Our French Watering-Place Page #3

"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

								

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 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
propriété’) 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 Château 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. 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 generous
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
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