THE FRENCH SHORE
What strikes the holiday traveller about the French shore is that
it is so much better managed than the Swiss shore. Its natural
advantages are fewer--they are, in fact, very few indeed. Evian--and
when one speaks of the French shore one is principally thinking of
Evian--stands with its back to the high mountains instead of facing
them. Consequently it has no views to compare with the views from
Lausanne, Geneva, and Vevey. Its hinterland is commonplace, except
for those who make a great effort and go up the Dent d'Oche. The
mouth of the Dranse, hard by, is a dreary collection of detritus.
There are hardly any literary landmarks, except the few that recall
the memory of St. Francis de Sales. Whence English travellers
have, almost with one accord, drawn the inference that it is not
worth while to go to Evian. But they are wrong. The French think
otherwise, and the French are right. They do not go there, as some
suppose, because they are crippled with diseases and need the waters
to wash poisons out of their blood and their organs: the Evian water
is the sort of water that the whole, as well as the sick, can drink
by the bucketful without feeling a penny the worse for it. Their
purpose in going to Evian is to live a life of luxury and leisure.
No doubt they pay through the nose for the privilege. Inquiry at one
hotel elicited the statement that the worst rooms were let at eight
and the best at eighty francs a day--with service _à la carte_ on the
same scale. But other hotels are cheaper, and it is also possible to
hire a villa, a flat, a lodging; and, in any case, it is right that
Evian should be introduced to the English tourist as the one place
on the Lake of Geneva in which the life of leisure and luxury is
possible.
There is no real luxury at Geneva itself, though there are high
prices and immense hotels. Instead of having good music at fixed
hours, they have indifferent music all day long. The whole air is
full of a continual tinkle-tinkle; louder than the tinkle-tinkle
rises the hooting of the steamers and the trams; louder still are the
voices of the trippers, mostly Americans, inquiring the prices of
things, or complaining that they have lost their luggage. The society
at the boasted Kursaal is an unpolished horde, mainly composed of
the Geneva clerks and shop-assistants losing their salaries at
_petits chevaux_. Nor are things much better elsewhere on the Swiss
shore. Nyon, for instance, is by nature an earthly paradise, and
they have formed a society for developing it. What they really want
is a society for cleaning it, since it is the present practice of
the inhabitants to empty their dustbins over their garden walls into
the lake, with results appalling to the nostrils of the stranger. At
Lausanne, or Vevey, or Montreux--other earthly paradises--you escape
this nuisance; but even there, in the season, you have the feeling
that the place is one vast hotel, and that everybody is waiting with
packed boxes for the omnibus. But cross to Evian. The town is a
little smaller than Montreux, but just as full. Yet it never seems
to be crowded. There is no hurrying or bustling. You are in nobody's
way, and nobody is in your way; which means that Evian is properly
managed.
They do not encourage you to come to Evian in the capacity of
tripper. On the contrary, they try to arrange things so that you must
sacrifice your lunch in order to get there, and your dinner in order
to get home. But this is a part of the secret of good management,
as you will appreciate if you stay there. No knickerbockered army,
headed by a polyglot guide in a straw hat with a label on it, will
invade your peace, but you will be free to live your lotus-eating
life in your own way. You will probably live most of it in the
casino, which is a proper casino, differing from the Geneva Kursaal
as cheese from chalk. There is so much shade that it is always cool
there, even on the hottest day. You will lunch there on a shaded
terrace, assisted by a sympathetic waiter, who understands that a
good lunch is an end in itself, and not merely a device for keeping
body and soul together until the evening. You will linger long and
agreeably over the coffee and liqueurs, without feeling that someone
else wants your seat. Nor will you be bothered, as in Geneva, by
the squeaking of a futile fiddle, or by hawkers offering picture
postcards. But, at the appointed hour, there will be a proper concert
with a programme, and a well-behaved and well-dressed audience:
beautiful French ladies looking as if they had stepped out of fashion
plates; beautiful French children looking as if they had been cut out
of Aunt Louisa's picture-book; fantastic Frenchmen, looking as
if they were dressed for amateur theatricals. Then, when the evening
comes, and you have dined as well as you have lunched, there will be
a performance in the little theatre, given by artistes from Paris,
who come on to Evian from Aix-les-Bains: Réjane, Jeanne Granier,
Charlotte Wiehe, or others. Or there will be a ball in the grand
style--not in the least like the balls in the Hall-by-the-Sea at
Margate--given in as good a ballroom as the heart of a dancer could
wish for. But no hurrying, or hustling, or excitement. At Evian, if
nowhere else on Lake Leman, life is a leisurely pageant.
[Illustration: GRANDVAUX FROM CULLY]
For the rest, there is little enough for you to do--nothing, in fact,
except to stroll up and down the long avenue of linked plane-trees by
the lake-side, observe how clean they keep the water, and gaze across
its calm surface to the Swiss shore where the trippers make a noise.
But this has always been a favourite occupation of the dwellers on
the French shore, whether in fact or works of fiction. From Meillerie
St. Preux gazed across at the _bosquet_ of Clarens. From Thonon
St. Francis de Sales gazed across, pondering plans for working the
Counter-Reformation in the Canton de Vaud. From Evian itself, Madame
de Warens gazed across, regretting the home of her youth to which
she could never return, because, when she left it, she had abandoned
her religion, and taken with her certain goods and chattels which her
creditors were about to seize.