Sights of Saint François and a remarkable man

I have lived in the St François quarter of Grasse for twenty five years. You can see what I have found out about its various mills in my blog 'Mills of Les Ribes' but here are some other notable places in our quarter and the history of a remarkable life led partly here.

The new road and an old track

The map of St François today is dominated by the road built in the 1890s which starts off as av Guy de Maupassant and changes to bd Schley and then rte de Saint-François. It opened up the whole quarter to development and was the catalyst for the building of some very large residences. But it’s possible to trace older tracks down the valley. One includes a semi- abandoned bridge over the millstream.

On the downstream side, it towers 12-15 metres above the water. I have been unable to find when it was built, but it was a substantial undertaking. It's worthwhile to walk the track, which passes two abandoned mills, and leads over the bridge.

To find it, turn left off av Guy de Maupassant, just by villa Noailles. The track emerges again on the 'new' road on the other side of the valley.

The canal de la Siagne

A little further down, the stream runs under the canal de la Siagne. The building of the canal was something of a power grab by the town of Cannes, driven by a Scotsman.

Route of the Canal de la Siagne in St François. It is possible to walk along the route marked in blue.

Henry Brougham was a very successful lawyer from Edinburgh who, as a Whig politician, was Lord Chancellor of England from 1830-1834. Visiting Cannes (largely by chance, it is said), he decided to have a house built there and eventually became almost a permanent resident. Amongst various acts of philanthropy and development, he supported the building of a new water supply for Cannes. This came to fruition in the 1860s when a canal was constructed which tapped the waters of the Siagne river near St. Cézaire, ignoring Grasse's claims to the water (see my blog here).

Part of the canal flows through the southern and eastern quarters of Grasse, including St Francois. It contributes little to Grasse’s water supply, despite its proximity to us.

It's possible to walk along part of the canal in St Francois (further along, in St Jacques and St Mathieu, much of it has been covered over) and there are some quite spectacular embankments and aqueducts along its course.

Traces of an old railway

The Chemin du Sud railway from Nice to near Marseille via Draguignan and Grasse ran through the southern end of St Francois and its traces are still visible today (its other branch is still working, as the famous 'train des Pignes' to Digne). The map below shows its course, via a roundabout called 'La Halte' because the St Jacques station halt once stood there.  The track was along what are now two roads,  Boulevard Louis Icard, which runs over one of the railway's still-standing viaducts, and Chemin de Peymeinade.

Track of Chemin du Sud in St Francois with La Halte and current and former viaducts

Because it was narrow gauge (1-metre), it could twist and turn more sharply than a standard gauge system. In between bd Icard and ch de Peymeinade, there was once a 100 metre viaduct whose single tower in the valley remains today as a ghostly remnant of the railway.

Clockwise from top left: bd Icard comes to an abrupt halt where a viaduct once continued on to ch de Peymeainade; Canal du Siagne, taken from the viaduct on bd Icard; heavily sloping path on a substantial bridge over a railway cutting on what is now ch de Peymeinade; view of the viaduct on bd Icard

Bastide Saint Francois

Where the ‘new’ road becomes bd Schley, it owes its name to an American financier of the ‘gilded age’ in New York. Grant B Schley made millions between 1885 and his death in 1917. His second son, Grant B Schley Jr., was a partner in his father’s firm, but, like other children of wealthy American fathers (Henry Clews, of the Chateau de La Napoule, springs to mind) he took up a life of leisure in France.

Bastide St Francois (crane to the right!)

He purchased and re-built the Bastide Saint Francois in 1925. More importantly, he chose a young French designer, Jacques Couëlle, who was only 23 at the time, to re-shape the Bastide.

Port la Galère and some 'bulle' houses

 It looks quite sedate compared to Couëlle’s later career, in the ‘architecture-sculpture movement’. He was subsequently the architect responsible for the faux chateau of Castellaras le Vieux and the ‘troglodyte village’ of Castellaras le Neuf in Mouans Sartoux.

He also conceived Port-La-Galère near Théoule and was a major influence on the renegade Hungarian architect Antti Lovag, who built Pierre Cardin’s Palais Bulles on the cliffs nearby.

Entrance to Bastide St François ('Villa Sanford'). The upper image is a still from the film.

It's difficult to see the Bastide from directly outside but its long wall, with occasional turrets, dominates part of bd Schley.

The entrance has become famous among buffs of the English film director Alfred Hitchcock, because a scene in his classic ‘To Catch a Thief’, with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, takes place there.

The ‘Umbrian’ houses

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Italians, not British, were the largest immigrant group in Grasse. The census of 1891 found over 2,500 living here, many from around Cuneo – quite a high proportion out of 11,000 inhabitants in all. St Francois seems to have also attracted Umbrians, especially after the Great War. They included the parents of my neighbour, who came from Perugia.

