ROUND THE NORMANDY CIRCUIT WITH MADAME
A slight hush falls upon the fashionable Parisian world after Grand
Prix has rung down the curtain upon the Paris season. The élégantes
pause to draw breath before plunging into the swirling tide of the
summer circuit, but the breathing time is short. A few leisurely days,
a few final visits to dressmakers and milliners, a closing of town
houses, and then, ho for Trouville.
There are many popular resorts on the Normandy coast, but Trouville is
queen of them all in so far as smart Parisian society is concerned.
Madame follows the races and is in evidence at every fashionable racing
event of the Normandy circuit, from the opening at Caen to the close at
Ostend--or at least to the last of the French courses at Dieppe; but
she is merely a bird of passage at the shifting rendezvous. Her summer
nest is at Trouville-Deauville.
They are practically one resort, these two places of hyphenated
association. Familiars even shorten the name to Trou-Deauville; but
the little ferry that crosses the river Tuch between the two towns,
and is heavily freighted with holiday-making folk from morning until
night, traverses a gulf wider than the casual traveller would imagine.
Trouville has the Casino, the promenade des planches, the Rue de
Paris, the famous Hôtel de Paris; but Deauville has the race course,
the hyperswell club, the villas of the ultra-chic. All the world is
eligible to the pleasures of Trouville--or at least such share of the
world as has the price at which Trouville pleasures are rated--but
Deauville is for the favoured few, for the crowd of Puteaux and la
Boulié, and the Polo Club of the Bois. The races draw the human
potpourri of Trouville across the ferry; but after the races, the ferry
carries the crowd back, while the social elect move on to the exclusive
club grounds for polo or tennis or tea. A small distinction when put
into mere words, but a mighty matter as viewed by the Parisienne, and
there are many women whose whole ambition but compasses the crossing of
that expressive hyphen in Trouville-Deauville.
The seashore season opens on the first of July, and from that time
on to the first of September the villas and hotels of Trou-Deauville
are filled with the most fashionable folk of Europe, though there is
much skurrying about the coast in automobile, coach, or train, and
constant interchange of social courtesies with the owners of villas
in neighbouring resorts. The Normandy shore line is crowded with
picturesque little villages of more or less ancient fame and more or
less fashionable repute, and there are Parisians who deliberately
choose villas at these smaller resorts, even when they might have the
entrée at Deauville, did they elect to join the crowd there. Life at
the little place is better for the children than life at Trouville,
and it is possible for the elders to relax slightly in the quieter
atmosphere, though they can easily find feverish gaiety within motoring
distance when they care to go in search of it.
They are charming, these little Normandy towns, but it would be
difficult for a town not to be charming on the Normandy coast. To be
sure the average seashore villa of France is a blot on the landscape,
but there are exceptions to the rule,--quaint modern houses of
true Norman type,--and there are, too, old timbered farmhouses and
picturesque châteaux which have been invaded by the tide of Parisian
modernity. Even the ugliest of the villas is likely to have a
delightful little garden, and over many of the architectural horrors
charitable roses clamber riotously, softening the hideous outlines and
bringing the dissonant notes into harmony with the melody round about.
Green fields and fruitful orchards run down to meet the sea, and smooth
white poplar-fringed roads that are the joy of the automobilist run
away in every direction through the smiling fertile country. Broad
shining beaches stretch along beside the sunlit waves and are dotted
with gay striped tents under which children play in the sand and
grown-ups idle away the hours. Perhaps a mediæval church and a quaint
market-place form a background for the summer settlement, and sturdy
Norman fisher folk come and go among the holiday aliens.
[Illustration: "Gossip Street" at Trouville]
Yes, they are charming, these little places, and they are, too, more
exclusively French than most of the larger resorts,--but not more
French than Trouville. Nothing could be more French than Trouville.
Dieppe has a tremendous American, English, Austrian, German, Russian
contingent that elbows the French element; Boulogne is given
over largely to bank-holiday crowds from England; Ostend is more
cosmopolitan than French; but Trouville is of the French Frenchy, and
to know Trouville is to know the Parisienne in her gayest summer rôle.
