Chapter 11

CANNES

Of one-half of Tarascon the prince whom Tartarin met in Algiers displayed an astonishingly detailed knowledge. Concerning the rest of the town he was as astonishingly noncommittal. When it leaked out that the prince had been in the Tarascon jail long enough to become familiar with what could be seen from one window, Tartarin understood his limitation. My picture of Cannes is as indelible as the prince's picture of Tarascon. For most of my Riviera days were spent in a villa across the Golfe de la Napoule from Cannes. Not infrequently our baby Hope gave us the privilege of seeing Cannes by sunrise. We ate and worked on a terrace below our bedroom windows. Every evening we watched Cannes disappear or become fairyland in the moonlight.

What we saw from the Villa Étoile was the Golfe de la Napoule from the Pointe de l'Esquillon to the Cap de la Croisette. The Corniche de l'Estérel rounded the Esquillon and came down to sea level at Théoule through a forest of pines. It passed our villa. The curve of the gulf between us and Cannes was only seven miles. First came La Napoule, above whose old tower on the sea rose a hill crowned with the ruins of a chapel. A viaduct with narrow arches carried the railway across the last ravine of the Estérel. In the plain, between two little rivers, the Siagne and the Riou, was a grove of umbrella pines. Here began the Boulevard Jean Hibert, protected by a sea-wall in concrete, leading into Cannes. The town of Cannes, flanked on the left by Mont Chevalier and on the right by La Croisette, displayed a solid mass of hotels on the water front. Red-roofed villas climbed to Le Cannet and La Californie, elbowing each other in the town and scattering in the suburbs until the upper villas were almost lost in foliage. Behind were the Maritime Alps. Not far beyond La Croisette, the Cap d'Antibes jutted out into the sea. At night the lighthouses of Cannes and Antibes flashed alternately red and green, and between them Cannes sparkled. Inland to the left of Cannes were Mougins on a hill and Grasse above on the mountain side. Occasional trails of smoke marked the main line of the railway along the coast and the branch line from Cannes to Grasse. In the sea lay the Iles de Lérins, Sainte-Marguerite almost touching the point of La Croisette.

But unlike the Prince, we did have a chance to see Cannes at other angles. Cannes was the metropolis to which we went hopefully to hire cooks, find amusement, and buy food and drink. Théoule had neither stores nor cafés, and after the Artist came we were glad to vary the monotony of suburban life. It is always that way with city folk. How wonderful the quiet, how delightful the seclusion of the "real country"! But after a few weeks, while you may hate yourself for wanting noise and lights, while you may still affect to despise the herding instinct, you find yourself quite willing to commune with nature a little less intimately than in the first enthusiastic days of your escape from the whirl and the turmoil of your accustomed atmosphere. Not that Cannes is ever exactly "whirl and turmoil;" but you could have tea at Rumpelmayer's, you could dance and listen to music and see shows at the Casino, and you could look in shop windows. On the terrace of the Villa Étoile we thanked God that we were out in the country, and we loved our walks on the Corniche road and back into the Estérel. But it was a comfort to have Cannes so near! We were not dependent upon the twice-a-day _omnibus_ train, which made all the stops between Marseilles and Nice. An hour and a half of brisker walking than one would have cared to indulge in farther east on the Riviera took us to Cannes, and the _cochers_ were always reasonable about driving out to Théoule in the evening.

From our villa to La Napoule we were still in the Estérel. Then we crossed the mouth of the Siagne by a bridge, and came down to the sea on the Boulevard Jean Hibert. Between the mouth of the Siagne and Mont Chevalier are the original villas of Cannes and the hotels of the Second Empire. Here Lord Brougham built the Villa Eleonore Louise in 1834, when Cannes was a fishing village, not better known than any other hamlet along the coast. Here are the Château Vallombrosa (now the Hôtel du Pare), the Villa Larochefoucauld and the Villa Rothschild, whose unrivaled gardens are shut off by high walls and shrubbery. They are well worth a visit: but you must know when and how to get into them. As you near Mont Chevalier, the sea wall, no longer needed to protect the railway (which for a couple of miles had to run right on the sea to avoid the grounds and villas laid out before it was dreamed of), recedes for a few hundred feet and leaves a beach.

