CHAPTER III.

THE REAL RIVIERA

The real French Riviera is not the resorts of rank and fashion alone; it is the whole ensemble of that marvellous bit of coast-line extending eastward from Toulon to the Italian frontier. Topographically, geographically, and climatically it abounds in salient features which, in combination, are unknown in any similar strip of territory in all the world, though there is very little that is strange, outré, or exotic about any of its aspects. It is simply a combination of conditions which are indigenous to the sunny, sheltered shores of the northern Mediterranean, which are here blessed, owing to a variety of reasons, with a singularly equable climate and situation.

Doubtless the region is not the peer of southern California in topography or climate; indeed, without fear or favour, the statement is here made that it is not; but it has what California never has had, nor ever will, a history-strewn pathway traversing its entire length, where the monuments left by the ancient Greeks and Romans tell a vivid story of the past greatness of the progenitors and moulders of modern civilization.

This in itself should be enough to make the Riviera revered, as it justly is; but it is not this, but the gay life of those who neither toil nor spin that makes this world’s beauty-spot (for Monaco and Monte Carlo are assuredly the most beautiful spots in the world) so worshipped by those who have sojourned here.

This is wrong of course, but the simple life has not yet come to be the institution that its prophets would have us believe, and, after all, a passion of some sort is the birthright of every man, whether it be gambling at Monte Carlo, automobiling on sea or land, painting, or attempting to paint, the masterpieces of nature, or studying historic monuments. At any rate, all these diversions are here, and more, and, as one may pursue any of them under more idyllic conditions here than elsewhere, the Riviera is become justly famed--and notorious.

Not all Riviera visitors live in palatial hotels; some of them live _en pension_, which, like the boarding-house of other lands, has its undeniable advantage of economy, and its equally undeniable disadvantages too numerous to mention and needless to recall.

Of course the Riviera has undeniable social attractions, since it was developed (so far as the English--and Americans--are concerned) by that vain man, Lord Brougham.

Lord Brougham, Lord Chancellor of England, first gave the popular fillip to Cannes in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign. From that time the Riviera, east and west of Cannes, has steadily increased in popularity and in transplanted institutions. The chief of these is perhaps the tea-tippling craze which has struck the Riviera with full force. It’s not as exhilarating an amusement as automobiling, which runs it a close second here, but a “tea-fight” at a Riviera _hôtel de luxe_ has at least something more than the excitement of a game of golf or croquet, which also flourish on the sand-dunes under the pines, from St. Tropez to Menton, and even over into Italy.

It’s a pity the tea-drinking craze is so monopolizing,--really it is as bad as the “Pernod” habit, and is no more confined to old maids than are Bath chairs or the reading of the _Morning Post_. Bishop Berkeley certainly was in error when he wrote, or spoke, about the “cup that cheers but does not inebriate,” for the saying has come to be one of the false truths which is so much of a platitude that few have ever thought of denying it.

The doctors say that one should not take tea or alcohol on the Riviera, the ozone of the climate supplying all the stimulant necessary. If one wants anything more exciting, let him try the tables at Monte Carlo.

Riviera weather is a variable commodity. Some localities are more subject to the mistral than others, though none admit that they have it to the least degree, and some places are more relaxing than others. Menton is warm, and very little rain falls; Nice is blazing hot and cold by turn; and there are seasons at Cannes, in winter, when, but for the date in the daily paper, you would think it was May.

Beaulieu and Cap Martin lead off for uniformity of the day and night temperature. The reading at the former place (in that part known as “_Petite Afrique_”) on a January day in 1906 being: minimum during the night, 9° centigrade; maximum during the day, 11° centigrade; 8 A. M., 10° centigrade; 2 P. M., 9° centigrade, and, in a particularly well-sheltered spot in the gardens of the Hôtel Metropole, 15° centigrade. This is a remarkable and convincing demonstration of the claims for an equable temperature which are set forth.

In general this is not true of the Riviera. A bright, sunny, and cloudless January day, when one is uncomfortably warm at midday, is, as likely as not, followed at night by a sudden fall in temperature that makes one frigid, if only by contrast.

