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.
[Illustration: _Comparative Theometric Scale_]
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_.”
[Illustration: _The Terrace, Monte Carlo_]
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.