Having on some occasions during, I admit, the spring and autumn, spent
a few days at Pinemouth on the South-Western Coast, and having had
the enormous value of the place as an ultra salubrious health-restorer
most energetically impressed upon me from time to time by such
thoroughly disinterested persons as local members of the medical
profession who, as a rule, took their holiday during the summer
season, merely because they couldn't get the opportunity at any other
time--a fact in itself going a long way (as they themselves did--to
Switzerland and elsewhere) to prove the peculiar healthfulness of this
seaside resort, and the place having been further highly recommended
(by residents who, having houses to let for the summer, were quite
disinterested) as quiet and delightfully refreshing, and having, in
fact, heard all that could be said in favour of Pinemouth as a Summer
Resort by those who had only the welfare of their dear friends at
heart (and if such interest did put a little ready capital in their
pockets through taking their dear friends' houses--where is the
harm?), I, ROBINSON CRUSOE, Jun., "The Man of the First of August"
(that being the beginning of my tenancy) determined on trying
Pinemouth (a name that I find spelt with unpardonable familiarity in
some local guide-books, thus--"P'm'th"--an abbreviation leaving the
name scarcely a shred of its original character), and when I say so
boldly, "_I_ determined," any other Paterfamilias will at once know
what _that_ means.
[Illustration: Mr. Robinson Crusoe, Junior, deciding on where to spend
his few weeks' holiday.]
Of course, directly "P'm'th" was decided upon, some of our friends
shook their heads, others observed dubiously that "they _had_ heard it
wasn't such a _very_ bad place in August," while the majority bade me
farewell with forced cheeriness, expressed the heartiest hopes for our
health and happiness in the new climate we were going to try, and in
a general way our excellent friends and acquaintances were almost as
enthusiastic and hopeful on the score of our enjoying ourselves
and benefiting by the change, as were the American acquaintances of
_Martin Chuzzlewit_ and _Mark Tapley_ when those two emigrants were
starting for the great dismal swamp.
Finding that we had made all our arrangements, and had actually signed
and sealed the bond, and delivered ourselves over into the hands of
the "P'm'thians," our friends, who, as we subsequently ascertained,
had never been near the place, or, if they had, had been there at a
hopelessly wrong time, and had pitched their tents in an utterly wrong
quarter, made ill-disguised attempts at speaking gently and kindly of
"P'm'th," allowing that possibly "it might not, at this time of year,
be so hot as had been represented,"--a theory which, like one recently
put forward by a tender-hearted theologian, was immediately placed
in the _Index Expurgatorius_ by the Inevitable Uncompromising One who
professed a thorough knowledge of the climate, and who asserted that
in this particular year, when the Summer had been abnormally hot and
was going to be more abnormally hot than ever, we should find "P'm'th"
absolutely unbearable.
But, as the adventurous hero of "_Excelsior_" would listen to nobody,
so I (representing "we") refused to hear the prognosticators of woe,
and adhered manfully to my purpose. In the very hottest season, when
the thermometer in every London house went so high that it had to be
deluged with wholesome antiseptic Condyment, and doors and windows
were everywhere left open so as to obtain a through draught,--for
people lived on draughts of all sorts in those doggiest of dog-days
and on little else,--we, that is all the CRUSOES, were seated in our
garden looking on to the heather and the sea, open to all the winds
of heaven--and getting one of them, the south-east, blowing softly and
sweetly across our south-western height. Gracefully and gratefully
we arose to play tennis, and sat down again after the evening meal
to take our coffee and cigarettes. Bless thee, P'm'th! thou art
delicious! thou art refreshing! Hot in the hottest August ever known
thou certainly art, that is, at midday, down in your valley and your
town! But up above on the Western Heights, looking across an expanse
of purple and yellow, uninclosed by firs, pines, or larches, on to
the broad expanse of the deep blue sea, thou art all my fancy painted
thee, thou art cucumbery in thy coolness! and as I think of Royat and
Aix-les-Bains I smile a smile of gentle pitying wonder, and almost
feel inclined to piously pray for all poor bodies suffering from the
canicular heat, whether London doth still hold them in its toils, or
stifling, smelling Continental cities, are causing them to sigh for
the balmy breezes of Old England.
Thus then is it that "P'm'th"--that is "Pinemouth" in its abbreviated
form--is the place about which, as being comparatively unknown at this
season of the year, I beg to offer to _Mr. Punch_, and through him to
the world at large, for the ultimate benefit of way-worn travellers,
a few notes representing an uncommonly pleasant experience, which, by
the kind permission of "_Mr. P'n'h_" aforesaid, shall be "continued in
our next" by
"THE MAN IN THE SOUTH."
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