Spirit of Place: Letters and Essays on Travel

by Lawrence Durrell

  Among these echoing river-names of Europe that of the Rhône has always been among the first. On the green map of France the rivers curve outwards like the veins on a tobacco-leaf, each with its private history and character, its climate, its particular morphology. Of the four great river-kingdoms of France that of the Rhône is the most various to study and perhaps the most delightful to explore, for in its relatively short course (it is the shortest of the four) it cuts across the two hemispheres which together make up the temperament of France itself: the cold dark north and the sun-dazzled Mediterranean. In a manner of speaking it is France, and if you journey along it you can study it as a sort of summation of the French character and of French history. Long before the Roman roads came into existence Bronze Age man thought of it as “the amber road” towards the south; in the Middle Ages it was perhaps the pilgrim’s chief hazard on the road to Rome. Every Roman army advancing on Gaul had to take it into account. Its bold rushing waters all but defeated the impetuous Hannibal’s first attempt to cross it, washing away his army, terrifying his elephants, and forcing him to make a long detour north in search of a negotiable ford.… These were only a few of its early victories, but they were enough to establish it as a fickle, undependable river—a river which did not allow anyone to take chances with it.

  Like the Rhine it is an intruder into France, for it is glacier-born, its head-springs start at 1,875 metres in the St. Gotthard massif, that “château d’eau de l’Europe.” Perhaps the relative closeness of the two sources, of Rhine and Rhône, has given them a common parentage in Swiss folklore, for we are told that both rivers were invented by an idle and playful dwarf called Rollin. To this day he is supposed to sing a little song describing just how he did so. It goes like this.

  One fine emerald is in my yellow sand

  One pure sapphire is in my little jewel case.

  My emerald melts and becomes the Rhine

  My sapphire dissolves to become the Rhône.

  Perhaps Victor Hugo was unconsciously thinking of the dwarf Rollin when he wrote: “Each of the great Alpine rivers on leaving the mountains has the colour of the sea towards which it is flowing. The Rhône on leaving Geneva is as blue as the Mediterranean. While the Rhine on leaving Lake Constance is as green as the Ocean.”

  One would hardly agree with him, however, if one picked up the southerly reaches of the Rhône, once it has crossed the divide into southern France; for there in the bright glare of the Midi it has turned olive-green, perhaps from the immense quantity of alluvial mud it ferries down into the lowlands with it—over three million tons a year. And what a journey! For in its lower straight course of some 230 miles between Lyons and the Mediterranean it separates the Lyonnais and Languedoc (on the westerly bank) from Dauphiné and Provence. Today of course both roads and railways hug it closely; yet most of the important towns lie on the eastern bank. Here its classical character is firmly established: you will not be able to miss the willow-clad islands, the ancient fortresses which line its banks, rich with the historic associations of the past. Its northern history is a mere record—its southern is a poetic evocation that includes the whole Mediterranean!

  It does not really grow up before it reaches Lyons; it does not become the river which the Provençal poets described as wilder than a charging bull, more fickle than a woman. Perhaps as the valleys open away southward, becoming more spacious and flat, the mere impression of its speed increases. Between Lyons and Aries, for example, its mean level drops by 156 metres as it covers the 282 kilometres between the two famous towns. But by now it is naturalized, has become a thoroughly French river: has forced its way into history and legend, so that it turns up even in such unexpected places as the Letters of Madame de Sévigné. “Ce diantre Rhône,” she calls it, after a journey full of hazards. “This devil of a Rhône!” For by now the piercing irregular winds like the mistral have taken a hand. The mountains and tributaries on either side of it contribute sudden rushes of water after the spring and autumn rains which swell it and cause severe yearly floods. Yes, even today, when science has effectively bridged it, and even harnessed it for power in places—even today it remains capricious and unpredictable, capable of anything. There is no warning usually. The flood rises at an incredible speed. In last year’s floods, the waters rose at the rate of a metre in ten minutes.

  Its childhood, like that of so many great personalities, is relatively uninteresting. It is hardly the same Rhône which so peaceably crosses the canton of Valais between banks which are green and rich: Alpine, glacier-fed vegetation. But after two hundred and ninety kilometres it swerves out of Switzerland and comes up against the granite hefts of the Jura Range. A narrow gorge allows it to burst its way through into France at last, where it weaves west by south, curling round towards Lyons. Its only tributary here is the Ain which propels it onward with ever-gathering momentum.

