Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia Part 16

CHAP. XXII.

_Ajaccio.-College-Fesch.-Reminiscences of the Buonaparte Family.-Excursion in the Gulf.-Chapel of the Greeks.-Evening Scenes.-Council-General of the Department.-Statistics.-State of Agriculture in Corsica-Her Prospects._

Sunday morning we attended high-ma.s.s at the cathedral of Ajaccio, a building of the sixteenth century, in the Italian style, having a belfry and dome, with the interior richly decorated. The service was well performed, there being a fine-toned organ, and the music of the ma.s.s well selected. The congregation was numerous, the girls' school especially. I was struck with the pensive cast of features in many of the girls, so like the Madonnas of the Italian masters. There were formerly six dioceses in Corsica, Mariana being the princ.i.p.al; for many years they have been all administered by the Bishop of Ajaccio, who is at present a suffragan of the Archbishop of Aix, in France.

After service, we called on one of the professors of the _College-Fesch_, to whom we had letters of introduction. This college and the _Seminaire_ are the best buildings in Ajaccio, both being finely situated fronting the sea. The _Seminaire_ is confined exclusively to the education of theological students intended for the clerical orders.

In the other, founded and endowed by Cardinal Fesch, the course of study is that generally pursued in the French colleges. The cardinal appears to have had more affection for his native place than any other member of the Bonaparte family, giving a proof of it in this n.o.ble foundation. He also bequeathed to his native place a large collection of pictures, few of them, however, of much merit. His remains are deposited with those of Madame Letizia, his sister, in a chapel of the cathedral of Ajaccio, having been brought from Rome; where I recollect seeing him in 1819,-short and portly in person, with a mild and good-humoured expression of countenance. He had been a kind guardian of the young Bonapartes, and carefully administered the small property they inherited.

The _College-Fesch_ is a large building, with s.p.a.cious lecture-rooms, long and lofty corridors, and a yard for exercise; the windows of the front looking out on the Gulf of Ajaccio and the mountains beyond. The professor's apartments had all the air of the rooms of a college fellow and tutor in one of our universities, carpets _et aliis mutandis_; only they were more airy and s.p.a.cious. There are fifteen professors, of whom the Abbate Porazzi is one of the most distinguished. We were indebted to him for many good offices during our stay at Ajaccio. The number of students at this time was 260. They appeared to be of all ranks and ages; some of them grown men.

Everything here has the southern character. We find rows of lemon-trees on the Corso; and the cactus, or Indian fig, flourishes in the environs,-the bright oleander thriving in the open air. The heat was excessive, my thermometer standing at 80 at noon, in the shade of an airy room. From the Corso, a short street leads into the market-place, a square, bounded on one side by the port, and embellished by a fountain.

During the last year it has been further ornamented by a statue of the first Napoleon, of white marble, standing on a granite pedestal, and facing the harbour. Concealed during the reigns of the restored Bourbons, its erection was a homage to the rising fortunes of the President of the French Republic. Ajaccio, being the modern capital of Corsica, the _chef-lieu_ of the department, and seat of the _prefetture_ and administration, is more French in habits and feeling than any other town in the island. But even here, I apprehend, there has never been much enthusiasm for the Bonapartes.[34] Among the native Corsicans, Pascal Paoli is the national hero.

We visited, of course, the house in which the first Napoleon was born, standing in a little solitary court dignified with the name of the _Piazza Lucrezia_, near the market-place. It has been often described.

Uninhabited, and without a vestige of furniture, except some faded tapestry on the walls, the desolate and gloomy air of the birthplace of the great emperor struck me even more than the deserted apartments at Longwood, from which his spirit took its flight. There, sheaves of corn and implements of husbandry still gave signs of human life, singularly as they contrasted with the relics of imperial grandeur recently witnessed by the homely apartments. A man, born in the first year of the French Revolution, and who has followed the career of its "child and champion" with the feelings common to most Englishmen, can have no Napoleonic sympathies; yet, without forgetting the atrocities, the selfishness, and the littleness which stained and disfigured that career, it is impossible that such scenes could be contemplated by a thoughtful mind, not only without profound reflection on the vicissitudes of life, but without a full impression of the genius and force of character which lifted the Corsican adventurer to the dangerous height from whence he fell.