A popular French seashore resort must be seen to be appreciated,
and no American whose theories of seaside customs is limited to
an acquaintance with the shore resorts of Jersey, Long Island,
Massachusetts, etc., can have the slightest conception of seaside life
in a French translation. There is, in the latter, a spice, a colour, an
audacity, lacking in the Anglo-Saxon version. An English or American
imitation of Trouville would be hopelessly vulgar, but Trouville--well,
it _is_ Trouville. It is all bubble, sparkle, brilliancy, extravagance,
folly. It is Paris with an added _laissez aller_, Paris set to a new
tune. There is much to shock the sober-minded as there is in Paris, but
the sober-minded should not go to Trouville. It is the refuge of the
light-hearted, the buoyant, the volatile; and soberness has no place in
its scheme. What would electrify Newport, Bar Harbor, even Narragansett
Pier, will not create even a ripple of excitement at Trouville. Someone
has said that the difference between smart society in New York and in
Paris is the difference between the immoral and the unmoral. French
seashore life in its most exaggerated phase is distinctly unmoral, but
like Paris life, it is also distinctly picturesque. The most shocking
thing about Gallic impropriety is the fact that it fails to shock.
But when one talks of morals, one is taking Trouville seriously, and
to take Trouville seriously is altogether out of the question. It is
all froth and effervescence, all laughter and irresponsibility. Beau
monde, bourgeoisie, actresses, dressmakers, milliners, cocottes, titled
folk and millionaires from all over the world, gamblers, racing touts,
English polo players, American yacht owners--all jostle each other on
the promenade, in the Casino, at the Hôtel de Paris; for the exclusive
set of Deauville does not cling to its own select haunts but crosses
the ferry often in search of diversion less monotonously comme il faut.
The Rue de Paris is the great meeting-place for this class during the
morning hours, and on a bright August morning one may find the most
noted social celebrities of Europe grouped before the doors of the
little shops that line the crooked street.
The jewellers and dressmakers of Paris have branch establishments here,
and around their thresholds flutter the women who are the best patrons
of those Paris tradesfolk, met to flirt and gossip and show in their
frocks and jewels what may be achieved with the assistance of the firms
whose names are written large above the open doors. It is called La
Potinière, the gossip rendezvous, this little Rue de Paris, and there
is gossip enough abroad there on any morning to justify the name. There
is so much excuse for gossip at Trouville.
Eleven o'clock is the magic hour that really opens the ball at
Trouville. Before that, there may possibly have been a private pigeon
shoot, but that calls out only a small clique and takes in one of the
most exclusive sets of Europe. No entrance here for the rank and file
even of the fashionable world, and no open sesame for women whom the
haughty dames of the French aristocracy do not put upon their visiting
list. If Monsieur and Madame appear together anywhere at Trouville it
is likely to be at the pigeon shoot.
But it is at eleven that the doors of the villas and hotels fly open.
Out flock all of the somebodies and a choice assortment of nobodies,
and every path to the beach is filled with the gay throng. Not that all
of the Trouville world takes a dip in the surf. No indeed,--the truly
smart folk scorn sea bathing, but they go to the beach to meet each
other, to watch the throng, to promenade, to show their pretty morning
frocks, to put in the time until déjeuner, and their decorative value
in the bathing hour scene is tremendous.
Those women who do intend to go into the water, or to wear fetching
bathing costumes at a safe distance from the waves, dress in their
own rooms, if they live anywhere near the beach, and issue cloaked,
hatted, and followed by maids. The maid is an essential feature of the
scenic effect. She carries anything that may be needed, and she gives
cachet to her mistress. There is a theory, too, that she represents the
proprieties. It is quite improper to go to the beach without a maid,
and so the Parisienne, no matter how lurid her reputation nor how
startling her attire, goes beachward with her maid trotting demurely at
her heels.
