living body. It is not easy to express that condition in a few words,
nor is it necessary. My wish is to be intelligible rather than
scholastic, and I should puzzle myself as well as you, were I to attempt
to lay down a strict and scientific definition of what is meant by the
term `health.' It is sufficient for our purpose to say that it implies
freedom from pain and sickness; freedom also from all those changes in
the natural fabric of the body, that endanger life or impede the easy
and effectual exercise of the vital functions. It is plain that health
does not signify any fixed and immutable condition of the body. The
standard of health varies in different persons, according to age, sex,
and original constitution; and in the same person even, from week to
week or from day to day, within certain limits it may shift and librate.
Neither does health necessarily imply the integrity of all the bodily
organs. It is not incompatible with great and permanent alterations,
nor even with the loss of parts that are not vital--as of an arm, a leg,
or an eye. If we can form and fix in our minds a clear conception of
the state of _health_, we shall have little difficulty in comprehending
what is meant by _disease_, which consists in some deviation from that
state--some uneasy or unnatural sensation of which the patient is aware;
some embarrassment of function, perceptible by himself or by others; or
_some unsafe though hidden condition of which he may be unconscious_;
some mode, in short, of being, or of action, or of feeling different
from those which are proper to health."
Can medicine restore the health of those who are threatened with a
break-up, whose nerves are shaken, whose strength has been failing for
some time past, when it seems to the sufferer--to quote the beautiful
words of the Preacher--the days have already come when you find no
pleasure in them; when you feel as if the light of the sun and the moon
and the stars are darkened, that the silver cord is loosed, the golden
bowl is broken, and the pitcher broken at the fountain?
No, no, no! a thousand times no. Medicine, tonic or otherwise, never,
alone, did, or could, cure the deadly ailment called _ennui_. You want
newness of life, you want perfect obedience for a time to the rules of
hygiene, and exercise above all.
Now I do not for a moment mean to say that caravanning is the very best
form of exercise one can have. Take your own sort, the kind that best
pleases you. But, for all that, experience leads me to maintain that no
life separates a man more from his former self, or gives him a better
chance of regeneration of the most complete kind, than that of the
gentleman gipsy.
Take my own case as an example. I am what is called a spare man, though
weighing eleven stone odd to a height of five feet nine. I am spare,
but when well as wiry and hard as an Arab.
I had an unusually stiff winter's work last season. On my 1,300-mile
caravan tour I had assuredly laid up a store of health that stood me in
good stead till nearly April, and I did more literary work than usual.
But I began to get weary at last, and lost flesh. I slaved on manfully,
that I might get away on my second grand tour, from which I have just
returned, after covering ground to the extent of a thousand and odd
miles. Well, I started, and as I took a more hilly route, the journey
was more fatiguing for us all. We all weighed before starting; six
weeks afterwards we weighed again; my coachman had increased one and a
half pounds, my valet three pounds, while I, who underwent the greatest
fatigue of the three, had put on five pounds. Nor was this all; my
heart felt lighter than it had done for years, and I was singing all day
long. Though not a young man, I am certainly not an old one, but before
starting, while still toiling at the drudgery of the desk's dull wood, I
was ninety-five years of age--_in feeling_; before I had been six weeks
on the road I did not feel forty, or anything like it.
The first fortnight of life in a great caravan like the Wanderer is just
a little upsetting; even my coachman felt this. The constant hum of the
waggon-wheels, and the jolting--for with the best of springs a two-ton
waggon will jolt--shakes the system. It is like living in a mill; but
after this you harden up to it, and would not change your _modus
vivendi_ for life in a royal palace.
Now I would not dream of insulting the understanding of my readers by
presuming that they do not know what the simple rules of hygiene which
tend to long life, perfect health, and calm happiness, are. There is
hardly a sixteen-year-old schoolboy nowadays who has not got these at
his finger-ends; but, unfortunately, if we do not act up to them with a
regularity that at length becomes a habit, we are apt to let them slip
from our mind; and it is so easy to fall off into a poor condition of
health, but not so very easy to pull one's self together again.
Let me simply enumerate, by way of reminding you, some of the ordinary
rules for the maintenance of health. We will then see how far it is
possible to carry these out in such a radical change of life as that of
an amateur gipsy, living, eating, and sleeping in his caravan, and
sometimes, to some extent, roughing it.
