In order to cover the gambling, the Casino ranks as a club, though everybody gets in—at least on the first floor. While fortunes are changing hands overhead, down here all is light and laughter and mirth. There is no drinking, but that does not trouble thirsty folk for there is first aid near at hand in the Café de Paris; and dinner is still a recent memory. The music is always good and there is dancing for those who want it. Perhaps some popular chanteuse or dancer from Paris is a feature of the evening entertainment, or there may be a costume ball or an effective cotillon. The best theatrical companies of Paris play in the little theatre, and always there are the petits chevaux to offer amusement of a mildly exciting sort.
All goes merrily until eleven o'clock, then the crowd pours out into the night, the doors close, the lights go out, and the great building stands dark and grim until morning. The board walk is thronged for a time with late strollers, but it is a poor imitation of Atlantic City's pride, this narrow board walk stretching from the Hôtel de Paris to the Rochers Noirs. Only Ostend can offer a board walk that appeals to Americans as something approaching the real thing.
The strollers melt away from the promenade, the cafés empty, and at a fairly respectable hour Trouville is given over to quiet and night shadow. Late hilarity is the exception rather than the rule, but enough gaiety is crowded into the hours between eleven A.M. and midnight to last the ordinary summer resort for a fortnight.
Dieppe, of course, echoes certain notes of the Trouville season and is as gay in its own way, though it has not the fine sparkle of the more Parisian resort nor such an exclusively chic villa set as that of Deauville.
One hears as much English as French in the Hôtel Royale and the Casino and on the beach, and more swell Americans congregate at Dieppe than at any other one of the European summer resorts. For the great racing week crowds flock in, as at Trouville, from all the coast and inland resorts, and in at least one feature the Dieppe races surpass any others of the seashore circuit. No finer natural steeple chase course is known to the racing world than that at Dieppe, and the steeple chase races there are events that make a notable sensation even among the many sensations of the Normandy season.
At Ostend it is German that disputes supremacy with French, and there are more Austrians and Germans there than at any other place on the Jockey Club racing circuit, but one misses the familiar Parisian faces, for my lady of Deauville does not often go to Ostend even for the grande quinzaine of August; and, oddly enough, even the "filles de Paris" do not make much of the Ostend season.
The crowd is an immense and interesting one even without the French element, and money is spent as prodigally as at Trouville—even more prodigally perhaps and a trifle more crudely. The Café de la Plage has the reputation of being one of the most expensive places in the world in which one may order a dinner, the promenade, as has been said, is the best on the coast, and the Kursaal is one of the finest in Europe. The programme of the days is as crowded as that of Trouville, and life at Ostend moves at a breathless pace,—tennis tournaments, golf tournaments, automobile races, motor-boat races, horse races, children's fêtes, balls, flower festivals, theatre, excursions, déjeuners, dinners, yachting—but the list is endless. There is gambling, too, at Ostend. Gambling cuts comparatively little figure at Dieppe, and the Belgian government has muzzled it at Ostend, but here as in Paris one may always play at one's private club, and there is a private club at Ostend where during the quinzaine play rivals that of the famous fourth-floor room at Trouville during grande semaine. Many of the same players are in evidence in both places, but at Ostend entrance to the club is a very serious matter. The king of Belgium, notorious viveur and most practical sovereign, has been extremely firm in regard to Ostend play, and permits it only on the guarantee of the club that no scandal shall arise to discredit the little Belgian country. Any serious gambling fracas would mean an immense forfeit to the government, and consequently rigid measures are taken to safeguard the play. Anyone desiring admission must be introduced by reliable members and his name must be posted for three days before he is accepted. No exceptions are made, and a rich American who presented written introductions from two of the best known and wealthiest men of Europe last season was promptly turned down.