CHAPTER VII.

LA NAPOULE AND CANNES

La Napoule is known chiefly to those birds of passage who annually hibernate at Cannes as the end of a six-mile constitutional which the doctors advise their patients to take as an antidote to overfeeding and “tea-fights.” In reality it is much more than this; it is one of the most charmingly situated of all the Riviera coast towns, and has a history which dates back to a fourteenth-century fortress, built by the Comté de Villeneuve, a tower of which stands to-day as a part of the more modern château which rises back of the town.

French residents on the Riviera have a popular tradition that Lord Brougham originally made overtures to the municipality of Fréjus when he was seeking to found an English colony on the Riviera. Whatever his advances may have been, they were promptly spurned by the town, and England’s chancellor forthwith turned his steps toward Italy, whither he had originally been bound. Suddenly he came upon the ravishing outlook over the Golfe de la Napoule, and the charms of this lovely spot so impressed him that he fell a prey to their winsomeness forthwith and decided that if he could find a place where the inhabitants were at all in favour of a peaceful English invasion, he would throw the weight of his influence in their favour. He travelled the country up and down and threaded the highways and byways for a distance of fifty kilometres in every direction until finally he decided that Cannes, on the opposite side of the Golfe, should have his approval. Thus the Riviera, as it is known by name to countless thousands to-day, was born as a popular English resort, and soon Cannes became the “_ville élégante_,” replacing the little “_bourg de pêche_” of a former day.

The road eastward from Fréjus, the highroad which leads from France into Italy, passes to the northward of the crests of the Estérel range just at the base of Mont Vinaigre, a topographical landmark with which the average visitor to Cannes should become better acquainted. It is far more severe and less gracious than Cap Roux, where the Estérels slope down to the Mediterranean; but it has many attractions which the latter lacks. From the summit of Mont Vinaigre one may survey all this remarkable forest and mountain region, while from Cap Roux one has as remarkable a panorama of sea and shore and sky, but of quite a different tonal composition.

Mont Vinaigre is the culminating peak of the Estérel, and is visible from a great distance. Its great white observatory tower rises high above the neighbouring peaks and, when one finally reaches the vantage-ground of the little platform which is found at the utmost height, he obtains a view which is far more vast in effect than many of the “grandest views” scattered here and there about the world. In clear weather the outlook extends from Bordighera to Sainte Baume, as if the whole region were spread out in a great map.

Below Mont Vinaigre is Les Adrets and its inn, which in days of old was known by all travellers to Italy by way of the south of France as a post-house, where horses were changed and where one could get refreshment and rest. To-day the Auberge des Adrets performs much the same functions for the automobilist, and is put down in the automobile route-books of France as a “_poste de secours_,” one of those safe havens on land which are as necessary to the automobilist _en tour_ as is a life-saving station to the shipwrecked sailor.

The inn, modest and lacking in up-to-date appointments as it is, has a delightfully wild and unspoiled situation, sheltered from the north by numerous chestnut and plane-trees, and in summer or winter its climatic conditions are as likely to fit the varying moods of the traveller as any other spot on the Riviera. Truly Les Adrets is a retreat far from the madding crowd, where an author or an artist might produce a masterwork if what he needed was only quiet and a change of scene. There are no distractions at Les Adrets to break the monotony of its existence. One may chat with a passing automobile tourist, or with one of those guardians of the peace of the countryside, the gendarmes,--who have barracks near by,--but this is the only diversion.

At the inn itself one finds nothing of luxury. One pays two francs for his repasts and a franc for his modest room. This is not dear, and has the additional advantage that neither one nor the other of these requirements of the traveller have the least resemblance to the sort of thing that one gets in the towns.

Over the doorway of this unassuming establishment one reads the following: “_La maison este rebastie par le Sieur Laugier en 1653; elle a été restaurée par Ed. Jourdan, 1898._”

Never is there a throng of people to be seen in these parts, and, if one wanders abroad at night, he is likely enough to have thoughts of the highwaymen of other days. Formerly the forests and mountains of the Estérel were infested with a class of brigands who were by no means of the polished villain order which one has so frequently seen upon the stage. They were not of the Claude Duval class of society, but something very akin to what one pictures as the Corsican bandit of tradition.

