Anxieties, evil habits, effeminate and unwholesome life;—all these betray themselves in the softened tissues, the meagre forms, the horrid scrofula. Lovely complexions cover the most vile diseases. Anne of Austria, renowned for her extreme clearness of complexion, died of loathsome ulcer; the Princess of Soubise, that dazzlingly fair beauty, rotted, so to speak, into her grave. In England, the Duke of Newcastle asked the learned Doctor Russell why it was that the beautiful Lily and Rose concealed so much of scrofula.
It rarely happens that a worn out race recovers itself; but the English did so. For some seventy or eighty years it recovered a wonderful strength of activity. Partly it owed its recovery to its political and social disturbances,—for there is nothing so conducive to health as movement; but it must be confessed that the chief cause of its renovation was its change ofhabits. It changed in everything,—education, food, medicine; all were changed, for all felt that health and strength were necessary to success in anything and everything.
There needed no great genius for such a Reform; the true theory had been propounded; all that was necessary was to make the Science an Art, topractisewhat hitherto had only beenpreached. The Moravian, Comenius, writing a century before Rousseau, said: "Return to Nature; educate according to Nature;" the Saxon Hoffman said: "Return to Nature; make her your Physician." Hoffman appeared just in time to combat the evils caused by the orgies of the Regency, evils in which the remedies were as bad as the disease, the Physician as fatal as the Quack. Hoffman truly said to his age—"Leave Doctors alone; live temperately, drink water, and you will need no medicines." That was a true moral reform. And thus among ourselves, Priessnith in 1830, after the Bacchanalia of the Restoration imposed upon the luxurious aristocracy of Europe the coarse food of the peasant, and, in the hard northern climate, the open air bath, in snow water; that Hell of cold which, in its reaction, gives such a glow of heat. And the rich and the delicate submitted to this hard discipline; so great is our human love of life and fear of death.
And, in fact, why should not water be the safety ofman? Berzelius assures us that four-fifths of our living frames are water; just as four-fifths of our globe are covered by Oceans, Seas, Lakes, and Rivers. For our arid Earth the Sea is a constant Hydropathist, curing it of its otherwise deadly dryness, and nourishing and beautifying its fruits and flowers. Strange and prodigious magician, that same water! With so little, making so much; with so little, destroying so much—destroying so slowly, but so surely!
Gutta lapidem cavat, non vi, sed stepe cadendo;"The plastic globule wears the rugged rock,By frequent falling, not by sudden shock."
Water is at once the most potent and the most elastic of all forces, lending her aid to all the metamorphoses of our globe, covering, penetrating, transforming all around us.
Into what frightful desert, into what gloomy forest, will not man penetrate in search of the healing springs which boil up from the bosom of the earth? What a perfectly superstitious belief we have in those springs which bring to us the hidden and healing virtues! I have seen fanatics who had no Deity but Carlsbad, that wonderful meeting of the most contradictory waters. I have seen the worshippers of Bareges, and I confess that I have myself submitted to the gushing and sulphureous waters of Acqui in their strange and almost animal pulsations. The hot baths of earth have no mediumin their action; they are either certain health or certain death. How many sufferers who might have lingered through weeks, months, or even years, have been quickly slain by them! Frequently, those potent waters give a sudden revival, and, together with health, bring back the very passions which caused disease; passions hot as the waters which revived them. The very atmosphere above these sulphureous waters is intoxicating, theauraof the Sybil that maddened her into Prophecy! An outburst which compels us to speak that which we would most conceal. And how terribly self-revealing we are in those Babels to which, under the plea of seeking health, we resort to throw aside the conventionalities, in too many cases the very decencies of Society. There, pale, worn sufferers, of both sexes, sit at the gaming table in eager passion to win gold, and, in reality, winning only an earlier Death.
Very different is the saving breath of the great Sea; in itself it is a purifier. That never ceasing interchange of the ocean of air, and the ocean of water, forbids life ever to languish. Early and late, those oceans of air and sea are at work. At every instant each passes through the crucible of death—and at every instant revives. The whirlwind and the water spout give newer and stronger life to the vexed ocean.
To live on land is to repose; to live on sea is tocombat, and to combat savingly;—for those who can bear it, a Spartan training in which many perish, but those who survive are very strong.
In the middle ages there was a perfect horror of the Sea. They libelled the great Sea, they called that fertile mother "the kingdom of the prince of the powers of air"—the very name which was given to Satan. The nobility of the seventeenth century would by no means consent to have its palaces near the huts of the rude seamen. The frowning castle, with its ugly and formal garden, was almost always built, as far as possible from the sea, on some place destitute of sun and air, but marvellously rich in fog and miasmata. In England it was just the same. If the manor house was on a hill, the advantage of the situation was sedulously provided against by a forest of tall trees, and quite as often, instead of being on the hill, it was in the pestilent marsh below. At the present day, England, wiser than of old, builds by the sea side, rejoices in sea baths even in winter, and is rewarded by strong health. The people of the sea coasts better knew, even in earlier times, the life-giving power of the sea. Its purifying power first struck them; they observed its power in curing scrofula of its disgusting sores, and they well knew the power of its bitterness in killing the parasite worms which, otherwise, would kill the child. They ate theSea weed and theHalcyonia, well knowing that the iodine that they contain contracts and makes firm the flesh. Russell, who heard and noted these popular recipes, was thus enabled to answer the question of the Duke of Newcastle, and did so in his excellent book, published in 1750, on the use of Sea water in cases of glandular wasting.
There is a great force in his sentence—"The great want is not how to cure, but how to repair,to create."
He proposed a miracle, but a quite possible one; to make new flesh, new tissues. And he proposed to do that chiefly with the child, who, though born of polluted parents, might yet be re-made.
It was at the same time that Bakewell, the Leicestershire farmer,createdmeat. Up to that time horned cattle were chiefly valued for their milk, from his day forth they are made to yield a more generous food. The poor milk diet, in fact, had to be abandoned by men who are compelled to be so active, so laborious, so untiring. Russell's little book, in 1750, created Sea bathing; it is not too much to say he created it, for it really was he who made it in vogue.
This whole grand theory may be summed up in a very few words:
"It is necessary to drink sea-water, to bathe in sea-water, and to eat sea-weed; clothe your children aslightly as possible, and let them have plenty of air. The Ocean breeze, and the Ocean water; there you have the sure cure."
That last advice seems very bold. To have the half naked child exposed to the open air in a damp and variable climate, is, no doubt, anticipatively, to lose the weak; but the strong will survive, and their posterity will be the better brought up. Let us add that business, and navigation, by earlier relieving the boys from school, from the sedentary life of the young nobles at Oxford or Cambridge, make them a new race.
In his ingenious book, guided only by popular tradition, Russell doubtless was far enough from suspecting how, in a single century, all science would come to the aid of his theory, and that each would aid him in making of the Sea a perfect system of Therapeutics.
