Chapter IV: Part 4

That great work, the _Sartor Resartus_, should have contained a chapter on bathing-dresses, and I have no doubt would have done so had the author been a frequenter of French watering-places. Each of these--even such a little place as Treport--has its _établissement des bains_, its etiquettes and rules as to the dress and comportment of its bathing populations; and Dieppe is the largest, and not the least quaint, of them all. The _établissement_ here is a long glass and iron building like the Crystal Palace, with a dome in the middle, under which there are daily concerts and nightly balls; and a transept at each end, one of which is a very good reading-room, while in the other a mild kind of gambling goes on, under the form of a lottery, for smelling bottles, clocks, and such like ware. I am told that the play here is by no means so innocent as it looks, and that persons in search of investments for spare cash can be accommodated to any amount, but to a stranger nothing of this discloses itself. Between this building and the sea there runs a handsome esplanade, the favourite promenade, and immediately underneath are the rows of little portable canvas huts which serve as bathing machines. The ladies bathe under one end of the esplanade, and the gentlemen under the other, while the fashionable crowd leans over, or sits by the low esplanade wall, inspecting the proceedings. This contiguity is, no doubt, the cause of the wonderful toilets, _spécialités des bains_, which fill the shops here, and are used by all the ladies and many of the men. They consist of large loose trousers and a jacket with skirts, made of fine flannel or serge, of all shades of colour according to taste, and of waterproof bathing caps, all of which garments are trimmed with blue, or pink, or red bows and streamers. Over all the _baigneurs comme il faut_ throw a large cloak, also tastefully trimmed. Thus habited the lady walks out of her hut attended by a maid, to whom when she reaches the water’s edge she hands her cloak, and, taking the hand of one of the male _baigneurs_, proceeds with such plunges and dancings as she has a fancy for, and then returns to the shore, is enveloped in her cloak by her maid, and re-enters her hut. These male _baigneurs_ are a necessary accompaniment of the performance. I have only heard of one case of resistance to the custom, which ended comically enough. A young Englishman, well known in foreign society, was here with his wife, who insisted on bathing, but vowed she would go into the water with no man but her husband. He consented, and in due course appeared on the ladies’ side with his pretty wife, in most discreet apparel, went through the office of _baigneur_, and returned to his own side. This raised a storm among the lady bathers, and the authorities interfered. The next day the lady went to the gentlemen’s side; but this was even more scandalous, and was also forbidden. The persecuted couple then took; to bathing at six in the morning; but, alas! on the second morning the esplanade was lined even at that untimely hour by young Frenchmen, who, though by no means early risers, had made a point of being out to assist at the bath of their eccentric friends, and as these last did not appreciate the _éclat_ of performing alone for the amusement of their friends, the lawless efforts of _ces Anglais_ came to an end. In England, where dress for the water is not properly attended to by either sex, one quite understands the rule of absolute separation; but here, where every lady is accompanied by a man in any case, where she is more covered than she is in a ballroom, and where all her acquaintance are looking on, it does not occur to one why she should not be accompanied by her husband. For, as on the land, here people are much better known by their dress in the water than by anything else. A young gentleman asked one of his partners whether she had seen him doing some particular feat of swimming that morning; she answered that she had not recognised him, to which he replied, “Oh! you may always know me by my straw hat and red ribbon.” The separation here is certainly a farce, for at sixty yards, as we know from our musketry instructors, you recognise the features of the party; and the distance between the men and women bathers is not so much. The rule is enforced, however, at any depth. A brother and sister, both good swimmers, used to swim out and meet one another at the boat which lies in the offing in case of accidents. But this was stopped, as they talked together in English, which excited doubts as to their relationship. I suppose it would be more improper for girls and boys of marriageable age to swim together than to walk; but I vow at this moment I cannot see why.

You may fancy, sir, that in such a state of things as I have described, good stories on the great bathing subject are rife. The last relates to a beauty of European celebrity, who is known to be here and to be bathing, but keeps herself in such strict privacy that scarcely a soul has been able to get a look at her, even behind two thick veils. Had she really wished to be unnoticed she could not have managed worse. The mystery set all the female world which frequents the _établissement_ in a tremor. They were like a knot of sportsmen when a stag of ten tines has been seen in the next glen, or when a 30 lb. salmon has broken the tackle of some cunning fisherman, and is known to lie below a certain stone. Of course, they were sure that something dreadful must have happened to her looks, which she who should be happy enough to catch her bathing would detect. In spite of all, the beauty eluded them for some time, but at last she has been stalked, and I am proud to say, sir, by a sportswoman of our own country. By chance this lady was walking at eight in the morning, when the tide was so low that no one was bathing. She saw a figure dressed _en bourgeoise_ approaching the bathing-place, apparently alone, but two women suspiciously like maids followed at a respectful distance. It flashed across our countrywoman that this must be the incognita; she followed. To her delight, the three turned to the bathing-ground, and disappeared in two huts which had been placed together apparently by accident. She took up a position a few yards from the huts. After an agonising pause the door opened, and a head appeared, which was instantly withdrawn, but now too late. The mystery was solved. It was too late-to send maids to the _directeur_ of the baths to warn off the spectator, and, moreover, useless, for she politely declined to move, though there was nothing more to discover. The whole establishment is ringing with the news that the beauty is _pale comme une morte_, and the inference, of course, follows that paint has been forbidden. You will also, sir, no doubt, be interested to know that she wears a red rose on the top of her bathing-cap, which, having regard to her present complexion, does not say much for her taste in the choice of colours.

