HISTORY ❘ FRANCE’S SEASIDE RESORTS


HIGH SOCIETY HOLIDAYS


Lanie Goodman revisits the Golden Age of well-heeled sojourns to coastal resorts Cannes, Biarritz and Deauville


whim, a caprice, an adoration. If you believe the legendary lore that gave rise to the sudden vogue of France’s glitziest seaside resorts, it all seems to goes back to a royal or aristocratic infatuation. Take Cannes, for example, where one steaming bowl of garlicky bouillabaisse would change the course of history and transform a sleepy fishing village – then a settlement of about 300 souls – into an ultra-fashionable winter playground for the crowned heads of Europe and the world’s wealthiest pleasure-seekers. Back in 1834, Henry Brougham, Britain’s former Lord Chancellor, was on his way to Italy, but a cholera epidemic prevented him from crossing the River Var. Making the best of his quarantine, he stayed at an auberge in Cannes, where the innkeeper served him some thick, home-cooked fish soup. Finding the cuisine utterly remarkable, he decided to stay in Cannes, where he built himself a grand Italianate villa with a sprawl of emerald lawn.


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Lord Brougham then convinced his wealthy, horticulturally- gifted friends from England to follow suit; soon the British were busy planting gardens with exotic non-indigenous species, from palms and mimosa to eucalyptus and flowering succulents, that


48 ❘ FRANCE TODAY Feb/Mar 2023


would later become emblematic of the Riviera landscape. Globetrotting botanical expert Thomas Robinson Woolfield brought rare specimens from the gooseberry to the acacia to Cannes – all indirectly thanks to Brougham, who escaped from “Fog-land” (as he called England) every winter, and continued to delight in Provençal cooking. Above all, Brougham even persuaded the King of France, Louis-Philippe, to finance the construction of an artificial harbour.


ALL ABOARD LE TRAIN BLEU Hailed as Cannes’ founding godfather, (his marble statue sits in the square across from the Palais des Festivals), Lord Brougham surely would have found it amusing that by 1878 – only ten years after his death – Cannes had become an effervescent hub of royal activity, with almost 50 hotels, including the Croisette’s snow-white Belle Époque palaces, plus Anglican churches, an exclusive yacht club le Cercle Nautique which hosted balls, croquet lawns and tennis courts. As the droves of sun-seeking aristocrats arrived on the luxurious Train Bleu, only a few visitors were less enthusiastic about Cannes than neighbouring Nice; Queen Victoria, for example did not find Cannes to her taste, presumably


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