The Riviera house-agent tells you: “Do not come here unless you are prepared to stay” (he might have added “and pay”), “for the Riviera renders all other lands uninhabitable after once you have fallen under its charm.”

Amid all the gorgeousness of perhaps the most exquisite beauty-spot in all the world--that same little strip of coast between Hyères and Menton--is a colony of parasitic dwellers who are no part of the attractions of the place; but who unconsciously act as a loadstone which draws countless others of their countrymen, with their never absent diversions of golf, tennis, and croquet. One pursues these harmless sports amid a delightful setting, but why come here for that purpose? One cannot walk the _Boulevards_ and _Grandes Promenades_ all of the time, to be sure, but he might take that rest which he professedly comes for, or failing that, take a plunge into the giddy whirl of the life of the “Casino” or the “Cercle.” The result will be the same, and he will be just as tired when night comes and he has overfed himself with a _dîner Parisien_ at a great palace hotel where the only persons who do not “dress” are the waiters.

This is certain,--the traveller and seeker after change and rest will not find it here any more than in Piccadilly or on Broadway, unless he leaves the element of big hotels far in the background, and lives simply in some little hovering suburb such as Cagnes is to Nice or Le Cannet to Cannes, or preferably goes farther afield. Only thus may one live the life of the author of the following lines:

“There found he all for which he long did crave, Beauty and solitude and simple ways, Plain folk and primitive, made courteous by Traditions old, and a cerulean sky.”

The rest is hubble, bubble, toil, and trouble of the same kind that one has in the hotels of San Francisco, London, or Amsterdam; everything cooked in the same pot and tasting of cottolene and beef extract.

There is some truth in this,--for some people,--but the ties that bind are not taken into consideration, and, though the words are an echo of those uttered by Alphonse Karr when he first settled at St. Raphaël,--after having been driven from Étretat by the vulgar throng,--they will not fit every one’s ideas or pocket-books.

Popularity has made a boulevard of the whole coast from St. Raphaël to San Remo, and indeed to Genoa, and there is no seclusion to be had, nor freedom from the “sirens” of automobiles, or the tin horns of trams and whistles of locomotives; unless one leaves the beaten track and settles in some background village, such as Les Maures or the Estérel, where the hum of life is but the drone of yesterday and Paris papers are three days old when they reach you.

For all that the whole Riviera, and its gay life as well, is delightful, though it is as enervating and fatiguing as the week’s shopping and theatre-going in Paris with which American travellers usually wind up their tour of Europe.

The Riviera isn’t exactly as a Frenchman wrote of it: “all Americans, English, and Germans,” and it is hardly likely you will find a hotel where none of the attendants speak French (as this same Frenchman declared), but nevertheless “All right” is as often the reply as “Oui, monsieur.”

All the multifarious attractions of this strip of coast-line are doubly enhanced by the delicious climate, and the wonders of the Baie des Anges and the Golfe de la Napoule are more and more charming as the sun rises higher in the heavens, and La Napoule, St. Jean, Beaulieu, Passable, Villefranche, Cap Martin, and Cap Ferrat, the “Corniche,” La Turbie, Monaco, and Menton are all names to conjure with when one wants to call to mind what a modern Eden might be like.

Of course Monte Carlo dominates everything. It is the one objective point, more or less frequently, of all Riviera dwellers. The sumptuousness of it acts like a loadstone toward steel, or the candle-flame to the moth, and many are the wings that are singed and clipped within its boundaries.

Whatever may be the moral or immoral aspect of Monte Carlo, it does not matter in the least. It has its opponents and its partisans,--and the bank goes on winning for ever. Meantime the whole region is prosperous, and the public certainly gets what it comes for. The _Monégasques_ themselves profit the most however. They are, for instance, exempt from taxes of any sort, which is considerable of a boon in heavily taxed continental Europe.

Monte Carlo is an enigma. Its palatial hotels, its Casino, its game, and its concerts and theatre, its pigeon-shooting, its automobile yachting, and all the rest contribute to a round of gaiety not elsewhere known. It may rain “_hallebardes_,” as the French have it, but the most adverse weather report which ever gets into the papers from Monte Carlo is “_ciel nuageux_.”

