The Sun.
London, England, 1864-10-05 00:00:00

Biarritz and Scarborough.

(From a Correspondent of the Morning Post.)
It does not fall to the lot of niVis7 travellers in Beards of
health and pleasure to visit, in one season, the British queen
of watering places and the rocky little resort of French
fashion on the shores of the Gulf of Gascony. It has been

my fate to journey, at all possible speed, from the Pyrenees
to Yorkshire, and, with the Casino and the old. port of

Biarritz fresh in my mind's eye, to find myself on the Spa,

and in the midst of the refreshing scandal, and a witness

of the vivacious flirtations which are among the attractions

of the queen of watering places. The contrasts in externals
and in manners and habits between the imperial and the

royal watering place are infinite. The great ladies of France
and Spain make holiday with a graceful abandon and a'
costume—or ten costumes—for the part. They are free to
laugh and rollick. They are not above donkey-riding. They

don't parade before the sea, with stately steps and set fea-
tures. They don't sit, in calm and silent rows, round an

al fresco orchestra, listening to the airs with which London
organs have made every grocer's boy familiar. The great
ladies of France and Sp.in throw aside the robes of state,

and go trooping through the narrow street, and chaffer at
the wood and ivory carving stalls, and show their dainty

white feet on the sands in their bathing dress, and laugh
as the waves play about their shoulders ; and take their ices
and coffee in the open air—free and frolicsome as mermaids.

They give reins to their rich fancy, and invent origina
dresses suited to the occasion. Old Neptune rolls shells and
seaweed to the shore, only to provide them pretty trimmings
for jacket and skirt, and Garibaldi and scut-en-barque.
These dainty nymphs gather shells not that they may list
to the echoes of the sea in them, but that they may steal a

march on the inventive powers of fair neighbours. Happy
is she who sails forth from her toy chalet on the steep and
rugged rock in a dress unlike in fashion and colour the robe
of any other lady in Biarritz. She s weeps, conscious of her
triumph, along the esplanade of the Casino, she climbs the
rocks, she toils along the sands, smiling, chattering to any fine
fleur of her acquaintance she may meet. She is careful to
impress upon you by her manner that this original. not to
say startling, costume in which she has decked her charms
is a trifle about which she has not the least concern, and

on which she could not be persuaded to bestow a single

hought.
" Madame has a dress that is delicious. It is ravishingly

becoming—it is as fresh as a rose."
Madame scornfully surveys her skirts, and then, with a
. .

pretty toss of the head, calls the entire costume—a nothing.
She will talk about anything except that upon which all

her waking dreams are concentrated. She tosses off the ad-
rairatioa she excites, and laughs and prattles to the young
count, who is wrapping up his tendresse in pretty conceits,
and has given his whole heart to her and to the suit of vel-

vet and the modified Hessian boots in which he is cased.

He protests that she will break his heart should she prove
too cruel ; and presently when madame has returned to the

chalet to put on costume No. 2, he will roll his cigarette,
and sip his curacoa and iced water, and vow to his friend
that madame has almost tempted him to put off his shooting
for a couple of days.
" You can flirt all the year round, but the shooting sea-
son come to a close, my friend. Take your gun and leave
madame."

The young men of France are bitter, and cynical, and
calculating in these days. They talk of la
_femme without
respect—as a toy, a very expensive amusement and orna-
ment. They air their conquests as Beau Brummell showed
his coat, They pay attenti ns as Bramwell tied his cravat,
The world must see how great is their fascination, and how
exquisite are their manners. Tne old French ladies shake
their wrinkled hands, and murmur mon Dieu, as they
watch the insolent airs of the rising generation. They
wonder whether society can be tending when young men
will stand covered in the presence of ladies and of the aged.
Society may be rising or falling in manners and morals
under the Second Empire. I shall not presume to offer an
opinion on this momentous question• I only know that if
society is going—to use the slang phrase—" to the bad," it
is going thither with the utmost cheerfulness, and in state.

The march is a merry one, and nowhere merrier than at
Biarritz, where the pale and feeble young men of the Bou-
levards des Capuciues, turning away from mademoiselle,
flirt with madame. This is the salt paradise of married
ladies. These grotesque costumes, these wondrously trim-
med sea-side jackets, are not for the young ladies. These
are not yet of the world. They must dress simply, and
walk with their eyes cast to the earth. They may not go
20 yards along a public thoroughfare alone. In due season
they will be wed, and then they may bid adieu to domestic
life.