The bathing at Trouville is not particularly picturesque, though much
imaginative description of its startling features has been written,
and conditions at the resort seem favourable for a spectacular display
of sea nymphs. Trouville is the summer paradise of Parisian cocottes,
and the average Parisian cocotte is not as a rule strikingly averse
to conspicuous rôles; but Narragansett Pier can show, during one fine
summer day, more audacious bathing costumes than will be seen at
Trouville in a week; and though little chorus girls up from Paris for
a holiday may tumble about in the waves, among a crowd of bathers that
but repeats the bathing types familiar the world over, the notorious
"filles" do not go into the water any more than do the great ladies of
Deauville.
There are some piquant and attractive bathing costumes worn on the
sands by women who do not go in for serious bathing, but the Trouville
show at the bathing hour is under the gay striped tents or on the
promenade, where women in Paris frocks and hats chat lightly with men
in informal summer attire, and where the grande dame of the Faubourg
St. Germain touches elbows with the cocotte of the Boulevards.
After the bathing hour the crowd scatters again to the hotels and
villas, and though in the afternoon there is an immense and amusing
crowd on the promenade, the very smart set is not seen there again
until the next morning.
It is so very busy, this smart set. The days are not long enough for
the goings and comings that must be crowded into them. The fashionable
women make elaborate toilettes for déjeuner at café or club or villa,
and after the déjeuner they pour out upon the terraces, arrayed in
their most ravishing costumes. Automobiles, coaches, smart traps of all
kinds, are in waiting. Madame enters the one that is to have the honour
of harbouring her mousseline and silk and lace, lifts her exquisite
sunshade, scatters smiles and gay jests among her friends, and is off
to the races.
Not even at Auteuil, Chantilly, or the Grand Prix can one see more
superb and extravagant costuming than in the Tribune or the pesage at
Trouville. The crowd is less mixed than at the Paris races and there
is more uniform elegance of dress, while the beautiful pesage with
its velvety turf, its masses of bloom, its shaded paths, offers the
most delightful of settings in which to display the latest creation of
Paquin, or a daring but successful innovation from Reboux.
The club of Deauville provides a scenic arrangement even more perfectly
adapted to the great show of frocks and mondaines, than is the pesage,
and here is the centre of that exclusive social life of which the
outsider can form but a vague idea, though the other side of Trouville
may afford him most enjoyable entertainment. The golf course of the
club is said to be the finest on the continent, the tennis courts are
always full, polo is played there by the crack players of all Europe,
and there is never a time when there is not something amusing on the
club tapis.
Perhaps, instead of races or club events, a garden party at one of
the Deauville villas claims the fashionables. Or perhaps the garden
party is in some nearby resort such as Houlgate or Villers, and the
clean white road leading to the rendezvous is crowded with automobiles
and traps as the appointed hour approaches. The automobile has added
much to the gaiety of the Normandy season. It has brought the resorts
closer together, has made intimate social intercourse between them
more possible. For great social events, the clans gather from every
direction, coming even from far-away spas and châteaux. Wherever
the races are in progress, there a host of automobiles makes its
appearance, each machine laden with a jolly party from some one of the
innumerable Normandy resorts. There is much motoring, too, in quest of
luncheon or dinner. Madame and her friends forsake the Parisian cuisine
of the Trouville hotel and motor merrily along the wonderful road to
Caen, where in one of the quaint old restaurants that huddle near the
market-place, one may have the best of Norman cooking and enjoy--or
at least sample--one of the tripe dinners for which the restaurant
is famed. A vulgar dish, tripe--but not tripe à la mode de Caen. The
chef will tell you proudly that there are fifty Norman ways of cooking
tripe, each more masterly than the other, and he will prove to you
that the ordinary domestic tripe is to the tripe of Caen as the fried
egg of the Bowery restaurant to the _[oe]ufs sur le plat_ of the Café
Foyot,--or to the omelette of Madame Poulard.
The omelette of Madame Poulard is another excuse for a motor pilgrimage
from Trouville. One goes all the way to Mont St. Michel for it, but
the run is a beautiful one and the omelette would be well worth even a
journey over a corduroy road. Rural Normandy and Brittany still make
pilgrimages to the shrine of the Archangel St. Michel, but even the
pious pilgrims make their obeisance to the famous omelette as well as
to the worthy saint, and the motor parties from Trouville know more
about omelette than shrine. They are not profoundly pious, ces gens là,
but they see the beauty of the sacred mountain where it towers between
sea and sky, and they appreciate the omelette which Madame, with due
ceremony, makes in a great casserole over the glowing logs in her
cavernous fireplace.