  The landscapes of the river’s northern course have a particular splendour and variety, for though the mountains still etch themselves like drypoints upon the cool sky nevertheless the valleys begin to roll and curve, to open more spaciously towards the west and south. The long curving rides of the forests rise and fall with them, and the villages bury themselves in their folds like secrets. It is one of the richest corners of France as far as productivity is concerned for there are many rivers which traverse it in the same general direction. It enjoys all the abundance of a landscape rich in water; a fruitful soil that can be worked, moulded and patterned by the husbandman. It goes without saying that the cuisine is famous for it draws its raw materials from several counties, but the chief characteristic is perhaps the fact that butter and cream are used very liberally in the more famous dishes. Here the determined traveller should screw his courage to the sticking point and try grenouilles à la crème, or escargots. The trivial inhibitions of the foreign stomach will be swept away at once. As for the severely orthodox who cannot look upon such fare without blenching, they should remember the peculiar excellence of the fish from these mountain rivers and hidden lakes and stick to trout or brochet—or at least sample the famous poulardes rôties from the nearby county of Bresse. Famous experiences such as these may be enjoyed on the very banks of the Rhône at points like Seyssel or Bellegarde, where the river flows smoothly, serenely, and gives no hint of its future caprices.

  Nor is this talk of food out of place—for the serious trencherman will not be able to traverse this country without emotion: without whispering to himself the magical name of Brillat-Savarin, the patron saint of gourmets. He came from these parts, and indeed there is hardly a little restaurant where you will not come upon someone bearing a marked resemblance to the great man, full of face and high of colour, with a flowing napkin tucked into his collar. (“L’abdomen est un peu majestueux,” to quote the words of the Master himself.) This is the landscape in which to read slowly, lingeringly, those flowing periods in La Physiologie du Goût which have transformed the mere act of eating into a philosophy. What a country, and what a man! Brillat-Savarin came from fabulous, immortal stock. The reader must remember that his great-aunt died at the age of ninety-three while drinking a glass of vieux Virieu; while one of his sisters, two months before her hundredth birthday, uttered her last words—words which are graven in the heart of every true gastronome. They were “Vite, apportez moi le dessert, je sens que je vais passer.” (Quick, bring in the dessert, I feel I’m going.)

  But it is at Lyons that the Rhône comes of age, so to speak: has its first real love-affair with the quiet-flowing Saône, a river almost as wide but only half as swift. The point where they join hands below the town was always considered sacred in ancient times. But the two rivers at their junction are really responsible for the character of this great industrial city. Lyons has always been the hinge between the two climates and the two cultures of France, and while the ebb and flow of history has changed the disposition and architecture of the town over and over again, nothing has ever managed to alter its influence as a catalyst, a transformer
between the hot-blooded southern Frenchman and his more reserved northern brother. Even in Roman times, as today, Lyons was the natural axis of the European road-system which Agrippa planned—in an age when it took one thirty days to traverse Gaul from the Pas de Calais to Marseilles. Today the axis still holds good for the modern road and rail system which nets eastern France. All roads lead to Lyons, and no wise traveller will complain for this great city is also the axis of good eating—the very midriff of haute cuisine, as it were. Opinions have always differed about the climate of Lyons, yes; even among Frenchmen. But … you will not find a gourmet in France who has not made the sacred pilgrimage called the Circuit du Beaujolais, for the wine-country of that famous name lies just north of Lyons, and is easily visited by the ardent wine-prover. No traveller of taste can afford to ignore the experience, and if follow the Rhône we must … why, it will not be without many a tender glance over the shoulder at this incomparable mulberry landscape with its verdant rolling valleys and uninhibited wines.

