The Argosy — page 79: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THe Ane This Year at Dieppe. 67 | will be the races? The town is full already ; numbers are arriving hourly ; the hotels will be choked inside and out.” The town of Dieppe in itself is not inviting, as everybody knows. Two or three long, straggling streets—nothing to see in them worth seeing but the ivory shops, and a few short side-streets, with widé gutters running down their midst. It is ill-drained—I suppose not drained at all, in point of fact; and the smells that come up from the open trap-holes in hot weather, or before rain, are something to fly away from. But the Plage is beautiful. An extensive green plain, long and wide, intersected with paths and a few benches ; the large expanse of sea stretching out before it, and the palace-like hotels, whose charges are said to be fabulous, making the background. The Casino! Dieppe is nothing without the casino. It is the insti- tution of the place—Dieppe proper. Visitors (taking them as a whole) live in the casino, so to say, and in it alone. It was between three and four o’clock on the Saturday afternoon, that I made my début there—if the word may be allowed in such a sense. Going through the rooms to the open terrace beyond, into the midst of some English friends sitting there quietly, it seemed to me, in very truth, that I had suddenly passed into an unknown world, never before heard or dreamt of. I felt bewildered. I could do nothing but sit still and gaze. My kind friends talked to me in vain; I answered at random, unable to hear or to think, seeing nothing but the strange sight before me. Take all the fashion-plates that have been issued during the last six or eight months, whether in Paris or London; cut out the figures and set them up on end before you, and I fearlessly and truthfully assert that you would not see fashions so outrageously grotesque as those that were passing before my eyes at the Etablissement of Dieppe, at this, the daily promenade. To attempt to describe them would be for me futile ; a court milliner could not do it. They were new to the world: of a Style that had not been worn in our days. Short robes with two skirts, the under one in vandykes, the upper one of marvellous cuts and angles, that the eye could not understand in a day’s gaze. Long robes a queue, very ugly; or with sweeping trains, very elegant. Satin petticoats trailing the gravel, embroidered white muslin skirts flowing over them. some of the toilettes were beautiful, some hideous: a few were white, others comprised all the colours of the rainbow. Look at Mademoiselle there! She is twenty-seven, if she’s a day, and she is dressed en bébé. A pretty white muslin frock, with a little flounce ; a short-waisted full bodice, in gathers ; simple sleeves, tied up ; no crinoline, a white satin sash tied behind, and low black shoes, with large bows: all exactly as we should dress a baby. It makes Mademoiselle look fifteen, at the most; and the little hat, perched on the fore part of the head, resting on the nose, partially hides the face, GOMMGIOO <S (CO)