cosmopolitan temper is not inclined to approve. He had, however, at
least one very agreeable acquaintance at Coblentz--Lieutenant Philip de
Franck, an officer in the Prussian service, of partly English
parentage: the good-fellowship which he kept up with this amiable
gentleman, both in personal intercourse and by letter, was (as we have
seen) even boyishly vivacious and exuberant. In the first instance Hood
lived at No. 372 Castor Hof, where his family joined him in the Spring
of 1835: about a year later, they removed to No. 752 Alten Graben.
Spasms in the chest now began to be a trying and alarming symptom of
his ill-health, which, towards the end of 1836, took a turn for the
worse; he never afterwards rallied very effectually, though the
fluctuations were numerous--(in November, 1838, for instance, he
fancied that a radical improvement had suddenly taken place)--and at
times the danger was imminent. The unfavorable change in question was
nearly simultaneous with a visit which he made to Berlin, accompanying
Lieutenant de Franck and his regiment, on their transfer to Bromberg:
the rate of travelling was from fifteen to twenty English miles per
diem, for three days consecutively, and then one day of rest. Hood
liked the simple unextortionate Saxon folk whom he encountered on the
route, and contrasted them with the Coblentzers, much to the
disadvantage of the latter. By the beginning of December he was back in
his Rhineland home; but finally quitted it towards May, 1837. Several
attacks of blood-spitting occurred in the interval; at one time Hood
proposed for himself the deadly-lively epitaph, "Here lies one who spat
more blood and made more puns than any other man."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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