The Decline of Bathing

by H. F. ELLIS

I SHALL not go further into the sea today. I shall lie here, with my feet in the ocean and my elbows on shore, feeling aggrieved.

This has nothing to do with advancing years. I still have the use of my arms and legs, numb though the latter are at this moment; and I am more like a fish in the water, even now, than I am out of it. No, the reason I do not care to wade out and breast the waves is that I have taken a violent and solidly grounded dislike to the bathers already out there breasting them. There are too many of them, for one thing. For another, their attitude towards the sea seems to me to be all wrong: it is frivolous and lacking in respect. Many of them cavort. Third and most damaging indictment, they affront the surface of the ocean with a variety of unseemly contraptions — of the kind that very young children play with in their bedtime baths, but larger. Experience tells me that if I try to swim peaceably about in this seething area I am likely to be splashed by strangers, or even struck on the head by a rubber ball flung by some gray beard to his mate.

So I shall lie here at the edge of the ripples, cold, sullen, and aggrieved, and brood on the decline and fall of British bathing.

There was a time when the entry of the sea-bat her into the water was an affair of dignity and decorum, quite unlike the onset of the shrieking family who have just swept past me carrying an inflated rubber hippopotamus. I am thinking of the era of the bathing machine, that superb Victorian conveyance that carried the bather right into the water and spared him — and, more important, her — the embarrassment of walking across the sands with the ankles showing. The era lasted, I am glad to say, into Edwardian days, and I can just recall, as in a vague dream, the long row of these wheeled henhouses that used to stand securely on the sand above the high-tide mark, the old horse that dragged them axle-deep into the sea, the steps that were let down at one end to afford a dignified access to the water.

Whether the business of undressing proceeded while the vehicle was actually in motion, or was completed before the journey down the beach began, I cannot now remember. It is a matter for the social historian. Certainly there was some means, when all was ready, of attracting the attention of the attendant, who thereupon let down the steps and unbarred the door. It was a great moment, never experienced by these modern bathers, when (after giving the man time to withdraw to a respectful distance) one unhitched the inner fastenings of the door and threw it wide. One was already at sea! Nothing met the eager gaze except the illimitable vista of sea and sky framed in t he opening. The sunlight was dazzling after the sealed gloom of the machine, and the little waves made gentle plashings against the wheels.

Yes, but where was the horse? The solution must be that the vehicle, after entering the water, described a half-circle, bringing the horse inshore to be unshipped for its next task, and presenting the rear of the machine (with door) to the horizon.

It was not only in the mode of entry into the water that the machine age excelled the present. Our costumes, too, were more dignified. We wore knee-length bathing dresses — “beachwear” was not a term in use in pre-1914 days — but I doubt very much whether men went in for horizontal stripes quite so generally as humorous drawings of the time would lead one to suppose; a plain dark blue, buttoning on the shoulders, is my recollection of the mode for men of taste and discretion. Of women’s costumes I can recall no more than that they were dark, discreet, and floated to the surface in astonishing quantities whenever, which was rarely, their owners became immersed to the waist. The effect of this billowing out in the water could be flowerlike, but generally wasn’t.

Thus clad, we stepped down boldly but quietly into the sea, clinging to a rope attached to the machine which at once lent confidence against the assaults of the waves and kept us in touch, like the thread in the Labyrinth, with base. These ropes, as I remember, were not very long, but no one complained about that; we were not ambitious, and in any case the foolhardy could always let go.

After the era of the bathing machine came the era of the hut. In the upheaval of the First World War the last of the old wheeled machines passed away — perhaps the Army found a use for them and in their place stood row upon row of little wooden cabins. These huts — known as bathhouses across the Atlantic and by no means to be confused with the miniature bungalows, verandaed and fitted up with cupboards and even iceboxes, of the present day — were sited at some distance from the sea, for in the general breakdown of moral standards that followed the war men, and even women, did not scruple to walk openly right across the beach, clad only in bathing dresses covered by a simple wrap and with rope-soled shoes on their feet.

Huts — or bathhouses — not unlike the ones of which I am speaking can still be seen today, generally at the more popular resorts where they are hired out to the shyer folk by corporation employees. But the essence of the between-the-wars hut was that it was privately owned, or rented for the season, and that the key to it was regularly left behind at the house owing to a misunderstanding. This key business led to recriminations and the waste of much time while the family stood round holding picnic baskets and arguing; but the difficulty was solved after the first fortnight by hiding the key overnight under a flat stone. Thereafter, with the key immediately available, there was no delay. We were able to get slraight on with the argument as to whelher the men or women of the party were to have first use of the hut.

