CHAPTER IX
OF THE WATERING-PLACES
French sea-coast watering-places fall easily into two groups--those of the English Channel and those of the Mediterranean. The first may be subdivided into the fashionable places between Deauville and the Belgian frontier and the go-as-you-please resorts of Brittany. There are long intervals between the different resorts, and few would dream of wandering along the coast from one to another; but on the Mediterranean the Riviera is almost one continuous chain of watering-places from St. Raphael to Mentone.
In the early days, when English doctors were beginning to recommend their more wealthy patients to winter on the French Riviera, there was little beyond the sunshine, the equable climate, the colour and the loveliness of the scenery to attract the visitor, and what more, one asks, could any rational being who has gone away with congenial companions require? A visit to the Riviera amply answers such a frivolous question. In the early days, visitors and tired politicians, perhaps of the type of Lord Brougham, or less strenuous people to whom the fogs of the northern winter were a periodic menace, found no hotels much above the average of the country inn, and villas were not. Obviously these things had to be provided, and now from Cannes to Garavan, which is within a shout of the Italian frontier, there is a very nearly continuous chain of villas and hotels. And where villas are too close together to permit the erection of a newly projected _Hotel Splendide_, a terrace is constructed a little higher up the face of the sea-front, and the new building offers to its guests finer views and less noise than those who stay lower down. Villas are pleasant enough, but they can become dull to those with a passion for amusement, a desire to escape from themselves or whatever one cares to call the disease, and a hotel to such offers very little more. Besides, one is practically driven to bed at a quarter to ten, so a casino is a sheer necessity. Then no one who wishes to be healthy can be so for long without exercise, and a golf-course must be provided. This is a difficulty on the French Riviera only overcome at Cannes, where the alluvial Plaine de Laval near La Napoule offers suitable ground. Everywhere else the mountainous nature of the coast vetoes the game. Lawn-tennis, however, is quite possible even where steep slopes reach down to the sea. The race-course, too, has been found a necessity for existence, and it has been provided. The casino offers gambling and music and theatrical performances. But this is not enough, there must be a theatre too. A Battle of Flowers is a relief to the monotony of the days, and at Nice such an extravagance is indulged during the Carnival, the climax of the season's manufactured gaiety. Besides all this there are regattas, motor weeks, pigeon-shootings, exhibitions of hydroplaning.... The list of distractions is now so enormous that the visitor almost needs a visit to one of the quiet spots beyond Genoa to rest before returning to the gaieties of the season in Paris or London.
The English were the discoverers of the French Riviera from the health-resort standpoint. They wrote books describing fine air and the attractions of this wonderful coast, and the social distinction of some of the writers assured an attentive audience. Lady Blessington penned an account of her journey along the Riviera in 1823, which reveals a condition of things as far removed from the luxury of to-day as are the shores of Patagonia. To journey from Nice to Florence was then more or less an adventure. "The usual route by land," she writes, "is over the Col di Tenda, and via Turin, but this being impracticable owing to the snow, and as we had a strong objection to a voyage in a _felucca_, we determined to proceed to Genoa by the route of the Cornice, which admits of but two modes of conveyance, a _chaise a porteurs_, or on horseback, or rather on muleback." The Lady Blessingtons of to-day travel on an excellently engineered and, for the most part, a dust-free road, in the luxurious ease provided by the builders of the modern motor-car _de luxe_. The six-cylindered engine purrs so softly that the sound of the waves on the rocks beneath the road is not lost, and even the faint smell of petrol is overcome by the exquisite productions of Roget et Cie.
Hyeres stands quite apart from the long chain of fashionable resorts. It is a picturesque old town separated from the sea by two or three miles of salt marshes, and only ranks as a watering-place on account of the proximity of Costebelle, where modern hotels perched picturesquely on the wooded hills known as the Montagnes des Oiseaux look across the Iles d'Or to the beautiful Maure Mountains. The villages perched on the face of the cliffs, and those standing on the intervals of alluvial shore along the coast of Les Maures, are typical of the whole Riviera before the leisured and wealthy classes of the western nations began to make their annual incursions. East of the valley at whose mouth stands Frejus, dozing in the midst of its eye-filling evidences of importance in Roman times, is St. Raphael, with its hotel quarter known as Valescure, high among the pines on the first slopes of the densely wooded Esterel Mountains. Healthfulness is still the main attraction here; but those who do not thirst for distracting gaiety love the sweet-smelling solitudes and the bays where the porphyry rocks, purple-red as the name implies, are overhung by masses of dark pines, and bathed by waters that reflect sky, trees, and rocks in a wonderful confusion of strong colour, reminiscent of bays on the south Cornish coast. Hotels have appeared near the larger villages on the littoral of the Esterels, but Nature is still free down to the splashing waves, and it is only when Cannes is reached that one is in the real Riviera atmosphere.