But if the water toilets here are fabulous, what shall I say of those on the land? The colours, the textures, the infinite variety, and general loudness of these bewilder the sight and baffle the pen of ordinary mortals. The keenest rivalry is kept up amongst the fair frequenters of the establishment. They sit by hundreds there working and casing of afternoons, while the band plays from three to six, or sweeping about on the esplanade; and in the evening are there again in ever new and brighter colours. The _Dieppe Journal_ comments on the most striking toilets. It noticed with commendation the purple velvet petticoats of the ladies of a millionaire house; it glowed in describing the “_toilette Écossaise_” of another rich Frenchwoman. An officer on reading the announcement laid down the paper, and addressed a lady, his neighbour, “Mais, madame, comment est que ça se fait?” He, worthy man, had but one idea of the toilet in question, which he had gained from the Highland regiments in the Crimea. I am happy to say, both for their own sakes and their husbands and fathers, that the Englishwomen are by far the most simply dressed. The men generally speaking are clad like rational beings, but with many exceptions. I hear of a celebrity in gray velvet knickerbockers and pink silk stockings, but have not seen him. A man in a black velvet suit, and a red beard reaching his waist, has just walked past, without apparently exciting wonder in any breast but that of your contributor.

Dieppe must be a paradise to the rising generation. The children share all the amusements of their elders, and have also special entertainments of their own, amongst which one notes specially two balls a week at the establishment. The whole building is brilliantly lighted every evening, and on these nights the space under the central dome is cleared of chairs, and makes a splendid ballroom. Here the little folk assemble, and go through the whole performance solemnly, just like their elders. The raised permanent seats are occupied by mammas, nurses, governesses, and the public. The girls sit round on the lowest seats, and the boys gather in groups talking to them, or walking about in the centre. They are of all nations, in all costumes--one boy in a red Garibaldian blouse and belt I noted as the most dangerous flirt. There were common English jackets and trousers, knickerbockers of many colours, and many little blue French uniforms. There was no dancer older than fifteen, and some certainly as young as seven. When the music began, the floor was at once covered with couples, who danced quadrilles, waltzes, and a pretty dance like the Schottische, to the tune of “When the green leaves come again.” At the end of each dance the girls were handed to their chairs with bows worthy of Beau Brummel. There were at least 200 grown folk looking on, and a prettier sight I have seldom seen, for the children danced beautifully for the most part. Should I like my children to be amongst them? That is quite another affair. On the whole, I incline to agree with the ladies with whom I went, that it would, perhaps, do boys good, but must be utterly bad for the girls. I certainly never saw before so self-possessed a set of young gentlemen as those in question, and doubt if any one of them will ever feel shy in after-life.

