The Abandoned House FWN 113 1878/9 49 cm x 58.5
Almost directly east of Aix-en-Provence, an hour’s walk along the Petite Route du Tholonet, lies a village of some 500 inhabitants who like to be known as Tholonétiens. On the north side of the road, runs a steep escarpment, the Barre de Roches, from where there are commanding views across the whole of the valley of the River Arc as far south as the mountains of the Chaine de l’Etoile. The peaks of Montagne Sainte-Victoire rise majestically to the east. On top of the escarpment, on the plateau, is the Bibemus quarry from which the stone of this abandoned house would have been built. It is an ancient land, deep and mountainous, sun-soaked and well-watered. The small river running through Le Tholonet, La Cause, first fills the small lake, Le Petite Mer, before flowing into the Arc. Le Petite Mer was in fact the remains of a Roman reservoir, which in turn had been fed by a Roman Aquaduct. It has a long history. The legions of the Roman General Marius inflicted a bloody defeat of the inhabitants in the 2nd Century. The vivid red soil of the area is traditionally said to have come from the blood of the slain. Beyond are the ruins of the ancient Chateau, isolated and forlorn, shrouded by the magnificent pines.
For nearly 2000 years, wars apart, the day-to-day relationships of life remained the same: as far as records goes back, the population remained steady at the 500 mark; all were engaged in some way, with different trades and labouring skills, within the employment opportunities, within the protection, and within the confines of the Chateau. Rent and tithes would be paid to the land-owner; food and produce were produced by the family for themselves, who probably lived upstairs, using the wooden beam of the gable to hoist up the necessities of life, while sheltering the livestock down below. The relationship between property, rent and labour remained the same also. Wealth existed for the rich 10% of the society to produce dependable regular payments so that the assets, neither increasing nor decreasing, could remain untouched by the course of ordinary living. And so, it continued, self-perpetuating, seemingly endlessly, albeit, only interrupted by war.
What would change with the Industrial Growth Economy ushered in by the Industrial Revolution was not primarily the relationship between capital and labour, but the nature of capital. The value of capital obviously changes if measured in crude monetary terms, but if we measure it in “one year’s worth of a country’s total value’ (Gross National Product), we find that France was worth 6 years’ total in 1700, and 6 at our millennium. But at 1700, agriculture accounted for 5 out of the 6 years’ worth, but only half a year’s worth by our millennium. Housing and financial capital account for the vast proportion of wealth nowadays. The second fundamental change is to a growth economy. The growth of the economy in the 1800’s was what it had been for millennia, barely ticking over at less than 0.5%; but after the Industrial Revolution, growth reached 1.5% and more. Housing, and financial capital were to become drivers of inequality so extreme as to rock the foundations of our society. “Wealth inequality is much greater than the differences in pay between workers, with the wealth of the top 10% richest households worth five times more than that of the bottom half of all families combined. The sheer scale of additional property wealth is an important driver of rising wealth gaps across Britain.” Resolution Foundation, June 2019. Over the last two centuries, wars apart, our society, and our climate, have become more extreme, and, if we continue on the same path, we are heading for a combustible end.
I love the atmosphere that is created when Cezanne strokes the colourful oils on to his canvasses. The low wall of the outdoor patio is not so much a barrier as an invitation to remember gentle evenings sitting with friends, with the vista over the abundant valley to the hill opposite, with the clicking sound of the cicadas in the top of the pine tree, and the house leaning back to give you more space. There are places in France that still have this atmosphere; it kind of fills you with a sense of nostalgia, and good times when things were sunny and simple, close to earth and rustic, colourful and solid. That’s one of the reasons I love the colours Cezanne uses: it provides a little escape, a memory of the good in the past, which we can, if we are wise, bring with us in to our future.
The past is our definition.
We may strive with good reason to escape it,
or to escape what is bad in it;
to reminisce
or to remember what is good in it;
but we will escape or reminisce well
only by including it, and
moving beyond to something better.
Wendell Berry, adapted.