The Recreations of a Country ParsonBoyd, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison
General
The Recreations of a Country Parson
Boyd, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison
Clergy -- Anecdotes; Country life -- England; Rural clergy -- England
But by this time we can imagine our readers asking with some
impatience, what is the Water Cure? What is the precise nature of
all those oddly-named appliances by which it produces its results?
Now this is just what we are going to explain; but we have artfully
and deeply sought to set out the benefits ascribed to the system
before doing so, in the hope that that large portion of the human
race which reads Fraser may feel the greater interest in the
details which follow, when each of the individuals who compose it
remembers, that these sitzes and douches are not merely the things
which set up Sir E. B. Lytton, Mr. Lane, and our old military
friend, but are the things which may some day be called on to revive
his own sinking strength and his own drooping spirits. And as the
treatment to which all water patients are subjected appears to
be much the same, we shall best explain the nature of the various
baths by describing them as we ourselves found them.
Our story is a very simple one. Some years since, after many terms
of hard College work, we found our strength completely break down.
We were languid and dispirited; everything was an effort: we felt
that whether study in our case had 'made the mind' or not, it had
certainly accomplished the other result which Festus ascribes to
it, and 'unmade the body.' We tried sea-bathing, cod-liver oil,
and everything else that medical men prescribe to people done up
by over study; but nothing did much good. Finally, we determined
to throw physic to the dogs, and to try a couple of months at
the Water Cure. It does cost an effort to make up one's mind to
go there, not only because the inexperienced in the matter fancy
the water system a very perilous one, but also because one's
steady-going friends, on hearing of our purpose, are apt to shake
their heads,--perhaps even to tap their foreheads,--to speak
doubtfully of our common sense, and express a kind hope--behind
our backs, especially--that we are not growing fanciful and
hypochondriac, and that we may not end in writing testimonials in
favour of Professor Holloway. We have already said that to have
the full benefit of the Water Cure, one must go to a hydropathic
establishment. There are numbers of these in Germany, and all along
the Rhine; and there are several in England, which are conducted in
a way more accordant with our English ideas. At Malvern we believe
there are two; there is a large one at Ben Rhydding, in Yorkshire;
one at Sudbrook Park, between Richmond and Ham; and another at Moor
Park, near Farnham. Its vicinity to London led us to prefer the
one at Sudbrook; and on a beautiful evening in the middle of May
we found our way down through that garden-like country, so green
and rich to our eyes, long accustomed to the colder landscapes of
the north. Sudbrook Park is a noble place. The grounds stretch for
a mile or more along Richmond Park, from which they are separated
only by a wire fence; the trees are magnificent, the growth of centuries,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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