One afternoon we hired a boat in the harbour, and sailed down the Gulf of Ajaccio. This fine inlet, opening to the south-west, is from three to four leagues in length and breadth, and forms a basin of about twelve leagues in circ.u.mference, from the northern extremity, where the old city stood, to its outlet between the _Isles Sanguinaires_ and the Capo di Moro, on the opposite coast. A range of mountains, considerably inferior in elevation to the central chain from which they ramify, rises almost from the sh.o.r.e, and stretches along the northern side of the gulf. The other coast is more indented, and swells into the ridges of the Bastelica, embracing the rich valley of Campo Loro (_Campo del'

Oro_), washed by the Gravone. The Gulf of Ajaccio, like many others, has been compared to the Bay of Naples; but, I think, without much reason, except for the colouring lent by a brilliant and transparent atmosphere to both sea and land. In the case of Ajaccio, the effects are heightened by a still more southern climate, and the grander scale of the mountain scenery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HARBOUR OF AJACCIO.]

There were only a few small vessels, employed in the coasting trade, in the port. We rowed round the mole, under the frowning bastions of the citadel, a regular work covering a point stretching into the bay; and then hoisting sail, stood out into the gulf. The wind was too light to admit of our gaining its entrance; we sailed down it, however, for four or five miles in the mid-channel, the rocky islands at the northern entrance gradually opening; one crowned with the tower of a lighthouse, another with a village on its summit. The coast to our right was clothed with the deep verdure of the ever memorable Corsican shrubbery, breathing aromatic odours as we drifted along: otherwise, it appeared desolate; not a village appeared, and the barren and rugged mountain chain towered above.

Finding that we made but little progress, the boat was steered for a little reef of rocks on the northern sh.o.r.e, and landing, we dismissed the boatman, determining to walk back to Ajaccio along the water's edge.

Meanwhile we sat down on the rocks while my companion sketched.

Presently I strolled up to a little chapel, standing by the side of the road which winds round the gulf towards _les Isles Sanguinaires_. A simple and chaste style of Italian architecture distinguished the white _facade_, rising gracefully to a pediment, crowned with a cross; pilasters, supporting arches, divided the portico beneath into three compartments, the central one forming the entrance. The door was closed, but the interior was visible through a _grille_ at the side. The nave was paved with blue and white squares, and marble steps led up to the sanctuary, forming, with two side chapels, a Greek cross. There was no ornament, no furniture, except two or three low chairs for kneeling.

Under the portico was a marble tablet, inscribed in good Latin, to the pious memory of a Pozzo di Borgo[35], who restored the chapel in 1632. I read on another tablet:-

_"Per gli Orfanelli dei Marinari Naufragati."_

Under an arch supported by pillars of green marble, a lamp was feebly glimmering, fed perhaps by the offerings of loving mothers and fond wives who here offered their vows for the safe return of those dear to them.

The sun was setting behind the islands at the mouth of the gulf, perfect stillness reigned, broken only by a gentle ripple on the granite rocks forming ledges from the water's edge to the base of the chapel. Struck with its singular interest, and wishing to learn more about it, on returning to my friend, who was still sketching, I found him in conversation with some loungers from the town. They could only tell us that it was called "The Chapel of the Greeks," and, laughing, turned on their heels when I pursued my inquiries. Did they suppose that we Northerns had no sentiment in our religion, or had they none themselves?

I afterwards heard two traditions respecting the Chapel of the Greeks.

One, that it was founded by the remains of a colony from the Morea, who, having been expelled with great loss from their settlement at Cargese, were granted an asylum here;-the other, that the original building was erected, by Greek mariners, in acknowledgment of their escape from shipwreck on this coast.

