Saint-Rémy-de-Provence

“ Remy, once the country seat of the Counts of Provence, has no walls of stone, but four-square leafy ramparts of plane-trees. From the door of the Hôtel de Provence one may turn to the right or left and blindly follow the avenues round the little town till one returns to one's starting-point, where probably a brown-eyed youth will still be grinding coffee beside the footpath. There are almost no sounds in St. Remy, for there are no vehicles except the hotel omnibus which trundles to and from the station, marking the lapse of time. ”

“ Remy, a little town of about five thousand inhabitants. This is a typical Provençal village, full of traditions, customs, and leisured existence, like hundreds of others in the Rhone valley, and but for its close proximity to the ancient Roman town of Glanum Livii, few strangers would ever walk its streets. It still retains traces of a former prosperity, and many of the houses in its quaint streets are embellished with fine portals of the Renaissance architecture. ”

“ Provence in the Middle Ages and the days of the troubadours of course is profusely treated. Architecture also fares brilliantly. Besides the splendid classic remains at Arles, Nimes, St. Remy, Orange, there are churches of a style such as can be found in no other part of the world; a version of the Romanesque which is peculiar to the South of France. ”

“ Remy: the Antiquities, sole relic of the prosperous town of Glanum Livii. Nowhere in Provence have we seen so beautiful a setting to monuments so perfect in their small proportions as the Triumphal Arch and the Mausoleum. Time has much ruined, it is true, the decorations of the Arch: the winged Victories are bruised and battered; only the feet of one warrior remain, the head and fighting arm of another; the chains of the slaves have fallen into pieces. But nothing has marred the style, the grace, the purity of the exquisite outline, Greek rather than Roman in its simple elegance. ”

“ From Nîmes to the Mediterranean the impressions are packed too thick. First the Rhone, with the castles of Tarascon and Beaucaire taunting each other across its yellow flood, Beaucaire from a steep cliff, Tarascon from the very brink of the river; then, after a short flight through olive-orchards and vineyards, the pretty leafy town of Saint Remy on the skirts of the Alpilles; and a mile to the south of Saint Remy, on a chalky ledge of the low mountain-chain, the two surviving monuments of the Roman city of Glanum. ”

“ The popes and the troubadours combined to cast a glamour over the "fair land of Provence" which is irresistible. Here were architectural monuments, arches, bridges, aqueducts, and arenas as great and as splendid as the world has ever known. Aix-en-Provence, in King René's time, was the gayest capital of Europe, and the influence of its arts and literature spread to all parts.
To the south came first the Visigoths, then the conflicting and repelling Ostrogoths; between them soon to supplant the Gallo-Roman cultivation which had here grown so vigorously. ”

“ The doorway at the west end is round-arched, and contains details which are remarkably characteristic of Provence, the purely Roman egg and leaf enrichments being mixed with dogtooth and other ornaments of Romanesque design. The small square tower which crowns the west gable is peculiar, being more in the style of the belfries further North and East, than those of the South.
From Tarascon a branch railway runs to St Remy (the Roman ruins at which have already been described) , and from that point the strange old town of Les Baux may be reached. ”

“ There it remained, until the amiable King René, who has left such a pleasant memory of himself in Provence, finally restored it to Saint-Maximin.
During all the two hundred and forty years that the great church was in the building the precious relics that it enshrined attracted pilgrims without number. Six Popes visited them, to say nothing of two anti-Popes; in one year alone five kings bowed before the shrine; royalties came from as far off as Sweden; the unfortunate Albigenses, after they had "abjured their errors," were compelled to make pilgrimage to it ”

“ I cannot but think that "Les Saintes," as it is commonly called, must be now at the very nadir of its poverty. It is right on the edge of the Mediterranean, and beautiful firm sands backed by sand dunes stretch away from it on either side. It is on a little line of railway from Arles; and by far the nearest possible watering-place to that city, and even to Avignon. In fact, Le Grau du Roi, near Aigues-Mortes, would be its only rival for the central cities of Provence. ”

“ As the tree came down [25] everybody shouted. Instantly the children were swarming all over it. In a moment our little company burst into the flood of loud and lively talk that is inseparable in Provence from gay occasions—and that is ill held in check even at funerals and in church. They are the merriest people in the world, the Provençaux.
IV
Marius completed his work by cutting through the trunk again, making a noble cacho-fiò near five feet long—big enough to burn, according to the Provençal rule, from Christmas Eve until the evening of New Year's Day. ”

“ I had surveyed the country at large for a week, and was ready for a different sort of interest, especially as the mistral had blown steadily all day long and walking was beginning to lose the edge of its rapture.
It is not only the architectural beauties of this noble church that give it its interest. It is its connection with a tradition that has left its marks all over Provence, and in past centuries has met [56] with such universal acceptance that it is small wonder that innumerable people firmly believe in it to this day. ”

“ Under Charlemagne a wonderful revival took place in Letters, Arts, Schools, and Religion—the first dawn after the long night of anarchy. In Italy, Provence, and Aquitaine, where the towns had preserved something of the Roman municipal rule, and of the manners, letters, and arts of the Empire, Literature and Art began slowly to improve and revive. ”

“ Remy, but at Maillane, a little village of the plain about seven kilometres distant. The house, to which many a pious pilgrimage has been made, is square and white and stands in a little shady garden with a high wall and iron gate facing the village street. Thanks to the poet and his colleagues the ancient costume still lingers at Maillane and at St. Remy, and on Sundays the women go to church in the soft, white fichu and picturesque head-dress that one has learnt to associate with the women of Arles. The Provençal type is characteristic ”

