Part 28

My notion of the water-diviner was gathered from Sir Walter’s famous portrait of Dousterswivel in the _Antiquary_; a fellow “who amongst fools and womankind talks of the Cabala, the divining-rod, and all the trumpery with which the Rosicrucians cheated a darker age, and which, to our eternal disgrace, has in some degree revived in our own.” I was resolved that the revival should in no case be forwarded by me, and so lost my opportunity, and have been ever since tantalised by reports of marvels wrought by the hazel-wand, as to which I was quite at a loss to form any reasonable opinion. It was with no little satisfaction, therefore, that I received, and accepted, an invitation to assist at a water-search about to be undertaken by a diviner of considerable reputation in the outskirts of Deer Leap Wood, in the parish of Wootton, Surrey.

This wood, notable even amongst the loveliest of that favoured county, belongs to the worthy representative of the author of _Sylva_ and the _Memoirs_, who, having built some excellent cottages on its confines, desires to find the occupants a good supply of spring-water _in situ_. Accordingly a group of us, men and women of all ages, and of all degrees of scepticism--for I doubt if there was a single believer in the efficacy of the rod, though the squire himself and a friend preserved a judicious silence--gathered last Friday after breakfast on the lawn before Wootton House, to await the arrival of the water-doctor, whom the agent had gone to meet at the station. It was agreed on all hands that a preliminary test should be applied, and that the lawn on which we stood offered quite admirable facilities for this purpose. For, more than two hundred years ago, John Evelyn had diverted a portion of the stream, which runs down the valley in which the house stands, for the purpose of making a fountain on the terraces. (Let it be noted in passing, that the lead-work of that fountain has needed no repair from that day to this! There _were_ plumbers in those days!) From this fountain two pipes carry the water into the house, under the lawn on which we stood. Now the lawn turf is as smooth as a billiard-table, without the slightest indication of the whereabouts of these pipes, which indeed was only known vaguely to the squire, and not at all to any one else of those present. If the divining-rod could discover these, the experiment at “Deer Leap Wood” might be undertaken with good hope.

Well, the doctor, conducted by the steward, arrived in due course, a stout middle-aged man, of the stamp of a high-class mechanic; plain and straightforward in speech, and with no pretence whatever to mystery. In answer to our questions, he said: “He couldn’t tell how it came about; but of this he was sure, that he could find springs and running water. Thirty years ago he was working as a mason at Chippenham, with a Cornish miner amongst others. He saw this man find water with the rod; had then tried it himself, and found he could do it. That was all he knew. Any one*of us might have the same power. Why, two young gentlemen who saw him working at Warleigh, near Bath, had copied him, and found a spring right under their father’s library.” We listened, and then proposed that he should just try about the lawn. He produced a hazel twig shaped like a Y, the arms, each some eighteen inches long; the point, perhaps, six inches. I may note, however, that the dimensions can be of no consequence, for he used at least half a dozen in his trials, cutting them at random out of the hazel-bush as we walked along, and taking no measure of any of them. Taking an arm of the Y between the middle fingers of each hand, he walked across the lawn slowly, stooping slightly forward, so as to keep the point downwards, about a foot from the ground. He had not gone a dozen yards before the rod quivered, and then the point rose at once straight up into the air. “There’s running water here,” he said, “and close to the surface.” We marked the spot and followed him, and some twenty-five yards further the point of the Y again sprang up into the air. The steward, who knew the plans accurately, was appealed to, and admitted that these were the precise spots under which the pipes ran. In answer to the suggestion that the point sprang up by pressure of his fingers, voluntary or involuntary, he asked two of us to hold the arms beyond his fingers, and see if we could prevent the point rising. We did so (I being one), and did all we could to keep it pointed downwards, but it rose in spite of us, and I watched his hands carefully at the same time and could detect no movement whatever of the muscles. Then he broke one of the arms, all but the bark, and still the point rose as briskly as ever. Lastly, he proposed that each of us should try if we had the power. We did so, but without success, except that in the case of Mrs. Evelyn and another lady the point trembled, and seemed inclined, though unable, to rise. He then took hold of their wrists, and at once it rose, nearly as promptly as it had done with him. This was enough; and we started in procession, on ponies, in carriage^, or walking, to Deer Leap Wood, where in the course of an hour he marked with pegs some half dozen spots, under which running water will be found at from 70 feet to 100 feet. He did not pretend to be able to give the exact depth, but only undertook to give the outside limits. And so we all went back to lunch, and Mullins took his fee and departed. I know, sir, that you have many scientific readers, and can picture to myself the smile tinged with scorn with which they will turn to your next page when they get thus far. Well, I own that the boring remains to be done, the results of which I hope to send you in due course. Meantime, let me remind them of a well-known adventure of one of the most famous of their predecessors towards the end of last century. Sir Joseph Banks, botanising on the downs on a cloudless June day, came across a shepherd whom he greeted with the customary “Fine day,”--“Ees,” was the reply, “but there’ll be heavy rain yet, afore night.” Sir Joseph passed on unheeding, and got a thorough drenching before he reached his inn. Next morning he went back, found the shepherd, and put a guinea in his hand, with “Now, my man, tell me how you knew there was going to be rain yesterday afternoon.”

