Laudator Temporis Acti

Stella Bowen (1893-1947), Drawn from Life (1941; rpt. London: Virago, 1984), p. 92:

I have made that journey many times since, but the thrill of finding oneself already in the landscape of Provence when dawn breaks gets sharper every time. At eight o'clock you are at Avignon, but ever since the first streak of light you have been beside the urgent, muddy Rhône and amongst the pale olives, the dark cypresses, the grey rocks and the flat-roofed, flat-faced houses which in spite of their poverty and austerity seem to hold promise of a sweeter life within their dry old walls.

Id., pp. 135-136:

I once knew a very sick poet in Montparnasse who had a nervous break-down and spent many dark months in a clinic. His window looked down on to a baker's shop and he told me afterwards that his convalescence began on the day when, noticing a woman going in to buy bread, he suddenly felt unutterably envious of the interest she was taking in the choosing of a loaf. It seemed to him to denote a miraculous state of bliss, a birthright that he had somehow lost and must recapture; a birthright, I still believe, that belongs especially to France and will surely survive . . .

Id., pp. 147-148:

It is something to do with the light, I suppose, and the airiness and bareness and frugality of life in the Midi which induces a simplicity of thought, and a kind of whittling to the bone of whatever may be the matter in hand. Sunlight reflected from red tiled floors on to whitewashed walls, closed shutters and open windows and an air so soft that you live equally in and out of doors, suggest an experience so sweetly simple that you wonder that life ever appeared the tangled, hustling and distracting piece of nonsense you once thought it. Your mind relaxes, your thoughts spread out and take their shape, phobias disappear, and if passions become quicker, they also lose their power of deadly strangulation. Reason wins. And you are released from the necessity of owning things. There is no need to be cosy. A pot of flowers, a strip of fabric on the wall, and your room is furnished. Your comforts are the light and warmth provided by nature, and your ornaments are the orange trees outside.