The first view of the sweeping coast-line between Cannes and the confines of Italy that suddenly unfolds itself as one goes eastwards on the coast road is one of surpassing loveliness, provided that the weather lives up to its honestly-earned reputation. A great sweep of sea of an exquisite, a tender, a most lovely blue fills half the scene. It is perhaps shaded here and there by clouds, and their shadows turn the blue to amethyst. There is a fringe of white along the low sandy shores of the Gulf of La Napoule. Farther off the coast becomes steep and clothed with a mantle of dark green foliage, speckled along its lower margin with creamy-white villas, while higher, the horizon is serrated with snow-capped peaks. As the coast recedes it becomes more lofty, the mountains coming to bathe their feet in the blue sea. There are islands and promontories faintly visible in the soft opalescent haze. Such is the first impression one obtains of a fairyland coast-line, which owing to various circumstances had to be discovered to the French people by foreigners. With their inherited instinct towards roving the British have not even been able to keep to their own land when merely taking a little seaside holiday.
It might be said of the French that, apart from their dozen or more seaports, they were until recently in a state of comparative ignorance as to the nature of the wonderful coast-line of their country. It was only recently that any considerable proportion of the great French middle-class population acquired the habit of taking an annual holiday by the sea. The expense of such a migration is a big item in a small budget, and when undertaken it is the need for economy which makes the housekeeper prefer to take a house wherein she can provide for her own _menage_, and avoid giving a landlady a living at her expense.
At first the seaside visits were of a very adventurous character, and little wooden chalets of a very temporary character were run up. They were placed in a most haphazard fashion where land was available. Gardens were not cultivated; and even when quite a number of these meretricious little seaside homes had gathered together at one spot, there was no attempt to produce the features regarded by the English as essentials. Instead of the pier with its concert-room raised above the waves on barnacle-swollen iron pillars, the French build a casino. In it all forms of evening amusement are concentrated, and all the holiday life is to be found there after sunset. The esplanade, that most tiresome feature of all English seaside resorts, is only built when the place has become so matured that it begins to yearn for smartness. Possibly foreigners are the main cause of the promenade. On the Riviera, where it has been the aim of the municipalities and the hotel proprietors to study the habits of _les Anglais_, the esplanade is to be found at every resort, and it is probably only the overwhelming expense due to the precipitous nature of a very considerable proportion of the coast that has saved the Riviera from becoming one continuous promenade from Cannes to Mentone. Even if this were ever accomplished the irregularities of the coast are so pronounced that there would be few opportunities for those who abominate the sea-front of the Brighton type to complain. At Cannes the isolated mass of rock crowned by the picturesque "old town" effectually cuts the frontage to the sea in two, and at Nice the tabular rock in whose shadow ancient Nice grew, forms an abrupt termination to the eastward end of the parade, the central portion of which is called the Promenade des Anglais, and there is situated a jetty to satisfy the tastes of the same patrons of "Paris by the Sea." Villefranche does not give any opportunity for producing sterile perspectives on account of the deep and narrow bay formed by the Cap du Mont Boron and the St. Jean peninsula. Beaulieu is little more than a fortuitous concourse of villas and hotels, and the only level ground is that occupied by the Corniche road.
The promontory of Monaco is entirely precipitous, but gardens on its outward side give shady walks and charming peeps of the distant coast. One side of the bay of Monaco is formed by the curving northern face of the tabular projection, and facing it are the creamy-white terraces of Monte Carlo, rising up to the blocks of equally brilliant red-roofed buildings terminating in the world-famed Casino, which stands at the apex of a small projection of the rocky shelf. The architecture of the Casino is of the commonplace "exhibition" type, and the gardens surrounding it support the parallel. Only the determination of man could have made the precipitous slopes of the mountainous sea-front produce lawns and flowers and shady trees, for the heat of summer would destroy all but the hardiest forms of vegetation, unless artificial aids were employed. The colour of Monte Carlo is intensely brilliant on account of the immense reflecting surface of pinkish limestone rock that towers up some 1300 feet from the sea, and makes the place quite unique among watering-places. Strictly speaking one hardly has any right to include it in a description of French watering-places, for Monaco is an independent principality, and its area includes Monte Carlo and the intervening township of Condamine, which is packed in between the gaming metropolis and the _col_ that separates Monaco's peninsula from the mainland.
