The Lady of Lynn

I must not forget the preparation made in the churches. There are two in Lynn, ancient and venerable churches both. I believe that they were always much larger than was ever wanted considering the number of the people, but in Norfolk the churches are all too large, being so built for the greater praise and glory of God. However, both in St. Margaret's and in St. Nicholas, the congregations had long since shrunk so that there were wide spaces between the walls and the pews. These spaces were now filled up with new pews for the accommodation of the expected invasion of visitors. I confess that I admire the simple faith in the coming success of the spa which at this time animated not only those most interested as the doctor himself, but also the people of the town who knew nothing except what they were told, namely that the well in the doctor's garden had properties, which were sovereign against certain diseases, and that all the world had learned this fact and were coming to be cured.

There were next the public preparations. The necessity of despatch caused the structures to be of wood which, however, when brightly painted, may produce a more pleasing effect than brick. First, there was the pump room. This was built, of course, over the well in the doctor's garden, which it almost covered: it was a square or oblong building, having the well in one corner, and containing a simple room with large sash windows, unfurnished save for a wooden bench running round the wall and two others in the middle of the room. The water was pumped up fresh and cool – it was really a very fine well of water always copious – into a large basin; a long counter ran across the room in front of the basin: the counter was provided with glasses of various sizes and behind the counter were two girls hired as dippers. The doctor's door opened out of the pump room so as to afford readiness and convenience for consultation.

Lastly it was necessary to provide for the amusement of the visitors. Everybody knows that for one person who visits a spa for health, there are two who visit it for the amusements and the pleasures and entertainments provided at these places. I have mentioned the open fields within the walls of the town which were anciently covered with the buildings and the gardens of the monks and friars and the nuns. They are planted in some places with trees: for instance below the Lady's Mount, in which is the ancient chapel, there lie fields on which now stand many noble trees. The committee chose this spot for the construction of the assembly rooms. They first enclosed a large portion with a wooden fence: they then laid out the grounds with paths: this done they erected a long room where the assembly might be held, with a smooth and level floor fit for dancing. This room was also to be the resort of the company in the mornings and when the weather was rainy: adjoining the long room was the card room, with one long table and several small tables: and the tea room, where that beverage could be served with drinks and cordials to counteract its (possibly) evil effects. A gallery at one end was ready for the music – outside there was another building for the music to play on fine evenings.

I must not forget the decoration of the trees. Nothing could be more beautiful than this avenue after nightfall: lamps of various colours hung on festoons from branch to branch: across the avenue in arches, and from tree to tree in parallel lines: these in the evening produced an appearance of light and colour that ravished the eye of every beholder. Those who knew London declared that in the daytime this place could compare favourably with the Mall in St. James's Park, and in the evening after dark even with the Marylebone Gardens or Vauxhall.

All these preparations were pushed forward with the utmost diligence, so that everything, might be ready by the first of May, on which day it was hoped that the season of the spa would commence. Musicians and singers were engaged: they came from London, bringing good recommendation from some of the pleasure gardens where they had performed with credit. They were to play for the dancing on the nights of the assembly; they were also to play in the morning when engaged or bespoke by the gentlemen. They brought with them two or three fiddlers; players on various instruments of brass, and the horns. A dancing master, Mr. Prappit, came from Norwich: he was busy for three weeks before the opening, with the young folks of the town, who had never before danced anything more ambitious than a hey or a jig or a country dance, or a frolic round the May pole. Mr. Prappit was also engaged as master of the ceremonies, a post of great responsibility and distinction.

A theatre is a necessary part of every public place: therefore a troop of strolling players received permission to perform three evenings in the week in the large room of the Duke's Head inn: I know not what reputation they had as actors, but I can bear witness that they made as much as they could out of a passion, tearing it, so to speak, to rags, and bawling themselves hoarse, so that at least they earned their money, which was not much, I fear.

The cock pit was newly repaired for the lovers of that manly and favourite sport to which the gentlemen of Norfolk are, as is well known, much addicted. For those who prefer the more quiet games there was the bowling green. And lastly, for those who incline to the ruder sports, there were provided masters of fence who could play with quarter staff or cudgel, jugglers and conjurers, with rope dancers, tumblers, merry andrews and such folk, together with a tent for their performance.

