SEASIDE PERSECUTION.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 6, Issue 333, 18 December 1865, Page 2

SEASIDE PERSECUTION.

(From the Oriental Budget, 15th September.) August being a holiday month, the newspapers necessarily search for absurdities wherewith to fill their desolate pages. Just at present a rather abundant harvest of murders has' served to decrease the dulness, while an approaching epidemic, and an epizotic that is here already, are formidably interesting to timid people. Happily there is no excuse for the public speaking, the elections having used up all the political platitudes ; the chief events in this line being that “ Tom Brown,” of the School Days, has presided at a cabman’s tea-meeting, and-that Lord Palmerston is shortly going to lay a foundation stone in the ancient town of Eomsey. Our octogenarian will be as vivacious as over questionless; but he does not enliven us till partridge-shooting begins. Meanwhile, people bathe in the sea—a highly commendable process. Whether that medical theory is true which represents Englishmen as possessing less vital force than their ancestors, and so requiring the sea as a tonic, we cannot pretend to say. It is certain that our grandfathers and grandmothers did not go to the sea in autum, and that the former fought duels and drank port wine, and lived with a vigorous fastness at- which our “fast” men would be terrified. There seems as much difference between them and us as between the mighty October which they drank and the clear pale liquid which Bass and Allsopp brew. However, not to delay too long with our ancestors, be it observed that to a great number of us the sca is a yearly necessity. Hence, on tho coasts spring up towns devoted to fashion and luxury, and vast hotels are built in which discomfort and expose are reduced to a system, myriads of wanderers throng favorite resorts upon the shore. Of course everybody with any sense gets as far away from fashion as possible, and dresses in careless costume, and forgets the grim restraints of society. But such escape is sometimes difficult. A luckless dissenting minister has lately been complaining to an evening paper that he was caught by two ladies of bis congregation catching cockles,with his trousers turned up abovehis knees. We can imagine the glee of the deaconess who discovered him :—■

Says I—“ As sure as eggs are eggs. If that aim our parson a showing his legs.”

ITnhappj mortal! And even for those who are not forced to maintain the perpetual superlative respectability of dissenting ministers, there is persecution by the seaside Extreme decorum is now the order of the day. The Mayor of Shrimpt.m-euper-MAre has given strict orders that any one who strips for a swim shall incontinently be brought before him. The shops of that famous watering-place are filled with gorgeous costumes for both sexes. Who has not seen “Mossoo” bathe at Dieppe and elsewhere—Mossoo politely assisting Madame, and then dipping the younger branches of his family ? That is not quite the Englishman's notion of enjoying a swim—any more than an Eton hoy would fancy being clapped into the livery of a French Lyceum, and taken out for a walk. Mayors and people of that sort, who very likely never wash, cannot be expected to understand that a man likes to feel his skin in contact with the fresh invigorating lymph. And the squeamish people who write letters to various newspapers, complaining that they actually saw a naked man plunge into the sea, not a hundred yards from where they were standing, should be mildly advised to remain inland, and to live as far as possible from any river or pond which might induce some immodest person to take off his clothes.

The poet’s vision of Aphrodite is passed away for ever, we know 5 the first voyage of the Foamhorn.

Wien down the streaming crystal dropt; and she Tar-fleeted by the purple island sides, Ifaked, a double light in air and wave.

But Leech, the beloved artist, lately lost, caught many a group of pretty girls in their mermaids, haunts, under the cliffs by the sea ; and sketched them dipping breathlessly under the lee of the bathing machines ; and immortalised their round ankles and disorderly back hair. We don’t know whether the people who turn out with telescopes to watch the sands, and, if they see a white gleam of shoulders in the sea a mile away, rush home and write to the Times, are able to perceive anything immodest in Leech’s charming sketches, but we really should’nt wonder.

The moral of it ia that the universal appetite for the ocean renders it almost impossible to obtain freedom from puritanical supervision. If .you are lucky enough to find some hitherto undreamt of nook in Devon or Hampshire, where you can hire the simplest of lodgings and splash freely into the salt water when you please, and wear any clothing that ia picturesque and comfortable, the probability is that on your second autumnal visit you see bricklayers hard at work, and a staring redbrick terrace half-finished, and the foundations laid of a huge hotel (limited). And of course the third autumn brings the old ladies and telescopes, and the Medo-Persian edicts about wearing trowsers in the sea. Whereupon you retire appalled, and thank heaven they can’t prevent you from having a tub in your bedroom.