Correspondence
A LETTER FROM THE RIVIERA.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sat,—In spite of early forebodings, the Riviera season is racketing to its end much as usual, Lent duly observed with the customary penitences of galas, fetes and battles of flowers, operas, dances and sporting competitions of every kind. The chief difficulty is to invent for Mi-Careme and Easter something to make them more festal than the preceding days of mourning.
One hears complaints that hotels—and especially the more expensive—have never filled ; and shopkeepers who cater to the tastes of wealthier visitors talk lugubriously ; but since the middle of February there have undoubtedly been an enormous number of people here, including, as the Press abundantly informs us, a respectable proportion of the Royal Families and aristocracy of most European countries, besides a sufficiency of " milliardaires " from both Americas.
And yet . . . And yet . . . !
Presumably it is only what is happening all over the world ; but, in spite of Kings and Princes, Dukes—Grand or otherwise—and much money, the Riviera in these last few years has become amazingly, let us say, democratized. (That is a prettier word than vulgarized.) The Countesses who, if old writers are to be believed, used to gamble at Monte Carlo with so disdainful an air among subdued murmurs from the well-dressed throng have vanished.. In place of them, in the " kitchen "—or public rooms—the mob that surges round the tables is discouragingly unappetising and the atmosphere fetid almost beyond imagination. The Salle Privee is worse than the public rooms were seven years ago. Even the Sporting Club seems, in practice, to have relaxed the social qualifications which used to be insisted on for admission. The most fashionable, or least squalid— as well as, probably, the highest—gambling is now to be found in the baccarat rooms, and, especially, in Cannes. But even the baccarat rooms are getting crowded, like the golf courses, tennis clubs, and everything else. Cannes alone among the larger towns seems to have the trick of somehow keeping a certain air of gentility and good breeding in face of the submerging hordes ; and, though the town is growing at a stupendous pace. yet with its polo, its yachts, and Lord Derby's exclusive golf course at Mougins, it seems likely to hold and increase its lead.
Climatically this season has not been one of the best. My diary tells me that only on twelve days has there been rain in the daytime since the beginning of December, which comes to about the accepted average of three wet days in every month. We have had our share of sunshine, therefore ; but with it has been a superabundance of cold winds, so that Mimosa Fetes and the early Battles of Flowers had to be postponed because neither the mimosa nor other flowers were forthcoming at their proper dates.
But after all, it is the sunshine that counts : which gives a glitter to life and a glamour to the sea and the mountains, while London is fog-bound and Paris slippery with mud and rain, and makes open-air games a pleasure through the dull months of the year. Many people hate the Riviera and all its ways. Not a few consider its climate dangerous. But it needs no great gift of prophecy to foretell that, by virtue of its sunshine alone, it is destined to become yearly more important in the eyes of the devotees of sport.
The racing season, both at Nice and Cannes, is being extended winter after winter and richer purses are tempting down a better class of horse, both for steeplechasing and on the flat. There have never before been so many well- known polo players, or so many ponies, at Cannes as there are this year : and never before has the accommodation
,for yachts been so crowded. There have been, I- believe,
ten golf courses in play at various places along the coast, and if they lack something of being up to championship standard, five of them—perhaps six--are good enough to be far from contemptible, even in England, and all are being steadily improved. At lawn tennis, outside Wimtledon the Riviera is the world's most important international meeting ground, and the season goes on for something five months.
The Riviera is ridiculously over-boomed. The populati9 is almost entirely parasitical, predatory on British a American visitors, and one may quite reasonably loathe t more unwholesome side of its life—the preposterous ga dinners," the gambling and the pigeon-shooting at Illon Carlo. But there is a saner side to existence. The mount and the sea remain. In spite of the multiplication of villa there are still olive groves and meadows pied with many hued anemones and wild narcissus. And the twenty-s' or twenty-seven days of sunshine in every month mat this an incomparable winter playing-field. It will be to the good if this year's experience has taught hotel-keel and others that profiteering can be carried to a point wile it defeats itself.—I am, Sir, &c.,
YOUR RIVIERA CORRESPONDENT.
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