petitions of bathers. But she had a tender heart. All at once, I may as well give the cries and conversation in English, for though I can scramble on with French—after a sort—I honestly confess I funk the spelling of short conversational speeches with unnecessary y’s in them; all at once, then, there was a great shriek, and the idle crowd rushed to the edge of the water, wildly excited in a moment. Two children had got out of their depth, and were being carried out and under by the tide; their little black dots of heads sunk beneath the surface. Then the big woman’s colour went, she stopped her knitting, and putting her right hand to her side, I thought she would have fainted, as she cried in a half-choked voice:
“Good God! the poor little infants! look! Oh—Oh!”
But the acrobats splashed in, and plucked them out, for they were as yet only in five feet water. This episode over, the directress went on with her knitting, and shouted out directions to the bathing men in the water, two hundred yards off.
To-morrow, thought I, I will come and have a dip here, myself, for I was eager to experience the whole sensation. When I went back to our hotel, and told my wife how they bathed in France, she thought it shocking, but after two or three visits admitted that the arrangements were both convenient and decorous.
But about my own bath. Next day I repaired to the beach, and going to a place like an Aldershot hut, with a notice outside, “Billets pour les Bains,” found an old man with a big book at a desk just within the entrance, taking down names; he had two large bunches of tin labels before him hung on wire, like keys. The building was fitted up like a large bottle-rack on the shelves of which lay bathing suits, rolled up, accessible and dry. When the old gentleman had, with a great display of precision, disposed of the group which was being served when I entered, I went up to his desk, and asked him for a ticket.
“One?” says he.
“One,” said I. “And ‘costume,’” I added, and he repeated.
Then he slowly took two of the tin labels, one from each ring—his hands were rheumatic—put down their numbers in his book, looked over his spectacles, and said:
“Eighteen sous.”
So I paid him, and he handed me the tickets, with directions to get them cashed on the beach. The big one represented a machine. The little one a suit. Then I sought out the Amazon, and presented my credentials. For the smaller “billet,” I got a suit with a towel rolled up inside it. The other was exchanged for a fresh ticket, marked No. 5.
“You will have the fifth chance,” said the Amazon, so I attached myself to her at once. As the machines became vacant, she called out the name of the next number loud enough to be heard by the whole crowd, for there were many bathers, and the edge of the water was alive.
“Nu—m—ber two!” she cried, pronouncing the numeral short and sharp. Not there! You must look sharp, or lose your turn. Num—ber three! like-wise out of the way. Num—ber four!”
An elegant lady, with a servant following her, and a long train of muslin, too, responded to the summons, and squeezed herself into the machine, which she must have filled when she got in.
“Num—ber five!”
“Here you are,” says I, and entered the next tent to my grand lady’s.
When I stepped out, in a short suit of mauve check, I saw Madame also emerge, seriously thinned. I never felt more odd and incongruous in my life. There were knots of well-dressed, fashionable people, through whom I had to pass before I reached the water. It was like escaping from a fire at night—only it was broad day—but the oddest thing was that nobody noticed me.
The scene in the water was most absurd, whole families were bathing together in a circle, hand in hand. Where I went in, Mr. and Mrs. Briggs, just their figures, and all the little Briggses, were crowing and splashing in a shallow. Now and then, you could see friends meet, and acquaintances bow; a young lady who thus met some partner at the last ball, making a fashionable sweep in the water. Sometimes a party of young men would come down together, full rim, and dash in like mermen, who had been confined in the town, tumbling head over heels, and otherwise throwing themselves into the arms of the sea.
The tide advanced so much while I was in the water that the machines were all drawn off the beach on to the paved road beneath the walls of the town before I came out. It was a spring-tide, which rises very high here. The result, however, was most grotesque when the dripping bathers emerged, and in several cases could not find their machines again for some time, wandering about in the crowd, sticky and cross. Mine was high and dry on the pavement. It was something like bathing in the Thames, and coming out to dress inside a cab in the Strand. However, I was more fortunate than several, for my wife had followed the machine, and showed me where it was.
The inconvenience of grit, from walking across the sand, is, as I said, removed by a little tub of water—cold or hot—for which last you pay a sou, or halfpenny, extra. I do not know, however, what Robinson Crusoe would have said to the beach, when he was so much astonished at the print of one naked foot. The place was dimpled with toe-holes.
When I had recovered from the novelty of the thing—from seeing ladies of all builds, from Mrs. Gamp to Ophelia, paddling down in scanty Bloomers, without shoes or stockings—when I felt that these gentlemen in check shorts were neither acrobats nor clowns, but sober, steady men of business who bathed on principle (for the liveliest and more sportsmanlike swimmers went to some distance where they could enjoy themselves without encumbrance), I decided in favour of the French fashion over the English. There is nothing indecorous or inconvenient in it. The system is well arranged. The ladies’ dresses must be much more comfortable than the shifts of freize which they wear in our watering-places, and they are more completely dresses. Much care is used to prevent accidents; there is generally a boat some short distance off where the water begins to