  As for Lyons itself, the second city of France, despite the splendour of its historic monuments, its great picture gallery, its magnificent squares and bridges, there is something not very inspiriting about its atmosphere. This is perhaps due to the river-mist which so often seems to hang over it, hazing up its sharp outlines. Despite the excellence of its cuisine. Myself I have always remembered the description of Daudet and found it not inapt. “Strange town!” he writes. “I remember a low-hanging sky the colour of soot, a perpetual mist rising from the two rivers. It never seems to actually rain. It mists over; and in the flatness of this wet atmosphere the walls weep, the pavements sweat, the balustrades of the staircases stick to one’s fingers. The people, too, in their way seem to reflect this grey humidity; yellowish in colouring, with sleepy eyes, and with lazy dawdling accents which draw out the long syllables of words.…” No traveller will repeat these words to a Lyonnais without provoking the passionate cry: “Unjust! Daudet was a blasted southerner. How could he appreciate our city?”

  But there is much to reconcile one apart from the food, and the industrious and inventive people of Lyons are right not to pay too much attention to sun-drunk southerners. The history of the town has laid its mark upon so many arts and industries—from fine printing to silk—that really it should be exonerated for its sad climate. Here, after all, in some little bookshop you might actually stumble upon a bundle of medieval almanacs which provided Rabelais with an immortal pattern for his book! Or better still, if by hazard you find yourself on the banks of the Saône at dusk, hunt out the little marionette theatre (30 du Quai Saint Antoine) and spend an evening watching the exquisite Théâtre Guignol at work! This famous local Punch and Judy show dates from 1808. Yes, Lyons has its charms. It has in fact always been a favoured town owing to its unique location. The Romans were perhaps the first to fully recognize the fact—if we are to judge by the fantastic engineering feats they performed to bring water to it: struggles which resulted in a flow of a hundred thousand cubic metres a day!

  Until comparatively recent times the Rhône currents presented a unique problem for the heavy haulage traffic (horse-drawn) which plied between Lyons and Aries. Who will say that the Lyonnais are not inventive as well as industrious? The first conquest of the Rhône currents by a steamboat was here, and the first steam-powered boat was Lyonnais in conception and design. De Jouffroy of Lyons built it and after several trials made his triumphal attack on the harsh cross currents of the river in the sight of ten thousand cheering spectators who lined the banks. He christened the animal “the pyroscaphe” but even in the old pictures of this memorable exploit it is recognizably the grandfather of the Mississippi steam-boat (though it is only forty-six metres in length, and of 120 tons burthen). Nor is this a mere metaphor. This proud day in Lyons indeed determined the future of river-traffic in America for de Jouffroy’s triumph reached the ears of the brilliant American inventor Fulton who was in France, and actually working along the same lines of thought. Following rapidly upon de Jouffroy he had several models built for him and tested them on the Seine in 1803. By 1806 he was satisfied with his tests and returned to America with his successful prototype, an eighteen horse-power river boat which was to inaugurate the first regular service between Albany and New York! No Lyonnais can listen to the strains of “OF Man River” today without a thrill of fraternal pride. Unfortunately, however, this great invention was more easily exploitable in the new world than in the French Midi, though for a short while the old-fashioned river traffic was superseded by it on the lower reaches of the Rhône. Yet the final death blow to the old river-teams with their strings of thirty and forty horses was in fact the steam-engine. The railway was not far off.

  So much for history. The traveller down the Rhône will certainly have more than his share of it, for the great river seems to traverse the richest corners of European history in its arrow-flight to the south. The fine roads leading south from Lyons echo its sweeps and curves, and this is a corner in which to linger for you are still in a relatively northern landscape with its verdant valleys and fine woodlands. It is only at Valence that suddenly, like a verse of Theocritus spoken in the mind, the olive-trees begin—the ageless grey silver trees of Pallas Athene. No, here you are still in sunny mulberry country. For some reason or other it does not seem much frequented. Yet Vienne, with its astonishing warren of medieval streets, its weird castle, and the lovely Corinthian temple, is worth lingering over, for it is really the cradle of Christianity in the West. It should be of interest, too, to diplomats for it was to Vienne that Pontius Pilate, the patron saint of the order, was exiled after his term of service in Judaea! At evening it is particularly entrancing when the blueness of the shadows, the round-tiled overhanging roofs, and the many-pronged mulberries planted to feed the silk manufactories of Lyons, the dusty plains around it—everything conspires to remind one that one is moving southwards towards the heat of the Midi.

