The Cruise of the Land-Yacht «Wanderer»: or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan

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 assuredly 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 constitution” 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.

The chief errors in diet which are apt to bring on chronic indigestion are: 1. Over-rich or over-nutritious diet. 2. Over-eating, from which more die than from over-drinking. 3. Eating too quickly, as one is apt to do when alone, the solvent saliva having thus no time to get properly mingled with the food. 4. The evil habit of taking “nips” before meals, by which means the blood is heated, the salivary glands rendered partially inert, the mucous membrane of the mouth rendered incapable for a time of absorption, and the gastric juices thrown out and wasted before their proper time, that is meal-time. 5. Drinking too much fluid with the meals, and thereby diluting the gastric juices and delaying digestion. 6. Want of daily or tri-weekly change of diet. 7. Irregularity in times of eating.

Drink. – I do not intend discussing the question of temperance. 1. But if stimulants are taken at all, it should never be on an empty stomach. 2. They ought not to be taken at all, if they can be done without. 3. What are called “nightcaps” may induce sleep, but it is by narcotic action, and the sleep is neither sound nor refreshing. The best nightcap is a warm bath and a bottle of soda water, with ten to fifteen grains of pure bicarbonate of soda in it.

Coffee is a refreshing beverage.

Cocoa is both refreshing and nourishing, but too much of it leads to biliousness.

Oatmeal. Water drunk from off a handful or two of this is excellent on the road.

Cream of tartar drink. This should be more popular than it is in summer. A pint of boiling water is poured over a dram and a half of cream of tartar, in which is the juice of a lemon and some of the rind; when cold, especially if iced, it is truly excellent in summer weather. It cools the system, prevents constipation, and assuages thirst.

Ginger-ale or ginger beer is good, but should be taken in moderation.

Tonic drinks often contain deleterious accumulative medicines, and should all be avoided.

Cold tea, if weak, flavoured with lemon-juice, and drunk without sugar, is probably the best drink of the road. But let it be good pure Indian tea.

Baths. – The morning cold sponge bath, especially with a handful or two of sea-salt in it, is bracing, stimulating, and tonic. No one who has once tried it for a week would ever give it up.

The Turkish bath may be taken once a week, or once a fortnight. It gets rid of a deal of the impurities of the blood, and lightens both brain and heart. Whenever one feels dull and mopish, he should indulge in the luxury of a Turkish bath.

Fresh air. – The more of this one has the better, whether by day or by night. Many chronic ailments will yield entirely to a course of ozone-laden fresh air, such as one gets at the seaside, or on the mountain’s brow. Have a proper and scientific plan of ventilating your bedrooms. Ventilators should be both in doors and windows, else one cannot expect perfect health and mental activity. Without air one dies speedily; in bad air he languishes and dies more slowly; in the ordinary air of rooms one exists, but he cannot be said to live; but in pure air one can be as happy and light-hearted as a lark.

Exercise. – This must be pleasurable, or at all events it must be interesting – mind and body must go hand in hand – if exercise is to do any good. It must not be over-fatiguing, and intervals of rest must not be forgotten. Exercise should never be taken in cumbersome clothing.

“Work,” I say in one of my books, “is not exercise.” This may seem strange, but it is true. I tell my patients, “I do not care how much you run about all day at your business, you must take the exercise I prescribe quite independently of your work.” There are perhaps no more hard-working men in the world than the Scottish ploughmen – wearily plodding all day long behind their horses, in wet weather or dry; no sooner, however, has the sun “gane west the loch,” and the day’s work is done, than, after supper and a good wash, those hardy lads assemble in the glen, and not only for one, but often three good hours, keep up the health-giving games for which their nation is so justly celebrated.

Cooking. – Good cooking is essential to health. I do not care how plainly I live, but pray exercise the attribute of mercy. Let my steak or chop be tender and toothsome; my fish or vegetables not overdone, and oh! pray boil me my potatoes well, for without old pomme de terre life to me would be one dreary void.

Now let us see how far the rules of health may be carried out in a caravan like the Wanderer.

First comes early rising. You get up almost with the lark – you are bound to, for there is a deal to be done in a caravan; what with getting breakfast, having the carriage tidied and dusted, the beds stowed away on the roof, dishes washed, stove cleaned, carpets shaken, and pantry swept and washed, eight o’clock comes before you know where you are. And by the time your flowers are rearranged in the vases, and everything so sweet and tidy that you do not mind Royalty itself having a look inside, it will be pretty near nine o’clock, and the horses will be round, the pole shipped, the buckets slung, and all ready for a start. But then you will think early rising the reverse of a hardship, for did you not turn in at ten o’clock? and have you not slept the sweet sleep of the just – or a gentleman gipsy?

The first thing you did when you got up was to have a bath under the tent which your servant prepared for you. Oh that delicious cool sponge bath of a lovely summer’s morning! If you do not join the birds in their song even before you have quite finished rubbing down, it is because you have no music in your soul.

