Marseille

“ Almost at one’s elbow is Marseilles itself, brilliant and burning with the feverish energies of a great mart of trade, and bathed in the dark blue of the Mediterranean and the lighter blue of the skies. Beyond are the isles of the bay and the rocky promontories to the eastward, while to the northeast are the heights of the Var and the Alpes-Maritimes. ”

“ The shipowner, smiling, followed him with his eyes until he saw him spring out on the quay and disappear in the midst of the throng, which from five o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock at night, swarms in the famous street of La Canebiere, - a street of which the modern Phocaeans are so proud that they say with all the gravity in the world, and with that accent which gives so much character to what is said, "If Paris had La Canebiere, Paris would be a second Marseilles." ”

“ Narbon, Tholoze par Bourdeaux outragée,
Tuez, Captifs presque d’un Milion. English.
Marseille shall wholly change her Inhabitants
These shall run and be pursued as far as Lion,
Narbon, Tholoze shall wrong Bourdeaux,
There shall be killed and taken prisoner almost a Milion. ANNOT. Marseilles is a Sea-Town in Provence, Narbon, and Tholoze are Cities of Languedoc, and Bourdeaux is the chief Town in Gascony, the rest is easie to be understood.
LXXIII.
French. ”

“ As we approached Marseilles, the road began to be covered with holiday people. Outside the public-houses were parties smoking, drinking, playing draughts and cards, and (once) dancing. But dust, dust, dust, everywhere. We went on, thorough a long, straggling, dirty suburb, thronged with people; having on our left a dreary slope of land, on which the country-houses of the Marseilles merchants, always staring white, are jumbled and heaped without the slightest order: backs, fronts, sides, and gables towards all points of the compass; until, at last, we entered the town. ”

“ We had a most delicious journey to Marseilles, through a country sweetly declining to the south and Mediterranean coasts, full of vineyards and olive-yards, orange trees, myrtles, pomegranates, and the like sweet plantations, to which belong pleasantly-situated villas to the number of above 1,500, built all of freestone, and in prospect showing as if they were so many heaps of snow dropped out of the clouds among those perennial greens. ”

“ Pines and boursailles and rocky hillocks, set out here and there with olive-trees, form the immediate foreground, while that distant horizon of blue, which is everywhere along the Mediterranean, forms a background which is softer and more sympathetic than that of any other known body of water, salt or fresh, great or small.
At the base of the first foot-hills of the Estaque lies Marseilles, a city enormously alive with industry and all the cosmopolitan life of one of the most important—if not the greatest—of all world-ports. ”

“ Notwithstanding modern rivals in the Mediterranean, Marseilles is to-day one of the largest and most prosperous of French cities. Built in amphitheatre around the bay, it is beautiful in general view, its streets bustle with commercial activity, and its vast docks swarm with workmen. The storms of the past have gone over Marseilles as the storms of nature over its sea, have been as passionate, and have left as little trace. ”

“ Marseilles is a very interesting and entertaining town, with its bold surrounding heights, its wide streets,—so they seemed to us after the Roman alleys,—its squares, shady with trees, its diversified population of sailors, citizens, Orientals, and what not; but I have no spirit for description any longer; being tired of seeing things, and still more of telling myself about them. Only a young traveller can have patience to write his travels. ”

“ I had no time to view the antiquities of the ancient city of Arles, so was fain to satisfy myself with a sufficiently lucid description of them, to be found in Murray’s hand-book. We had a delightful steam to Marseilles, though the change from the sweetness of the sea-breeze and blue water, to the stinks and exhalations of its closed harbour, was any thing but refreshing. From its very narrow outlet, the port of Marseilles is perhaps as bad in this respect as any in the Mediterranean. ”