And then there is Dives, with its ancient hostellerie Guillaume le
Conquerant, whose praises have been sung so often and so eloquently
that even a mere mention of its charms seems rank plagiarism. All the
Trouville crowd motors over to Dives for luncheon or for dinner, and
divides the tables with other motor parties from Paris and from all the
country round; for it is famous, this inn of William the Conqueror, the
most picturesque and popular of the provincial taverns of France.
The great William himself saw to the building of the inn when he chose
Dives as the most convenient place in which to build the boats needed
for his little excursion to England; and since that far day a multitude
of famous personages has found shelter there, though the place has
not always been used for an inn. Kings and queens of France have slept
under the low roof, Madame de Sévigné and other great ladies of her day
dined in the feudal dining-room and chatted in the Salle des Marmousets.
But the rooms were not, in Madame de Sévigné's time, what they are now.
Monsieur Paul has made of his old Norman inn a treasure-house. He is
artist, antiquary, and inn-keeper, this quiet M. Le Remois, and his inn
is his hobby as collecting is his passion. He has ransacked the hidden
places of Europe for rare and wonderful things that would add beauty
and interest to the three low-raftered rooms in which he serves private
dinners and luncheons and suppers, and his collection has overflowed
into every corner of the inn. Fourteenth-century glass gleams like
jewel mosaic in some of the windows; marvellous old tapestries, rare
antique carvings, embroideries, brasses, ivories, laces, porcelains are
everywhere, yet all are disposed with an eye to artistic effect and the
result is a harmonious interior, not a museum jumble of curios. Even in
the kitchen, antiquity holds sway; the carved cupboards and walls are
rich in old Normandy brasses and in porcelains and pottery that would
drive a collector wild with covetousness. Up in the sleeping-rooms that
open from a vine-embowered gallery are old carved bedsteads and presses
and dressing-tables, quaint chintzes, ewers and basins and bric-à-brac
and candelabra of a far-away time. They are named for illustrious
visitors who have slept in them, these chambers along the rambling
galleries. One, with seventeenth-century coquetry, is sacred to Madame
de Sévigné. Another bears the name of Dumas; for Dumas and all the
other famous writers, artists, bohemians of France have at one time or
another frequented the inn at Dives. From the galleries one looks down
upon a courtyard surrounded by the timbered, gable-roofed, many-winged
old building. It is all abloom with flowers, this court. Doves flutter
and coo about the low eaves and the niches in which stand queer, stiff,
archaic images. Flamingoes and herons and peacocks pick their way over
the cobblestones. Cockatoos swing from mullioned windows.
And into this place of mediæval memories come the worldly moderns of
Trouville and Paris. They flutter about the courtyard scattering the
doves, and rivalling the peacocks and flamingoes in brilliance of
plumage. They make their toilettes in the low-ceilinged rooms off the
vine-draped galleries, they lunch and dine in the Salle des Marmousets,
or the Chambre de la Pucelle, among the marvellous carvings and
tapestries and bibelots.
An American millionaire once offered M. Paul five hundred thousand
dollars for the feudal dining-room just as it stood, woodwork,
fireplace, glass, furnishings and all. Doubtless he had visions of
sensational New York dinners framed in such setting, but the dream was
a vain one. Sell a part of the inn? M. Paul would sell as readily his
head or heart, but millionaires do not always understand the artist
temperament.
The meals served in the treasure rooms are worthy of their setting,
for the artist is a prince of inn-keepers as well as a connoisseur
of parts; and some of his dishes have long been the joy of Parisian
epicures and the despair of Parisian chefs. There, for example, is
his poulet vallée d'Auge. One sees the name upon Parisian menus now,
but one tastes the real thing only in the dining-rooms of the old inn
at Dives. Here is a luncheon menu prepared for a motor party from
Trouville, a menu not too long, but calculated to call up to the
gourmet who has lunched in the Salle des Marmousets memories of past
delights.
Potage Dives.
Melon.