The most valuable elements of terrestrial life are abundantly in the sea; and science may well say to us—"Hither! Hither, worn and wearied nation, swinked laborer, failing woman, young child, fading because your parents sinned; hither! to the Sea, and the Sea shall cure you!" The universal base of life, the embryonic mucus, the living animal jelly in which man continually takes and retakes the marrowy substance of his being, is so abounding in the sea that we may call it the sea itself. Of that mucus, both marine animals and marine vegetables are made. Her generosity puts earth toshame. She is liberal to give, be ye therefore, willing to receive.
"But," it maybe said, "we are attacked in the very foundation and support of our being. Our bones bend, bow, and we are weak, and tottering from their insufficient nurture." Well! The lime which they need abounds in the sea; so abounds that her madrepores build islands of it, and are at this moment building whole continents. Her fishes carry it hither and thither in such vast quantity that, washed upon every shore, it serves as a manure.
And you, young female, you who, visibly, are wasting into an early grave, repair to the sea, where every breath you draw shall be a restorative. That restorative iodine, is in every breath that blows, in every wave that heaves, in every fish that swims. The Cod alone have enough to iodise the entire earth.
Is it animal warmth that you lack? The sea affords you the most perfect, the most equable, the most widely diffused warmth; warmth so great, in fact, that were it not diffused, it would melt the earth from Pole to Pole, and make each Pole another Equator.
The rich, warm, red blood, is the triumph of the Sea; by it she has animated and armed with mightiest strength her giants, so much mightier than mightiest giants of the earth. She has made that element, and she can remake you, poor, pale, drooping flower. Sheabounds, superabounds, in that rich red blood; in her children it so abounds that they give it forth to every wind.
And there is the revelation of the whole mystery. All the principles, pale mortal, that are combined in you, she has in separation. She has your bone, your blood, your sap and your heat—in one or the other of her creatures, she has them all.
And she has, also, what you have not, a superabundant strength. Her breathing gives I know not what of inspiring excitement; of what we may call physical heroism. With all her violence, the great generating element inspires us with the same fiery vivacity, the same wild love, with which she herself palpitates.
CHAPTER II.
CHOICE OF COAST.
Earth is her own doctor; every climate has its own remedy. More and more will Medicine lie in Emigration. But it must be an Emigration of foresight, not one of those mad-cap, rapid, and most mischievous journeys in which the patient rushes from one extreme of climate to another, but prudently calculated to the obtaining of those vivifying aids which nature every where holds in store for those who know how to profit by them. The youth, that is yet to be born, depends upon these two things—theScience of Emigrationand theArt of Acclimatization. Hitherto, man has remained a prisoner like an oyster on its rock. If he occasionally emigrates to some small distance from his temperate zone, he, for the most part, goes to die. He will only become free, really brave, when the science and art of Emigration and Climatization shall make him free of the whole globe.
Few diseases are cured in the place and under the circumstances which have given rise to them; they hold to certain habits which the localities perpetuate and render unconquerable. There is no Reform, physical or moral, for those who persist in the originating vice.
Medicine, guided by the auxiliary sciences, directs us in the new road to the desired end. Our emigrations must be made prudently and gradually. Can we, safely, without preparation, without alteration of diet and of habits, be suddenly removed from an inland to a maritime abode? Can we prudently take to the sea-bath until the sea breeze shall have trained our physical frame? Can we suddenly and without preparation encounter the severe shock, the horripilation of the really tremendous shock of the cold water bath in the cold open air? These questions we are glad to say are more and more being put and answered by our physicians.
The extreme rapidity of our railroad journeys is very mischievous even to the strong;—in many cases fatal to the ailing. To pass, as so many do, from Paris to the Mediterranean in twenty-four hours, passing at every hour into a different climate, is as perilous a thing as a nervous person can do. You arrive agitated, giddy. When Madame de Sevigné took a whole month to travel from Brittany to Provence, she proceeded by slow and calculated degrees from one climate to another, and its opposite. She proceeded, by slow degrees,from the maritime climate of the West into the inland climate of Burgundy. Then, travelling slowly by the upper Rhone into Dauphiny, she, with the greater safety and comfort, braved the free winds of Valence and of Avignon; then, halting awhile, and resting at Aix, in the interior of Provence, far from the Rhone and from its shores, she made herself Provençal in lungs.
France has the enviable advantage of being between two seas, and thence the facility of alternating, as the disease may require, between the saline tonicity of the Mediterranean and the moister and—except in case of tempest—the far milder air of the Ocean.
On each of the two coasts there is a graduated scale of stations, more or less mild, more or less strengthening. It is very interesting to observe, and very useful to follow, this double scale,—proceeding, as a general thing, from weaker to stronger.
The climate of the Ocean parting from the strong, rough, ever-heaving waters of the channel, becomes extremely mild at the South of Brittany, milder still in the Gironde, and mildest of all in the land-locked basin of Arcachon.
The air of the Mediterranean, which we may call circular, has its highest note in the dry, though keen, climate of Provence and Genoa, becomes more mild as you approach Pisa, milder and less variable in Sicily,and at Algiers attains a wonderful mildness and regularity. And on your return be sure of a balmy air at Majorca and the little ports of the Rousillon, so well sheltered from the harsh north wind.
The Mediterranean commands our admiration by two characteristics; the beauty of its shores and the brilliant purity of its sky and atmosphere. Very salt, very bitter is that sea; but what a glorious blue sky is above it! It gives out by evaporation about thrice as much water as it receives from all its tributary rivers. It would become all salt, like that terrible Dead Sea, but for the lower currents, the under-tow, like that from Gibraltar, for instance, were not constantly tempering it with the waters of the Ocean.
All that I have seen of its shores are beautiful, though somewhat stern. Nothing common-place about those shores. The volcanic, the lurid bale fires of the lower earth, have everywhere made their mark upon the upper earth; those dark Plutonic rocks are never tiresome like the marshy sands of other shores. If the famous Orange woods sometimes seem somewhat monotonous, they compensate you when here and there, a sheltered spot, you find the true African vegetation, the Aloe and the Cactus, the hedge of Myrtle and Jessamine, and the wild and perfumed landes. Above, it is true, bald and frowning mountains loom, and their long offshoots run even into the very sea.
"It seemed to me," said a traveller, "that I was between two atmospheres; the air above, and the air below." He describes the varied world of plants and animals which were reflected by the crystal mirror of that deep blue sea of Sicily. I was less fortunate off Genoa, where, gazing into the depths, I saw nothing but a desert. The dry and sterile rocks, the volcanic framing of the shores, dark as midnight, or of a still sadder and more ghastly and ghostlike white, showed me nothing but antique sarcophagi—reversed churches, reminding one, at times, of the cathedrals of Florence, or the leaning tower of Pisa. Sometimes, also, I seemed to see "strange monsters of the deep." Whales? Elephants? I do not know; but of real life not a trace.
