The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer" Part 41

"May the Lord preserve us!" cried the soldier's wife, "is that a mosquito?"

But we had to leave the dear old Forest at last, and turn our horses'

heads to the north once more. "It is," says Phillips, "in such sequestered spots as these, removed from the everlasting whirl and turmoil of this high-pressure age, that we may obtain some glimpses of a life strangely contrasting in its peaceful retirement with our own; and one cannot envy the feelings of him who may spend but a few hours here without many happy and pleasant reflections."

"The past is but a gorgeous dream, And time glides by us like a stream While musing on thy story; And sorrow prompts a deep alas!

That like a pageant thus should pa.s.s To wreck all human glory."

We met many pleasant people at Lyndhurst and round it, and made many pleasant tours, Lymington being our limit.

Then we bade farewell to the friends we had made, and turned our horses'

heads homewards through Hants.

When I left my little village it was the sweet spring time, and as the Wanderer stood in the orchard, apple-blossoms fell all about and over her like showers of driven snow. When she stood there again it was the brown withered leaves that rustled around her, and the wind had a wintry sough in it. But I had health and strength in every limb, and in my heart sunny memories--that will never leave it--of the pleasantest voyage ever I have made in my life.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

CARAVANNING FOR HEALTH.

"Life is not to live, but to be well."

This chapter, and indeed the whole of this appendix, may be considered nothing more or less than an apology for my favourite way of spending my summer outing.

Now there are no doubt thousands who would gladly follow my example, and become for a portion of the year lady or gentlemen gipsies, did not circ.u.mstances over which they have no control raise insuperable barriers between them and a realisation of their wishes. For these I can only express my sorrow. On the other hand, I know there are many people who have both leisure and means at command, people who are perhaps bored with all ordinary ways of travelling for pleasure; people, mayhap, who suffer from debility of nerves, from indigestion, and from that disease of modern times we call _ennui_, which so often precedes a thorough break-up and a speedy march to the grave. It is for the benefit of these I write my appendix; it is to them I most cordially dedicate it.

There may be some who, having read thus far, may say to themselves:--

"I feel tired and bored with the worry of the ordinary everyday method of travelling, rushing along in stuffy railway carriages, residing in crowded hotels, dwelling in hackneyed seaside towns, following in the wake of other travellers to Scotland or the Continent, over-eating and over-drinking; I feel tired of ball, concert, theatre, and at homes, tired of scandal, tired of the tinselled show and the businesslike insincerity of society, and I really think I am not half well. And if _ennui_, as doctors say, does lead the way to the grave, I do begin to think I'm going there fast enough. I wonder if I am truly getting ill, or old, or something; and if a complete change would do me good?" I would make answer thus:--You may be getting ill, or you may be getting old, or both at once, for remember age is _not_ to be reckoned by years, and nothing ages one sooner than boredom and _ennui_. But if there be any doubts in your mind as regards the state of your health, and seeing that _ennui_ does not weaken any one organ more than another, but that its evil effects are manifested in a deterioration of every organ and portion of the body and tissues at once, let us consider for a moment what health really is.

It was Emerson, I think, who said, "Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous."

There is a deal of truth underlying that sentence. To put it in my own homely way: if a young man, or a middle-aged one either, while spending a day in the country, with the fresh breezes of heaven blowing on his brow, with the larks a-quiver with song in the bright sunshine, and all nature rejoicing,--I tell you that if such an individual, not being a cripple, can pa.s.s a five-barred gate without an inclination to vault over it, he cannot be in good health.

Will that scale suit you to measure _your_ health against?

Nay, but to be more serious, let me quote the words of that prince of medical writers, the late lamented Sir Thomas Watson, Bart:--

"Health is represented in the natural or standard condition of the 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, s.e.x, and original const.i.tution; 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 embarra.s.sment 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 a.s.suredly 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 const.i.tution" 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.