To-day, however, all is peaceful enough, with the Gendarmerie near by, a terror to all wrong-doers, and the only reminiscences which one is likely to have of the highwaymen of other days are such as one gets from an old mountaineer or a review of the pages of history and romance, where will be found the names of Robert Macaire and Gaspard de Besse, two famous, or infamous, characters whose names and lives were closely connected with this region. It is all tranquil enough to-day, and one is no more likely to meet with any of these unworthies in the Estérel than he is with the “Flying Dutchman” at sea.

As one draws near to Cannes, he realizes that he has left the simplicity of the life of the countryside behind him. While still half a dozen kilometres away, he sees a sign reading “Cannes Cricket Club,” and all is over! No more freedom of dress; no more hatless and collarless mountain climbs; but the costume of society, of London, Paris, or New York is what is expected of one at all times.

Cannes is truly “aristocratic villadom,” or “_séjour aristocratique et recherché_,” as the French have it, with all that the term implies. Consequently Cannes is conventional, and the real lover of nature--regardless of the town’s charming situation--will have none of it.

It is believed that the town grew up from the ancient Ligurian city of Aegytna, destroyed by Quintus Opimius a hundred and fifty years before the beginning of the Christian era.

If one does not make his entry into Cannes by road, direct from the Estérel, he will probably come by the way of Le Cannet. Le Cannet is itself a sumptuous suburb which in every way foretells the luxury which awaits one in the parent city by the seashore.

Three kilometres of palm and plantain bordered avenue, lined with villas and hotels, joins Le Cannet with Cannes. Not long ago the suburb was an humble, indifferent village, but the tide of popularity came that way, and it has become transformed.

The Boulevard Carnot descends from Le Cannet to the sea by a long easy slope, and again one comes to the blue water of the enchanted Mediterranean. At times, Cannes is most lively,--always in a most conventional and eminently respectable fashion,--and at other times it sleeps the sleep of an emptied city, only to awake when the first fogs of November descend upon “_brumeuse Angleterre_.”

To tell the truth, Cannes is far more delightful “out of season,” when its gay, idling population of strangers has disappeared, stolen away to the watering-places of the north, there to live the same deadly dull existence, made up of rounds of tea-drinking and croquet-playing, with perhaps an occasional ride in a char-à-banc. Probably the millionaire improves somewhat upon this régime, but there are countless thousands who live this very life in European watering-places--and think they are enjoying themselves.

Cannes’s off season is of course summer, but, considering that it is so delightfully and salubriously situated at the water’s edge, and has a summer temperature of but 22° Centigrade, this is difficult to understand. Certainly Cannes is more delightful in the winter months than “_brumeuse Angleterre_,” but then it is equally so in June.

Not every one in Cannes speaks English; but for a shopkeeper to prosper to the full he should do so, and so the local “professors” have a busy time of it, in season and out, teaching what they call the “_idiome britannique_” and the “_argot Américaine_.”

The shore east and west of the centre of the town is flanked with hotels and villas, and great properties are yearly being cut up and put into the hands of the real-estate agents in order that more of the same sort may be erected where olive and palm trees formerly grew.

Horticulture is still a great industry at Cannes, as well as the selling of building-lots, but the marvel is that there is any unoccupied land upon which to raise anything. A dozen years from now how will the horticulturalists of Cannes be able to grow those decorative little orange and palm trees with which Paris and Ostend and London and even Manchester hotel “palm-gardens” are embellished?

Cannes has an ecclesiastical shrine of more than ordinary rank, in spite of the fact that it is of no great architectural splendour. It is the old Basilique de Notre Dame d’Espérance which crowns the hill back of the town and possesses a remarkable reliquary of the fifteenth century, said to contain the bones of St. Honorat, the founder of the famous monastery of the Lerin Isles.

