A letter from a hydropathic establishment, by Catherine Wyndlow

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this letter, written in 1867, a woman staying at a fashionable water cure in the hills writes to her husband about the other guests.

Glenmore House, Tuesday

My dear George,

You ask whether the cure agrees with me, but I find the patients a great deal more interesting than the water. There are forty of us at the long table, and since tea, coffee and wine are all forbidden, we are obliged to grow merry upon toast and conversation, which is a severe test of any company.

At the head of the table sits Colonel Fawley, who has come here for eleven summers and treats Dr Muirhead as a junior officer. He drinks his tumbler of spring water at every meal as if it were brandy, and tells the newcomers that he was carried in upon a stretcher and now walks twelve miles a day, which no one has ever seen him do. Opposite me sit the two Miss Tremletts, who compare their ailments every morning as other ladies compare bonnets, and are never so happy as when one of them has found a new one.

The most admired person in the house is a young clergyman with a cough, who is pale, silent and very handsome. Seven ladies have taken to sitting in the conservatory where he reads. The doctor ought to charge him nothing, for he does more for the spirits of the house than any spring.

I continue to sleep well, and I am trying very hard not to become a Miss Tremlett. Our bill for the fortnight is nine guineas.

Your loving wife,

Kate

(a) How many patients sit at the long table? (b) For how long has Colonel Fawley been coming to Glenmore House? (c) What does the writer suggest about the Colonel’s claim that he walks twelve miles a day?