As likes their mazzards broke for love.
But I should be sorry to believe that there are fewer youngsters to-day
in the West country who “likes their mazzards broke for love” than there
used to be half a century ago.
The Divining-Rod, 21st September 1889.
About a quarter of a century ago, I had the chance of seeing some
experiments in the search for water by the use of “the divining rod” on
a thirsty stretch of the Berkshire chalk range. Oddly enough (what a lot
of odd things there are lying all round us!) at the highest points of
this very range you might come on “dew-ponds,” which never seemed to run
dry, though how the white chalky water got there, or kept there, no
one, I believe, has ever been able to explain from that day to this. But
these “dew-ponds” were of no use, of course, to the cottages scattered
along the hillside, and whoever wanted spring-water, had to go down
about 400 feet for it. Well, I neglected that chance, and ever since
have been regretting it.
My notion of the water-diviner was gathered from Sir Walter’s famous
portrait of Dousterswivel in the _Antiquary_; a fellow “who amongst
fools and womankind talks of the Cabala, the divining-rod, and all the
trumpery with which the Rosicrucians cheated a darker age, and which,
to our eternal disgrace, has in some degree revived in our own.” I was
resolved that the revival should in no case be forwarded by me, and so
lost my opportunity, and have been ever since tantalised by reports of
marvels wrought by the hazel-wand, as to which I was quite at a loss
to form any reasonable opinion. It was with no little satisfaction,
therefore, that I received, and accepted, an invitation to assist at
a water-search about to be undertaken by a diviner of considerable
reputation in the outskirts of Deer Leap Wood, in the parish of Wootton,
Surrey.
This wood, notable even amongst the loveliest of that favoured county,
belongs to the worthy representative of the author of _Sylva_ and the
_Memoirs_, who, having built some excellent cottages on its confines,
desires to find the occupants a good supply of spring-water _in situ_.
Accordingly a group of us, men and women of all ages, and of all
degrees of scepticism--for I doubt if there was a single believer in the
efficacy of the rod, though the squire himself and a friend preserved
a judicious silence--gathered last Friday after breakfast on the lawn
before Wootton House, to await the arrival of the water-doctor, whom the
agent had gone to meet at the station. It was agreed on all hands that a
preliminary test should be applied, and that the lawn on which we stood
offered quite admirable facilities for this purpose. For, more than two
hundred years ago, John Evelyn had diverted a portion of the stream,
which runs down the valley in which the house stands, for the purpose of
making a fountain on the terraces. (Let it be noted in passing, that the
lead-work of that fountain has needed no repair from that day to this!
There _were_ plumbers in those days!) From this fountain two pipes carry
the water into the house, under the lawn on which we stood. Now the lawn
turf is as smooth as a billiard-table, without the slightest indication
of the whereabouts of these pipes, which indeed was only known vaguely
to the squire, and not at all to any one else of those present. If the
divining-rod could discover these, the experiment at “Deer Leap Wood”
might be undertaken with good hope.
Well, the doctor, conducted by the steward, arrived in due course, a
stout middle-aged man, of the stamp of a high-class mechanic; plain and
straightforward in speech, and with no pretence whatever to mystery. In
answer to our questions, he said: “He couldn’t tell how it came about;
but of this he was sure, that he could find springs and running water.
