FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
Dec. 1st.
"HOW did you get over the precipices?" is generally the first
question asked of any one who arrives at Mentone, and in our case it was a real
subject of congratulation, that we arrived with unbroken necks, for the hour,
the weather, and the driver had alike been favorable to an accident. We left
Nice so late, that night had begun to close in before we reached the summit of
the Turbith, as the mountain is called, which divides that township from this,
and the last glimmer of daylight deserted us, whilst our horses were tearing at
full gallop along its fearful ledges, with a driver who delighted in showing
off, by keeping as close as possible to the edge of the precipice. The said
driver, as we left our hotel at Nice, had put his head in at the window at the
last moment, with ominous shakings and mutterings of, "Nous aurons les eaux
à passer, Monsieur, il y aura beaucoup d'eau," but we believed these
threats were founded on fiction, till just as we reached the plain and were
reposing on the belief in danger past, we were roused up to danger present, by
the carriage being suddenly brought to a stop, amid shouts of "Les eaux,
les eaux"; a sound of rushing waters, and an indistinct vision in the faint
starlight, of a broad, white, foaming torrent, which was raging across the road
in front of us, and carrying everything before it. The driver declared his
belief that the carriage could not possibly pass the flood, and certainly not
with us in it; so we all had to turn out in the pouring rain, into the swimming,
slippery road. Happily, however, though its parapet had been washed away, a
little foot-bridge of broken planks, still remained standing just above the
water, across which we were able to walk, while the carriage and horses
contrived to splash round through the shallows higher up the river, without
being overturned.
When the flood was passed, lights streaming through a misty street, announced
that we had reached Mentone; but then began the new difficulty of finding our
house, for we had taken a house beforehand, as we had been induced to believe
the reports which Mentonese house-owners circulate, that every apartment is let
at the beginning of the season, even when two-thirds of their houses are
standing empty, and half their windows displaying placards of "Apartments
à louer." Not a single person we met seemed to be able to distinguish any
house in the place by its name, certainly no one in the crowded street confessed
to knowing liaison Trenca, as our house is called ; and when, after endless
search, one individual was discovered who had heard of such a place, it was only
to tell us that there were two liaisons Trenca, and thus to create a new source
of bewilderment. We could only drive on in the darkness to the Genoa end of the
town, where on one side of the road the sea was roaring beneath a stone
causeway, while on the other, lights twinkled far up in the quaint overhanging
buildings. Here, after storming two wrong houses in turn, and disappointing a
strange family who were anxiously expecting their own friends, and who rushed
out, with arms extended to embrace them, we at length discovered our future
abode, high on the side of a steep olive-clad hill, to he readied by a narrow
stony way, which wound up behind a little chapel, where a lamp was glimmering
over a gloomy altar, and which we have since found to be dedicated to St. Anne,
and to have a very quaint Turkish appearance. The road was so narrow that it was
all we could do to get our driver to venture on the ascent, but at last, on some
workmen assuring him that a turn existed further on, and that he would not be
obliged to remain jammed up there for life as he expected, he was induced to
urge his horses up the hill and set us down at our own gate.
Our apartment is a fair specimen of most others we have seen in Mentone. It
is on the first floor, with a bright salon looking towards the garden, having
glass doors opening on a balcony. The salle-à-manger only looks out on the olive
wood behind, and is less cheerful, but the three bedrooms and the kitchen are
excellent. All the rooms except one, overlook a vast expanse of blue sea, above
groves of magnificent olive trees, and from the garden a scent of fresh flowers
is wafted up, even in this beginning of December. From this garden the peaks of
the Berceau Mountain are seen rising above the thickets of oranges and lemons,
and beyond, a chain of rose-coloured rocks descending in an abrupt precipice to
the blue waters of the bay, while on the furthest promontory, Bordighera (the
scene of Dr. Antonio) 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 small boat would easily
cany you over 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 yellow sunset. Bordighera is
also sometimes the subject of a curious aerial phenomenon, when the town and
houses are separated from the sea by an effect of mirage, and seem to be lifted
up and suspended in mid-air.
