from the sea; and with the glorious sun of Provence returned Juliette’s health and spirits.
Introductions from the north speedily surrounded her with interesting acquaintances: her physician, Dr. Maure, the friend of Thiers; Dr. Maure’s friends, Prosper Mérimée and Victor Cousin; Jean Reynaud, an eminent Saint-Simonian, but not of Enfantin’s group. At Jean Reynaud’s villa, la Bocca, she met Lord Brougham. Mme. Reynaud, one of Chopin’s most accomplished pupils, entranced Juliette by her rendering of Beethoven. Jean Reynaud took her long rambles. In one of these he related how he had come to leave Enfantin, having found his views on sexual morality quite impossible.
Next winter, when Juliette returned to Cannes, her little Alice, now seven and a half, came with her and joined in these rambles at her mother’s side. Jean Reynaud was amused by Juliette’s respect for her daughter’s personality. For Mme. Lamessine, mindful of the suffering endured in her own childhood through the proselytising ardour of her grandmother and father, was careful not to impose on Alice any of her own ideas. With regard to fundamental things Juliette would say to the child: “Grandfather thinks so and so, my view is such and such. You must form your own opinion.”
The first time Jean Reynaud heard this kind of conversation he burst out laughing, and was about to repeat the phrase in jest, when Juliette stopped him with a look, and sending her little girl away to pick some flowers, said: “Joke with me as much as you like, but not before her. Remember she has only me to respect.”
So charmed was the young author with her life at Cannes, so beneficial for her own health and her daughter’s did she find the climate of Provence, that, before the end of her second winter there, she had persuaded her father to buy a building site on the Golfe Juan; and before her return to the north in the spring of 1862, the walls of her villa of Bruyères were already rising.
Dr. and Mme. Lambert were thinking of selling their house at Chauny, in order to spend the summer months with their daughter in a Paris flat and their winters on the shore of the Mediterranean.
The winter of 1862-3 found Juliette and Alice installed in their villa of Bruyères. Mme. de Pierreclos was their first visitor. Dr. Maure called frequently, always bringing with him his last letter from his friend Thiers, which he was proud to read to his friends at Bruyères. But, alas! he by whose advice Juliette had settled on the Golfe Juan, Jean Reynaud, her “third father,” as she called him, was no more. He had died in Paris, during the summer, after a surgical operation. His loss left his adopted daughter disconsolate. Her book Mon Voyage autour du Grand Pin she dedicated to his memory; for every one of its pages, she writes, had been inspired by their walks and talks at Cannes.
Dr. Lambert, when he came to Bruyères, was as charmed as his daughter and granddaughter with the villa and its surroundings. He was delighted with the garden which Juliette had planned. But, above all, he was enraptured by the Mediterranean, which he saw for the first time, and by the view of the island of Corsica in the distance.
Gazing upon this lovely prospect, the fervent classicist cried: “Ah! this is Greece. And to think that I could ever have imagined that I understood Homer and all he described! Why, I must read him again, in the light of this new experience. And I will begin this very day. Juliette, have you our old Homer here? If not, I must go and buy a copy at Cannes, at Nice, or even in Corsica, if need be.”