These details are perhaps below the dignity of history. I mention them in order to let it be understood that the invention – the lying invention of Sam Semple, was bearing the fruit which he most desired in the deception of the whole town. There was never, I believe, so great a deception attempted or carried into effect.

Meantime, the work of the town continued as usual. The port had nothing to do with the spa. For my own part I was discharging cargo from The Lady of Lynn, and making ready to take in a new cargo. All day I was engaged on board: I slept on board: but in the evening I went ashore and looked on at the preparations, and at this new world of fashion and pleasure the like of which I had never seen before. And, as usual, the ships came into port and dropped anchor off the Stath: or they cleared out and went down the river with the current and the tide. There were two kinds of life in the place when there had never before been more than one: and while the people in one part of the town had nothing to think of but amusement, those at the other part were as usual, engaged in their various work. The clerks ran about with their quills behind their ears; the porters rolled the casks, the bargemen brought their unwieldy craft alongside with many loud sounding oaths and the yohoing without which they can do nothing; and in the taverns the sailors drank and danced and sang, quite unmindful of the people in the streets behind them.

The first arrivals were the gentlefolk from the country round Lynn. They learned when everything would be ready and they came in as soon as the gardens were laid out, the long room finished and the first evening announced – they had but a few miles to travel; they engaged the best lodgings and demanded the best provisions. As for wine, they could not have better because there is no better wine than fills the cellars of our merchants or our vintners.

As these good people came to the spa it was thought necessary to drink the waters and this they did with much importance, every morning. The natives of Norfolk are, I verily believe, the longest lived and the most healthy people in the whole world. With the exception of ague – they call it the bailiff of Marshland – the people in this county seldom suffer from any disorder and live to a good old age. Yet all with one consent began the day by drinking a glass of the cold bright water served in the pump room. Very few of them, I say, were troubled with any kind of complaint: though the gentlemen are hard drinkers, they are also hard riders and the open air and cold winds of the morning drive out and dissipate the fumes of the evening and its wine. For this reason, though many of our sea captains drink hard at sea, they are never a bit the worse for the fresh salt air is the finest restorative, and a sailor may be drunk once every twenty-four hours and yet live to a hundred and be none the worse. Most of those who drank the waters had never felt any symptoms of gout or rheumatism, lumbago, sciatica, pleurisy, consumption or asthma, or any other disease whatever. They flocked to the pump room in order to drive away even the possibility of these symptoms. To drink the waters for a month, or even for a fortnight, was considered sovereign for the keeping off of all kinds of sickness for at least a whole year to come. It was strange how quite young men and young maidens suddenly conceived this superstitious belief – I can call it nothing but superstition – that those who were perfectly well would be maintained in health —although young people of this age do not commonly contract the diseases above enumerated – by drinking a glass of water every morning. That old men, who will catch at anything that offers to restore health, should resort to this newly discovered universal medicine was not so strange. Captain Crowle, who, to my certain knowledge, had never suffered a day's sickness in the seventy years of his life; who kept his teeth firm and sound; whose hair had not fallen off; who stood firm on his legs and square in his shoulders; who still drank free and devoured his rations as eagerly as any able-bodied sailor, marched every morning to the pump room and took his glass. "Jack," he said, "the discovery is truly miraculous. By the Lord! it will make us all live to be a hundred. Already I feel once more like a man of thirty. I shall shake a leg, yet, at the wedding of Molly's grandchildren."

They all consulted the doctor – the sick and the well alike – the former in order to be cured and the latter in order to guard against disease. Now that one knows the foundation of the whole business it is wonderful to reflect upon the number of cures the doctor was able to register in his book: cures about which there could be neither doubt nor dispute, so that one is fain to think that faith alone may be sufficient to drive out rheumatism. The prescription of the worthy doctor rested entirely on the curative power of the water. "You will take," he said to every one who came to him, "every morning before breakfast for choice, a glass of the water. Or, if you prefer first to take a dish of tea, a cup of chocolate, or a draught of beer, do so by all means. In that case take your glass an hour – not more – after breakfast. I prescribe in your case, a dose in a glass numbered A or B – or C" – as the case might be. "It contains seven ounces and six drachms" – or some other weight as the case might be. He was very exact in the size of the glass and the weight of the dose. "This is the exact quantity which operates efficaciously in your case. Do not take more which will not expedite your cure: nor less which will hinder it. Seven ounces and six drachms."