We have had some difficulty in obtaining a native servant, the maid we first
tried to engage having refused to take service in this part of the place on
account of her terror of passing the little chapel of St. Anne, the burial place
of the Gastaldy family, which is close to our gate, and which the peasants say
is haunted by a "Revenant," who walks from thence every midnight, as
far as the chapel of Sta. Francesca, which is also close to us. A Mentonese
accounted for the superstition by a story that the man who used to light the
lamp, which burns nightly in the chapel, had a particular grudge against a
priest, who was obliged to pass that way every night, and who was notorious for
neglecting to fulfil his duties towards the sick. One night the lamplighter
concealed himself here, and as the priest passed the chapel, he heard an awful
voice from its interior exclaim, "I wished, dear friend, to have seen you
before I died, but as you would not come to mo then, now 1 have come to
you." The priest, who imagined that he recognized the voice of a dead and
neglected Gastaldy, was so dreadfully frightened, that he set off "au plein
galop," and did not rest till he found himself safe in the Cathedral of
Ventimiglia, five miles distant.
The Mentonese natives are full of superstitions, and invest each house and
rock with some terrible story. Most of these have their origin in some actual
horror, of which the facts have been forgotten except by a few of the older and
better class of inhabitants, while the impression remains universal, and causes
the spot to be avoided or looked upon with suspicion. Thus one of the haunted
houses is said to be that of Monsieur Joseph de Monleon. This was once a
cemetery, or at least the place where French soldiers were buried who died in
the hospital of Mentone. It is said that several of these were interred before
the last breath had fairly deserted them, and that some were even heard to groan
and cry out afterwards. A gentleman who is still living in the place, remembers
passing the cemetery as a child, on the way to school, and seeing over the wall
a French Grenadier, who had been buried alive the evening before, and had still
strength enough left to drag himself out of the trench into which he was thrown
; he was sitting on its edge, waiting for daylight, and for some one to pass by
and come to his assistance, but the women, who had heard him call out as they
went to the fields, had taken him for a ghost, and had fled in terror, instead
of going to help him. Another curious anecdote has led to the sea-shore in a
particular direction being avoided after dark. In the year 1793, or '94, when
the French troops were passing through Mentone, they bivouacked in the Avenue
St. Koch, where numbers of Hussars lay down to sleep beneath the trees by the
wayside. One of them, who had the care of the kitchen, began meantime to cut
down branches from the trees to feed his fire, and one of the branches falling
on the nose of a sleeper, awoke him to furious anger and abuse ; a violent
quarrel ensued, and the men, drawing their swords, fought on the sea-shore, in
front of the place where the Hotel des Quatres Nations now stands. Here they
were both so overcome with rage, that they stabbed each other, and fell dead at
the same moment, when the spectators, hurried away by their regimental duties,
hastily placed each in a corn-sack, and having scooped out holes in the sand,
buried them as they were. A few days after, a washerwoman, hanging out her
clothes to dry on this spot, in a high wind, saw a piece of cord blown up from
the sand. She pulled at it, and with such force, that she drew up the sack which
was attached to it, from which the head of one of the soldiers jumped up, and
regarded her fixedly. Overwhelmed with terror, and crying out that she saw a
spirit, she fainted away. The people, who ran to her assistance, disinterred the
poor soldiers for burial elsewhere, and the story is generally forgotten, but
the idea of something terrible connected with that spot has never been
eradicated. While ideas of this kind attach themselves to extinct burial places,
it is not to be wondered at that the actual cemetery of present times possesses
its local terrors. As the clock strikes midnight, a procession of gigantic
"revenants" is believed to issue from its portals, and to march
solemnly, two and two, along the adjoining terrace, till at a particular turn in
the path, they all vanish into air, no one knows how ; still, it must be
confessed, that when some young Mentonese gentlemen summoned courage, a short
time ago, to watch the cemetery gates all night, they came home in the morning
very much disappointed at not having seen the ghostly procession, but also
rather — relieved.
The terrace below our house is an inexhaustible delight, as it presents a new
picture at every turn, framed in the gnarled trunks of its olive trees. Here is
the chapel of Santa Francesca, which contains the tomb of a M. Richelmy, officer
in the guard of the Prince of Monaco, "Helas! trop tôt enlevé, de la plus
tendre affection de sa sœur inconsolable." A portrait of the young
guardsman hangs above his grave, but has decayed equally with the mouldering
flowers on the altar, which is always covered with an embroidered white cloth.