Such, however, as that beautiful sea is, it admirably nerves and hardens the dwellers on its shores, and the sailors on its bosom; it makes at once the most fiery and the most solid of races. Our giants of the North, are, perhaps, stronger, but certainly are not more enduring, and, as certainly, they do not so readily, or so safely acclimatise, as the seamen of Genoa, of Calabria, or of Greece, bronzed as they are, not by an accident of the skin, but by the permeation, the imbibation of the Sun's rays. A friend of mine, a learned physician, sends his pale patients from Paris or Lyons to take their Sun-baths in the South, and himself lies nude on therocks, for hours together. He has only his head covered; as to all the rest of his person, he is bronzed as an African.
The really sick will go to Sicily, to Algiers, to Madeira, in search of health. But the restorative of the pale, worn populations of our great cities, is best to be found in the more varied and more strengthening climates of the country which has given to Earth its most iron humanity, its heroes by sea and by land, and in the council chamber—that truly iron race of the Columbuses, the Dorias, the Massenas,—and the Garibaldis.
Our extreme Northern ports, Dunkirk, Boulogne and Dieppe, where the winds and waters of the Channel meet, are also a great nursery of renewed life, and restored strength. That great breeze and that great sea, might recall one from the grave. You may see there perfectly incredible recoveries. Go there without any real and vital wound, and you recover on the instant. The whole human machine acts strongly; digests well, breathes freely. You need not even strive for health when there, for nature says to you, as Tully said to Atticus,Jubeo valere,—I command you to be well. The sturdy vegetation that flourishes upon the very margin of the sea, seems to rebuke our weakness. Each of the little ports which pierce our Norman coast, is swept by the nor' westerly wind, which strengthens and revivesus; but grows less violent, though not less salubrious, at the mouth of the Seine, beneath the fruitful orchards of Honfleur and Trouville. The good river, sweeping away to the left, carries with it a softer and gentler air. Higher up, you meet the strong, the sometimes really terrible, sea of Granville, Saint-Maloes, and Cancale, about the best of naval schools for young folks, a school which will make the strong still stronger.
But if, on the contrary, we have to deal with some weakling, some young child, born to weakness, or some young mother, made weak by too frequent parturition, we must select some milder shelter. And such a warm and always calm shelter, you will find, without going further South, among the sleepy little isles and peninsulæ of Morbihan. These isles form a labyrinth more perplexed than that in which the English king sheltered his fair Rosamond. Entrust your own treasure to that shelter, and none shall know of her save the Druidic rocks and the handful of fishermen who inhabit those at once wild and gentle shores. Does some gentle patient ask us on what people live, in those marine solitudes? We reply, upon Fish, Fish—still Fish! It is not far from St. Gildas, where the Bretons assure you that Heloise sought her Abelard. They contrive to live there as cheaply and as well as Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday.
Places more civilized and attractive are to be found farther South, such as Pornice, Royan, Saint George, Arcachon, &c.
I spoke elsewhere of Saint George's, bordered by many a bitter and precious plant; and Arcachon, too, is as attractive, with its resinous and wholesomely pleasant odor of its pine woods. But for the worldly rush from that great and Wealthy Bordeaux, but for that flood of health seekers, which pours into it at certain seasons, it is at Arcachon that we would shelter the dearly beloved patient, that dear and delicate creature for whom we fear the rush and crush of the hard working day world. That place, as long as we contemplate it only within the inner basin, offers the contrast of an absolute and very deep calm with a terribly rough sea close by. Beyond the lighthouse is the terrible Gascon sea, within the bay a lazy tide, so lazy that you cannot hear its murmurs, as low, as light, as the quiet tread of lady's gentle footstep on the sea-weed carpet of that strand.
In an intermediate climate which is neither North nor South, neither Brittany nor Vendëe, I have visited again and again, and always with pleasure, the pretty and staid shelter of Ponice, with its frank seamen and its pretty girls, with their conical hats. It is a pretty quiet little place, which, protected as it is by the island (rather the peninsula) of Noirmantiers, receives only aslanting and exceedingly well behaved sea; that enters silken in its softness. And in that bay of several leagues, these creeks, with sloping shores, made, as it would seem, on purpose for baths for women and children, they are so sheltered and so safe. Those nice sandy beaches, parted by such sheltering rocks, conceal so much, and yet reveal so much of the sea life, the plain, blunt, yet ever kindly and courteous life of the seaman! But if those sheltering rocks do much good, they also do no little injury. The sheltered creek and safe haven, keeps out the Tempest;—but, it also keeps out the fishes. By little and little, but very regularly, the grand rush and the grand murmur of the sea are kept out, and yet, that half silence has a very great charm. No where else have I so much welcomed, or so richly enjoyed, that great luxury of the undisturbed Day-dreaming.
CHAPTER III.
THE HOUSE.
Permit an ignoramus who, yet, has paid a pretty high price for what hedoesknow, to give you some quiet advice upon certain points upon which books, hitherto, have told you little and Doctors nothing. That this advice may come the more directly to both head and heart, I will address them to an imaginary patient. Imaginary? Not so; I have met such a patient many times.
You meet a young lady seriously ill, or manifestly about to be so, she is very weak, and her young child is weaker still. The Winter has been hard upon them, and the Spring still harder. Yet it is only weakness;—lassitude, thetedium vitæwhich Byron truly calls "more terrible than death itself." And she is sent to the sea-side for the Summer.
A great expense, that, for a fortune below even mediocrity; painful moving for the mistress of a family; hard separation, above all, for husband and wife whotruly love each other. They bargain, they would fain shorten that separation. Would not one month be enough? But the wise Physician knows better, and says it wouldnot; he well knows that a very short sojourn at the sea side is far more likely to injure than to benefit. The sudden, the severe shock of the sea bath is likely enough to injure even the strong; to the feeble it is simply murderous. You should first breathe the sea air;—acclimatize yourself. Do this during the month of June, then you shall have July, August, September, and, in some seasons, even October for your baths, and the bath and the great, strong, keen winds will harden your frame against the fast approaching Winter.
Few men are free during the whole Summer; happy the husband who can be away from the thronged city to pass a couple of the Summer months at the sea side with his suffering wife. However much he may feel inclined to sacrifice every secondary interest for her, it is for her interest that he must remain in the counting house or the factory. There are strong links in the chain of our daily life which we may not, which we cannot, break. Therefore, the wife must go alone; and, for the time, behold them loving, and yet divorced. Shall I give you my opinion?Lether go alone; better for her than if she went in the train of some rich luxurious family.
That gregarious travel and gregarious abode have their pleasures, no doubt; but, also, they have their evils. In such cases we are apt either to become enemies, or, which is still worse in the case of woman, to become too friendly. The style of life at a watering place sometimes, and not seldom produces results which we regret through the whole remainder of life. In my opinion the smallest inconvenience of that gregarious watering-place life (smallest but very far from small) is that the very people who alone would be both morally and physically benefited by the sea, lose all that benefit by carrying to the solemn shore the frivolity, the late hours, the false gaiety of the great town.
