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Merry Garden
by
II.
Dr. Clatworthy was a man in many respects uncommon. To begin with, he had plenty of money; and next, he was as full of crazes as of learning. One of these crazes was astronomy, and another was mud-baths, and another was open windows and long walks in the open air, and another was skin-diseases and nervous disorders, and another was the Lost Tribes, and another was Woman’s Education; with the Second Advent and Vegetable Diet to fill up the spaces. Some of these he had picked up at Oxford, and others in his travels abroad, especially in Moravia: but the sum total was that you’d call him a crank. Coming by chance into Cornwall, he had taken an uncommon fancy to our climate and its ‘humidity’–that was the word. There was nothing like it (he said) for the skin–leastways, if taken along with mud-baths. He had bought half a dozen acres of land at the head of the creek, a mile above Merry-Garden, and built a whacking great house upon it, full of bathrooms and adorned upon the outside with statues in baked earth to represent Trigonometry and the other heathen gods. He had given the contract to an up-country builder, and brought the material (which was mainly brick and Bath-stone) from the Lord knows where; but it was delivered up the creek by barges. There were days, in the year before William John’s death, when these barges used to sail up past Merry-Garden at high springs in procession without end. But now the house had been standing furnished for three good years, with fruit-gardens planted on the slopes below it, and basins full of gold-fish: and there Dr. Clatworthy lived with half a score of male patients as mad as himself. For, though rich, he didn’t spend his money in enjoyment only, but charged his guests six guineas a week, while he taught ’em the secret of perfect health.
Well, you may laugh at the man, but I’ve heard my mother (who remembers him) say that, with all his faults, he had the complexion of a baby. She would describe him as an unmarried man, of the age of fifty,–he had a prejudice against marrying under fifty,–dressed in nankeen for all weathers, with no other protection than a whalebone umbrella, and likewise remarkable for a fine Roman nose. ‘Twas this Clatworthy, by the way, that a discharged gardener advised to go down to Merry-Garden and make a second fortune by picking cherries, “for,” said he, “having such a nose as yours you can hook on to a bough with it and pick with both hands.” I don’t myself believe that he came to visit Merry-Garden on any such recommendation; but visit it he did, and often, while his own trees were growing; and there his noble deportment and his lordly way with money made an impression on Aunt Barbree, who had already heard talk of his capabilities.
So–as I was saying–one day, being near upon driven to her wits’ end, Aunt Barbree marched the boy up to Hi-jeen Villa (as the new great house was called), and begged for Dr. Clatworthy’s advice; “for I do believe,” she wound up, “the boy is sinking into a very low state of despondency.”
“And so should I be despondent,” said the doctor, eyeing Nandy, “if I had that number of pimples and didn’t know a sure way to cure them.”
“Fresh fruit don’t seem to do no good,” said Aunt Barbree, “though I’ve heard it confidently recommended.”
The doctor made Nandy take off his shirt. “Why,” said he, enthusiastic-like, “the boy’s a perfect treasure!”
“You think so?” said Aunt Barbree, a bit dubious, not quite catching his drift.
“A case, ma’am, like this wouldn’t yield to fresh fruit, not in ten years. It’s throwing away your time. Mud is the cure, ma’am–mud-bathing and constant doses of sulphur-water, varied with a plenty of exercise to open the pores of the skin.”