“ For this reason, and because the main gateway from the north leads directly past their doors, that wonderful group of Provençal cities and towns, beginning with Arles and ending with Aix-en-Provence, have been included in this book, although they are in no sense “resorts,” and are not even popular “tourist points,” except with the French themselves.
Particularly are the byways of Old Provence unknown to the average English and American traveller; the wonderful Pays d’Arles, with St. Rémy and Les Baux; the Crau; that fascinating region around the Étang de Berre ”

“ This city enjoyed the most ample privileges: the citizens felt their freedom, and made their princes respect it,—at the same time that the wealth which they had acquired rendered the taxes more productive, and permitted the court of the Counts to display a magnificence unknown to other sovereigns. Raymond Berenger, and his successor, brought into Provence at once the spirit of liberty and chivalry, the taste of elegance and the arts, and the sciences of the Arabs. ”

“ From the hilltop behind the castle one looks over a country as rich as any in Provence. The Rhone glides through meadows, orchards, vineyards, and great mulberry plantations, past little red-tiled farmhouses, and long white roads lined by tall poplars and thickset hedges.
Orange is the gateway to Roman Gaul, and its two monuments are a magnificent introduction to the neighbouring towns of Arles and Nîmes. There are many curious streets and houses in the town, and the Hôtel de Ville, which stands in the principal square, is a pleasing bit of seventeenth-century architecture. ”

“ Then he devoted his time and energies to collecting Provençal relics, and to-day, with its treasures and associations, the place has become a shrine. Everything relating to the life and traditions of the Provence is there—Roman sculpture, sarcophagi, ceramics, frescoes, furnishings, implements—the place is crowded with precious things. Lately a room of honor has been devoted to the poet himself. ”

“ Avignon, Tarascon, Beaucaire, Arles, Nimes, Montpellier, Béziers, Carcassonne, Albi, Aigues Mortes, Carpentras, Cabestaing, Uzès, Vaucluse, L'Isle sur Sorgue, Aix-en-Provence—all printed irreverently in heartless columns, as if they were not worth mentioning except for their relation to time and tide. ”

“ The nobility of Provence shared in his infatuation and eagerly joined in the undertaking. At the accession of Charles under the wise government of Raymond Berenger, and the judicious husbanding of its resources by Romeo de Villeneuve, Provence was at its acme of prosperity. Charles brought it to ruin. After the execution of Conradin, he rode roughshod over the people of Naples and Sicily. To his exactions there was no end. The great fiefs were seized and granted to Provençal or Angevin favourites; the foreign soldiers lived at free quarters, and treated the people with the utmost barbarity. ”

“ A good friend this fierce, cleansing sun, and the wind from Mont Ventoux must sweep away all impurities from the narrow streets, and—il y en a!
Away across the parapet a mass of roofs fills the slope to the river bank—most wonderful of rivers!—and to the south there are hills and bright distances: Provençal hills, distances of the land of "joy, young-heartedness and love." And that makes the thought that we are in Provence wake up with a cry that rings in the heart like a reveillé. ”

“ It was the same spirit, one would have said, that had created the treasures of ecclesiastical art and architecture of which Provence is so full, but if so, what had become of its creative force? And yet the people—the uncontaminated sons of the soil, to whom the latest doctrine would have us look for the truest appreciation of art—flocked to this pinchbeck shrine, and took its gaudy ignorance for a true revival of ancient splendours. ”

“ On the day of the Assumption, there is held on the mountain in the vicinity of the chapel, what is called in the Provençal tongue, a roumaragi, which is a country feast. The people from the neighbouring parts assemble on the spot, dressed in their Sunday clothes, where they join in dancing, playing at bowls, of which the Provençaux are passionately fond, quoits, running races, and other rural sports. Every village in Provence has a similar fête on some day in the year. In case of the village being named after any saint, which is very common, as St. ”

“ The Romans have left behind them in Provence not only a series of unalterable monuments, but the type of their race. Up country, in the little farms, a Celtic strain prevails, but in every town we find the square-built Roman frame and classic features.
We end our afternoon by a long drive through the fertile plain of Orange, all the brighter for the severeness of its setting, for the spires and hedges of cypress, for the gaunt dim blue of the distant mountains. The spring is luxuriant and ample here. ”

“ When one comes to the Roman period the remains are so splendid that many are satisfied with what they have seen in Provence, and do not feel impelled to see Rome before they die. Nîmes stands first among the towns of Provence for the splendour of the Roman structures it has preserved. ”

“ It is precisely as in Rome, with the difference that here it is rheumatism, and there fever, against which one must guard. To-day my back has regained some of its elasticity, and I have begun to walk.
I have had a visit from my old friend M. Ellice, who spent twenty-four hours with me and renewed my stock of news, and my ideas, which had become strikingly shrivelled by my sojourn in Provence. Everything considered, this is the only inconvenience of living away from Paris. One soon comes to be a log when one does not share the tastes of my friend, M. de Laprade, who would like to be an oak. ”

“ We shall also presently see how the dome-topped campaniles of Provence are also copied from Roman monuments, such as that at St Remy; and how in almost all the churches throughout Provence Roman columns, caps, cornices, mouldings, and enrichments are freely imitated. But these imitations are generally incomplete, and invariably contain defects or omissions, which shew that they are imperfect copies, and not real Roman work. Such imperfections affect the details rather than the general style. ”

“ We left Italy last week, and came to Provence. Marseilles, I admit, seemed to me an unattractive place after Rome—and indeed all of Provence we have seen as yet is somewhat chill and barren after Italy. No doubt the charm will grow. For one thing, Spring is very late here this year....
Arles we like much. It is a quaint and pleasant little town: and once I can get my mind free of those haunting hill-towns of the Sabines and Albans I love so much— (is there any hill range in the world to equal that swing of the Apennines stretching beyond Rome eastward, southward, and southwestward?) ”