Too Precious to Lose

Author’s Note

Author’s NoteThe discovery of the South of France as a resort for the British and which made it eventually the playground of Europe in the spring began at Cannes.

It was also said if Cannes was the creation of Lord Brougham, then Nice was the discovery of Smallett, the author of ‘Humphrey Clinker’ who found that there was no English colony there in 1763 and no English comforts.

But when he had written about it in his travels, the great humourist brought it to the notice of the sightseers and invalids thought that the mild weather of the Mediterranean would do them good.

That was the beginning and then gradually, year by year, Royal personages like the Duke of York spent the winter there.

A few years later his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, stayed a few months at a villa on the other side of the Paglione.

The Royal Dukes having led the way, English aristocrats began to make their own discoveries along the coast.

Beautiful villas enclosing their own little Eden of semi-tropical vegetation began to appear on the hills and numberless paths led into lovely dells bright with wild flowers.

Beyond Villefranche, the beautiful village of Beaulieu, situated in one of the most sheltered rocks in the Riviera, drew visitors like a magnet.

The Marquis of Salisbury built a large pink villa up above it with magnificent views of the Mediterranean and today it is difficult to find a place that has not been built on.

But the villa I describe at Cap d’Estel was actually built at the beginning of the century as a private house.

It has a small ‘Cap’ of its own with the road high above it and it is on the sea-side of the railway.

It has a charm and a mystique all its own and although it is now a hotel, what I describe in this novel could easily have happened in the villa in the past.

Nowadays it is more fashionable to go to the South of France in the summer, when there are sunbathers and sea-bathers on every rock.

But they cannot spoil the beauty and charm it had at the end of the century.

Then the wealthy aristocrats from all countries, including Russia, flocked either to Monte Carlo, Nice or Cannes for the sun, and, of course, the irresistible excitement of gambling.