On Mont Chevalier is the Old Town, grouped around a ruined castle and an eleventh-century tower. The parish church is of the thirteenth century. The buildings on the quay below, facing the port, are of the middle of the nineteenth century. But they look much older. For they were built by townspeople, and serve the needs of the small portion of the population which would be living in Cannes if it were not a fashionable watering place. Despite its marvelous growth, Nice has always maintained a life and industries apart from tourists and residents of the leisure class. Cannes, on the other hand, with the exception of the little Quartier du Suquet, is a watering place. It needs Mont Chevalier, as Monte Carlo needs Monaco, to make us realize that Cannes existed before this spot was taken up and developed by French and British nobility. The square tower and the cluster of buildings around it, the hotels and restaurants of fishermen on the Quai Saint Pierre, dominate the port. This bit out of the past, and of another world in the present, is at the end of the vista as one walks along the Promenade de la Croisette: and the Boulevard Jean Hibert runs right into it. The touch of antiquity would otherwise be lacking, and the Artist would scarcely have considered it worth his while to take his kit when we went to Cannes.

The port is formed by a breakwater extending out from the point of Mont Chevalier, with a jetty opposite. Except for the fishermen, who are strong individualists and sell their catch right from their boat, the harbor's business is in keeping with the city's business. Its shipping consists of pleasure craft. Among the yachts whose home is Cannes one used to see the _Lysistrata_ of Commodore James Gordon Bennett. How many times have I received irate messages and the other kind, too, both alike for my own good, sent from that vessel! In the garden of his beautiful home at Beaulieu, between Villefranche and Monaco, the Commodore told me of the offer he had received from the Russian Government for this famous yacht. Not many months after the _Lysistrata_ disappeared from its anchorage at Cannes, the man who had been the reason--and means--of Riviera visits to more journalists than myself died at Beaulieu.

Only on the side of Mont Chevalier has the harbor a quay. The inner side is bordered by the Allées de la Liberté, a huge rectangle with rows of old trees under which the flower market is held every morning. At the Old Town end is the Hôtel de Ville and at the east end the Casino. Running out seaward from beside the Casino is the Jetée Albert Edouard. To its very end the jetty is paved, and when a stiff sea wind is blowing you can drink in the spray to your heart's content. Behind the Casino is a generous beach. This is one great advantage of Cannes over Nice, where instead of sand you have gravel and pebbles. The Riviera is largely deserted before the bathing season sets in, but one does miss the sand. At Cannes kiddies are not deprived of pails and shovels and grownups can stretch out their blankets and plant their umbrellas.

The Promenade de la Croisette runs along the sea from the Casino to the Restaurant de la Réserve on La Croisette. The difference between the Promenade de la Croisette and the Promenade des Anglais was summed up by an English friend of mine in five words. "More go-carts and less dogs," he said. "More wives and less _cocottes_," the Artist put it. Of course there are some children at Nice and some _cocottes_ at Cannes. And where fashion reigns the difference between _mondaine_ and _demi-mondaine_ is unfortunately not always apparent. Gold frequently glitters. But Cannes is less garish than Nice in buildings and in people.

Doubling the Cap de la Croisette, we are in the Golfe Juan, with the Cap d'Antibes beyond. Here Napoleon, fearing his possible reception at Saint-Raphaël, landed on his return from Elba. A column marks the spot. Bound for the final test of arms at Waterloo, Napoleon little dreamed that twenty years later his English foes would begin to make a peaceable conquest of this coast, and that within a hundred years French and English would be fighting side by side on French soil against the Germans. How much did the Englishman's love of the Riviera have to do with the Entente Cordiale? What part did the Riviera play in the Franco-Russian Alliance? British and Russian sovereigns always showed as passionate a fondness for this corner of France as their subjects. There were even English and Russian churches at Cannes and Nice. Men who played a vital part in forming political alliances were regular visitors to the Riviera. At the beginning of the Promenade de la Croisette, only three miles from the Napoleon column, stands Puech's remarkable statue of Edward VII, who spoke French with a German accent, but who never concealed his preference for France over the land of his ancestors.

