A SPRING WALK IN PROVENCE

PREFACE

The following pages owe a considerable debt to what others who have been over the same ground have written. Mr. T. A. Cook's[1] "Old Provence" (London: Rivington's, 2 vols.) is a most valuable record of the history of the country as it attaches to the innumerable places of interest to be visited, and his taste and knowledge when brought to bear upon its architectural remains have greatly enhanced my own appreciation of those rich treasures. I know of no book, either in French or English, from which a visitor to Provence could get so much to supplement his own observation, and I have made constant use of it. To Mr. Thomas Okey's[2] "Avignon" in Dent's "Mediæval Towns" series, I also owe a great debt of gratitude. The Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould's "In Troubadour Land" (London: W. H. Allen), though slighter than those two works, contains much interesting information. Mistral's "Mes Origines" (Paris: Libraire Plon), translated from the Provençal, is of course invaluable for its pictures of Provençal life, and from that book and from M. Paul Mariéton's "La Terre Provençale" (Paris: Ollendorf) one can get the best information about the movement of the Félibrige, which has done so much to revivify the old life of Provence. A good deal of desultory information is afforded by M. Louis de Laincel's "La Provence" (Paris: Oudin), and some of the stories that linger on Provençal soil are well told in M. Charles-Roux's "Légendes de Provence" (Paris: Bloud). These books, and the French translation of Mistral's "Mirèio," which is a mine of Provençal lore, besides being a noble poem, have been my chief "authorities," but they have been very usefully supplemented by the various pamphlets to be picked up locally. Some of these have been excellent, and I have made mention of their authors in the following pages.

The photographs are of my own taking, except those very kindly given to me by Mr. Hope Macey, whom I was fortunate enough to come across in Avignon in the course of an expedition that coincided with mine at many points. The one of Mistral's birthplace I bought at Arles, and those of the picture and tapestry at Aix in Paris.[3]

This account of my spring journey has been finished under the shadow of the great war, which might have caused me to look upon the jours de conscription with which I fell in on the early days of the walk in a light much sadder, if I could have foreseen it. I left Provence in a train full of young soldiers going to their homes in various distant parts of France for their Easter furlough. Of those who crowded the carriage in which I travelled from Arles to Lyons the faces come before me as clearly as if I saw them in the flesh, and I can hear their songs and jokes and laughter. They seemed to have been drawn from all classes, but to mix in the readiest frankest comradeship. Whenever I read now of the French in action I think of those light-hearted boys in their holiday mood, and wonder what they are doing, and how many of them are still alive. One has somewhat changed one's view of the toll that France has taken of her manhood since those days that now seem so far off.

Chateau d'Oex, August, 1914.

The world has changed since this book was written, but I hope that the record of an expedition made in the happy days before the war may still be read with pleasure, now that the great shadow is in part removed. I have been over the manuscript again and made a few alterations here and there, but have altered nothing that shows it to have been written five years ago.

Burley, Hants, August, 1919.