Sole à la Normande.
Poulets à la vallée d'Auge.
Aloyau Hastings.
Pêches flambées à la Guillaume le Conquerant.
Gallette.
Fruits.
Oh, that fish sauce, those little chickens cooked in fresh cream, those
peaches flavoured with other fruits and dropped in raspberry syrup and
brandy--all eaten from a genuine fifteenth-century carved table in a
room that might serve for a curio collector's dream of heaven! Verily
the epicureans of Trouville and Paris should mention M. Le Remois in
their prayers.
[Illustration: In the Club Grounds at Deauville]
A sound all modern comes in through the Gothic doorway and wakens the
group around the fifteenth-century tables from their dream of bliss.
The car is waiting in the courtyard and driving the cockatoos to
hysteria. There is a hasty donning of dust-coats, a climbing into the
huge touring-car, an exchange of compliments with M. Paul, a waving of
hands, and then the long white road through a green, green land, and
Trouville in time for polo and dinner and the Casino.
Such excursions are now essential features of the seashore life.
Trouville is motor-mad as is Paris, and last season there was not half
enough garage room to accommodate the crowd. At every hour of the
day great machines dash up to the hotels and unload well-known men
and women from Hamburg, from Carlsbad, from Vichy, from Vienna, from
Berlin, from Brittany, from Paris, from anywhere and everywhere. The
King of Greece arrives at the Hôtel Paris in a Mercedes, the Shah of
Persia spins blithely up to the Casino in a Panhard, a Russian Princess
steers her motor into the narrow winding way of the Rue de Paris and
brings it up with quick turn before Doucet's popular corner or in front
of the fashionable pâtisserie. An English Duke has run up from Boulogne
in his Daimler, the American Millionaire has made sixty miles an hour
from Paris in his Packard, in order to meet his yacht in the bay of
Deauville. It is an automobile show of the finest, the grande semaine
at Trouville, and, later, automobile week at Ostend brings together a
host of cars even more cosmopolitan, just as it brings together a crowd
of folk still more cosmopolitan, than that of Trouville.
Yachting, too, is an important feature of Trouville life, and the bay
is always well filled with sleek sea-going craft during grand semaine.
Few of the very large yachts are French, but a fleet of beautiful
small yachts has sailed up the Seine from Melun which is the anchorage
for the Yacht Club of France, and there are a few imposing yachts
flying the French colours. Trim English and American yachts by the
dozen anchor off the Trouville shore for the great week, and there
is a constant going and coming between boats and shore, a perpetual
interchange of courtesies between the smart folk of villas and hotels,
and the yachting visitors. Sometimes it is not the villa set that
lunches and dines aboard the yacht. There are hilarious doings out
there on the sea, when certain parties from the Hôtel de Paris are
entertained, but those who hear tales of these doings when they stroll
through la Potinière only shrug their shoulders, What can one expect
when the season at Trou-Deauville, according to the traditional phrase,
"bat son plein"?
Evening at Trouville means an elaborate dinner at one of the private
villas or hotels, and an hour or two at the Casino, or perhaps some
private social function following in the wake of a dinner--dancing,
bridge, music, theatricals. The Hôtel de Paris is the public
dining-place par excellence, the best vantage-ground from which to
watch the passing show, but it is no easy matter to secure a table
at the Hôtel de Paris during the height of the season. The most
extravagant and modish part of the Trouville crowd--aside from the
occupants of the handsomest villas--is quartered at the Hôtel de
Paris. A crowd quite as swell but more inclined to quiet goes to
the Grand Hôtel de Deauville, but rooms at this hotel are all taken
months in advance by folk belonging to the Deauville set. The Hôtel
de Paris rooms are reserved far in advance, too, but by a clientèle
less exclusive. Money is the one essential at the Hôtel de Paris,
but one must have plenty of that. There are always famous mondaines,
millionaires, royal personages, staying at the Paris; but there, too,
one finds the Parisian demi-mondaine, the noted jockey, the great
actress, the wealthy tourist, and the worthy bourgeois of Paris will
often save thriftily all year in order that he may afford a week at
the Paris during the season. It is chic to stay at the Paris, and it
is vastly amusing. Incidentally it is, as has been hinted, expensive.