  Le Chemin du Soleil, as it is known to travellers, rolls south from Vienne, through the rich plains around Ampuis towards Condrieu, along the willow-fringed banks of the river, through vineyards whose crops bear the proud names of vintages known the world over. From Vienne to Condrieu is only twelve kilometres but it is one of the most delightful and unfrequented stretches of the river for the landscape here hangs breathlessly suspended between the two worlds; it is a temperate zone so to speak between the white dusty heat of Provence and the misty verdant richness of a more northerly clime. It is a country, not only of vines, but also of cherries and apricots and pears—their frail blooms in the early spring turn every corner of it into Japanese water-colours of breathless distinction. Alas! how brief the flowering is, lasting for perhaps a fortnight at most, at the end of February, but how unforgettable.

  Condrieu has few monuments of interest but it is a name which has a distinct echo for Frenchmen, for it used to be the headquarters of those bands of whiskered fishermen who manned the great barges on the Rhône. It is called la patrie des nautes, and Mistral’s great poem of the Rhône has left us an unforgettable picture of the river-life as it was lived before steam ousted the horse. His poem, indeed, is the traveller’s source-book for the ancient life of the river, and his central character Maître Apian is a character of Chaucerian dimensions. His is the most famous of the river haulage-teams, and Mistral simply transcribes the old river-sailor’s memoirs in unforgettable verse. Maître Apian worked a team of forty horses, of great massive Charolais stock, and each of his convoys ferried about four hundred tons of goods up and down river. In summer, when the river was relatively low, such a convoy took twenty days to reach Lyons from Aries; in winter when the Rhône “swelled like a muscle” it took thirty-five to forty days. These were old-fashioned barges with flared poops where the hammocks of the crew swung to the slow rhythm of the tugging currents. In the days of Apian, conditions on the river had changed little since the Middle Ages. His barges, for example, visited the famous Fair of Beaucaire, carrying “the magnificent silks of Lyo
ns, worked leather-ware, and bales of hemp.” On his return journey northward he loaded “the fine-eared wheat of Toulouse, the wines of the Languedoc and sea-salt of the Camargue, the famous soaps of Marseilles, and Provençal olive-oil.” The going upstream was hard enough, but coming down again was harder because more dangerous. The swift river carried them down from Lyons to Aries in only three days. Frequently they ran aground on the shifting sandbanks, while the bridges constituted serious hazards. To cross Pont St. Esprit was like shooting the rapids when there was a strong mistral blowing. It was a rugged tradition to which Maître Apian belonged, and it died hard in the thirties of the last century. But Condrieu has not forgotten, and one of the proud boasts of the town is that it was the rivermen of Condrieu who first followed Louis to the Crusades. Maître Apian was simply the last heir of a great tradition which de Jouffroy of Lyons killed with his “pyroscaphe.”

  These, then, are the appropriate thoughts with which to pass a quiet hour on the banks of the Rhône at Condrieu drinking a glass of the famous local wine to the memory of Maître Apian.

  Tournon, Valence, Montelimar and you are now in a new country, the kingdom of the olive and the cypress. Here the Mediterranean begins with its characteristic cuisine based on garlic and olive-oil, its concentration on herbs—saffron, thyme, fennel, sage, black pepper. Here, too, the apéritif changes to pastis—an aniseed drink which is a mild second-cousin to the brain-storming northern Pernod. This, too, is the territory in which to make your first tentative exploration of the little rosé wines which are (with the famous exceptions like Tavel) hardly known abroad. Under the dusty glare of the Provençal sunlight this new diet seems supremely appropriate; appropriate too that the accents begin to change from chicken and mutton to fish—which comes to its apotheosis in the great bouillabaisse cauldrons of the port of Marseilles! Even the most unobservant of travellers will have noticed already the steep low pitch of the roofs, the warm rose of Marseilles tiles, the ever-present black beret which characterizes the south; and more than one will stop in the shade of a plane-tree to watch the obsessional game of boules which gives idleness in Provence a very special flavour of timelessness. Provence! This new world is a pre-Christian one, with its mouldering monuments of the Roman occupation, its sculptured reliefs and shattered columns; even the bullfights you will see in the ancient arenas of Aries and Nîmes will remind you that the parentage of this ancient ritual goes back to Crete and is pictured on the Minoan vases. Long before Christian martyrs were thrown to the wild animals in these stately arenas, the god Mithras was worshipped or perhaps propitiated by the ceremonial bull-slaying of his devotees.