At the western extremity of the terrace is the town, which rises from the sea in
tier above tier of the quaintest, tallest, and most varied houses imaginable. It
is entered by the old gateway of St. Julien, with a fountain beside it, where
any one who wishes to study costume and colour, had better stand to watch the
water-carriers in the morning. Above it a ruined wall runs up the rooks to join
an, old tower near the cemetery, which is said to be a remnant of the Mediaeval
Castle of Poggio-Pino, a stronghold of the Counts of Ventimiglia, and a fortress
of celebrity long before Mentone sprang into existence.
The gateway leads into the Strada Lunga, the narrowest of possible streets,
all arches and gutters and dirt, with shirts, stockings, and other garments,
mingled with sheep-skins and goat-skins, hanging out to dry on ropes, slung
across from one high upper window to another. This street, till quite modern
days, was the great street of the town, and it is remembered how before the
first French revolution, the ladies of Mentone used to sit out and work in the
open air, just as the peasants do now, before the doors of the houses, or (one
is expected to say) the "palaces" of the Rue Longue. A contemporary
letter describes the "animated appearance" which this gave to the
place in those days, the gentlemen stopping to chat with each group as they
passed. "Towards evening, all the society walked out to the Cape St.
Martin, to drink coffee and play at games, under the Aristocrat's Tree,"
and the nights were enlivened by frequent serenades, which were given by their
admirers beneath the windows of the principal belles. At that time the town
consisted only of this street, and a few of the narrow alleys which surround the
principal church, and it was shut in by two gateways, one, that of St. Julien,
which still remains, the other situated where Amaranto's Bazaar now stands.
Continuing our walk through the town-one of the first houses on the left of the
Strada Lunga, No. 133, is entered by a picturesque old doorway, surmounted by a
niche, containing a little brown image of the Virgin, and marked with the date
1543. This is the abode of the Martini family, who have inhabited it ever since
its foundation.
Three hundred years ago one of its members fell in love with a beautiful
Roman lady, the daughter of a Cavaliere Paliarci, and when they were married,
the bride brought with her to Mentone, as her dowry, a picture of the Virgin,
which has always had the reputation of being a Guido. The family of Martini were
then powerful and rich, but they are now fallen and poor, for most of their
property was lost during the revolution, and almost all its members were forced
to emigrate and take refuge at Genoa; only an old aunt was left behind, and
while she was taking a last look round the house, to see if there was anything
she could secrete before it was seized and turned into a gendarmerie, she espied
the Madonna of the bridal Paliarci, and hid it. "When the Emigres returned
from exile, the old aunt was dead, and the picture was supposed to have been
destroyed, till one day it was accidentally found, hidden in a hole in the wall,
but a good deal injured; the glass which covered it having been broken, which
had caused a large cut across the face of the Madonna. The picture still hangs
on the wall of a dismal chamber in the old house, where it may be seen, on
application to its venerable proprietor, Monsieur Martini, and where it is now
the sole ornament, so that its beauty is enhanced tenfold by the
poverty-stricken appearance of all that surrounds it. It is a small head of the
Madonna, looking upwards in a halo of light, in which the colouring is still
fresh, and the execution soft and delicate. Many years ago old Monsieur Martini
was offered a sum of 4000 francs for it, which he then refused, but now he would
have no objection to part with this interesting family relic for that, or even a
smaller sum.
Near this house, still on the left, is another building distinguished by its
heavy projecting cornices, resting on carved stone corbels. This was formerly
the Palace of that branch of the Grimaldi family, which maintained a separate
government in Mentone, and afterwards of the Grimaldi Princes of the Monaco,
when the rest of the family ceded their rights, and Mentone was re-united to the
Mother State. It is said to have been built from the materials of the old castle
of Poggio-Pino. The staircase is handsome, with a coved ceiling, and a marble
pillar at its foot; and at the back of the Palace, which overhangs the quay, by
looking over the wall on the edge of the sea, the remains of the steps may still
be seen cut in the rock below, by which the Princes descended to the water. The
chambers are now used as schools, "Ecoles primaires," the expenses of
which are paid by the commune, neither boys nor girls themselves paying
anything.