The following remarks from one of my books on cycling are very much to
the point in the subject I am now discussing, and the very fact of my
writing so will prove, I think, that I am willing you should hear both
sides of the question, for I know there are people in this world who
prefer the life of the bluebottle-fly--fast and merry--to what they deem
a slow even if healthful existence. ["Health upon Wheels." Messrs.
Iliffe and Co, 98 Fleet Street, London.]
Good habits, I say, may be formed as well as bad ones; not so easily, I
grant you, but, being formed, or for a time enforced, they, too, become
a kind of second nature.
Some remarks of the author of "Elia" keep running through my head as I
write, and for the life of me I cannot help penning them, although they
in a certain sense militate against my doctrine of reform. "What?" says
the gentle author, "have I gained by health? Intolerable dulness. What
by early hours and moderate meals? A total blank."
I question, however, if Charles Lamb, after so many years spent in the
London of his day, had a very great deal of liver left.--If he had,
probably it was a very knotty one (_cirrhosis_) and piebald rather than
healthy chocolate brown.
Now I should be sorry indeed if I left my readers to infer that, after a
reckless life up to the age say of forty, forty-five, or fifty, a
decided reformation of habits will so far rejuvenate a man that he shall
become quite as healthy and strong as he might have been had he spent
his days in a more rational manner; one cannot have his cake and eat it
too, _but_ better late than never; he can by care save the morsel of
cake he has left, instead of throwing it to the dogs and going hot foot
after it.
Every severe illness, no matter how well we get over it, detracts from
our length of days: how much more then must twenty or more years of a
fast life do so? With our "horse's constitution" we may come through it
all with life, but it will leave its mark, if not externally,
internally.
I am perfectly willing that the reader should have both the _cons_ and
the _pros_ of the argument, and will even sit in judgment on the
statements I have just made, and will myself call upon witnesses that
may seem to disprove them.
The first to take the box is your careless, sceptical, happy-go-lucky
man, your live-for-to-day-and-bother-to-morrow individual, who states
that he really enjoys life, and that he can point to innumerable
acquaintances, who go the pace far faster than he does, but who,
nevertheless, enjoy perfect health, and are likely to live "till a fly
fells them."
The next witness has not much to say, but he tells a little story--a
temperance tale he calls it.
Two very aged men were one time subpoenaed on some case, and appeared in
the box before a judge who was well-known as a staunch upholder of the
principles of total abstinence. This judge, seeing two such aged beings
before him, thought it a capital opportunity of teaching a lesson to
those around him.
"How old are you?" he said, addressing the first witness.
"Eighty, and a little over," was the reply.
"You have led a very temperate life, haven't you?" said the judge.
"I've never tasted spirits, to my knowledge, all my life, sir."
The judge looked around him, with a pleased smile on his countenance.
Then he addressed the other ancient witness, who looked even haler than
his companion.
"How old are you, my man?"
"Ninety odd, your worship."
"Ahem?" said the judge. "You have doubtless led a strictly abstemious
life, haven't you?"
"Strictly abstemious!" replied the old reprobate; "indeed, sir, I
haven't been strictly sober for the last seventy years."
_Diet_.--Errors in diet produce dyspepsia, and dyspepsia may be the
forerunner of almost any fatal illness. It not only induces disease
itself, but the body of the sufferer from this complaint, being at the
best but poorly nourished, no matter how fat and fresh he may appear, is
more liable to be attacked by any ailment which may be in the air.
Dyspepsia really leaves the front door open, so that trouble may walk
in.
The chief errors in diet which are apt to bring on chronic indigestion
are: 1. Over-rich or over-nutritious diet. 2. Over-eating, from which
more die than from over-drinking. 3. Eating too quickly, as one is apt
to do when alone, the solvent saliva having thus no time to get properly
mingled with the food. 4. The evil habit of taking "nips" before meals,
by which means the blood is heated, the salivary glands rendered
partially inert, the mucous membrane of the mouth rendered incapable for
a time of absorption, and the gastric juices thrown out and wasted
before their proper time, that is meal-time. 5. Drinking too much fluid
with the meals, and thereby diluting the gastric juices and delaying
digestion. 6. Want of daily or tri-weekly change of diet. 7.
Irregularity in times of eating.
