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“It was September, and it was Provence”

The Loire divides France on a line running from the southeast to the middle of the west coast, parting the territory into two great divisions, which in the middle ages had a separate form of legislation, of speech, and of literature. The language south of the Loire was known as the langue d’oc (an expression which gave its name to a province), so called from the fact, say some etymologists and philologists, that the expression of affirmation in the romance language of the south was “oc” or “hoc.” Dialects were common enough throughout this region, as elsewhere in France; but there was a certain grammatical resemblance between them all which distinguished them from the speech of the Bretons and Normans in the north. This southern language was principally distinguished from northern French by the existence of many Latin roots, which in the north had been eliminated. Foreign influences, curiously enough, had not crept in in the south, and, like the Spanish and the Italian speech, that of Languedoc (and Provence) was of a dulcet mildness which in its survival to-day, in the chief Provençal districts, is to be remarked by all.

Northward of the Loire the langue d’œil was spoken, and this language in its ultimate survival, with the interpolation of much that was Germanic, came to be the French that is known to-day.

The Provençal tongue, even the more or less corrupt patois of to-day which Mistral and the other Félibres are trying to purify, is not so bad after all, nor so bizarre as one might think. It does not resemble French much more than it does Italian, but it is astonishingly reminiscent of many tongues, as the following quatrain familiar to us all will show:

“Trento jour en Setèmbre,

Abrieu Jun, e Nouvèmbre,

De vint-e-une n’i’a qu’un

Lis autre n’an trento un.”

An Esperantist should find this easy.

The literary world in general has always been interested in the Félibres of the land of “la verte olive, la mure vermeille, la grappe de vie, croissant ensemble sous un ciel d’azur,” and they recognize the “littérature provençale” as something far more worthy of being kept alive than that of the Emerald Isle, which is mostly a fad of a few pedants so dead to all progress that they even live their lives in the past.

This is by no means the case with the Provençal school. The life of the Félibres and their followers is one of a supreme gaiety; the life of a veritable pays de la cigale, the symbol of a sentiment always identified with Provence.

Of the original founders of the Félibres three names stand out as the most prominent: Mistral, who had taken his honours at the bar, Roumanille, a bookseller of Avignon, and Theodore Aubanal. For the love of their pays and its ancient tongue, which was fast falling into a mere patois, they vowed to devote themselves to the perpetuation of it and the reviving of its literature.

In 1859 “Mirèio,” Mistral’s masterpiece, appeared, and was everywhere recognized as the chief literary novelty of the age. Mistral went to Paris and received the plaudits of the literary and artistic world of the capital. He and his works have since come to be recognized as “le miroir de la Provence.”

The origin of the word “félibre” is most obscure. Mistral first met with it in an ancient Provençal prayer, the “Oration of St. Anselm,” “emè li sét félibre de la léi.”

Philologists have discussed the origin and evolution of the word, and here the mystic seven of the Félibres again comes to the fore, as there are seven explanations, all of them acceptable and plausible, although the majority of authorities are in favour of the Greek word philabros—“he who loves the beautiful.”

Of course the movement is caused by the local pride of the Provençaux, and it can hardly be expected to arouse the enthusiasm of the Bretons, the Normans, or the native sons of the Aube. In fact, there are certain detractors of the work of the Félibres who profess regrets that the French tongue should be thus polluted. The aspersion, however, has no effect on the true Provençal, for to him his native land and its tongue are first and foremost.

Truly more has been said and written of Provence that is of interest than of any other land, from the days of Petrarch to those of Mistral, in whose “Recollections,” recently published (1906), there is more of the fact and romance of history of the old province set forth than in many other writers combined.

Daudet was expressive when he said, in the opening lines of “Tartarin,” “It was September, and it was Provence;” Thiers was definite when he said, “At Valence the south commences;” and Felix Gras, and even Dumas, were eloquent in their praises of this fair land and its people.

Then there was an unknown who sang:

“The vintage sun was shining

On the southern fields of France,”

and who struck the note strong and true; but again and again we turn to Mistral, whose epic, “Mirèio,” indeed forms a mirror of Provence.

Madame de Sévigné was wrong when she said: “I prefer the gamesomeness of the Bretons to the perfumed idleness of the Provençaux;” at least she was wrong in her estimate of the Provençaux, for her interests and her loves were ever in the north, at Château Grignan and elsewhere, in spite of her familiarity with Provence. She has some hard things to say also of the “mistral,” the name given to that dread north wind of the Rhône valley, one of the three plagues of Provence; but again she exaggerates.

The “terrible mistral” is not always so terrible as it has been pictured. It does not always blow, nor, when it does come, does it blow for a long period, not even for the proverbial three, six, or nine days; but it is, nevertheless, pretty general along the whole south coast of France. It is the complete reverse of the sirocco of the African coast, the wind which blows hot from the African desert and makes the coast cities of Oran, Alger, and Constantine, and even Biskra, farther inland, the delightful winter resorts which they are.