Thirty years ago he was working as a mason at Chippenham, with a Cornish
miner amongst others. He saw this man find water with the rod; had then
tried it himself, and found he could do it. That was all he knew. Any
one*of us might have the same power. Why, two young gentlemen who saw
him working at Warleigh, near Bath, had copied him, and found a spring
right under their father’s library.” We listened, and then proposed that
he should just try about the lawn. He produced a hazel twig shaped like
a Y, the arms, each some eighteen inches long; the point, perhaps,
six inches. I may note, however, that the dimensions can be of no
consequence, for he used at least half a dozen in his trials, cutting
them at random out of the hazel-bush as we walked along, and taking
no measure of any of them. Taking an arm of the Y between the middle
fingers of each hand, he walked across the lawn slowly, stooping
slightly forward, so as to keep the point downwards, about a foot from
the ground. He had not gone a dozen yards before the rod quivered, and
then the point rose at once straight up into the air. “There’s running
water here,” he said, “and close to the surface.” We marked the spot
and followed him, and some twenty-five yards further the point of the
Y again sprang up into the air. The steward, who knew the plans
accurately, was appealed to, and admitted that these were the precise
spots under which the pipes ran. In answer to the suggestion that the
point sprang up by pressure of his fingers, voluntary or involuntary, he
asked two of us to hold the arms beyond his fingers, and see if we could
prevent the point rising. We did so (I being one), and did all we could
to keep it pointed downwards, but it rose in spite of us, and I watched
his hands carefully at the same time and could detect no movement
whatever of the muscles. Then he broke one of the arms, all but the
bark, and still the point rose as briskly as ever. Lastly, he proposed
that each of us should try if we had the power. We did so, but without
success, except that in the case of Mrs. Evelyn and another lady the
point trembled, and seemed inclined, though unable, to rise. He then
took hold of their wrists, and at once it rose, nearly as promptly as
it had done with him. This was enough; and we started in procession, on
ponies, in carriage^, or walking, to Deer Leap Wood, where in the
course of an hour he marked with pegs some half dozen spots, under which
running water will be found at from 70 feet to 100 feet. He did not
pretend to be able to give the exact depth, but only undertook to give
the outside limits. And so we all went back to lunch, and Mullins
took his fee and departed. I know, sir, that you have many scientific
readers, and can picture to myself the smile tinged with scorn with
which they will turn to your next page when they get thus far. Well, I
own that the boring remains to be done, the results of which I hope to
send you in due course. Meantime, let me remind them of a well-known
adventure of one of the most famous of their predecessors towards the
end of last century. Sir Joseph Banks, botanising on the downs on a
cloudless June day, came across a shepherd whom he greeted with the
customary “Fine day,”--“Ees,” was the reply, “but there’ll be heavy rain
yet, afore night.” Sir Joseph passed on unheeding, and got a thorough
drenching before he reached his inn. Next morning he went back, found
the shepherd, and put a guinea in his hand, with “Now, my man, tell me
how you knew there was going to be rain yesterday afternoon.”
“Whoy,” said Hodge, with a grin, “I zeed my ould ram a shovin’ hisself
back’ards in under thuck girt thornin bush; and wenever a doos that
there’ll sartin sure be heavy rainfall afore sundown.”
Note.--Water was found where it was expected by the Diviner, and this
well is now used by the tenants of the Deer Leap Cottages.--October
1895.
Sequah’s “Flower of the Prairie,” Chester, 26th March 1890.
“Why, what on earth can this be?” I asked of the man who stood next me
in the Foregate some ten days ago, as we paused at a crossing to allow
the strange object which had drawn from me the above ejaculation to pass
on, with its attendant crowd. It was a mighty gilded waggon, certainly
fourteen feet long by six feet or seven feet broad. It was drawn by four
handsome bays. On two raised seats at the front sat eight men, English,
I fancy, every man of them, but clad over their ordinary garments in
long leather coats with fringes, such as our familiar Indians wear in
melodrama, and in the broad-brimmed, soft felts of the Western cowboy.
They were all armed with brass instruments and made the old streets
resound with popular airs. Behind these raised seats, in the body of
the waggon, rode some half dozen, including three strapping brown men,
Indians, I fancy they pose for, but they looked to me more like the
half-castes whom one sees on the Texan and Mexican ranches on the Bio
Grande. They also were clad in fringed leather coats, and wore sombreros
over their long black locks. The sides of the waggon, where not gilt,
were panelled with mirrors, on which were emblazoned the Stars and
Stripes and other coloured devices. Altogether, the thing seemed to me
well done in its way, whatever it might mean; and I turned inquiringly
to my neighbour and repeated my question, as the huge gilded van and
its jubilant followers passed away down the station road. “Oh! ’tis the
‘Merikin chap, as cures folks’s rheumatics and draws their teeth.”
“He must draw something more than their teeth,” I said, “to keep up all
that show.” My neighbour grinned assent. “He’ve drawed pretty nigh all
the loose money as is going hereabouts already,” he said as we parted.
“One more quack to fleece the poor,” I thought, as I walked on. “Well,
anyhow, they get a show for their shillings; that van beats Barnum!”
