New Rochelle

“ The full pleasure is to approach by stages and gradations; to observe the successive shades of difference by which it ceases to be the north. These shades are exceedingly fine, but your true south-lover has an eye for them all. If he perceive them at New York and Philadelphia, - we imagine him boldly as liberated from Boston, - how could he fail to perceive them at La Rochelle? The streets of this dear little city are lined with arcades, - good, big, straddling arcades of stone, such as befit a land of hot summers, and which recalled to me, not to go further, the dusky portions of Bayonne. ”

“ The commercial greatness of the City of New York dates from the opening of the Erie Canal in [Pg 106] 1825, which made New York the outlet of the lake States. Meanwhile, however, several other foreign invasions had taken place.
The French Huguenots, racially Nordic and almost identical with the British, began to arrive in Colonial New York after 1685, founding the town of New Rochelle to commemorate the French city from which so many of them had come. Here, as elsewhere, their influence was far in excess of their proportionately small number. ”

“ The interior is absolutely new and extremely sumptuous, abounding in tapestries, upholstery, morocco, velvet, satin. This is especially the case with a really beautiful grande salle, where, surrdunded with the most expensive upholstery, the mayor holds his official receptions. (So at least, said my worthy portress.) The mayors of La Rochelle appear to have changed a good deal since the days of the grim Guiton; but these evidences of municipal splendor are interesting for the light they throw on French manners. ”

“ If the French were not known to be good soldiers, one would think this laxity of discipline little likely to make them so; but they are, like French servants, good enough in their way, though careless in the extreme, and too tenacious to be spoken to.
La Rochelle is a more remarkable town, from the characteristic features it exhibits, than any we had met with since we set out on our tour. Although there is a great deal new in the streets and outskirts, yet much that originally existed remains. For instance, almost the whole centre of the town is built in the same manner: namely, in arcades. ”

“ Still La Rochelle hesitated to espouse the Protestant side. It was not until midwinter, [492] that Condé, re [Pg 228] turning from Lorraine, commissioned M. de Sainte-Hermine to assume command of the city in his name; and on the tenth of February, 1568, the mayor and échevins of La Rochelle opened their gates to their new friends, with protestations of their purpose to devote their lives and property to the advancement of the common cause. "The sequel proved only too clearly," writes a Roman Catholic historian, "that they were very sincere in their promises ”

“ The Rochellese, for defensive strength, had but 22 companies of refugees or inhabitants, making in all 3,100 men. The siege lasted from the 26th of February to the 13th of June, 1573; six assaults were made on the place. ... La Rochelle was saved. Charles IX. was more and more desirous of peace; his brother, the Duke of Anjou, had just been elected King of Poland; Charles IX. was anxious for him to leave France and go to take possession of his new kingdom. Thanks to these complications, the peace of La Rochelle was signed on the 6th of July, 1573. ”

“ La Rochelle is a quiet little town at the bottom of a small bay, the mouth of which is almost closed up by two islands. There is a sleepy, peaceful air about the place—a sort of drowsy languor pervades everything and everybody about it, that tells of a town whose days of busy prosperity have long since passed by, and which is dragging out life, like some retired tradesman—too poor for splendour, but rich enough to be idle. ”

“ The departure of the English left Richelieu face to face with La Rochelle, “like a lion with his prey.” But the Cardinal was well aware that it was a prey which could not be secured without a long and terrible struggle. With its strong walls, covered on two sides by marshes and on a third by the harbour, and its brave and hardy population, largely composed of seafaring men inured to perils and hardships, La Rochelle was one of the most difficult places to subdue which it was possible to imagine. ”

“ I followed this walk for some time, under the stunted trees, beside the grass-covered bastions; it is very charming, winding and wandering, always with trees. Beneath the rampart is a tidal river, and on the other side, for a long distance, the mossy walls of the immense garden of a seminary. Three hundred years ago, La Rochelle was the great French stronghold of Protestantism ”

“ The scenes which took place at these periods have made this interesting town classic ground: there is not a wall, a tower, or a street, which has not some tale of heroism attached to it, and some noble trait may be recounted as having occurred in every quarter. [7]
There are no interesting churches in La Rochelle, the wars of religion having destroyed all the antique buildings of worship, both Catholic and Protestant. Nothing now remains of the extensive possessions of the Templars, or the Knights of Malta, who both had commanderies here. ”

“ The city of La Rochelle, said to have become a walled place about 1126, had received many tokens of favor at the hands of its successive masters before the accession of Queen Alienor, or Éléonore, last Duchess of Aquitaine. It was by a charter of this princess, in 1199, that the municipality, or "commune," was established. (Arcère, Hist. de la Rochelle, ii., Preuves, 660, 661.) The terms of the charter are vague; but, as subsequently constituted, the "commune" consisted of one hundred prominent citizens, designated as "pairs," or peers, in whom all power was vested. ”

“ CHAPTER XII.
rochefort—the curious bonne—americanisms—convicts—the charente—"tulipes"—taillebourg—henry the third—st. louis—false security—romegoux—puytaillé.
Our good fortune in respect to the weather, which we so much enjoyed at La Rochelle, seemed to have taken leave of us when we quitted that charming town and took our way southward. It rained in torrents when we got into the diligence for Rochefort, and continued to do so throughout our journey. The country is very flat for several leagues, and possesses no remarkable beauties ”

“ The season, we understood, had been particularly brilliant this year, and was scarcely yet over; though the ball-room and reading-rooms were less crowded than a few weeks before, when we were told that all that was gay and splendid in France [179] et l'Etranger was to be seen beneath the striped canopies of the sea-baths of La Rochelle. Certainly a more enjoyable place cannot be found anywhere; and I was not surprised that anything so rare and really comfortable and agreeable should meet with success. ”