In summer the “mistral,” when it blows, makes the coast towns and cities of the mouth of the Rhône, and even farther to the east and west, cool and delightful even in the hottest summer months, and it always has a great purifying and healthful influence.

Ordinarily the “mistral” is faithful to tradition, but for long months in the winter of 1905-06 it only appeared at Marseilles, and then only to disappear again immediately. The Provençal used to pray to be preserved from Æolus, son of Jupiter, but this particular season the god had forsaken all Provence. From the 31st of August to the 4th of September it blew with all its wonted vigour, with a violence which lifted roof-tiles and blew all before it, but until the first of the following March it made only fitful attempts, many of which expired before they were born.

There were occasions when it rose from its torpor and ruffled the waves of the blue Mediterranean into the white horses of the poets, but it immediately retired as if shorn of its former strength.

“C’est humiliant,” said the observer at the meteorological bureau at Marseilles, as he shut up shop and went out for his apéritif.

All Provence was marvelling at the strange anomaly, and really seemed to regret the absence of the “mistral,” though they always cursed it loudly when it was present—all but the fisherfolk of the Étang de Berre and the old men who sheltered themselves on the sunny side of a wall and made the best use possible of the “cheminée du Roi René,” as the old pipe-smokers call the glorious sun of the south, which never seems so bright and never gives out so much warmth as when the “mistral” blows its hardest.

A Martigaux or a Marseillais would rather have the “mistral” than the damp humid winds from the east or northeast, which, curiously enough, brought fog with them on this abnormal occasion. The café gossips predicted that Marseilles, their beloved Marseilles with its Cannebière and its Prado, was degenerating into a fog-bound city like London, Paris, and Lyons. At Martigues the old sailors, those who had been toilers on the deep sea in their earlier years, told weird tales of the “pea-soup” fogs of London,—only they called them purées.

One thing, however, all were certain. The “mistral” was sure to drive all this moisture-laden atmosphere away. In the words of the song they chanted, “On n’sait quand y’r’viendra.” “Va-t-il prendre enfin?” “Je ne sais pas,” and so the fishermen of Martigues, and elsewhere on the Mediterranean coast, pulled their boats up on the shore and huddled around the café stoves and talked of the mauvais temps which was always with them. What was the use of combating against the elements? The fish would not rise in what is thought elsewhere to be fishermen’s weather. They required the “mistral” and plenty of it.

The Provence of the middle ages comprised a considerably more extensive territory than that which made one of the thirty-three general gouvernements of the ancient régime. In fact it included all of the south-central portion of Languedoc, with the exception of the Comtat Venaissin (Avignon, Carpentras, etc.), and the Comté de Nice.

In Roman times it became customary to refer to the region simply as “the province,” and so, in later times, it became known as “Provence,” though officially and politically the Narbonnaise, which extended from the Pyrenees to Lyons, somewhat hid its identity, the name Provence applying particularly to that region lying between the Rhône and the Alps.

The Provence of to-day, and of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is a wider region which includes the mouth of the Rhône, Marseilles, and the Riviera. It was that portion of France which first led the Roman legions northward, and, earlier even, gave a resting-place to the venturesome Greeks and Phoceans who, above all, sought to colonize wherever there was a possibility of building up great seaports. The chief Phocean colony was Marseilles, or Massilia, which was founded under the two successive immigrations of the years 600 and 542 B. C.

In 1150, when the Carlovingian empire was dismembered, there was formed the Comté and Marquisat of Provence, with capitals at Avignon and Aix, the small remaining portion becoming known as the Comté d’Orange.

Under the comtes Provence again flourished, and a brilliant civilization was born in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which gave almost a new literature and a new art to those glorious gems of the French Crown. The school of Romanesque church-building of Provence, of which the most entrancing examples are still to be seen at Aix, Arles, St. Gilles, and Cavaillon, spread throughout Languedoc and Dauphiné, and gave an impetus to a style of church-building which was the highest form of artistic expression.

It was at this time, too, that Provençal literature took on that expressive form which set the fashion for the court versifiers of the day, the troubadours and the trouvères of which the old French chronicles are so full. The speech of the Provençal troubadours was so polished and light that it lent itself readily to verses and dialogues which, for their motives, mostly touched on love and marriage. Avignon, Aix, and Les Baux were very “courts of love,” presided over—said a chivalrous French writer—by ladies of renown, who elaborated a code of gallantry and the droits de la femme which were certainly in advance of their time.

The reign of René II. of Sicily and Anjou, called “le bon Roi René,” brought all this love of letters to the highest conceivable plane and constituted an era hitherto unapproached,—as marked, indeed, and as brilliant, as the Renaissance itself.