In this mind I reached the vicarage of one of our biggest city parishes
to which I was bound. “I don’t know about quack,” said the vicar, when
I had detailed my adventure on the way, using that disparaging phrase;
“but this I do know, that I have given over writing certificates for
my poor from downright shame, the demand is so great.” And then he
explained that the “medicineman,” whose stage name was Sequah, made no
charge to any patient who brought a clergyman’s certificate of poverty;
that the van had now been in the town above a week; and at first he,
the vicar, had given such certificates freely, both for treatment
(tooth-drawing) and for the medicines, but now refused except in the
case of the very poorest. No! not because Sequah was an impostor; on the
contrary, he had done several noteworthy cures--at any rate temporary
cures--on some of the vicar’s own parishioners: notably in the case of
one old man who had been drawn up to the van in a wheel-chair. He had
had rheumatism for two years, which had quite disabled him, and was in
great pain when he got on the platform. After he had been treated he
walked down the steps without help, and wheeled his chair home himself.
Unluckily, Sequah had advised him to get warm woollen underclothing,
and on his pleading that he had not the money to buy it, had given him
a sovereign. This so elated him that he felt quite a new man, and could
not help breaking his sovereign on the way home to give the new man a
congratulatory glass at a favourite pot-house. This had thrown him back,
and his knees were a little stiff again, but the pain had not returned
even in this case.
After such testimony from a thoroughly trustworthy and matter-of-fact
witness, I resolved to see this strange thing with my own eyes, and
went off straight from the vicarage to the scene of action, to which
the vicar directed me. This was an old tan-yard about half an acre in
extent, and was full of people when I arrived, the space immediately
round the waggon being densely crowded. It was drawn up in the middle of
the plot. The eight brass-bandsmen had wheeled round so as to look down
from their raised benches on the floor of the waggon, on which was a
large leather chair. In front of the chair, speaking to the crowd
from the end of the waggon, stood a tall figure, in a finer kind of
leather-fringed coat, ornamented with rows of blue, red, and white
beads. At first glance I thought it was a woman from the fineness of
the features, and masses of long, light hair falling on the shoulders. A
second glance, however, showed me that it was a man, and a vigorous and
muscular one too. He was explaining that the medicines he was going
to sell presently were not “scientific,” but “natural” medicines,
“compounded of the water of a Californian spring and certain botanic
ingredients”! I will not trouble you with a list of all the ailments
they will cure if taken steadily and in sufficient doses, but get on
at once to the performance. Having finished his speech, he put on his
sombrero, took up a pair of forceps from a table on which a row of
them were displayed, and stood by the chair. Upon this, advanced an
apparently endless line of men, women, and children, marshalled by the
Indians who stood at the foot of the steps. One by one they came up, sat
down in the chair, passed under Sequah’s hands, and descended the steps
on the other side of the waggon into the wondering crowd, while the band
discoursed vigorous and continuous music. I watched him draw at least
fifty teeth in less than as many minutes. The patient just sat down,
opened his mouth, pointed to the peccant tooth, and it was out in most
cases before he could wink. There were perhaps three or four cases (of
adults) in which things did not go quite so smoothly, and one--that of a
young woman, who seized her bonnet and rushed down the steps in evident
pain and rage--after which he stopped the band, and explained to us that
her tooth was so decayed that he had had to break the stump in the jaw.
This he had done, and should have taken the pieces out without causing
any further pain, if she had just waited a few more seconds. There are
rumours flying round that the infirmary is crowded daily with patients
in agonies from broken fangs which have been left in by Sequah. On the
other hand, two of our doctors whom I have met admit that he is a very
remarkable “extractor,” and has first-rate instruments.
There were still crowds waiting their turn when he finished his
tooth-drawing for the day, and announced that he would now treat a case
of rheumatism. Thereupon, an elderly man--who gave his name and address,
and stated that he had been rheumatic for twelve years, unable to walk
for two, and was now in great pain--was carried up the steps and put in
the chair. Then buffalo-robes were brought by the Indians, two of
whom held them up so as to conceal Sequah and the third, a rubber,
who remained inside with the patient. Then the brass band struck up
boisterously, the buffalo-robe screen was agitated here and there, and a
strong and very pungent smell (not unlike hartshorn) spread all round.
I timed them, and at the end of eighteen minutes the buffalo-robes
were lowered, and there was the old man dressed again and seated in the
chair. The band stopped. Sequah asked the old man if he felt any pain
now. He replied, “No,” and then was told to walk to the front of the
platform, which he did; then to get down the ladder, walk round the
waggon amongst the crowd, and come up on the other side, which he did,
looking, I must say, as astonished as I was, at his own performance.
