petticoat trousers, made to all appearance of tarry old sails, so
additionally stiffened with pitch and salt, that the wearers have a
walk of their own, and go straddling and swinging about among the
boats and barrels and nets and rigging, a sight to see. Then,
their younger women, by dint of going down to the sea barefoot, to
fling their baskets into the boats as they come in with the tide,
and bespeak the first fruits of the haul with propitiatory promises
to love and marry that dear fisherman who shall fill that basket
like an Angel, have the finest legs ever carved by Nature in the
brightest mahogany, and they walk like Juno. Their eyes, too, are
so lustrous that their long gold ear-rings turn dull beside those
brilliant neighbours; and when they are dressed, what with these
beauties, and their fine fresh faces, and their many petticoats -
striped petticoats, red petticoats, blue petticoats, always clean
and smart, and never too long - and their home-made stockings,
mulberry-coloured, blue, brown, purple, lilac - which the older
women, taking care of the Dutch-looking children, sit in all sorts
of places knitting, knitting, knitting from morning to night - and
what with their little saucy bright blue jackets, knitted too, and
fitting close to their handsome figures; and what with the natural
grace with which they wear the commonest cap, or fold the commonest
handkerchief round their luxuriant hair - we say, in a word and out
of breath, that taking all these premises into our consideration,
it has never been a matter of the least surprise to us that we have
never once met, in the cornfields, on the dusty roads, by the
breezy windmills, on the plots of short sweet grass overhanging the
sea - anywhere - a young fisherman and fisherwoman of our French
watering-place together, but the arm of that fisherman has
invariably been, as a matter of course and without any absurd
attempt to disguise so plain a necessity, round the neck or waist
of that fisherwoman. And we have had no doubt whatever, standing
looking at their uphill streets, house rising above house, and
terrace above terrace, and bright garments here and there lying
sunning on rough stone parapets, that the pleasant mist on all such
objects, caused by their being seen through the brown nets hung
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across on poles to dry, is, in the eyes of every true young
fisherman, a mist of love and beauty, setting off the goddess of
his heart.
Moreover it is to be observed that these are an industrious people,
and a domestic people, and an honest people. And though we are
aware that at the bidding of Bilkins it is our duty to fall down
and worship the Neapolitans, we make bold very much to prefer the
fishing people of our French watering-place - especially since our
last visit to Naples within these twelvemonths, when we found only
four conditions of men remaining in the whole city: to wit,
lazzaroni, priests, spies, and soldiers, and all of them beggars;
the paternal government having banished all its subjects except the
rascals.
But we can never henceforth separate our French watering-place from
our own landlord of two summers, M. Loyal Devasseur, citizen and
town-councillor. Permit us to have the pleasure of presenting M.
Loyal Devasseur.
His own family name is simply Loyal; but, as he is married, and as
in that part of France a husband always adds to his own name the
family name of his wife, he writes himself Loyal Devasseur. He
owns a compact little estate of some twenty or thirty acres on a
lofty hill-side, and on it he has built two country houses, which
he lets furnished. They are by many degrees the best houses that
are so let near our French watering-place; we have had the honour
of living in both, and can testify. The entrance-hall of the first
we inhabited was ornamented with a plan of the estate, representing
it as about twice the size of Ireland; insomuch that when we were
yet new to the property (M. Loyal always speaks of it as 'La
propriete') we went three miles straight on end in search of the
bridge of Austerlitz - which we afterwards found to be immediately
outside the window. The Chateau of the Old Guard, in another part
of the grounds, and, according to the plan, about two leagues from
the little dining-room, we sought in vain for a week, until,
happening one evening to sit upon a bench in the forest (forest in
the plan), a few yards from the house-door, we observed at our
feet, in the ignominious circumstances of being upside down and
greenly rotten, the Old Guard himself: that is to say, the painted
effigy of a member of that distinguished corps, seven feet high,
and in the act of carrying arms, who had had the misfortune to be
blown down in the previous winter. It will be perceived that M.
Loyal is a staunch admirer of the great Napoleon. He is an old
soldier himself - captain of the National Guard, with a handsome
gold vase on his chimney-piece presented to him by his company -
and his respect for the memory of the illustrious general is
enthusiastic. Medallions of him, portraits of him, busts of him,
pictures of him, are thickly sprinkled all over the property.