Alone we think; in the crowd we gossip and scandalise. The great and the rich lead the young and suffering female into their own dissipations, and the consequence is that she has by the sea shore a really more mischievous excitement than she would have had in Paris, or London, Saint Petersburgh or New York, and will entirely lose the end for which, loving husband, you sent her thither. Reflect upon it, young woman, be courageous, but also be prudent. It is in an innocent solitude that you may, if you will, enjoy with your child, that you will most surely find the renewed health and strength that you so much desire. In that infantine, pure, but noble and poetic life, I again assure you, it is that you will find restoration. Believe me the delicateand tender justice which makes you fear expense, while he at home is toiling so hard, will well repay you. The old Ocean will love you the better if you love only it, and will lavish upon you its great treasures of health and youthfulness. Your child will flourish like a young bay tree and you shall increase in grace and beauty; and you will return to your far home youthful and dearly beloved.
She resolves, she departs, for a place, the waters of which are well known by chemical analysis to have the qualities suited to her case. But there are many local circumstances which cannot be known or even guessed at from a distance. The Doctor who recommends particular waters seldom knows the place, though he knows the waters.
For some of the more important watering places Guides have been published which are not without merit, so far as they point out the particular diseases for which particular waters are suited. But very few give details which enable one to choose between a healthy and unhealthy, a pleasant and an unpleasant, situation. They do not venture upon such particulars as would enable one to choose between places as well as between waters, but confine themselves to so general a eulogy of the latter as to leave us in the dark as to the former.
What is the precise exposition? Look at the map and you perceive that the coast slopes to the South, buteven this tells you nothing; for it may chance that a peculiar curve of the land may place your house under a cold or damp influence, from a Northern or Western exposure.
Are there any marshes in the neighborhood? In most cases the answer must be, yes. But the difference is very great whether the marshes be salt and renewed, and made salubrious by the sea, or whether they be stagnant marshes of fresh water which after droughts emit feverish miasmata.
Is the sea very pure, or mixed? And in what proportion? A great mystery. For nervous persons, however, for novices just commencing with salt water bathing, the mildest are the best. A sea, somewhat mixed, an air less salt and keen, and a less desolate shore, having some of the charms of the country, are the best recommendations.
A grave point is the choice of a house; and who shall direct you as to that? No one. You must see for yourself; you must observe all the particulars on the spot. You will learn little from persons who have visited or even lived there. They praise or condemn this or that place not on account of its real merit, but according to the pleasure they have enjoyed or the friends they have made there. They recommend you to some of those friends who receive you admirably; at first you are delighted, but in a short time you discovermany inconveniences, and sometimes the house is even dangerously unhealthy. Yet you do not like to leave it, lest you should mortify both those who recommended you and the kind and amiable family who so hospitably received you.
"Well, then," you say, "I will ask no recommendation, but on reaching the place I will consult an honest and skilful doctor who will be able to enlighten me." Honest! that is not enough, he must also be very intrepid to tell you frankly any of the bad qualities of the place, for he would be a ruined man, he would take leave of the whole place, would live as solitary as a wolf; and, indeed, would be lucky if some personal injury were not done to him.
I have a perfect horror of the absurdly flimsy houses which speculators build in our variable climate. These pasteboard erections are so many dangerous traps. In the full heats of Summer such bivouacs are all well enough, but often one has to remain in September and October amid the high winds and the torrents of rain.
For themselves the landlords build good substantial houses, but for poor patients they build chalets of wood, ill closed, and not even moss-covered, like the Swiss chalets. It really is treating us quite too ill.
In those villas, apparently luxurious, but in reality wretched, no provision is made for comfort. Drawing-rooms for show,—and commanding a view of the sea,they have, but no provision is made to gratify that feeling of home comfort, so dear to the sick, and more especially so to woman. She feels unsheltered, as though constantly exposed to half a gale of wind, and constantly passing from one temperature to another.
On the other hand, the solidly built house of the Fisherman is often low, damp, and inconveniently arranged in its interior. Often, it has not even a double ceiling, but mere planks, which admit cold draughts into the upper rooms, inflicting coughs, rheumatism, and a score of other diseases.
Whatever may be your choice, Madame, between these two kinds of house, do you know what I heartily wish for you? Laugh, if you please. What I wish you to have, even in June, is a good fire-place, with a very excellent chimney, well closed against the wind. In our beautiful France, with its cold north-west and its rainy south-west, which occasionally predominates for nine months, a good fire may be necessary, even in June. On a damp evening, when your child returns shivering from his promenade, a fire is necessary, to warm him, before he goes to bed.
Two things ought to be especially looked after, wherever you lodge, fire and good water, the latter a thing rarely to be found near the sea. If it is altogether bad, endeavor, by the use of beer or tea, to dispense withdrinking the plain water, or if you must use it, let it previously be boiled.
Why cannot I, with a single word, build you just such a villa as I have in my mind? I do not speak of the show-house, the almost castle, such as the wealthy build at the sea side, but of the humble house, fitted for humble fortunes. It is an art which is yet to be created, and one which no one seems to suspect, that of building a house, at once small and substantial. The houses which are built for us, especially at the sea side, are built in direct contradiction with our needs in so changeable a climate. Those Kiosks, with their flimsy ornaments, may do well enough for well-sheltered situations, but make one fancy that the wind must needs blow them into the sea. The Swiss chalets have immense overhanging roofs, which so well protect from the snow, but also have the serious defect of excluding the light. The sun, in our northern seas, should not be excluded, but most cordially received. As to the imitations of chapels, gothic churches, and the like toys, we need say nothing about them, they are really beneath notice, so absurdly ill calculated as they are for comfortable homes.
The first necessity for a sea-side house, is great strength, a solid thickness of walls, which will obviate that rocking which we always feel in slight buildings.We want such a solidity of construction as even in the greatest tempests will give courage to a timid woman, and enable her to say with a smile of pleasure. "How very comfortable we are in here, while such a storm rages without!"
The second point is that on the land side, the house should be so perfectly sheltered that on that side we can sit and forget the sea, and in the neighborhood of that great movement find the most complete repose.
To meet those two needs, I prefer the form which affords least hold to the wind, the crescent form, with the convex front to the sea, so that every window will in turn receive the Sun.
The concave portion of this half circle would be sheltered by the horns of the crescent, so as to enclose the pretty flower garden of the mistress of the house. Stretching from this flower garden, the progressive sloping of the soil would allow of a kitchen garden of a certain extent, well sheltered from the wind.
We are told that "Flora shuns the sea;" what she really does shun, is not the sea, but man's negligence, ignorance, or indolence. At Eteretat, before a very heavy sea, on the high overlooking beach, and exposed to heavy winds, there is a farm, with an orchard of superb trees. What precautions have been taken? A simple hedge-crowned bank, five feet high, and behind that a row of elms, which shelter all the rest. Manyplaces Brittany would furnish us with like instances. Who does not know that Roscoff raises fruit and vegetables in such profusion as to sell them cheaply, even in Normandy?
But to return to our building. I want it low-pitched; only a ground floor, and over that the bed-chambers. Our house, therefore, will be but small; but, on the other hand, it must be very thick, must have two rows of chambers, an apartment looking out on the sea, and another on the land.