Then six or seven men, mostly elderly, came up and declared that they
had been similarly treated, and were wonderfully better, some of them
quite cured and at work again. Then Sequah invited any person who had
been treated by him or taken his medicines and were none the better, to
come up into the waggon and tell us about it, as that was their proper
place and not below. This offer seemed quite _bona fide_, but it did
not impress me, as I doubt whether any protesting patient would have had
much chance of ascending the steps, which were kept by the Indians and
their able-bodied confederates. No one answering, two big portmanteaus
were brought up, out of which he began to sell his medicines at a dollar
(4s.) the set--two bottles and two small packets. The rush to be served
began, people crushing and struggling to get near enough to hand up
their hats or caps with 4s. in them, which were returned with the
medicines in them. I watched for at least ten minutes, when, there
being apparently no end to the purchases, I strolled away, musing on the
strange scene, and wondering what the attraction can be in the Bohemian
life which could induce a man of this evident power to wander about
the world in a gilded waggon, in a ridiculous costume, and talking
transparent clap-trap, to sell goods which apparently want no lies
telling about them.
I may add that I went again last Saturday, when there was even a greater
crowd, and an older and more severe case of rheumatism was treated with
quite as great (apparent) success.
French Popular Feeling, 15th August 1890.
I doubt if any of your readers has less sympathy than I with the
yearning to go back twenty, thirty, or forty years (as the case may be),
which seems to be a note of contemporary literature, and therefore, I
take it, of the average mind of the men and women of our day, who have
passed out of their first youth. “The Elixir of Life,” which Bulwer
dreamed and wrote of, which should restore youth, with its bounding
pulses and golden locks, its capacity for physical enjoyment, and for
building castles in Spain, I think I may say with confidence I would
not drink four times a day, with twenty minutes’ promenade between the
glasses (as I am just now drinking of the _source Cosar_ here), even
if an _elixir vito source_ were to come bubbling up to-morrow in this
enchanting Auvergne valley, and our English doctor here at Royat--known
to all readers of Mr. _Punch’s_ “Water Course”--were to put it
peremptorily on my treatment-paper to-morrow morning. It is not surely
the “_good fellows_ whose beards are gray,” who sigh over the departure
of muscular force, and sure quickness of eye and nerve, which enabled
them in years gone by to jump five-barred gates or get down to
leg-shooters. They are glad to see the boys doing these things, and
rejoicing in them; but, for themselves, do not desire any more to jump
five-barred gates or get down to leg-shooters. They have learned the
wise man’s lesson, that there is a time for all things, and that
those who linger on life’s journey and fancy they can still occupy the
pleasant roadside places after their part of the column has passed on
ahead, will surely find themselves in the way of, and be shouldered out
by, the next division, without a chance of being able to regain their
place in the line, side by side with old comrades and contemporaries.
But it is one thing to fall out of the line of march of one’s own
accord, from an unwise hankering after roadside pleasures, and quite
another to have to fall out because one can no longer keep one’s old
place in the column by reason of failing wind, or muscle, or nerve;
and the man of sense who feels his back stiffening, or his feet getting
tender, will do well to listen to such hints betimes, and betake himself
at once to whatever place or regimen holds out the best hope of enabling
him to keep step once more, till the day is fairly over and the march
done. It is for this reason, at any rate, that I find myself at Royat,
from which I have been assured by more than one trustworthy friend who
has tested the waters, that I shall return after three weeks “with new
tissues,” and “fit to fight for my life.” I don’t see any prospect
of having to fight for my life in my old age, though one can’t be too
confident with the new Radicalism looming up so menacingly, and am very
well content with my old tissues, if they can’ only be got into fair
working order again, of which I already begin to think there is good
prospect here, though my experience of the _sources_ “Eugénie” and
“Cæsar” is as yet not a week old.
