By the sea, by the boundless and beautiful sea...on the beach at Deauville...

Dear friend,

The scream of the goëland above, the crash of the wave below, the shimmer of sunlight on rocking water…Faraway, a haze along the horizon obscures the frontier of sea and sky. There, the elements of air and water mingle and dissolve, silver and blue, silver and white.

We had been studying wildflowers on a cliff walk near the beach at Deauville, looking down into the long grass, into a sweet world of rosy yarrow, pink thrift, blue batchelor’s buttons, yellow buttercups.

Looking up, the sight of the sea is a momentary shock. Beyond the miniscule sphere of these delicate flowers is a glimpse of the infinite. The Atlantic Ocean spreads out before us, in continual movement and constant change, immense in its seemingly infinite extension into the sky.

"Tantôt, debout sur un roc solitaire,
Il se penchait sur les flots écumeux
Et sa pensée, abandonnant la terre
Semblait percer les mystères des cieux."
 
At times, standing solitary on a cliff
He looked down upon the spitting waves
And his thought, abandoning the earth,
Seemed to pierce the mysteries of the heavens.
 
        --Guy de Maupassant, Au bord de la Mer, in Etretat, 1867
 

It’s not just walkers, poets, and painters to whom “l’océan” incarnates “l’éternel.” When Sigmund Freud’s ideas about the deep desires and anxieties underlying our consciousness and sexual impulses arrived on the French intellectual scene in the 1920s, one of his admirers took up his pen to write:
 

“Cher ami respecté,

… j’aurais aimé à vous voir faire l’analyse du sentiment religieux spontané ou, plus exactement, de la sensation religieuse…
J’entends par là…le fait simple et direct de la sensation de l’éternel…
Tout au long de ma vie… j’y ai toujours trouvé une source de renouvellement vital en…ce sentiment “océanique”…"

In sum, Romain Rolland thought that religious feeling arises from "le sentiment océanique"…the feeling you have when you gaze out at the eternity of the sea.

For Freud, with his horror of religion and mysticism, that “oceanic feeling” stems instead from an infantile craving for the mother. In the normal person, it ought to cease with being weaned, he thought. Then, he pursued, the healthy ego develops. 
 
It’s probably a good thing that Freud did not write manuals for baby care.

And speaking of mystical feelings induced by the sea and childhood, we recall that school lets out in France on July 6. Very soon, the beaches will be invaded by little figures carrying buckets and shrimp nets, and splashing in the shallows. Gaily-colored kites will skip in the breezes, and the delightful coconut scent of sunscreen will fill the air. For the sea is to summer in France as Orangina is to le picque-nique.

It wasn’t always this way, of course. “Femme de marin, femme de chagrin” goes the old adage, summing up the fearful respect typically inspired by the sea, which swallowed up men and left behind sorrowing widows. It wasn’t until 1824 that sea-bathing, which had become a fashionable cure in England, caught on in France.

The instigator of the new mode was the beautiful and tragic 26-year-old Duchesse de Berry, mother of the only heir to the 1,000-year-old throne of the Bourbon kings of France. In 1820, the duchess’ husband had been assassinated before her eyes as they left a performance at the Paris Opéra.

On the Normandy coast at Dieppe, the duchess established a fashionable enclave where healthful dips in the sea waters by day, and dancing and card parties in the evenings animated her spirits and those of la bonne société. The duchess, famous for her verve and determination, was also an intrepid sailor, as the painting below suggests.

The fashion for la station balnéaire, the seaside resort, was launched in France. But it wasn’t until the 1850s, when another combination of romance and royalty led to the creation of Deauville that a French resort attained le chic international.

“Que faut-il donc pour que vous couronniez enfin ma flamme?” demanded Count Charles de Morny to the object of his ardor, a lady-in-waiting at the court of his half-brother, Napoléon III.

“What must happen for you to reward my passion?”

“Mon cher comte, je ne demande qu’à vous aimer ! Mais à Paris l’hiver, je n’ai pas le temps. Et en province l’été, je n’en ai pas le goût !"

“I ask only to love you, my dear man! But in winter in Paris, I haven’t the time. And during summer in the provinces, it’s so hot.”

“So be it !” cried the dashing nobleman. “Give me three months!”

Thus, according to legend, the remarkable duc de Morny created Deauville from what had been a small fishing village on a promontory overlooking a marshy beach. Within six months of purchasing the land, he and his well-connected friends had erected sumptuous villas. Plans had been drawn up for streets, baths, a hotel, and a casino.

Deauville shrugged off the medicinal image of the station balnéaire to became the rendez-vous of tout Paris and their international friends. There were two palaces, or fancy hotels. Besides the casino, there was a race track, polo fields, clay pigeon range and a deep-water marina for yachts. The resort roared through the 1920s. Kings and shahs, English lords and German princes, les aristos and la bourgeoisie, film stars and chorus girls coalesced. Chanel opened her first boutique here.

Today, Deauville is still the place to spend a sophisticated day or two by the sea. Besides the beach with its famously colorful parasols and cabanas, there are the chic bars, restaurants, and boutiques. The baths have recently been renovated, as has the grand Hôtel Normandie. Bloodstock sales draw bidders from around the horse-racing world. The Festival of American Film rolls out the red carpet every September. Sailboats and motor yachts fill the harbor.

As the Chateau is only a couple of hours from the coast, we enjoy putting on our most elegant chapeau de paille and feeling the sand between our toes on a sunny day in July. But we are still reminded, as a sea gull skims low over the waves, of these lines from Maupassant’s poem:

"Tantôt, courant sur l’arène marine,
Il poursuivait les grands oiseaux de mer,
Imaginant sentir dans sa poitrine
La Liberté pénétrer avec l’air."

At times, gazing upon the arena of the sky,
He watched the great birds of the sea,
Imagining he could feel the breath of
Liberty penetrating his chest with the air.

The sea and its creatures proclaim their independence from the earth-bound lot of man…and we, grasping that sensation of freedom, try to breathe it in with the salty air.

We also remember, though, how the poem ends. He, who has stood upon the cliffs to gaze on eternity and taste liberty, succumbs to the charms of two lustrous eyes and the pleasure of the dance.

“Voyons,” commented my better half, to whom I was reading Maupassant’s verses, “Love conquers all. Freud was on to something.”

He smiled cheerfully. With our pretty little bouquet of wildflowers, we climbed back in the car for the drive back to the Chateau.

A bientôt!

P.S. Would you like help arranging your day trip to the seaside from Chateau de Courtomer? Please write to Heather or Béatrice (both are bilingual in English and French), or, of course to me, at info@chateaudecourtomer.com. We look forward to hearing from you!