During the first month of our occupation, it was our affliction to
be constantly knocking down Napoleon: if we touched a shelf in a
dark corner, he toppled over with a crash; and every door we
opened, shook him to the soul. Yet M. Loyal is not a man of mere
castles in the air, or, as he would say, in Spain. He has a
specially practical, contriving, clever, skilful eye and hand. His
houses are delightful. He unites French elegance and English
comfort, in a happy manner quite his own. He has an extraordinary
genius for making tasteful little bedrooms in angles of his roofs,
which an Englishman would as soon think of turning to any account
as he would think of cultivating the Desert. We have ourself
reposed deliciously in an elegant chamber of M. Loyal's
construction, with our head as nearly in the kitchen chimney-pot as
we can conceive it likely for the head of any gentleman, not by
profession a Sweep, to be. And, into whatsoever strange nook M.
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Loyal's genius penetrates, it, in that nook, infallibly constructs
a cupboard and a row of pegs. In either of our houses, we could
have put away the knapsacks and hung up the hats of the whole
regiment of Guides.
Aforetime, M. Loyal was a tradesman in the town. You can transact
business with no present tradesman in the town, and give your card
'chez M. Loyal,' but a brighter face shines upon you directly. We
doubt if there is, ever was, or ever will be, a man so universally
pleasant in the minds of people as M. Loyal is in the minds of the
citizens of our French watering-place. They rub their hands and
laugh when they speak of him. Ah, but he is such a good child,
such a brave boy, such a ge
nerous spirit, that Monsieur Loyal! It
is the honest truth. M. Loyal's nature is the nature of a
gentleman. He cultivates his ground with his own hands (assisted
by one little labourer, who falls into a fit now and then); and he
digs and delves from morn to eve in prodigious perspirations -
'works always,' as he says - but, cover him with dust, mud, weeds,
water, any stains you will, you never can cover the gentleman in M.
Loyal. A portly, upright, broad-shouldered, brown-faced man, whose
soldierly bearing gives him the appearance of being taller than he
is, look into the bright eye of M. Loyal, standing before you in
his working-blouse and cap, not particularly well shaved, and, it
may be, very earthy, and you shall discern in M. Loyal a gentleman
whose true politeness is ingrain, and confirmation of whose word by
his bond you would blush to think of. Not without reason is M.
Loyal when he tells that story, in his own vivacious way, of his
travelling to Fulham, near London, to buy all these hundreds and
hundreds of trees you now see upon the Property, then a bare, bleak
hill; and of his sojourning in Fulham three months; and of his
jovial evenings with the market-gardeners; and of the crowning
banquet before his departure, when the market-gardeners rose as one
man, clinked their glasses all together (as the custom at Fulham
is), and cried, 'Vive Loyal!'
M. Loyal has an agreeable wife, but no family; and he loves to
drill the children of his tenants, or run races with them, or do
anything with them, or for them, that is good-natured. He is of a
highly convivial temperament, and his hospitality is unbounded.
Billet a soldier on him, and he is delighted. Five-and-thirty
soldiers had M. Loyal billeted on him this present summer, and they
all got fat and red-faced in two days. It became a legend among
the troops that whosoever got billeted on M. Loyal rolled in
clover; and so it fell out that the fortunate man who drew the
billet 'M. Loyal Devasseur' always leaped into the air, though in
heavy marching order. M. Loyal cannot bear to admit anything that
might seem by any implication to disparage the military profession.
We hinted to him once, that we were conscious of a remote doubt
arising in our mind, whether a sou a day for pocket-money, tobacco,
stockings, drink, washing, and social pleasures in general, left a
very large margin for a soldier's enjoyment. Pardon! said Monsieur
Loyal, rather wincing. It was not a fortune, but - a la bonne
heure - it was better than it used to be! What, we asked him on
another occasion, were all those neighbouring peasants, each living
with his family in one room, and each having a soldier (perhaps
two) billeted on him every other night, required to provide for
those soldiers? 'Faith!' said M. Loyal, reluctantly; a bed,
monsieur, and fire to cook with, and a candle. And they share
their supper with those soldiers. It is not possible that they
could eat alone.' - 'And what allowance do they get for this?' said
we. Monsieur Loyal drew himself up taller, took a step back, laid
his hand upon his breast, and said, with majesty, as speaking for
himself and all France, 'Monsieur, it is a contribution to the
State!'
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It is never going to rain, according to M. Loyal. When it is
impossible to deny that it is now raining in torrents, he says it
will be fine - charming - magnificent - to-morrow. It is never hot
on the Property, he contends. Likewise it is never cold. The
flowers, he says, come out, delighting to grow there; it is like
Paradise this morning; it is like the Garden of Eden. He is a
little fanciful in his language: smilingly observing of Madame
Loyal, when she is absent at vespers, that she is 'gone to her
salvation' - allee a son salut. He has a great enjoyment of
tobacco, but nothing would induce him to continue smoking face to
face with a lady. His short black pipe immediately goes into his
breast pocket, scorches his blouse, and nearly sets him on fire.
