Chapter IX: Work in Southern Counties (4)

The dear mother, however, was very well, and this winter was therefore perhaps the happiest of the many we have spent abroad. Mentone consisted then only of the old town on a promontory above the sea, ending in a little island-tower, and clambering up the sides of the hill to the castle and cemetery. On either side were a very few villas scattered amid the olive and orange groves. In one of these,[189] above the terrace which led from the eastern gate of the town to the little chapel of St. Anne, we rented the first floor. On the ground floor lived our worthy landlord, M. Trenca, and his Swiss wife, with whom we made much acquaintance. In the neighbouring villas also we had many friends, and often gave little parties,--for the tiny society was most simple and easily pleased. We all enjoyed Mentone, where we had no winter, and breakfasted with windows wide open at Christmas. Our old servants, Lea and John, amused themselves by collecting roots of anemones and other plants; I drew, and sought materials for my little book "A Winter at Mentone;" and my mother was always gay and happy, betaking herself every morning with her camp-stool to draw in some sheltered nook, and returning proud of having discovered some new pathlet, or some fresh bank of rare flowers in the olive groves; and in the afternoons often going to sit with and read or sing to some of the invalid visitors.

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JOURNAL.

"_Dec. 1860._--Our apartment has a bright salon looking towards the
garden, with glass doors opening on a balcony. All the rooms except
one overlook a vast expanse of blue sea, above groves of
magnificent olivetrees, and from the garden a fresh scent of
flowers is wafted up, even in December. From this garden the peaks
of the Berceau are seen rising above the thickets of oranges and
lemons, and beyond is a chain of rosecoloured rocks descending in
an abrupt precipice to the blue waters of the bay, while on the
farthest promontory Bordighera gleams white in the sunshine. Twice
a day a lovely fairy vision salutes us; first, when, in the
sunrise, Corsica reveals itself across the sapphire water,
appearing so distinctly that you can count every ravine and
indentation of its jagged mountains, and feel as if a boat would
easily take you to it in an hour; and again in the evening, when,
as a white ghost, scarcely distinguishable from the clouds around
it, and looking inconceivably distant, it looms forth dimly in the
pink haze of sunset.

"We were here a very little while before several donkey-women
presented themselves to secure our custom. We engaged ourselves to
a wild Meg Merrilies figure in a broad white hat, with a red
handkerchief tied underneath, and a bunch of flowers stuck jauntily
in the side of her hair, who rejoices in the name of Teresina
Ravellina Muratori de Buffa! With her we have made many excursions.
It is impossible for anything to be more beautiful than the variety
of green in the valleys: the blue-green of the gigantic euphorbias,
which fringe the rocks by the wayside, the grey-green of the
olives, the dark green of the old gnarled carouba trees, and the
yellow-green of the canes and the autumnal vineyards. The walls are
beautiful with their fringe of mesembryanthemum--'Miss Emily
Anthem' as the servants call it. Most of the paths are a constant
'excelsior,' and beginning with the steep yellow tufa rocks behind
the town, gradually enter the pine-woods, and ascend towards the
blue peaks of Sant' Agnese, which are always visible through the
red stems of the pine-trees, and across the rich foreground of
heath and myrtle. The trees are full of linnets, which the natives
call 'trenta-cinque' from the sound of their note, and the air
resounds with the cries of the donkey-drivers--'Ulla'--go on, and
'Isa'--for shame."

"_Jan. 11, 1861._--We have been climbing up to Grimaldi, whose
broad sunny terrace is as Italian a scene as any on the Riviera,
for it is crossed by a dark archway, and lined on one side with
bright houses, upon whose walls yellow gourds hang in the sun, with
a little church, painted pink and yellow, while the other side is
overshadowed by old olive-trees, beneath which is seen the broad
expanse of sea, here deep blue, there gleaming silver white in the
hot sunshine. Children in bright handkerchiefs and aprons were
playing about, and singing 'Tanta di gioja, tanto di contento,'
while we were drawing.

"Beyond Grimaldi the path becomes intensely steep, but we were
repaid for going on when we reached to the top of the hills, as the
scenery there is almost Alpine in its bold rocky foregrounds,
beneath which yawns the deep black chasm of St. Louis, with a huge
cliff towering above. On the scorched rock is Ciotti Superiore, a
quaint cluster of houses, while the church, quite separated from
the village, stands farther off, on the highest ridge of the
mountain. Behind the church, the sea view is magnificent, embracing
the coast, with its numerous bays, as far as the Estrelles, which
turn golden and pink in the sunset; the grand mountain barriers,
with all the orange-clad valleys running up into them; and S.
Agnese rising out of the blue mist on its perpendicular cliff....
And, even in this high situation, lovely narcissus and pink
carnations were blooming in January.

"People here are unconventional. When it began to rain on Tuesday,
as we were going to a picnic, the coachman said 'Ah! le bon Dieu a
oublié que c'est un jour de fêtes.'"