“Whoy,” said Hodge, with a grin, “I zeed my ould ram a shovin’ hisself back’ards in under thuck girt thornin bush; and wenever a doos that there’ll sartin sure be heavy rainfall afore sundown.”

Note.--Water was found where it was expected by the Diviner, and this well is now used by the tenants of the Deer Leap Cottages.--October 1895.

Sequah’s “Flower of the Prairie,” Chester, 26th March 1890.

“Why, what on earth can this be?” I asked of the man who stood next me in the Foregate some ten days ago, as we paused at a crossing to allow the strange object which had drawn from me the above ejaculation to pass on, with its attendant crowd. It was a mighty gilded waggon, certainly fourteen feet long by six feet or seven feet broad. It was drawn by four handsome bays. On two raised seats at the front sat eight men, English, I fancy, every man of them, but clad over their ordinary garments in long leather coats with fringes, such as our familiar Indians wear in melodrama, and in the broad-brimmed, soft felts of the Western cowboy. They were all armed with brass instruments and made the old streets resound with popular airs. Behind these raised seats, in the body of the waggon, rode some half dozen, including three strapping brown men, Indians, I fancy they pose for, but they looked to me more like the half-castes whom one sees on the Texan and Mexican ranches on the Bio Grande. They also were clad in fringed leather coats, and wore sombreros over their long black locks. The sides of the waggon, where not gilt, were panelled with mirrors, on which were emblazoned the Stars and Stripes and other coloured devices. Altogether, the thing seemed to me well done in its way, whatever it might mean; and I turned inquiringly to my neighbour and repeated my question, as the huge gilded van and its jubilant followers passed away down the station road. “Oh! ’tis the ‘Merikin chap, as cures folks’s rheumatics and draws their teeth.”

“He must draw something more than their teeth,” I said, “to keep up all that show.” My neighbour grinned assent. “He’ve drawed pretty nigh all the loose money as is going hereabouts already,” he said as we parted. “One more quack to fleece the poor,” I thought, as I walked on. “Well, anyhow, they get a show for their shillings; that van beats Barnum!”

In this mind I reached the vicarage of one of our biggest city parishes to which I was bound. “I don’t know about quack,” said the vicar, when I had detailed my adventure on the way, using that disparaging phrase; “but this I do know, that I have given over writing certificates for my poor from downright shame, the demand is so great.” And then he explained that the “medicineman,” whose stage name was Sequah, made no charge to any patient who brought a clergyman’s certificate of poverty; that the van had now been in the town above a week; and at first he, the vicar, had given such certificates freely, both for treatment (tooth-drawing) and for the medicines, but now refused except in the case of the very poorest. No! not because Sequah was an impostor; on the contrary, he had done several noteworthy cures--at any rate temporary cures--on some of the vicar’s own parishioners: notably in the case of one old man who had been drawn up to the van in a wheel-chair. He had had rheumatism for two years, which had quite disabled him, and was in great pain when he got on the platform. After he had been treated he walked down the steps without help, and wheeled his chair home himself. Unluckily, Sequah had advised him to get warm woollen underclothing, and on his pleading that he had not the money to buy it, had given him a sovereign. This so elated him that he felt quite a new man, and could not help breaking his sovereign on the way home to give the new man a congratulatory glass at a favourite pot-house. This had thrown him back, and his knees were a little stiff again, but the pain had not returned even in this case.

