THE RURAL WATERING-PLACE.  
A great deal has been written about our fashionable watering-places, but there is another class of watering-places quite as amusing in their way, of which the public knows little or nothing. There are the rural watering-places, which are part and parcel of our subject, without which any picture of rural life would be incomplete; and which I shall here therefore take due notice of. These are the resort of what may be styled the burgher and agricultural part of our population. The farmer, the shopkeeper, the occupant of the clerk’s desk, or the mercantile warehouse,—each and all of these feel the want of a periodical relaxation from business and care, and the want of that change of scene and circumstance, that may give a fresh feeling of both mental and physical renovation. These, as they stand wearily sweltering in the hot[503] field, or bending over the everlasting counter, suddenly see in their mind’s eye the flashing of the sea, and feel the breezes blow upon them like a new life. They resolve on the instant “to go to the salt-water” before the summer is over, and begin contriving when and how it shall be, and what wives and children, or old cronies, can go with them. The farmer sees that the only time for him will be in the interval between hay and corn harvest, and speedily he has inoculated some of his friends with the same desire. Many a jolly company is thus speedily made, and at the fixed time away they go, in gigs and tax-carts, or on scampering horses, with more life and spirit than most people return from more celebrated places. In Lancashire the better class of the operatives in the manufacturing districts, consider it as necessary “to go to the salt-water” in the summer, as to be clothed and fed all the rest of the year. From Preston, Blackburn, Bolton, Oldham, and all those great spinning and weaving towns, you see them turning out by whole wagon and cart-loads, bound for Blackpool and such places; and they who have not seen the swarming loads of these men and women and children, their fast driving, and their obstreperous merriment, have not seen one of the most curious scenes of English life.
In one of those strolls through different parts of the country in which I have so often indulged myself, and in which I have always found so much enjoyment, from the varieties of scenery and character which they laid open to me, I once came upon a watering-place on the coast, that afforded me no small matter for a day or two’s amusement. What could have been the cause of the setting up of such a place as a scene of pleasurable resort, it would be difficult to tell, except that it possessed a most bounteous provision of two great articles in demand in the autumnal months in cities—salt water and fresh air, for which a thousand inconveniences would be endured. It was situated quite on the flat coast of a flat country, a few miles from one of its sea-ports, yet near enough to obtain speedily thence all those good things which hungry mortals require—and who are so hungry as people bathing in sea water, and imbibing sea air, and taking three times their usual exercise without being distinctly aware of it?
Strolling along the coast, I found a good hotel, with all the usual marks of such an establishment about it. There were quantities[504] of people loitering about the sands in front and in the garden, and other quantities looking out of windows with the sashes up; some of them, particularly the ladies, holding colloquies out of the windows of upper stories with some of the strollers below; post-chaises, and gigs, and shandray carts, standing here and there in the side scenes; a row of bathing-machines on the shore, awaiting the hour of the tide; and a loud noise of voices from a neighbouring bowling-green. The odours of roasting and baking that came from the hotel, were of the most inviting description. I inclined to take up my abode there for a few hours at least, but on entering, I found that as to obtaining a room, or a tithe of a room, or even a chair at the table of the ordinary, it was quite out of the question. “Lord bless you, sir,” said the landlady, a woman of most surprising corporeal dimensions, in a white gown, an orange-coloured neckerchief, and a large and very rosy face, as she stood before the bar, filling the whole width of the passage; “Lord bless you, sir, if you’d give me a thousand golden guineas in a silken purse, I should not know where to put you. We’ve turned hundreds and hundreds of most genteel people away, that we have, within this very week, and the house is fit to burst now, it’s so hugeous full. But you’ll get accommodated at the town.” “What town?” said I; “is there a town near?” “Why, town we call it, but it’s the village, you know; it’s Fastside here, not more than a mile off; if you follow the bank along the shore, you’ll go straight to it. You can’t miss it.” Accordingly, following the raised embankment along the shore, I soon descried Fastside, a few scattered cottages, placed amongst their respective crofts and gardens, and here and there a farm-house, with its substantial array of ricks about it, denoting that the dwellers were well off in the world. But I soon found that all the cottages, and many of the farm-houses, had their boarders for the season, and that there was scarcely one but was full. I had the good luck to spy an equipage, and something like a departing group at the door of one of the cottages, and as it moved away, to find that I could have the use of two rooms, a parlour and chamber over it, if I liked to go to the expense. “Perhaps,” said the neat cottage housewife, “as a single gentleman, you may not like to occupy so much room, for just at this season we charge rather high.” “And[505] pray,” said I, “what may be the enormous price you are charging for these rooms, then?” “Seven shillings a-week each room, and half-a-crown for attendance,” looking at me with an inquiring eye, as if apprehensive that I should be astounded at the sum. “What! the vast charge of sixteen and sixpence per week,” I replied, smiling, “for two rooms and attendance?” “Yes,” said the simple dame; “but then, you see, you will have to live besides, and it all comes to a good deal. But may be you are a gentleman, that doesn’t mind a trifle.” Having assured her that there would, at all events, be no insurmountable obstacle in her terms, I entered and took possession of two as rustic and nicely clean rooms as could be found under such a humble roof. I had taken a fancy to spend a few days, or a week at least, there. It was a new scene, and peopled with new characters, that might be worth studying. The cottage stood in a thoroughly rural garden, full of peas, beans, and cabbages, with a little plot round the house, gay with marigolds, hollyhocks, and roses, and sweet with rosemary and lavender. The old dame’s husband was a shrimper, or fisher for shrimps, whom I soon came to see regularly tracing the edge of the tide with his old white horse and net hung behind him. She had, besides me, it seemed, another lodger, who, she assured me, “was a very nice young man indeed, but, poor young gentleman, he enjoyed but very indifferent health. Sometimes I think he’s been crossed in love, for I happened to cast my eye on one of his books—he reads a power of books—and there was a deal about love in it. It was all in poetry, you see, and so on; and then again, I fancy he’s consumptive, though I wouldn’t like to say a word to him, lest it should cast him down, poor young man; but he reads too much, in my opinion, a great deal too much; he’s never without a book in his hands when he’s in doors; and that’s not wholesome, you are sure, to be sitting so many hours in one posture, and with his eyes fixed in one place. But God knows best what’s good for us all; and I often wonder whether he has a mother. I should be sorely uneasy on his account, if I were her.” So the good dame ran on, while she cooked me a mutton chop and took an account of what tea and sugar and such things she must send for by the postman, who was their daily carrier to the town. I listened to her talk, and looked at the pot of balm of[506] Gilead, and the red and white balsams standing in the cottage window, and the large sleek and well-fed tabby cat sleeping on the cushion of the old man’s chair, and was sure that I was in good hands, and grew quite fond of my quarters. Before the day was over, I became acquainted with the old shrimper, who came in after his journey to the next town with his shrimps, and who was as picturesque an old fellow as you would wish to see, and full of character and anecdotes of the wrecks and sea accidents on that coast for forty years past. I had been informed all about who were the neighbours inhabiting the other cottages and farms, and had a good inkling of their different characters too. I had walked out to the bank when the tide was up, and round the garden, and actually got into conversation with “the poor young man,” my fellow lodger.