Last Sunday afternoon: again, we had a _fete des vacances_ for the children. The _Gazette des Bains_ announced, “À deux heures, ascensions grotesques, l’enlèvement du phoque; à deux heures et demie, distribution de jouets et bonbons; à trois heures, course à ânes, montés par des jockeys grosse-tête,”--a most piquant programme. Not to mention the other attractions, what could the _enlèvement du phoque_ be? In good time I went into the _établissement_ grounds at the cost of a franc, and was at once guided by the crowd to the brink of a small pond, where sure enough a veritable live seal was swimming about, asking us all as plainly as mild brown eyes could speak what all the rout meant, and then diving smoothly under, to appear again on the other side of the pond. Were the cruel Frenchmen actually going to send the gentle beast up into the air? My speculations were cut short by the first comic ascent and the shouts of the juveniles. A figure very like Richard Doyle’s Saracens in the illustrations to Rebecca and Rowena, with large head, bottle nose, and little straight arms and legs, mounted suddenly into the air, and went away, wobbling and bobbing, before the wind. Another and another followed, as fast as they could be filled with gas. The wind blew towards the town, and there was great excitement as to their destiny, for they rose only to about the height of the houses. I own I was surprised to find myself so deeply interested whether the absurd little Punchinellos would clear the chimneys. One only failed, a fellow in a three-cornered hat like a beadle’s, and, refusing to mount, was soon torn in pieces by the boys. The last was a balloon of the figure of a seal, and I was much relieved when we all trooped away to the distribution of _bonbons_, leaving the real phoca still gliding about in his pond with wondering eyes. The _bonbons_ were distributed in the most polite manner, the handfuls which were thrown amongst the crowd only calling forth a “Pardon Monsieur,” “Pardon Mademoiselle,” as they were picked up, instead of the hurly-burly and scramble we should have had at home. The donkey races might better be called processions, which went three times round the _établissement_. The winner was ridden by a jockey whose _grosse tête_ was that of a cock, in compliment, I suppose, to the national bird; the lion jockey was nowhere, but he beat the cook’s boy, who came in last. The figures were well got up, and some of the heads really funny. At night we had fireworks, and a grand pyrotechnic drama of the taking of the old castle, which stands on the chalk cliff right over the _établissement_ and commanding the town. The garrison joined in the fun, and assaulted the walls twice amidst discharges of rockets and great guns. The third assault was successful, and the red-legged soldiers swarmed on the walls in a blaze of light and planted the tricolour. A brilliant scroll of “_Vive l’Empéreur_” came out on the dark castle walls above their heads, and so the show ended. The castle, by the way, is a most picturesque building. One of the towers has been favourably noticed by Mr. Ruskin. It is also to be reverenced as the stronghold of Henry IV. and the Protestants. It was here, just before the battle of Arques, that he made the celebrated answer to a faint-hearted ally, who spoke doubtfully as to the disparity of numbers, “You forget to count God and the good cause, who are on our side.” It will never be of any use in modern warfare, but makes a good barrack and a most magnificent place for a pyrotechnic display for the delectation of young folk, in which definition for these purposes may be included the whole of the population of France.

As I am writing, a troop of acrobats pass along the green between this hotel and the sea, followed by a crowd of boys. There is the strong man in black velvet carrying the long balancing triangle, on which he is about to support the light fellow in yellow who walks by his side.

There is an athletic fellow in crimson breeches, carrying a table on his head, and a clown with two chairs accompanying. There they have pitched on the green, and are going to begin, and the English boys are leaving their cricket, and the French boys their kites and indiarubber handballs, and a goodly ring is forming, out of which, if they are decent tumblers, I hope they may turn an honest franc or two.

They are not only decent but capital tumblers, the best I have seen for many a day, especially the man in crimson. He has balanced three glasses full of water on his forehead, and then lain down on his back, and passed himself, tumblers and all, through two small hoops. He has placed one chair upon the table, and then has tilted the second chair on two legs upon the seat of the first, and on this fearfully precarious foundation has been balancing himself with his legs straight up in the air while I could count thirty! The strong man has just run up behind the man in yellow, who was standing with his legs apart, and, stooping, has put his head between the yellow man’s legs and thrown him a backward somersault! I must positively go down and give them half a franc. It is a swindle to look on at such good tumbling for nothing.

P.S.--Imagine my delight, sir, when I got down on the green to find they were the tumblers of my native land. They joined a French circus for a tour some weeks back, but could get no money, and so broke off and are working their way home. They can speak no French, and find it very difficult to get leave to perform, as they have to do in all French towns. The crowd of English boys seemed to be doing their duty by them, so I hope they will speedily be able to raise their passage-money and return to the land of double stout and liberty.

Normandy, 20th September 1863.

To an Englishman with little available spare cash and time, and in want of a thorough change of scene and air, which category I take to include a very handsome percentage of our fellow-countrymen, I can recommend a run in Normandy without the slightest hesitation. I am come to the age when one learns to be what the boys call _cocksure_ of nothing in this world, but am, nevertheless, prepared to take my stand on the above recommendation without fear or reservation. For in Normandy he will get an exquisitely light and bracing air, a sky at least twice as far off as our English one (which alone will raise his spirits to at least twice their usual altitude), a pleasant, lively, and well-to-do people, a picturesque country, delicious pears, and, to an Englishman, some of the most interesting old towns in the world out of his own island. All this he may well enjoy for ten days for a five-pound note, or thereabouts, in addition to his return fare to Dieppe or Havre. So let us throw up our insular vacation wide-awakes, and bless the men who invented steam, and pears, and Norman architecture, “and everything in the world beside,” as the good old song of “the leathern bottèl” has it, and start for the fair land from which our last conquerors came before the days get shorter than the nights. Alas! how little of that blissful time now remains to us of the year of grace 1863.