To have the humblest and scrappiest of rooms one must pay at least six
dollars a day, and the prices of suites run up into appalling sums.
Restaurant prices, too, are monumental and tips are no small item. The
waiter who serves one is the most ingratiating, the most efficient, the
most knowing of his kind, but if one does not give the suave Shylock
the full ten per cent of his bill, which is the letter of his bond,
it will be much better not to come back again. They have retentive
memories, those waiters; they are used to lavish generosity--and tables
are always at a premium.
It is practically impossible to secure a table for dinner without
first enlisting the head waiter's sympathy by a discreet tip of from
five to fifty francs, and a thousand francs has been paid for a table
during grande semaine. The cuisine is not remarkable--not so good, for
instance, as that of the Paris Café de Paris, which is under the same
management; but much beside food goes to make up one's money's worth
when the coveted table has at last been obtained, and there are few
things more amusing to a student of men, women, and things than to sit
in some corner of the café and watch the world go by. To thoroughly
appreciate the show one should have, across the table, a friend who is
versed in the gossip of the European capitals, and who can name the
diners and tell their stories; but even the stranger within the gates
can get a vast amount of entertainment out of the heterogeneous crowd,
the amazing types, the beautiful clothes, the superb jewels, and many
of the stories are written so plainly that he who runs may read.
After dinner the crowd drifts into the great Casino and now for a
certain part of the idlers begins the serious business of the day. It
is the custom to say that there is no high play in France to-day and
that the great days of gambling are over, but every year folk go away
from Trouville who could furnish circumstantial evidence to refute that
theory. Play is more guarded than it once was. The gambling does not
jump at the eyes. On the first floor of the Casino near the music a
few modest tables of petits chevaux attract a crowd of players whose
heaviest plunging is but a matter of a few francs, and many transient
visitors go away thinking that this outfit represents the gambling of
Trouville; but habitués of the place know better than that. Up on the
second floor there are trente et quarante and baccarat, but even here
the limit is not high. Many women surround the tables here, and women
make up a large percentage of the crowd admitted to the tables of the
third floor, where play runs high and admittance is not altogether
easy to obtain; but on the fourth floor are tables from which women
are barred and to which only the men accustomed to play for very high
stakes are welcomed. Here is the innermost circle of the Trouville
gambling Inferno, and here are found men whose very names ooze money.
Here are found, too, men who have no colossal fortunes behind them,
but who can play high because they are willing to risk all they have.
A Rothschild, a Vanderbilt, a Menier, may rub shoulders at the tables,
but they will perhaps have an actor, a restaurant proprietor, and a
great dressmaker for vis-à-vis, and no one is playing for less than
one thousand dollars a point. Last season an American actor was one of
the heavy losers in this fourth-floor room, but a theatrical manager
evened things up by cashing in a goodly heap of counters representing
ten thousand dollars each at the end of a spectacular evening's play
in which several of the wealthiest men of Europe took a hand. Men
have been beggared at these tables. One prominent racing man lost his
stables down to the last horse and bridle in an evening of play. A
famous English yacht changed hands as a result of an hour at baccarat.
Some of those who are knowing in such matters contend that the heaviest
gambling in the world to-day goes on in the Trouville Casino during
grande semaine, but one gives that statement for what it is worth, and
authentic gambling statistics are not easy to obtain.
In order to cover the gambling, the Casino ranks as a club, though
everybody gets in--at least on the first floor. While fortunes are
changing hands overhead, down here all is light and laughter and mirth.
There is no drinking, but that does not trouble thirsty folk for there
is first aid near at hand in the Café de Paris; and dinner is still a
recent memory. The music is always good and there is dancing for those
who want it. Perhaps some popular chanteuse or dancer from Paris is a
feature of the evening entertainment, or there may be a costume ball or
an effective cotillon. The best theatrical companies of Paris play in
the little theatre, and always there are the petits chevaux to offer
amusement of a mildly exciting sort.
