I have started my cure, he writes on 18.7.17, which promises to be a most strenuous, arduous and tedious affair. I have to take daily two soda-water tumblers of strong sulphur water and two ordinary tumblers of warm magnesia water; and on alternate days (a) a Nauheim bath and (b) a hot-air bath....
It is raining steadily. This doesn’t matter. But that sulphur-water, on an empty stomach, at 8 a.m.! Two-and-twenty ounces of it, hot! The stench of it! It is said to remind one of rotten eggs; but, as I have never smelt a rotten egg, it reminds me of nothing and only suggests hell.[5]
Sugar seems to have been more scarce in Harrogate than in London; and Teixeira’s appeals and contrivances were always pathetic and sometimes frantic.
My wife did manage to get half a pound of it flung at her head this morning, he writes on 19.7.17. I had so entirely forgotten the essential rudeness of the people of Yorkshire that its discovery came upon me as an utter surprise. I amuse myself by overcoming it with smiles. Smiles are unfamiliar symptoms to them and take them aback.
You may tell Sutro that I have bought a dozen silk collars.
After weary weeks of nauseating treatment, he writes:
It will be an awful sell if this cure ends without doing me good. Still I always hope. Whatever happens I shall want at least a week’s after-cure which I should probably take here: simply a rest and air, without any waters or baths. But what is your Cornish date?
I replied, 27.7.17.
By this time you will have seen that our minds have been working on parallel lines towards the same conclusion that an after-cure is quite essential. It will suit me perfectly well to stay here until, and including, Friday the 24th, or later if you like. My Cornish arrangements are quite fluid....