It would be difficult, I imagine, to find a more favourable point of view, or a happier moment, than that of which my friend availed himself to make the sketch of Ajaccio, which has been selected for the frontispiece of this volume. The gulf was perfectly calm, and of the deepest green and azure, a slight ripple being only discernible where a boat lay in one of the long streams of light reflected from the ma.s.s of orange and golden clouds in which the sun was setting behind the islands; while, to the east, flakes of rosy hue floated in the mid-heaven. The sails of the feluccas, becalmed in the gulf, faintly caught the light, and it gleamed on the houses of Ajaccio, particularly those of the modern town, distinguished by its white walls and red roofs from the old buildings about the cathedral. Behind were sugar-loaf hills; and the mountain-sides across the gulf glowed with the richest purple. Then came gradual changes of colour, softer and deeper hues, till, at last, a steamy veil of mist from seaward stole over the gulf. A faint glimmer from the lighthouse at the entrance of the harbour was scarcely visible in the blaze left behind by the glorious sunset.

The lights began to twinkle from the windows of Ajaccio, and the cathedral bells tolling for the Ave Maria, stole on the ear across the gulf in the silence of the twilight hour. Reluctant to leave the scene, we lingered till it was shrouded from view, and an evening never to be forgotten closed in. Then we wound slowly towards the city along the sh.o.r.e, at the foot of hills laid out in vineyards hedged by the p.r.i.c.kly cactus, or lightly sprinkled with myrtles and cystus, and all those odoriferous plants which now perfumed the balmy night air. Embowered in these, we had remarked some mortuary chapels, the burying-places of Ajaccian families. One of them, high up on the hill-side, was in the form of a Grecian temple; and we now pa.s.sed another, standing among cypresses, close to the sh.o.r.e. Nearer the city, two stone pillars stand at the entrance of an avenue leading up to a dilapidated country-house, formerly the residence of Cardinal Fesch, and where Madame Bonaparte and her family generally spent the summer. Among the neglected shrubberies, and surrounded by the wild olive, the cactus, the clematis, and the almond, is a singular and isolated granite rock, called Napoleon's grotto, once his favourite retreat.

On our return, we found the streets thronged; braziers with roasted chestnuts stood at every corner; strings of mules, loaded with wine casks suspended on each side, were returning from the vineyards; and there was a gay promenade on the Corso-ladies with no covering for their heads but the graceful black _faldetta_, French officers in not very brilliant uniforms, and a sprinkling of ecclesiastics in _soutanes_ and prodigious beavers.

Professor Porazzi took us to the only bookseller's shop in Ajaccio, where we made some purchases. It was a small affair, the book trade being combined with the sale of a variety of miscellaneous articles. The _prefetture_, a handsome building, lately finished, contains a library of 25,000 volumes. We were introduced there to M. Camille Friess, the author of a compendious history of Corsica, who was kind enough to show us some of the archives, of which he has the custody. Among the doc.u.ments connected with the Bonaparte family is a memorial, addressed by Napoleon to the Intendant of Corsica, respecting his mother's right to a garden. I jotted down the beginning and end:-

"_Memoire relative a la pepiniere d'Ajaccio._

"_Letizia Ramolini, veuve de Buonaparte, d'Ajaccio, a l'honneur de vous exposer...._

"_Votre tres humble et tres obeissant serviteur_, "BUONAPARTE[36], _Officier d'Artillerie_.

"_Hotel de Cherbourg_,

"_Rue St. Honore, Paris, le 9 Nov. 1787._"

The claim for a few roods of nursery garden was made by a young man who afterwards distributed kingdoms and princ.i.p.alities! It is said that in the division of some property which fell to the family after he became emperor, his share was an olive-yard in the environs of Ajaccio.

M. Friess obligingly gave me copies of the _proces-verbals_ of the proceedings of the Council-General of the Department for the preceding years. These reports are printed annually, and, I believe, similar ones are made in all the departments of France. Those I possess are models of good arrangement in whatever concerns provincial administration. They have supplied more information on the present state of Corsica and its prospects of improvement than all the books of travel, and works of greater pretensions, it has been my fortune to meet with.

