Certain it is that they were both men of position and were both much esteemed. Blacas, his biographer asserts, was admired more for “the nobleness of his manners” than for the merit of his poems.[29] The two of them wrote and dreamed of love and of fair women, of gardens and green fields. They formed for themselves a little literary circle, as if they were living in Old Chelsea, held Courts of Love and meetings with their poet friends in which they competed with one another. Indeed the first known poem of Blacas (written before 1190) was a tanzon with the troubadour Peyrols. A tanzon, it may be explained, was a competition in verse, the rhymers concerned contributing alternate couplets.
For those who are curious as to the kind of poetry that rippled over the walls of Eze I append a verse by Blacas translated into the French of a later period from the Proven?al in which it was written.
“Le doix et beau temps me plait,
?Et la gaie saison
?Et le chant des oiseaux;
?Et si j’etais autant aimé
?Que je suis amoureux,
?Me ferait grande courtoisie,
?Ma belle douce amie.
?Mais puisque nul bien ne me fait
?Hélas! eh donc que deviendrai-je?
?Tant j’attendrai en aimant
?Jusqu’à ce que je meure en suppliant,
?Puisqu’elle le veut ainsi.”
EZE: THE MAIN GATE.
The scene of the treachery of Gaspard de Ca?s.
The picture of a troubadour writing little love ditties in this most woeful place is as anomalous, and indeed as incongruous, as the picture of a lady manicuring her hands during the crisis of a shipwreck. The sound of these songs as they floated—like a scented breeze—down the lanes of the putrid town must have been interrupted, now and then, by the shriek of a strangled man in a cellar or the shout of the trembling watchman on the castle roof.
The two troubadours loved war. Blacasette penned enthusiastic verses about it. He thought it an excellent pursuit, a measure much to be desired, a thing of which it was impossible to have too much. Had he lived at the present day he would probably have modified his views. He was, however, no mere dreamer. He carried his theories into practice and took to fighting when he could. He was engaged in the war which, in 1228, Raymond Berenger waged against the independent towns of Avignon, Marseilles, Toulon, Grasse and Nice. He came out of the fray alive, for he did not die until some time between the years 1265 and 1270.
Blacas was married. His wife was Ughetta de Baus. The marriage came to an abrupt end; for one day Ughetta walked off with her sister Amilheta, entered a convent and took the veil. This precipitate step caused Blacas considerable distress, for he is described as being “plunged in profound sorrow.”
Ughetta was probably not to blame; for Blacas as a husband and at the same time a troubadour must have been very trying. From a professional point of view he loved women as a body. That was a part of his business and no doubt Ughetta became tired of his violent and continual ravings about women with whom she was but slightly acquainted. Moreover her home life in Eze must have been very unsettled. Blacas would one day be humming songs about a new lady at the dinner table and the next day he would be turning the house upside down in order to hold a Court of Love; while, perhaps, on the third morning he would be off to a war he had just heard of. Ughetta no doubt talked this over with her sister—who may possibly have married a troubadour herself—and the two came to the conclusion that the quiet of a convent would be a pleasant change after life with a crazy poet in Eze.
Blacasette—who wrote with facile elegance—was more fortunate than his father. He fell harmlessly in love with a grande dame or imagined that he had and most of the poems of his that survive are amatory sonnets devoted to his “sweet lady.” The position was made awkward by the fact that the sweet lady was already married and was, moreover, the wife of no less a person than Blacasette’s master, Raymond Berenger. Nothing, of course, came of this. The lady remained unmoved and was probably much bored by the receipt of these florid effusions; while the troubadour did not feel called upon to retire to a monastery, nor to take any action that was excessive. In fact the love-making was purely academic and little more than a display in verse making.
The “sweet lady” was truly a grande dame, for she was the famous Beatrix of Savoy. She married in 1219 and had four remarkable daughters, the most illustrious bevy of girls of almost any age. One, Beatrix, succeeded her father and became the Countess of Provence; another, Eleanor, married Henry III of England; a third, with the pretty name of Sancia, married King Henry’s brother, Richard, Duke of Cornwall; while Marguerite—the fairest of them all—became the wife of Louis IX.
[28]
Durandy, “Mon Pays, Villages, etc., de la Riviera,” 1918.
[29]
“Histoire littéraire de la France,” t. xix, 1838. Reynouard, “Choix des Poésies orig. des Troubadours,” 1816-21.