Until 1856 the principality had no gambling halls, and it was not until 1858 that the Prince of Monaco laid the foundation stone of the existing Casino, the gaming-tables having been first set up within the walls of the old town. In a few years the annual income from the Casino ran up to L1,000,000, a sum of L50,000 being the Prince's share. So by playing down to the widespread instinct for gambling, one of the most unprofitable patches of coast has become in proportion to its area the most revenue-producing in the whole world. It is a melancholy reflection that one of the most perfect spots on the Mediterranean for enjoying all the warmth of the winter sun should be so fatally contaminated by a cosmopolitan crowd of ne'er-do-weels of every grade of society. One sees all the world at Monte Carlo, for no one who passes along the Riviera can quite resist the desire to have a peep at a place of such notoriety. And so many come to Monte Carlo for this selfsame purpose that the real habitues, the professionals and the "last-hopers," are rather lost sight of in the crowd of quite irreproachable people who half fill the concert-hall, and drift through the gaming-rooms throwing a few five-franc pieces on to the roulette tables "just to see what happens," or to experience the very edge of the strange fascination which leads men and women to fling away a competency in a fevered desire for wealth.
The two superimposed roads between Nice and Mentone known as the Upper and the Lower Corniche, are both laboriously engineered highways, possessing almost unrivalled charms. On the lower road there used to be a most serious disadvantage to the enjoyment of the scenery in the choking clouds of dust raised by every passing vehicle. Motor-cars used to throw up such a smother of dust that it did not settle for some minutes, and in the interval fresh clouds would be produced. Tar has at last been brought to rescue the charms of the Lower Corniche from being completely destroyed. Trams grind and scream as they follow the constant curves of the road, and their presence robs it of any sense of repose. It is therefore more possible to enjoy the changing panorama of bay, cliff, and promontory, of brilliantly coloured waves in shadow and in sunshine from a seat in a car than on foot. An automobile, unless driven very slowly, is tiresome and tantalizing in such scenery. One can only compare the sensation of being flung through beautiful surroundings of this character at 30 miles an hour to being obliged to go through the galleries of the Louvre at a trot.
On the Upper Corniche the traffic is light, there are no trams, and dust is scarcely noticeable. The scenery is altogether on a greater scale. At certain spots one commands nearly the whole of the French Riviera at once. The sea is far below, and its nearer shores are almost invariably hidden. Whoever passes one on this lofty highway is fairly sure to have come there for pleasure, business taking few along the high "cornice." Energetic folk from all the resorts within reach are to be found climbing up the steep zig-zag pathways to this splendid vantage-ground. Frenchmen in clothes suited for _le sport_ or perhaps wearing the dark city type of jacket suit which so many adhere to even when holiday-making, Germans thoughtfully carrying their red Baedekers with them, and Englishmen of the retired military officer or I.S.O. type are all to be found enjoying or "doing" the Upper Corniche in the various manners of their widely differing temperaments. At La Turbie, where the remains of the huge monument to Caesar Augustus, the conquering emperor, still bulk prominently in the midst of the village, there is a funicular railway connecting the upper and lower roads, bringing the splendid air and scenery of the heights within reach of the infirm or the merely slack types of visitors.
The long winding descent from La Turbie to Mentone brings the two roads together opposite Cap Martin, a promontory densely grown with old and gnarled olives and masses of dark pines that come down to the water's edge. From beneath their shade one can look across the blue waves breaking into white along the curving shore to Mentone's villas and hotels overtopped by its old town on a spur of the mountain slopes that rise sharply just behind. Although built at the mouth of two torrents, Mentone is sheltered by an imposing amphitheatre of lofty mountains, which very effectually screen it from the treacherous mistral, and it is this fact which has made it the most popular place for invalids on the whole of _la Cote d'Azur_. It is fortunate in having been spared the inflictions of overpowering perspectives of the Nice or Brighton order, and one can sit close to the shore under the shade of great eucalyptus trees free from the glare and the traffic of a big sea-front roadway of the stereotyped British pattern.
The eastern extension of Mentone, known as Garavan, is within a few minutes' walk of the Italian frontier, where the sea-coast resorts become more brightly coloured and have more architectural interest in their old quarters, the Ligurian type of compactly built walled town being scarcely recognisable in what remains of old Mentone.
