We first endure—then pity—then embrace.”
[29] Granville, vol. 1, p. 110.
[30] I do not, for one moment, doubt the fidelity of Dr. Granville’s description; but I am convinced that the effects which he describes were more owing to some happy mood in which he was at the time, than to any peculiar properties of the waters. Let us remember the expression of the Frenchman in the Serpent’s Bath at Schlangenbad—“dans ces bains on devient absoluement amoreux de soi-même.” Now, I do not see why Dr. G. might not have “fallen in love with self,” in the baths of Wildbad, as well as Monsieur in those of Schlangenbad.
[31] “Chargé par son Excellence Mons. le Comte De Witt, General au service de la Russie, j’ai l’honneur d’avertir Mons. le Docteur Johnson, qu’il est prié de se trouver a la fête que Mons. le Comte donnera ce soir au Palais Royal.
“Wildbad, Aug. 18, 1839. Heim.”
Circumstances did not permit me to accept the kind invitation, and I can only thus return my thanks to Count De Witt for his politeness to a casual bath-acquaintance.
[32] The public and promiscuous bathing of both sexes, so common on the Continent, is more easily condemned by prejudice than convicted by argument. I confess that I was fairly beaten out of the field by a German philosopher, while discussing the point. First, he urged the antiquity of the practice—the Romans having public baths for both sexes indiscriminately, on a most magnificent scale. The larger the bath, however, the less the objection, and vice versa, which he acknowledged. Secondly, he asked me what there was in the element water, to render promiscuous assemblages of the sexes more indelicate than in the element air? I answered that in the latter element the people were dressed. Dressed! he exclaimed. Why in the bath they are closely clothed from the chin to the soles of the feet; while in the ball-room the ladies exclude dress from every spot which they dare expose without outraging decency! There was no denying this. He added that, it was surely as unobjectionable for invalids of both sexes to walk and wade about in the bath, during the open day, as for people in high health to waltz about in crowded assemblies, during the middle of the night. On observing that the English were shocked at the practice of bathing promiscuously, because their eyes were unaccustomed to the sight; he replied, “exactly so—and the Germans, who are accustomed to it, feel nothing at all on the occasion.” The only objection on which I was obliged to fall back, was the loss of friction and shampooing in the bath—a drawback which the German admitted as unavoidable in public baths, but which, he maintained, was, in some degree, compensated for by the pleasure of conversation and society.
[33] The “Auxiliary” which I have recommended to be taken over night, while using the waters of Wisbaden, would prevent or mitigate the spa-fever, or “bad-sturm” of Wildbad, without any abatement of the medicinal effects of the waters.
J. J.
[34] This child of the Revolution, and of fickle fortune, fell at the battle of Dresden, and his body lies interred on the frozen banks of the Neva!