Probably no seaside watering-place known to the polite world contrasts so strongly with the typical American watering-place as does this Welsh resort. Not at Brighton, not at Biarritz, not at any German spa, will the tourist find so complete a contrast in every respect to Long Branch or Newport. Tenby is almost _sui generis_. A watering-place without a wooden building in it would of itself be a novelty to an American. Our summer cities consist wholly of wooden buildings, but Tenby, from the point of its ponderous pier, where the waves break as on a rock, to the tip of its church-spire, which the clouds kiss, is every inch of stone. Welshmen will not build even so insignificant a structure as a pig-sty out of boards if there are stones to be had. I have seen stone pig-sties in Glamorganshire with walls a foot thick and six hundred years old. There is not a wooden building in Tenby. The station-buildings are "green" (as the Welsh say of a new house), but they are solid stone.
Alighting from the railway-carriage in which you have come down from London, you are greeted with no clamor of bawling hack-drivers and hotel-omnibus men roaring in stentorian tones the names of their various houses. Three or four quiet serving-men in corduroy small-clothes and natty coats touch their hats to you and look in your face inquiringly. They represent the various hotels in Tenby, and at a gesture of assent from you one of them takes your bags, your wraps, whatever you are burdened with, and conducts you to a somewhat antiquated vehicle which bears you to your chosen inn through some gray stony streets, under an ivy-green archway of the ancient town-wall; and as the vehicle draws up at the inn-door the beauty of Tenby lies spread suddenly before you--the lovely bay, the cliffs, the sands, the ruined castle on the hill, the restless sea beyond. A handsome young person in an elaborate toilet as regards her back hair, but not otherwise impressive in attire, comes to the door of the hotel to meet you, and gently inquires concerning your wishes: that you have come to stay in the house is a presumption which no properly constituted young person in Tenby would venture upon without express warrant in words. Receiving information on this point from you, the probability is that she imparts to you in return the information that the house is full. Such, indeed, is the chronic condition of the hotels at Tenby in the season; and unless you have written beforehand and secured accommodations, you are not likely to find them. In the life of a Welsh watering-place hotels do not fill the important place they do in American summer resorts. Nobody lives at an hotel in Tenby. If their stay be longer than a day or two (and very few indeed are they who come to-day and are off to-morrow), visitors inevitably go into lodgings. Such is the custom of the country, and there is no provision for any other, no encouragement to a prolonged stay at an hotel. The result is, that the hotels are in an incessant state of bustle and change: there is a never-intermitting stream of arrivals, who only ask to be made comfortable for a night or two while they are looking for lodgings, and then make way for the next squad. Tenby abounds in lodging-houses, the expenses of which are smaller than hotel expenses, while their comforts are greater, their cares actually less and their good tone unquestionable. The various lodging-house quarters vie with each other in genteel cognomens and aristocratic flavor. The Esplanade is but a row of lodging-houses. The various Terraces, each with a prenomen more graceful than the other, are the same. The windows of Tudor Square and Victoria street, Paragon Place and Glendower Crescent, bloom with invitations to "inquire within." A handsome parlor and bedroom may be had for two pounds a week, and the cost of food and sundries need not exceed two pounds more for two persons moderately fond of good living; which means, at Tenby, the fattest and whitest of fowls, the freshest and daintiest salmon and john dories, the reddest and sweetest of lobsters and prawns. Those who prefer to take a house have every encouragement to do so. A bijou of a furnished cottage, all overrun with vines and flowers, may be had for three pounds a month, the use of plate and linen included. These things are fatal to hotel ambition, for although the hotels are not expensive, from an American point of view, they cannot compete with such figures as these. Hence there is nothing to induce a change in the customs of Tenby, which have prevailed ever since it became a watering-place. Britons do not change their habits without good and valid cause therefor, and no Americans ever come to Tenby, so far as I can learn.