The ground floor apartment, looking towards the land, would be somewhat sheltered by the upper story, which would project about five feet. This would make the interior crescent a sort of gallery for use in bad weather. The lower rooms would be a dining room;—a small room for our books (voyages and travels, and natural history) and a bathroom. I do not mean an actual library or luxurious bath. The necessary, and the very plain, the convenient, and nothing more.
On very rough days, when the beach is hardly the fit place for delicate patients, I should wish to see the lady reading or working in her pretty parterre. She would have some life there, flowers, an aviary, and a little tank of sea water to receive the little creatures which the fishermen would be sure to give her. Of course she would also have an excellent compound microscope.
For the aviary, I should prefer the free one which Ihave advised elsewhere, into which the birds come at night for protection and a little food. It is closed upon them at night, to protect them from birds of prey, but opened for them very early in the morning. They return to this aviary very regularly. I believe, even, that if the aviary were large enough, and the tree which they most affect were enclosed, they would freely breed there, and confide their little ones to your protection.
Delightful, and yet serious life, this, that we have planned for our fair patient and her sole child. What charming solitude in this short widowhood. How new the situation. No housekeeping, no business. With her boy, she is even more alone than she would be without him. But for him she would be intruded upon by reverie and vain fancies. But her innocent guardian, her boy, keeps all such fancies away. He occupies her, causes her to talk, and talks to her of home, and he thus constantly reminds her of him who, in their far off home, is toiling for them, and she counts the days to her return.
Flourish, pure and amiable woman. You are now even younger than ever, you have become a girl again, free, sweetly free, under the guardianship of your boy.
CHAPTER IV.
FIRST ASPIRATION OF THE SEA.
It is a great and sudden transition to leave Paris in the beautiful month of June when the great city is resplendent with its magnificent gardens and its chestnut trees in bloom. June would be delightful on the coast if one had a single companion and the crowd had not arrived. But when one is alone on the deserted, with the great sea, we are touched with a sort of melancholy.
On a first visit to the coast the impression made is not very favorable. There is aridity, there is wildness, and yet there is a certain monotony. The novel grandeur of the spectacle makes us feel, by contrast, how weak and small we are, and that thought thrills the heart. The delicate chest that so lately was confined in a chamber, and now finds itself suddenly removed to this vast open chamber of the universe, with the sun shining so brightly and the sea breeze blowing so strongly, feels oppressed. The child comes, goes, and the mother sits down, shivering in the free fresh breeze.The warmth of the home she has but just left comes to her mind and she saddens. But her boy frolics gaily and that soon consoles her.
All this will soon pass away Madame. Be resolute; your impressions will be very different when you become better acquainted with the Sea and think of its myriads of inhabitants. And that painful constriction of the lungs will pass away too, when you become accustomed to the free atmosphere of the sea. You require time to accustom yourself to it, by and by, not thinking about it, as your boy plays with you in sheltered nooks, you will breathe freely and your chest will dilate without pain and without conscious effort. But, just at first, I advise you not to stay too long at a time on the beach, but rather to take your walk inland.
The land, your accustomed friend, recalls you. The pine woods rival the sea in healthful emanations; and theirs have less of harshness. They penetrate all our being, enter by every pore, modify and purify the blood, and perfume us with their subtle aroma. In the Landes behind the pine woods, the herbs and even the coarse grass on which you tread, yield perfumes not enervating or intoxicating as the dangerous roses, but agreeably bitter. Seat yourself among them and you, like them, will be sheltered by this slight slope of land. Might you not, now that you are thus sheltered, fancyyourself a hundred leagues from the sea? Drink in the sweet breathings, the pure spirits, the very soul of these wild flowers—that, in purity, are your very sisters. Gather them if you will, Madame; they ask for nothing better. Somewhat rude, perhaps, and yet so beautiful; and in their virginal perfume they have that singular mystery of calming and strengthening. Do not fear to hide them in your fair bosom and upon your beating heart.
Let us not forget that these sheltered landes are, at certain hours, burning hot. They so absorb and concentrate the rays of the sun. The weak woman is wilted there. The young girl, full of vigorous life, feels her pulses boiling and has redoubled power; her brain swims and she has strange and dangerous day dreams. If you wish to go there let it be on some moist and rather cloudy day; or, still better, rise at a very early hour when all is cool, when the wild thyme still keeps somewhat of its dew, and while the Hare is still abroad.
But let us return to the Ocean. At ebb-tide he manifests, and, in some sort, presents to you, the rich life that he nourishes. You must follow, step by step, the retiring waves, though the wet sand will sink some little beneath your feet. Fear not. The gentle wave will, at the most, kiss your feet. If you look closely you will perceive that the sand is not, as you at firstthought it, dead, but is here and there moved by numerous lingerers that the ebb-tide has left behind. On certain beaches, small fish are thus hidden in the sand. At the mouth of the rivers the Eel's writhing movement, throws up the sand in mimic earthquakes. The Crab, too eagerly engaged in feeding, or fighting, has now to hasten back to the sea, and in his flight he leaves an odd mosaic, a zigzag line marking his oblique travel, and at the end of that line you will find him lying in wait for the coming in of the tide. The Solen (Manche de Couteau), that razor-shaped shell fish, has plunged deep into the sand, but betrays himself to you by the breathing holes that he has left. The Venus you can just as certainly trace by the fucus attached to its shell, but floating on the surface; and the undulations of the soil betray to you the covered ways of the warlike annelides, and viewing them with the aid of your microscope you will be charmed with the rainbows of their changing colors.
But the finest sights are caused at the first low ebb, which always follows the high Spring tide. At such ebbs, immense and unexplored spaces are left bare, and we can survey that mysterious bottom of the sea, on which we have so often speculated and dreamed. There you discover, in motion, in life, in all the secrecy of their retreats, astonished populations, which fanciedthemselves secure, and which rarely, if ever before, had been looked upon by the sun, and still more rarely by the eye of man. Be not alarmed, swarming populations of minute creatures, you are seen only by the inquisitive but compassionate eye of a woman; it is not the cruel and coarse hand of a fisherman that invades your retreat. But you ask, what does she want with you? Nothing but to see you, salute you, show you to her boy, and leave you in your natural element, and with every kindly wish for your health and prosperity. At times we need not wander far; at such times in a cleft of the rock, we may find every minute species, old Ocean having diverted himself with lodging a whole world of minute creatures within the space of a few square feet. We sit and we watch, and the longer and the more closely we watch, the more do we see of life, at first imperceptible. And so interested are we that we should sit there for an indefinite time, were we not chased to shore by that imperious master of the beach, the flood Tide.
But to-morrow, at ebb, she will return to the beach, that school, that Museum, that inexhaustible amusement for both mother and child. There the delicate and penetrating sense of woman and the tenderness of her heart seize and divine all. Maternity tells her all the secrets of increasing, diminishing, and recreating life.Do you ask why her instinct so quickly reveals creation to her; why she enters as one so thoroughly at home, into the great mystery of Nature? It is because she is Nature herself.