It is some few years, I forget how many, since I was last in a Norman town, and must confess that in some respects they have changed for the better, externally at least, now that the Second Empire has had time to make itself felt in them. All manner of police arrangements, the sweeping, lighting, and paving, are marvellously improved, and there is an air of prosperity about them which does one good. Even in Rouen, the centre of their cotton district, there are scarcely any outward signs of distress, although, so far as I could see, not more than one in three of the mills is at work. I was told that there are still nearly 30,000 operatives out of work in the town and neighbourhood, who have no means of subsistence except any odd job they can pick up to earn a few sous about the quays and markets, but if it be so they kept out of sight during my wanderings about the town. But there is one characteristic sign of the empire to be noted in all these same Norman towns, for which strangers will not feel thankful, though the inhabitants may. The building and improving fever is on them all. In Rouen, amongst other improvements, a broad new street is being made right through some of the oldest parts of the town, from the quays straight up to the boulevards, which it joins close by the railway-station. This Grand Rue de l’Empereur will be a splendid street when finished, to judge by the few houses which are already built at the lower end. Meantime, the queer gables of the houses whose neighbours have been destroyed, and a chapel or two, and an old tower, standing out all by itself, which would make the architectural fortune of any other city, and which find themselves with breathing room now, for the first time, I should think, in the last five hundred years, look down ruefully on the cleared space, in anticipation of the hour rapidly approaching, when they will be again shut out from human ken by four-storied stone palaces, and this time, undoubtedly, for good and all. They can never hold up until another improving dynasty arrives.

At Havre the same process is going on. New houses are springing up all along the new boulevards. Between the town and Frescati’s great hotel and bathing establishment, which faces the sea, there used to stand a curious old round tower of great size, which commanded the mouth of the harbour, and some elaborate fortifications of more modern date. All these have been levelled, old and new together, and the ground is now clear for building, and will, no doubt, be covered long before I shall see it again. Large seaports are always interesting towns, and Havre, besides the usual attractions of such places, has a sort of shop in greater perfection than any other port known to me. In these you can buy or inspect curiosities, alive and dead, from all parts of the world. Parrots of all colours of the rainbow scream at the door, long cages full of love-birds, and all manner of other delicate little feathered creatures one has never seen elsewhere, hang on the walls, or stand about amongst china monsters, and cases of amber, and inlaid stools from Stamboul, and marmoset monkeys, and goodness knows what other temptations to solvent persons with a taste for collections or pets. To neither of these weaknesses can I plead guilty, so after a short inspection I stroll to the harbour’s mouth, and do wonder to think over the astounding audacity of our late countryman, Sir Sidney Smith, who ran his ship close in here, and proceeded in his boats to cut out a French frigate under the guns of the old fortifications. His ship got aground, and was taken; he also. But, after all, it was less of a forlorn hope than throwing himself with his handful of men into Acre, and facing Bonaparte there, which last moderately lunatic act made him a name in history. _Audace! et encore d’audace! et toujours d’audace!_ was the rule which brought our sailors triumphantly through the great war. And there is another picture in that drama which Havre harbour calls up in the English mind, to put in the scale against Sir Sidney’s failure--I mean Citizen Muskein and his gunboats skedaddling from Lieutenant Price in the _Badger_. Do you remember, sir, Citizen Muskein’s--or rather Canning’s--inimitable address to his gunboats in the _Anti-Jacobin?_--

Gunboats, unless you mean hereafter

To furnish food for British laughter,

Sweet gunboats, and your gallant crew,

Tempt not the rocks of St. Marcou,

Beware the _Badger’s_ bloody pennant

And that d----d invalid Lieutenant!

Enough of war memories, and for the future the very last thing one wishes to have to do with this simple, cheery, and, for all I can see, honest people, is to fight them.

There are packets twice a day from Havre across the mouth of the Seine, a seven miles’ run, to Honfleur, described in guide-books as a dirty little town, utterly without interest. I can only say I have seldom been in a place of its size, not the site of any great historic event, which is better worth spending an afternoon in, and I should strongly advise my typical Englishman to follow this route. In the first place, the situation is beautiful. From the steep wooded heights above the town, where are a chapel, much frequented by sailors, and some villas, there are glorious views up the Seine, across to Havre, and out over the sea. Then, in the town, there is the long street, which runs down to the lighthouse, and which, I suppose, the guide-book people never visit, as it is out of the way. It is certainly as picturesque a street as can be found in Rouen, or any other French town I have ever seen--except Troyes, by the way. The houses are not large, but there is scarcely one of them which Prout would not be proud to ask to sit to him.

Then there is the church in the centre of the town by the market-place, with the most eccentric of little spires. It seems, at an early period of the Middle Ages, to have taken it into its clock--or whatever answers to a spire’s head--that it would seer more of the world, and to have succeeded in getting about thirty yards away from its nave. Here, probably finding locomotion a tougher business than it reckoned on, it has fallen asleep, and, while it slept, several small houses crept up against its base and fell asleep also. And there it remains to this day, looking down over the houses in which people live, and many apples and pears are being sold, and crying, like the starling, “I can’t get out.” There is a splendid straight avenue, stretching a mile and a half up the Caen road, and a good little harbour full of English vessels, which ply the egg and fruit trade, and over every third door in the sailors’ quarter you see “Cook-house” written up in large letters, for the benefit of the British sailor.