" I find unmarried girls insipid," said a little Parisian to
me. He was about 25 years of age,
and had spent the
quelques miles francs he had inherited, in the vices and
woful experiences which supported the gilded saloons of the
northern side of the fashionable Boulevards. A Lilliputian
roue, with the airs of a giant, he blew his cloud, and said,
"Young ladies don't amuse me—l can't interchange my
ideas freely with them. A married woman is a woman of
the world." Of the world—and always in the world, he
might have added. Married women were the life and soul
of Biarritz. The young cavaliers were in crowds also, and
they appeared to be of the little debauche's opinions as to the
relative charms of unmarried and married ladies.
The matrons made the streets and shore look as bright
with colours as that avenue in the Zoological Gardens which
the parrots and cockatoos adorn. They were light hearted,
full of grace and coquetry, and they communicated their
brightness to the atmosphere of the place. At the table
d' hole, and at the great ten o'clock breakfast, they sparkled
while they ate. I saw a lady in a red suit, trimmed with
white (who had been likened to a danger signal earlier in
the day), talk, while she held the leg of a chicken in her
ethoffeeleit'tle fair in the high
hand. She would have looked better, I think, with.
by no
out the bone ; but she looked well, and
means vulgar with it. The table d' hote was a holiday
dinner. Everybody talked lightly and unreservedly.
in
bAndy the
et they wentea. They lingeredf or t h
wfoat.
rot,
a.aotbnakutfetotl
foot.
t .
singing,
otrhedaonpeeinng,aiorr,
Carriages are of little
atbzs°i—dilYofor it is a pocket watering place; and
street, when the lamps were lit—or took ices at the cafe—
or
the fun and enjoyment
Empressare a lively, social equality and
healthy exercise. The sets forth on foot, from the
o r gambling.wentn
no set o
at tiveaerrrCyi
villa, leaning on the Emperor's arm, and calls at one of the
hotels, to see a friend. Her Majesty may be met strolling
on the sands ; and she will talk freely and affably, like the
rest of the visitors. She stopped one day to admire a dog
that was following a gentleman. She coaxed it, and talked
to it, and complimented the owner on the possession of it.
Whereupon the gentleman begged that her Majesty would
accept the animal. A pretty and graceful excuse and a smile
were the answers ; and the lady passed on the quietest and
the most distinguished figure on the sands.
Biarritz, in short, is a lively, sociable, extravagant place,
where people greatly enjoy themselves in preposterous
toilettes; where they masquerade and hold fancy dress balls
in the sea; and where there does not appear to be man,
woman, or child under a cloud. The Sardine women foot it
nimbly and merrily, and the Spanish hawkers just seem to
be selling the gaudy produce of Castilian looms for sheer
fun. Many a passage of wit do they have with their French
customers. Their manner would startle a portly British
dame who is accustomed to take her annual dose of sea air
from Spa- terrace at Scarborough. What would mater say
if a swarthy fellow, wearing great military moustachios,
were to advance to her, and, with a bow, propose to take her
in his arms and dip her in the sea. I saw such au auda-
cious fellow astound an English lady in the old port at
Biarritz a few weeks ago. I hope, and trust, and pray, that
Mrs. Grundy may never take train at the Orleans Railway
terminus at Paris for Biarritz. Should her eyes ever fall
on groups of bathers in the old port she will swoon, and be
borne away in a state of pious horror. In vain will the
French argue before her that Biarritz bathing is by far
more decent than that of Scarborough, and must not be
compared for one Inoment with that of Margate, Ramsgate,
Hastings, or Herne Bay. Mrs Grundy will pack up her
trunks and return direct to London to refresh her moral
sense with a week at Clapham and a few days at Brixton.
"My dear," will she say, " the creatures were actually
walking about the sands with their feet bare—as bare, my
dear, as baby's. To be sure they were dressed—but how ?
Miss Bloomer was a Quakeress to them. And then, men
and women and children, all together—floundering about,
with corks fastened upon their baoks--and I am quite sure