In the depths of the unctuous waters the small algæ, small, but unctuous and nourishing, and other little plants of delicate and pretty figures, form a miniature prairie which is browsed by a vast herd of molluscæ, Limpets, Whelks, and a hundred other species, watch, wait, feed, there, and to-morrow you will find them there still. But do you therefore suppose that they are utterly inert? That they have no confused idea of Love and the Unknown? Of some benevolent thing which at certain hours returns to refresh and nourish them? Oh yes, they both think of it and expect it; those widows of the great Ocean well know that he will return to caress the earth. Anticipatively they look towards the Ocean, and even those which have a fixed abode, turn from the rock and open their shells towards the incoming tide. And if it come in somewhat strongly they are all the more delighted; too happy to hail that living wave that advances so strongly, as in haste to caress them.
"See my child" says the young mother, "at our approach the motionless ones remain, but the quicker have fled. Now see, they take courage again. The activeshrimp, with its fine feelers, rainbowed by the water, creates a great commotion in that mimic and miniature sea, and the slow and hesitating sea spider, at once timid and daring, saves herself by ascending to the warm surface, and the crab advancing and surveying, suddenly returns into his miniature forest of sea weed.
"But what do I see now? Whatisthat? A large, motionless shell suddenly takes life, and moves. Oh, but that is not natural, and the impostor betrays himself by his awkward gait and his many stumbles. Yes, yes, we detect you now, you most cunning of all cunning crabs, Sir Bernard the Hermit, who would fain pass yourself off for an innocent mollusc! Your bad conscience agitates you too much."
On the shore of our ocean, strangers to these movements, the animated flowers expand their corollæ. Near to the heavy anemone those charming little annelides appear in the sunlight. From a tortuous tube rises a disc, an umbrella, white or lilac, sometimes flesh color. Thrown, itself, a little on one side, it casts off from itself an object which has nothing comparable to it in the whole vegetable world. Not one of these is like its sister, and all are admirable for their velvety delicacy.
See one of them, without umbrella, which throws off a whole cloud of light cottony threads, scarcely tintedwith a silver grey, while five longer filets are of the richest cherry color. They wave, they entwine, they untwist, and their silvery heads form beautiful images in the water. To the coarse senses of man, such a sight as that would suggest no serious thought; but to the nervous and delicate woman, it is much. At those colors, by turns flashing and fading, she reflects on her own young life that now flashes, now fades, and now threatens to expire. Affecting thought! Again she looks into the pretty miniature Ocean of a few feet square, and there she better discerns Nature, the fertile mother, but the stern mother too.
And our fair patient is plunged into an oppressive reverie. Woman would cease to be woman, that is to say, the charm of the world, if she had not that touching gift ofTenderness for everything that lives;pity, and loving tears.
She has not wept as yet, our fair patient, but she has been so near to doing so! Her boy perceives it. Being already attentive and quick, he remains silent; and, silently they return. That was the amiable first day when she first began to spell with her heart the language of Nature. And at her very first lesson that language had so stirred the tenderness of that poor heart! The daylight was dying, the sea bird, on rapid wing, approached the shore and sought his nest.And as our patient and her boy entered their already dark garden, the cry of the night bird was heard. But the aviary was well closed, and the innocent little refugees within were asleep with heads under wings. Having herself seen that all was thus safe, she relieved her heart with a sigh, and embraced her son.
CHAPTER V.
BATHS—RESTORATION OF BEAUTY.
If, as certain French physicians maintain, sea-water baths have only a mechanical action, infuse no new principle into the blood andare merely a simple branch of hydropathy, it must be confessed that of all the forms of hydropathy they are the harshest and most hazardous. Let it once be clearly shown that that sea-water, so rich in life, bestows no more of vitality than fresh water and we must confess that it is little less than madness to take sea-baths in the open air and at all the risk of the wind, the sun, and the thousand possible accidents.
Whoever has seen a poor creature come out of the water after taking his first bath, whoever has seen him come out pale and shuddering, must perceive how dangerous such experiments are to certain constitutions. Be assured that none of us would submit to so much suffering if health could be as readily secured withoutsuffering and without danger, in one's own house, and by common fresh water hydropathy.
And, as though the impression of a first sea-bath were not sufficiently strong, it is aggravated for a nervous woman by the presence of the crowd of bathers. For her it is a cruel exhibition to make before a critical crowd, before rivals, delighted to see her ugly, for once; before silly and heartless men, who, with telescope in hand, watch the sad hazards of the toilette of the poor humiliated woman.
To brave all this the patient must have faith, great, surpassing faith, in the Sea. She must believe that no other remedy will meet her case, and must determine that, at whatever risks, she will be permeated by the virtues of the sea water. "And why not be thuspermeated?" ask the German physicians. "If at first entering the water you contract and close up your pores, reaction brings almost immediately a warmth that reopens them, dilates the skin and renders it very capable ofabsorbingthe life of the sea."
The two operations, the closing and the reopening of the pores, the first chill and the succeeding glow, almost always take place in five or six minutes. To stay in longer than the latter space of time, is almost always injurious.
Moreover, we should not venture upon this violent emotion of the cold bath without a preliminary courseof warm bathing, to facilitate absorption. Our skin which is entirely composed of the little mouths which we call pores, and which, in its way, both absorbs and digests, as the stomach does, wants time to get accustomed to such strong nourishment as themucusof the sea, that salted milk with which the sea makes and remakes such myriads of creatures. By a graduated course of baths, hot, warm, lukewarm, and almost cold, the skin acquires this habit, and, so to speak, this appetite; and "increase of appetite grows by what it feeds on."
For the hard ceremony of the first cold sea-water baths, at least, the odious gaze of a mob of people is to be avoided. Let them be taken in private and with no one present but a perfectly reliable person who, at need, will help the nervous patient, and rub her with hot cloths and revive her with warm drinks containing a few drops of the potent elixir.
"But," it may be said, "the presence of other bathers lessens the danger; we are far different from Virginia, who, in an extreme danger, preferred drowning herself to taking a bath." A great mistake; we are more nervous now than ever we were. And the impression of which I speak is at once so vivid and so revolting—I mean for nervous people—that it is quite capable of killing, by aneurism or apoplexy.
I love the people, but I hate a mob; especially anoisy mob of fast livers who come to sadden the great Sea with their noise, their fashions, and their absurdities. What! Is not the land large enough? Must such people come to the Sea to martyrize the sick and to vulgarize the majesty of the Sea, that wild and true grandeur?
I once had the ill luck to run from Havre to Honfleur in a craft loaded with such fools. Even in that short trip they found time to grow weary of quiet, and to get up a ball. One of them—probably a dancing master—had his Kit with him and played all sorts of dances in the presence of that great Ocean. Happily one could not hear much of that small music; scarcely now and then could a shrill note or two rise above the solemn, the truly solemn bass of the Sea's roar. I can easily imagine the sadness of the lady who, in July, suffers under the invasion of a mob of these fops, fools, and gossips. All liberty is then at an end. Even in the most retired spot the drowsy ear of night is vexed by the boisterous echoes from saloon, and dancing room, coffee-room and Casino. In the day the host of yellow gloves and varnished boots crowds the shore. One lady is observed alone, with her boy. Why is that? Impertinents wish to know, they approach, and, gathering sea shells for the child, endeavor to force their conversation on the mother. The lady is embarrassed, bored to death, and has to confine herself to herlodging or venture out only in early morning, while the empty pated revellers are still sleeping off the effects of the last night's follies. Then, from her seclusion flow a thousand ill natured comments. She becomes alarmed, for some of these idlers have influence and may, possibly, injure her husband.
