On the French Riviera, Fitzgerald Found His Place in the Sun

Beautifully written article -- I loved it. One thing wrong, though: Zelda wasn't "mad." She was emotionally disturbed and acted out her disturbances too publicly, but that isn't madness. She wasn't irrational when she was sober. And Zelda was a fine writer too, so good that Scott sometimes stole her lines. When that made her angry, Scott could shrug off the anger as part of her madness.

Are the rich different from you and me? Yeah, I agree with Hemingway. They have more money.

A friend and I decided to visit the Cote d'Azur with no itinerary in mind. We started in Nice which was fun but too much of a city, headed to Cannes which was too chic. We took the train back to Antibes and had a fantastic time. Great restaurants, great food, great beach, laid back nightlife and, yes, yachts, but not in your face wealth.

Indeed Fitzgerald's shadow looms large in that area but the truth is that Juan- les-Pins, Antibes and the entire coast offers so much more that people watching! Indeed the entire coast, from France all the way to the Italian side where I used to vacation as a child, one can find exquisite little villages where quaint streets and lovely people abound, not to mention the food and lovely wines! In addition it is where the most amazing Jazz-a-Juan festival will be held in July which I will attend with the WBGO Jazz Radio group that I have organzied-world-class jazz on the Pinede Gould in July with the Mediterranean as a background-who could ask for anything more!

Fitzgerald affected me the most with the romantic insanity of many of his short stories. He gives clear evidence that we are a pair-bonding species created by nature to love.

When I was 20, in 1955, I was staying at an outdoor tent-hostel at Port de la Villette in Paris, and the hostel manager rented a bus and drove forty of us campers down to Juan-les-Pins for a few days of recreation and swimming in the Mediterranean. I will never forget that aquamarine sea, the emptiness of the beaches, the as yet unbuilt-up shoreline. What struck me as most amusing is that the natives of Juan-les-Pins seemed to speak French with what I can only call a "southern accent"--charmingly drawn out, drawling vowels that reminded me of the "southern accent" in the U.S. I wondered whether southern speakers in other Mediterranean countries shared that apparent "drawl." The whole experience of that town and that sea was magical. It is with me still. How I wish I had known about the Fitzgerald connection at that time! It would have thrilled me even more.

Juan-les-Pins has one of the few sand beaches on the Côte d'Azur, and it's pretty small. Fortunately the French don't seem to require sand, or at least the ones that stick with free public beaches don't.

I've been to the area many times over a 20 year period, and it had, and still does have real charm. I was vaguely aware of it's history which this author covers in detail. What I was not "vaguely aware of" was the traffic on the D669, which is the "main road" that connects the towns on the Cote d'Azur.

Much like you can spend a week in the Hamptons with no memories to show for it but sitting in traffic on Rt 27, this section of the Cote d'Azur can provide the same experience. The less you drive, the happier you will be.

One reason, I think, for why people with means have private villas and don't leave them once there. For much of the year vacation houses and apartments will be empty; which is (tant pis) a bit depressing.

Technology companies have built R&D centers nearby, so there are full year residents bringing commute traffic, and trucks and service vans. My work is what brings me there, otherwise once would be enough.

I do recommend going. The quality of sun light in summer, alone, is magical. Just be prepared for some cognitive dissonance.

Always amazed that people still put Fitzgerald on a pedestal. Yes, he was a good writer but to act like he was anything but an elitist racist beyond that is silly. People who like to quote him should read some of the things he wrote about people that weren't rich and white. And don't blame Zelda for his alcoholism.

For exclusivity, nothing I saw beat Portofino. No one can move there unless someone dies to make room for them, a native told me, keeping the population at about 750 persons. The easiest way to get there (in 1979) was by boat. Between Monaco and Portofino is San Marino, the world's oldest republic, a brochure said. Was the same on Jersey, Channel Islands, as in Portofino: no net population increase allowed, tho tax-haven Jersey also required a minimum net worth of 2 million pounds sterling to live there.

No one has pointed out that Francis Scott Fitzgerald was a direct descendant and namesake of Francis Scott Key, who composed the "Star Spangled Banner."
Someone who badly sought to replicate Scott's experience at Princeton was John O'Hara of "Butterfield 8" fame, a wannabe Tiger and dining club member, a native son of Pottstown, PA as John Updike was of Shillington, PA.

I am currently rereading Fitzgerald -- a ritual I have repeated most every spring for the past 20 years, choosing either Tender is the Night or Gatsby. Since the first time I read that line, "bright tan prayer rug of a beach," I haven't been able to regard any strip of coast without judging how it would have compared to the original that inspired Fitzgerald. Because of this article, I know now to visit La Garoupe. So timely as well -- in less than a month, I will be visiting the Cote d'Azur to fulfill a lifelong desire to learn more about Fitzgerald and what inspired him to write.

Recently, a friend teased me for wanting to stalk a "dead author," but thanks to this article, I now know I am not the only one.