If Marseilles is the “Modern Babylon” of the workaday world, the Riviera--in the season--may well be called the “_Cosmopolis de luxe_.” In winter all nations under the sun are there, but in summer it is quite another story; still, Monte Carlo’s tables run the year around, and, as the inhabitant of the principality is not allowed to enter its profane portals, it is certain that visitors are not entirely absent.

There are three distinct Rivieras: the French Riviera proper, from Toulon to Menton; the Italian Riviera, from Bordighera to Alassio; and the Levantine Riviera, from Genoa to Viareggio.

Partisans plead loudly for Cairo, Biskra, Capri, Palermo, and Majorca,--and some for Madeira or Grand Canary,--but the comparatively restricted bit of Mediterranean coast-line known as the three Rivieras will undoubtedly hold its own with the mass of winter birds of passage. Just why this is so is obvious for three reasons. The first because it is accessible, the second, because it is moderately cheap to get to, and to live in after one gets there, unless one really does “plunge,” which most Anglo-Saxons do not; and the third,--whisper it gently,--because the English or American tourist, be he semi-invalid or be he not, hopes to find his fellows there, and as many as possible of his pet institutions, such as afternoon tea and cocktails, marmalade and broiled live lobsters, to say nothing of his own language, spoken in the lisping accents of a Swiss or German waiter.

It is not necessary to struggle with French on the Riviera, and the estimable lady of the following anecdote might have called for help in English and got it just as quickly:

At the door of a Riviera express, stopping at the Gare de Cannes, an elderly English lady tripped over the rug and was prostrated her full-length on the platform.

Gallant Frenchmen rushed to her aid from all quarters: “Vous n’avez pas de mal, madame?” “Merci, non, seulement une petite sac de voyage,” she replied, as she limpingly and lispingly made her way through the crowd.

This ought to dispose of the language question once for all. If you are on the Riviera, speak English, or, likely enough, you will fall into similar errors unless you know that vague thing, idiomatic French, which is only acquired by familiarity.

The French Riviera has from forty to fifty rainy days a year, which is certainly not much; and it is conceivable that a stay of two months at Nice, Cannes, or Menton will not bring a rainy day to mar the memory of this sunny land. On the other hand, the Levantine Riviera may have ten days of rain in a month, and the next month another ten days may follow--or it may not. It is well, however, not to overlook the fact that Pisa, not so very far inland from the easternmost end of the Italian Riviera, is called the “Pozzo dell Italia”--the well of Italy.

There was a time when Cannes, Nice, and Menton were favoured as invalid resorts, and as mere pleasant places to while away a dull period of repose, but to-day all this is changed, and even the semi-invalid is looked at askance by the managers of hotels and the purveyors of amusements.

The social attractions have quite swamped the health-giving inducements of the chief towns of the Riviera, and the automobile has taken the place of the Bath chair; indeed, it is the world, the flesh, and the devil which have come into the province where ministering angels formerly held sway.

At the head of all the throng of Riviera pleasure-seekers are the royalties and the nobility of many lands. “_Au-dessous d’eux_,” as one reads in the monologue of Charles Quint, “_la foule_,” but here the throng is still those who have the distinction of wealth, whatever may be their other virtues. A “_petit millionaire Français_,” by which the Frenchman means one who has perhaps thirty thousand francs a year, stands no show here; his place is taken by the sugar and copper kings and “milords” and millionaires from overseas.

There are others, of course, who come and go, and who have not got a million _sous_, or ever will have, but the best they can do is to hire a garden seat on the promenade and with Don Cesar de Bazan “_regarder entrer et sortir les duchesses_.” It is either this (in most of the resorts of fashion along the Riviera) or one must “_manger les haricots_” for eleven months in order to be able to ape “_le monde_” for the other twelfth part of the year. Most of us would not do the thing, of course, so we are content to slip in and out, and admire, and marvel, and deplore, and put in our time in some spot nearer to nature, where dress clothes cease from troubling and functions are no more.