Gerald and Sara Murphy in Antibes
So he ran away from the heat. In summer the Atlantic was sought at Trouville or Biarritz. The coast between Cannes and the Italian border languished until, in autumn, the English arrived.
Throughout the 19th century, the British leisure class fled to the south when the rigors of the weather took their toll. The activism of the doctor James Henry Bennett praised the therapeutic benefits of the French Mediterranean during the winter months.
From 1869 the railway connection with Paris favored access to the area. Queen Victoria became a regular in the seasonal exodus and, between 1882 and 1899, she rode a donkey with her Indian assistant Abdul Karim, the Munshi, on the roads of Menton. She established her headquarters at the ** Hotel Excelsior Regina in Nice **, where she conversed with her cousin Leopold II of Belgium and the actress Sarah Bernhardt.
Queen Victoria was also a regular in the seasonal exodus
But health was just an excuse. A scandal or simply boredom were reasons enough to settle in a hotel with sea views or get a coastal villa.
Hippolyte de Villemessant, founder of Le Figaro newspaper, built in 1869 Villa Soleil in Antibes for hosting writers looking for inspiration. Twenty years later, the property became the Hôtel du Cap which, as usual, closed its doors in May.
So it was until, in 1923, The Murphys arrived. The comfortable fortune of the American marriage financed a dilettante life. Gerald was an esthete who was introduced to avant-garde painting during his stay in Paris with Natalia Goncharova.
Sarah, unorthodox, cheerful and intellectually restless, she quickly became popular in the city's artistic circles. On the occasion of the premiere of the ballet Les Noces , by Stravinsky, the Murphys had a party on a barge on the Seine which lasted until dawn.
La Garoupe, the beach that conquered them
Cole Porter, Gerald's classmate at Yale, had told them about the goodness of Antibes. They arrived there in the spring, when the Hôtel du Cap was about to end the season. But the Murphys were fascinated the Eden-Roc pavilion , which had been built in 1914 on a promontory overlooking the sea, and they convinced the director to rent the hotel to them for the summer.
Why not uncover the skin? Why not take a dip in the warm water? Once cleared of fishing gear and algae, La Garoupe beach became his daytime park.
They did not take long to reform the neighbor Villa America where, next to Pablo Picasso, Dorothy Parker, Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds They established the rhythm to which any summer aspires: beach, lunch, siesta, beach, dinner and soirée.
In the sequence, beach was substitutable for boat: the sailboat Picaflor and later the Weatherbird they stood ready to sail at the jetty on the cape.
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald had responded to the Murphys' summons with enthusiasm. They settled in Villa Saint-Louis , today converted into the Hôtel Belles Rives , where the author concluded The Great Gatsby.
Although Hemingway was the most respected writer in the circle, the Murphys established a very intimate relationship with the couple. It was not easy. The Fitzgeralds drank heavily and their behavior was often erratic.
The former Villa Saint-Louis, now converted into Hôtel Belles Rives
Zelda used to jump into the sea in her evening dress from a thirty-foot escarpment. When Sarah rebuked her, she replied that her priority was not survival. For his part, Scott didn't seem to enjoy the hedonistic tone of Villa America. ran away from the sun and He rarely swam in the sea.
The style of the Murphys was not based on ostentation, but in the pleasure marked by the aesthetics of the moment. They were sensitive, resourceful, and their cultural concerns were sincere. But Fitzgerald's admiration was fundamentally based on the freedom that their money gave them.
Her fortune was not comparable to that of Americans like Winnaretta Singer, princess of Polignac who presided over the Murphy's party in Paris as Stravinsky's benefactress, but the truth is that the writer's income depended on his publications and, despite the favorable exchange rate of the dollar, this fact placed him in a position of conscious economic inferiority.
The life mismatch of the couple , fueled by alcohol, manifested itself in bizarre nocturnal episodes.
Zelda falling down the stairs before Scott's attentions to Isadora Duncan or lying under the wheels of the car while her husband was about to start; the fig thrown by Scott to the princess of Caraman-Chimay at a party for the Murphys , a punch to one of the guests, Murano pieces propelled on the wall.
In these cases, the hosts' tolerance of him subsided in phases of distancing that were never definitive. But it was the author who changed the terms of the relationship when he decided to include the marriage in the novel he had started working on.
Antibes
Nicole and Dick Diver , the characters in Tender Is the Night combine Fitzgerald's autobiographical drive with Obvious references to the Murphys.
The hotel where they reside is a version of the Hôtel du Cap, which is later converted into a villa that resembles Villa Saint-Louis , on the edge of a large pine forest. Like Sarah, Nicole wears a large pearl necklace over her swimsuit on the beach . They throw great parties. They drink incessantly.
But Nicole, like Zelda, is unfaithful to Dick. Zelda was with a French pilot, Edward Jozan. Her infatuation made her think about divorce until Jozan disappeared. Nicole's literary adventure marks her psychiatric recovery; Zelda's initiated her slide into madness.
When the novel was published in 1934 the world she described had disappeared. The Côte d'Azur had been trivialized and the Great Crisis had broken the lightness.
Fitzgerald reflected his own fall in Dick Diver's decadence. He had passed his moment. Tender Is the Night was a commercial failure. Today he draws the fragile and sophisticated refuge created by the Murphys in Antibes.