The doctor's dignity and gravity indeed were a credit to the town. Out of London, I believe, there was no physician with such outward tokens of science. The velvet coat he now wore habitually: a new wig greatly delayed had been brought from Norwich: his lace and his linen were clean every morning: his fingers became curly from the continual clasp of the guinea. No one, I am sure, expected to find so grave and dignified a physician in a town occupied mainly by rude tarpaulins and their ladies. Where nothing better than a mere apothecary could be expected there was found a physician in manner and in appearance equal to the most fashionable doctor of medicine in London itself.

"Before breakfast, madam," he repeated. "Fasting, if possible. If that is not convenient, after breakfast. Think not to hasten the operation of the waters by too generous a use of them. Seven ounces and six drachms in weight. Let that be your daily allowance: that and no more. For your diet, let it be ample, generous, and of the best quality that the market supplies. It is providentially, considering the wants of the spa – the best market in Norfolk, provided with birds of all kinds, both wild and of the farmyard: with beef and mutton fattened on the pastures of Marshland; and with fruit and other things of the very best. Partake plentifully, madam. Do not deny yourself. Tea, you may take if you desire it: very good tea can be obtained of the apothecary at a guinea a pound. For my own part I allow the beverage to be sometimes useful in clearing the brain of noxious vapours and the body of corrupt humours. For wine I recommend Port, Malmesey, Madeira or Lisbon – but not more than one measured pint in the day. You must take exercise gently by walking in the gardens, or in the long room, or by dancing in the evening. And you may maintain cheerfulness of mind, which is beneficial in any case whether of sickness or of health, by taking a hand in the card room."

To the gentlemen who had not as yet fallen victims to any of the prevalent diseases he would discourse much after the same fashion.

"Put out your tongue, sir – I believe it to be furred – So… Dear me! Worse than I suspected. And your pulse? I believe it to be strong. So. As I thought. A little too strong, perhaps even febrile. Your habits, I suppose, include a hearty appetite and a full allowance of strong ale and wine. You ride – you hunt – you attend races, cockpit and sport of all kinds; you are not addicted to reading or to study, and you sometimes play cards."

"The doctor," said his patients afterwards, "knew exactly and could tell by my pulse and my tongue my daily way of living. 'Tis wonderful!"

"It is my duty to warn you, sir, that you have within you the seeds of gout – of inflammatory gout – which will fix itself first upon the big toe and thus become like a bag of red hot needles. Afterwards it will mount higher – but I will spare you the description of your dying agonies. You may, however, avert this suffering, or postpone it, so that it will only seize upon you should you live to a hundred and twenty, or thereabouts. The surest method is by drinking these waters every year for a week or two. One tumbler every morning fasting. You will take a measured weight of seven ounces and six drachms – " or as I said before some other weight. "I prescribe in your case, no other medicine. Let your diet be generous. Confine yourself to a single bottle of wine a day. Ride as usual and, in fact, live as you are accustomed. Nature, sir, abhors a revolution: she expects to perform her usual work in the usual manner."

If any came to him already afflicted with gout or rheumatism he prescribed for them in a similarly easy and simple fashion.

"You have been taking colchicum – " or whatever it might have been. "I recommend you on no account to discontinue a medicine to which you are accustomed. Gout is an enemy which may be attacked from many points. While it is resisting so far successfully the attack by the drugs which have been administered to you, I shall attack it from an unsuspected quarter. Ha! I shall fall upon the unguarded flank with an infallible method. You will take, sir, three glasses of water daily; each before meals. Each glass contains the measured weight of seven ounces and six drachms," or some other weight was carefully prescribed. "You will, in other respects, follow the diet recommended by your former physicians."

"The doctor," said his patients, "is not one who scoffs at his brethren. On the contrary, he continues their treatment, only adding the water. And you see what I am now."

