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
and among them are enormous hickories, acacias, and tulip-trees;
while horse-chestnuts without number make a very blaze of floral
illumination through the leafy month of June. Richmond-hill, with
its unrivalled views, rises from Sudbrook Park; and that eerie-looking
Ham House, the very ideal of the old English manor-house, with
its noble avenues which make twilight walks all the summer day, is
within a quarter of a mile. As for the house itself, it is situated
at the foot of the slope on whose summit Lord John Russell's house
stands; it is of great extent, and can accommodate a host of
patients, though when we were there, the number of inmates was less
than twenty. It is very imposing externally; but the only striking
feature of its interior is the dining-room, a noble hall of forty
feet in length, breadth, and height. It is wainscoted with black
oak, which some vile wretch of a water doctor painted white, on
the ground that it darkened the room. As for the remainder of the
house, it is divided into commonplace bed-rooms and sitting-rooms,
and provided with bathing appliances of every conceivable kind.
On arriving at a water establishment, the patient is carefully
examined, chiefly to discover if anything be wrong about the heart,
as certain baths would have a most injurious effect should that
be so. The doctor gives his directions to the bath attendant as
to the treatment to be followed, which, however, is much the same
with almost all patients. The newcomer finds a long table in the
dining-hall, covered with bread and milk, between six and seven
in the evening; and here he makes his evening meal with some wry
faces. At half-past nine p. m. he is conducted to his chamber, a
bare little apartment, very plainly furnished. The bed is a narrow
little thing, with no curtains of any kind. One sleeps on a mattress,
which feels pretty hard at first. The jolly and contented looks
of the patients had tended somewhat to reassure us; still, we had
a nervous feeling that we were fairly in for it, and could not
divest ourselves of some alarm as to the ordeal before us; so we
heard the nightingale sing for many hours before we closed our eyes
on that first night at Sudbrook Park.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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