Leading the Blind Read online

  The cries of the dying; the shrieks of those who were half-buried under the ruins; the wild terror with which others, who were still able, attempted to make their escape; the despair of fathers, mothers, and husbands, bereft of those who were dearest to them, – these formed altogether a scene of horror such as can but seldom occur in the history of the calamities of the human race. Amid that fearful scene, instances of the most heroic courage and of the most generous affection were displayed. Mothers, regardless of their own safety, rushed into every danger to snatch their children from death. Conjugal and filial affection prompted deeds not less desperate and heroic. But no sooner did the earthquake cease than the poor wretches who had escaped began to feel the influence of very different passions. When they returned to visit the ruins, to seek out the situation of their fallen dwellings, to inquire into the fate of their families, to procure food and collect some remains of their former fortunes, such as found their circumstances the most wretched became suddenly animated with rage, which nothing but wild despair could inspire. The distinction of ranks and the order of society were disregarded, and property eagerly violated. Murder, rapine, and lawless robbery reigned among the smoking ruins …

  In 1848, when the people of Messina rebelled against the king of Naples, the place was mercilessly bombarded, and the Neapolitan forces on entering the town burned whole streets, committing ‘the most unheard-of ravages. Some of the details of their cruelties are really too horrible to be cited.’ The carnage was only stopped when French and British warships standing off-shore – in spite of neutrality having been imposed on them by their governments – intervened in the name of humanity to stop the slaughter. And then in 1908 came the worst disaster of all, when the same earthquake which flattened Reggio killed 96,000 people.

  On landing at Messina, Hare tells us that it is almost useless to ask one’s way. ‘One is sure to be answered by – “Who knows?” or with the assertion in reply to any remonstrance, that a housewife has no need to know the way anywhere but to her church or her fountain.’ Should you care to go along the coast to the lighthouse at Cape Pelorus, ‘travellers are beset by the rough, noisy inhabitants of the village, and a dirty begging crowd accompanies them to the lighthouse, and prevents their having any enjoyment’.

  As for the travelling in the interior, Bartlett says, with echoes of Charlotte Eaton: ‘I shall spare the reader a detailed account of our progress from Syracuse to Girgenti, in which we made full proof of the deplorable filth and misery of the interior of the island. Suffice it to say that we passed the first night at Palazzolo, the second at Biscari, and the third at Terranova. The first was bad, the second worse, and the third so utterly unsupportable, that to escape the onslaught of the vermin I ordered the mules in the middle of the night and departed. No sooner on horseback, however, than the sense of fatigue returned with increased force, and one rides on half asleep, and at every moment, ready to drop, until the rising sun awakens a forced and feverish activity; and so one goes forward the whole day under the blazing heat.’

  Thirty years later the hotels in the larger towns of the island were said by Hare to be excellent, but that if the traveller takes the train to Taormina he will suffer much at the hands of railway officials, ‘who by night thrust emigrants into first and second class carriages’. He also reports that the recent abolition of the rural police has brought insecurity, ‘causing an exaggerated report of brigandage, which has consequently fallen upon the less populated districts, and has deterred most Italian travellers from prolonging their rambles into a country which is nevertheless full of the elements of enjoyment’.

  In a later edition he warns travellers, regarding the main cities, ‘not to take the same liberties in the suburbs that he may take with impunity at Florence or Rome: though, for that matter, the lonely or the rash visitor may find himself victimised unpleasantly in those of any large town.’

  In climbing the volcanic Mount Etna: ‘The deepest ashes are very fatiguing, and most visitors are grievously overwhelmed by sickness, induced more by the terrible cold than the noxious gases, before reaching the top, where the guides will often cover them up in the warm ashes till they recover.’ At the summit: ‘The desolation is supreme – all vegetation has long ceased: there is no sound from beast, bird, or insect. In later times Etna has been supposed to be a place of torment for Anne Boleyn, perverter of the faith in the person of its “Defender”!’