Has no one thought to establish a beachhead? Just build a McDonald's, a Starbuck's, a Taco Bell and the sweat-shirty, torn jeans barbarians will swarm in.

What a story!

Heaven or Hell, you tell me.....

I lived at Cap d'Antibes for eight years. Across the street from a Russian oligarch and five minutes from the Hotel du Cap.
People live in villas behind high walls, swimming in their own pools rather than the sea, and inviting weekend guests for diversion.
Putting aside the celebrity history and the seasonal tourism, it's a lonely place.

"They dined at the new Beach Casino at Monte Carlo . . . much later they swam in Beaulieu in a roofless cavern of white moonlight formed by a circlet of pale boulders about a cup of phosphorescent water, facing Monaco and the blur of Mentone." From Tender is the Night. You should have mentioned that F. Scott had to have been familiar with that part of the Cote D'azur that was east of Nice, including Beaulieu, which you can see from St. Jean Cap Ferrat. Much of that novel takes place there. And just around the bluff is Monaco. One can argue about which seaside village is the most romantic (in the most general sense), but travelers should be aware that the novelist was not confined to Antibes and Juan-Le-Pins in his travels.

Next week-- less crowded and less expensive places to visit on the Mediterranean? How is the Costa Brava these days? I understand Croatia is very n? and the south coast of Turkey has becomes a place to retire beach-pside.

To the author: this is top notch writing. Thoroughly enjoyed your superb work. Bravo!

Thanks enjoyed this. It's no Faro but has its own charms. Like the ref to the Murphy couple since Gerald's art is still underappreciated. Probably due to the
'rich man' curse but his works, like Razor, are forerunners of pop. They also are the ones who made French Riviera into a round year event, not just winter.

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold 2 opposing ideas in the mind and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald might have been "happier" there than he had been anywhere else in years, but he couldn't have been happy if he and his wife were fighting constantly and she was sinking into insanity. He wrote so beautifully about the young, loss of innocence and the crass materialism of the idle rich (though he never stopped envying them). The best he could offer can be found in one of his novels (or perhaps his stories are even better for being more essential). No need to make a pilgrimage to a billionaire watering hole on the Riviera!

First time I went to the States, I was a junior in Madrid's University. I spent a summer vacation helping and taking care of ranch chores near Mariposa County, CA. I could barely speak english. I brought with me "Bernice Bobs her hair" by F. S. Fitzgerald. At the end of the day, sweaty and tired, I read, almost word by word, his short stories with the help of a tiny dictionary. To me, until these days, F.S. Fitzgerald still smells like summer dreams and tastes like the soul of youth.

Unless you happen to be on a billionaire’s yacht requiring a deepwater port
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That's where fate put me in summer 1979, on a millionaire mortgage broker's new Hinckley 64-ft. ketch that we'd sailed from Maine to NY to Bermuda to the Azores and then along the coast to Portofino, Sardinia, and Majorca. (His family firm had built Ft. Lauderdale's Coral Ridge section & Galt Ocean Mile & the town of Coral Springs.) A friend from his college days in Switzerland had built a small waterfront village called "Port Grimaud" where we berthed, across a small bay from St. Tropez, where we went to the beach by dinghy. (The man, Francois, later built Port Liberte waterfront condos on NY Harbor near Elizabeth.) The boat's owner, Jack, had a film in the Cannes film festival, "The Great Balloon Race," starring Peter Fonda. A novelty in the small Provence towns we toured then (incl. Aix) was public telephone booths. We docked in front of the Casino and Sporting Club in Monte Carlo, the skipper and I played blackjack in our washed-out clothes (we were "yachties") among gamblers in black tie; he won $300. The owner's friend Jerry and an Italian contessa came for a sail; he'd been the lead broker on a sale of the Chrysler Building. Ed Stone the architect came aboard too. A year later the British skipper got in trouble on the Greek isle of Kos & was jailed for 3 months. A $150K fine was extorted. The owner's family sailed the ketch back to FL & more adventures.

I've always had a special feeling for Juan-les Pins since I first visited there in the Summer of 1964. Too bad Fitzgerald was a drunk. He probably would have enjoyed the place even more.

Having grown up on Long Island,'s South Shore, i was really, truly a long, long distance from that famous Gatsby territory, so i never could understand the impact of that famous book and how it influenced what seemed to me to be the rest of the entire world.

Outside of that famous "'Green "Light" i still, to this day, cannot comprehend what all the fuss was about. I liked MOBY DICK and Joseph Conrad's LORD JIM ....- and maybe because i grew up in a house with no central heating and only a hot bottle bottle to keep me warm at might.

"The Cap is still democratic enough that many stretches of waterfront, usually rocky, occasionally sandy, are public." Nothing specific to this place : in France, the littoral belongs to the state and cannot be privatized.

Nescafé at €10 a cup..... Surely not instant coffee on the Côte d'Azur!