All goes merrily until eleven o'clock, then the crowd pours out into
the night, the doors close, the lights go out, and the great building
stands dark and grim until morning. The board walk is thronged for a
time with late strollers, but it is a poor imitation of Atlantic City's
pride, this narrow board walk stretching from the Hôtel de Paris to
the Rochers Noirs. Only Ostend can offer a board walk that appeals to
Americans as something approaching the real thing.
The strollers melt away from the promenade, the cafés empty, and at
a fairly respectable hour Trouville is given over to quiet and night
shadow. Late hilarity is the exception rather than the rule, but enough
gaiety is crowded into the hours between eleven A.M. and midnight to
last the ordinary summer resort for a fortnight.
Dieppe, of course, echoes certain notes of the Trouville season and
is as gay in its own way, though it has not the fine sparkle of the
more Parisian resort nor such an exclusively chic villa set as that of
Deauville.
One hears as much English as French in the Hôtel Royale and the Casino
and on the beach, and more swell Americans congregate at Dieppe than
at any other one of the European summer resorts. For the great racing
week crowds flock in, as at Trouville, from all the coast and inland
resorts, and in at least one feature the Dieppe races surpass any
others of the seashore circuit. No finer natural steeple chase course
is known to the racing world than that at Dieppe, and the steeple chase
races there are events that make a notable sensation even among the
many sensations of the Normandy season.
At Ostend it is German that disputes supremacy with French, and there
are more Austrians and Germans there than at any other place on the
Jockey Club racing circuit, but one misses the familiar Parisian
faces, for my lady of Deauville does not often go to Ostend even for
the grande quinzaine of August; and, oddly enough, even the "filles de
Paris" do not make much of the Ostend season.
The crowd is an immense and interesting one even without the French
element, and money is spent as prodigally as at Trouville--even more
prodigally perhaps and a trifle more crudely. The Café de la Plage has
the reputation of being one of the most expensive places in the world
in which one may order a dinner, the promenade, as has been said,
is the best on the coast, and the Kursaal is one of the finest in
Europe. The programme of the days is as crowded as that of Trouville,
and life at Ostend moves at a breathless pace,--tennis tournaments,
golf tournaments, automobile races, motor-boat races, horse races,
children's fêtes, balls, flower festivals, theatre, excursions,
déjeuners, dinners, yachting--but the list is endless. There is
gambling, too, at Ostend. Gambling cuts comparatively little figure at
Dieppe, and the Belgian government has muzzled it at Ostend, but here
as in Paris one may always play at one's private club, and there is
a private club at Ostend where during the quinzaine play rivals that
of the famous fourth-floor room at Trouville during grande semaine.
Many of the same players are in evidence in both places, but at Ostend
entrance to the club is a very serious matter. The king of Belgium,
notorious viveur and most practical sovereign, has been extremely firm
in regard to Ostend play, and permits it only on the guarantee of
the club that no scandal shall arise to discredit the little Belgian
country. Any serious gambling fracas would mean an immense forfeit to
the government, and consequently rigid measures are taken to safeguard
the play. Anyone desiring admission must be introduced by reliable
members and his name must be posted for three days before he is
accepted. No exceptions are made, and a rich American who presented
written introductions from two of the best known and wealthiest men of
Europe last season was promptly turned down.
"These gentlemen are members. We know them well. Monsieur is doubtless
altogether eligible, but our rules are our rules. We cannot accept
cards of introduction, but if Monsieur will come here with sponsors who
are members--"
Money would not buy the entrée. The directors of the Ostend Club take
no chances. They leave that to the gamblers at the club tables.
With Ostend the season ends, and during the next week all of the
expresses running to Paris are crowded with homing holiday folk. Dinard
and the other Brittany resorts have been crowded as has Normandy, but
Dinard is not so popular with the smart Parisienne as is Trouville,
and money is not spent so lavishly in the Brittany resorts as in those
of Normandy. Some Parisians of the fashionable set have wandered to
Switzerland or to German or French spas. Others have spent the summer
in quiet country houses and châteaux far from fashion's haunts; but
from all quarters they flock to Paris when August is past, and Paris
welcomes them with smiles. She has amused herself after a fashion, but
the summer has been long and a trifle dull.