Our French Watering-Place Page #2

"Our French Watering-Place" is a travelogue by Charles Dickens, published in 1851. The work captures Dickens’ observations and experiences during his visit to the French seaside town of Boulogne-sur-Mer. Through vivid descriptions and sharp wit, he explores the local culture, the social dynamics of the British expatriate community, and the customs of the French. The book reflects Dickens' keen eye for detail and his ability to blend humor with social commentary, making it a delightful read for those interested in the nuances of 19th-century travel and society.

• Short story

								

at the fourth-floor window, might conceive himself another Jack,
alighting on enchanted ground from another bean-stalk.  It is a place
wonderfully populous in children; English children, with governesses
reading novels as they walk down the shady lanes of trees, or nursemaids
interchanging gossip on the seats; French children with their smiling
bonnes in snow-white caps, and themselves—if little boys—in straw
head-gear like bee-hives, work-baskets and church hassocks.  Three years
ago, there were three weazen old men, one bearing a frayed red ribbon in
his threadbare button-hole, always to be found walking together among
these children, before dinner-time.  If they walked for an appetite, they
doubtless lived en pension—were contracted for—otherwise their poverty
would have made it a rash action.  They were stooping, blear-eyed, dull
old men, slip-shod and shabby, in long-skirted short-waisted coats and
meagre trousers, and yet with a ghost of gentility hovering in their
company.  They spoke little to each other, and looked as if they might
have been politically discontented if they had had vitality enough.
Once, we overheard red-ribbon feebly complain to the other two that
somebody, or something, was ‘a Robber;’ and then they all three set their
mouths so that they would have ground their teeth if they had had any.
The ensuing winter gathered red-ribbon unto the great company of faded
ribbons, and next year the remaining two were there—getting themselves
entangled with hoops and dolls—familiar mysteries to the
children—probably in the eyes of most of them, harmless creatures who had
never been like children, and whom children could never be like.  Another
winter came, and another old man went, and so, this present year, the
last of the triumvirate, left off walking—it was no good, now—and sat by
himself on a little solitary bench, with the hoops and the dolls as
lively as ever all about him.

In the Place d’Armes of this town, a little decayed market is held, which
seems to slip through the old gateway, like water, and go rippling down
the hill, to mingle with the murmuring market in the lower town, and get
lost in its movement and bustle.  It is very agreeable on an idle summer
morning to pursue this market-stream from the hill-top.  It begins,
dozingly and dully, with a few sacks of corn; starts into a surprising
collection of boots and shoes; goes brawling down the hill in a
diversified channel of old cordage, old iron, old crockery, old clothes,
civil and military, old rags, new cotton goods, flaming prints of saints,
little looking-glasses, and incalculable lengths of tape; dives into a
backway, keeping out of sight for a little while, as streams will, or
only sparkling for a moment in the shape of a market drinking-shop; and
suddenly reappears behind the great church, shooting itself into a bright
confusion of white-capped women and blue-bloused men, poultry,
vegetables, fruits, flowers, pots, pans, praying-chairs, soldiers,
country butter, umbrellas and other sun-shades, girl-porters waiting to
be hired with baskets at their backs, and one weazen little old man in a
cocked hat, wearing a cuirass of drinking-glasses and carrying on his
shoulder a crimson temple fluttering with flags, like a glorified
pavior’s rammer without the handle, who rings a little bell in all parts
of the scene, and cries his cooling drink Hola, Hola, Ho-o-o! in a shrill
cracked voice that somehow makes itself heard, above all the chaffering
and vending hum.  Early in the afternoon, the whole course of the stream
is dry.  The praying-chairs are put back in the church, the umbrellas are
folded up, the unsold goods are carried away, the stalls and stands
disappear, the square is swept, the hackney coaches lounge there to be
hired, and on all the country roads (if you walk about, as much as we do)
you will see the peasant women, always neatly and comfortably dressed,
riding home, with the pleasantest saddle-furniture of clean milk-pails,
bright butter-kegs, and the like, on the jolliest little donkeys in the
world.

We have another market in our French watering-place—that is to say, a few
wooden hutches in the open street, down by the Port—devoted to fish.  Our
fishing-boats are famous everywhere; and our fishing people, though they
love lively colours, and taste is neutral (see Bilkins), are among the
most picturesque people we ever encountered.  They have not only a
quarter of their own in the town itself, but they occupy whole villages
of their own on the neighbouring cliffs.  Their churches and chapels are
their own; they consort with one another, they intermarry among
themselves, their customs are their own, and their costume is their own
and never changes.  As soon as one of their boys can walk, he is provided
with a long bright red nightcap; and one of their men would as soon think
of going afloat without his head, as without that indispensable appendage
to it.  Then, they wear the noblest boots, with the hugest tops—flapping
and bulging over anyhow; above which, they encase themselves in such
wonderful overalls and 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
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