The railway to Lisieux passes through a richly wooded, hilly country, and then runs out into the great plain in which Caen lies. The city of William the Conqueror is quite worthy of him, which is saying a good deal. For, though one may not quite share Mr Carlyle’s enthusiasm for “Wilhelmus Conquestor,” it must be confessed that he is, at least, one of the three strongest men who have ruled in England, and that in the long run he has done a stroke of good work for our nation. The church of the Abbey _des Hommes_, which he began in 1066, and of which Lanfranc was the first abbot, stands just as he left it, except the tops of two towers at the west end, which were finished two centuries later. It is a pure Norman church, 320 feet long, and 98 feet high in the nave and transepts, and the simplest and grandest specimen of that noble style I have ever seen. William’s grave is before the high altar, the spot marked by a dark stone, and no king ever lay in more appropriate sepulchre. The Huguenots rifled the grave and scattered his bones, but his strong stern spirit seems to rest over the place. There is an old building near the Abbey surmounted by a single solid pinnacle, under which is a room which tradition says he occupied. It is now filled with the wares of a joiner who lives below. Caen is increasing in a solid manner in its outskirts, but seems less disturbed and altered by the building mania than any of her sisters. There was an English population of 4000 and upwards living here before 1848, but the English Consul fairly frightened them away by assurances of his inability to protect them (against what does not seem to have been settled) in that wild time, and now there are not as many hundreds. One of the survivors is the Commissionaire of the Hôtel d’Angleterre, West by name, a really intelligent and serviceable man, well up to his work. It is scarcely ever worth while to spend a franc on a commissionaire, but West is an exception to the rule. His father was in the lace trade, which is active in Caen, but his premises were burnt down some years since, and an end put to his manufacture. West is now trying to revive the family business, and one of his first steps was to get over a new lace machine, and a man to work it, from England. It has not proved a good speculation as yet, for no one else can manage the machine, and the Englishman insists on being drunk half his time.

We left by one of the steamers which ply daily from Caen to Havre. The run down the river is chiefly interesting from the quarries on its banks. They are not the principal quarries, but are of very considerable extent; and from the quantities of tip, heaped into moderate-sized grass-covered hills by the river side, it is plain that they must have been in work here for centuries. You see the stone in many places lying like rich Cheddar cheese, and cut as regularly in flakes as a grocer would cut his favourite cheeses. The stone is very soft when it comes first from the quarries, but gains its great hardness and sharpness after a short exposure. After passing the quarries we got between salt marshes haunted by abundance of jack snipe, and so we passed out to sea.

Gleanings from Boulogne

There is one large portion of the French people which has improved marvellously in appearance in the last few years, and that is the army. The setting up of the French soldier of the line used to be much neglected, but now you never see a man, however small and slight, who does not carry himself and move as if every muscle in his body had been thoroughly and scientifically trained. And this is the actual fact. They have the finest system of military gymnastics which has ever been seen. In every garrison town there is a gymnasium, in which the men have to drill as regularly as on the parade-ground. The one close to the gate of the old town of Boulogne is an admirable specimen, and well worth a visit. Our authorities are, I believe, slowly following in the steps of the French, but little has as yet been done. There is no branch of army reform which may more safely be pressed on. We have undoubtedly the finer material. The English soldier is a bigger and more muscular man than the French soldier, but is far behind him in his physical education, and must remain so until we provide a proper system of gymnastic training, which, by the bye, will benefit the general health of the men, and develop their intelligence as well as their muscles.

During our stay at Boulogne there was some very heavy weather. A strong sou’-wester came on one night, and by two o’clock next day, when I went down, was hurling the angry green waves against the great beams of the southern pier in fearful fashion. The entrance to the harbour, as most of your readers will remember, is quite narrow, not one hundred yards across between the two pier heads. The ebb-tide was sweeping down from the north, and, meeting the gale right off the harbour’s mouth, made a battling and raging sea which brought one’s heart into one’s mouth to look at. The weather was quite bright, and though the wind was so strong that I held my hat on with difficulty, the northern pier was crowded, as the whole force of the sea was spent against the southern pier, over which it was leaping every moment. We were in comparative shelter, and could watch, Without being drenched with spray, the approach of one of the fishing smacks of the port, which was coming home. I shall not easily forget the sight. We stood there, jammed together, rough sailors, fishwomen, Cockneys, weatherbound soldiers, well-dressed ladies, a crowd of all ranks, the wind singing through us so that we could scarcely make our nearest neighbours hear. Not that we wanted to talk. The sight of the small black hull and ruddy brown sail of the smack, now rising on the crest of a great wave, and the next moment all but disappearing behind it, took away the desire, almost the power, of speech. Two boats, manned with fishermen, pulled to the harbour’s mouth, and lay rolling in the comparatively still water just within the shelter of the southern pier head. It was comforting to see them there, though if any catastrophe had happened they could never have lived in that sea. But the gallant little smack needed no help. She was magnificently steered, and came dancing through the wildest part of the race without shipping a single sea, seeming to catch each leaping wave just in the spot where it was easiest to ride over. As she slid out of the seething cauldron into the smooth water past the waiting boats the crowd drew a long breath, and many of us hurried back to get a close view of her as she ran into her place amongst the other fishing boats alongside the quay. I envied the grizzly old hero at the helm, as he left his place, threw off his dreadnought coat, and went to help the two men and two boys who were taking in the sail and coiling away the ropes. There was much shouting and congratulation from above; but they made little answer, and no fuss. Their faces struck me very much, especially the boys’, which were full of that quiet self-contained look one sees in Hook’s pictures. There was no other boat in the offing then, so I went home; but within a few hours heard that a smack had capsized in the harbour’s mouth, with the loss of one man. I only marvel how the rest could have been saved.

