WATERING-PLACES. E NGLAND is now in the very middle of that
idle season which is sacred to sea-bathing, to pie-nits, and to donkey-chairs. We are at present almost universally engaged in the pursuit of health and recreation. Some of us are at the Lakes, in Scotland, or on the Continent ; some of us partridge-shooting over broad acres in the country, but far more of our fellow-countrymen are recruiting the health of themselves and their families at English watering-places. There is something very characteristic about Englishmen while they are engaged in taking a holiday, and an English watering-place is unlike any other watering-place in the world. It is no more like a French one than an English lady at a pic-nic is like a French lady at Dieppe ; it is no more like a German bathing-place than Paterfamilias, with his telescope on the top of Dover cliffs, and gazing with proud confidence on the British Channel, is like a German father of a family drinking coffee and smoking long pipes, through a summer afternoon, under a linden-tree. The occupations of each nation are managed in a way peculiar to themselves. Nor is it easy to say wherein exactly the amusement of holiday-making Englishmen consists. There are dry watering-places, which are dusty, and entirely devoid of all pretence at water, just as there are sea watering-places which are sandy. German bands, indeed, are common to all such scenes of amusement, and it is probable that there are no English watering-places in which donkeys are not let out for hire by the hour. But though a long line of patient and thirsty-looking animals, standing quietly for hours in the sun, and a continued flow of German music, are both of them peculiar to watering-places, still they are only so incidentally. We feel that donkeys do not constitute a watering- place any more than swallows make a summer. 'the truth is, that the peculiarities of the spot do not reside in the locality, but in the people who frequent it. Wells, baths, and bathing-machines are merely convenient and often fictitious characteristics ; and it is not a pump- room here and a spa there which makes a watering-place what it is but the character of those who repair to it, and the objects for which they do so. The Parisian who changes Paris for Dieppe, the German who voyages during the summer to Ems or Baden, the Tuscan who be- takes himself to Lucca or Pisa, have their own distinct views about watering-places, and act upon reasons which arc not applicable to the case of Englishmen. There is a remarkable dog alive at Florence of the name of Borrinowsky, who is to be seen every day, and all day, either at the fashionable cafés or the other places to which the gay world resort. Whether or no he may have originally belonged to anybody is not known. At present he belongs only to himself, and is graciously willing to be fed at meal-times by the volun- tary contribution of his fellow-citizens. He is more like a hu- man being. than a dog, and from continually living among Ita- lians, has imbibed all the habits and follies of a young Tuscan nobleman. All of us have our humble followers, if we only recognized them; and Borrinowsky is not an exception to the rule. Another dog, who is jet black all over, from ear to tail, has been so thoroughly fascinated by the cool confidence and success of Borrinowsky, that he has determined to link his fortunes in an unpre- tending way to the fortunes of his superior, and to throw himself on the public protection as an illustrious dog's companion. Whenever Borrinowsky moves, this black companion moves like his shadow, a little behind him, at his side. The Tuscans have given him the name of the " Secretary," from his black and sober dress, and from his retiring manners. The two dogs march at stated hours through the day from one public place to another, and dine together at the best restaurant in Florence, the " Secretary" refusing to touch a morsel till Borrinowsky has satisfied his taste. In the afternoon they walk side by side in the Cascine, among the carriages. At night they are to be found among the coffee-drinkers and thesmokers at the large café just above the Piazza Santa Trinita. When it closes, they repair to another which is open for an hour longer, and when that shuts too, they have found a little cabaret which prolongs its hospi- tality till a later hour in the morning. Finally, they retire to rest on the door-steps of Messrs. Plowden's bank. The they "Secre- tary" lies down first, and Borrinowsky stretches his illustrious. person on the top of him. Like all other foreigners of any pretensions to importance, the pair of dogs go to a fashionable watering- place for the hot weather, and when the dog-days begin, walk across to the baths of Lucca or of Pisa. The causes of their voluntary migration are the same as those which induce all foreigners to migrate too. The " Secretary," like a great many people, we may presume, simply goes to Pisa because Borrinowsky goes. But why does Borrinowsky go P He goes, first, because it is the fashion, and because there is nothing else to do ; secondly, he goes to cool him- self ; thirdly, he goes to distract himself. Under one of these three heads may probably be ranked all the reasons for which foreigners, as a general rule, go to watering-places. Unlike Borrinowsky and continentals in general, English people, as a rule, frequent watering-places neither altogether because it is de riqueur to do so, nor yet to cool themselves, nor yet to cater for an exhausted appetite for amusement. Englishmen, generally speaking, are very hard at work for ten months out of the twelve, and absorbed in the occupations of busy life. What they seek during the remaining two is health and repose for themselves, and change of air for their children, who have been for the greater part of the year con- fined to one residence in consequence of their parents' avocations. The father of the family is anxious to enjoy pure domestic life him- self, which he has hardly had leisure to taste for some time past, and at the same time to relieve the monotony of domestic life for those who are tied to home while he is at his daily duties elsewhere. Rest for j himself, and variety for his family, is just what a watering-place gives him ; and an English watering-place takes its character from the necessity under which it labours of ministering to the quiet of the father and at the same time to the amusement of the household. There is accordingly at such places a double current of domestic and social life which moves on simultaneously; pro- ducing a curious and characteristic effect. Englishmen who are tired with work, as far as their own personal enjoyment is concerned, would as soon spend their holiday in lying on their backs on the top of a hill, and letting the wind blow over them, as iu anything else. But the younger portions of the family soon weary of such vacant idleness. 'they are as anxious to escape from home as their parents are to enjoy its privacy. The Master Smiths are longing to play at fortificatious on the beach, to dabble iu the water, to forget the re- straints of the nursery or the play-room, and to be able to dream for a few happy hours that they are young savages. Their sisters long to wander at their will in the quiet streets, or on the shore, or in the fields, speculating on the faces that they meet, interrupted by no con- ventionalities, or else buried ig fancy, believing all whom they meet to be heroines or heroes, and hoping against hope that some great adventure may drop from the skies to vary the too even tenor of their lives. Existence at a watering-place is a compromise between these two conflicting desires : the wish on the part of the older members to be together, and the wish on the part of the younger to be free. The consequence is, that the life an Englishman leads at such times is only half sociable, and at the same time only half domestic.
