WHERE MONEY FLOWS LIKE WATER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 502, 3 November 1928, Page 26

WHERE MONEY FLOWS LIKE WATER

Cosmopolitan Deanville Attracts Thousands of Sensation=Seekers „ . . The Persian who Sold His Harem .„» South American who Crashed £.1500 Pearl Studs and Drank Them in Champagne,

T first glance the beach of Deauville this season has looked like a grand rotisscerie of living flesh, writes the French correspondent of an Ameri-

can paper. From every corner of the globe men and women have gathered there, apparently forthe sole purpose of roasting as much of their epidermis as the code of decency would permit. Every noted person in the world seemed to be there to join in the sunbaking bacchanalia of buring backs. Some to show and some to see. Women were displaying the most extraordinary bathing dresses, some wearing too much, some too little. Few suits were intended for the bitter brine. Three daring Swedish maidens, responding to a natural urge of freedom, splashed into the surf without their bathing attire. They wanted to inaugurate a new all-Eve fad, they to the official arbiter of beach etiquette who courteously reprimanded them. Sitting in the sand with the back of their suits stripped down to their waists was as far as the law of Deauville would allow them to

go. And that only during the noon hour of the “bain du soleil.”

Bjit, the attune spectacle of sun-bath-ing could be observed on the terrace of the Sun-Bar. Here women of every class of society, beautiful young countesses and stately dowager duchesses, mingling- freely with noted actresses and sirens of the gaming table, could be seen with their bare backs to the sun, sipping their drinks with one hand and holding up their bathing suits in front with the other. The men, some of them, were exposing their full torso to the tanning rays of the sun and baking placidly from one drink to another. x On the beach again everybody seemed to indulge in extravagances of some kind. Anything to attract attention, any daring act or attire to catch the eye and be noticed rather than go down unseen in the surging multitude. One beautiful girl’s

“bathgown” was made of a fishing net studded with champagne corks. Another wore a helmet and a tight cuirass of poker chips, like fish scales. A tall, celebrated actress (Elvire Popesco) paraded in something that looked like a bathing suit and tent combined. She could retire in her own beach home in the sand at a momen’t notice.

One of the most original restaurants admits only those clad in bathing dress or pyjamas, so that the bathers shall not be deterred by their natural modesty from taking a seat_at its tables. In the course of the many seasons the luncheon hour has become a social function, at which all the latest bathing creations from Paris and Vienna are displayed before the eyes of fashionable Europe and America. From the bather's point of view, this is an ideal arrangement, for bathing at Deauville is not the hurried in-and-out affair it so often becomes in American and English windy summers, but a pastime which occupies a greater part of the day. during which the bather alternates between sea and sun.

We could hear a dozen different languages spoken and see almost eyery type of nationality or race in the world. Great captains of finance from Central Europe, distinguished ladies from Great Britain, globecircling American millionaires with their seagoing yachts in Trouville Harbour, pretty mannequins from the Paris dressmaking establishments, cigar-chewing movie magnates from Hollywood, all the beau rnonde of the real French aristocracy, including Boni de Castellane, fabulously rich South Americans and Greeks, flashy adventurers and giddy American flappers, famous painters and actors, professional gamblers, jewellery-laden and hard-faced women from every capital in Europe. Russian would-be princes and loud-voiced baronesses from the Kurfurstendamm in Berlin—all incredibly mixed and enjoying the mixing. And stories to our hearts’ content.

That portly man with the Oriental mien, the one who was having his toes polished by a pedicurist, had been a heavy loser at baccarat. Luckily, he had brought his harem all the way from the Caspian Sea, four heavily-veiled women and their dis-illusioned-looking overseer, all of whom, in his extremity, he had'sold to a French multimillionaire for a mere song, something like £60,000 in French baccarat chips. In five minutes he had trebled that sum with a lucky banco, but refused to buy back his harem. The Frenchman, on the next day, proceeded to inspect his new acquisition and then grandly gave the four young women their liberty. Their first act of freedom was to cast off their veils and sit with the others to get their backs tanned. There is also the story of a mysterious pleasure yacht, nicknamed the Messalina Club. This strange vessel softly glides into the quiet harbour every morning between 2 and 3 o’clock and picks up as many as 20 or 25 I couples for an hour’s cruise and an early breakfast at .£4O a head. It is said to be a wonderful tonic and a relaxation from the fever of gambling. Also, it is not as costly as staying at the Casino. It is more expensive

than the hotels, however, where a nice breakfast may be had for £2 10s and two square meals during the day at anywhere from £lO to £ls. The most beautiful jewels were worn by Americans. One young matron had around her burnt neck the historic pearls of the Empress Eugenie: another (Mabel Boll) wore a £55,000 diamond necklace: and still another had in her earlobes the famous pearshaped pearls said to have belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots. One Hungarian music-hall dancer (Rosie Dolly), who recently married a young Englishman, was literally covered with cascades of pearls and brilliants. It would be difficult to imagine a more sumptuous repast. At the dessert a dark-skinned South American cattle king crushed his £1,500 pearl studs with a nut-cracker, poured the pulverised jewels into his champagne and

drank the health of his blonde lady amid a round of applause. Did the man know that once upon a time, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth of England, when the Spanish Ambassador was received at dinner by the Queen, another high-tempered man, Sir Thomas Gresham, smashed a great round pearl worth £20,000 and drank the health of his sovereign in a similar fashion, though not in ehampaigne, merely to demonstrate his fealty and boost the reputation of England’s wealth? Anyhow, whether the cattle king knew of this or not, his pearl stunt was good publicity and won him the heart of the lady. Incidentally, the blonde lady lost 3,000,000 francs of his money at baccarat an hour later; but a little thing like that didn’t disturb the digestion of the cattle man from Rio. An American movie king from Hollywood who sat at the same table lost £30,000 just to show that an American can lose without batting an eyelash. He did not bat a lash, but he perspired a lot.