“ Marseilles, visiting the Exchange, the Palais de Justice, the ancient and modern port with its thousands of ships,—28,000 entering it per year—ascended the lofty mount, with garden walls on its sides, to the Notre Dame church which surmounts it—a small church of the sailors hung with innumerable characteristic mementoes of their escapes from shipwreck, through the intercession of their Mother-protector! The view of the city and surrounding country, all dotted with villas, is magnificent. ”

“ Let us hope that the authorities of Toulon were equally on the alert. Marseilles no more resembles Lyons, Bordeaux, Nantes, than those cities resemble each other. Less elegant than Lyons, less majestic than Bordeaux, gayer by far than Nantes, the capital of Southern France has a stamp of its own. Today, as three thousand years ago, Marseilles may be called the threshold of the East. In these hot, bustling, noisy streets, Paris is quiet by comparison; London a Trappist monastery! Orientals, or what our French neighbours call exotics, are so common that no one looks at them. ”

“ Marseilles struck us as being the handsomest and the cleanest town we had yet seen in France. All the houses are spacious and lofty, built of white stone, and in good condition, while every portion of the city is well paved, either after the English fashion, or with brick, quite even, and inserted in a very tasteful manner. Many of the streets are extremely wide, and some are adorned with handsome fountains. The shops are very elegant, and much more decorated than those of any other place in France ”

“ All the Mediterranean nations are represented in Marseilles. Three-quarters of the world send their people here. Europe, Asia, Africa. In the streets the Syrian jostles the Spaniard; the Italian the Arab; the Moor jokes with the Jew; the Greek chaffers with the Algerine; the Turk scowls at the Corsican; the Russian from Odessa pokes the Maltese in the ribs. There is no want of variety here. Human nature is seen under a thousand aspects. Marseilles is the most cosmopolitan of cities, and represents not only many races but many ages. ”

“ MARSEILLES, LYONS, AND AIX IN SAVOY If the people of Marseilles do not love the Emperor of the French, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. He has so completely changed the aspect of that city by his improvements, that the man who knows it as it existed in the reign of Louis Philippe, would be lost if he were to revisit it now. The completion of the railway from Paris to Marseilles is an inestimable advantage to the latter city, while the new port, in magnitude and style of execution, is worthy of comparison with the splendid docks of London and Liverpool. ”

“ Marseilles repeatedly suffered from the plague, notably from May 1720 to May 1721.
During the Revolution the people rose against the aristocracy, who up to that time had governed the commune. In the Terror they rebelled against the Convention, but were promptly subdued by General Carteaux. The wars of the empire, by dealing a blow to their maritime commerce, excited the hatred of the inhabitants against Napoleon, and they hailed the return of the Bourbons and the defeat of Waterloo. ”

“ From Arles we journeyed to Marseilles, to see how the first cosmopolitan town in the world fared in war-time. Here was an amazing spectacle of swarming life. If France has reason to feel the war most of all the great countries, Marseilles must surely feel it less than any other great town; she flourishes in a perfect riot of movement and colour. Here all the tribes are met, save those of Central Europe—Frenchman, Serb, Spaniard, Algerian, Greek, Arab, Khabyle, Russian, Indian, Italian, Englishman, Scotsman, Jew, and Nubian rub shoulders in the thronged streets. ”

“ I go to-morrow to Fréjus, and from there to the islands of Lérins, where I may find, perhaps, the remains of the first Christian church of the West. I am more than half inclined to believe I shall find nothing at all. But one must follow one’s profession conscientiously, and examine everything of historical significance.
It is impossible to find anything dirtier and prettier than Marseilles. Dirty and pretty applies equally to the women of Marseilles. They all have expressive faces, lovely black eyes, beautiful teeth, tiny feet, and imperceptible ankles. ”

“ There are a great number of public places in Marseilles, several of which are adorned with statues or fountains, or triumphal arches or columns, and set out with trees, and otherwise furnished as a kind of drawing-rooms, where the populace may meet together and gossip. I never before heard from human lips anything like this bustle and babble, this thousand-fold talk which you hear all round about you in the crowd of a public square ”