"Observe," the doctor continued, "my treatment is simple. It is so simple that it must command success. I shall expect therefore, to find in you, for your own share in the cure, that faith which assists nature. Nothing so disconcerts an enemy as the confidence of victory on the other side. Before that faith, gout flies, terrified; and nature, triumphant, resumes that nice balanced equilibrium of all the functions which the unlearned call health."

The doctor also encouraged his dippers, one of whom was a young woman of attractive appearance and great freedom of tongue, to relate for the benefit of those who drank the waters, cases of cure and rapid recovery. This encouragement caused the girl who had a fine natural gift of embellishment or development, to sing the praises of the spa with a most audacious contempt for the structure of fact.

"Lawk, madam!" she would say, using the broad Norfolk accent which I choose to convert into English, because her discourse would be unintelligible save to the folk of the county. "To think what this blessed water can do! That poor gentleman who has just gone out – you saw yourself that he now walks as upright as a lance and as stiff as a recruiting sergeant. He first came to the pump room, was it a fortnight ago or three weeks, Jenny? Twelve days? To be sure. You ought to know – Jenny dipped for him, madam. He was carried in: his very crutches were no good to him; and as for his poor feet, they dangle for all the world like lumps of pork. And his groans, – Lawk! – they would move a heart of stone. Jenny here, who has a feeling heart, though but a humble dipper at your service, madam, like myself and pleased to be of service to so fine a lady, burst into tears when she saw him – didn't you, Jenny, my dear? Before all the people, she did. Well, he drank three tumblers every day – each exactly seven ounces and six drachms in weight – oh! the doctor knows what to do for his patients – did your ladyship ever see a wiser doctor? On the third day he left off groaning: on the fourth he said, 'I feel better, give me my third tumbler.' Didn't he say those very words, Jenny? 'Give me my third,' he said. On the fifth day he walked in by himself. It was on crutches, it is true, for even this water takes its time. Lord forbid that I should tell your ladyship anything but gospel. On the sixth day he used a walking stick: on the seventh, he said, walking upright, his stick over his shoulder, 'If it was not Sunday,' he said, 'I should cut a caper – cut a caper,' he said. Jenny heard him. And now he talks of going home where a sweet young lady, almost as beautiful as your ladyship, waits for him with a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. She couldn't marry a man, could she, madam, with both feet, as a body might say, in the grave? Nobody except the doctor and us dippers, knows the secrets of the spa. If we could talk – but there we are bound to secrecy, because ladies would not let the world know that they have had ailments – but if we could talk, you would be astonished. Tell her ladyship, Jenny, about the old gammer of ninety, while I attend to the company. Yes, sir, coming, sir."

And so she rattled on, talking all day long and never tired of inventing these stories. The people listened, laughed, affected disbelief, yet believed. They drank the waters, and put down their twopences, which went into a box kept for the doctor. What with the patients' guineas and the daily harvest of this box he, at least, was in a fair way of proving the truth of his own prophecy that everybody in Lynn would be enriched by the grand discovery.

CHAPTER IX

SENT TO THE SPA

At the outset, though the pump room was full every morning and the gardens and long room in the evening were well attended, the spa lacked animation. The music pleased, the singers pleased, the coloured lamps dangled in chains between the branches and pleased. Yet the company was dull; there was little noise of conversation, and no mirth or laughter; the family groups were not broken up; the people looked at each other and walked round and round in silence; after the first round or so, when they had seen all the dresses, the girls yawned and wanted to sit down.