Entering the school, you find three pleasant-looking French Soeurs de Charité
in their nun's dress, who teach in three separate rooms. The largest is
appropriated to the infant class, which is ranged on steps, before which their
teacher stands, while the children follow her in singing, and in different
manual exercises. The little creatures do it with much vivacity, and their
actions are full of native grace and freedom. A little boy of three years old is
called up, and makes a bow and "bonjour," with as great courtesy as a
nobleman. The copy books exhibited are wonderfully well written, if they are
really "first books," as the nuns say. The inner room is given up to
the first class of bigger girls, at work on "broderie." While thus
occupied, they repeat a kind of Litany, in which the main subject is rapidly
muttered by the Sister, who never raises her eyes from the artificial flowers
she is making, so that the children do just as they like, and not a symptom of
reverence is evinced, either during the repetition of the endless titles with
winch the Virgin is saluted, or during the "Ora pro nobis," which
comes between each of them. "When work is done, books (a short abridgment
of Sacred History) are taken out, and one or two come up to read, the rest play,
or read as they please. Nothing can be less edifying or instructive than this
part of the education, justifying the assertion of Marie, a maid in this house,
that " they learn nothing." The sisters, however, both like and are
liked by the children, who they consider to be far more teachable than those in
France, and with whose quickness and intelligence they are much astonished. They
come from Aix, in Provence, and have only just been installed in the place of
the former teachers, the Italian nuns. "When asked if they understood
patois, "Oh, no," they said, "but signs do just as well."
Many of the old Mentone families who formerly lived in this street, and who were
attached to Italian goverment and customs, have emigrated, since the annexation,
to other towns on. the Riviera, where they can be under the Sardinian rule.
Among these, the old family of Clairvoisin has just removed to St. Remo in
despair at the annexation, having lived here from time immemorial. From being
grandees of the land, they were reduced to the rank of peasants; but they still
preserved a chain of family portraits, unbroken from the year 10GO; their china
was Majolica, embossed with the family arms, and their furniture magnificent
from age and carving. Before they left Mentone their house, was thrown open to
the public and many people went to see the antiquities contained in it, which
would readily have found purchasers, but when asked if they would sell them, the
Clairvoisins proudly replied, "No, they might be peasants now, but were not
these their family relics?"
Lower down this street, near "Il Portico," is the ascent to the
principal churches of the town, by a handsome flight of broad steps, paved with
a Mosaic of small stones, which was repaired and beautified four years ago by
the voluntary exertions of the inhabitants of the narrow street at its loot. At
the top is a broad platform, overlooking the bay and the red rocks, with the
promontories of Ventimiglia and Bordighiera. On one side is the large and
handsome parish church of St. Michaele, decorated with a smart statue of that
saint, in a Roman helmet, and fly-away costume, trampling on the devil. Over the
inside of the door is a curious old Giottesque picture of saints. The other
church, prettily covered all over with delicate stucco work, is dedicated to La
Santissima Conceptione. Opposite St. Michaele is the Hospital, attended by
French Sisters of Charity. The picturesque gateway by the side of it, with the
dark winding flights of steps seen beneath, leads up to the cemetery on the hill
top. On the church steps, in the. narrow street, sotto Il Portico, and
everywhere else in Mentone, you are saluted by the characteristic cries of the
donkey-drivers, and jostled by the donkies themselves, which are the regular
household servants of the place, and are used to bring down, the olives from the
mountains, to carry manure back instead, to tread in the wine press, to work in
the mills, to bring fuel, to rock the little children , in their gently swaying
panniers, to supply milk for the babies, and so on ad infinitum, till at last
they die of overwork, or old age, and are eaten up in sausages.
The universal burial place of Mentone is the Cemetery, which forms the top of
the pyramid-like town, and looks like a castle in the distance. Funerals
generally take place at night, because the streets are then much quieter, and
the processions arc most picturesque, conducted by the two burial
confraternities of the "Penitents noirs et blancs," who issue from the
parish church and wind up through the steep streets, with lighted candles or
torches in their hands, all the mourners and followers bearing lighted candles
also, which they extinguish when the body arrives at the gate of the cemetery ;
after which it is frequently left in a little chapel for several days before
actual interment. The rich who wish to have a monument, can buy a piece of
ground; but the poor are buried in the centre of the cemetery under little
mounds, while small wooden crosses mark their place of interment. A plot of
ground inside the wall has been set aside for the Protestant burial place; but
at present it only contains a few graves, one being that of a young lady who was
killed by a dreadful accident near the Pont St. Louis.
At the end of the Rue Longue is the entrance to the Rue Neuve, where, from a
terraced garden on the right, Pope Pius VII. blessed the people on his return to
Rome, after his long exile in France; all the changeable inhabitants, who a few
years before had raged against ecclesiastical power, and publicly burnt his
predecessor in effigy, having now flocked together with one mind and one voice
to do him honour.