Not only is the Riviera a land of winter sunshine, it is also one of the most sweetly-scented coasts in the world. The delicious fragrance of the lemon and the orange, when those trees are in blossom, is often Nature's final lavish filling up of the cup of enjoyment to overflowing. And in the spring, when the northern sea-coast resorts are shivering before the icy winds that sweep down the Channel, this favoured coast has nasturtiums and other flowers that England does not see until late in summer, in their fullest blossom. France is indeed fortunate in its Mediterranean shore, of which Plato must have been thinking when he wrote:
There the whole earth is made up of colours brighter far and clearer than ours; there is a purple of wonderful lustre, also the radiance of gold, and the white which is in the earth is whiter than any chalk or snow.
Among the watering-places on the Channel the twin towns of Deauville and Trouville, separated only by the river Toques, are pre-eminent among the wealthiest and most fashionable of Parisians. Trouville has a longer season, but it is altogether outshone by its neighbour during the fortnight of the races in August, and during the quieter weeks of its season Deauville probably boasts more leaders of fashionable French society than any other coast resort. It is popularly believed that during the season one cannot smell the salt air off the sea at either of these places on account of the scent used by its expensive visitors. This is more or less true of Etretat also, and possibly of Biarritz too, and no one who dreams of careless attire should come near these places during the season.
Both places possess splendid stretches of sand, and therefore bathing is safe, and one of the greatest attractions to visitors. The casinos are well adapted to the demands made upon them, and the villas include, among the various more temporary old-fashioned types, many that are quite charming.
Westward from Deauville is pretty little Cabourg, just beyond the mouth of the River Dive, where William the Norman assembled his army for the invasion of England. Here also the beach is of excellent sand, extending for four miles. The casino is, of course, a prominent feature, and there is a broad terrace, not far short of a mile in length, raised above the beach. Between Cabourg and the mouth of the Orne one finds one of those embryo seaside places that are typical of the haphazard fashion in which French watering-places grow. It bears the curious name of Le Home-sur-Mer, and in its present stage of development is little more than a railway-station and a collection of widely scattered and hurriedly-built villas, dumped anywhere along a sandy ridge.
After Deauville the seaside resort most patronised by the opulent is Etretat. It has none of the advantages of a sandy shore, and bathing from the steep shingly beach is often so dangerous that the authorities insist on securing intrepid bathers by rope around the waist. Good swimmers enjoy the depth of water to be found close to the shore, and have no fear of a buffeting by big rollers; but to the weak or timid the conditions are often forbidding, and on such days there are more early arrivals than usual at the first tee on the golf-course.
From the point of view of scenery Etretat holds a high position, its bold chalk cliffs adding enormously to the picturesqueness of the coast. Erosion produces very curious effects in the chalk, boring vast cavities with wonderfully domed roofs, and leaving natural arches and projecting ribs that sometimes suggest the colossal legs of a white elephant. The arch springing from the central projection of the cliffs, known as the Porte d'Aval, is approachable from the east at low tide, and a nearer view can be obtained of an isolated pillar called the Aiguille d'Etretat.
There are lofty cliffs at Fecamp and a curving bay, with a casino in the centre and the mouth of the Fecamp River to the east; but it cannot claim to be so much the resort of fashion as its western neighbour. The town has a busy port and all the picturesqueness contributed by the fishing-boats that go to the cod or herring fisheries. There is, as well, the abbey church and the Benedictine distillery with its interesting museum, but such features do not attract many holiday-makers, who are looking for amusement of the entirely social order.
St. Valery-en-Caux has a beach made up of both sand and shingle, the upper portion of the bathing-ground being exceedingly stony. On the lower level children bathe in safety, and the joy of shrimping is indulged in by visitors of all ages.
A little to the east is Veules, where the cliffs are low and of rather loose earth, and the beach is not ideal for bathing. It is popular with the people of Rouen, being conveniently placed and inexpensive. The shrimp here too offers a fund of excitement to the families who are usually content with the most simple of amusements, provided they can drop into the casino after dinner.