On the 1st of October in every year there is a solemn festival of the seafaring people of Boulogne, and the sea is blessed by their pastors. I was anxious to wait for the ceremony, but was unable to do so. There seems to be a strange mixture of trust in God and superstition in all people who “occupy their business on the great waters.” There is a little chapel looking down on Boulogne port full of thank-offerings of the sailors’ wives, where the fishwomen go up to plead with God, and pour out the agony of their souls in rough weather. There are propitiatory gifts, too, by the side of the thank-offerings, and the shadow of a tyrannous power in nature, to be bought off with gifts, darkens the presence of the true Refuge from the storm. There are traces, too, of a more direct idolatry in the town. In the year 643 of our era the Madonna came to Boulogne in an open boat, so runs the story, and left an image with the faithful, which soon became the great religious lion of the neighbourhood, drawing largely, and performing a series of miracles all through the Middle Ages. When Henry VIII. took the town the English carried off the image, but it was restored in good condition when peace came, and as powerful as ever for wonder-working. The Huguenots got hold of it half a century later, and were supposed to have destroyed it; but an image, which at any rate did duty for it, was ultimately fished up out of a well. Doubts as to identity, however, having arisen, the matter was referred to the Sorbonne, and a jury of doctors declared in favour of the genuineness of the article which was forthcoming. And so it continued to practise with varying success until the Revolution, when the Jacobins laid hands on it, broke it up, and burnt it, thinking to make once for all an end of this and other idol-worships. But a citizen not so enlightened as his neighbours stayed by the fire, and succeeded at last in rescuing what he declared to be an arm of the original image, which remains an object of veneration still, and is said not to have lost all healing power. But it is far inferior in this respect to some drops of the holy blood, for the reception of which a countrywoman of ours has built a little chapel in the suburbs.

Boulogne has all the marks of rapidly increasing material prosperity which may be seen now in every French town, one of the many fruits of which is a wonderful improvement in the condition of the streets and thoroughfares. The fine new buildings, the look of the shops and of the people, all tell the same tale. In fact, one comes away from France now with a feeling that, so far as surface polish and civilisation are concerned, this is the country which is going to the front. Whether it goes any deeper is a matter upon which a traveller flitting about for a few weeks cannot venture an opinion.

I came back in one of the daily packets to London Bridge, which, besides carrying seventy passengers, was piled fore and aft with cargo. There were 400 cases of wine on deck, besides other packages, which sorely curtailed our walking privileges. But the boats are good boats, and the voyage past Dover, through the Downs, round the North Foreland, and up the Thames, is so full of life and interest that it is well worth making a long day of it, if one is a moderately good sailor. The advertisements call it eight and a half hours, which means eleven; but it is not a moment too long.

Blankenberghe

Yesterday (14th August) we were warned by meagre fare at the _table d’hôte_ of our hotel that it was the vigil of some saint’s day. Our gastronomic knowledge was enlarged by the opportunity of partaking of boiled mussels. A small and delicate species of this little fish--despised of Englishmen--is found in extraordinary quantities on this coast. The sand is dotted with the shells after every ebb. The wattles of the jetties are full of them. After the first shock of having a salad bowl full of small black shells presented to one, following immediately on a delicate _potage à l’oseille_, the British citizen may pursue his education in this direction fearlessly, with the certainty of becoming acquainted with a delicate and appetising morsel; and he will return to his native country with at least a toleration for “winks” and “pickled whelks,” when he sees them vended at corner stalls in Clare Market or in the Old Kent Road, for the benefit of the dangerous classes of his fellow-citizens who take their meals in the street. In these Flemish parts they are eaten with bread and butter, and even as whitebait, and by all classes.