On a recent walk, our guide took us along rue Jeanne Jugan and showed us these houses, whose friezes, she told us, are typical of ‘Umbrian’ houses between the wars. Perhaps the many cypresses on the western side of the valley reminded them of home.

Rue Jeanne Jugan. Clockwise from top left: number 1, number 5, number 5, number 3

Jules Chaperon

Bastide Saint Francois and Villa Noailles are only two amongst many extensive and opulent residences built by and for the rich above and below the ‘new’ road around the quarter. As a total contrast, there is what is today a holiday residence called ‘Lou Naouc’ on the ch des Hautes Ribes. At its entrance, there’s a small plaque which hides the story of a quite remarkable man.

'To the Abbé Jules Chaperon, Hero of Charity (1877-1951) who brought here Armenian orphans who survived the 1915 genocide and took care of them until his death'

Chaperon was never more than a parish priest and an army chaplain, but he led a very full life. There is plenty of information about him here on the site of the ‘Notre Montagne’ Association here (in French, but a Google translation works well).

Brought up near Vienne in the Dauphiné, he studied theology in Tunisia and at the age of 22 he was present at the notorious 1899 ‘Fashoda incident’, on the river Nile in what is now South Sudan. The 'incident' was a confrontation between 150 French colonial troops and 1,500 British-led Egyptian soldiers in five gunboats. The spat nearly caused a war between France and the UK. It was so serious that Queen Victoria almost cancelled her annual visit to the Riviera!

After the ‘incident’, Chaperon was hospitalized with tuberculosis, and advised to spend time in the Var mountains for his health.

Ordained in 1902, he was assigned to a small group of Var parishes centred upon La Martre in the Artuby valley, about 50km north west of Grasse along what is now the Route Napoleon. There, he created an association named Notre Montagne to raise funding to run an orphanage specializing in rescuing abandoned children who were infected with or in danger of tuberculosis. Not content with that, he was highly active in creating what amounted to a series of social services in his high valley, including one of France’s first holiday camps, a home for the elderly and various charitable and economic associations. He even set up a syndicat d’initiative (tourist office) and as its president in 1913 proposed creating the Route Napoleon as a way of promoting tourism.

Chaperon as a chaplain in during the Great War (Photo Wikimedia Commons)

After the outbreak of the Great War, he established a military hospital at La Martre. In 1916 became a chaplain on the western front and then went with the French troops who helped the Italians finally beat Austro-Hungary in the Veneto in 1918. After the war ended, he served with the French soldiers sent to try to halt Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s nationalist forces in Turkey. In Istanbul, he founded another orphanage for Armenian refugees in the aftermath of the massacres perpetrated by the Turks in 1915-16.

In 1921, he sought a larger site for the Notre Montagne orphanage. He found it at an abandoned farmhouse on the ch de Hautes Ribes here in St Francois. When he, his staff and the children first arrived, it is said that they more or less had to ‘camp out’ at the site.

In 1922, he arranged for the children from the orphanage in Istanbul to come to Grasse.

Subsequently he raised funds for the Grasse site in the USA, acting as an attaché to the French consulate in New York.

Postcard from 1941 and the same building in Lou Naouc taday

By 1930, Chaperon was in his mid-fifties and he’d lived several lives already. One might say that he deserved a quieter time looking after orphans for the next 20 years!

The Route Napoleon was inaugurated in 1931 in a ceremony attended by the Minister of Tourism, the Prefects of four departments, the officers commanding four battalions of the Chasseurs Alpins, four senators and numerous mayors….and Chaperon, just a lowly priest, who had started it all in 1913 when president of his local tourist office. So when you see a notice on a road indicating the next place is a commune of the Route Napoléon, remember Jules Chaperon.

He died in Grasse in 1951 and is buried in the Ste Brigitte cemetery here in Grasse.

Emilie Morel's inscription reads that she 'fell victim to her ardent charity after having devoted her whole life to the service of the elderly and children. Jules Chaperon's that 'after having fought so hard for others, he fell under the weight of his devotion to the field of honor of charity.'

Very unusually, he shares his grave and headstone with Emilie Morel, his friend from childhood who worked with him in Notre Montagne from 1903 in La Martre and then in Grasse. She organized the transfer of the Armenian orphans from Istanbul in 1922. In 1937, she was killed in a car accident, which must have been the worst blow which Jules Chaperon ever suffered.

A memorial service was held in 2011 in the cathedral on the 60th anniversary of his death. Today, the Notre Montagne orphanage is the Lou Naouc holiday residences. Possibly, as a pioneer of holiday camps, Chaperon might have approved.