Our French Watering-Place Page #4

"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

								

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—à 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!’

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’—allée à 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 Dieu,’ says M. Loyal presently, ‘will recompense me,’ and
he laughs 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-a-franc, 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. Féroce, 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 himself; immensely stout withal; and of a beaming aspect.  M.
Féroce 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 never hang them on, all at once.
It is only on very great occasions that M. Féroce 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
red-sofa’d salon of his private residence on the beach, where M. Féroce
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 fêtes 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, fire-balloons and
fireworks.  Further, almost every week all through the summer—never mind,
now, on what day of the week—there is a fête in some adjoining village
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