Yes, youth and beauty come to Trouville-by-the-sea; French beauty of the dresden china pattern, side by side and hand in hand, with the young English girl of the heavy Clapham type (which elderly Frenchmen adore)--all in the water together, in the prettiest dresses, 'sweetly trimmed' and daintily conceived; all joining hands, men and women having a 'merry go round' in the water--some swimming, some diving, shouting, and disporting themselves, and 'playing fantastic tricks before high heaven,'--to the admiration of a crowded beach.
'_Honi soit qui mal y pense_,' when English ladies join the party, and write home that 'it is delightful, that there is a refreshing disregard for what people may think at French watering-places, and a charming absence of self-consciousness that disarms criticism'! What does quiet paterfamilias think about his mermaid daughter, and of that touch about the 'absence of self-consciousness;' and would anything induce _him_ to clothe himself in a light-green skin, to put on a pair of 'human fins,' or to perch himself on the rocks before a crowd of ladies on the beach, within a few yards of him? Yes, it _is_ delightful--the prettiest sight and the brightest life imaginable; but is it quite the thing, we may ask, for English girls to take their tone (ever so little) from the Casino, and from the '_Guides Conty;_' which they do as surely, as the caterpillar takes its colour from the leaf on which it feeds?
But the system of bathing in France is so sensible and good compared with our own; the facilities for learning to swim, the accommodation for bathers, and the accessories, are so superior to anything we know of in England, that we hardly like to hint at any drawbacks. We need not all go to Trouville (some of us cannot afford it), but we may live at most of these bathing places at less cost, and with more comfort and amusement than at home. They do manage some things better in France: at the seaside here the men dress in suits of flannel, and wear light canvas shoes habitually; the women swim, and take their children with them into the water,--floating them with gourds, which accustoms them to the water, and to the use of their limbs. At the hotels and restaurants, they provide cheap and appetizing little dinners; there is plenty of ice in hot weather, and cooling drinks are to be had everywhere: in short, in these matters the practical common sense of the French people strikes us anew, every time we set foot on their shores. Why it should be so, we cannot answer; but as long as it is so, our countrymen and countrywomen may well crowd to French watering-places.