The Normandy seaside resorts: Parisian extensions and the performance of leisure

“ The principal bathing places on the north coast are the following, commencing from the east:—Dieppe, Fécamp, Étretat, Trouville and Deauville, Villers-sur-mer, Houlgate, Cabourg, and Cherbourg. We will say a few words about Trouville and Étretat (as representative places) and conclude with some statistics, in an Appendix, which may be useful to travellers.
Life at Trouville is the gayest of the gay: it is not so much to bathe that we come here, as because on this fine sandy shore near the mouth of the Seine, the world of fashion and delight has made its summer home ”

“ WESTWARD of the mouth of the Seine is a little strip of coast-line which in a restricted sense may be said to be the resort of the Parisian world of fashion during the summer months. Trouville-Deauville, Beuzeval-Houlgate, Dives-Cabourg, and Arromanches have their own especial attractions and their own clientèles; but they are all much alike, and it is only in the old towns, such as Honfleur, Pont l’Evêque, Ouistreham, Ruys, or Port-en-Bessin, that one sees anything at all characteristically Norman. ”

“ Havre many travellers know as a port of embarkation or debarkation for the great Atlantic liners under the subsidy of the French government. Trouville, to the westward from Havre, across this broad bay of the Seine, is a genuine resort of rank and fashion, not dull, to be sure, but as stale and unprofitable a place in which to linger as one can well imagine. It is the abode of the fashionable world and of millionaires who are unable to take their pleasures except to the accompaniment of details which are not even luxuries to many others, but which to them are necessities of prime importance. ”

“ To the right stretches the white line of Havre, pointed with its electric phare; to the left, the shore swells and dimples, and the hills, in gentle curves, rise beyond. Deauville is below, and beyond—a [Pg 275] flat, formal place of fashion, where ladies exhibit the genius of Worth to one another, and to the astonished fishermen.
Imagine a splendid court playing at seaside life; imagine such a place as Watteau would have designed, with inhabitants as elegantly rustic as his, and you imagine a Trouville. ”

“ Those who had been bred in the downy lap of luxury, were charmed with tales of the hardy chase and deadly encounter; those to whom the artifices of dress constituted more [Pg 248] than half the pleasures of existence, delighted to dwell upon the simplicity of forest attire: those who gloried in the splendors of a city mansion,—halls, boudoirs, saloons, and conservatories,—thought how charming it would be to dwell beneath the wide canopy, or a deer-skin tent! ”

“ Deauville is Trouville’s more exclusive and aristocratic neighbour, and has its polo field, golf links, tennis-courts, and automobile race-course. It is an impossible place for the man of moderate means, and is as Parisian as the boulevards themselves.
The “Terrasse” may be called its chief sight, though hardly any but mammon worshippers seek it out. Along its length and breadth, for it is a vast seashore boulevard sixty or more feet in width, are the villas of many whose names are famous in the society columns of the journals of France, England, and America ”

“ There is a brilliance in the sunny air, a gaiety in the mingling crowds, a completeness in the round of amusements, and the opportunities for observing one’s fellow-creatures, that are grand elements in the tonic of change. The bathing, the bands, the casinos, the toilets, are all excellent of their kind, and many a tired worker goes back to that office in the city, where his view is limited by his neighbour’s window-reflectors, a new man for the busy idleness of a fortnight at one of these holiday resorts. ”

“ Normandy divides itself topographically into the three itineraries mentioned: “The Coast,” “The Seine Valley,” and the “Inland Route.” They may be combined readily enough, or they may be taken separately; but to nibble a bit at one, a little at another, and still less at a third, and then rush on to Paris and its distractions, or to some seaside place where brass bands and a casino form the principal attractions, is not the way to have an intimate, personal, and wholly delightful experience of “la belle Normandie.” ”

“ After that time, however, though to the casual visitor Paris may seem as animated and as crowded as ever, he who knows la Ville Lumière realizes that for the moment it is a social desert. The smart world is out round the Normandy circuit in the wake of the horses, is flirting and lounging and frivolling in seashore villas and casinos, is taking the baths and playing high at popular spas, or is motoring frantically over the face of Europe, with intervals for all of these occupations. ”

“ Every dressmaker of pretensions to-day makes her trips to Paris at least twice a year, views the advance season models, buys as many of them as she can, lays in a supply of exclusive materials and trimmings, and fills her note-book with ideas to be used for the benefit of her home customers. Often during her summer trip she takes a run to Trouville and to other Normandy resorts where the tide of fashion is at its highest as the summer draws to a close; and, in the late winter or early spring, the Riviera is a famous hunting-ground for fashions. ”

