University of Virginia Library

WATERING-PLACE PEOPLE.

There exists a class of people in the country, who
seemed designed by Providence specially for watering-places.
They make their appearance summer
after summer at Newport, or Saratoga,—adorn with
their presence the cycle of the season, and then pass
out of sight until the Springs and the summer
hotels revive their intermittent existence. They
seem gay, cheerful, and admirably calculated by
nature, for that species of enjoyment which belongs
to a heated atmosphere. Like the summer brood
of flies, they grow festive in the sunshine,[2] and lose
their grace and activity, if not their existence, as
the season advances.

With not a few of these, there is a particular
method of advance, which serves to variegate the

charms of their summer life. The closing days of
June will, perhaps, find them at Rockaway, or at
Fort Hamilton, from which they migrate in swarms
toward the sand plains of Saratoga; from thence
they swoop down in the heat of the season, and settle
for a day or two upon the rocks by the Mountain
House. At the striking of the tents, they will
revive their last year's flirtations with the graycoated
cadets, or grow sentimental upon the walk
by the shore, or indulge in romance at Kosciusko's
tomb. Still later, they catch the breezes of September
at the Ocean House; and having adorned with
their presence the closing ball of the season, they
fade away upon the water, and are lost to public
wonder for a winter.

In this species of people, may be enumerated
vagrant families—not without pretensions to beauty,
and other pretensions to match—who are the
inhabitants of some quite traditionary locality,
the descendants of some traditionary ancestry,
the possessors of some traditionary fortune, and
the heirs to some traditionary renown.

They are the subjects of periodical doubts, and
annual discussion, as well as of July admiration.
They neither seem to disappear by marriage, or by
any other Providential dispensation. Year after
year they appear, without growing old, or growing

new. If some vague report has disposed of a single
number, there is some new member to fill up the
gap. If misfortune has overtaken them pecuniarily,
it does not, in the slightest degree, alter their periodic
migration, or the eccentricity of their movement.

In the winter season, nearly all trace of them is
lost; and though individuals have sometimes set on
foot reports, of their having been seen in January, at
the Assembly Balls of Washington,—the testimony is
quite frail, and is scarce worthy of more credit
than that relating, in the colonial times, to the
appearance of Peter Rugg, and his daughter.

Another type of this species may be found in
some pleasant, old, gouty, red-nosed gentleman,
who may be found year after year seated in his
arm-chair upon the corridor of the United States,
or in the bar-room of our host at Avon. Everybody
knows him very well, though few know much of
him. Everybody knows his hours for bathing, if
he is by the sea, or at the sulphur baths; and everybody
knows his hour for cheese, and brandy and
water, at either place. He is never fatigued, and
never in a perspiration; and wherever in the whole
range of watering-places your eye falls upon him,
you recognize the fitness of his position, and feel
quite sure you would be surprised to meet him anywhere
else. If, by chance, you fall upon him of a

winter, in the town, you are shocked by the incongruity,
and cannot fail to think that he is wandering
in his mind, and has strayed away unconsciously
from the galleries of Saratoga.

Of his origin and business, only vague rumors
are afloat; as for his years, none are so weak as to
hazard a guess at their number. In the memory
of the oldest habitué, he has neither changed the
color of his hair, nor of his nose; and he has been
overheard, by credible witnesses, to talk of Madison
and the elder Adams, as he now talks of Van Buren,
or Mr. Fillmore. He has been seen to talk occasionally
with middle-aged ladies, and sometimes to
pat rosy-cheeked girls under the chin; but his name
has not, to anybody's knowledge, ever been in the
Herald, nor has he ever fought a duel. It is uncertain
in what grave-yard he will be buried, if,
indeed, he should ever die.

Of a somewhat kindred stamp are certain middle-aged
bachelors, who delight themselves, by talking of
each other, as young men. They dress in very
perfect style, and know vast numbers of people.
They are familiar and easy in their chat about heiresses,
and the belles of the hour. They are nice
judges of cigers and brandies, and the comparative
size of ladies' ankles. They pride themselves specially
on some extraordinary personal accomplishment,—such

as a delicate hand with a cue, or on
being a good horseman, or on their conquests of
pretty milliners. They never go to second-class
hotels, or to second-class watering-places, and are
exceedingly attentive to young ladies on the point
of coming out. They expect some day to be married,
and to be esteemed; and it is possible they
may be so.

There are not a few middle-aged ladies who
adorn, year after year, the tables of our summer
hotels, and who seem to have been spared the possession
of their maidenly charms for their annual
attendance. But, much more noticeable than these,
is a class of married ladies of independent aim, and
fair exterior, whose town-life, if rumors may be
credited, is far less satisfactory than the summer
indulgence in sea breezes and bath dresses. They
have fairly worked up their social education to a
level with the freedom of country recreations.
They achieve easily, and maintain boldly, a distinguished
notoriety; and while they adorn the distinction
they enjoy, they give brilliant eclat to the
quietude of private life, and to the elegancies of
social action.

They give much of the burden to the talk of the
watering-place salons, and they study to make the
burden light. They have husbands, it is true; but

when these make their appearance, they do it with
considerate forbearance, and manifest an insouciance
which is as creditable to their education, as
it is to their discretion. As to what their husbands
may be, rumor talks with a lagging tongue, as if
the topic were not worth a trouble; and it is only
on one or two points, not connected with their
profession, or their family, (perhaps not with their
happiness) that public judgment has ever ventured
a decision.

Such ladies are not usually to be found at Union
Hall, but favor sooner the cool corridors of the
United States. They are fond of rides; and will
make their reputations so brilliant, by the character
and earnestness of their cavaliers, as that the
torpidity of a winter's exclusion will leave it undimmed.
They are not overcharged with the fastidiousness
of a prurient modesty, nor have they
any absurd notion of covering their gayety with the
sombre veil of matrimony. Their views are of
public width, and they would adorn our American
life with that prettiness of freedom, which our laws
have left neglected.

There are young ladies, who maintain the title
wonderfully well, and to whom it sticks, from force
of habit, year after year; these are to be found,
with every revolving season, playing the belle and

the peasant. Their attractions multiply by repetition,
and grow by being made familiar. A shade
of scandal will only spice their reputations, and
make their services more desirable in the perfecting
of our summer recreations.

The subject grows, Fritz, though the weather
is wilting. And I must give no farther enumeration
until the quicksilver has gone down, and the
study is more complete.

I pray the patience of those correspondents who
have favored me with their letters. They shall all
be served in due time, and shall receive such attention
as their merit demands.

My letter is short, Fritz, but if I may draw an
opinion from the trial of most of our book-writers
and pamphleteers, its brevity will be its best ornament.