But
your professional gardener knows everything; it is useless for an
amateur to offer him advice; worse than useless, of course, to ask him
for it. Indeed, the flowers, even the wild ones, might almost reconcile
one to a life on the Riviera. Almost.... I recall a comely plant, for
instance, seven feet high at the end of June, though now slumbering
underground, in the Chemin de Saint Jacques--there, where the steps
begin----
Almost....
And here my afternoon musings, up yonder, took on a more acrid
complexion. I remembered a recent talk with one of the teachers at the
local college who lamented that his pupils displayed a singular dullness
in their essays; never, in his long career at different schools, had he
met with boys more destitute of originality. What could be expected, we
both agreed? Mentone was of recent growth--the old settlement, Mentone
of Symonds, proclaims its existence only by a ceaseless and infernal
clanging of bells, rivalling Malta--no history, no character, no
tradition--a mushroom town inhabited by shopkeepers and hoteliers who
are there for the sole purpose of plucking foreigners: how should a
youngster's imagination be nurtured in this atmosphere of savourless
modernism? Then I asked myself: who comes to these regions, now that
invalids have learnt the drawbacks of their climate? Decayed Muscovites,
Englishmen such as you will vainly seek in England, and their painted
women-folk with stony, Medusa-like gambling eyes, a Turk or two, Jews
and cosmopolitan sharks and sharpers, flamboyant Americans, Brazilian,
Peruvian, Chilian, Bolivian rastaqueros with names that read like a
nightmare (see "List of Arrivals" in New York Herald)--the whole exotic
riff-raff enlivened and perfumed by a copious sprinkling of
horizontales.
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