FullReads

Have you ever visited one of these places in the midst of a tennis week, when the grand tournaments take place? Lawn tennis is a delightful recreation for a time, provided you have a good partner and good antagonists, and you are playing under a moderately warm sun; but when you hear, see, and play nothing else for a week, when the conversation is “tennis,” when no one appears without a racquet in his hand, when all you have to listen to are criticisms on the courts and balls, grumblings against the handicapping, imprecations on “bisques”–well, you begin to hate the very name, and wish you could injure the man who invented it. You grow tired of watching the same thing day after day, the men who spend their lives in tossing balls across to each other, the sea of faces; turning backwards and forwards at each stroke with the regulation of a pendulum.

Yes, it takes a long time to decide on a watering place, and when at last you do make up your mind you have to change it again very soon because you find all your “sisters, cousins, and aunts” have chosen the same resort; and really you have quite enough of your relations in town without their following you wherever you go. You require a little variety when you go away. An old lady I used to know always kept it a profound secret where she intended spending her summer holiday, “otherwise, my dear,” she said, “I should have the whole family at my heels!” A most disagreeable old lady she was; and I know for a fact that her relatives always avoided her when possible (she was not blessed with very great possessions!) so that her caution was quite unnecessary. Oh, vanity of vanities, how little we know of the world’s true opinion of us!

When you have fixed on your locality, there is even a greater difficulty to go through. You have to choose your residence; and this takes up even more thought and time.

There are the lodging-houses, monotonous in their similarity. The same gilt-edged mirrors protected from the dust by green perforated paper; the same jar of wax flowers, standing on a mat which is composed of floral designs in Berlin wool–designs to which you can give any name you like–“You pays your money and you takes your choice.” They represent anything, the whole concern hiding its modest head under a glass case; the same shavings in the grate, with long trails of roses gently slumbering on the top; yes, and the same voluble landlady, the whole of whose private concerns you are in possession of five minutes after you have taken the apartments.

There is the boarding-house, advertised as “Directly facing the sea;” and when you have engaged your rooms, and arrive with all your luggage, you find the establishment is at the far end of a side street; and “Directly facing the sea” is interpreted by the fact that by hanging half-way out of the sitting-room widow, and screwing your head round violently to the left, you can see the place where that watery monarch ought to be.

“A boarding-house is so much nicer than an hotel, because you get to know the people so much easier,” I heard a girl remark once. This is my chief objection to a boarding-house. Because you are staying under the same roof, all the inhabitants consider they have a right to address you, and, what is more, they will not be repulsed, which, as most of them by no means move in the best society, is not at all palatable. The women you can tolerate, but the men are not to be endured. You are always coming across them, too. On whatever drive, excursion, or trip you take you invariably meet “boarding-houseites,” who are only too ready to recognize you. You can never get away from them; there is only the public drawing-room, and there they come in and out, talking to you, interrupting you, or else causing your ears to ache by their attempts at music.(?)