In the Town Council and on occasions of ceremony, he appears in a
full suit of black, with a waistcoat of magnificent breadth across
the chest, and a shirt-collar of fabulous proportions. Good M.
Loyal! Under blouse or waistcoat, he carries one of the gentlest
hearts that beat in a nation teeming with gentle people. He has
had losses, and has been at his best under them. Not only the loss
of his way by night in the Fulham times - when a bad subject of an
Englishman, under pretence of seeing him home, took him into all
the night public-houses, drank 'arfanarf' in every one at his
expense, and finally fled, leaving him shipwrecked at Cleefeeway,
which we apprehend to be Ratcliffe Highway - but heavier losses
than that. Long ago a family of children and a mother were left in
one of his houses without money, a whole year. M. Loyal - anything
but as rich as we wish he had been - had not the heart to say 'you
must go;' so they stayed on and stayed on, and paying-tenants who
would have come in couldn't come in, and at last they managed to
get helped home across the water; and M. Loyal kissed the whole
group, and said, 'Adieu, my poor infants!' and sat down in their
deserted salon and smoked his pipe of peace. - 'The rent, M.
Loyal?' 'Eh! well! The rent!' M. Loyal shakes his head. 'Le bon
and smokes his pipe of peace. May he smoke it on the Property, and
not be recompensed, these fifty years!
There are public amusements in our French watering-place, or it
would not be French. They are very popular, and very cheap. The
sea-bathing - which may rank as the most favoured daylight
entertainment, inasmuch as the French visitors bathe all day long,
and seldom appear to think of remaining less than an hour at a time
in the water - is astoundingly cheap. Omnibuses convey you, if you
please, from a convenient part of the town to the beach and back
again; you have a clean and comfortable bathing-machine, dress,
linen, and all appliances; and the charge for the whole is half-afranc,
or fivepence. On the pier, there is usually a guitar, which
seems presumptuously enough to set its tinkling against the deep
hoarseness of the sea, and there is always some boy or woman who
sings, without any voice, little songs without any tune: the strain
we have most frequently heard being an appeal to 'the sportsman'
not to bag that choicest of game, the swallow. For bathing
purposes, we have also a subscription establishment with an
esplanade, where people lounge about with telescopes, and seem to
get a good deal of weariness for their money; and we have also an
association of individual machine proprietors combined against this
formidable rival. M. Feroce, our own particular friend in the
bathing line, is one of these. How he ever came by his name we
cannot imagine. He is as gentle and polite a man as M. Loyal
Devasseur h
imself; immensely stout withal; and of a beaming aspect.
M. Feroce has saved so many people from drowning, and has been
decorated with so many medals in consequence, that his stoutness
seems a special dispensation of Providence to enable him to wear
them; if his girth were the girth of an ordinary man, he could
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never hang them on, all at once. It is only on very great
occasions that M. Feroce displays his shining honours. At other
times they lie by, with rolls of manuscript testifying to the
causes of their presentation, in a huge glass case in the redsofa'd
salon of his private residence on the beach, where M. Feroce
also keeps his family pictures, his portraits of himself as he
appears both in bathing life and in private life, his little boats
that rock by clockwork, and his other ornamental possessions.
Then, we have a commodious and gay Theatre - or had, for it is
burned down now - where the opera was always preceded by a
vaudeville, in which (as usual) everybody, down to the little old
man with the large hat and the little cane and tassel, who always
played either my Uncle or my Papa, suddenly broke out of the
dialogue into the mildest vocal snatches, to the great perplexity
of unaccustomed strangers from Great Britain, who never could make
out when they were singing and when they were talking - and indeed
it was pretty much the same. But, the caterers in the way of
entertainment to whom we are most beholden, are the Society of
Welldoing, who are active all the summer, and give the proceeds of
their good works to the poor. Some of the most agreeable fetes
they contrive, are announced as 'Dedicated to the children;' and
the taste with which they turn a small public enclosure into an
elegant garden beautifully illuminated; and the thorough-going
heartiness and energy with which they personally direct the
childish pleasures; are supremely delightful. For fivepence a
head, we have on these occasions donkey races with English
'Jokeis,' and other rustic sports; lotteries for toys; roundabouts,
dancing on the grass to the music of an admirable band, fireballoons
and fireworks. Further, almost every week all through the
summer - never mind, now, on what day of the week - there is a fete
in some adjoining village (called in that part of the country a