Nowhere more than at the sea side, are we inquisitive, and the poor woman becomes agitated and sleepless during the long hot nights of July and August, and if, towards morning, she at length sleeps, she is not much more tranquil. The baths, far from cooling, add the saline irritation to the fierce heat of the dog days. From her youth she derives, not strength, but fever; and, weak and highly nervous, she is all the more disturbed by that interior storm.
Interior, but yet not hidden. The Sea, the pitiless Sea, brings to the skin the proofs of that excitement which the sufferer would fain keep hidden. She betrays it by red blotches, slight efflorescences. All these petty annoyances, which still more afflict the children, and which in them the mother looks upon as signs of returning health, the mothers feel as humiliations when seen on their own faces. They fear that they will therefore be less loved. So little do they know of the heart of man. They know not that the sharpest spur of love is not beauty, but suffering.
"Oh! If he should find me ugly!" is the poor woman's morning thought, as she looks in her glass. She at once fears and desires the coming of her husband. And yet she feels so lonely, and fears, she knows not what, amidst that noisy crowd. She dares not go out, she becomes feverish, and at length is confined to her bed. In little more than twenty-four hours, the beloved one is by her side.
Who has summoned him? She certainly has not. But, in his great straggling handwriting, her boy has written to his father thus: "My dear Papa, come quickly. Mamma is confined to bed, and the other day she said 'oh if he were here!'" And accordingly he was there, and immediately she felt herself recovering. And he, how happy he is! Happy to see her restored, happy to be necessary to her, and happy to see her looking so beautiful. She is somewhat sun burnt, but how young she looks! What life in her glance, and in her flowing and silky hair!
Is this mere fiction, this so prompt restoration of life, beauty, and tenderness; this delightful incident of finding in a wife, a young mistress, so happy in being rejoined by a husband? Not at all. It is an agreeable sight which right often may be witnessed. If rare among the very rich, it is not so among the laborious families whose labor makes them, during most of theirlives, close prisoners. Their forced separations are painful, and their reunion has a charm, a rapture, which they do not even try to conceal.
When we consider the prodigious tension of modern life, for toiling men, (that is to say, for every one but a few idlers) one cannot but be glad to witness those scenes of joy, when a reunited family expand their hearts. Those who have no hearts, call all this vulgar and prosaic. But, the form matters little, where the substance is so surpassingly good. The careworn merchant, who, from three months to three months, has only with utmost difficulty saved the bark in which the destiny of his wife and children is exposed to shipwreck; the administration victim; the employé, worn well nigh to death by the injustice and tyranny of the offices—these suffering captives, are released, for a brief space, from their galling chains, and the tender family, the mother and child, endeavor to make the husband and father forget his cares.
And well able are wife and child to wile the worn man into that sweet temporary oblivion. Their gaiety, their caresses, and the distractions of the sea-side, soothe his wearied soul, and fill his mind with other and happier thoughts. It is their triumph. They hurry off to visittheirbeach, to contemplatetheirsea, and to enjoy his admiration, which he, worthy man, just a little exaggerates, because he wishes them to be pleased. Yes! it istheirsea; having bathed in it, they have taken possession; and he, the toilworn husband and father, must share with them in their vast possession. The young woman no longer fears that crowd which formerly so much annoyed, and even alarmed, her; now that he is beside her she is not merely safe, but bold, daring; to say the truth, just a little presumptuous. She is quite familiar with the sea; familiar enough to be determined to learn to swim. At first she is supported by her active and bold boy. Supported by him, she swims—but I fear if left to herself her native timidity would return, and she would sink. Yet she is in love with the sea; yea, jealous of the sea. For, in fact, the sea inspires no moderate passions. There is I know not what of electric inspiration, of all-absorbing passion for the Sea, in all who truly know it.
CHAPTER VI.
THE RESTORATION OF HEART AND BROTHERHOOD.
There are three forms of Nature which especially expand and elevate our souls, release her from her heavy clay and earthy limits, and send her, exulting, to sail amidst the wonders and mysteries of the Infinite.
First; there is the variable Ocean of Air with its glorious banquet of light, its vapors, its twilight, and its shifting phantasmagoria of capricious creatures; coming into existence only to depart on the instant.
Second; there is the fixed Ocean of the earth, its undulating and vast waves as we see them from the tops of "earth o'er gazing mountains," the elevations which testify its antique mobility, and the sublimity of its mightier mountains clad in eternal snows.
Third; there is the Ocean of waters, less mobile than air, less fixed than earth, but docile, in its movements, to the celestial bodies.
These three things form the gamut by which the Infinite speaks to our souls. Nevertheless, let us pointout some very notable differences. The air-Ocean is so mobile that we can scarcely examine it. It deceives, it decoys, it diverts; it dissipates and breaks up our chain of thought. For an instant, it is an immense hope, the day of an infinity;—anon, it is not so; all flies from before us, and our hearts are grieved, agitated, and filled with doubt. Why have I been permitted to see for a moment that immense flood of light? The memory of that brief gleaming must ever abide with me, and that memory makes all things here on Earth look dark.
The fixed ocean of the mountains is not thus transient or fugitive; on the contrary, it stops us at every step, and imposes upon us the necessity of a very hard, though wholesome, gymnastic. Contemplation here has to be bought at the price of the most violent action. Nevertheless, the opacity of the Earth, like the transparency of the air, frequently deceives and bewilders us. Who can forget that for ten years Ramon, in vain, sought to reach Mount Perdu, though often within sight of it?
Great, very great, is the difference between the two elements; the Earth is mute and the Ocean speaks. The Ocean is a voice. It speaks to the distant stars, it answers to their movements in its deep and solemn language. It speaks to the Earth on the shores, replying to the echoes that reply again; by turnswailing, soothing, threatening, its deepest roar is presently succeeded by a sad, pathetic sigh. And it especially addresses itself to Man. As it is the fecund womb in which creation began and still continues, it has creation's living eloquence; it is Life speaking to Life! The millions, the countless myriads, of beings, to which it gives birth, are its words. That milky Sea from which they proceed, that fecund marine jelly, even before it is organized, while yet white and foaming,—speaks. All these mingled together makes the unity, the great and solemn voice of the Ocean.
And, "what are those wild waves saying?" They are telling ofLife, of the eternal Metamorphosis; of the great fluid existence, shaming our senseless ambitions of the earth-world.