_Drink_.--I do not intend discussing the question of temperance. 1. But
if stimulants are taken at all, it should _never_ be on an empty
stomach. 2. They ought not to be taken at all, if they can be done
without. 3. What are called "nightcaps" may induce sleep, but it is by
narcotic action, and the sleep is neither sound nor refreshing. The
best nightcap is a warm bath and a bottle of soda water, with ten to
fifteen grains of pure bicarbonate of soda in it.
Coffee is a refreshing beverage.
Cocoa is both refreshing and nourishing, but too much of it leads to
biliousness.
Oatmeal. Water drunk from off a handful or two of this is excellent on
the road.
Cream of tartar drink. This should be more popular than it is in
summer. A pint of boiling water is poured over a dram and a half of
cream of tartar, in which is the juice of a lemon and some of the rind;
when cold, especially if iced, it is truly excellent in summer weather.
It cools the system, prevents constipation, and assuages thirst.
Ginger-ale or ginger beer is good, but should be taken in moderation.
Tonic drinks often contain deleterious accumulative medicines, and
should all be avoided.
Cold tea, if weak, flavoured with lemon-juice, and drunk without sugar,
is probably the best drink of the road. But let it be good pure Indian
tea.
_Baths_.--The morning cold sponge bath, especially with a handful or two
of sea-salt in it, is bracing, stimulating, and tonic. No one who has
once tried it for a week would ever give it up.
The Turkish bath may be taken once a week, or once a fortnight. It gets
rid of a deal of the impurities of the blood, and lightens both brain
and heart. Whenever one feels dull and mopish, he should indulge in the
luxury of a Turkish bath.
_Fresh air_.--The more of this one has the better, whether by day or by
night. Many chronic ailments will yield entirely to a course of
ozone-laden fresh air, such as one gets at the seaside, or on the
mountain's brow. Have a proper and scientific plan of ventilating your
bedrooms. Ventilators should be both in doors and windows, else one
cannot expect perfect health and mental activity. Without air one dies
speedily; in bad air he languishes and dies more slowly; in the ordinary
air of rooms one exists, but he cannot be said to live; but in pure air
one can be as happy and light-hearted as a lark.
_Exercise_.--This must be pleasurable, or at all events it must be
interesting--mind and body must go hand in hand--if exercise is to do
any good. It must not be over-fatiguing, and intervals of rest must not
be forgotten. Exercise should never be taken in cumbersome clothing.
"Work," I say in one of my books, "is not exercise." This may seem
strange, but it is true. I tell my patients, "I do not care how much
you run about all day at your business, you _must_ take the exercise I
prescribe quite independently of your work." There are perhaps no more
hard-working men in the world than the Scottish ploughmen--wearily
plodding all day long behind their horses, in wet weather or dry; no
sooner, however, has the sun "gane west the loch," and the day's work is
done, than, after supper and a good wash, those hardy lads assemble in
the glen, and not only for one, but often three good hours, keep up the
health-giving games for which their nation is so justly celebrated.
_Cooking_.--Good cooking is essential to health. I do not care how
plainly I live, but pray exercise the attribute of mercy. Let my steak
or chop be tender and toothsome; my fish or vegetables not overdone, and
oh! pray boil me my potatoes well, for without old _pomme de terre_ life
to me would be one dreary void.
Now let us see how far the rules of health may be carried out in a
caravan like the Wanderer.
First comes _early rising_. You get up almost with the lark--you are
bound to, for there is a deal to be done in a caravan; what with getting
breakfast, having the carriage tidied and dusted, the beds stowed away
on the roof, dishes washed, stove cleaned, carpets shaken, and pantry
swept and washed, eight o'clock comes before you know where you are.
And by the time your flowers are rearranged in the vases, and everything
so sweet and tidy that you do not mind Royalty itself having a look
inside, it will be pretty near nine o'clock, and the horses will be
round, the pole shipped, the buckets slung, and all ready for a start.
But then you will think early rising the reverse of a hardship, for did
you not turn in at ten o'clock? and have you not slept the sweet sleep
of the just--or a gentleman gipsy?
The first thing you did when you got up was to have a bath under the
tent which your servant prepared for you. Oh that delicious cool sponge
bath of a lovely summer's morning! If you do not join the birds in
their song even before you have quite finished rubbing down, it is
because you have no music in your soul.
But I mentioned a Turkish bath as a health accessory. Can that be had
in a Wanderer caravan? Indeed it can. I have a portable one, and it
does not exceed three inches in height, and when put away takes hardly
as much space up as a pair of boots does.