The next morning I was up early, and out to reconnoitre the place and neighbourhood; and this young man having found out that I was also addicted to the unwholesome practice of reading books, took at once a great fancy to me, and went with me as guide and cicerone. I found that all the mystery about him was, that he was a youth articled to an attorney in great practice, and had stooped over the desk a little too much, but was soon likely to be as strong and sound as ever, being neither consumptive nor crossed in love, although in love he certainly was. A more simple-hearted, good-natured fellow, it was impossible could exist. He had the most profound admiration of all poets and philosophers, and read Goldsmith, Shenstone, and Addison, with a relish that one would give a good deal for. As for Sir Walter Scott, and Lord Byron, and Tom Moore, he knew half of their voluminous poetical works by heart; mention any fine passage, and he immediately spouted you the whole of it; and as for the Waverley Novels, he had evidently devoured them entire, and was full of their wonders and characters. Yet, thus fond of poetry and romance, it was not the less true that he had a fancy for mathematics, and played on the fiddle and the flute into the bargain. Nor was this all the extent of his tastes, he had quite a penchant for natural history; had he time, he declared he would study botany, ornithology, geology, and conchology too; and yet, although such a book-worm himself, he seemed to enjoy the company of[507] the other visiters there who never read at all. There was a whole troop that he made acquaintance with, and whose characters he sketched to me, particularly those of a merry set who lodged at a cottage opposite, where he often went to amuse them with his fiddle. As my business was to see what were the characters and the amusements of such a place, I desired him to introduce me to them, but in the first place to let us run a little over the country.
The country was rich and flat, divided into great meadows full of luxuriant grass, grazed by herds of fine cattle, and surrounded by noble trees, which served to break up the monotony of the landscape. Here and there you saw the tall, square, substantial tower of a village church peeping over its surrounding screen of noble elms. We were accustomed to stroll into these churchyards, admiring the singularly large and excellent churches, all of solid stone; the spacious graveyard and the large heavy headstones, adorned with carved skulls and cross-bones; and gilded angels with long trumpets figured above the simple epitaphs of the departed villagers. The farm-houses, too, surrounded also with tall elms, and with a great air of wealth and comfort, drew our attention. As we approached nearer to the sea, the country was more destitute of wood; consisted of very large fields of corn, then beginning to change into the rich hues of ripeness; fields also of woad, a plant used in dyeing, and there extensively cultivated; and these fields intersected no longer by hedges, but by deep wide ditches called dykes, in which grew plenty of reeds, water-flags, a tall and splendid species of marsh ranunculus (R. lingua) and yellow and white water-lilies. As we drew near to the village, if village such scattered dwellings could be called, we were struck with the peculiar aspect of the dry lanes, and the plants which grew there, so different to those of an inland neighbourhood. They were exactly such as Crabbe has described them in such a situation:—
There, fed by food they love, to rankest size,
Around the dwelling docks and wormwood rise;
Here the strong mallow strikes her slimy root;
Here the dull nightshade hangs her deadly fruit;
On hills of dust the henbane’s faded green,
And pencilled flower of sickly scent is seen;
At the wall’s base the fiery nettle springs,
With fruit globose and fierce with poisoned stings.[508]
Above, the growth of many a year, is spread
The yellow level of the stonecrop’s bed;
In every chink delights the fern to grow,
With glossy leaf and tawny bloom below.
The great embankment secured all this from the invasion of the sea, and, winding along the flat sands, formed a delightful walk when the tide was roaring up against it. Here also the male portion of the visiters came to bathe; and, when the tide was up, nothing could be more delicious. They could undress on the sunny sward of the mound at whatever distance from the others they pleased, for there were many miles of the bank; and the waves dashing gently against the grassy slope, received them on a secure and smooth sand, at a depth sufficient to allow them either to wade or swim. They generally, however, undressed near enough to swim or wade in company, and to splash one another and play all manner of practical jokes.
When the tide was out, from this bank you had a ............