CHAPTER XXIX

BIARRITZ AND SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ

[Illustration: _Biarritz and the Surrounding Country_]

If Bayonne is the centre of commercial affairs for the Basque country, its citizens must at any rate go to Biarritz if they want to live "the elegant and worldly life."

The prosperity and luxury of Biarritz is very recent; it goes back only to the second empire, when it was but a village of a thousand souls or less, mostly fishermen and women.

The railway and the automobile omnibus make communication with Bayonne to-day easy, but formerly folk came and went on a donkey side-saddle for two, arranged back to back, like the seats on an Irish jaunting-car. If the weight were unequal a balance was struck by adding cobble-stones on one side or the other, the patient donkey not minding in the least. This astonishing mode of conveyance was known as a _cacolet_, and replaced the _voitures_ and _fiacres_ of other resorts. An occasional example may still be seen, but the _jolies Basquaises_ who conducted them have given way to sturdy, bare-legged Basque boys--as picturesque perhaps, but not so entrancing to the view. To voyage "_en cacolet_" was the necessity of our grandfathers; for us it is an amusement only.

Napoleon III, or rather Eugénie, his spouse, was the faithful godfather of Biarritz as a resort. The Villa Eugénie is no more; it was first transformed into a hotel and later destroyed by fire; but it was the first of the great battery of villas and hotels which has made Biarritz so great that the popularity of Monte Carlo is steadily waning. Biarritz threatens to become even more popular; some sixteen thousand visitors came to Biarritz in 1899, but there were thirty-odd thousand in 1903; while the permanent population has risen from two thousand, seven hundred in the days of the second empire to twelve thousand, eight hundred in 1901. The tiny railway from Bayonne to Biarritz transported half a million travellers twenty years ago, and a million and a half, or nearly that number in 1903; the rest, being millionaires, or gypsies, came in automobiles or caravans. These figures tell eloquently of the prosperity of this _villégiature impériale_.

The great beauty of Biarritz is its setting. At Monte Carlo the setting is also beautiful, ravishingly beautiful, but the architecture, the terrace, Monaco's rock and all the rest combine to make the pleasing ensemble. At Biarritz the architecture of its casino and the great hotels is not of an epoch-making beauty, neither are they so delightfully placed. It is the surrounding stage-setting that is so lovely. Here the jagged shore line, the blue waves, the ample horizon seaward, are what make it all so charming.

[Illustration: BIARRITZ]

Biarritz as a watering-place has an all the year round clientèle; in summer the Spanish and the French, succeeded in winter by Americans, Germans, and English--with a sprinkling of Russians at all times.

Biarritz, like Pau, aside from being a really delightful winter resort, where one may escape the rigours of murky November to March in London, is becoming afflicted with a bad case of _la fièvre du sport_. There are all kinds of sports, some of them reputable enough in their place, but the comic-opera fox-hunting which takes place at Pau and Biarritz is not one of them. It is entirely out of place in this delightful southland, and most disconcerting it is as you are strolling out from Biarritz some bright January or February morning, along the St. Jean-de-Luz road, to be brushed to one side by a cantering lot of imitation sportsmen and women from overseas, and shouted at as if you had no rights. This is bad enough, but it is worse to have to hear the talk of the cafés and hotel lounging-rooms, which is mostly to the effect that a fox was "uncovered" near the ninetieth kilometre stone on the Route d'Espagne, and the "kill" was brought off in the little chapel of the Penitents Blanc, where, for a moment, you once loitered and rested watching the blue waves of the Golfe of Gascogne roll in at your feet. It is indeed disconcerting, this eternal interpolation of inappropriate manners and customs which the _grand monde_ of society and sport (_sic_) is trying to carry round with it wherever it goes.

To what banal depths a jaded social world can descend to keep amused--certainly not edified--is gathered from the following description of a "gymkhana" held at Biarritz at a particularly silly period of a silly season. It was not a French affair, by the way, but gotten up by visitors.

The events which attracted the greatest interest were the "_Concours d'addresse_," and the "pig-sticking." For the first of these, a very complicated and intricate course was laid out, over which had to be driven an automobile, and as it contained almost every obstacle and difficulty that can be conceived for a motor-car--except a police trap, the strength and quality (?) of the various cars as well as the skill (??) of the drivers, were put to a very severe test. Mr ---- was first both in "tilting at the ring" and in the "pig-sticking" contests, the latter being the _best_ item of the show. One automobile, with that _rara avis_, a flying (air-inflated dummy) pig attached to it, started off, hotly pursued by another, with its owner, lance in hand, sitting beside the chauffeur. The air-inflated quarry in the course of its wild career performed some curious antics which provoked roars of laughter. Of course every one was delighted and edified at this display of wit and brain power. The memory of it will probably last at Biarritz until somebody suggests an automobile race with the drivers and passengers clad in bathing suits.

The gambling question at Biarritz has, in recent months, become a great one. There have been rumours that it was all to be done away with, and then again rumours that it would still continue. Finally there came the Clemenceau law, which proposed to close all public gambling-places in France, and the smaller "establishments" at Biarritz shut their doors without waiting to learn the validity of the law, but the Municipal Casino still di