“ The mould of the race is one for heroes, but if all that is said of them be true, the blood has become impure. Of the two or three hundred I must have seen at Marseilles, I scarce remember one whose countenance would not have been thought remarkable.
I have remained six days in Marseilles by the advice of the Sardinian consul, who assured me that so long a residence in the south of France, is necessary to escape quarantine for the cholera, at the ports or on the frontiers of Italy. ”

“ Not only does the Cannebière captivate the stranger, but each of the various quartiers does the same, until one realizes that the life of Marseilles unrolls itself as does no other in provincial France. The arts, science, industry, commerce, and the shipping all have their separate and distinct quarters, where the life of their own affairs is ceaseless and brings a content which only comes from industry. Twenty-five centuries have rolled by since the foundations of the present prosperity of Marseilles were laid, and nowhere has the star of progress burned more brilliantly. ”

“ On their little feet they wear cinnamon stockings, of the colour of Marseilles mud, coarse in quality, and darned with twenty different shades of cotton. Their gowns are badly made, and are always shabby and soiled. Their beautiful black hair owes its glossiness almost entirely to the use of candle tallow. Add to this an atmosphere of garlic mixed with the fumes of rancid oil, and you have a picture of the Marseilles beauty. What a pity it is that in this world nothing should be perfect! Ah, well, they are charming, the Marseilles women, in spite of it all. ”

“ Marseilles, as you know, is situate on the coast of Provence, a city ancient and most famous, and in old time the seat of many more rich men and great merchants than are to be seen there to-day, among whom was one Narnald Cluada by name, a man of the lowest origin, but a merchant of unsullied probity and integrity, and boundless wealth in lands and goods and money, who had by his lady several children, three of them being daughters, older, each of them, than the other children, who were sons. ”

“ The southern suburb was governed by the abbot of St Victor, and owned the Port des Catalans. Situated between the two, the lower town, the republic, retained the old harbour, and was the most powerful of the three divisions. The period of the crusades brought prosperity to Marseilles, though throughout the middle ages it suffered from the competition of Pisa, Genoa and Venice. In 1245 and 1256 Charles of Anjou, count of Provence, whose predecessors had left the citizens a large measure of independence, established his authority above that of the republic. ”

“ Beyond Salon the road becomes interestingly accidentée. One climbs among the mountains which fold Marseilles in their encircling arms, and has spacious views over the great Etang de Berre to the glittering Mediterranean. The Napier crested the hills without faltering, and from the top we had a long run down (over bad pavé at the last) into the lively, noisy streets of gay Marseilles, Payne guiding the car very decently over intricate tram lines, finally turning across the pavement to circle into the white, airy court of a large hotel. ”

“ His account of their discoveries in the low life of a seaport town would have made a charming book, and in the various characters that came their way the student might easily have found matter for a very complete dictionary of rogues. But I must content myself with a few paragraphs. I received the impression of a life intense and brutal, savage, multicoloured, and vivacious. It made the Marseilles that I knew, gesticulating and sunny, with its comfortable hotels and its restaurants crowded with the well-to-do, tame and commonplace. ”

“ At Marseilles we find a quasi tropical aspect—long streets, handsome and well-shaded, tempting shops, luxurious hotels, a motley company, and, above all, a friend, one of our own countrymen, divided between the glitter of the new life and the homesick weaning of the old. Half, he assumes the cicerone, and guides our ignorance about. Half, he sits to learn, and we expound to him what has befallen at home, so far as we are conscious of it. We take half a day for resting, the next day for sight-seeing. ”

“ Marseilles is on the sea-coast, on a pleasant rising ground, well walled, with an excellent port for ships and galleys, secured by a huge chain of iron drawn across the harbor at pleasure; and there is a well-fortified tower with three other forts, especially that built on a rock; but the castle commanding the city is that of Notre Dame de la Garde. In the chapel hung up are divers crocodiles' skins. ”