The Council-General, as many of my readers know, is a body elected by the people; each canton, of which there are sixty-one in Corsica, sending representatives in proportion to the population. The _prefet_, who is _ex-officio_ president, opens the session by a speech, in which he reviews the affairs of the department under the heads of finance, public works, education, &c., &c., and presents a budget, with detailed reports on the various branches of administration. All these are printed, with a short _proces-verbal_ of the debates, and the divisions when the Council-General comes to a vote. The proceedings are submitted to the Minister of the Interior, who approves or rejects the proposals made. Virtually, however, although the Council has no power to act on its resolutions until they are confirmed by the central government, whatever relates to the a.s.sessment of taxes, police, roads, and other works, all matters of local interest not only come under discussion in these provincial a.s.semblies, but are shaped and decided by them. The services thus rendered must therefore be very valuable, and it is worth considering whether our over-worked House of Commons might not be relieved of some of its burthens, and the business better done, by similar representative bodies, entrusted with legislative powers so far as concerns matters of local interest. Such a.s.semblies would well accord with our Anglo-Saxon inst.i.tutions. But to give them a fair field, with sufficient weight, impartiality, and importance, a considerable area should be embraced in each jurisdiction. Durham might be united with Yorkshire; the three western counties, Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall, might form a province; North and South Wales, each one. And what a valuable body of statistics would be furnished by an annual report, corresponding with those which have led to these remarks!

We gather some general statistics from these doc.u.ments and other sources.

By the census of 1851, the population of Corsica was 236,251 souls, of whom 117,938 were males, and 118,313 females. All but 54 were Roman Catholics. There were no less than 32,364 proprietors of land. The day-labourers were 34,427; government officials, 1229; clergy, 955; regular troops, _gendarmes_, &c., 5000. The number of students in all the public colleges and schools was from 16,000 to 17,000, of which 15,000 were male, and only from 2000 to 3000 females. The proportion of males frequenting the schools is greater than in France, it being as 137 to 100 in the winter, and 226 to 100 in the summer; while that of the girls is the reverse, being as 12 to 100 in the winter, and 21 to 100 in the summer. This disproportion between male and female scholars in Corsica is very remarkable.

The superficies of the island is estimated at somewhat less than two millions and a quarter of English acres. Of this surface, only a six-hundredth part is, on an average, under cultivation, an area which, it is said, might be doubled. Vast portions of the soil belong to the communes, and measures are in contemplation for their improvement.

Wheat produces, on an average of years, an increase of nine times the seed sown; barley and oats, twelve or thirteen; maize, thirty-eight to forty; and potatoes, twenty.

The rate of daily wages for the year 1851 was fixed by the Council-General at 75 _centimes_ for the towns of Ajaccio and Bastia, and 50 _centimes_ for all the other communes.

Among the most important subjects brought to notice by the _proces-verbal_ of 1851 is the state of agriculture in the island; on which the _Prefet_ finds little to congratulate the Council-General except an increase in the cultivation of lucerne and in the plantations of mulberry-trees. The obstacles to its progress are found in the insecurity of life, the want of inclosures, and the unbounded rights of common enjoyed by the shepherds; in the richest plains being uninhabited, and their distance from the villages; in the pestilential air of these plains, and the want of roads.-A stranger will be disposed to add to this list the indolence of the natives. So far as the obstacles to improvement can be surmounted by judicious legislation and encouragement, the _proces-verbals_ of the Council-General exhibit enlightened ideas far in advance of the opinions and habits of the people; and there is much good sense and right feeling in the observation with which the _Prefet_, in one of his addresses, concludes his statement of the position of affairs:-

"Si la Corse," he says, "devait pa.s.ser subitement a l'etat des civilisations avancees, elle courait risque de perdre dans cette transformation (et ce serait a jamais deplorable) tout ce qu'il y a de primitif, de genereux, d'energetique dans ses murs seculaires. Je n'en citerai qu'un exemple. Le mouvement civilisateur trouve, a certains egards, resistance dans la force des sentiments de famille, dans la cohesion des membres qui la composent. Et, cependant, qui d'entre vous consentirait a acheter les progres de la civilisation au prix du relachement de ces liens sacres qui sont la clef de voute de toute societe organisee?"

Delivered from the scourge of _banditisme_ and the _vendetta_ by severe measures, supposed to be strongly opposed to the popular instinct, and with hopes held out of such further improvement in civilisation as the progress of ideas will admit, Corsica may, perhaps, have no reason to regret that she failed in her long struggles for national independence.

