Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu

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Woolson Constance Fenimore. Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu

AT MENTONE

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CAIRO IN 1890

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CORFU AND THE IONIAN SEA

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It is of no consequence why or how we came to Mentone. The vast subject of health and health resorts, of balancings between Torquay and Madeira, Algeria and Sicily, and, in a smaller sphere, between Cannes, Nice, Mentone, and San Remo, may as well be left at one side while we happily imitate the Happy-thought Man's trains in Bradshaw, which never "start," but "arrive." We therefore arrived. Our party, formed not by selection, or even by the survival of the fittest (after the ocean and Channel), but simply by chance aggregation, was now composed of Mrs. Trescott and her daughter Janet, Professor Mackenzie, Miss Graves, the two youths Inness and Baker, my niece, and myself, myself being Jane Jefferson, aged fifty, and my niece Margaret Severin, aged twenty-eight.

As I said above, we were an aggregation. The Trescotts had started alone, but had "accumulated" (so Mrs. Trescott informed me) the Professor. The Professor had started alone, and had accumulated the Trescotts. Inness and Baker had started singly, but had first accumulated each other, and then ourselves; while Margaret and I, having accumulated Miss Graves, found ourselves, with her, imbedded in the aggregation, partly by chance and partly by that powerful force propinquity. Arriving at Mentone, our aggregation went unbroken to the Hôtel des Anglais, in the East Bay – the East Bay, the Professor said, being warmer than the West: the Professor had been at Mentone before. "The East Bay," he explained, "is warmer because more closely encircled by the mountains, which rise directly behind the house. The West Bay has more level space, and there are several little valleys opening into it, through which currents of air can pass; it is therefore cooler, but only a matter of two or three degrees." It was evening, and our omnibus proceeded at a pace adapted to the "Dead March" from Saul through a street so narrow and walled in that it was like going through catacombs. Only, as Janet remarked, they did not crack whips in the catacombs, and here the atmosphere seemed to be principally cracks. But the Professor brought up the flagellants who might have been there, and they remained up until we reached our destination. We decided that the cracking of whips and the wash of the sea were the especial sounds of Mentone; but the whips ceased at nightfall, and the waves kept on, making a soft murmurous sound which lulled us all to restful slumber. We learned later that all vehicles are obliged, by orders from the town authorities, to proceed at a snail's pace through the narrow street of the "old town," the city treasury not being rich enough to pay for the number of wooden legs and arms which would be required were this rule disregarded.

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"I wonder how many girls have thrown themselves off that rock?" said Janet, gazing at an isolated peak, shaped like a sugar-loaf, which stood alone within the ravine.

"What a holocaust you imagine, Miss Trescott!" said Verney. "How could they climb up there, to begin with?"

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