After the meal I consulted the calendar in my pocket-book as to the approaching festival, not wishing to thrust my heretical ignorance unnecessarily on the notice of the simple folk who inhabit the _Lion d’Or_. That obstinately Protestant document, however, informed me simply that the Rev. E. Irving was born on this day in 1792, probably not the saint I was in quest of. A _Churchman’s Almanac_, with which the only English lady in the place was provided, was altogether silent as to the day. In the end, therefore, I was obliged to fall back upon the bright-eyed little _demoiselle de la maison_, who informed me that it was the vigil of the Assumption of the Virgin, and that the _fête_ was one greatly honoured by the community of Blankenberghe.

Thus prepared, I was not surprised at being roused at five in the morning by the clumping of sabots and clinking of hammers in the street below--my room is a corner one, looking from two windows on the Rue d’Eglise, the principal street of the place, and from the other two on the Rue des Pecheurs, or “Visschurs’ Straet,” which runs across the northern end of the Rue d’Eglise. A flight of broad steps here runs up on to the Digue, or broad terrace fronting the sea, and at the foot of these steps they were erecting a temporary altar, and over it a large picture of fishermen hauling in nets full of monsters of the deep. They had brought it from the parish church, and, as such pictures go, it was by no means a bad one. Presently tricoloured flags began to appear from the windows of most of the houses in both streets, and here and there garlands of bright-coloured paper were hung across from one side to the other. As the morning advanced the bells from the church and convent called the simple folk to mass at short intervals, six, half-past seven, nine, and grand mass at ten. The call seemed to be answered by more people than we had fancied the town could have held. At eleven there was to be a procession, and now miniature altars with lighted candles appeared in many of the ground-floor windows, both of shops and private houses; and the streets were strewed with rushes and diamond-shaped pieces of coloured paper. Punctual to its time the head of the procession came round the corner of “Visschurs’ Straet,” half a dozen small boys ringing bells leading the way. Then came the beadledom of Blankenberghe, in the shape of several imposing persons in municipal uniform, then three little girls dressed in white, with bouquets, more boys, including a diligent but not very skilful drummer, six or seven other maidens in white, somewhat older than their predecessors, of whom the centre one carried some ornament of tinsel and flowers. Then came the heavy silk canopy, supported by four light poles carried by acolytes, and surrounded by choristers, of whom the leader bore a large silver censer, and under the canopy marched a shaven monk in cream-coloured brocade satin, carrying the pyx, and a less gorgeously attired brother with an open missal. Around the whole of the procession, to protect it from the accompanying crowd, were a belt of bronzed fishermen in their best clothes, some carrying staves, some hymn-books, and almost all joining in the chant which was rolled out by the priest, in a powerful bass with a kind of metallic ring in it, as they neared the altar at the foot of the steps. Here the whole procession paused, and the greater part knelt, while the priest put incense in the censer, and made his obeisances and prayed in an unknown tongue, and the censer boy swung his sweet-smelling smoke about, and the fishermen and their wives and children prayed too, in their own tongue, I suppose, and their own way, probably for fair weather and plenty of fish, and let us hope for brave and gentle hearts to meet whatever rough weather and short commons may be in store for them by land or water, Then the procession rose, and passed down the Rue d’Eglise, pausing at the corner of the little market-place opposite a rude figure of the Madonna in a niche over some pious doorway, [Greek phrase] and so out of sight. And the _bourgeois_ blew out the candles and took away the chairs on which, while the halt lasted, they had been kneeling from their shop windows, putting back the bathing dresses, and the shell boxes, and other sea-side merchandise, while the whole non-shopkeeping population, and the neighbours from Bruges, and the strangers who fill the hotels and lodging-houses turned out upon the splendid sands and on the Digue to enjoy their _fête_-day. In the afternoon the _corps de musique_ of the communal schools of Bruges gave a gratuitous concert to us all by the permission of the communal administration of that town, as we bathed, or promenaded, or sipped coffee or liqueurs in the broad verandahs of the _cafés_ which line the Digue. Gaily dressed middle-class women (of upper classes, as we understand them, I see none), in many-coloured garments and immense structures of false back hair, such as these eyes have never before seen; a sprinkling of Belgian officers in uniform, Russians, Frenchmen, Germans a few, and two Anglo-Saxons, Englishmen I cannot say, for one is an American citizen and the other your contributor, who compose the only English-speaking males, so far as I can judge; groups of Flemish women of the people in long black cloth cloaks, with large hoods lined with black satin, more expensive probably, but not nearly so picturesque as the old red cloak which thirty years ago was the almost universal Sunday dress of women in Wiltshire, Berkshire, and other Western counties; little old-fashioned girls in nice mob caps, and the fishermen in excellent blue broad-cloth jackets and trousers, and well-blacked shoes or boots, instead of the huge sabots of their daily life; in short, every soul, I suppose, in Blankenberghe, from the Bourgmestre who sits on his throne, to the donkey-boy who drives along his Neddy under a freight of children, at half a franc an hour, whenever he can entice the small fry from the superior attraction of engineering with the splendid sand, spends his or her three or four hours on the Digue, enjoying whatever of the music, gossip, coffee, beer, or other pastimes they are inclined to or can afford; and in that whole crowd of pleasant holiday-making folk there is not one single trace of poverty, not a starved face, not a naked foot, not a ragged garment. It is the same on the week-days. The people, notably the fishermen and _baigneurs_, dress roughly, but they have all comfortable thick worsted stockings in their sabots, and their jerseys and overalls are ample and satisfactory. Why is it that in nine places out of ten on the Continent this is so, and that in England you shall never be able to find a watering-place which is not deformed more or less by poverty and thriftlessness? Right across the sea, there, on the Norfolk coast, lie Cromer and Sherringham. More daring sailors never manned lifeboat, more patient fishermen never dragged net, than the seafaring folk of those charming villages. They are courteous, simple, outspoken folk, too, singularly attractive in their looks and ways. But, alas! for the rags, and the grinding poverty, declaring itself in a dozen ways, in the cottages, in the children’s looks, in the women’s premature old age. When will England wake up, and get rid of the curse of her wealth and the curse of her poverty? When will an Englishman be able again to look on at a fête-day in Belgium, or Switzerland, or Germany, or France, without a troubled conscience and a pain in his heart, as he thinks of the contrast at home, and the bitter satire in the old, worn-out name of “Merry England?” It is high time that we all were heartsick over it, for the canker grows on us. Those who know London best will tell you so; those who know the great provincial towns and country villages will tell you so, except perhaps that the latter are now getting depopulated, and so contain less altogether of joy or sorrow. However, sir, there are other than these holiday times in which to dwell on this dark subject. I ought to apologise for having fallen into it unawares, when I sat down merely to put on paper, if I could in a few lines, and impart to your readers the exceeding freshness of the feeling which the feast-day at this little Belgian watering-place leaves on one. But who knows when he sits down, at any rate in the holidays, what he is going to write? However good your intentions, at times you can’t “get the hang of it,” can’t say the thing you meant to say.

