Trouville

“ There creaks a pump which wets your legs; two boys are rinsing decanters; a parrot repeats from morning till night: “Have you breakfasted, Jacko?” and finally, a brat about ten years old, the son of the house and the hope of the pharmacy, exercises in all sorts of athletics, such as raising himself from the ground by his teeth.
This journey to Trouville has brought the whole inner story of my life before me. I have dreamed much in this theatre of my passions. I now take leave of them forever, I hope; in the part of life that remains, there is time to say adieu to youthful sadness. ”

“ The Trouville Casino
But it must be a bother picking up a taste for having baths and things afterwards, if it isn't from instinct, don't you think so, Mamma? And I am glad I am not French. It is even eccentric if you sleep with your window open; Héloise screamed at me for that. They all assure me it gives sore eyes, besides encouraging an early grave. I said at last that in England we slept the whole summer in the open air. I was so exasperated, and they would believe anything.
Oh, I wish we were back on the Sauterelle!—which reminds me I have never told you anything about Trouville. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ You would rather keep this unhappy Piero on thorns beside you, than see him enjoy himself with other people. Now, I call that shockingly selfish, and if you go in that spirit to Trouville, he will soon begin to wish, my dear child, that he had never had a fancy to come over to a London season. I can see you so exactly! Too dignified to be cross, too offended to be companionable; silent, reproachful, terrible!'
83
From the Lady Mary Bruton, Roches Noires, Trouville, to Mrs d'Arcy, British Embassy, Berlin. ”

“ I found Trouville a most amusing place: no chance of being dull here! It was the height of the season, and the place was full of people who had come to see the races at Dauville, a pretty Norman coast town on the other side of the river La Touque, possessing a splendid hippodrome, where during one week important races take place. Crowds of people came by special trains from Paris, and omnibuses kept constantly arriving with passengers. Our hotel was crammed to the garrets, and it was difficult to get a seat at any of the tables during our meals. ”

“ From Houlgate all the way to Trouville the country is wooded and hilly, and in the hollows, where the timber-framed farms with their thatched roofs are picturesquely arranged, there is much to attract the visitor who, wearying of the gaiety of Trouville and its imitators along the coast, wishes to find solitudes and natural surroundings. ”

“ What possible difference could it make to us whether we were landed at Trouville or at Villerville? But to him—to be accused of betraying two ladies—to allow the whole of the Havre quays to behold in him a man disgraced, dishonored!
His was a tragic figure as he stood up, erect on the poop, to clap hands to a blue-clad breast, and to toss a black mane of hair in the golden air.
"Dame! Toujours été galant homme, moi! I am known on both shores as the most gallant of men. But the most gallant of men cannot control the caprice of the wind!" ”

“ Among the watering-places on the Channel the twin towns of Deauville and Trouville, separated only by the river Toques, are pre-eminent among the wealthiest and most fashionable of Parisians. Trouville has a longer season, but it is altogether outshone by its neighbour during the fortnight of the races in August, and during the quieter weeks of its season Deauville probably boasts more leaders of fashionable French society than any other coast resort. ”

“ The red sail of a heavy fishing-bark, lying motionless on the level waters, looked like a large rock standing up out of the sea. And the Seine, rolling down from Rouen, seemed a wide inlet dividing two neighbouring lands. They reached the harbour of Trouville in less than an hour, and as it was the time of day when the world was bathing, Pierre went to the shore. ”

“ She is a charming woman, quite a cosmopolitan. She lives in Paris ’most all the time, but I fancied she was at Trouville for the summer. I wonder....”
She read the letter a third time. Drooping lids and a screen of heavy eyelashes veiled her eyes, and when the fingers holding that disturbing note rested on the rail of the veranda again, still those radiant blue eyes remained invisible, and the eloquent eyebrows were not arched in laughing bewilderment but straightened in silent questioning. ”

“ And yet, patent as this singularity must have been to the dullest, it was something quite apart from any eccentricity of manner, though, heaven knows, I was soon to think him odd enough.
“Isn’t your description,” I said gravely, thinking to suit my humour to his own, “somewhat too general? Over yonder a few miles lies Houlgate. Trouville itself is not so far, and this is the season. A great many white hats trimmed with roses might come for a stroll in these woods. ”

“ They reached their own former stopping place, to which they had been sent by Major de Trouville, but when they inquired for the Gleasons the landlady, who remembered the boys, stared at them in surprise, and said:
"Why, Madam Gleason and her daughter are not here! They went out this morning to meet you, and have not come back!"
"To meet us?" gasped Jack. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I never witnessed a French horse-race, but I am told that they enjoy it moult tristement, as they say we English enjoy all our amusements.
Close to Lisieux is the fashionable watering-place of Trouville, a place without any charms that I could see, puffed into celebrity by Alexander Dumas. The Duke de Morny invested in building there a good deal of the money which he made by the coup d'état. Life at a French watering-place seems to be as close an imitation of life at Paris as French ingenuity can produce under the adverse circumstances of the case. ”

