DEAUVILLE IN AUGUST

Shannon News, 8 October 1929, Page 3

DEAUVILLE IN AUGUST

A Hectic Pleasure

THERE GODDESS OF PLEASURE REIGNS SUPREME Deaoiville in August is largely a mixture of cocktails and cocottes. Certs inly one cannot see the one without "establishing contact" with the other. For tilio rest, colour and life and light, jazz and laughter, the popping of corks, the flutter of banknotes, the hoot of motor honns in all directions.

If "one wants a long spoon to sup with the devil," one wants a long purse to sup (or to do anything else) at Deauvillo in August. While the sun shines there, the shopkeepers and hotel and restaurant managers are determined to make hay out of' the visitors. Most of them want to raise several crops. This is why a bedrom in an anything but do lure establishment costs a minimum of £;J a day (twice this in one that really is de luxe), and 4s is unblushingly demanded for a packet of humble "gaspers." Everything else is in proportion. "Well, what do'yon say?" says the tradesman, with a Gallic shrug of the shoulders. "Monsieur must remember that the esason is sfo short."

The "Gay Life." This is hue enough. The "season" is short, but merry. During its continuance, life at Oeauville is as hectic as that of two Hollywood heroes (or heroines) rolled into one. Sleep is the last thing for which anybody appears to hav.e discovered a use. The morning is spent in sauntering down to the plage, calling on the way for an aperitif at the Casino Mar and for another somewhere else, and then joining the throng taking a constitutional on the golden sands. An odd mixture, this typical crowd. The all-British contingent seems to be made up of the peerage and beerage; individuals like "Sir Edward" (but nobody at all like his generous friend, "Duggic") and "Mr Everyman"; bookmakers and bootleggers, leading (and misleading) financiers, film stairs and newspaper proprietors, and heads of "big business" and tails of ditto, together with their womenfolk. As 'for the foreign element, this is, comprised of Americans, Argentines, Belgians, Germans. Italians, Levantines, members of the "Greek Syndicate," and Russians, and a few (very few) French. But Trench visitors are not encouraged. It seems that, first of all, they have not enough money to "go the pace"; and, secondly, in the opiuion of the restauranteurs, they are too frugal with what they have.

Luxury Bathing. Bathing at Deauville is very much on the do luxe side. Nothing so vulgar or suggestive of Margate as a mere dip in the sea. On the contrary, one disports oneself in a specially-constructed pool, floored with peacock tiles and filled with water spouting from gilded melons.

At Doauville bathing is a 'function,' and people —especially women —are expected to dress with as much care and eye to effect as they do for dinner. Costumes are not elaborate, perhaps, but they are certainly decorative. TUe plain blacks and blues and yellows of other resorts are here regarded as museum pieces.

Similarly with the sterner sex. A man venturing to appear on the duck boards in flannel bags and a Norfolk jacket would run the risk of being asked by M. le Claire to leave by the next train. ' If h...- braznned 't out -nd s.opped, something wrong would probably be discovered with his passport. : Luncheon at one of the super-smart restaurants is followed by an hour on the golf course, or watching the tenr> or polo. Then comes a rhe-dansant,' and a return to test the prowess of the cocktail shakers. You can get anything out of these experts —except change from a 50-franc note. Indeed, to ask for any stamps one as a novice. The Deauville dinner hour is somewere very near 11 p.m. This is apparently to give pleasure seekers more time in which to consume expensive cocktails. Also it enables the bevy of lovely and friendly ladies, without which no first-class hotel is complete, an opportunity of dressing twice since luncheon.

It is after dinner that the 'serious' business of Deauville begins. This is to tempt the Goddess of Chance. Gambling is always expensive. At the Deauville Casino the "administration" arc clever enough to make the onlookers contribute to their coffers. Merely to sit down and watch other people losing money costs £4. It makes Monte Carlo green with envy.

The Casino is full of odd contrasts. Bankrupts think nothing of wagering £2OO on the turn of a card in the baccarat rooms, while millionaires look cautiously at five-franc pieces.- Oil kings and demi-mondaines appear to regard the sky as their limit; and the members of the Greek Syndicate have a habit of opening a bank with a quarter of a million francs. "Nothing venture, nothing have." " The "King of Deauville." Deauville and all that in it is acknowledges allegiance to a single individual. This is M. Andre. At any

rate he is the proprietor of most of the hotels and restaurants, as well as of the Casino, the principle bars, the race-, course, and the golf and tennis clubs. The English Church is probably the only institution which (as yet) he is not actually managing. Besides Deauville, he has "interests" in Aix-les-Bains, Cannes, La Baule' and Ostend-6, and the Ccrcle Haussmann at Paris.

A man with a "past," this M. Andre. Just fifty years of age, he was a ,sergeant during the war. On being "demobbed," he felt that his compatriots still wanted some excitement, acordingly, he sank his twopenny-half-penny gratuity in opening a small gambling club in Paris, beginning with a single chemin-de-fer table. Well, as everybody knows,, the proprietor of such an establishment can always make enough to at least keep ! the " wolf, from the door. Fortune smiled on the efforts of this one, and, almost before he cculd turn round, he was in a position to move to premises where he could run twenty tables and multiply his profits twenty times.

The dream of M. Andre's life is to found a resort for multi-millionaires only, where the "season" will begin on January 1, a.nd expire on December, 31. It is a vision he will probably realise.