Many nice-looking villas have been planted on the outskirts of the town, particularly upon and in the direction of the road to Bayonne. The heights above the Basque beach are likewise studded by various distinctive houses; and about a mile from town, isolated from everything about, there is a house belonging to Lord Ernest Bruce, built in the Moorish style with a glass dome, and surrounded by a garden.
The French and Spanish form the bulk of the visitors during August and September, these months constituting, par excellence, what is called the season, while during the winter months the English take possession. In the winter months the hotel charges undergo great modification, and pension can then be had in some of the best hotels at 7 francs per day.[45] It is noteworthy that pension at Biarritz and Pau, and elsewhere in the south of France, includes wine. House accommodation, too, in the winter months is correspondingly cheap. The best months for enjoying Biarritz, we were informed, are the months of April and May, when the heat is sufficient but not oppressive. The month of July is sometimes unbearably hot. A family who had been there during July told us that they could hardly venture out in that month till late in the evening; and if the sirocco prevailed, they were even obliged to close the windows, the hot sand percolating through every crevice. The band of music, I understood, plays only during the two months of the season, and removes at its close, when the enclosure is dismantled.
But the great attractions of Biarritz consist in its beach, its rocks, its grand seas, and in its capacities for good bathing. We were never fortunate enough to witness a storm in the bay, although there was occasionally enough of swell upon the water to show what a storm could be. Our landlord, speaking of the appearance of a storm on the ocean, described it as ‘terreeble;’ and no doubt it is, and not very safe, too, as sometimes people are washed away by an unexpected dash and sweep of the ocean. But a standing evidence of the force of the waves is exhibited by the remains or ruins of the breakwater, begun in view of here affording a port of refuge and pier. Regarding this scheme Count Russell says (p. 13):—
‘Napoleon III. suggested it, meaning to connect by a breakwater several of the detached rocks scattered on the north-western side of the Porte Vieux, and thus to form a small harbour, only open to the north. A clever engineer, M. Palaà, was entrusted with this almost superhuman undertaking, but the only result has been, after years of labour and more than one sacrifice of life, to accumulate a shapeless and useless mass of ruins along the intended harbour. The breakwater (or what is left of it) was built with concrete; artificial square blocks weighing 36 tons (some of them 48) were sunk by hundreds at random and just where they liked to fall! But the tremendous surf has been playing with them as if they were pebbles, and in 1868 one of them was carried right over the pier (22 feet above low-water mark) like a toy or a feather! For these and for financial reasons the works are now suspended. They have already cost £120,000, and all to no purpose. In fact, nothing human can resist such a sea as the Sea of Biscay, except, perhaps, at St. Jean de Luz, where nature has half made a harbour.’
The sea is by far too treacherous and violent to make boating safe, and we seldom, if ever, saw pleasure-boats out, although they were lying in the harbour.
Some isolated rocks stand out in the water, separated from the mainland, with which, I fancy, they have at one time been connected. They are rough, and rugged, and bare, and honeycombed, and even, occasionally, altogether perforated by the water; bearing witness in their haggard condition to the violence of the waves by which they are continually assailed, undermined, broken up, and thrown down. It is, indeed, very beautiful to see, during a swell, the water lashing the rocks and dashing over in clouds of white spray, or sometimes through the perforations or over and down the rocks in streams of white foam. During the day we used to stand and observe the swell surging into the large cavities formed by continual action, and tossed out again, as if the rocks had said with Phineas, ‘Friend, thee isn’t wanted here;’ while the whole water around, nothing daunted, was boiling and excited, dancing and glancing and sparkling in the sun as if in glee, or in the spirit of fun and mischief. This, too, in calm weather. But at night we used to hear the boom of the waves as they tumbled into these caverns and were as promptly turned out again, as if it had been guns firing—for which, indeed, at first we were inclined to mistake the sound.
Unlike the Mediterranean Sea, the tide has the usual ebb and flow of the Atlantic, consequently not only is the beach more interesting, but the town is kept more healthy. The sands afford the usual occupation and delight to children, but shells and seaweed are rare. A good many jelly-fish are thrown up; some gelatinous animals of a large size perhaps were octopi. We used often to sit by the beach and watch the sea, especially under the Basque Rocks, where the waves, with the slightest breath of wind, would come charging gallantly in, high and crested, and turn gracefully over in long lines when they neared the shore. Over the rocks the inhabitants would seem to have the odious habit of running their drains or dirty water, both unsightly to the eye and leaving disagreeable black pools below. This surely might be remedied. It does create a drawback to this most enjoyable beach. Equally objectionable, if not more so, is the practice, so offensive at Cannes, of putting the outlets of the town drains close to each of the bathing-places. The tide, no doubt, is such at Biarritz as to remove the stuff carried down, but there could or should be no difficulty in carrying the pipes away to some distance from parts where people enter the water to bathe, and at all events in not making them so obnoxiously near and prominent.
There are three bathing establishments at Biarritz. One, and the largest, is on the Grande Plage, between the Villa Eugenie and the hotels, though much closer to the latter. It is a large wooden building of one storey, in the Moorish style, and opening from the promenade, three or four steps leading down at each end to the sands. When the tide is low there is a long space of sand to traverse. At the west side, where the rocks are, a rope for the use of the bathers is stretched between two rocks running seaward. The second is on the Port-Vieux, a creek perhaps 400 or 500 feet long by 100 to 150 feet wide. The wooden building forming the bathing establishment, of very neat design, with a balcony running all round, and a red-tiled roof, is built on three sides of the square down to the usual high-water mark. The fourth and open side is to the sea, which for a good way out is hemmed in by rocks, between which a rope, slack but strong, is stretched across the creek, hanging, in very low tide, considerably above water, but in high tide having the middle part submerged. One side of the house is devoted to the dressing-rooms of the ladies and the other to those of the gentlemen, and long wooden stairs on each side enable the bathers to reach the sands. A few yards brings into sufficient depth for bathing, but at low water the sea goes back so as to land one among the rocks, especially in spring tides, and bathing is then not so pleasant, especially to non-swimmers; but this condition does not last above an hour. When the wind is in the west, even when hardly perceptible, there is more or less surf at the edge, and in strong west or north-west winds the swell must be such as to prevent bathing altogether at the Port-Vieux. But in this case more shelter will no doubt be had at the Grande Plage, which is to a small extent protected on the west by rocks. In stormy weather it must be altogether impossible to bathe anywhere. The third bathing establishment is at (though raised some feet above) the Basque beach, and is intended for the convenience of those residing in that neighbourhood on the plateau above. It is smaller considerably than either of the other two, and can be reached from the sands by ascending a ladder or stair of steps, or from the town by descending a zigzag path from the top of the nearly perpendicular rock against which it is placed. The arrangements of all are, I suppose, on exactly the same principles: little boxes under cover of the establishment for undressing and dressing, towels, and the usual appliances, including a tub of hot water to take the sand out of the feet.