un Voyageur

roquebrune-cap-martin and a brief story about yeats

If I die bury me up there [at Roquebrune] and then in a year’s time when the newspapers have forgotten me, dig me up and plant me in Sligo.  –William Butler Yeats

He disappeared in the dead of winter . . . / What instruments we have agree / The day of his death was a dark cold day.  –W. H. Auden 

And that is what happened.  Yeats died in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in January, 1939 and he was buried there.  His request was to remain in Roquebrune for one year and then his remains moved to Ireland.  Unfortunately, his request became complicated.

A French diplomat was sent to oversee the reburial, but he found that it was “impossible to return the full and authentic remains of Mr Yeats” and asked the local pathologist “to reconstitute a skeleton presenting all the characteristics of the deceased.”  The remains of several other individuals, including an Englishman named Alfred Hollis, were assembled in a coffin and sent to Ireland for reburial.

View from Place des Deux Frères, looking in the direction of Menton

I was unaware of Yeats’s favorite village.  I thought I had visited them all, from Grasse to Menton near the Italian border, all the villages perchés along the Côte d’Azur.  I had taken busses and sometimes trains from Nice into the interior to explore them, going as far as Digne-les-Bains, the little town where Victor Hugo set the opening scenes of Les Misérables.  I thought I had seen them all, and several more than once, and many many times.  (Click on any photo to see it larger and in more detail. Cliquez sur une vignette pour l’agrandir.)

But wait, there’s more!

visiting the ciotadens and ciotadennes of la ciotat

After having moved to Marseille, Julia Child and her husband Paul decided to take a trip along the southern French coast toward Cannes.  They stopped for a picnic near La Ciotat, a small fishing village at the time.  Today, tourists find La Ciotat appealing and maybe it is second only to Cassis for a day trip from Marseille.

One day I joined Paul for a business trip to Cannes, which was about four hours east of Marseille by car. We took six hours, in order to explore the windy side roads. What a beautiful countryside. The hills rising from the coast were all golden with flowering mimosa. In a little beach town called La Ciotat, where Charlie and Paul had visited in the 1920s, we stopped for a picnic lunch on the edge of the sea. We sat in the hot sun on flat rocks in a strong breeze.  —Julia Child, My Life in France.

La Ciotat has some historical significance: it is said that pétanque was invented there, and the Lumière brothers, among the first filmmakers in history, filmed one of the earliest films there L’Arrivée d’un Train en Gare de la Ciotat, or “The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat,” and Napoleon, as a captain of the artillery, had stayed in a house in La Ciotat during the 4th and 5th of September in 1793 while preparing the siege of Toulon.

Port of La Ciotat, France

Taking the #69 bus from Marseille to La Ciotat is simple once one locates the Halte routière Sud bus stop near Place Castellane.  It is on a side street at 11 Rue du Rouet, across from Cantini Medical if one looks on Google Maps.  (Click on any photo to see it larger and in more detail. Cliquez sur une vignette pour l’agrandir.)

I would not recommend taking the train to La Ciotat and expecting a regular, frequent bus service to the town center. But wait, there’s more!

the blues and yellows of martigues

Auguste Renoir traveled to Martigues and painted.  So did Raoul Dufy.  Nicolas de Staël, as well.  Others but less well-known went: Émile Loubon, Félix Ziem, Paul Camille Guigou, Charles Pellegrin, Edouard Ducros, Charles Henri Malfroy and Henry Malfroy, father and son, Antoine Ponchin, Francis Picabia.

I go to Martigues to take photographs.  My efforts with watercolors should remain in the shadows.

I craft the day before I go.  I want the light.  The colors, blues and hues of yellow and some greens, are gorgeous around the ports and inside the village where the courts nap, always quiet, often vacant.

I go in the morning.  I check the Météo in advance.  I want a sunny clear day, otherwise I do not go.  Martigues is an excellent place to take pictures, and I want the light.  (Have I already emphasized that?)  During mid-afternoon, it becomes ‘hazy,’ less defined, and the heat can become unfriendly and difficult, so I leave.

Place Mirabeau, Martigues

Place Mirabeau, Martigues

Place Mirabeau, Martigues

Place Mirabeau, Martigues

When I arrive, I cross the bridge with the solid blue railings and circle around the harbor, or I walk straight into the village.  My favorite plaza is Place Mirabeau, a large, empty quiet space.  I wonder, “Where are the people?”  A café sits in the corner with a few tables and chairs.  What I find astonishing are the bright colors like paint patches covering the walls.  (Click on any photo to see it larger and in more detail. Cliquez sur une vignette pour l’agrandir.) But wait, there’s more!