CHAPTER VII
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.
