Nothing is more distinct than the two classes of people who are to be
met with in the morning and in the afternoon, sauntering along the
_allées_ of a German watering-place. The former are the invalid portion,
poured forth in numbers from hotel and lodging-house; attired in every
absurdity of dressing-room toilette, with woollen nightcaps and flannel
jackets, old-fashioned _douillettes_ and morocco slippers, they glide
along, glass in hand, to some sulphur spring, or to repose for an hour
or two in the delights of a mud bath. For the most part, they are the
old and the feeble, pale of face and tottering in step. The pursuit of
health with them would seem a vain and fruitless effort; the machine
appears to have run its destined time, and all the skill of man is
unavailing to repair it. Still, hope survives when strength and youth
have failed, and the very grouping together in their gathering-places
has its consolation; while the endless diversity of malady gives an
interest in the eye of a sick man.
This may seem strange, but it is nevertheless perfectly true. There is
something which predisposes an invalid to all narratives of illness;
they are the topics he dwells on with most pleasure, and discourses
about with most eagerness. The anxiety for the ‘gentleman next door’ is
neither philanthropy, nor is it common curiosity. No, it is perfectly
distinct from either; it is the deep interest in the course of symptoms,
in the ups and downs of chance; it is compounded of the feelings which
animate the physician and those which fill the invalid. And hence we see
that the severest sufferings of their neighbours make less impression on
the minds of such people than on those in full health. It is not from
apathy nor selfishness they are seemingly indifferent, but simply
because they regard the question in a different light: to take an
illustration from the gaming-table, they have too deep an interest in
the game itself to feel greatly for the players. The visit of the doctor
is to them the brightest moment of the day; not only the messenger of
good tidings to the patient, he has a thousand little bits of sick-room
gossip, harmless, pointless trifles, but all fraught with their own
charm to the greedy ear of the sick man. It is so pleasant to know how
Mrs. W. bore her drive, or Sir Arthur liked his jelly; what Mrs. T. said
when they ordered her to be bled, and whether dear Mr. H. would consent
to the blister. And with what consummate tact your watering-place doctor
doles out the infinitesimal doses of his morning’s intelligence! How
different his visit from the hurried flight of a West-End practitioner,
who, while he holds his watch in hand, counts the minutes of his stay
while he feels your pulse, and whose descent downstairs is watched by a
cordon of the household, catching his directions as he goes, and
learning his opinion as he springs into his chariot! Your Spa doctor has
a very different mission; his are no heroic remedies, which taken to-day
are to cure tomorrow; his character is tried by no subtle test of
immediate success; his patients come for a term, or, to use the proper
phrase, for ‘a course of the waters’--then they are condemned to
chalybeates for a quarter of the year, so many glasses per diem. With
their health, properly speaking, he has no concern; his function is
merely an inspection that the individual drinks his fluid regularly, and
takes his mud like a man. The patient is invoiced to him, with a bill of
lading from Bell or Brodie; he has full information of the merchandise
transmitted, and the mode in which the consignee desires it may be
treated--out of this ritual he must not move. The great physician of the
West End says, ‘Bathe and drink’; and his _chargé d’affaires_ at
Wiesbaden takes care to see his orders obeyed. As well might a _forçat_
at Brest or Toulon hope to escape the punishment described in the
catalogue of prisoners, as for a patient to run counter to the remedies
thus arranged, and communicated by post. Occasionally changes will take
place in a sick man’s condition _en route_ which alter the applicability
of his treatment; but, then, what would you have? Brodie and Chambers
are not prophets; divination and augury are not taught in the London and
Middlesex hospitals!
I remember, myself, a marquis of gigantic proportions, who had kept his
prescription by him from the time of his being a stripling till he
weighed twenty stone. The fault here lay not with the doctor. The bath
he was to take contained some powerful ingredient--a preparation of
iron, I believe; well, he got into it, and immediately began swelling
and swelling out, till, big as he was before, he was now twice the size,
and at last, like an overheated boiler, threatened to explode with a
crash. What was to be done? To lift him was out of the question--he
fitted the bath like a periwinkle in its shell; and in this dilemma no
other course was open than to decant him, water and all--which was
performed, to the very considerable mirth of the bystanders.
The Spa doctor, then, it will be seen, moves in a very narrow orbit. He
must manage to sustain his reputation without the aid of the
pharmacopoeia, and continue to be imposing without any assistance from
the dead languages.
Hard conditions! but he yields to them, like a man of nerve.