The master of the ceremonies exerted himself in vain. He had hoped so much and promised so much that it was sad to see him standing in front of the orchestra and vainly endeavouring to find couples for the minuet. How should they dance a minuet when there were no leaders to begin? And where were the gentlemen? Most of them were at the tavern or the cockpit, drinking and cockfighting, and making bets. What was the use of calling a country dance when there were none to stand up except ladies and old men? Mr. Prappet, in a blue silk coat and embroidered waistcoat, hat under arm, and flourishing his legs as a fencing master flourishes his arms, fell into despondency. "I make no progress, Mr. Pentecrosse," he said. "I cannot begin with the beaux of the town; they are nautical or rustical, to tell the truth, and they are beneath the gentry of the county. If I begin with them none of the gentry will condescend either to dance with them or to follow them, and so the character of the assembly will be gone. We must obey the laws of society. We want rank, sir. We want a leader. We want two or three people of fashion, otherwise these county families, none of whom will yield precedence to any other, and will not endure that one should stand up before the other, will never unbend. They are jealous. Give me a leader – a nobleman – a baronet – a lady of quality – and you shall see how they will fall in. First, the nobility, according to rank; after them, the gentry; then the town degrees must be observed. But, in order to observe degrees, sir, we must have rank among us. At present we are a mob. An assembly in the polite world should be like the English Constitution, which, Mr. Pentecrosse, consists of Lords and Commons – Ladies, and the wives and daughters of commoners."

To me it was amusing only to see the people in their fine dresses marching round and round while the music played, trailing their skirts on the floor, swinging their hoops, and handling their fans; for the lack of young men, talking to the clergy from the cathedrals and the colleges, and casting at each other glances of envy if one was better dressed, or of scorn when one was worse dressed than themselves.

"As for the men, Jack," said Captain Crowle, "I keep looking about me. I try the pump room in the morning, the ordinary at dinner, the taverns after dinner. My lad, there is not one among them all who is fit to be mated with our Molly. Gentlemen, are they? I like not the manner of these gentlemen. They are mostly young, but drink hard already. If their faces are red and swollen at twenty-five, what will they be at forty? My girl shall marry none of them. Nor shall she dance with them. She shall stay at home."

In fact, during the first week or two after the opening of the spa, Molly remained at home and was not seen in the long room or in the gardens.

The town was nearly full, many of the visitors having to put up with mean lodgings in the crazy old courts, of which there are so many in Lynn, when the first arrival from London took place. It was that of a clergyman named Benjamin Purdon, Artium Magister, formerly of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a man of insignificant presence, his figure being small and thin, but finely dressed. His head was almost hidden by a full ecclesiastical wig. Apparently he was between forty and fifty years of age; he looked about him and surveyed the company with an air of superiority, as if he had been a person of rank. He spoke with a loud, rather a high voice; his face was pale and his hands, which he displayed, were as white as any woman's, on one finger he wore a large ring with a stone on which were carved three graces, or Greek goddesses, standing in a row. To some the ring was a stumbling-block, as hardly in accordance with the profession of a divine. "Art," however, he was wont to say, "knows nothing of Eve's apple and its consequences. Art is outside religion;" and so forth. Fustian stuff, it seems to me, looking back; but at that time we were carried away by the authority of the man.

He came to us down the river by a tilt boat from Cambridge, and accepted, contentedly, quite a humble lodging, barely furnished with a chair and a flock bed. "Humility becomes a divine," he said, in a high, authoritative voice. "The room will serve. A coal fire and an open window will remove the mustiness. Who am I that I should demand the luxuries of Lucullus? The Cloth should daily offer an example. We must macerate the flesh." He was thin, but he certainly practised not maceration. "We must subdue the body. To him who meditates a hovel becomes a palace. There is an ordinary, you say, daily at the 'Crown' – At two shillings? For the better subjugation of the carnal appetite it should have been one and sixpence. Nevertheless, I have heard of the green goslings of Lynn. Perhaps I shall now be privileged to taste them. There were excellent ruffs and reeves when I was at college that came to the market-place from the fens in the May time. You have a Portuguese trade I am told – in wine, I hope, otherwise we are not likely to get anything fit for a gentleman to drink. It is, indeed, little that I take; were it not for my infirmities, I should take none. Your port, I hope, is matured. More sickness is caused by new wine than by any other cause. Give me wine of twenty years – but that is beyond hope in this place. If it is three, four, or five years old, I shall be fortunate beyond my expectation." He did not say all these fine things at once, or to one person; but by bits to his brother clergyman, the vicar of St. Margaret's; to Captain Crowle, to the mayor, to the landlady of the Crown Inn, to the ladies in the long room. "You see me as I am, a poor scholar, a humble minister of the church —servus servorum