When the French composer Hector Berlioz arrived in Nice from Rome in the spring of 1831, it wasn’t music that preoccupied him, but murder. After this pit stop in the southeast of France, he planned to go on to Paris and kill his treacherous fiancee, her new husband, and finally his lovelorn self. But the beauty and the serenity of the coast had a profound effect on him, soothing his thoughts, healing his heart, and changing his mind. The dramatic cliffs around Nice also inspired him to write his overture to King Lear. He called his stay the happiest 20 days of his life. Asked at the time what he was doing there, he replied: “I compose, I dream, I thank God for the glorious sun, the sea, the flower-clothed hillsides.”
Since then, countless visitors have flocked to the French Riviera to bathe in its glow and revel in its delights. Many, like Berlioz, have been revivified by the area’s natural charms or creatively influenced by their surroundings: F. Scott Fitzgerald showed how this side of paradise became a playground for wealthy and glamorous expatriates in Tender is the Night; Monet was mesmerized by the “magical light” of the Mediterranean and sought to capture it in his art; and Coco Chanel’s sojourns to the south led her to open a salon in Monte Carlo selling beachwear that included her elegant and liberating “beach pajamas.”
ZADIE SMITH’S NEW NOVEL THE FRAUD IS MORE ADMIRABLE IN ATTEMPT THAN EXECUTION
In British author Jonathan Miles’s new, thoroughly engaging book, The Once Upon a Time World, he chronicles the history of the French Riviera, that strip of land and glittering coast that runs from the rust-red rocks of the Esterel Massif to the Italian border.
The Riviera as a pleasure ground is only part of the story. The region’s first incarnation was, in the words of one belle epoque writer, “an outdoor hospital.” For decades, the sick and the weary turned up to relax and, with luck, recuperate. Chekhov, D.H. Lawrence, and Katherine Mansfield, all ravaged by tuberculosis, came in the vain hope of extending their lives. Gradually, though, healthier visitors started to appear. When Beaulieu went from sleepy backwater to fashionable hot spot, the town council placed an advert to assure visitors that hotels would turn away consumptives in case their guests “would be upset by the early morning coughing.” As Miles explains: “It was a sure indication that the raison d’être of the Riviera had changed.”
Miles begins his study with accounts of early visitors making often arduous journeys across sea or difficult terrain to an area that was unexplored and undeveloped. One pathfinder was the legendary lover Giacomo Casanova who, after finding the women of Marseilles “undoubtedly the most profligate in France,” continued his hunt for sexual conquests along the coast. Another trailblazer, the Scottish writer Tobias Smollett, ventured south in search of clean air for his ailing lungs and ended up staying two years to reap the benefits of a temperate climate.
Then in 1834, another Scotsman, Henry, Lord Brougham, who was traveling to Italy to restore his health, “discovered” Cannes when a cholera epidemic stymied his progress. While stranded, he became so intoxicated by the landscape around him that he built a villa. Word spread, and many affluent Englishmen followed his lead and bought plots of land. In doing so, Miles notes, “a process of genteel Anglicization began.” The writer Prosper Merimee bewailed the presence and the grand designs of the English, writing that they “deserve to be impaled for the architecture they imported.”
Before long, however, it wasn’t only English enclaves that studded the Cote d’Azur. Affluent Russians and Americans also showed up and turned towns into resorts. The arrival of the railway in 1866 brought in hordes of other foreigners, together with visitors from all over France. Four years later, Nice, a modestly sized town, hosted consulates from a range of far-flung countries. The Riviera was now on the map. As a luxury Eden, it had to be sampled to be believed.
In Monte Carlo, wealthy visitors found a “haven of excess” in which high society’s finest rubbed shoulders and flaunted and squandered their riches. The Villa Louvaroff was lost in one night’s play at the casino. When newspaper magnate James Gordon Bennett found all the tables occupied at a Monte Carlo restaurant, he bought the establishment. After his meal, he gave the restaurant to his favorite waiter as a tip.
During World War I, the Riviera’s hotels, chateaus, and motorcars were requisitioned. But then the sun came out again, and the party restarted. New guests arrived on the scene and made their presence felt. Miles catalogues the exploits and endeavors of, among others, Cole Porter, Sergei Diaghilev, Picasso, Matisse, Chanel, Igor Stravinsky, Jean Cocteau, and Noel Coward. Edward, Prince of Wales, and Wallis Simpson fall in love on a yacht; Colette writes in a house outside a rustic, unspoiled village called Saint-Tropez; Scott and “Southern belle gone rogue” Zelda Fitzgerald crash and burn at parties; and the dancer Isadora Duncan meets a tragic end when her scarf becomes entangled in the rear wheel of the open-topped French sports car she is traveling in.
The book’s roll call of illustrious greats is impressive, but it is refreshing when Miles moves away from the usual suspects and turns his attention to less prominent figures. There are Gerald and Sara Murphy, who opened the doors of their art deco villa on Cap d’Antibes to artists and writers; Carmen Otero, a courtesan who unwittingly struck it lucky in Monte Carlo and captivated powerful admirers; and Helene Vagliano, a French resistance fighter whose valiant work helping refugees escape from Cannes was cut short — as was her life — when she was betrayed to the Gestapo.
These darker episodes of the Riviera’s history provide a necessary contrast to the fun in the sun. Miles takes the reader through the hardships of the Great Depression and the horrors of World War II, and later demonstrates how the return of glitz and glamour in the 1950s gave way to sleaze, corruption, and organized crime. Somerset Maugham’s famous description of “a sunny place for shady people” started to ring true. Another English writer, Graham Greene, came to call the Cote d’Azur the “Côte d’Ordure.” Today the area is overcrowded, overpriced, blighted by monstrous architecture, and living off its past glories — but those that can afford its pleasures keep pouring in and coming back for more.
Following on from a book on St. Petersburg, The Once Upon a Time World is, according to its author, the second volume of a trilogy about “phenomenal places created by strangers.” Whichever phenomenal place Miles visits next, it will be worth accompanying him for the ride.
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Malcolm Forbes has written for the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. He lives in Edinburgh.