The average hut measured internally perhaps six feet by four and was simply furnished. A plank across the back to form a seat, two or more rusty hooks, part of an old cracked mirror, and a sweepingout brush — these you could count on. Additional obstructions normally present were the clothes of the people who had changed ahead of you, several buckets and spades, quantities of sand, and a surprising number of brothers and cousins undressing simultaneously. It was awkward at times and not an uncommon thing, when you had got one leg of your bathing dress on, to find the other leg-hole already occupied; but these huts had the advantage that, however chilly the day, however cold and gray the sea, you were glad to get out of them.

It has to be admitted that there was some decline in dignity during this era. But our relations with the sea remained, to my mind, correct: friendly but not contemptuous. When we had taken ofl our wraps and shoes at the edge of the dry sand, bundled the shoes in the wraps and laid them down in a neat pile with a stone on top, we walked waist-deep into the water, ducked our heads as a precaution against sunstroke, and swam twenty majestic overarm side strokes straight out towards the horizon. Then we rolled over on our backs and floated. This concluded the bath proper (though some kicked their legs about while floating — fat, baldish men in the main, who were not much liked), and we were at liberty to return to the shallows and lie there with the ripples running over our toes. I do not remember that I was ever, while in this position — It is quite all right, Madam. I am not seriously injured — I do not remember that I was ever, in those days, run over by the outer cover of an old automobile tire.

Our costumes, though less full than in the machine age, were seemly; women’s, for instance, had not yet come in half in the middle; so that we were able, after bathing, to lie decorously on the sands, smoking a cigarette and dreading the moment when we should have to return to the hut, the close atmosphere of discarded towels and the insuperable difficulty of pulling on socks without sitting on a bench on which others, wilh the thoughtlessness of first-comers, had already sat in wet bathing things. There were drawbacks, but they were great days.

In the Hut Era, the number of huts, being finite even at the most popular resorts, controlled the number of people who could bathe at any one lime. No such control operates now. We have reached the era of alfresco bathing.

The word alfresco is not entirely satisfactory. Sea-bathing is inevitably in the open air, in any age. Still, the term must suffice to indicate the change from private to public dressing and undressing on our beaches. Somewhere in the thirties, it must have been, that the British decided to dispense, on all but the most closely controlled stretches of coast, with the cramping restrictions of the hut. The habit spread rapidly, another disruptive war came to give it impetus, until now, on a fine summer day, the whole coastline is dotted with little heaps of discarded clothing. A far cry, this, from the stately days of the horse-drawn bathing machine.

If I object to this alfresco bathing, it is on no prudish grounds; indeed I shall shortly be returning to my own little heap of clothing. I blame it for making the sea too crowded; and to the overpopulation of the sea I attribute the sad lack of resped among bathers in t heir approach to it. One ought — we certainly used — to bathe with a certain sense of awe, raising timid eyes to the vast horizon, conscious of being intruders in this tremendous element. But what if the tremendous element is itself outnumbered? What if the horizon is obscured by a thousand dripping torsos? The bather loses all sense of awe and decency. He becomes overweening. He scoops the sea about and smacks its surface with hideous instruments, after the manner of Xerxes.

What may be called the Marine Appliance is the outward sign of this mistaken attitude towards the sea. The Bathing Machine Era had its rope, certainly, and the Hut Era its water wings; but both were handled with something of reluctance and discarded at the earliest opportunity. Nowadays hardly a bather goes to his task empty-handed. Where the sea is suitable he carries a surfboard; where it is not, he pushes ahead of him into the water such enormities as inflated ducks, rubber rafts, and vast blown-up mattresses. This is to make a mockery of the ocean, and no good can come of it. One has only to remember what happened to Xerxes.

I shall not, then, go further into the sea today.

But tomorrow I may. Or next year. Or perhaps the year after that. For there are signs that a fourth bathing era is under way, the Deep-Sea or Diving Era. There is a move among bathers to equip themselves with flippers and goggles and dive many fathoms below the surface to look for seaweed and to stare into the cold, cruel eyes of octopuses. The movement is spreading fast, and I welcome it.

Of what this may mean, or come to mean, in terms of dressing and undressing fashions, I have no knowledge. It may be that preparations for bathing will be carried out in boats or diving bells rented for the season. But the point seems to me unimportant. What matters is that the great multitude of bathers will be out of sight, hidden away in caves and grottoes, rediscovering their respect for the sea.

I shall not be with them. I shall be wading out waist-deep into the untroubled water and swimming twenty majestic overarm side strokes straight out towards the horizon. Then I shall roll over on my back and float. Perhaps — for, though not fat, I am baldish — I may even kick my legs about a bit.