The troubadours and the “courts of love” have gone for ever from Provence, and there is only the carnival celebrations of Nice and Cannes and the other Riviera cities to take their place. These festivities are poor enough apologies for the splendid pageants which formerly held forth at Marseilles and Aix, where the titled dignitary of the celebration was known as the “Prince d’Amour,” or at Aubagne, Toulon, or St. Tropez, where he was known as the “Capitaine de Ville.”

The carnival celebrations of to-day are all right in their way, perhaps, but their spirit is not the same. What have flower-dressed automobiles and hare and tortoise gymkanas got to do with romance anyway?

The pages of history are full of references to the Provence of the middle ages. Louis XI. annexed the province to the Crown in 1481, but Aix remained the capital, and this city was given a parliament of its own by Louis XII. The dignity was not appreciated by the inhabitants, for the parliamentary benches were filled with the nobility, who, as was the custom of the time, sought to oppress their inferiors. As a result there developed a local saying that the three plagues of Provence were its parliament; its raging river, the stony-bedded Durance; and the “mistral,” the cold north wind that blows with severe regularity for three, six, or nine days, throughout the Rhône valley.

Charles V. invaded Provence in 1536, and the League and the Fronde were disturbing influences here as elsewhere.

The Comté d’Orange was annexed by France, by virtue of the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, and the Comtat Venaissin was acquired from the Italian powers in 1791.

Toulon played a great part in the later history of Provence, when it underwent its famous siege by the troops of the Convention in 1793.

Napoleon set foot in France, for his final campaign, on the shores of the Golfe Jouan, in 1815.

History-making then slumbered for a matter of a quarter of a century. Then, in 1848, Menton and Roquebrune revolted against the Princes of Monaco and came into the French fold. It was as late as 1860, however, that the Comté de Nice was annexed.

This, in brief, is a résumé of some of the chief events since the middle ages which have made history in Provence.

It is but a step across country from the Rhône valley to Marseilles, that great southern gateway of modern France through which flows a ceaseless tide of travel.

Here, in the extreme south, on the shores of the great blue, tideless Mediterranean, all one has previously met with in Provence is further magnified, not only by the brilliant cosmopolitanism of Marseilles itself, but by the very antiquity of its origin. East and west of Marseilles and the Bouches-du-Rhône is a region, French to-day,—as French as any of those old provinces of mediæval times which go to make up the republican solidarity of modern France,—but which in former times was as foreign to France and things French as is modern Spain or Italy.

To the eastward, toward Italy, was the ancient independent Comté de Nice, and, on the west, Catalonia once included the region where are to-day the French cities of Perpignan, Elne and Agde.

Of all the delectable regions of France, none is of more diversified interest to the dweller in northern climes than “La Provence Maritime,” that portion which includes what the world to-day recognizes as the Riviera. Here may be found the whole galaxy of charms which the present-day seeker after health, edification, and pleasure demands from the antiquarian and historical interests of old Provence and the Roman occupation to the frivolous gaieties of Nice and Monte Carlo.

Tourists, more than ever, keep to the beaten track. In one way this is readily enough accounted for. Well-worn roads are much more common than of yore and they are more accessible, and travellers like to keep “in touch,” as they call it, with such unnecessary things as up-to-date pharmacies, newspapers, and lending libraries, which, in the avowed tourist resorts of the French and Italian Rivieras, are as accessible as they are on the Rue de Rivoli. There are occasional by-paths which radiate from even these centres of modernity which lead one off beyond the reach of steam-cars and fils télégraphiques; but they are mostly unworn roads to all except peasants who drive tiny donkeys in carts and carry bundles on their heads.

One might think that no part of modern France was at all solitary and unknown; but one has only to recall Stevenson’s charming “Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes,” to realize that then there were regions which English readers and travellers knew not of, and the same is almost true to-day.

Provence has been the fruitful field for antiquarians and students of languages, manners, customs, and political and church history, of all nationalities, for many long years; but the large numbers of travellers who annually visit the sunny promenades of Nice or Cannes never think for a moment of spending a winter at Martigues, the Provençal Venice, or at Nîmes, or Arles, or Avignon, where, if the “mistral” does blow occasionally, the surroundings are quite as brilliant as on the coast itself, the midday sun just as warm, and the sundown chill no more frigid than it is at either Cannes or Nice.

Truly the whole Mediterranean coast, from Barcelona to Spezzia in Italy, together with the cities and towns immediately adjacent, forms a touring-ground more varied and interesting even than Touraine, often thought the touring-ground par excellence. The Provençal Riviera itinerary has, moreover, the advantage of being more accessible than Italy or Spain, the Holy Land or Egypt, and, until one has known its charms more or less intimately, he has a prospect in store which offers more of novelty and delightfulness than he has perhaps believed possible so near to the well-worn track of southern travel.