But I mentioned a Turkish bath as a health accessory. Can that be had in a Wanderer caravan? Indeed it can. I have a portable one, and it does not exceed three inches in height, and when put away takes hardly as much space up as a pair of boots does.

The greatest cleanliness is maintainable in a caravan where regularity exists, – cleanliness of person, and cleanliness of the house itself.

As to regularity, this is one of the things one learns to perfection on a gipsy tour extending over months. There can be no comfort without it. Everything in its place must be your motto, and this is a habit which once learned is of the greatest service to one in more civilised life. For the want of regularity causes much worry, and worry is one of the primary causes of illness.

Fresh air. – You are in it all day. Now down in the valley among the woods, or breathing the balmy odours of the pine forests; now high up on the mountain top, and anon by the bracing sea-beach. And at night your ventilators are all open, without a chance of catching cold, so no wonder your sleep is as sweet and dreamless as that of a healthy child.

As to the weather, you are hardly ever exposed. The caravan does not leak, and if you are on the coupé you are protected by the verandah (vide frontispiece).

Exercise. – This you get in abundance, and that too of the most wholesome and exhilarating kind.

Food in the caravan. – Perhaps you have been living too freely before, and having too many courses; all this will be altered when you take to the road. Plainly you must live, and you will soon come to prefer a plain substantial diet.

The first result of your new mode of life – and this you will not be twenty-four hours out before you feel – will be hunger. It does not matter that you had a substantial breakfast at eight o’clock, you will find your way to the cupboard at eleven, and probably for the first time in your life you will find out what a delicious titbit a morsel of bread-and-cheese is. Yes, and I would even forgive you if you washed it down with one tiny glass of mild ale, albeit beer is not the best thing on the road.

At the midday halt you will have luncheon. You can drink your tea cold on the road or warm it in the spirit stove; and when settled for the night in some quiet and peaceful meadow, your servant will speedily cook the dinner, which has been put all ready in the Rippingille stove during the midday halt.

While this is being cooked, in the privacy of the saloon you can play the fiddle or discourse sweet music from the harmonium, or if tired lie on the sofa and read.

I have said that you must live plainly in a caravan. But the word plainly is a term. You may not have French dishes nor twenty courses, but I append extracts from bills of fare of caravan cookery, to show that diet is not necessarily a mere off-put in the Wanderer.

I must, however, premise that I myself did not always bother with so good a menu.

To begin with, here are my cook’s general instructions: —

Always see that the stove is clean and in order. Wipe the tanks thoroughly dry, if any oil is perceptible upon them; trim the wicks, light them, turn down low, place in the proper grooves, and carefully follow instructions given with the stove. When set fairly in, regulate the light by observing the height through the sight holes. Brush out the oven, and then all is ready for a good day’s work. All this will occupy very little time, one-tenth of that generally spent in lighting coal fires and trying to escape the dust and dirt the old-fashioned open range entailed. Next rinse out the kettle, fill with fresh water from the tap, place over one of the burners. Wash your hands, and then get all ready for breakfast. Cut rashers of bacon and slices of bread sufficient for the family requirements. Bring out the eggs, butter, pepper, salt; then the tea-caddy, coffee, etc, with their respective pots; plates, dishes, toast-rack, fish slice, teacup or small basin, and lay on the table near the stove, so that no time may be lost running about when the cooking begins. These instructions apply to all meals. First get the apparatus and material ready, and then begin to cook.

Breakfasts

I. Toast, poached eggs, tea, coffee, or chocolate.

II. Toast, fried eggs and bacon, or mashed eggs, tea, etc.

III. Oatmeal porridge with butter and creamy milk, followed by a boiled new-laid egg and a rasher, with tea. N.B. – The butter is always the sweetest, and the milk the crème de la crème.

IV. Herrings, devilled melt and roe, toast, tea, etc, eggs bouillés.

V. Mock sausages, boiled eggs, and usual fixings.

VI. Finnan haddocks, poached eggs, and usual fixings. And so on ad libitum.

Eleven o’clock Snacks

I. Bread or biscuit and cheese with a modicum of beer.

II. Bloater-paste or anchovy-paste, or buttered toast with cold tea.

III. Tongue and ham (potted), turkey and tongue, and fixings.

Luncheons

The cold joints of yesterday, with hot potatoes, piquant sauces, and chutney; washed down with a cup of delicious chocolate or new milk.

Dinners

I. Fried cutlets of fish; roast fowls; brown sauce, potatoes, greens, and bread; rice or golden pudding.

II. Spatch cock; minced meat, baked potatoes, green peas; custard.

III. Roast mutton, mashed turnips, potatoes; and fruit pudding.

IV. Rabbit stewed, game in season, vegetables; and sago pudding.

V. Beefsteak and onions, boiled potatoes, cauliflower; pudding.

VI. Salmon à la Reine; cold meat and salad; La Belle pudding.

And so on ad libitum, with wine or beer to suit the taste.