“ How could we hope to make a Frenchman comprehend an instinctive impulse to turn our backs on the Trouville world? What, pray, had we just now to do with fashion—with the purring accents of boudoirs, with all the life we had run away from? Surely the romance—the charm of our present experiences would be put to flight once we exchanged salutations with the beau monde—with that world that is so sceptical of any pleasure save that which blooms in its own hot-houses, and so disdainful of all forms of life save those that are modelled on fashion's types. ”

“ Dearest Mamma,—I am sorry our nice voyage is nearly finished, for we go over to Trouville this evening, and from there by train back to Vinant. The river is not nearly so pretty after you leave Caudebec, but Tancarville is fine, and looks very imposing sitting up so high. The Vicomte has been talking to me all the time, but Jean stays by. We were dusty and sun-burnt by the time we got to Havre, and Héloise and the Marquise and I started at once for the big baths. ”

“ We were reassured by this information and had no further hesitation about loafing to our heart's content on the beach of Trouville. An hour later, various stretches of sand having been crossed and two or three directions asked in French and answered in Trouvillois, we managed to land at our inn. A woman of about forty—plump, clean and comely, with the quizzical smile of the Norman peasant on her lips—came up to us. This was Mother Oseraie, who probably never suspected the celebrity which one day the Parisian whom she received with an almost sneering air was to give her. Poor Mother Oseraie! ”

“ 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. ”

“ the fact of a leading organ of Evangelical thought being edited for two successive fortnights from Trouville and Monte Carlo was generally admitted to have been a mistake. ”

“ Thanks to this double gift and the spotless name that accompanied it, M. de Treville was admitted into the household of the young prince where he made such good use of his sword, and was so faithful to his motto, that Louis XIII, one of the good blades of his kingdom, was accustomed to say that if he had a friend who was about to fight, he would advise him to choose as a second, himself first, and Treville next--or even, perhaps, before himself. ”

“ But the words were hardly out of her mouth before it struck her that the man was Aaron Trow, of whom every one in Bermuda had been talking.
“Come into the house,” he said, “and give me food.” And he still held her with his hand as though he would compel her to follow him.
She stood for a moment thinking what she would say to him; for even then, with that terrible man standing close to her in the darkness, her presence of mind did not desert her. “Surely,” she said, “I will give you food if you are hungry. But take your hand from me. No man would lay his hands on a woman.” ”

“ Upon Hallowell's report, Troubridge, who had now been made Sir Thomas for his services, sent Captain Louis with a squadron to enforce the terms which he had offered; and, as soon as he could leave Naples, he himself followed. The French, who had no longer any hope from the fate of arms, relied upon their skill in negotiation, and proposed terms to Troubridge with that effrontery which characterises their public proceedings; but which is as often successful as it is impudent. They had a man of the right stamp to deal with. ”

“ Now Mr Trulliber had, by his
professions of piety, by his gravity, austerity, reserve, and the
opinion of his great wealth, so great an authority in his parish, that
they all lived in the utmost fear and apprehension of him. ”

“ Its twenty chimneys were as tranquil as its tall spire, and its slaughter-house as silent as the adjacent church, where the poet Crabbe, once vicar, is commemorated by a tablet, informing the world that he rose by his abilities. In fact, the noisiest thing in Trowbridge was the rookery where I left it. Like nearly all towns—market towns, factory towns—Trowbridge is girdled by villas, chestnuts, and elms, and in the trees rooks build, thus making a ceremoniously rustic entrance or exit. While the rooks cawed overhead, the blackbirds sang below. ”

“ From fifty to sixty Musketeers, who appeared to replace one another in order always to present an imposing number, paraded constantly, armed to the teeth and ready for anything. On one of those immense staircases, upon whose space modern civilization would build a whole house, ascended and descended the office seekers of Paris, who ran after any sort of favor--gentlemen from the provinces anxious to be enrolled, and servants in all sorts of liveries, bringing and carrying messages between their masters and M. de Treville. ”

“ De Treville knows him and esteems him very highly, and De Treville, as you know, is one of the queen's greatest friends. As a soldier the man ranks well; he did his whole duty and even more, at the siege of Rochelle -- as at Suze and Perpignan. ”

“ To Captain Troubridge, then, My Lady was an adventuress. He never thought that the love which ennobled her connection with Mr. Greville might also ennoble her passion for the Admiral; and he made no allowance for the rich colours of the imagination with which the Admiral painted My Lady’s companionship and love, till it seemed to him like the sunshine which makes the difference between the winters of Naples and England. ”

“ On the following morning the priest was very jolly at breakfast, and in speaking of the ladies at Ardkill made no allusion whatever to the conversation of the previous evening. "Ah no," he said, when Neville proposed that they should walk up together to the cottage before he went down to his boat. "What's the good of an ould man like me going bothering? And, signs on, I'm going into Ennistimon to see Pat O'Leary about the milk he's sending to our Union. The thief of the world,—it's wathering it he is before he sends it. ”