One charm of Cannes is the feeling one has of not being crowded. At Nice and along the eastern Riviera hotels and villas jostle each other. Around Cannes the gardens are more important than the buildings. Striking straight inland from the Casino past the railway station, the broad Boulevard Carnot gradually ascends to Le Cannet. This is the only straight road out of Cannes. All the other roads wind and turn, bringing you constantly around unexpected corners until you have lost your sense of direction. Branches of trees stick out over garden walls overhung with vines. Many of the largest hotels can be reached only by these _chemins_. You realize that the city has grown haphazard, and that no methodical city architect was allowed to make boulevards and streets that would disturb the seclusion of the villa-builders, who plotted out their grounds with never a thought of those who might later build higher up. So roads skirted properties. The result does not commend itself to those who are in a hurry. But it gives suburban Cannes an aspect unique on the Riviera. Many of the hotels thus hidden away are built on private estates, and if you want to get to them you have to follow all the curves.

The labyrinthine approach adds greatly to the delight of a climb to La Californie. If you go by carriage, unless you have a map, you are tempted to feel that the _cocher_ is taking a roundabout route to justify the high price he asked you. But if you go afoot--and without a map--you may find yourself back at the point of departure before you know it. But however extended your wanderings, the beauty of the roads is ample compensation, and when you reach at last the Square du Splendide-Panorama, nearly eight hundred feet above the city, you are rewarded by a view of mountains and sea, from Nice to Cap Roux, which makes you say once more--as you have so often done in Riviera explorations--"This is the best!"

After lunch at the observatory we decided to walk on to Vallauris and look up our friend of Antibes at the pottery. A _cocher_ without a fare persuaded us to visit the aqueduct at Clausonne en route to Vallauris. He painted the glories of the scenery and of Roman masonry. "You will never regret listening to me," he urged. We followed the wave of his hand, and climbed meekly aboard, although at lunch we had been carrying on an antiphonal hymn of praise to the pleasure and benefit of shanks' mare.

We did not regret abandoning our walk. I managed to get the Artist by the Chapelle de Saint-Antoine on the Col de Vallauris and to limit him to a hasty _croquis_ of the Clausonne Aqueduct. We were out for pleasure, with no thought of articles. When you feel that you are going to have to turn your adventures to a practical use, it does take away from the sense of relaxation that a writer like anyone else craves for on his day off. On the road to Vallauris we were more struck by the heather than any other form of vegetation. The mountains and hills were covered with it, and whatever else we saw, heather was always in the picture on the hills and mimosa along the roadside. From the roots of transplanted Mediterranean heather--and not from briar--are made what we call briarwood pipes. When a salesman assures you that the pipe he offers is "genuine briar," if it really was briar, you would think it wasn't. When names have become trademarks, we have to persist in their misuse.

Vallauris was called the golden valley (_vallis aurea_) because of the pottery the Romans discovered the natives making from the fine clay of the banks of the little stream that runs into the Golfe Juan. For twenty centuries the inhabitants of Vallauris have found no reason to change their _métier_. They are still making dishes and vases and statuettes, and there is still plenty of clay. Moreover, modern methods have not found a substitute either for the potter at his wheel or for the little ovens of limited capacity when it comes to turning out work that is flawless and bears the stamp of individuality. We can manufacture almost everything en masse and in series except pottery. Joseph-Marie was not in evidence at Vallauris: but we found the potters glad to show us their work, seemingly for the pride they had in it. Of course you did have a chance to buy: but salesmanship was not obtrusive.

The great industry of Cannes is fresh cut flowers. The flower market of a morning in the Allées de la Liberté is richer in variety than that of Nice. There is less charm, however, in the sellers. In Nice you simply cannot help buying what is offered you. Pretty faces and soft pleading voices draw the money from your pocket. You look from the flowers to those who offer them: and then you buy the flowers. At Cannes, on the other hand, you ask yourself first what in the world you are going to do with them after you have them. Perhaps this difference in your mood is the reason of the enormous industry that has been developed in Cannes. You are not asked to buy flowers because a seller wants you to and is able to lure you with a smile. You are told that here is the unique chance to send your friends in Paris and London a bit of the springtime fragrance of the Riviera.

"Three francs, five francs, ten francs, _monsieur_, and tomorrow morning in Paris or tomorrow evening in London the postman will deliver the flowers to your friend."

Pen and ink, cards, gummed labels or tags are put under your nose. You are shown the little reed baskets, in rectangular form, that will carry your gift. If your Paris or London friend knows Latin, and thinks a minute, he will realize that Cannes is living up to her name in thus utilizing her reeds to send out over Europe an Easter greeting, jonquils, carnations, roses, geraniums with the smell of lemons, orange blossoms, cassia, jessamine, lilacs, violets and mimosa.