Page:The life and letters of Sir John Henniker Heaton bt. (IA lifelettersofsi00port).pdf/175



He was a great clubman. He was not only one of the early founders, but also one of the most promiment figures in the Bath Club. He had strange fads about health, and one of them was a faith in the efficacy of the Turkish bath, and for years he might be found almost every morning, in the hottest room of the Turkish bath in the Bath Club, following this up with a swim in its spacious tank. He also visited the Continent freely. In the winter he might be seen, tall, eager, ingenious, perspiring at the tables in Monte Carlo, now and then shaking the building with that loud, resounding laugh which was so familiar to his friends. For more than a quarter of a century he went regularly every year to Carlsbad, and to every one of his friends he preached the gospel that the waters of that well-known resort were the end of all human maladies.

Sir Henniker Heaton did not effect in postal reform all he desired; but one great reform he did accomplish which entitles him to grateful and long-enduring memory. To him more than to any other human being is due the penny postal service between England and America—one, doubtless, of the many causes that have brought the peoples closer together. He was equally eager—it was his last great campaign—to cheapen the cable service between them, and between all parts of the Empire. He might apparently have remained Member for Canterbury for his life, but there came a split in the party, and his once splendid robustness was shaken, and he resolved to resign. His friends remonstrated, and there was almost a universal groan at the possibility of a figure so familiar