It is more than twenty years since I have written to you from France
over this signature, and since that time I have only been once in Paris,
for two days on business. The gay city is much less changed than I
expected to find it, so far as one can judge from a drive across it from
the Gare de l’Ouest to the Gare de Lyon, and a stroll (after depositing
luggage at the latter station) along the Rue de Rivoli and the Quais,
and through the streets of the old city. The clearance which has left
an open space in front of Notre Dame, so that one can get a good view
of the western front, seemed to me the most noteworthy improvement. The
great range of public buildings and offices which have been added to
the Louvre are stately and impressive, but cannot make up for
the disappearance of the Tuileries. The Eiffel Tower is a great
disappointment. All buildings should be either beautiful or useful; but
it is neither, and only seems to dwarf all the other buildings. But one
change impressed me grievously. Where are all the daintily dressed women
and children gone to? Perhaps the world of fashion may be out of town;
but there must be some two millions of people left in Paris, a quarter
of them at least well-to-do citizens, and able to give as much care as of
old to their toilets. Nevertheless, I assure you, I sought in vain for
one really dainty figure such as one used to meet by the score in every
street. Can twenty years of the true Republic have made La Belle France
dowdy? It is grievous to think of it, and I hope to be undeceived before
I get back amongst the certainly better got-up women of my native land.
For my nine hours’ journey south, I bought a handful of the cheap
illustrated papers--_Le Grelot, Le Troupier_, and others--which seem to
be as much the daily intellectual fare of the French travelling public
as (I regret to say) _Tit-Bits_ and its congeners are, at any rate in
my part of England. Of course it is always difficult to know what “the
people” are thinking or caring about; but to get at what they read must
be not a bad test. A perusal of these certainly surprised me favourably,
especially in this respect, that they were almost entirely free from
the pruriency which is so generally supposed to be the characteristic of
modern French literature.
I wish I could speak half as favourably of the attitude of France, so
far as these journals disclose it, towards her neighbours; but this is
about as bad as it can be, touchy, jealous, and unfair, all round. Take,
for instance, the _Troupier_, which is specially addressed to the
Army. The cartoon represents the “Grand Jeu de Massacre,” at which all
passers-by are invited to join free of charge. The _jeu_ consists of
throwing at a row of puppets, citizens of Alsace-Lorraine, in which
a brutal German soldier is indulging, while the French “Ministre
des Affaires (qui lui sont) Etrangères” slumbers peacefully on a
neighbouring seat. But we come off at least as badly as Germany. In
a vigorous leader, entitled “Une Reculade,” on the Zanzibar Question,
after a very bitter opening against England--“il n’y a guère de pays qui
n’ait été roulé dupé et volé par elle,”--the _Troupier_ breaks into a
song of triumph over the backing-down of England, “flanquée d’Allemagne
et de ses alliés,” before the resolute attitude of France. “Cette
reculade,” it ends, “de nos ennemis indique suffisamment que La France a
repris la place et le rang qui lui conviennent, et qu’elle est de
taille à se faire respecter partout et par tous. C’est tout ce que nous
desirions.” In all commercial and industrial matters we are equally
grasping and unscrupulous. There seems to be just now a great stir
in the sardine industry, and, so far as I can make out, English and
American Companies seem to be competing for a monopoly of that savoury
little fish. It is, however, upon the English “Sardine Union Company,
Limited”--“qui s’appelle en France, Société Générale de l’Industrie
Sardinière de France”--that the vials of journalistic wrath are being
emptied. “Sept polichinelles,” it would seem, have subscribed for one
share each, and the whole scheme is utterly rotten. Nevertheless, this
bogus Company threatens to buy up all the sardine manufactories
in France at fancy prices, and, the control being in England,
will manufacture there all the metal boxes, and will build all the
fishing-boats over there, “au détriment de nos constructeurs Français,”
and so on, and so on. I was getting quite melancholy over all these
onslaughts on my native country, when I came upon a topic which
alone seems to excite the petit-journaliste more than the sins of the
long-toothed Englishman--viz. those of priests and their followers and
surroundings. Here is a comic example, over which the Grelot foams
in trenchant and sarcastic but incredibly angry sentences. A Belgian
Council has decided to divide the 500 fr. which it has voted to the
“Institut Pasteur,” the vote being “pour M. Pasteur et pour St. Hubert.”
This remarkable vote was carried on the pleading of a Deputy, who, after
paying homage to M. Pasteur, added: “C’est un grand homme qui a opéré
des cures merveilleuses; seulement il y a un autre grand homme, qui
depuis onze cent soixante-trois années a opéré des miracles, c’est St.
Hubert--M. Pasteur devra travailler longtemps avant d’en arriver là.”
I am afraid you will have no room for more than one of the scathing
sentences in which the writer tosses this unlucky vote backwards and
forwards: “M. Pasteur acceptera-t-il de partager les 500 fr. avec St.
Hubert (adresse inconnue), ou St. Hubert refusera-t-il de partager avec
M. Pasteur (adresse connue)?--‘That is the question/ comme disait le
nommé Shakespeare.”