  Of all the perils, however, perhaps the greatest was that which at one time threatened in the catacombs of Syracuse. Hare quotes from Wanderungen in Sicilien by a German traveller, Gregorovius. ‘Twenty years ago a professor, with six pupils, to whom he wished to explain the wonders of the city of tombs, was lost there. They wandered long and despairingly through the horrible labyrinth in search of the entrance till they died of exhaustion, and they were found lying side by side, four miles distant from the gate. Since that time holes for light and air have been pierced in the galleries, through which the dubious daylight shimmers mysteriously into this fearful Hades.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE SOUTH OF FRANCE

  Even as early as 1848 Murray had no illusions about the charms of the South of France, nor did he wish his readers to have any, and his comments are repeated in all later editions:

  The Englishman who knows the S. of France only from books – who there finds Provence described as the cradle of Poetry and Romance, the paradise of the Troubadours, a land teeming with oil, wine, silk, and perfumes, has probably formed in his mind a picture of a region beautiful to behold, and charming to inhabit. Nothing, however, can differ more widely from reality. Nature has altogether an arid character; – in summer a sky of copper, an atmosphere loaded with dust, the earth scorched rather than parched by the unmitigated rays of the sun, which overspread every thing with a lurid glare. The hills rise above the surface in masses of bare rock, without any covering of soil, like the dry bones of a wasted skeleton. Only on the low grounds, which can be reached by irrigation, does any verdure appear. There is a sombre, melancholy sternness in the landscape of the South. The aching eye in vain seeks to repose on a patch of green, and the inhabitant of the North would not readily purchase the clear cloudless sky of Provence with the verdure of a misty England. Neither the bush-like vine nor the mop-headed mulberry, stripped of its leaves for a great part of the summer, nor the tawny green olive, whose foliage looks as though powdered with dust, will at all compensate in a picturesque point of view for forests of oak, ash, and beech.

  After several hundred more words of this, he treats us to a disquisition on the character of the people. ‘Their fervid temperament knows no control or moderation; hasty and headstrong in disposition, they are led by very slight religious or political excitement, on sudden impulses, to the committal of acts of violence unknown in the North. They are rude in manner, coarse in aspect, and harsh in speech, their patois being unintelligible, even to the French themselves, not unlike the Spanish dialect of Catalonia. From loudness of tone, and energy of gesture, they appear always as though going to fight when merely carrying on an ordinary conversation. The traveller who happens to fall into the hands of the ruffianly porters at Avignon will be able to judge if this be an exaggerated picture.’

  Murray goes on to say that anyone who thinks the climate of England is bad should try that of the South of France. ‘The variations between summer and winter are marked by the dead olive, and vine trees killed by the frost; and the torrid influence of summer by the naked beds of torrents left without water. In many years not a drop of rain falls in June, July, and August, and the quantity is commonly very small: the great heats occur between the middle of July and the end of September, yet even in summer scorching heat alternates with the most piercing cold; and the vicissitudes are so sudden and severe, that strong persons, much more invalids, should beware how they yield to the temptation of wearing thin clothing, and of abandoning cloaks and great coats.’

  If this were the case (and having lived some years in
the South of France I can say that there is at least some truth in Murray’s assessment), why did people go there in such numbers? Especially when they went on to read that another plague in that part of the world was that of

  mosquitoes, which, to an inhabitant of the North, unaccustomed to their venomous bite, will alone suffice to destroy all pleasure in travelling. They appear in May, and last sometimes to November; and the only good which the mistral effects is that it modifies the intensely hot air of summer, and represses, momentarily, these pestilential insects. They are not idle by day, but it is at night that the worn-out traveller needing repose is most exposed to the excruciating torments inflicted by this cruel insect. Woe to him who for the sake of coolness leaves his window open for a minute; attracted by the light they will pour in by myriads. It is better to be stifled by the most oppressive heat than to go mad. Even closed shutters and a mosquito curtain, with which all beds in good inns are provided, are ineffectual in protecting the sleeper. A scrutiny of the walls, and a butchery of all that appear, may lessen the number of enemies; but a single one effecting an entry, after closing the curtains and tucking up the bed-clothes with the utmost care, does all the mischief. The sufferer awakes in the middle of the night in a state of fever, and adieu to all further prospect of rest. The pain inflicted by the bites is bad enough, but it is the air of triumph with which the enemy blows his trumpet, the tingling, agonising buzzing which fills the air, gradually advancing nearer and nearer, announcing the certainty of a fresh attack, which carries the irritation to the highest pitch.