He begins, then, by extolling the virtues of the waters, which by
analysis of ‘his own making,’ and set forth in a little volume published
by himself, contain very different properties from those ascribed to
them by others. He explains most clearly to his non-chemical listener
how ‘pure silica found in combination with oxide of iron, at a
temperature of thirty-nine and a half, Fahrenheit,’ must necessarily
produce the most beneficial effects on the knee-joint; and he describes,
with all the ardour of science, the infinite satisfaction the nerves
must experience when invigorated by ‘free carbonic gas’ sporting about
in the system. Day by day he indoctrinates the patient into some stray
medical notion, giving him an interest in his own anatomy, and putting
him on terms of familiar acquaintance with the formation of his heart or
his stomach. This flatters the sick man, and, better still, it occupies
his attention. He himself thus becomes a _particeps_ in the first degree
to his own recovery; and the simplicity of treatment, which had at first
no attractions for his mind, is now complicated with so many little
curious facts about the blood and the nerves, mucous membranes and
muscles, as fully to compensate for any lack of mystery, and is in truth
just as unintelligible as the most involved inconsistency of any written
prescription. Besides this, he has another object which demands his
attention. Plain, common-sense people, who know nothing of physic or its
mysteries, might fall into the fatal error of supposing that the wells
so universally employed by the people of the country for all purposes of
washing, bathing, and cooking, however impregnated by mineral
properties, were still by no means so capable, in proportions of great
power and efficacy, of effecting either very decided results, curative
or noxious. The doctor must set his heel on this heresy at once; he must
be able to show how a sip too much or a half-glass too many can produce
the gravest consequences; and no summer must pass over without at least
one death being attributed to the inconsiderate rashness of some
insensate drinker. Woe unto him then who drinks without a doctor! You
might as well, in an access of intense thirst, rush into the first
apothecary’s shop, and take a strong pull at one of the vicious little
vials that fill the shelves, ignorant whether it might not be aqua
fortis or Prussic acid.
Armed, then, with all the terrors of his favourite Spa, rich in a
following which is as much partisan as patient, the Spa doctor has an
admirable life of it. The severe and trying cases of illness that come
under the notice of other physicians fall not to his share; the very
journey to the waters is a trial of strength which guards against this.
His disciples are the dyspeptic “diners-out” in the great worlds of
London, Paris, or Vienna; the nervous and irritable natures, cloyed with
excess of enjoyment and palled with pleasure; the imaginary sick man, or
the self-created patient who has dosed himself into artificial malady--
all of necessity belonging to the higher or at least the wealthier
classes of mankind, with whom management goes further than medicine, and
tact is a hundred times better than all the skill of Hippocrates. He had
need, then, to be a clever man of the world; he may dispense with
science, he cannot with _savoir faire_. Not only must he be conversant
with the broader traits of national character, but he must be intimately
acquainted with the more delicate and subtle workings of the heart in
classes and gradations of mankind, a keen observer and a quick actor. In
fact, to get on well, he must possess in a high degree many of those
elements, any one of which would insure success in a dozen other walks
in life.
And the Spa doctor must have all these virtues, as Swift says, ‘for
twenty pounds per annum’--not literally, indeed, but for a very
inadequate recompense. These watering-place seasons are brief intervals,
in which he must make hay while the sun shines. With the approach of
winter the tide turns, and the human wave retires faster than it came.
Silent streets and deserted promenades, closed shutters and hermetically
sealed cafés, meet him at every step; and then comes the long, dreary
time of hibernation. Happy would it be for him if he could but imitate
the seal, and spend it in torpor; for if he be not a sportsman, and in a
country favourable to the pursuit, his life is a sad one. Books are
generally difficult to come at; there is little society, there is no
companionship; and so he has to creep along the tedious time silent and
sad, counting over the months of his durance, and longing for spring.
Some there are who follow the stream, and retire each winter to the
cities where their strongest connection lies; but this practice I should
deem rather dictated by pleasure than profit. Your Spa doctor without a
Spa is like Liszt or Herz without a pianoforte. Give him but his
instrument, and he will ‘discourse you sweet music’; but deprive him of
it, and he is utterly helpless. The springs of Helicon did not suggest
inspiration more certainly than do those of Nassau to their votaries;
but the fount must run that the poet may rhyme. So your physician must
have the odour of sulphurets in his nose; he must see the priestess
ministering, glass in hand, to the shivering shades around her; he must
have the long vista of the promenade, with its flitting forms in flannel
cased, ere he feel himself ‘every inch a doctor.’ Away from these, and
the piston of a steam-engine without a boiler is not more helpless. The
fountain is, to use Lord Londonderry’s phrase, the ‘fundamental feature
on which his argument hinges,’ and he could no more exist without water
than a fish.