It was in the midst of such instructive if not entirely pleasant
reading, that I arrived at Clermont, the old capital of Auvergne, by far
the most interesting town I have been in this quarter of a century,
not excepting Chester. From thence, one comes up to Roy at, about three
miles, in an electric tramway, or by ’bus or cab.
Royat les Bains, 23rd August 1890.
Some thirty years ago, more or less, I remember reading with much
incredulous amusement Sir Francis Head’s “Bubbles of the Brunnen.”
It was in the early days of the Saturday Review, when the infidel
Talleyrand gospel of surtout jooint de zèle was being preached to young
England week by week in those able but depressing columns. I, like the
rest of my contemporaries, was more or less affected by the cold water
virus, and was certainly inclined to look from the superior person
standpoint on what I could not but regard as the outpourings of the
second childhood of an eccentric septuagenarian, who was really asking
us to believe that the Schwalbach waters were as miraculously potent as
the thigh-bone of St. Glengulphus, of which is it not written in _The
In-goldsby Legends_:--
And cripples, on touching his fractured _os femoris_,
Threw down their crutches and danced a quadrille.
I need scarcely say to you, sir, that it is many years since I have been
thoroughly disabused of this depressing heresy; but perhaps one never
quite recovers from such early demoralisation. At any rate, now that I
find myself approaching Sir Francis’s age, and much in his frame of mind
when he blew his exhilarating bubbles, I can’t quite make up my mind to
turn myself loose, as he did, and in Lowell’s words, “pour out my hope,
my fear, my love, my wonder,” upon you and your readers. The real fact,
however, stated in plain (Yankee) prose is, that Schwalbach (I have been
there) “is not a circumstance” to this refuge for the victim of gout,
rheumatism, eczema, dyspepsia, and I know not how many more kindred
maladies, amongst the burnt-out volcanoes of the Department Puy-de-Dome.
Nevertheless, you may fairly say, and I should agree, that my ten days’
experience of the effect of the waters is scarcely sufficient to make
me a trustworthy witness as to the healing properties of these springs.
Twenty-one days is the prescribed course, and as I am as yet but half
through, I will not “holloa till I am out of the wood,” but will try in
the first place to give you some idea of this Royat les Bains and its
surroundings.
Let us look out from this third-floor window at which I am writing, on
the highest guest-floor of the topmost hotel in Royat, to which a happy
chance (or my good angel, if I have one) led me on my arrival. I look
out across a narrow valley, from three to four hundred yards wide, upon
a steep hill which forms its opposite side. They say this hill is a
burnt-out volcano. However that may be, it is now clothed with vineyards
on all but the almost precipitous places where the rock peeps out. On
the highest point, against the sky-line, stands out a small white house,
calling itself the Hôtel de l’Observatoire, from which there must be a
magnificent view; but how it is to be reached I have not yet learned,
for there is no visible road or footpath, and the peasants object to
one’s attempting the ascent through the vineyards. The valley winds up
round this hill, taking a turn to the north, our side widening out and
sweeping back behind Royat Church and village, to which the retreating
hill behind forms a most picturesque background. For, on the lower
slope, just above the houses, are stretches of bright green meadow,
interspersed amongst irregular clumps of oak; above this comes a
brown-red belt of rough ground, growing heather and wild strawberries;
and, again above that, all along the brow, are dense pine woods. The
constant changes of colour which this southern sun brings out all day
long on this hillside make it difficult to break away from one’s window
and descend to the _établissement_ to drink waters and take baths.
This institution lies down at the bottom of the valley I have been
describing, some 200 feet below this window, and 150 feet below the
broad terrace which is thrown out from the ground-floor of this hotel.