  I have never read a more perfect description of their tactics and torments, and Murray goes on to tell us that the pain and swellings last for several days, and that there is no remedy but patience. ‘The state of the blood at that time, however, considerably modifies or increases the amount and duration of suffering. It is said to be the female only which inflicts the sting.’

  Another danger is from scorpions, which are sometimes brought into the house with the firewood, and might also be found ‘in the folds of the bed-curtains or sheets. Instances, however, of persons being bitten by this foul insect are very rare indeed: from its nature it is fearful, and, when discovered, endeavours to run away and hide itself.’

  Having fed us the disadvantages first, in no uncertain terms, Murray brings out a somewhat sweeter pill: ‘There is one little corner of Provence which combines remarkable picturesque scenery with a climate so serene and warm, and well protected from the injurious blasts, that its productions are almost tropical in their nature. This is a narrow strip bordering on the blue Mediterranean, extending from Toulon to Nice. It is a favoured region, the true garden of Provence, the real paradise of the Troubadours, sheltered from the injurious mistral …’

  In such early days the approach to the South of France was on steamboats down the Rhône, being ‘almost without exception managed by English engineers’, starting every morning from Lyons. The inn at Tain was classified as ‘middling’, and one downriver at Valence as ‘not at all bad, with some pretensions to English comforts, but rather dear. Try here the sparkling St. Peray, an excellent wine, but inferior to Champagne.’ There was also a boarding house, kept by two English Protestant ladies.

  Later, one could go by railway, and in 1890 the inn at Tain was described as ‘a mere cabaret’. If one survived the rigours of the journey, there was, near Avignon, ‘a well-managed Hydropathic establishment and pleasant boarding house, in a handsome château. Part of it is of the 14th century. It is under the direction of Dr. Masson, and may be found a pleasant half-way house for invalids going to or returning from a more southern climate.’

  In whatever town our traveller stops Murray never fails to inform him of the unpleasantnesses which took place during the French Revolution. At Avignon, Marshall Brune, though Lord Exmouth’s passport was in his pocket, ‘was murdered by an infuriated mob of Provençal royalists, who, on receiving news of the Battle of Waterloo, and instigated by hatred of Napoleon, rose upon their adversaries, and committed all sorts of atrocities’.

  On another page we are treated to an account of the infamous Glacière: ‘The tower, so called from an ice-house in a garden near it, stands close to the tower of the Inquisition. Into its depths were hurled no less than 60 unfortunate and innocent persons, females as well as men, by a band of democrats in Oct. 1791. The prisoners were dragged from their cells, and poignarded or struck down; but some of the victims were precipitated from above before life was yet extinct; and to finish the deed, quick-lime in large quantities was thrown down upon the mangled heap of dead and dying.’

  Romance, as if the opposite face of the coin to death, was always well represented in Victorian guidebooks: ‘Continuing along the Rue de Lices, we shall find the last relic of the Church of the Cordeliers, in which Petrarch’s Laura, a lady of the family of De Sade, was buried. The church, destroyed at the Revolution, is now reduced to a fragment of the tower and side walls.’

  Arthur Young, at the end of the previous century, described Laura’s tomb as ‘nothing but a stone in the pavement, with a figure engraved on it, partly effaced, surrounded by an inscription in Gothic letters, and another on the wall adjoining, with the armorial bearings of the De Sade family’. Murray adds that this ‘has entirely disappeared, having been broken open, and the contents of the tomb scattered, by the Revolutionists’.

  Vaucluse, where John Stuart Mill stayed, was the site of Petrarch’s retirement, and ‘the Hôtel de Petrarque et Laure is rather a café frequented by Sunday excursionists. Formerly the landlord was a good cook, and, judging from the Strangers’ Book, the fried trout and eels, soupe à la bisque, and coquille d’écrevisse, made a far deeper impression on some visitors than the souvenir of Laura; Petrarch himself has mentioned the fish of the Sorgues with praise.’