Having said so much of the genus, let me be excused if I do not dilate
on the species; nor, indeed, had I dwelt so long on the subject, but in
this age of stomach, when every one has dyspepsia, it is as well to
mention those who rule over our diets and destinies; and where so many
are worshippers at the Temple, a word about the Priest of the Mysteries
may not be unseasonable.
And now, to change the theme, who is it that at this early hour of the
morning seems taking his promenade, with no trace of the invalid in his
look or dress? He comes along at a smart walk; his step has the assured
tramp of one who felt health, and knew the value of the blessing. What!
is it possible--can it be, indeed? ‘Yes, it is Sir Harry Wycherley
himself, with two lovely children, a boy and a girl--the eldest scarcely
seven years old; the boy a year or so younger. Never did I behold
anything more lovely. The girl’s eyes were dark, shaded with long deep
fringe, that added to their depth, and tempered into softness the
glowing sparkle of youth. Her features were of a pensive but not
melancholy character, and in her walk and carriage ‘gentle blood’ spoke
out in accents not to be mistaken. The boy, more strongly formed,
resembled his father more, and in his broad forehead and bold, dashing
expression looked like one who would become one day a man of nerve and
mettle. His dress, too, gave a character to his appearance that well
suited him--a broad hat, turned up at the side, and ornamented with a
dark-blue feather, that hung drooping over his shoulder; a blue tunic,
made so as to show his chest in its full breadth, and his arms naked the
whole way; a scarlet scarf, knotted carelessly at his side, hanging down
with its deep fringe beside his bare leg, tanned and bronzed with sun
and weather; and even his shoes, with their broad silver buckles,
showing that care presided over every part of his costume.
There was something intensely touching in the sight of this man of the
world--for such I well knew he was--thus enjoying the innocence and
fresh buoyancy of his children, turning from the complex web of men’s
schemes and plottings, their tortuous paths and deep designings, to
relax in the careless gaiety of infant minds. Now pursuing them along
the walk, now starting from behind some tree where he lay in ambush, he
gives them chase, and as he gains on them they turn sharp round, and
spring into his arms, and clasp him round the neck.
Arthur, thou hast had a life of more than man’s share of pleasure; thou
hast tasted much happiness, and known but few sorrows; but would not a
moment like this outnumber them all? Where is love so full, so generous,
so confiding? What affection comes so pure and unalloyed, not chilled by
jealous doubts or fears, but warm and gushing--the incense of a happy
heart, the outpourings of a guileless nature. Nothing can be more
beautiful than the picture of maternal fondness, the gracefulness of
woman thrown like a garment around her children. Her look of love
etherealised by the holiest sentiment of tenderness; her loveliness
exalted above the earth by the contemplation of those, her own dear
ones, who are but a ‘little lower than the angels’--is a sight to make
the eyes gush tears of happiness, and the heart swell with thankfulness
to Heaven. Second alone to this is the unbending of man’s stern nature
before the charms of childhood, when, casting away the pride of manhood
and the cold spirit of worldly ambition, he becomes like one among his
children, the participator in their joys and sorrows, the companion of
their games, the confidant of their little secrets. How insensibly does
each moment thus passed draw him further from the world and its cares;
how soon does he forget disappointments, or learn to think of them less
poignantly; and how by Nature’s own magnetism does the sinless spirit of
the child mix with the subtle workings of the man, and lift him above
the petty jarrings and discords of life! And thus, while he teaches
_them_ precepts of truth and virtue, _they_ pour into his heart lessons
of humility and forbearance. If he point out the future to them, with
equal force they show the past to him, and a blessing rests on both. The
_populus me sibilat_ of the miser is a miserable philosophy compared to
his who can retire from the rancorous assaults of enemies and the dark
treachery of false friends, to the bosom of a happy home, and feel his
hearth a sanctuary where come no forms of malice to assail him!
Such were my musings as I saw the father pass on with his children; and
never before did my loneliness seem so devoid of happiness.
Would that I could stop here; would that I might leave my reader to
ponder over these things, and fashion them to his mind’s liking; but I
may not. I have but one object in these notes of my loiterings. It is to
present to those younger in the world, and fresher to its wiles than
myself, some of the dangers as well as some of the enjoyments of foreign
travel; and having surveyed the cost with much care and caution, I would
fix a wreck-buoy here and there along the channel as a warning and a
guide. And now to begin.
Let me take the character before me--one of whom I hesitate not to say
that only the name is derived from invention. Some may have already
identified him; many more may surmise the individual meant. It is enough
that I say he still lives, and the correctness of the portrait may
easily be tested by any traveller Rhinewards; but I prefer giving him a
chapter to himself.