It's often as good as medicine, and always more
comforting.
We unpacked our trunks and settled ourselves down for a three weeks'
stay here, for no matter how much rheumatism you have or how little,
you've got to take Buxton and its baths in three weeks' doses.
Besides taking the baths Jone has to drink the waters, and as I cannot
do much else to help him, I am encouraging him by drinking them too.
There are two places where you can get the lukewarm water that people
come here to drink. One is the public well, where there is a pump free
to everybody, and the other is in the pump-room just across the street
from the well, where you pay a penny a glass for the same water, which
three doleful old women spend all their time pumping for visitors.
[Illustration: Pomona encourages Jonas]
People are ordered to drink this water very carefully. It must be done
at regular times, beginning with a little, and taking more and more
each day until you get to a full tumbler, and then if it seems to be
too strong for you, you must take less. So far as I can find out there
is nothing particular about it, except that it is lukewarm water,
neither hot enough nor cold enough to make it a pleasant drink. It
didn't seem to agree with Jone at first, but after he kept at it three
or four days it began to suit him better, so that he could take nearly
a tumbler without feeling badly. Two or three times I felt it might be
better for my health if I didn't drink it, but I wanted to stand by
Jone as much as I could, and so I kept on.
We have been here a week now, and this morning I found out that all the
water we drink at this hotel is brought from the well of St. Ann, where
the public pump is, and everybody drinks just as much of it as they
want whenever they want to, and they never think of any such thing as
feeling badly or better than if it was common water. The only
difference is, that it isn't quite as lukewarm when we get it here as
it is at the well. When I was told this I was real mad, after all the
measuring and fussing we had had when taking the water as a medicine,
and then drinking it just as we pleased at the table. But the people
here tell me that it is the gas in it which makes it medicinal, and
when that floats out it is just like common water. That may be; but if
there's a penny's worth of gas in every tumbler of water sold in the
pump-room, there ought to be some sort of a canopy put over the town to
catch what must escape in the pourings and pumpings, for it's too
valuable to be allowed to get away. If it's the gas that does it, a
rheumatic man anchored in a balloon over Buxton, and having the gas
coming up unmixed to him, ought to be well in about two days.
When Jone told me his first bath was to be heated up to ninety-four
degrees I said to him that he'd be boiled alive, but he wasn't; and
when he came home he said he liked it. Everything is very systematic in
the great bathing-house. The man who tends to Jone hangs up his watch
on a little stand on the edge of the bathtub, and he stays in just so
many minutes, and when he's ready to come out he rings a bell, and then
he's wrapped up in about fourteen hot towels, and sits in an armchair
until he's dry. Jone likes all this, and says so much about it that it
makes me want to try it too; though as there isn't any reason for it I
haven't tried them yet.
This is an awfully queer, old-fashioned town, and must have been a good
deal like Bath in the days of Evelina. There is a long line of high
buildings curved like a half moon, which is called the Crescent, and at
one end of this is a pump-room, and at the other are the natural baths,
where the water is just as warm as when it comes out of the ground,
which is eighty-two degrees. This is said to chill people; but from
what I remember about summer time I don't see how eighty-two degrees
can be cold.
Opposite the Crescent is a public park called The Slopes, and farther
on there are great gardens with pavilions, and a band of music every
day, and a theatre, and a little river, and tennis courts, and all
sorts of things for people who haven't anything to do with their time,
which is generally the case with folks at rheumatic watering-places.
Opposite to our hotel is a bowling court, which they say has been
there for hundreds of years, and is just as hard and smooth as a boy's
slate. The men who play bowls here are generally those who have got
over the rheumatism of their youth, and whose joints have not been very
much stiffened up yet by old age. The people who are yet too young for
rheumatism, and have come here with their families, play tennis.
The baths take such a little time, not over six or seven minutes for
them each day, and every third day skipped, that there is a good deal
of time left on the hands of the people here; and those who can't play
tennis or bowl, and don't want to spend the whole time in the pavilion
listening to the music, go about in bath-chairs, which, so far as I can
see, are just as important as the baths.