“ The spirit of going through with what you undertake and not being stopped by a little mud that we first met with in Rochelle is here much intensified. In Illinois they prided themselves on surmounting obstacles; out here they are so imbued with the attitude of the men who live out on the plains and through the mountains—the pioneers whose adventures the most frivolous social leader knows by heart—that they don’t even recognize an obstacle when they see it. ”

“ La Rochelle and its Hôtel du Commerce are too good to be treated lightly or abruptly by any writer; but, for fear they may both become spoiled, no more shall be said here except to reiterate that they are both unapproachable in quaintness, comfort, and charm by anything yet found by the writer in four years of almost constant wanderings by road and rail up and down France.
Offshore four kilometres is the Ile de Ré, an isle thirty kilometres long, where the inhabitants wear the picturesque coiffe and costume which have not become contaminated with Paris fashions. ”

“ The walls or ramparts are planted with shade trees, which have attained an immense size, and form beautiful promenades.
The head-gear of the peasant women is the most peculiar in France. They wear plain white or embroidered caps upon a form suited to the head, rising eighteen inches in height, the top extended like a fan; the elderly women are more moderate in their patterns, but the young girls seem to rival each other in the quantity and quality of the floating material. The next town en route is La Rochelle, in striking contrast to Rochefort for cleanliness and beauty. ”

“ Aside from this and the record of the fact that it became, in the fourteenth century, the seat of a bishop's throne,—with Geoffroy I. as its first occupant,—it must be dismissed without further comment.
III
ST. LOUIS DE LA ROCHELLE
The city of La Rochelle will have more interest for the lover of history than for the lover of churches.
Its past has been lurid, and the momentous question of the future rights of the Protestants of France made this natural stronghold the battle-ground where the most stubborn resistance against Church and State was made. ”

“ Rochefort, Comte de, commonly known as Henri Rochefort, French journalist and violent revolutionary, who was deported for his share in the Commune in 1871, but escaped and was amnestied, and went back to Paris under eclipse; b. 1830.
Rochelle, La (23) , a fortified seaport of France, on an inlet of the Bay of Biscay, 95 m. NW. of Bordeaux; capital of the department of Charente-Inférieure; has a commodious harbour, noteworthy public buildings, a fine promenade and gardens; shipbuilding, glass-works, sugar-refineries, &c., are among its chief industries. ”

“ The population of La Rochelle, swelled by the zealous Huguenots of the surrounding country, numbered at least thirty thousand souls—a race of fierce and intrepid corsairs, hardened to fatigue and danger, accustomed, for sixty years past, to live with restless vigilance in the perpetual state of siege which they had imposed on themselves in order to preserve their stormy liberties. ”

“ The resident of the town will lead you over into its Third ward—a compact community almost within stone-throw of the Four Corners, and shut off from the rest of the vulgar world by a river, a canal and a railroad yard. In that compact community, its tree-lined streets suggesting the byways of some tranquil New England community, is the seat of Rochester social government. The residents of the Third ward are a neighborly folk, borrowing things of one another and visiting about with delightful informality among themselves, and yet their rule is undisputed. ”

“ La Rochelle is, however, infinitely less dull than the generality of French towns; and the quays and shipping, and the constantly-changing sea, prevent it from wearing the sad aspect which distinguishes France in her country places. Notwithstanding all that travellers are in the habit of saying about the liveliness of France, I never can cease to think that it is a dull country; for, except Paris in its season, there is no movement, no activity, no bustle, in its towns, save, now and then, the confusion of market-days. ”

“ To say that I found any traces of the siege would be to misrepresent the taste for vivid whitewash by which La Rochelle is distinguished to-day. The only trace is the dent in the marble top of the table on which, in the hôtel de ville, Jean Guiton, the mayor of the city, brought down his dagger with an oath when in 1628 the vessels and regiments of Richelieu closed about it on sea and land. This terrible functionary was the soul of the resistance ”

“ It is certainly a queer city, La Rochelle, with strong characteristics of its own streets tangled like a labyrinth, sidewalks running under endless arcaded galleries like those of the Rue de Rivoli, but low, mysterious, built as if to form a suitable setting for conspirators and making a striking background for those old-time wars, the savage heroic wars of religion. It is indeed the typical old Huguenot city, conservative, discreet, with no fine art to show, with no wonderful monuments, such as make Rouen ”

“ In my dream, this city looks very much like the ones — in all my dreams, the city looks very much like the one I grew up in — Rochester, New York — a city that doesn't matter any more than any other city, just as I matter no more than any other person. ”

“ The City Hall of La Rochelle, an edifice that was almost wholly re-built nearly a century ago, in the year 1486, is one of the most beautiful monuments that patriotism and the love for one's city can boast. ”

“ At the time when the beautiful and wealthy, the admired and accomplished, heiress of Aquitaine, presided over her courts of Love, now in one city of her extensive dominions, now in another, delighting and astonishing the whole troubadour world with her liberality, her taste, her learning, grace, and gaiety, lived, in the city of La Rochelle, a rich merchant, named Alexander Auffrédy, young, handsome, esteemed and envied. ”

“ The one thing to criticize is the backwardness of the lives of the good folk of the isle and their enormous pieds plats.
Northward from La Rochelle is a region, almost within sight of the Ile de Ré, where the women wear the most highly theatrical costumes to be seen anywhere in modern France, not even excepting the peasants of Brittany. ”

“ La Rochelle is the seat of a bishopric and a prefect, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce and a branch of the Bank of France; its educational establishments include an ecclesiastical seminary, a lycée and a training college for girls. Ship-building, saw-milling and the manufacture of briquettes and chemicals, sardine and tunny-preserving and petroleum-refining are among the industries. ”