282 
THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 
Luna Park, in Paris, has been a great success. 
If some enterprising individual were to plant 
a Luna Park in one of the coast towns, 
transform it into a sort of Blackpool, it would 
he found that people from all over France 
would flock there to be amused. The French 
are, if anything, fonder of amusement than 
the English. 
As yet there is nothing of the kind in 
France— certainly not at Biarritz, which is 
the last seaside resort in France, saving Saint 
Jean de Luz, which is really Spanish. I 
am not suggesting that France would be any 
better off with a Blackpool — that is a matter 
of opinion. I do not think that it would be 
any worse off. T should like to see the people 
flocking there : the railway companies would 
have to revise their methods of transport if 
they wished to deal adequately with the 
resulting crowd. I do think that some 
French coast town might offer something 
besides the eternal Casino to amuse its patrons. 
The Casino, as it exists at present, is an 
incubus ; one has to go there morning, noon, 
and night if one wants to do something ; in 
some places one has even to go there if one 
wants to bathe. And the Casino means 
gambling — let there be no nonsense about 
that. If people want to gamble, so far as I 
am concerned, let them, but that, in the 
summer-time, there should be nothing to do 
but gamble — no one surely suggests that that 
is as it should be. 
If a visitor attends a theatrical performance, 
a concert, or a dance, there are frequent long- 
intervals, which are made as long as possible 
so that he may be driven into the gaming- 
room, and leave at least a few francs behind 
him. An enormous number of persons, both 
English and French, come away from the 
Casino-haunted French coast town wishing 
they had never been there — they have not 
benefited by their holiday. Probably the 
immense majority of persons who visit the 
English seaside town in summer are all the 
better for going there. 
Let it not be supposed that there is any 
intention to disparage the Continental holiday 
resort, or to hint that the English one is 
perfection. Not a bit of it. It is merely 
suggested that to write of Continental 
“ gaiety ” is to write of something which, in 
the writer’s sense, hardly exists. What is 
found abroad is change — of atmosphere, 
surroundings, life. Some very charming French 
people of my acquaintance are of opinion 
that the two most delightful places in which 
to spend a holiday are in England — Folkestone 
and Brighton. There is nothing in the whole 
of France, they maintain, to compare with 
them in the way of gaiety — and I say that is 
true. Comparisons are odious. Brighton is 
near to London, we are all of us familiar with 
it, we know its drawbacks. But what a 
town it is ! How it tries to offer amusement 
— “ gaiety ” — to suit the palate of every sort 
of visitor ; and what you do not find at 
Brighton you find at Folkestone — verdure-clad 
cliffs and no King’s Road. There are more 
than a dozen coast towns in England which 
are not to be matched in France, or even 
approached anywhere abroad. There are 
intimate subjects, such as sanitation, of which 
in the French coast town one had better not 
think. There are still numberless hotels 
without a bathroom ; where there is one they 
charge you half a crown or three shillings for 
a bath 1 
Yet there is always this to be said — when 
one crosses the Channel one lands in another 
world. I have spent a large portion of my 
life abroad, and I feel that still. There is 
something to be got in France which is not to 
be had in England. It is not easy to define 
what it is, but all travellers know the thing 
is true. My own taste inclines towards the 
Roscoffs and the Pont Avens, because there 
one can live a sort of life which is not to be 
lived in England. The same remark applies 
to your Dieppcs and your Trouvillcs— there 
is nothing like them on this side. But, oh ! 
gentlemen of the Press, do not counsel your 
readers, in search of gaiety and economy, to 
go abroad ! 
