Normandy Picturesque eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 170 pages of information about Normandy Picturesque.

Normandy Picturesque eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 170 pages of information about Normandy Picturesque.

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 things better in France:  at the seaside here the men dress in suits of flannel, and wear light canvas shoes habitually; the women swim, and take their children with them into the water,—­floating them with gourds, which accustoms them to the water, and to the use of their limbs.  At the hotels and restaurants, they provide cheap and appetizing little dinners; there is plenty of ice in hot weather, and cooling drinks are to be had everywhere:  in short, in these matters the practical common sense of the French people strikes us anew, every time we set foot on their shores.  Why it should be so, we cannot answer; but as long as it is so, our countrymen and countrywomen may well crowd to French watering-places.

The situation of Trouville is thus described by Blanchard Jerrold, who knows the district better than most Englishmen:—­’Even the shore has been subdued to comfortable human uses; rocks have been picked out of the sand, until a carpet as smooth as Paris asphalte has been obtained for the fastidious feet of noble dames, who are the finishing bits of life and colour in the exquisite scene.  Even the ribbed sand is not smooth enough; a boarded way has been fixed from the casino to the mussel banks, whither the dandy resorts to play at mussel gathering, in a nautical dress that costs a sailor’s income.  The great and rich have planted their Louis XIII. chateaux, their ‘maisons mauresques’ and ‘pavillons a la renaissance,’ so closely over the available slopes, round about the immense and gaudily-appointed Casino, and the Hotel of the Black Rocks, that it has been found necessary to protect them with masonry of more than Roman strength.  From these works of startling force, and boldness of design, the view is a glorious one indeed.  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 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.  It is the village of the millionaire—­the stage whereon the duchess plays the hoyden, and the princess seeks the exquisite relief of being natural for an hour or two.  No wonder every inch of the rock is disputed; there are so many now in the world who have sipped all the pleasures

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Normandy Picturesque from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.