Off early to Heidelberg. Delighted, at all events, to bid farewell to the worthy Monarchs. This trip seemed to invigorate us, and if civility, polite attention, good rooms, and an excellent cuisine could make any invalid temporarily better, then our short stay at the Prinz Karl Hotel—a really perfectly managed establishment—ought to have revived us both considerably. And so it did. A lovely drive to the heights among the pine woods and in the purest air went for something, but alas the knowledge that we had to rise at 5 A.M., to be off by six—it turned out to be a 6.30 train—drove slumber from our eyes, and only by means of a cold bath, the first thing on tumbling out of bed, could I brace myself for the effort. Then on we went, taking Skurrie's pre-arranged tour.
Let the remainder be a blank.
When abroad I had bought a French one-volume novel which I had seen praised in the Figaro. I will not give its name, nor that of its author. If it indeed portrays persons really living in Paris, and if these persons are not wholly exceptional (but, if so, why this novel, which implies the contrary and denounces them?) then is the latest state of Republican Paris worse than its former state in the days of the dégringolade of the Empire, and Paris must undergo a fearful purgation before she will once again possess mens sana in corpore sano. I read this disgusting novel half-way through until its meaning became quite clear to me, and then I proceeded by leaps and bounds, landing on dry places and skipping over the filth in order to see how the author worked out a moral and punished his infamous scoundrel of a chief personage. No. Moral there was none, except an eloquent appeal to Paris to rise and crush these reptiles and their brood. On the wretched night when feverish, ill, and sleepless, I lay miserably in the saloon of the Flemish steamer crossing to Queenborough, I opened the porthole above me and threw this infernal book into the sea. After this I bore the sufferings of that night with a lighter heart.
Suffice it that I arrived at home—and how glad I was to get there—broken down, prostrate and only fit for bed——where with railways running round and round my head, steamboats dashing and thumping about my brain, the shrieks of German and Flemish porters ringing in my ears, Skurrie always forcing me to travel on, on, on, against my will, I remained for about three weeks.
Advice gratis to all Drinkers of Waters.—"The story shows," as the Moral to the fables of Æsop used to put it, that when you have finished your cure, make straight by the easiest stages for the seaside at home. Avoid all exertion: and ask your medical man before leaving to tell you exactly what to eat, drink, and avoid, for the next three weeks at least after the completion of your cure.
While ill, but when beginning to crave for some amusement or distraction, I asked that my dear old Boz's Sketches should be read to me, to which in years gone by I had been indebted for many a hearty laugh. Alas! what a disappointment! Except for a little descriptive bit here and there, the fun of these Sketches sounded as wearisome and old-fashioned as the humours of the now forgotten "Adelphi screamers" in which Messrs. Wright and Paul Bedford used to perform, and at which, as a boy, I used to scream with delight, when the strong-minded mistress of the house, speaking while the comic servant was laying the cloth for dinner, would say of her husband, "When I see him I'll give him——" "Pepper," says the comic servant, accidentally placing that condiment on the table. "He shan't," resumes the irate lady, "come over me with any——" "Butter," interrupts the comic servant, quite unconsciously, of course, as he deposits a pat of Dorset on the table. And so on. Later on, I tried Thackeray's Esmond. How tedious, how involved, and full of repetitions! It is enlivened here and there by the introduction of such real characters as Dick Steele, Lord Mohun, Dean Atterbury, and others, and by the mysterious melodramatic appearances and disappearances of Father Holt, a typical Jesuit of the "penny dreadful" style of literature. But the work had lost whatever charm it ever possessed for me, and, indeed, I had always considered it an over-rated book, not by any means to be compared with Vanity Fair, Pendennis, or even with Barry Lyndon, which last is repulsively clever.
Then I asked for a book that I never yet could get through, and to which I thought that now, with leisure and a craving for distraction, I might take a liking. This was Little Dorrit. I tried hard, but it made my head ache even more than Esmond had done, and I laid it down, utterly unable to comprehend the mystery which takes such an amount of dreary, broken-up, tedious dialogue in the closing chapters to unravel.