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.