Mary Gresley, and An Editor's TalesTrollope, Anthony
General
Mary Gresley, and An Editor's Tales
Trollope, Anthony
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
We had trailed our way into the bath-room, and had slowly walked to one
of those arm-chairs in which it is our custom on such occasions to seat
ourselves and to await sudation. There are marble couches; and if a man
be able to lie on stone for half an hour without a movement beyond that
of clapping his hands, or a sound beyond a hollow-voiced demand for
water, the effect is not bad. But he loses everything if he tosses
himself uneasily on his hard couch, and we acknowledge that our own
elbows are always in the way of our own comfort, and that our bones
become sore. We think that the marble sofas must be intended for the
younger Turks. If a man can stretch himself on stone without suffering
for the best part of an hour,--or, more bravely perhaps, without
appearing to suffer, let him remember that all is not done even then.
Very much will depend on the manner in which he claps his hands, and the
hollowness of the voice in which he calls for water. There should, we
think, be two blows of the palms. One is very weak and proclaims its own
futility. Even to dull London ears it seems at once to want the eastern
tone. We have heard three given effectively, but we think that it
requires much practice; and even when it is perfect, the result is that
of western impatience rather than of eastern gravity. No word should be
pronounced, beyond that one word,--Water. The effect should be as though
the whole mind were so devoted to the sudorific process as to admit of
no extraneous idea. There should seem to be almost an agony in the
effort,--as though the man enduring it, conscious that with success he
would come forth a god, was aware that being as yet but mortal he may
perish in the attempt. Two claps of the hand and a call for water, and
that repeated with an interval of ten minutes, are all the external
signs of life that the young Turkish bather may allow to himself while
he is stretched upon his marble couch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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