But France will not have performed her duty to this outlying department of the empire till she promotes the manufactures and commerce of the island. It is a part of the protective system to which she clings to discourage all direct foreign trade, just as England formerly engrossed the commerce of her colonies. The result is that the poor Corsicans, compelled to purchase the commodities they require-manufactured goods, colonial produce, and even corn and cattle-in the French market, buy at enormously high prices. The balance of trade is much against them, their annual exports to France being only a million and a half of _francs_, while they import from thence articles of the value of three millions. The present Emperor of France is understood to entertain enlightened views on the subject of free trade; and it is to be hoped that, when he is able to carry them out, Corsica will share in the benefits of an unrestricted commerce.

CHAP. XXIII.

_Leave Ajaccio.-Neighbourhood of Olmeto.-Sollacaro.-James Boswell's Residence there.-Scene in the "Corsican Brothers"

laid there-Quarrel of the Vincenti and Grimaldi.-Road to Sartene.-Corsican Marbles.-Arrive at Bonifacio._

We were quite as well served, and the accommodations were as good, at Ajaccio as in any provincial city of France. They gave us a delicate white wine made in the neighbourhood, an agreeable beverage, which, we thought, resembled _Chablais_; and a _confiture_ of cherries preserved in jelly, which was exquisite. I had told the story of our adventure with the poor girls from Corte to the mistress of the house, and, on Bridget's appearing the day after our arrival to claim her wardrobe, she informed me, with great joy, that our good hostess had taken her into her service.

On leaving Ajaccio, Sartene was our next point. The road crosses the Gravone and the Prunelle, flowing into the gulf through fertile valleys, and then winds through a wild and mountainous country, in which Cauro is the only village, till, surmounting the Col San Georgio, 2000 feet above the level of the sea, it descends into a rich plain, watered by the Taravo. In its upper course its branches water two romantic valleys, which formed the ancient fiefs of Ornano and Istria, the seats of powerful lords in the old times. Picturesque scenery, ruins of castles, and mediaeval tales lend a charm to this region, in which we would gladly have wandered for some days, but that Sardinia was before us.

There are few finer spots in the island than the _paese_ of Olmeto, the princ.i.p.al village being surrounded by mountains, with a plain below, extending to the deep inlet of the Mediterranean, called the Gulf of Valinco, and rich in corn-lands, olive, and fruit trees. At Olmeto we were served with a dish of magnificent apples, some of them said to weigh two pounds. On the Monte Buturetto, 3000 feet high, are seen the ruins of the stronghold of Arrigo della Rocca; and, further on, near Sollacaro, another almost inaccessible summit was crowned by a castle, built by his nephew, Vincentello d'Istria-both famed in Corsican story.

It was at Sollacaro, standing at the foot of this hill, that our countryman, Boswell, first presented himself to Pascal Paoli, in a house of the Colonna's, with letters of introduction from the Count de Rivarola and Rousseau. Boswell remained some time with Paoli, who was then keeping a sort of court at Sollacaro, and admitted him to the most familiar intercourse. His conversations with the ill.u.s.trious Corsican, jotted down in his own peculiar style, form the most interesting part of the account of his tour, published after his return to England. "From my first setting out on this tour," he states, "I wrote down every night what I had observed during the day. Of these particulars the most valuable to my readers, as well as to myself, must surely be the memoirs and remarkable sayings of Pascal Paoli, which I am proud to record."[37]

Boswell was treated with much distinction, and appears to have been flattered with the character, which ignorance or policy attributed to him, of being _Il Ambasciadore Inglese_. "In the morning," he says, "I had my chocolate served up on a silver salver, adorned with the arms of Corsica. I dined and supped constantly with the general. I was visited by all the n.o.bility; and when I chose to make a little tour, I was attended by a party of guards. One day, when I rode out, I was mounted on Paoli's own horse, with rich furniture of crimson velvet and broad gold lace, and had my guards marching along with me." His vanity so flattered, and with what he calls Attic evenings, "_noctes, cnaeque Deum_," giving scope to his ruling pa.s.sion, James Boswell must have been in the seventh heaven while Paoli's guest at Sollacaro.