They are telling ofImmortality. An indomitable strength is at the bottom of Nature, how much more so at Nature's summit, the Soul! And it speaks of Partnership, of Union. Let us accept the swift exchange which, in the individual, exists between the diverse elements; let us accept the superior Law which unites the living members of the same body—Humanity; and, still more, let us accept and respect the supreme Law which makes us create and coöperate with the Great Soul, associated as we are—in proportion with our powers,—with the loving Harmony of the world—copartners in the Life of God.
The Sea very distinctly, in that voice that is mistakenly supposed to be a mere confusion of sounds, articulates those grave words. But man does not easily recognize those words, when he first arrives on the shore exhausted by worldly struggles, deafened, distracted, by worldly babble. The sense of the higher life is dulled even among the best of us; the best of us, to a greater or less extent, resist that sense. And who shall teach us to quicken and obey that sense? Nature? Not yet. Softened into tenderness by the family, by the innocence of the child and the tenderness of the wife, man first takes an interest, real and strong, in the things of humanity, in the cares and studies which tend to preserve the family. But woman is earlier and more deeply interested in the Sea, in the Poetry of the Infinite. And thus we see that souls have sexes as well as bodies have. For the man thinks of the seaman more than of the sea's wonders; he thinks of its dangers, of its daily and hourly tragedies, and of the floating destiny of his family. The woman, tender as she is to individuals, takes less interest in classes. Every laborious man, who visits the coast, bestows his principal attention and his principal sympathy upon the hard life of the man of toil, the fisherman and the sailor; upon that hard hard life so laborious and perilous and so little productive of gain.
Such a man, while his wife rises and dresses hersweet child, walks upon the beach in the early morning just as the fishing boats return. The morning is cold, the night has been rainy, and the boats have shipped many a heavy sea. The men, and not only men but very small boys, too, are wet to the skin. And what have they brought back? Not much;—but theyhavecome back, and that is much. For last night, see you, they shipped many a sea and looked at death closely many a time. Ah! When the stranger reflects upon the hard life brought immediately under his purview, surely, however much he may have complained of his own lot, he will now learn to say "My lot is far better than theirs."
In the evening, just when the sun sets, coppery and threatening, into the sinister horizon, these men already have to sail again. And the stranger says to them, "Shall you not have bad weather, think you?" "Sir," they reply, "we must earn our bit of bread," and they and their sturdy boys push off to Sea. And their wives, more than serious, sad, follow them with their eyes; and more than one of those wives whisper an earnest prayer. And the stranger, too, whispers his prayer, and says to himself, "They will have a dirty night; would that they may return in safety."
And thus it is that the Sea opens the heart, and that even the hardest hearts are softened in presence of thegreat stern mother. In that presence, no matter what we may strive to think, we become humanized, sympathizing, tender. And Heaven knows how much need and how much occasion there are for sympathy there! Every kind of want and struggle is to be found among those brave, honest and intelligent marine populations who are incomparably the best of our country. I have lived a good deal on the coast. Every heroic virtue, which an inland population would praise so highly, is there an every day and very common-place matter. And, still more curious!—there is no pride among these hardy mariners. All our French pride is for the landsmen—the soldiery. But among our marine population the greatest dangers count for nothing; every one braves such every day, and no one ever thinks of boasting of them. I have never met with men who were milder or more modest (I had almost said more timid) than our Gironde pilots who, from Royan and from St. George's gallantly put out, to face all that Cordouan has of peril. There, as at Granville, and every where else on that coast, it is the women alone who have anything to say, or any business to do, on land. The brave pilots, when once on shore, never say a word in the way of command; peaceable as their valiant wives are superbly noisy, the men leave the women full authority to administer the poor income and to rule (occasionally with a prettyhard hand) the youngsters of the household. The husband, in fact, though he reads no Latin, literally and practically translates the Latin poet:
"Happy, when in mine own house I am as nobody."
Their wives, greatly interested about the foreigner, had, nevertheless, let it be boldly as truly said, a royal, a magnificent, a generous, kindly feeling. At St. Georges, they cut up, and scraped up, all their linen to make lint for the wounded at Solferino. At Entretat, three Englishmen being wrecked, and in awful danger, the whole population, men, women and children, rushed to the rescue, and dragged them to land with all the outward and visible signs of a real and a violent sensibility. And they were fed, and clothed, and tended, and relieved, even as though they had been compatriots, and very dear friends. This occurred in April, 1859.
Oh! Those kind French people! And yet, how hard, hitherto, has been their life! In ourregimeof Classes (so useful, however, in itself, and from which we derive so much of giant strength) the sailor is compelled, at any moment, to leave the merchant service for the war ship, daily and hourly growing more severe, more crushing, in its hard discipline! Forty years ago the sailor sang, as he worked at the capstan bar;nowhe heaves in silence. (Ial. Arch II. 522). And in the merchant service, the great fisheries are almost worked out. The profits of the Whale Fishery belong, almostentirely, to the outfitter. (Boitard, Diet. art. Cetaceæ, Whales, &c.) The Cod has diminished, the Mackerel grows more and more scarce. A very precious little book (The Story of Rose Duchenin, by herself) gives a most touching picture of this great destitution. Alphonse Karr, that admirable writer, had the good sense to write that book from the dictation of that Fisherman's Wife, without altering a word of hers, or adding a word of his own.
Étretat is not, properly speaking, a port. Situated little, if any, above the level of the Sea, and defended only by the pebbly bar which the sea has washed in, it is but poorly sheltered. And consequently, it is necessary that, according to the old Celtic custom, every vessel that runs in there, must be hauled up to the Quay by the cable and the capstan; the capstan bars being handled by the women, for the lads are all at sea. The labor and the difficulty will be easily understood by all who read this. The lubberly craft, as it is drawn up, hits hard from boulder to boulder, and ascends only by leaps, violent and damaging, and still more threatening than either. And at every leap and every shock, those poor women suffer from the hard blow to their necks and from the bitterly painful emotions of their poor hearts.
When I first witnessed this terrible labor, I was wounded, saddened in mine inmost heart. My firstimpulse was to bear a hand and lend my aid. But the thing would seem so singular, I thought, that a something, I know not what, of false shame, arrested me. But every day I lent a hand, at least with my wishes and my prayers. I went, and looked. Those young and charming, though anything but pretty, women and girls did not sport the short red petticoat of the coasts, but long robes; and for the most part, they had the refined and delicate aspect of the young lady of the great city. Bending to that hard toil (a filial, and, therefore, a noble toil) they had a certain mingled grace and pride, and, in all that hard toil, not a complaint, not even a sigh, escaped them.
That very small Quay of Boulders, small as it is, yet is too large. I saw there a number of vessels, abandoned, useless. For, see you, the Fishery has become so unproductive! The fish have fled that shore. Entretat languishes, perishes, so near to languishing, and, but for its sea-bathing, perishing, Dieppe, which owes its present existence—such as it is!—to the greater or less number of visitors, who render Dieppe in one season prosperous, and in another as nearly as possible, bankrupt. And this very influx from Paris, worldly Paris, is, after all, morally, at least, a real scourge to that marine population.