The greatest cleanliness is maintainable in a caravan where regularity
exists,--cleanliness of person, and cleanliness of the house itself.
As to regularity, this is one of the things one learns to perfection on
a gipsy tour extending over months. There can be no comfort without it.
Everything in its place must be your motto, and this is a habit which
once learned is of the greatest service to one in more civilised life.
For the want of regularity causes much worry, and worry is one of the
primary causes of illness.
_Fresh air_.--You are in it all day. Now down in the valley among the
woods, or breathing the balmy odours of the pine forests; now high up on
the mountain top, and anon by the bracing sea-beach. And at night your
ventilators are all open, without a chance of catching cold, so no
wonder your sleep is as sweet and dreamless as that of a healthy child.
As to the weather, you are hardly ever exposed. The caravan does not
leak, and if you are on the _coupe_ you are protected by the verandah
(_vide_ frontispiece).
_Exercise_.--This you get in abundance, and that too of the most
wholesome and exhilarating kind.
_Food in the caravan_.--Perhaps you have been living too freely before,
and having too many courses; all this will be altered when you take to
the road. Plainly you must live, and you will soon come to prefer a
plain substantial diet.
The first result of your new mode of life--and this you will not be
twenty-four hours out before you feel--will be hunger. It does not
matter that you had a substantial breakfast at eight o'clock, you will
find your way to the cupboard at eleven, and probably for the first time
in your life you will find out what a delicious titbit a morsel of
bread-and-cheese is. Yes, and I would even forgive you if you washed it
down with one tiny glass of mild ale, albeit beer is not the best thing
on the road.
At the midday halt you will have luncheon. You can drink your tea cold
on the road or warm it in the spirit stove; and when settled for the
night in some quiet and peaceful meadow, your servant will speedily cook
the dinner, which has been put all ready in the Rippingille stove during
the midday halt.
While this is being cooked, in the privacy of the saloon you can play
the fiddle or discourse sweet music from the harmonium, or if tired lie
on the sofa and read.
I have said that you must live plainly in a caravan. But the word
plainly is a term. You may not have French dishes nor twenty courses,
but I append extracts from bills of fare of caravan cookery, to show
that diet is not necessarily a mere off-put in the Wanderer.
I must, however, premise that I myself did not always bother with so
good a _menu_.
To begin with, here are my cook's general instructions:--
Always see that the stove is clean and in order. Wipe the tanks
thoroughly dry, if any oil is perceptible upon them; trim the wicks,
light them, turn down low, place in the proper grooves, and carefully
follow instructions given with the stove. When set fairly in, regulate
the light by observing the height through the sight holes. Brush out
the oven, and then all is ready for a good day's work. All this will
occupy very little time, one-tenth of that generally spent in lighting
coal fires and trying to escape the dust and dirt the old-fashioned open
range entailed. Next rinse out the kettle, fill with fresh water from
the tap, place over one of the burners. Wash your hands, and then get
all ready for breakfast. Cut rashers of bacon and slices of bread
sufficient for the family requirements. Bring out the eggs, butter,
pepper, salt; then the tea-caddy, coffee, etc, with their respective
pots; plates, dishes, toast-rack, fish slice, teacup or small basin, and
lay on the table near the stove, so that no time may be lost running
about when the cooking begins. These instructions apply to _all meals_.
First get the apparatus and material ready, and then begin to cook.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Breakfasts.
I. Toast, poached eggs, tea, coffee, or chocolate.
II. Toast, fried eggs and bacon, or mashed eggs, tea, etc.
III. Oatmeal porridge with butter and creamy milk, followed by a boiled
new-laid egg and a rasher, with tea. N.B.--The butter is always the
sweetest, and the milk the _creme de la creme_.
IV. Herrings, devilled melt and roe, toast, tea, etc, eggs bouilles.
V. Mock sausages, boiled eggs, and usual fixings.
VI. Finnan haddocks, poached eggs, and usual fixings. And so on _ad
libitum_.
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Eleven o'clock Snacks.
I. Bread or biscuit and cheese with a modicum of beer.
II. Bloater-paste or anchovy-paste, or buttered toast with cold tea.
III. Tongue and ham (potted), turkey and tongue, and fixings.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Luncheons.
The cold joints of yesterday, with hot potatoes, piquant sauces, and
chutney; washed down with a cup of delicious chocolate or new milk.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dinners.