Suppers

I. If required, a snack of anything handy.

II. Tomatoes forcés (tinned tomatoes if fresh cannot be had), cocoa, toast.

III. Macaroni cheese and toast.

IV. Eggs à la Soyer, toast; or a poached egg on toast. Salad, especially of lettuce, with a modicum of good beer or stout.

A cleverer cook than I could devise a hundred simple dishes for caravan cookery, but I do not think my menu is altogether prison fare.

Ailments Likely to be Benefited by Caravan Life

I can, of course, only mention a few of these, and it must be distinctly understood that I am not trying to enforce the merits of a new cure. I am but giving my own impressions from my own experience, and if anyone likes to profit by these he may, and welcome.

I. Ennui.

II. Dyspepsia.

III. Debility and enfeeblement of health from overwork, or from worry or grief.

IV. Insomnia.

V. Chronic bronchitis and consumption in its earliest stages.

VI. Bilious habit of system.

VII. Acidity of secretions of stomach, etc.

VIII. All kinds of stomachic ailments.

IX. Giddiness or vertigo.

X. Hysteria.

XI. Headaches and wearying backaches.

XII. Constipated state of system.

XIII. Tendency to embonpoint.

XIV. Neuralgia of certain kinds.

XV. Liver complaints of a chronic kind.

XVI. Threatened kidney mischief.

XVII. Hay fever.

XVIII. Failure of brain power.

XIX. Anaemia or poverty of blood.

XX. Nervousness.

Some of the great factors in the cure of such complaints as the above by life in a caravan for a series of months would be, that perfect rest and freedom from all care which is so calming to shattered nerves, weary brains, and aching hearts. The constant and pleasurable change of scene and change of faces, the regularity of the mode of life, and the delightfully refreshing sleep, born of the fresh air and exercise, which is nearly always obtainable at night.

In concluding this chapter, let me just add that of all modes of enjoying life in summer and autumn I consider – speaking after a somewhat lengthy experience – caravan travelling the healthiest and the best.

Chapter Twenty Nine.

The Cycle as Tender to the Caravan

“When the spring stirs my blood    With the instincts of travel,    I can get enough gravelOn the old Marlborough road.”Thoreau.

I begin to think, reader, that the plan of putting headlines or verses to chapters, although a very ancient, time-honoured custom, is not such a very excellent one after all.

The verses are written subsequently, of course, after you have finished the chapter, and the difficulty is to get them to fit; you may have some glimmering notion that, once upon a time, some poet or other did say something that would be apropos, but who was it? You get off your easy-chair and yawn and stretch yourself, then lazily make your way to the bookshelf and commence the search among your favourite poets. It is for all the world like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay, and when you do find it, it isn’t half so bright as you thought it would be, only down you jot it in a semi-reckless kind of a way, feeling all the while as if you were a humbug, or committing some sort of a deadly sin.

If this good poet Thoreau had said, —

“When the spring stirs my blood    With the instincts of travel,I can get enough exercise    On my Marlborough tricycle.”

– Although not metre, it would have been to the point. But the poet did not, so there we are. Nevertheless, the Marlborough is the cycle I have bestridden during my tour this summer, and a sweet wee thing it is. In my caravan tour of 1885 it was the Ranelagh Club I had as tender to the Wanderer, also a good one.

But really, without a cycle, one would sometimes feel lost in caravan travelling. The Wanderer is so large that she cannot turn on narrow roads, so that on approaching a village, where I wish to stay all night, I find it judicious to stop her about a quarter of a mile out and tool on, mounted on the Marlborough, to find out convenient quarters. Then a signal brings the Wanderer on.

Another advantage of having a tender is this. In narrow lanes your valet rides on ahead, and if there really be no room for a trap to pass us, he warns any carriage that may chance to be coming our way.

Take, for example, that ugly climb we had when passing through Slochmuichk, in the Grampians (see illustration). My valet was on ahead, round the corner and on the outlook for coming vehicles, and so had anyone hove in sight a probable accident would have been avoided.

Again, when passing through a town where board schools with their busy bees of boys are numerous, my valet, on the Marlborough tender, comes riding up behind, and accordingly the bees do not have a chance of sticking on to the carriage.

Tramps will, at times, get up and try the drawers behind, but whenever I see a suspicious gang of these worthless loafers, a signal brings the tender flying back, and thus robbery is prevented.

I had the utmost satisfaction once this year in punishing some country louts. Butler, my valet, was innocently riding on about a hundred yards ahead, and no sooner had he passed than the three blackguards commenced stone-throwing. They had no idea then the cycle belonged to the caravan. They had soon after though. I slid quietly off the coupé, whip in hand, and for several seconds I enjoyed the most health-giving exercise. Straight across the face and round the ears I hit as hard as I knew how to. One escaped Scot-free, but two tumbled in the ditch and howled aloud for mercy, which I generously granted – after I got tired. The beauty of the attack was in its suddenness, and those roughs will remember it to their dying day.