his blood-vessels to preserve them whole and sound.
_Patient's name, Inimitable B._ . . . It's a mortal mistake!--That's the
plain fact. Of all the places I ever have been in, I have never been in
one so difficult to exist in, pleasantly. Naples is hot and dirty, New
York feverish, Washington bilious, Genoa exciting, Paris rainy--but
Bonchurch, smashing. I am quite convinced that I should die here, in a
year. It's not hot, it's not close, I don't know what it is, but the
prostration of it is _awful_. Nobody here has the least idea what I
think of it; but I find, from all sorts of hints from Kate, Georgina,
and the Leeches, that they are all affected more or less in the same
way, and find it very difficult to make head against. I make no sign,
and pretend not to know what is going on. But they are right. I believe
the Leeches will go soon, and small blame to 'em!--For me, when I leave
here at the end of this September, I must go down to some cold place; as
Ramsgate for example, for a week or two; or I seriously believe I shall
feel the effects of it for a long time. . . . What do you think of
_that_? . . . The longer I live, the more I doubt the doctors. I am
perfectly convinced, that, for people suffering under a wasting disease,
this Undercliff is madness altogether. The doctors, with the old
miserable folly of looking at one bit of a subject, take the patient's
lungs and the Undercliff's air, and settle solemnly that they are fit
for each other. But the whole influence of the place, never taken into
consideration, is to reduce and overpower vitality. I am quite confident
that I should go down under it, as if it were so much lead, slowly
crushing me. An American resident in Paris many years, who brought me a
letter from Olliffe, said, the day before yesterday, that he had always
had a passion for the sea never to be gratified enough, but that after
living here a month, he could not bear to look at it; he couldn't endure
the sound of it; he didn't know how it was, but it seemed associated
with the decay of his whole powers." These were grave imputations
against one of the prettiest places in England; but of the generally
depressing influence of that Undercliff on particular temperaments, I
had already enough experience to abate something of the surprise with
which I read the letter. What it too bluntly puts aside are the
sufferings other than his own, projected and sheltered by what only
aggravated his; but my visit gave