COLUMN
If I had been here a century ago, it would have
been April when I drove to the coast to enjoy the
quietude of empty shores, and I would not have
been disturbed until summer’s end. Nobody, during
the first decades of the last century, sunbathed. Not
until the Americans arrived, when they changed
forever the beat of the Riviera.
At the beginning of the 1920s, on to the scene
came Sara and Gerald Murphy. (Think F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night). They zoomed
south, quitting their high-society, expat lives in Paris
to visit their pal, Cole Porter. It was to the sleepy
fishing village of Antibes that Porter directed them.
Sara and Gerald rented the Hôtel du Cap, requesting
that it remain open for the entire summer.
So delighted were they by soaking up the sun,
cooling off in the jade-and-amethyst sea, that they
bought a villa and invited everybody: Americans,
French, artists, writers, the Lost Generation moved
generously bestowed. Picnics in the
groves break the intense days. And when
the harvest is in, and the green, viscid oil
has been decanted and stored in a cool
spot, what then? Christmas will soon be
here: family celebrations. Until then,
there is a lull. These are the days I steal
for myself. Beachcombing for stories,
ideas and souvenirs.
Down at the coast, where many of
the restaurants are closed, ‘En vacances’
before the Christmas rush, the tourists
are absent. I park without difficulty and
then walk, listening to the rush of sea
hitting the shoreline. I gaze up at the private villas with their
shutters firmly bolted. I imagine the lives of those who graced
these dusty belle-époque rooms.
A century and more ago, when the French Riviera was the
most stylish resort in Europe, the upper crust and fabulously
wealthy were climbing out of trains to settle here for winter.
This climate was kind to their constitutions. The white Russians
built churches and palaces. British royalty all but founded
Cannes. Press magnates, the nobility and socialites abounded.
They visited one another, sipped tea together, enjoyed genteel
dances, croquet and lawn tennis.
They stayed through until April, inhaling the heady
perfumes of mimosa in January, the delicate almond
blossoms in February, the scintillating aromas of
orange flowers, and then they packed up,
wending north to avoid the insufferable heat.
south, creating the Riviera’s earliest
summer seasons and the coolest of
the world’s hot spots.
Theirs was a fairy-tale existence
that couldn’t last. The Depression
beckoned, but they bequeathed us
jazz, glamour and romance,
as well as stories, and cocktails
in abundance.
I bend to the sand, caught by the
glinting. I gather up the coin: a silver
dollar. I close my eyes, imagining
a 1926 Peace dollar; a lost souvenir
from this coast’s fabulous past.I
have found a coin in the sand, half-buried
sideways. Eureka. I am an out-of-season
beachcomber. I walk blustery littorals when
nobody is about, when the wind slaps and lifts
waves. In the distance, one lone figure appears with
a dog that lopes into the sea, chasing thrown sticks.
The emptiness brought on by the shifting season
sends me hunting for ghosts. Ghosts imagined or
those who have trodden this way before me.
The Côte d’Azur is not seasonal in the way that
a storm-torn Irish seaside town might be, but still it
has its phases of the year.
November is a busy time in the Provençal
hinterland. Growers such as us are harvesting their
olives. The grapes have been pressed and are ageing
in vats in preparation for an excellent vintage while
the olives are turning from green to mottled purple,
awaiting picking.
We hope for clement weather, which is
Vignette
Carol Drinkwater
is the best-selling
author of The Olive
Farm series.
Her latest work is
The Forgotten
Summer, a novel
set in Provence.
Contact Carol at
caroldrinkwater.comIn the lull before Christmas, Carol Drinkwater finds
echoes of the past on an empty Riviera beachGhosts in the sands
ILLUSTRATIONS: MELISSA WOOD106 FRANCE MAGAZINE http://www.completefrance.com