*• GAIETY ABROAD .” 
281 
— they had three apiece ; nine pounds for 
dessert as a wind-up to an extremely expen- 
sive dinner ! 
Trouville is an odd little place — with its 
neighbour Deauville, where the races arc held ; 
it contains fewer than nine thousand in- 
habitants. It has no front ; hotels, villas, 
restaurants come right down to the shore. 
They have imitated a great watering-place in 
America, and constructed a board-walk. 
Boards are laid upon the sands themselves, 
so as to form a sort of floor, and that is the only 
promenade there is. In race week the show 
on this board-walk is worth seeing — once. I 
know men who hold that the finest women in 
Europe are to be seen at Trouville — that is a 
question of taste; one certainly sees the most 
remarkable costumes. There is a sort of fair 
on the sands. Bathing boxes and such-like 
things are placed right down by the water’s 
edge. The scene on the -plage on a fine morn- 
ing in August is certainly a gay one. We have 
“ gaiety ” in a Continental seaside resort at 
last ; but it must be distinctly understood 
that it is gaiety of a peculiar kind. 
The fact is that the Casino is the beginning 
and end of Trouville — and that the Casino 
stands for gambling. There is probably more 
play in the Casino during the short Trouville 
season than in all the other French watering- 
places put together. 
You can get play, and quite good play, on 
all that coast — at Deauville, Dives, Vi llers, 
Cabourg, and Houlgate — but in that respect 
they all of them pale their ineffectual fires as 
compared with Trouville. 
Perhaps that is what our friends in the 
newspapers mean when they write of the 
gaiety which is to be found abroad ; they 
regard u gaiety ” as a synonym for 
“ gambling.” Because, as will be seen, there 
is little “ gaiety ” of any other kind to be 
found. 
One takes a jump when one leaves Cabourg, 
across the peninsula, which is crowned by 
Cherbourg, until one reaches Granville. 
There you have a typical French holiday 
resort of another kind, and one can hardly 
find one less inviting. Passing Mont Saint 
Michel, where — though it is one of the sights 
of Europe — only very few people stay even 
a night, the next seaside resort is Parame. 
At Parame there is an immense expanse of 
sand, and nothing else. For people with 
children in the spade-and-bucket stage it 
may have attractions. It is bounded by 
Saint Malo, a quaint, old, walled town, rich in 
smells. On the other side of the mouth of 
the Ranee is Brittany, and the first Breton 
seaside resort which, although in that remote 
spot, is almost more English than French — 
Dinan. 
There is no doubt that in the summer 
Dinan can be cheerful. Those of its patrons 
who are not English are, for the most part. 
American ; the amusements provided are 
suited to their palates. There is a social 
club — quite a nice club, to whose member- 
ship both sexes are eligible. You have 
tennis and tea, and all sorts of delights, just 
as you have, to quote an instance, in the 
club, say, at Shanklin. There is one very 
expensive hotel, and others quite expensive 
enough. There is a Casino with — as a 
French advertising syndicate puts it — “ the 
usual attractions of thermal resorts.” 
After Dinan, on the French coast, what is 
there ? There are practically no seaside 
resorts in Brittany ; 1 know France pretty 
well, and it happens to be one of the parts of 
it which T love best. But, in the popular 
sense, Brittany is not gay. Roscoff, in 
Finistere, is, perhaps, the seaside resort 
which comes next to Dinan, though that 
entails a longish jump, in the popular 
sense, Roscoff is not gay, it does not want to 
be gay ; its present patrons would probably 
not go there if it were. There are visitors to 
be found along the Breton coast, in queer, 
out-of-the-way nooks and corners, but the 
nearest approach to a popular resort is Pont 
Avon — which is not upon the sea, though 
pretty near it. 
With a certain set of people Pont Aven 
has become quite the vogue of recent years. 
It. is in the south of Finistere. It is still, at 
present, but a village, which is going to grow ; 
possibly one of its chief attractions is its 
inaccessibility". Tt is a long way from every- 
where. Pont Aven has qualities which appeal 
to some folk ; their number is increasing 
every year. But, in the newspaper sense, 
Pont Aven is not gay. 
One passes, after leaving Brittany, all 
along the coast of France without finding 
what is understood in England as a seaside 
town until one reaches Arcachon, in Gironde. 
The English go there in the winter ; some of 
them live there ; in summer it is crowded 
with French — when* it is almost gay. There 
is no organized attempt made to amuse 
visitors, as is done with ns, and, for the most 
part, they are not the sort of visitors who 
would care for that kind of amusement. 
French people, of the better sort , like to amuse 
themselves in their own way — though I have 
a theory that that is because they never have 
a chance of being amused in any other way. 