I. Fried cutlets of fish; roast fowls; brown sauce, potatoes, greens,
and bread; rice or golden pudding.
II. Spatch cock; minced meat, baked potatoes, green peas; custard.
III. Roast mutton, mashed turnips, potatoes; and fruit pudding.
IV. Rabbit stewed, game in season, vegetables; and sago pudding.
V. Beefsteak and onions, boiled potatoes, cauliflower; pudding.
VI. Salmon _a la Reine_; cold meat and salad; La Belle pudding.
And so on _ad libitum_, with wine or beer to suit the taste.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Suppers.
I. If required, a snack of anything handy.
II. Tomatoes forces (tinned tomatoes if fresh cannot be had), cocoa,
toast.
III. Macaroni cheese and toast.
IV. Eggs _a la Soyer_, toast; or a poached egg on toast. Salad,
especially of lettuce, with a modicum of good beer or stout.
A cleverer cook than I could devise a hundred simple dishes for caravan
cookery, but I do not think my _menu_ is altogether prison fare.
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Ailments Likely to be Benefited by Caravan Life.
I can, of course, only mention a few of these, and it must be distinctly
understood that I am not trying to enforce the merits of a new cure. I
am but giving my own impressions from my own experience, and if anyone
likes to profit by these he may, and welcome.
I. Ennui.
II. Dyspepsia.
III. Debility and enfeeblement of health from overwork, or from worry
or grief.
IV. Insomnia.
V. Chronic bronchitis and consumption in its earliest stages.
VI. Bilious habit of system.
VII. Acidity of secretions of stomach, etc.
VIII. All kinds of stomachic ailments.
IX. Giddiness or vertigo.
X. Hysteria.
XI. Headaches and wearying backaches.
XII. Constipated state of system.
XIII. Tendency to _embonpoint_.
XIV. Neuralgia of certain kinds.
XV. Liver complaints of a chronic kind.
XVI. Threatened kidney mischief.
XVII. Hay fever.
XVIII. Failure of brain power.
XIX. Anaemia or poverty of blood.
XX. Nervousness.
Some of the great factors in the cure of such complaints as the above by
life in a caravan for a series of months would be, that perfect rest and
freedom from all care which is so calming to shattered nerves, weary
brains, and aching hearts. The constant and pleasurable change of scene
and change of faces, the regularity of the mode of life, and the
delightfully refreshing sleep, born of the fresh air and exercise, which
is nearly always obtainable at night.
In concluding this chapter, let me just add that of all modes of
enjoying life in summer and autumn I consider--speaking after a somewhat
lengthy experience--caravan travelling the healthiest and the best.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.
THE CYCLE AS TENDER TO THE CARAVAN.
"When the spring stirs my blood
With the instincts of travel,
I can get enough gravel
On the old Marlborough road."
Thoreau.
I begin to think, reader, that the plan of putting headlines or verses
to chapters, although a very ancient, time-honoured custom, is not such
a very excellent one after all.
The verses are written subsequently, of course, after you have finished
the chapter, and the difficulty is to get them to fit; you may have some
glimmering notion that, once upon a time, some poet or other did say
something that would be _apropos_, but who was it? You get off your
easy-chair and yawn and stretch yourself, then lazily make your way to
the bookshelf and commence the search among your favourite poets. It is
for all the world like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay, and when
you do find it, it isn't half so bright as you thought it would be, only
down you jot it in a semi-reckless kind of a way, feeling all the while
as if you were a humbug, or committing some sort of a deadly sin.
If this good poet Thoreau had said,--
"When the spring stirs my blood
With the instincts of travel,
I can get enough _exercise_
On my Marlborough tricycle."
--Although not metre, it would have been to the point. But the poet did
not, so there we are. Nevertheless, the Marlborough is the cycle I have
bestridden during my tour this summer, and a sweet wee thing it is. In
my caravan tour of 1885 it was the Ranelagh Club I had as tender to the
Wanderer, also a good one.
But really, without a cycle, one would sometimes feel lost in caravan
travelling. The Wanderer is so large that she cannot turn on narrow
roads, so that on approaching a village, where I wish to stay all night,
I find it judicious to stop her about a quarter of a mile out and tool
on, mounted on the Marlborough, to find out convenient quarters. Then a
signal brings the Wanderer on.