Page:The elephant man and other reminiscences.djvu/90

78 Something happened to prevent me from leaving England, but six months later I came across the letter and, feeling it was no longer of use, opened it. It began, "My dear Harry," and contained a great deal about their respective handicaps at golf and their plans for the summer. The kind doctor ended in this wise in a postscript: "The lady who brings this is Mrs. . She is a terrible woman, a deplorable neurotic. I need say no more about her, but I hope you won't mind my burdening you with her, for she is the kind of tedious person who bores me to death. However she pays her fees." My husband sent the letter back to the doctor who wrote it, because he thought the memoranda about the golf handicaps would be interesting for him to keep.

As I made no progress and as my friends were getting as tired of me as I was of myself, it was resolved that I should be taken "seriously in hand." I was therefore sent to a nursing home to undergo the rest cure. I had to lie in bed, be stuffed with food and be massaged daily. I was cut off from all communion with the familiar world and was allowed to receive neither letters nor newspapers.

The idea underlying this measure is, I think, a little silly. It is in the main an attempt to cure