Dieppe, owing to its connection with England by the Newhaven steamers, is popular among English visitors, who can run over for a day or two with the minimum of trouble and expense. The broad sunny Plage, the casino to which one is free all day on payment of three francs, and the Etablissement des Bains keep the place very full of life and gaiety throughout the season; but one does not expect to find there the people who may be seen at Etretat or Deauville. Possessing a busy and not unpicturesque port, an historic fifteenth-century _chateau_, and a beautiful Gothic church, it is surprising to find the sea-front so entirely suggestive of one of the newly developed resorts. To the north-east is Treport, an interesting and picturesque little coast town, with the usual requirements for bathing and summer visitors. Along the top of the great bank of shingle are the dressing-sheds, with wooden steps at intervals leading down to the beach. Those who have any interest in history find the proximity of the famous old town of Eu a great attraction, but golf acts with such magnetic force over the average Anglo-Saxon that such considerations do not often weigh in the choice of a holiday resort. The French have only lately begun to know the joys and the profound dejections of golf; it is not yet a necessary adjunct to a seaside resort. Where there are golf-courses it is mainly British capital that brings them on to the sand-dunes. Le Touquet is very cosmopolitan, but it could hardly exist a month without its English patrons. It is one of those places which come into existence with the wave of the capitalist's wand. He says, in effect, "Let us make on this waste an ideal health resort, let us erect hotels, casinos, theatres, and to these add golf-courses, croquet lawns, lawn-tennis courts, and polo grounds; we will have rides through the forest and bathing facilities on this shore, and we will advertise until the whole world knows that we have made this place." And, having spoken, everything desired straightway comes to pass, so that one reads on a leaflet concerning this newly arrived resort such items as these:--
10 hotels. 2 golf-courses. 2 casinos. 3 croquet lawns. 2 theatres. 17 lawn-tennis courts. 10 miles of forest rides. 3 miles of sandy beach. A polo ground. Drag-hounds.
Paris Plage is the newly-built town, brought into existence through the needs and attractions of Le Touquet, Etaples being a little too far away to answer this purpose.
Farther north is Boulogne, with its own casino and promenade and its village resorts, such as Hardelot, close at hand. So numerous, indeed, are the bathing-places of this type that it would be tiresome to even attempt a list of them all, but they all have their own devotees--French, English, and American--and any little villa along the coast of Normandy or Picardy may during the hot months be the temporary home of men and women whose names are household words on either side of the Channel.
Brittany is farther away from Paris and from England, and its charms are only beginning to be appreciated. With the exception of Dinard, there is no place that is expensive or smart in any sense. Some of the villages on the long and deeply indented coast-line have at least one good hotel, and if one is content with what the sea will provide in the way of amusement, the happiest of holidays may be spent there. Bathing, sailing, fishing, sketching, walking, exploring quaint villages, and seeing the curious social customs that still live in this very Celtic corner of France, fill up endless days, and only those to whom none of these things appeal can be dull, provided the weather is tolerably fine.
Biarritz, down at the southern extremity of the French Atlantic coast, in the innermost corner of the Bay of Biscay, with its neighbour St. Jean de Luz, are far away from the two great groups of coast resorts. The first was popularised among both French and English on account of the frequent visits paid to it by King Edward VII. It was understood when _Le Roi Edouard_ came to Biarritz that no one was to take any notice whatsoever of his presence. Cameras were promptly confiscated if any one attempted to snapshot the King or any of his friends, and it was in this way possible for the sovereign who loved to step down into the crowd, to forget the tedious functions of his office. After Sunday morning service he would stroll along the promenade with one or two friends in the most informal fashion, so that a chance British visitor who did not dream that he might at any moment rub shoulders with his sovereign would almost gasp with astonishment when he suddenly discovered that he had actually done so!
Only at intervals does the sea give up its onslaught upon the rocks that form the coast at Biarritz, and one of the charms of the place is to be found in the magnificent displays given by the Atlantic. Thundering waves rear themselves in great walls of green, marble-veined with foam, which fling themselves in a chaos of white upon the smooth, sandy shore of the Plage or the deeply indented promontory which contains the fishing port. The town is very modern, but is well built and extremely clean and pleasant in every way, the new streets being full of good houses in gardens that are something more than a patch of unmown grass.
Besides bathing, for which there are three _etablissements_, there is golf and lawn-tennis, while the proximity of the Pyrenees gives opportunity for motor drives in the midst of deep valleys, whose vast slopes clothed with pine or box fall precipitously to torrential rivers. The whole country, too, is rich in memories of Wellington's successful completion of the Peninsular War. St. Jean de Luz was for a time his headquarters, the house he occupied being still in existence. Nearly all who stay at Biarritz go on to Pau, the inland winter resort close to, but not within the actual embrace of the Pyrenees. English people visit both places mainly in the winter and spring. They make the season at those times, while French and Spanish visitors flood thither in the summer, putting up prices at that period of the year to a height not reached during the zenith of the English season. Almost every form of sport and open-air exercise can be enjoyed at Pau, and foxhounds meet regularly throughout the winter. The town is magnificently placed on the north side of the Gave de Pau, and the view it commands of the snowy range of peaks, with the deep and picturesque valleys leading up to them, is one of the finest possessions of this character to be found in any town of France.