My grandfather, Forrest Aldrich Mills kept a diary of life in another town along the French Riviera."So while the Nazis were having thousands of French Jews gassed or burned in the ovens at Ravensbruck, Dr.Karl Brandt was ensconced at Villa D'Oro located at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat thirty miles from Fitzgerald's haunts.The rose colored Villa D'Oro built on a promontory on the Isthmus of Cap Ferrat by a prominent shipping family overlooked the sea was filled with the most valuable antique furniture, Old Master paintings by MIcheangelo, Rembrandt and Titian as well as works of Picasso and Chagall, and a room devoted totally to the works of Monet that had been stolen from his studios at Giverny with the help of his Nazi collaborator of a gardener a Monsieur Claverie who now was in charge of the secret gardens here in Cap Ferrat. Visitors to the Villa would tell of the sounds of children playing and music coming from the gardens as if a group of children were at school behind an elaborate walled garden in which its hedges had ben shaped to look like a large ship or ocean liner. The Ship’s garden, was outfitted with hibiscus swaged swings hanging from century old olive trees, a silver plated carousel used by the Dauphin children of Marie Antoinette before they were beheaded. The carousel was brought to Cap Ferrat when the Third Reich overran Paris."
Not quite the scene and very much different than Fitzgerald's images.
Pas mal !

Love this article--thoroughly enjoyed reading it!

I wandered in to the Hotel du Cap by accident in July of 1968. My tiny room costs "75" which terrified me until I reslixrf it esd 75 French Francs, of sabout $15. The hotel says I can return for an almost-50year visit and rent the same vroom for 450 Euros, or just short of $500. It is a magical place at any price.

There was a wonderfully witty mad American novel about 10 years ago, the heart of which was set in Antibes, MISS GAZILLIONS. Captured the old spirit well.

Poor Zelda. Poor Scott.

Art is long, life is short.

Despite all his troubles, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote like an angel.

TENDER IS THE NIGHT so perfectly captures sur la plage at the French Riviera that readers might well be advised to apply sunscreen before diving into the novel.

"Rosemary felt that this swim would become the typical one of her life, the one that would always pop up in her memory at the mention of swimming. Simultaneously the whole party moved toward the water, super-ready from the long, forced inaction, passing from the heat to the cool with the gourmandise of a tingling curry eaten with chilled white wine. The Divers' day was spaced like the day of the older civilizations to yield the utmost from the materials at hand, and to give all the transitions their full value, and she did not know that there would be another transition presently from the utter absorption of the swim to the garrulity of the Provençal lunch hour. But again she had the sense that Dick was taking care of her, and she delighted in responding to the eventual movement as if it had been an order."

“The rich were dull and they drank too much, or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor Scott Fitzgerald and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, ‘The very rich are different from you and me.’ And how some one had said to Scott, Yes, they have more money. But that was not humorous to Scott. He thought they were a special glamorous race and when he found they weren't it wrecked him as much as any other thing that wrecked him.” Wemedge

Very nicely written article on this beautiful city and the Fitzgerald's history there!

Can't remember when I didn't love reading Fitzgerald. At Pomona college I was missing two credits to graduate after a semester abroad in Chile and devised a one on one course on him with the late, great Dean Strathman.

Just picked up a book of his early short stories. Even the less literary stories he wrote are gems. I'm glad Antibes and Juan les Pin are still magic.

just back last week from 3 weeks in south of France - having driven extensively and visited most of the area between the Italian border near Nice/Monaco to Toulouse in the west, then northeast to Lyon and Chamonix near Mont Blanc and back to Nice, I can happily say Cap d'Antibes was my favourite spot.

{Fitzgerald was famously obsessed with the mysteries of great wealth, what people do with it and what it does to them, big money’s glorious power and ruinous effects, and the irreconcilability of the lifestyles of the rich with those of the rest of us.}

Ho hum, so what else is new.

I lived in Antibes, whilst working at Europe's then equivalent of Silicon Valley nearby. It is called Sophia Antipolis - because the French politician who convinced the government to fund it had a wife called Sophie. And Antibes is from the Latin word antipolis ("the town in front").

Sophia Antipolis is no longer what it once was, and neither is France - which is going through a protracted economic conniption.

But during the summer, the Riviera seaside attracts a certain class of people who are aptly described in this article. They are the Moneyed Crowd, and they come here to see and be seen.

It all started with the Brit by the name of Lord Brougham in the 1830s who, unable to enter Italy because of sort of plague, stopped in Cannes - and never left. He was able to convince his Victorian friends to come, and they literally poured in. Victoria convinced her cousin Tsar Nicholas, which started the Russian infatuation with the Riviera.

All so very old and yet so very new each and every summer ...

I loved the article and having been to hun le pins and had a drink in the bar by the sea side I can appreciate that article. actually if I ever can afford it I would live there in an apartment by the sea side.