The champagne crowd pep up the Riviera
CANNES.
THE
THE Riviera is basking at the moment in the watery rays of Britain's increased tourist allowance. This Increase has restored to the South of France for the first time since the war is cherished winter season.
True, it is an austerity version of the prewar winter season. It does not make much difference to the casinos, but has made all the difference to the languishing hotel trade of the coast.
For the dominant econo. mle fact about the Riviera
Is that it cannot live with-
*Franch hotel-keepers are happy again, os the English with more francs to spend help them back to prosperity.
by SAM WHITE
out the British middle should try
my man,
he
still
closses. It was the British will get you eight to one for your Swiss francs in- middle-class visitor excap. ing regularly for two or stead of the seven to one three months from the at the American Express." Over at the casinos the British win- rigours of a ter-the retired Army offi- faint cathedral hush cer or civil servant or hangs over gaming tables, elderly widow of indepen- but the betting is modest. dent means--who was the The casinos have been los-
the
steadily basis of
Riviera's ing money
since the war, and are only prosperity.
now beginning to break
LEAN YEARS FOR five
postwar years the Riviera has been
even.
ever
MORE YACHTS
THE CHINA' - MAIL, SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 1951.
"When you've finished swearing at me about your blessed Stone I'll tell you I happen to be a Welshman."
C. S. FORESTER
66
middle
heavy- THE decline in
scale gambling is
trying to get along with
the British
out
It postwar
FIND Korn- blower admirable.".
read the message Winston from
class. The winter season partly explained by the Churchill to Oliver Lyttel
decline of virtually disappeared.
theton, Minister of State in was replaced by a summer casinos as an exclusive re-Cairo. The Prime Minister shop sort. It is hard to gamble was aboard the Prince of invasion of French keepers and their families, for large sums in an atmo-Wales on his way to draft Hollywood film stars, Bel- sphere quite as public as the Atlantic Charter with
Riviera President Roosevelt. gians and Swiss intent on the present-day profiting from the favour- casino.
Thie
ruin to the hundreds smaller hotels and siona..
of pen-
Now at last
the siege has been lifted and the Riviera's garish Edwardian
to
from
news-
Fi
in
Д
At Middle East headquarters Familiar faces able exchange rate.
wear anxious officers searched their enabled the large hotels to paper front pages who
Ales for some new operation sun-tan like survive-but it brought their winter
star's make-up abound with the codeword 'Hornblower. film
They were relieved to find that everywhere.
this cryptle signal was merely There is
boor 3 mild yacht buying, Cannes harbour Mr Churchill's way of thanking is crowded with yachts flying Mr Lyttelton for a copy of C. S.
trilogy, dozen different flags.
"Captain Cynics Forester's explain the boom by the eager-Hornblower, RN.”
Euro- It would not, indeed, have ness of some wealthy
unusual had the word peans to ensure a get-away to been hotels, whose very names Tangler in the event of war. "Hornblower" been
used to a830- Many of the yachts are of a conceal recall their English
prospective naval clations, echo again
liner-like
size and luxury and operation. For Admiralty circles English voices speaking fly the flags of South Ameri-have a fond regard for the in- trospective, taciturn, courageous the language which
pro- can republics.
As for the villas of the Captain Horatio Hornblower and porters and prietora,
of those which the efficient manner in which he Riviera, most waiters had almost forgot remained shuttered for years swept the seas of foreigners dur-
been ing the Napoleonic Wars, after the wor have now ten.
ntone The English are back sold Wealthy Belgians
have bought 20,000 properties Nowhere in the world between Mentone and St Ra- could their presence be phaet in the past three years. more welcome. By way of contrast to the frugalities of tourist life, there is al- ways the bar of the luxury hotel. Here you get fas- cinating glimpses of life as it is lived by that hardy breed of nomads, the Inter- national Set,
It is a life geographical ly bound by an Empire of far-flung but strictly limit- ed resorts, and populated almost entirely by princes,
maharajahe dukes.
and millionaires. In this world nobody goes to bed before,
before four, or lunches
energy is three; bodily maintained on staple
д
diet of steaks, souffles and champagne.
MONEY FIRST
The
POSSIP provides every- one with a constant occupation; hangovers with a constant illness, boredom with an ever present worTY -the possibility of not being recognised. favourite, subject of versation is money. typical luxury hotel dialogue will deal. exhaus-! tively with the intricacles of currency exchange rates and remarks such as, “You
NANCY
con-
·A·
bar
THE COMMISSARS
MEANWHILE
and
warm
commissarg
C. S. FORESTER
•. ships without salt water.
by MILTON
London Express Bervion
SHULMAN
He is still an omnivorous and 'with social and ethical problems, amazingly fast reader. He can "My primary purpose is to pro- go through an average novel in vide three hours of pleasure," he an hour and a half. He still said.
avoids philosophy and music.
Since 1943 Mr Forester has Odd bits of verse, articles for trade magazines and two bad been unable to walk more than historical novels of the Napo- 50 paces at a time because of leonic period earned him a pre- arteriosclerosis of the legs which carious livelihood until 1920 he contracted aboard an Ameri- when his neat and exciting mur- can battleship in the Bering Sea.
that has its der story, "Payment Deferred," "It's an anliction
sald. "A was published. It was convert compensations," he
ed into a play starring Charles wheel chair is the best way of Laughton, filmed in Hollywood going around an art gallery and still sells more than 2,000 without getting tired." coples a year.