[191]

It was a great delight during our winter at Mentone that Lady Mary Wood and her family were spending the winter at Nice with old Lady Grey, so that my friend Charlie and I often met, and became greater friends than ever, entirely sympathising in all we did and saw. I went to Nice to spend some days with the Woods, and they came to Mentone for Easter, when we saw the Mentonais assemble to "grind Judas's bones," and many other of their strange ceremonies.

"_Good Friday, 1861._--When Charlie and I went to S. Michele at
eight o'clock in the evening, we found the church crowded from end
to end with people chanting the Miserere, and radiant with a
thousand waxlights. In the choir, under a canopy, upon a raised
bier surrounded by a treble row of tall tapers, lay the body of
Christ, for which the whole service was a funeral celebration. Soon
after we arrived, a sudden hush in the crowd showed that something
important was going to happen, and a huge friar's lanthorn carried
in by a boy preceded the celebrated 'Pilgrim Preacher of the
Riviera,' a Capuchin monk with a long white beard, who exercises
his wonderful gift of preaching all along the Riviera during Lent.
His sermon was short, but very graphic and striking. He began by
describing a dreadful murder which people had committed upon the
person of their kindest friend, with the horror it excited; and
then, pointing to the white corpse which lay before him amid the
blazing candles, he declared that those around him were themselves
the perpetrators of the crime, and that the object of it was no
other than their Saviour, whose image they saw there pale and
bleeding before their eyes. Then, snatching the crucifix from the
support by his side, he held it aloft to urge repentance by the
sufferings there portrayed. As he concluded, soldiers filed into
the church, and, amid rolling of drums and blowing of trumpets
which intermingled with the chanting, the body was taken up and
carried three times round the church by the Black Penitents,
Mentonais nobles supporting a canopy over the bier."

With Charlie Wood, also, I went to Dolceacqua, which will always come back to me as one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, with its forest-clad mountains, its tall bridge, its blue river Nervia, and the palatial castle of the Dorias on a cliff, with sunlight streaming through its long lines of glassless windows. Almost equally picturesque were Peglia and Peglione, the latter on the top of a conical rock, with tremendous precipices and extraordinary mountain forms all around.

[192]

In the spring we went for a few days to S. Remo, accompanied by several friends. With them, when my mother returned to Mentone, I travelled farther along the Riviera, an excursion which was most amusing, as we bargained for a little carriage from place to place, giving ridiculously small sums, and living entirely like Italians. We went on to many-towered Albenga, to Savona, and eventually to Genoa, making all the excursions belonging to each place. From Genoa we joined Mr. and Mrs. Strettel in an excursion to Porto Fino. When we returned, it was too late to reach Mentone before Sunday, and my companions refused to travel on that day, so we employed the interval in going to Piacenza, Parma, and Modena! Thence we were obliged to telegraph to Mr. Strettel (then chaplain at Genoa) to send us some money to get home with, which we did in a series of little carriages as we had come, but travelling all day and night, driving in the moonlight along the Riviera roads, or often walking for miles at night upon the sands by the sea.

[193]

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Mr. Petit, the famous ecclesiologist,[195] spent some time at Mentone afterwards, and was very kind in taking me sketching excursions, as a fourth in the carriage with his sister, Miss Emma Petit, and his niece, Miss Salt. Mr. Petit was extraordinarily clever, especially as an artist, but most eccentric. He covered the backs of his pictures with caricatures of goblins, &c., representing the events of each day on which the pictures were done. When they travelled, this extraordinary family used to keep what they called "the Petit count:" if they met a cat, it counted for so much--a black goat for so much more, and so on: but if they met a royal prince, it annihilated the whole of the Petit count, and the party would consequently go a whole day's journey out of their way to evade a royal prince. Mr. Petit was most striking in appearance, with a great deal of colour and snow-white hair and beard. I remember the start which our donkey-boy François gave when he first saw him, and his exclaiming, "Je crois, Monsieur, que c'est le frère du Père Eternel!" One day I had gone with Mr. Petit and Miss Salt to Ventimiglia, and we were returning at a most alarming speed (with their horses, from Toulon, unaccustomed to the road) along the edge of an almost unguarded and perpendicular precipice. Suddenly the horses made a great dash, and I _felt_, rather than saw, that they were leaving the road. I threw myself out instantly over the side of the carriage. As I picked myself up, I had the horror of seeing the horses _over_, hanging in the branches of an olive-tree which overhung the sea at a tremendous height, and on the tiny plateau on which it grew. The carriage was swaying to and fro on the wall, which it had broken down, and which was rapidly giving way altogether. "Uncle, shall I get out?" said Miss Salt, as coolly as if nothing was going on. "Yes," he said--and they both got out. A crowd of men came and rescued the horses with ropes from their perilous position, and we walked home.

As usual, in our return to England, we lingered much by the way. The railway then only reached as far as Aix in Provence, and we joined it there after a long _vetturino_ journey; then, after visiting the wonderful deserted town of Les Baux near Arles and Vaucluse near Avignon, we went to S. Laurent du Pont and the Grande Chartreuse, greatly enjoying the beauty of the spring flowers there, as well as the scenery.