Another monument of the middle ages is the ancient “Tour Seigneuriale,” erected in 1080 by Adelbert II., an abbot of the Monastery of Lerins. For three hundred years it was in constant use, serving both as a _citadelle_ and as a marine observatory. To-day its functions are no more; but, with the tower of the church, it does form a sort of a beacon, from offshore, for the Cannes boatmen.

There is a Christmas custom celebrated by the fisher-folk of Cannes which is exceedingly interesting and which should not be missed if one is in these parts at the time. On the eve of Christmas there is held a popular banquet, in which the sole dish is polenta, most wonderfully made of peas, nuts, herbs, and meal, together with boiled codfish, the yolks of eggs, and what not, all perfumed with orange essence. It’s a most temperate sort of an orgy, in all except quantity, and, when washed down with a local _vin blanc_, bears the name, simply, of a “_gros souper_.” Brillat-Savarin might have done things differently, but the dish sounds as though it might taste good in spite of the mixture.

At Le Cannet is the Villa Sardou, where the great actress Rachel spent the last days of her life and died in 1858. Near Le Cannet, too, is a most strangely built edifice known as the “Maison du Brigand.” It is the chief sight of the neighbourhood for the curious and speculative, though what its uncanny design really means no one seems to know. It is a spudgy, square tower with an overhanging roof of tiles and four queer corbels at the corners. The entrance doorway is three metres, at least, from the ground, and leads immediately to the second story. From this one descends to the ground floor, not by a stairway, but through a trap-door. This curious structure is supposed to date from the sixteenth century.

Vallauris is what one might call a manufacturing suburb of Cannes, a town of potteries and potters. The potteries of the Golfe Jouan, of which Vallauris is the headquarters, are famous, and their product is known by connoisseurs the world over.

One notes the smoke and fumes from the furnaces where the pottery is baked, and likens the aspect to that of a great industrial town, though Vallauris is, as a matter of fact, more daintily environed than any other of its class in the known world. Not all of its six thousand inhabitants are engaged at the potteries; but by far the greater portion are; enough to make the town rank as a city of workmen, for such it really is, though it would take but little thought or care to make of it the ideal “garden city.”

Artist-travellers have long remarked the qualities of the plastic clay found here, and by their suggestions and aid have enabled the manufacturers to develop a high expression of the artistic sense among their workmen. Most of these workers are engaged, in the first instance, as mere moulders of ordinary pots and jugs; but, as they acquire skill and the art sense, they are advanced to more important and lucrative positions.

The establishment of Clément Massier is famous for the quality and excellent design of its product. The proprietor in the early days, by his natural taste and studies, brought his work to the attention of such masters in art as Gérôme, Cabanal, Berne-Bellecour, and Puvis de Chavannes, all of whom encouraged him to develop his abilities still further.

Study of antique forms and processes threw a new light upon the art, or at least a newly reflected light, and at last were produced those wonderful iridescent effects and enamels which were a revelation to lovers of modern pottery. Their success was achieved at the great Paris Exposition of 1889, since which time they have been the vogue among the “_clientèle élégante du littoral_,” as the cicerone who takes you over the Ceramic Musée tells you.

Vallauris is noted also for its production of orange-water, or, rather, orange-flower water, with which the French flavour all kinds of subtle warm drinks of which they are so fond. The _tisane_ of the French takes the place of the tea of the English, and they make it of all sorts of things,--a stewed concoction of verbena leaves, of mint, and even pounded apricot stones,--and always with a dash of orange-flower water. It is not an unpleasant drink thus made, but wofully insipid.

The orange-trees of the neighbourhood of Cannes and Vallauris prosper exceedingly, though it is not for their fruit that they are so carefully tended. It is the blossoming flowers that are in demand, partly for enhancing the charms of brides, but more particularly for making orange essence. There are numerous distilleries devoted to this at Vallauris, and, when the season of gathering the orange-flower crop arrives, a couple of thousand women and children engage in the pleasant task. A million kilogrammes of the flower are gathered in a good season, from which is produced as much as seventy-five thousand kilos of essence.