After such testimony from a thoroughly trustworthy and matter-of-fact witness, I resolved to see this strange thing with my own eyes, and went off straight from the vicarage to the scene of action, to which the vicar directed me. This was an old tan-yard about half an acre in extent, and was full of people when I arrived, the space immediately round the waggon being densely crowded. It was drawn up in the middle of the plot. The eight brass-bandsmen had wheeled round so as to look down from their raised benches on the floor of the waggon, on which was a large leather chair. In front of the chair, speaking to the crowd from the end of the waggon, stood a tall figure, in a finer kind of leather-fringed coat, ornamented with rows of blue, red, and white beads. At first glance I thought it was a woman from the fineness of the features, and masses of long, light hair falling on the shoulders. A second glance, however, showed me that it was a man, and a vigorous and muscular one too. He was explaining that the medicines he was going to sell presently were not “scientific,” but “natural” medicines, “compounded of the water of a Californian spring and certain botanic ingredients”! I will not trouble you with a list of all the ailments they will cure if taken steadily and in sufficient doses, but get on at once to the performance. Having finished his speech, he put on his sombrero, took up a pair of forceps from a table on which a row of them were displayed, and stood by the chair. Upon this, advanced an apparently endless line of men, women, and children, marshalled by the Indians who stood at the foot of the steps. One by one they came up, sat down in the chair, passed under Sequah’s hands, and descended the steps on the other side of the waggon into the wondering crowd, while the band discoursed vigorous and continuous music. I watched him draw at least fifty teeth in less than as many minutes. The patient just sat down, opened his mouth, pointed to the peccant tooth, and it was out in most cases before he could wink. There were perhaps three or four cases (of adults) in which things did not go quite so smoothly, and one--that of a young woman, who seized her bonnet and rushed down the steps in evident pain and rage--after which he stopped the band, and explained to us that her tooth was so decayed that he had had to break the stump in the jaw. This he had done, and should have taken the pieces out without causing any further pain, if she had just waited a few more seconds. There are rumours flying round that the infirmary is crowded daily with patients in agonies from broken fangs which have been left in by Sequah. On the other hand, two of our doctors whom I have met admit that he is a very remarkable “extractor,” and has first-rate instruments.

There were still crowds waiting their turn when he finished his tooth-drawing for the day, and announced that he would now treat a case of rheumatism. Thereupon, an elderly man--who gave his name and address, and stated that he had been rheumatic for twelve years, unable to walk for two, and was now in great pain--was carried up the steps and put in the chair. Then buffalo-robes were brought by the Indians, two of whom held them up so as to conceal Sequah and the third, a rubber, who remained inside with the patient. Then the brass band struck up boisterously, the buffalo-robe screen was agitated here and there, and a strong and very pungent smell (not unlike hartshorn) spread all round. I timed them, and at the end of eighteen minutes the buffalo-robes were lowered, and there was the old man dressed again and seated in the chair. The band stopped. Sequah asked the old man if he felt any pain now. He replied, “No,” and then was told to walk to the front of the platform, which he did; then to get down the ladder, walk round the waggon amongst the crowd, and come up on the other side, which he did, looking, I must say, as astonished as I was, at his own performance. Then six or seven men, mostly elderly, came up and declared that they had been similarly treated, and were wonderfully better, some of them quite cured and at work again. Then Sequah invited any person who had been treated by him or taken his medicines and were none the better, to come up into the waggon and tell us about it, as that was their proper place and not below. This offer seemed quite _bona fide_, but it did not impress me, as I doubt whether any protesting patient would have had much chance of ascending the steps, which were kept by the Indians and their able-bodied confederates. No one answering, two big portmanteaus were brought up, out of which he began to sell his medicines at a dollar (4s.) the set--two bottles and two small packets. The rush to be served began, people crushing and struggling to get near enough to hand up their hats or caps with 4s. in them, which were returned with the medicines in them. I watched for at least ten minutes, when, there being apparently no end to the purchases, I strolled away, musing on the strange scene, and wondering what the attraction can be in the Bohemian life which could induce a man of this evident power to wander about the world in a gilded waggon, in a ridiculous costume, and talking transparent clap-trap, to sell goods which apparently want no lies telling about them.

I may add that I went again last Saturday, when there was even a greater crowd, and an older and more severe case of rheumatism was treated with quite as great (apparent) success.