  Going southwest into the Languedoc – then, as now, the ‘wrong’ side of the Rhône – we may refer to the impressions of Charlotte Eaton, the intrepid lady-traveller quoted earlier. She found that part of France looking dull, uninteresting and neglected: ‘… the want of wood, of corn, of pasture, of animals, and even of birds; its general desertion both by the proprietor and the peasant, and the absence of life and human habitation, have a most melancholy effect, and accord but too well with the heartless and discontented appearance of the people, who herd together in villages composed of long, narrow streets of miserable hovels, the filth and wretchedness of which I shall never forget. Not a single neat cottage by the way-side, or rural hamlet, or snug farm-house is to be seen; even the château is rare, and when it appears, it is in a state of dilapidation and decay, and the very abode of gloom; not surrounded with pleasure-grounds, or woods, or parks, or gardens, but with a filthy village appended to its formal court-yard. How often did the cheerful cottages, and happy country seats of our smiling country, recur to my mind as I journeyed through the bepraised, but dreary scenes of Languedoc and Provence!’

  Nîmes was the birthplace of Nicot, Murray says, a physician who first introduced tobacco into France (called after him nicotiana, or nicotine); and of Guizot, the historian, ‘whose father, an advocate, was guillotined during the Reign of Terror’.

  Montpellier is thought little enough of as regards climate since, though ‘it bears a name familiar as the type of salubrity and mildness of climate, the place will not in reality answer the expectations of those who seek either a soft air or a beautiful position. Indeed it is difficult to understand how it came to be chosen by the physicians of the North as a retreat for consumptive patients; since nothing is more trying to weak lungs than its variable climate … Though its sky be clear, its atmosphere is filled with dust, which must be hurtful to the lungs.’

  The sad story is told of how Mrs Temple, the adopted daughter of Young, the poet (no relation of Arthur Young the gentleman farmer) died suddenly at Montpellier, ‘at a time when the laws which accompanied the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, backed by the superstition of a fanatic populace, denied Christian burial to Protestants. Nar
cissa was buried at Lyons, eventually.’ One can imagine the bereaved man travelling from place to place with his daughter’s body in the coach, searching for a decent grave for her interment.

  Further down the road, the Hôtel du Nord at Béziers was declared by Murray in 1848 to be ‘filthy in the extreme and exorbitant’. At that place we are reminded of the fanaticism of the Middle Ages, ‘of the horrible slaughter of 1209, which followed the memorable siege by the Crusading army, raised at the call of the Church of Rome, to exterminate the heretical Albigenses, who were numerous in this devoted city. The inhabitants refusing to yield, the crusaders carried the city by storm, led by the Bishop Reginald of Montpellier and the Abbot of Citeaux, who had prepared a list of the proscribed victims. In the confusion of the assault, however, the soldiers were perplexed to distinguish the heretics from the orthodox, whereupon the abbot is said to have exclaimed: “Kill all! The Lord will know his own.” The number massacred amounted to 60,000 according to some historians, though the Abbot of Citeaux himself modestly avows that he could only slay 20,000.’

  When Henry James visited the region (A Little Tour of France), carrying his ‘faithful Murray’, he slept in a bad bed at Carcassonne, but a worse one at Narbonne, where the hotel was ‘crowded from cellar to attic’, causing him to spend the night in a room at the local blacksmith’s. Breakfasting at the Hôtel de France next morning, ‘the dirty little inn and Narbonne at large seemed to me to have the infirmities of the south without its usual graces … At ten o’clock in the morning there was a table d’hôte for breakfast – a wonderful repast, which overflowed into every room and pervaded the whole establishment. I sat down with a hundred hungry marketers, fat, brown, greasy men, with a good deal of the rich soil of the Languedoc adhering to their hands and boots. I mention the latter articles because they almost put them on the table. It was very hot, and there were swarms of flies; the viands had the strongest odour … which my companions devoured in large quantities. A man opposite to me had the dirtiest fingers I ever saw; a collection of fingers which in England would have excluded him from a farmers’ ordinary.’