St.-Tropez Idyll

St.-Tropez used to be a sleepy little fishing village west down the road from glitzy Cannes and glamorous Monte Carlo. A few curious members of the international society had come across it, but, as Noel Coward might have said, stayed only for cocktails.

Then, in 1956, something happened: And God Created Woman, as in the Roger Vadim film starring an unknown Brigitte Bardot. St. Trop, as the place is called by those in the know, has never been the same since. After the film made BB the hottest star in Europe, she moved to St.-Tropez big time. She bought a house on the beach?La Madrague?invited her bohemian Parisian friends down and, presto, boutiques and quaint little restaurants appeared as if by a miracle.

This was the late 50s, and St. Trop was the worst-kept secret among the newly created jetset. What I remember best is the entrance to the harbor. It's a natural one, with a promenade and ochre houses surrounding it like a horseshoe. Back in those halcyon days, sailing boats were the rage. Gianni Agnelli, the most dashing, good-looking and charismatic of Italian tycoons, had his magnificent Agneta, a Swedish-built, brown-varnished ketch; Stavros Niarchos, the Greek shipping tycoon, was on Creole, a black, 180-foot, three-masted beauty; Max Aitken, son of the press tycoon and a Battle of Britain hero, was on Drumbeat; while the great lover Errol Flynn conducted his affairs of the heart on Zaca, his massive 150-foot schooner. (Forty years to the day of his death in the arms of the 16-year-old Beverly Aadland in the late 50s, I happened to be in St.-Tropez for a classic boat race; when the newly restored Zaca appeared, the crowd lining the harbor began to cheer, shouting Errol Flynn, Errol Flynn...)

I've just spent two weeks in St.-Tropez, on board a beautifully restored 1930s ketch, although any resemblance to the past was purely coincidental. For one, I had the mother of my children and my son and daughter on board. Ergo, no women. For another, large wooden sailing boats no longer attract hoi polloi; the rubberneckers now crowd the harbor to catch a glimpse of grotesque so-called super-yachts, five- to seven-story refrigerators on steroids that reflect the vulgarity of their nouveau-riche owners. Never have I seen such horrors. In fact, watching some of the fatcats waddling off their monstrosities, one cannot decide what's uglier, the human cargo or the carrier.

Mind you, St. Trop has not been ruined a la Cannes and Monte Carlo. For starters, there are no high-rises. There is still Place de Lices, where locals play petanque throughout the day, and Tahiti beach is still the best place to drop anchor for a night. My crew were all from St.-Tropez, assuring me a place in the port when things got a bit quiet. But a quiet family life on board was not what bothered me. It was remembrance of things past. On the Cote d'Azur, nostalgia is a way of life, as if the sunny gaming haven needs to remind her lovers that it was not always day-glo hang-gliders, Lycra-clad toy boys, slot machines and sewage. Not to mention the barbarism of young Americans begging in Nice's railway station, the very same in which Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald arrived in the fabled land of their youth. The sailing trip brought it all back.

As soon as one disembarked from Le Train Bleu, one was met by the wild scarlet splash of the poppies, and the violet waves of the wisteria. The building boom had not begun back then, only geraniums starting from every crevice. There was no traffic, and the sea was cleaner than anywhere else in the Mediterranean. Life was very simple. Nobody seemed to have heard of the word guilt, and fun for fun's sake was pursued with a vengeance. There was tennis in the Hotel du Cap, swimming in the bay of Antibes, where Rosemary Hoyt first fell in love with Dick Diver, followed by lunch either on the terrace of the Hotel du Cap, or at Le Point, in Monte Carlo. As there was no traffic, an eager young man could easily move up and down the coast in pursuit of nonstop pleasure. St.-Tropez was reserved for weekends, when Cannes and Monte Carlo got too crowded.

The way the system worked was as follows: A host or hostess would invite a dozen people to stay, and after a week or two the guests would return to the various grand hotels of the Riviera. Then others would take their place. It was one big party for three long months. The end came rather suddenly. By the early 70s, Onassis lost Monte Carlo to Prince Rainier, who turned it from a Ruritania into a Las Vegas-sur-mer. Gianni Agnelli sold his magnificent Leopolda?the present owner is Lily Safra?and moved his summer operation to Corsica. Nice and Cannes turned into crime-ridden cities, overrun by poor Algerians at first, now by poor and desperate Eastern Europeans. St.-Tropez had its surrounding verdant hills built up, with a difference: only private houses went up, and very beautiful private houses at that.

Last week, at the helm and running to windward under a stiff breeze and calm seas past Tahiti and La Moute, I felt as young as I was when I first saw the place. We came into the harbor with all the sails flying, dropped the anchor and the sails simultaneously and swung around on a 180-degree turn. Thirty years ago our showing-off would have been met with cheers. This time no one noticed. They were too busy looking while a 30,000-horsepower behemoth was disgorging blondes. Oh well, it could be worse. I could have been on the behemoth.