An inscription on the wall tells how
Pio vii. P.M.
Lutetia Romam redux
Hinc
Caelestem populo supplici
Benedictionem impertibat
Die XI. Mensis Februarii
An. Dom. MDCCCXIII.
Opposite this, on the Maison Brea is another of those house inscriptions,
which render a street walk in Italy so interesting, and which are so much needed
in England, to mark for posterity, the dwellings of our good and illustrious
dead.
"Au General Brea,
Né a Menton le 23 Avril, 1720.
Mort à Paris le 24 Juin, 1848.
Pour la defense de l'ordre
et de la patrie.
Par decret du grand conseil des
Villes libres de Menton et Roquebrune
du 25 Septembre, 1848."
Close to this is the Mairie, where the Syndic and Municipal Council transact
the business of the town. Here is preserved one of the stones of the Bastile,
which were sent at the time of its destruction to every commune in France, but
which, for the most part, have been since destroyed. Here also is a public
library, which came to the town three years ago by a bequest of Madame Villarney,
neé Sassi. It is open to the public from nine to twelve o'clock, and from two
till four, but as yet it is not well organized ; there are neither chain nor
tables, the room is cold and wretched, and you may not take any of the books
away. The library consists chiefly of medical works. Adjoining the Mairie is the
church of St. John Baptist, dark and gloomy, with a horrid picture of the bloody
head of the saint.
The English church is approached by the filthiest of alleys, winding down
from a little Piazza at the entrance of the town, on the Genoa side. It is
generally said that the building itself was once a palace of the Princes of
Monaco, but this is not the case; it was built by the Alboni family, and
formerly inhabited by the "Pudestat" or "Intendente," an
office which was suppressed in 1792. It still retains traces of its former
magnificence, entirely out of character with the wretched buildings which
surround it. The staircase has the pillar at its foot, and the coved ceiling, so
often found in old Italian palaces, and over what were once the chimney pieces,
are two old portraits of Grimaldis. These are now swathed in red calico by the
church authorities, who have also exiled all the other old pictures to a dark
cupboard, and caused the ceilings, which were once covered with frescoes, to he
whitewashed. The noise of the sea, by which the building is begirt on two sides,
is often very disturbing to the service.
Most of the alleys near this lead out to the Port, crammed with picturesque
shipping, or to the Fort, a little yellow wave-beaten castle, only connected
with the mainland by a kind of pier, which blazes like liquid gold against the
blue mountains in the sunset. Hence you have beautiful views on either side; on
the right towards the olive-clad hill sprinkled with English villas, which has
the shining peak of Berceau rising above it, while beyond are the precipices of
the Rochers Rouges, the castle of Ventimiglia on its rock, and brilliant
palm-girt Bordighera on the furthest point of the promontory. On the left are
the port and shipping, with the flat table-topped Mount Agel, the hold crag of
the Tête du Chien, and the Cape St. Martin green with olive gardens and pines,
running far out into the sea. Picturesque bits of costume may sometimes he found
in the port, especially amongst the fishermen, some of whom may chance to have
landed from the smaller and less modernized towns of the Riviera. Their
brilliant scarlet caps, or sometimes only scarlet knobs rising from a broad band
of black or brown, are always picturesque ; but the chief characteristic costume
here is the largo flat white hat, the general head-dress of the female
peasantry, of great use in supporting the heavy burdens, which they carry on
their heads. These hats are composed of straw, very thick and very tightly sewn
together with strong white thread, in such quantities that they have a white
appearance ; they are exceedingly heavy, but they arc also very durable. The
better class of peasantry always wear them adorned with black velvet strings, or
sometimes with stars of black velvet sewn round the top, and all wear a coloured
handkerchief beneath, which is tied under the chin, and which is still worn when
the hat is taken off.
The principal street of Mentone is the Rue St. Michel. Here is situated
Amarante's Bazaar, a most useful place, where almost everything may be obtained,
and with the exception of the native wood-work, at not unreasonable prices.
Almost opposite this, is the family house of the Trencas, on the face of which a
marble slab bears an inscription in memory of the Chevalier Trenca, the most
distinguished modern citizen of Mentone. Behind the Bazaar, is the Maison
D'Adhemar, a dilapidated Palazzo,