It must be acknowledged that if an Englishman is not—like the Roman philosopher—always alone in a crowd, at least he is always uncomfortable when he is in one. There is something in our na- tional character which prevents us from being thoroughly at ease when we are living a domestic life as it were in public. We are ac-
customed, it is true, to society, but we are not accustomed to be familiar in society. When an Englishman invites his friends to dinner, he does not invite them to dine at his domestic hearth. His Lares and Penates are carefully put away before the company arrive, and no curious eye can penetrate into the recesses wherein the household gods and the household cares are hidden. The domestic machinery of a foreigner's life is not concealed with the same studious anxiety from the world. The French and German middle class do not keep their wimp a sacred secret from their friends. There is but one step abroad from the drawing-room to the cuisine. The entire circle of acquaintances know how the family dine, and are probably on speaking terms with Francois the cook. This want of reserve at home makes it easier for foreigners to amuse themselves when they are in public. We are in the habit of remarking unfairly on the very opposite and dissimilar habit of our own countrymen and countrywomen. Yet it is a sense of delicacy and personal reserve which, even in uneducated people, leads them to withdraw their most intimate affairs from the introspection of their neighbours. The feeling may be exaggerated so far as to become mauvaiee haute at last, but so long as it is kept within proper bounds, there is no reason that we should only look upon its darker side. But though it has a bright side, and is connected with much that is refined and noble in the English character, one result of it is certainly to render our devices for amusing ourselves more laborious and generally less suc- cessful. A watering-place brings out these foibles of our nature into prominent relief. A kind of uneasy sense of publicity pervades the Englishman of the middle class at such times in the midst of his domestic life. When he entertains his neighbours at home, all is swept and garnished, and polished up into artificial and monotonous decorum. But at a watering-place the happiness of the Joneses is greatlyimpaired by a disquiet consciousness that the eye of the united Jenkinses is on them in their most retired moments. While Jacky digs trenches in the sand, he feels by a secret intuition that twenty scrutinizing decides from twenty neighbouring ranges of rapidly constructed earthworks arc examining hint from top to toe, and silently contrast- ing him—much to his own disadvantage—with themselves. Pater- familias cannot sweep the horizon with his telescope without knowing that he is being swept himself by almost telescopic eyes from every quarter of the square. And his stately lady is aware that she is being watched from the windows of next door as she starts the pro- cession of merry pic-nie-makers on their way, and that it is to the edification and amusement of many neighbours that she herself mounts her donkey at their head-
"Monstratque immense volumina crnrum."
Foreigners are completely exempt from these unnecessary anxie- ties, which we foolishly allow to cloud the minds of our English children of the middle class during their moments of semi-public relaxation. The sense of strange criticism and inspection does not interfere with any foreigner's enjoyment. The wife of a Paris shop- keeper who drives on Sunday to the Bois de Boulogne, examines carefully her neighbour's shawl and bonnet, but is not the less happy at knowing that other eyes are examining her own. A hundred happy domestic circles may be seen at Dieppe or Ostend, drinking coffee without any scrupulous anxiety as to each other's proceedings, within as many yards of one another. But the precarious pleasure of a pie-nic would be spoilt for the Smiths, if it was suddenly dis- covered that their next-door neighbours were starting on an expedi- tion to the same place : their appetites would be spoilt, and even the children would be uncomfortable. Just as women are less fidgeted than men at finding themselves the objects of personal examination, because from their earliest years they are compelled to undergo narrow observation wherever they show themselves, so the reason why English people dislike these ordeals is, that they are not accustomed to them. It is a great question whether any people enjoy anything at a watering-place except the change of air. That innocent pleasure should be disturbed so easily, that per- sons should be unable to unbend in the presence of their neigh- bours, is clearly a very great pity. In proportion as real educa- tion and good manners increase, this kind of false delicacy, which is, after all, a species of misanthropy, will vanish. At heart there is no one so refined as a refined Englishman or a refined Englishwoman. But we need not be afraid, in spite of this, to acknowledge that there are many social lessons we may yet learn from our neighbours. Neither distinctions of class nor the restraints of individual dignity are at all incompatible with real social case and freedom. It is often said abroad that English mauvaise honte is attributable entirely to the barriers which part off one section of English society from an- other. This is in part true, but it is far from being only true in the sense in which it is meant. The want of Signified ease which marks very often the social life of Englishmen of the middle classes is as much attributable to faults in the middle classes themselves as to the reserve and hauteur of the upper.
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