French Popular Feeling, 15th August 1890.

I doubt if any of your readers has less sympathy than I with the yearning to go back twenty, thirty, or forty years (as the case may be), which seems to be a note of contemporary literature, and therefore, I take it, of the average mind of the men and women of our day, who have passed out of their first youth. “The Elixir of Life,” which Bulwer dreamed and wrote of, which should restore youth, with its bounding pulses and golden locks, its capacity for physical enjoyment, and for building castles in Spain, I think I may say with confidence I would not drink four times a day, with twenty minutes’ promenade between the glasses (as I am just now drinking of the _source Cosar_ here), even if an _elixir vito source_ were to come bubbling up to-morrow in this enchanting Auvergne valley, and our English doctor here at Royat--known to all readers of Mr. _Punch’s_ “Water Course”--were to put it peremptorily on my treatment-paper to-morrow morning. It is not surely the “_good fellows_ whose beards are gray,” who sigh over the departure of muscular force, and sure quickness of eye and nerve, which enabled them in years gone by to jump five-barred gates or get down to leg-shooters. They are glad to see the boys doing these things, and rejoicing in them; but, for themselves, do not desire any more to jump five-barred gates or get down to leg-shooters. They have learned the wise man’s lesson, that there is a time for all things, and that those who linger on life’s journey and fancy they can still occupy the pleasant roadside places after their part of the column has passed on ahead, will surely find themselves in the way of, and be shouldered out by, the next division, without a chance of being able to regain their place in the line, side by side with old comrades and contemporaries.

But it is one thing to fall out of the line of march of one’s own accord, from an unwise hankering after roadside pleasures, and quite another to have to fall out because one can no longer keep one’s old place in the column by reason of failing wind, or muscle, or nerve; and the man of sense who feels his back stiffening, or his feet getting tender, will do well to listen to such hints betimes, and betake himself at once to whatever place or regimen holds out the best hope of enabling him to keep step once more, till the day is fairly over and the march done. It is for this reason, at any rate, that I find myself at Royat, from which I have been assured by more than one trustworthy friend who has tested the waters, that I shall return after three weeks “with new tissues,” and “fit to fight for my life.” I don’t see any prospect of having to fight for my life in my old age, though one can’t be too confident with the new Radicalism looming up so menacingly, and am very well content with my old tissues, if they can’ only be got into fair working order again, of which I already begin to think there is good prospect here, though my experience of the _sources_ “Eugénie” and “Cæsar” is as yet not a week old.

It is more than twenty years since I have written to you from France over this signature, and since that time I have only been once in Paris, for two days on business. The gay city is much less changed than I expected to find it, so far as one can judge from a drive across it from the Gare de l’Ouest to the Gare de Lyon, and a stroll (after depositing luggage at the latter station) along the Rue de Rivoli and the Quais, and through the streets of the old city. The clearance which has left an open space in front of Notre Dame, so that one can get a good view of the western front, seemed to me the most noteworthy improvement. The great range of public buildings and offices which have been added to the Louvre are stately and impressive, but cannot make up for the disappearance of the Tuileries. The Eiffel Tower is a great disappointment. All buildings should be either beautiful or useful; but it is neither, and only seems to dwarf all the other buildings. But one change impressed me grievously. Where are all the daintily dressed women and children gone to? Perhaps the world of fashion may be out of town; but there must be some two millions of people left in Paris, a quarter of them at least well-to-do citizens, and able to give as much care as of old to their toilets. Nevertheless, I assure you, I sought in vain for one really dainty figure such as one used to meet by the score in every street. Can twenty years of the true Republic have made La Belle France dowdy? It is grievous to think of it, and I hope to be undeceived before I get back amongst the certainly better got-up women of my native land.

For my nine hours’ journey south, I bought a handful of the cheap illustrated papers--_Le Grelot, Le Troupier_, and others--which seem to be as much the daily intellectual fare of the French travelling public as (I regret to say) _Tit-Bits_ and its congeners are, at any rate in my part of England. Of course it is always difficult to know what “the people” are thinking or caring about; but to get at what they read must be not a bad test. A perusal of these certainly surprised me favourably, especially in this respect, that they were almost entirely free from the pruriency which is so generally supposed to be the characteristic of modern French literature.