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Updated: May 15, 2025
Digue, dingue, donne L'heure sonne Digue, dingue, di.... C'est midi. When the song was finished I went into my bedroom and made myself into a belle dame for lunch. My aunt had followed me. "But, my dear," said she, "you are mad to think I am going to eat with all these workmen. Certainly in all Paris there is no one but yourself who would do such a thing." "No, no, Aunt; it is all right."
And I was so foolish as to fancy there was a depth of feeling in his tone and manner! I am sure he is all that is good and generous; but the falling in love is no doubt a national failing." She remembered the impertinent advances of divers unknown foreigners whom she had encountered on pier or digue, kursaal or beach, in the frequently unprotected hours of her continental wanderings.
To walk from Nieuport Ville to the Digue de Mer at Nieuport-Bains is to pass in a few minutes from the old Flanders, the home of so much romance, the scene of so many stirring deeds, from the market-places with the narrow gables heaped up in piles around them, from the belfries soaring to the sky, from the winding streets and the narrow lanes, in which the houses almost touch each other from the tumble-down old hostelries, from the solemn aisles where the candles glimmer and the dim red light glows before the altar, from the land of Bras-de-Fer, and Thierry d'Alsace, and Memlinc, and Van Eyck, and Rubens, the land which was at once the Temple and the Golgotha of Europe, into the clear, broad light of modern days.
One part of the beach in front of the digue is crowded with bathing-machines, and it is said that during one day in August a few years ago no fewer than 7,000 people bathed. Ostend, however, is not a nice place to stay in. In summer it is noisy, and full of people who care for nothing but eating, drinking, dressing up, and gambling.
The front rooms on the sea are charming, but the back ones directly under the cliff with no air or sun, are not very tempting. There is a fine digue and raised broad walk all along the sea front, with flowers, seats, and music stand.
The air, indeed, is perfect, and there are fine views from the digue and the dunes of the island of Walcheren, Flushing, and the estuary of the Scheldt; but the place was evidently begun with no definite plan: the dunes were ruthlessly levelled, and the result is a few unlovely streets, and a number of detached houses standing in disorder amidst surroundings from which everything that was picturesque has long since departed.
All day and all night boats are coming in and going out: The English steamers with their peculiar, dull, penetrating whistle that one hears at a great distance steam tugs that take passengers and luggage out to the Atlantic liners, lying just outside the digue yachts, pilot boats, easily distinguished by a broad white line around their hulls, and a number very conspicuously printed in large black letters on their white sails, "baliseurs," smart-looking little craft that take buoys out to the various points where they must be laid.
On the top another solid bed of branches is laid down, and the whole is first covered with concrete, and then with bricks or tiles, while the top of the digue, at the edge of the seaward slope, is composed of heavy blocks of stone cemented together and bound by iron rivets. The finest and longest digue is that which extends from Ostend for about nine miles. It is a good place for bicycle rides.
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