Antibes 1926: The Torment of Scott Fitzgerald

The beach at La Garoupe looks much as it did when Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald saw it for the first time in the summer of 1926, traveling to the Côte d’Azur at the invitation of their good friends, Gerald and Sara Murphy, who owned a villa in Cap d’Antibes. They called it Villa America and played host to a social circle that included the foremost artists and writers of the day—Picasso, Hemingway, Léger, Cocteau, Dos Passos, the list goes on. They liked to entertain their guests at La Garoupe, where Gerald had salvaged the beach almost single-handedly, raking away a mass of shells, seaweed, and debris to reveal the sand beneath. Fitzgerald described it as a “bright tan prayer rug” in the opening pages of Tender Is the Night, the novel he was struggling with and despaired of ever finishing.

He and Zelda decided to rent a villa in Juan-les-Pins, a mile or so away, where I recently spent a week. I hadn’t intended the trip to be a literary pilgrimage, although it evolved into one without my willing it. I hoped to visit the unfashionable village of Cagnes-sur-Mer to avoid the crowds on the Riviera and attend a few horse races at the local track, but my wife did not think much of the plan. There was nothing in Cagne-sur-Mer to interest her except the Renoir Museum, so she preferred Antibes, with its fine food and glorious beaches and a little hotel in Juan-les-Pins with a balcony that looked out at the sea and the mountains beyond.