As the Crow Flies. Dodge Walter Phelps
Russia, who spent a winter here early in the seventies. The Promenade is used as a scene for “church parade” after service on Sunday mornings by the English colony, and every afternoon, from four onward, one may meet the world and his wife there. The municipal band plays twice a week in the public gardens, but the performance – a rather poor one – is attended mainly by Italians. The language of San Remo is a curious patois made up of Ligurian Italian – very different to the pure Lingua Toscana of Florence, and the bastard French heard in Nice and Cannes.
Five days in every week are bright and sunny, one of the remaining two is usually cloudy and the other rainy. The average temperature is fifty-two degrees in winter. The winds are hardly ever troublesome, as the high chain of hills behind the town act as a natural barrier. Among the many bad shops there is one really good one: Squire’s, the English chemist’s, who dubs himself (but by real Letters Patent) “Court Chemist to the late German Emperor and to H. R. H. the Prince of Wales.”
When the late Emperor Frederick was ill here in ’88 at his villa and all his affairs and correspondence were in confusion, his much-loved wife, the popular Empress Victoria (who looks so much like her mother, the Queen of England) used to have all her English letters sent to the villa enclosed in this chemist’s prescription envelopes, to keep them safe from Bismarck’s spies; for the relations, never very cordial, between the grim Chancellor and the Illustrious Lady were then at a dangerous tension and the friends of the Empress claimed that he did not scruple to confiscate her private letters from the English Court when he could get hold of them. The young Princesses were very fond of taking long walks in the endless olive groves about San Remo, and sketching the town from either of the two high rocks that shut in the bay on each side.
A pretty peasant girl in a small fruit shop near the Emperor’s villa made a small fortune by selling mouldy pears and sour oranges to enthusiastic British tourists who thronged the shop, because the Empress Victoria had made a lovely study of her in oils, which has appeared in a London exhibition.
Another permanent memorial of the visit of the Royal Family to San Remo is the constant appearance of the highly-gilt arms of the Hohenzollerns over most of the shops in the new town, which, one and all, describe themselves as “Court Grocer to the Emperor Frederick”; “Court Bootmaker to the Imperial Family,” when possibly the chef may have bought some candles from the one and the Emperor’s valet may have been measured for a pair of boots at the other. I have even seen the advertising card of one “Guiseppa Candia, Court Laundress to the German Empress.”
The English set in San Remo is charming and very hospitable when one comes with letters of introduction. The leading English physician, Dr. Freeman, and his wife are always ready to extend the courtesies of the place to fresh arrivals; and any visitor at the English Club will easily recall the jovial person of Mr. Benecke. But when one comes without letters or other credentials, the English colony can be very freezing; as a third-rate American author found some years since, when, with his wife, he tried to take the town by storm.
The country round about San Remo is full of pleasant walks. Ospedaletti is only two miles away, and one may take a charming walk there and back in the afternoon. It is an interesting place, albeit a dreary one, for it is the monument of a great failure. Some years ago a great International Company bought up all the land along the lovely bay, built splendid hotels and shops, made good roads and put up the magnificent Casino still to be seen there. The shares were at a high premium and every one was sure the company would make a huge fortune, and so it would if it had not neglected the trifling formality of obtaining the consent of King Humbert to the establishment of a large gambling hell in his dominions. The result was that he stepped in at the last minute and intimated that while he had no objections to a Casino, he was not prepared to allow games of chance. Of course, this ruined not only the company, but the place, for Ospedaletti’s only raison d’être was in the Casino, and the Casino’s in the roulette table. The hotels and shops are all closed now and the beautiful building is gradually falling to pieces from decay. The roads are all overgrown, and a few poor Italian families are the only representatives of the gay world that was to make Ospedaletti a successful rival of Monte Carlo.
Then, beyond, is the town of Bordighera, an Anglo-Italian resort nearer the frontier and especially loved by consumptives. George McDonald, the Scotch author, has a beautiful house there and his daughters are famous in the tennis courts along the Riviera. Bordighera is a garden of palms and supplies all the churches of Rome on Palm Sunday.
A more interesting walk from San Remo is to take the Corniche road as far as the Pietra Lunga on the east side of San Remo, and then to strike inland through the olive groves until one finds the dreary village of Bussana, a place totally destroyed by the earthquake of 1886. The ruins of the quaint old church are still shown (with the inevitable monogram of the Virgin on everything), where a service was being held when the first shock came on that eventful Sunday. The peasants say there are still bodies hidden under the massive masonry and swear that the place is haunted. This was the earthquake that startled Cannes early on the same morning, when walls were falling and people flying from the hotels and houses in various stages of undress. The Prince of Wales was there then on his yearly visit to the Riviera, and one of his valets rushed in to call him at five o’clock for the hotel walls had fallen at the back, and there was danger that the others might go. But the Prince only scolded the valet sleepily for waking him and refused to get up in spite of the man’s entreaties, finally turning over and going to sleep again amid the noise of falling chimneys and crashing walls. It is needless to say that H. R. H. was not injured and that the other walls did not fall.
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