“ Paris the great dressmaker is a personage, belonging to the swell clubs, in evidence everywhere save in society's exclusive circles, owning a superb country place up the Seine, a seashore home in Normandy, a villa on the Riviera, buying—as did one of the group this year—whole blocks of houses in the most expensive quarter of Paris, spending—as did another of the guild—twenty thousand dollars upon one day's entertainment of a few chosen friends, running handsome automobiles, driving and racing fine horses, and, from his vantage point, watching the flood of fashions which he has set flowing. ”

“ But the system of bathing in France is so sensible and good compared with our own; the facilities for learning to swim, the accommodation for bathers, and the accessories, are so superior to anything we know of in England, that we hardly like to hint at any drawbacks. We need not all go to Trouville (some of us cannot afford it) , but we may live at most of these bathing places at less cost, and with more comfort and amusement than at home. They do manage some [Pg 273] things better in France: at the seaside here the men dress in suits of flannel, and wear light canvas shoes habitually ”

“ Prom our windows at Houlgate (on the sea-coast, near Trouville) we can see modern, half-timbered houses, set in a garden of shrubs and flowers, with gables prettily 'fringed,' graceful dormer windows, turrets and overhanging eaves; solid oak doors, and windows with carved balconies twined about with creepers, with lawns [Pg 252] and shady walks surrounding—as different from the ordinary type of French country-house with its straight avenues and trimly cut trees, as they are remote in design from any ordinary English seaside residence ”

“ There was little sign of culture, and the luxury was senseless and haphazard, and was as ill fitting as that uniform. The floors irritated him with their brilliant polish, the lustres on the chandelier irritated him, and he was reminded for some reason of the story of the merchant who used to go to the baths with a medal on his neck. ”

“ The love of ease that luxury brings along with it,—the selfish and compromising spirit, in which the members of a polished society countenance each other, and which reverses the principle of patriotism, by sacrificing public interests to private ones,—the substitution of intellectual for moral excitement, and the repression of enthusiasm by fastidiousness and ridicule,—these are among the causes that undermine a people,—that corrupt in the very act of enlightening them ”

“ Elegance annoys him, luxury makes him uncomfortable, politeness is a lie, conversation mere prattle, ease of manner a grimace, gaiety a convention, wit a parade, science so much charlatanry, philosophy an affection and morals utter corruption. All is factitious, false and unwholesome,3334 from the make-up, toilet and beauty of women to the atmosphere of the apartments and the ragouts on the dinner-table, in sentiment as in amusement, in literature as in music, in government as in religion. ”

“ The odious and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon the ruins of all that is good in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism scarce capable of cure. ”

“ 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 [Pg 120] 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. ”

“ Eastward toward the boundary of Normandy and Picardy, one passes Varengeville-sur-Mer, Sainte Marguerite and Quiberville, all delightful little seaside towns with a touch of the beau-monde in summer, and a dull, quiet, but none the less entrancing, life in winter, when the natives gossip about their last season’s visitors, and speculate as to what the harvest may be the coming year, meantime catching a few fish and going weekly to the nearest market-town. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here in the garden the drowsy air would lift a flower petal, as some dreamer sunk in hasheesh slumber might touch a loved hand, only to let it slip away in nerveless impotence. Never had the charm of this Normandy sea-coast been as compelling; never had the divine softness of this air, this harmonious marriage of earth-scents and sea-smells seemed as perfect; never before had the delicacy of the foliage and color-gradations of the sky as triumphantly proved that nowhere else, save in France, can nature be at once sensuous and poetic. ”

“ One must go as far as Brittany to see a real peasant with the superstitions of a peasant. As for Normandy, it went in step with the rest of the world, que diable! And again the whip lash descended. Poulette must suffer for Jacques's disgust.
If the Norman peasant was a modern, his country, at least, had retained the charm of its ancient beauty. The road was as Norman a highway as one could wish to see. It had the most capricious of natures, turning and perversely twisting among the farms and uplands. The land was ribboned with growing grain, and the June grass was being cut. ”

“ Everywhere the scenery is exceedingly English, the steep hillsides are often covered with orchards, and the delicate green of the apple-trees in spring-time, half-smothered in pinky-white blossom, gives the country a garden-like aspect. You may see a man harrowing a field on a sudden slope with a cloud of dust blowing up from the dry light soil, and you may hear him make that curious hullaballooing by which the peasants direct their horses, so different from the grunting "way-yup there" of the English ploughman. ”

“ I was twenty-five years of age and was pillaging along the coast of Normandy. I call 'pillaging' wandering about, with a knapsack on one's back, from inn to inn, under the pretext of making studies and sketching landscapes. I knew nothing more enjoyable than that happy-go-lucky wandering life, in which one is perfectly free, without shackles of any kind, without care, without preoccupation, without thinking even of the morrow. One goes in any direction one pleases, without any guide save his fancy, without any counsellor save his eyes. ”