Читать книгу England have my Bones - T. H. White - Страница 6

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I drove up from Tenmere to Aberdeen yesterday in 13¼ hours, including stops for breakfast, lunch and tea, and many other breaks of a few minutes at bridges to look at the fishy water: less than eleven hours’ driving, and a distance of 516 miles on the speedometer. I arrived in a hail storm, like Amundsen; bought the best room in the Caledonian Hotel; had two baths, and slept it off.

People ought to take more interest in baths and extravagance. Both must be indulged in sparingly, to be properly appreciated. If I live in a public-house for ten months, and shave in the kitchen, then Claridges becomes an excellent way of expressing myself for two days. The true voluptuary wears sackcloth nearly all the time, so that when he does put on his sheer silk pants he can get the full satisfaction out of rolling in the hay. It is the same with baths. If I am continually washing myself, quite apart from the dangerous and insanitary nature of the practice, I shall cease to appreciate it. The thoughtful bather, who has a bath once a fortnight, is the man who knows that a bath ought to be entered warm, and raised to hot after entry, in order to experience the ineffable warmness, wetness, nakedness, milkiness of the steamy relaxation, percolating between his hams, with the winter night outside. It is the horny-handed and the leather-legged who properly enjoys his rare ablutions. He is the man who uses five shillings’ worth of bath-salts at a time, and loves it; while the poor pansy, eroded almost out of recognition by excessive water twice a day, though in the baths of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose.

To-day I bought stock at Sharpes, Alexander Martin’s and another’s: drove to Grantly and settled at the Stratheven Commercial: drove to Craigenkillie Castle and found Macdonald out to his traps: fished right up the river and back again to discover its geography. But it was a hopeless spate. When I got back to the castle at 7.45 Macdonald was waiting. He says the water has been out of order since Thursday, but should improve soon. We are to fish two of the pools to-morrow with minnow for salmon. I could follow Charles’ map from the Linbane pool down to Upper Crombie, but after that it became confused. A roaring brown torrent all the way: a staircase of dun waves with back-drafts leaping uphill, a spectacle of Biscay.