You may wonder, too, at this sudden plunge into the _fête_ of the Assumption at Blankenberghe, when I have never warned you even that I had flitted from my round on the great crank which grinds for us all so ruthlessly in the parts about the Strand and the Inns of Court. Well, sir, I plead in my defence the test that a very able friend of mine applies to novels. He opens the second volume and reads a chapter; if that tempts him, on he goes to the end of the book; if it is very good indeed, he then goes back, and fairly begins at the beginning. So I hope your readers will be inclined to peruse in future weeks some further gossip respecting this place, which should perhaps have preceded the _fête_-day. If they should get to take the least interest in Blankenberghians and their works and ways, it is more than these latter can be said to do about them, for in the two or three cheap sheets which I find on the table here, and which constitute the press of this corner of Belgium, there is seldom more than a couple of lines devoted to the whole British Empire. The fact that there is not another Englishman in the place, and that the American above mentioned, the only other representative of our English-speaking stock here, went once to see the Derby, and got so bored by two o’clock that he left the Downs and walked back to Epsom station, enduring the whole chaff of the road, and finding the doors locked and the clerks and porters all gone up to the race, ought to be enough to make them curious--curious enough at any rate for long-vacation purposes. There are plenty of odds and ends of life a little out of our ordinary track lying about here to make a small “harvest for a quiet eye,” which I am inclined to try and garner for you, if you think well. And are not the new King and Queen coming next week to delight their subjects, and witness many kinds of fireworks, and a “_concours des joueurs de boule, dits pas baenbolders_,” whatever these may be?

Belgian Bathing

I should like to know how many grown Englishmen or Englishwomen, apart from those unfortunates who are preparing for competitive examinations, are aware of the existence of this place? No Englishman is bound to know of it by any law of polite education acknowledged amongst us, for is it not altogether ignored in Murray?

Even Bradshaw’s _Continental Guide_ is silent as to its whereabouts. This is somewhat hard upon Blankenberghe, sturdy and rapidly growing little watering-place that she is, already exciting the jealousy of her fashionable neighbour, Ostend. It must be owned, however, that she returns the compliment by taking the slightest possible interest in the contemporary history of the British Empire. Nevertheless, the place has certain recommendations to persons in search of a watering-place out of England. If you are content with an hotel of the country, of which there is a large choice, you may have three good meals a day and a bedroom for six and a half francs, with a considerable reduction for families. Even at the fashionable hotels on the Digue the price is only eight or nine francs; and when you have paid your hotel bill you are out of all danger of extravagance, for there is literally nothing to spend money upon. Your bathing machine costs you sixpence. There are no pleasure boats and no wheeled vehicles for hire in the place, and no excursions if there were; shops there are none; and the market is of the smallest and meagerest kind. There are no beggars and no amusements, except bathing and the Kursaal. These, however, suffice to keep the inhabitants and visitors in a state of much contentment.