That turned him to full-time authorship and a series of suc- cessful novels that switched fran history for their mystery to plots Brown on Resolution," "Plain Murder," "The Gun,"
The African Queen."
-talks about
'My confidence
trick'
annually
the
HIS TARGET
OR the climate which he now needs, 'Mr Forester lives In modest house in San Francisco "looking out towards, the Golden Gate and China." Each morn In 1932 he acing at nine he sits at his desk in cepted a 19- the sun
1,000 and completes week contract words in longhand. "If I didn't at $500 a week set myself a strict target I would to write alm never finish anything, for I find and an exhausting scripts in Holly- writing wood. It was wearisome business," he said. a job he did
C. S. Forester has now com- after that until pleted the Hornblower cycle. came, "They There is a final short story would give me a star, a locale which tells of Hornblower's last and a few other factors and I days in 1848 at the age of 72. It would provide a plat," he said. is not to be published until (THERE_is_a_good_chance, too,
-a-handbook-for-master-marin- "Every week in Hollywood gave Forester's death. that Hornblower may some
me a month-of-freedom-else- Holmes, ers," he explained, "and not only where."
(World Copyright Reserved Sherlock day Join Jeeves and the Scarlet Pimper- tells you how to get a ship out
Incidentally the original treat London Express Service,)" nel in the ranks of English of trouble but what trouble it is
ment of the Hornblower film now mythology. For through his likely to get into."
Mr Forester seems slightly to be seen in the West End was expect him to know any more. Leslie Howard. His comment on "Acquiring the appearance of the film? I think they got too difficult many battles in it, but it could knowledge is not a thing," he said. "It's merely a have been lots worse." confidence trick."
THE
THE LAND-LUBBER-
have been attending the film of millions of readers.
in
aix
Such candour comes naturally from a man whose ready laugh
M Mediterranean sun shines adventures, recorded follow surprised that anyone should written by Forester in 1939 for impartially on rich man, poor he has grown to almost life
Spiv man,
commisar like stature in the consciousness Russian Three
It almost distressing to re- festival at Cannes, and their ort, then, that his creator, presence has aroused the sort Ceelt Scolt Forester, has no solt-
-£15,000 A YEAR Elizabethan water in his blood, comes from of curiosity that Englishmen might have shown family of conscientious land- ter and easy informality betray in the presence of Red In lubbers-doctors and civil ser his inability to take himself too dians.
storyteller and the popu vants--is awkward with engines seriously. If it were not for the FORESTER'S reputation as a (World Copyright Reserved.-London and has never been in a selling impressive height of the almost larity of his novels he earns Gothic forehead, you might between £15,000 and £20,000 a Express Service.)
In his life.
first conceived of the guess
that the tight face with year--has tended to obscure his solid achievements 49 a character when I became inter- its gold-rimmed spectacles be more ested in the paychological prob longed to a bank manager, a perceptive and imaginative writ-
a minor civil ser- er. lem of independent command," solicitor or Mr Forester told me, addlag: vant.
that doesn't sound 100
ARTIE'S HEADLINE
Arti-
"Shot them nothing, Colonel, I've KATEN them !“
Let's Face It! **ANIN
OH, MISS PRIM- HOW IS NANGY [DOING AT SCHOOL?.
SHE'S THE MOST BACKWARD CHILD IN THE
CLASS
I DON'T BELIEVE 'IT
ship
highbrow."
FAST READER
י.
hope Since seamanship in the days
S. FORESTER was born the of sailing ships was a relatively
youngest of five children in remote subject, Mr Forenier de- elded it would be easler if his Calro in 1809. His father was a hero was an insecure, self- Goverment official and the boy critical and slightly comie did not see England until character. We could then go was six. through our doubts together,
he said.
ho
Hla sensitive delineation in "The General" of the 'mind of an officer in the First World War was described by H. G.. Walls as "a portrait for all time of an individual in his period,
"
And his account in "The Ship" of what men go, thr
through in a modern sea battle can be rum- From an unimpressive, career bered among the few great wor at Dulwich College, Forester books. For his material he went. has went on to spend three years
chasing submarines In, a British Although Homblower salled
frigates and
ships-of-the- studying medicine at Guy's Hos- cruiser in the Atlantic: "I don't Une through raging seas and pital. His inability to identify know how many cups of tea I fought the best that Spain and bones and his desire to write drunk with the men to find out France could pit against him, combined to prevent his enter how they talked and thought,
he said: Mr Forcater receives no com- ing the medical profession. pluints about the tactics and techniques he employs.
ALL IN THE BOOK
owes much of his informa
tion to an old Admiralty. manual, he picked up in Ports mouth. "It is 1798 edition of
COME. OVER AND SEE FOR”
YOURSELF
Searching for an explanation in writing, Mr
for his ributes It largely to.
Forester
the fact that his home was close
NO WRESTLING
to a pubile brory, "I think 1 E there fa no comment, specu- lation or morallaing about rend everything in that library except the books on philosophy life inhia novels, it is because and music," he said. "Gibbon Mr Forester does not believe it la a novelist's function to wrestle impressed me most."
By Frate Bushmiller
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