CHAPTER III.

THE HOUSE.

Permit an ignoramus who, yet, has paid a pretty high price for what he _does_ know, 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, the _tedium vitæ_ which 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 who truly 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 would _not_; 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? _Let_ her 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 delicate and 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, but even 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 discover many 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 with drinking 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. Many places 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 I have 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.