Days Are Frequent During
The Winter In Which One May Stand Warmly Wrapped In The Brilliant
Sun And Feel The Protection Of A Greatcoat No More Than That Of A
Piece Of Gauze Against The Icy And Penetrating Blast That Comes
From "Tile Roof Of France."
Unable to take the direct route by Arles as at present, the
eastward-bound traveller from Montpellier in 1764 had to make a
northerly detour.
The first stone bridge up the Rhone was at
Avignon, but there was a bridge of boats connecting Beaucaire
with Tarascon. Thence, in no very placable mood, Smollett set out
in mid-November by way of Orgon [Aix], Brignolles and le Muy,
striking the Mediterranean at Frejus. En route he was inveigled
into a controversy of unwonted bitterness with an innkeeper at le
Muy. The scene is conjured up for us with an almost disconcerting
actuality; no single detail of the author's discomfiture is
omitted. The episode is post-Flaubertian in its impersonal
detachment, or, as Coleridge first said, "aloofness." On crossing
the Var, the sunny climate, the romantic outline of the
Esterelles, the charms of the "neat village" of Cannes, and the
first prospect of Nice began gradually and happily to effect a
slight mitigation in our patient's humour. Smollett was
indubitably one of the pioneers of the Promenade des Anglais.
Long before the days of "Dr. Antonio" or Lord Brougham, he
described for his countrymen the almost incredible dolcezza of
the sunlit coast from Antibes to Lerici. But how much better
than the barren triumph of being the unconscious fugleman of so
glittering a popularity must have been the sense of being one of
the first that ever burst from our rude island upon that secluded
little Piedmontese town, as it then was, of not above twelve
thousand souls, with its wonderful situation, noble perspective
and unparalleled climate. Well might our travel-tost doctor
exclaim, "When I stand on the rampart and look around I can
scarce help thinking myself enchanted." It was truly a garden of
Armida for a native of one of the dampest corners of North
Britain.
"Forty or fifty years ago, before the great transformation took
place on the French Riviera, when Nizza, Villafranca, and Mentone
were antique Italian towns, and when it was one of the
eccentricities of Lord Brougham, to like Cannes, all that sea-board
was a delightful land. Only a hundred years ago Arthur
Young had trouble to get an old woman and a donkey to carry his
portmanteau from Cannes to Antibes. I can myself remember Cannes
in 1853, a small fishing village with a quiet beach, and Mentone,
a walled town with mediaeval gates and a castle, a few humble
villas and the old Posta to give supper to any passing traveller.
It was one of the loveliest bits of Italy, and the road from
Nizza to Genoa was one long procession for four days of glorious
scenery, historic remnants, Italian colour, and picturesque
ports. From the Esterelles to San Remo this has all been ruined
by the horde of northern barbarians who have made a sort of
Trouville, Brighton, or Biarritz, with American hotels and
Parisian boulevards on every headland and bay.
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