From the terrace a rough zigzag path leads down to the brook, which
rushes down from Royat village in a succession of tiny waterfalls,
sending up to us all day the murmur of running water. On reaching the
brook’s bank, we have about one hundred yards to walk by its side, when,
crossing a good road which runs round it, we reach the low wall of
the park, in which lies the bathing establishment. From this point the
electric tram-cars run to Clermont, carrying backwards and forwards
for two sous baigneurs and holiday-folk enough, I should say, to pay
handsome dividends. This park occupies the whole breadth of the valley,
pushing back the houses on either side against the hillsides. Its main
building, a handsome structure, built of lava, with red-tiled roof,
contains all the separate baths and a _piscine_, or swimming bath,
besides a good-sized hall for sanitary gymnastics, and a _salle
d’escrime_, in which a professor instructs pupils daily in fencing and
_le boxe_. The broad path runs from top to bottom of this park, having
this _établissement_ building on its left or northern side, and on its
right two parallel terraces, one above the other. On the lower of
these is the great _source_, the “Eugénie,” which bubbles up here in
magnificent style, sending up some millions of gallons daily. Over the
Eugénie _source_ is a pavilion, with open sides and striped red and
white curtains. A second pavilion on the same terrace, a little lower
down, is devoted to the band, which plays every afternoon for two or
three hours; and below that again, the casino. On the second or upper
terrace are a few favoured _châlet_ shops, for the sale of books,
pictures, photographs, and the pottery and _bijouterie_ of Auvergne.
Then, above again, comes the road which encloses the park, on the
opposite side of which are the row of large hotels built against the
rocky side of the valley, and communicating at the back from their upper
stories with the road which runs up to Royat village. The rest of the
park is laid out in lawns and garden-beds, full of bright flowers and
walks, amongst which are found three other sources--the Cæsar, the St.
Mart, and the St. Victor, each of which has its small drinking-pavilion.
In front of these several pavilions and along the terraces are a
plentiful supply of seats, and chairs which you can carry about to any
spot you may select under the shade of the plane-trees and acacias
which line the terraces and walks, with weeping-willows, chestnuts, and
poplars happily interspersed here and there. The abundant water-supply
which the brook brings down is well utilised, so that the whole
park, some six acres in extent, is kept as fresh and green, and the
flower-beds as luxuriant and bright with colour, as if it were in dear,
damp England. At the bottom of the park, a handsome viaduct of arches,
built of lava, spans the valley, seeming to shut Royat in from the
outer world, and beyond, the valley broadens out into a wide plain, with
Clermont, the capital of Auvergne, in the foreground, and beyond the
city, stretching right away to Switzerland, a splendid sea (as it were)
of corn and maize and vines and olives, the richest, it is said, in the
whole of _la belle_ France. It is stated in all the guidebooks, and by
trustworthy residents, that on a clear day you may see Mont Blanc from
Royat, but as yet I have not been lucky enough.
Unless I have failed altogether in describing the view which lies
constantly before me--from the pine-clad hillside over Royat village,
with its gray church and white red-roofed houses to the west, away down
over the park and surrounding hotels and shops, and viaduct and city and
plain to the far east--you can now fancy what it must be in the early
morning, when the light mist is lying along the hillsides until the sun
has had time to dispose of the clouds in the upper air, or at night,
when the clear sky is thick with stars, and the Northern Lights flame up
behind the silent volcano opposite this Hôtel de Lyon. There is no place
on earth, from the back-slums of great cities to the mountain-peak
or mid-ocean, to which early morns and evening twilights do not bring
daily, or almost daily, some touch of the beauty of light-pictures which
sun and moon and stars paint for us so patiently, whether we heed them
or no; but to get them in their full perfection, one should be able
to look at them in the light, dry, warm air of such places as these
volcanic highlands of Auvergne.
And now for the life we lead in this air and scenery. Every morning
at six I arrive at the Cæsar spring and drink two glasses, with twenty
minutes’ interval between them. Then I climb the hill to _café au lait_
and two small rolls and butter on the terrace, which comes off about
7 A.M., as soon as the last of our party of four has come up from the
park. Rest till eleven follows, when we have _déjeûner à la fourchette_,
which, as we sit down about a hundred, lasts for an hour. In the
afternoon I drink two glasses at the St. Mart spring, and between them
have twenty minutes in the _piscine_, which is my great treat of
the day. Going punctually at two, when the ladies surrender this
swimming-bath to the men, I almost always get it to myself, and enjoy
it as I used to do years ago, when my blood was warm enough, lying about
amongst the waves on the English coast, and letting them just tumble
and toss me about as they would. This water comes warm from the Eugénie
spring daily, and is so buoyant that one can lie perfectly still on the
top of it with one’s hands behind one’s head; and if there were no roof
to the _piscine_, and one could only look straight up all the time into
the deep-blue sky, twice as high, so it looks, as ours in England, the
physical enjoyment would be perfect. It is not far from that as it is,
and I thoroughly sympathise with Browning’s Amphibian:--
From worldly noise and dust,