PICKLE AT PENN STATE

For Buchman, in fact, the 'Y Week' was merely the high point in a year of intense activity. His summer holiday seems to have been conducted with the same vigour. Mrs Buchman had been complaining constantly of the lack of letters from her son; but now they were to spend the vacation as a family, and in June, Buchman, his parents and Dan sailed on the President Lincoln. They returned three months later, having been in England, Holland, Belgium, Germany and Italy. His father, by now two years retired, was 72 and already a semi-invalid.

Dan kept a diary. Four days out to sea, on 25 June, he notes: 'Cousin Frank held a service in the dining saloon. Good attendance.' On 6 July, in London, Buchman's attention seems to have wandered from the care of his family: 'Spent whole day in British Museum, got no dinner. Cousin Frank went to Eastbourne to see some lady-in-waiting to Queen of Greece.' 15 July, Antwerp: 'Met Edith Randall from Quincy, Mass. F. went to movies with E.R.' This was a year after her letter to Buchman reminiscing about their Swiss mountain climb in 1903. The next day, 'F. to Cathedral with E.R.' Again, his family seem to have been left to fend for themselves. Edith Randall also appears for dinner a week later, in Cologne, then vanishes for good. On 1 August, in Bad Homburg, Buchman is learning to play golf, and on the 12th all the family are at the English Church, at the invitation of the British chaplain, to see the Kaiser unveil a memorial to Edward VII of England.

At Bad Homburg, Buchman consulted a Dr Schafer who diagnosed a 'floating kidney' linked with colitis. Schafer prescribed a rich diet. 'A quiet mind at night and a rest of several hours during daytime will contribute to your well-being, and take Falstaff as an ideal - every pound you will put on will increase your health,' he wrote. 'Baths will be the hours when you may think of poetry and romances, and every drop of water will stimulate the heart and nervous systems. Begin with a hot bath of fifteen minutes duration and pour cold water down your back - where the floating kidney is a solid rock... ,'18 How much of the good doctor's advice Buchman took is doubtful - although he was never averse to a rich diet - but in later life he spoke of Schafer as the man who had 'anchored my floating kidney'.

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