[1]He died at the beginning of 1892, after entering his eighty-fourth year. He was two months my senior. I have later on made a distinction between early friends and later ones, dwelling on the fact that what happens to us before we have attained our full growth is nourished as a part of us, and so becomes ingrained in our natures.
[1]He died at the beginning of 1892, after entering his eighty-fourth year. He was two months my senior. I have later on made a distinction between early friends and later ones, dwelling on the fact that what happens to us before we have attained our full growth is nourished as a part of us, and so becomes ingrained in our natures.
[1]He died at the beginning of 1892, after entering his eighty-fourth year. He was two months my senior. I have later on made a distinction between early friends and later ones, dwelling on the fact that what happens to us before we have attained our full growth is nourished as a part of us, and so becomes ingrained in our natures.
Dr. Basham, physician to the Westminster Hospital, was another of us. I lost sight of him between the years 1824 and 1860, when I met him in the laboratory, and knew him again at a glance.
Sir Henry Cole, whom I had not seen for five and thirty years, another boy, came across me at one of Lady Ripon’s receptions; I recognized him too, though he was disguised in the broad red ribbon and star of the Bath.
These two men reached notoriety, each in his calling, Basham as a physician, Cole as an official in the office of Records. But they and their like were of the vanishing class, their names are disappearing; they filled only a little space in their own generation, which they accompany to oblivion.
My school days are a memory that I have never refreshed by visiting those ancient halls and cloisters; once only since I left them have I passed through from Newgate Street to Little Britain. I found all there was doubly dead. It was dead in its own past, and dead in mine. I saw a moral blank in which love was absent, absent as it had ever been between the pupil and his masters. During my holidays at Seaford, I experienced thirty days at a time of love and kindness; the recollection of this drew me to it again. I was seldom at Brighton without going over there with my brother and his wife, or with his children and mine, to look oncemore at the house on the Crouch, and to walk over that beautiful south down that ascends from the beach and the sea to Cuckmere.
When we no longer knew one living creature there, we still found pleasure in asking the oldest inhabitants if they remembered Captain and Mrs. Wallinger.
When I quitted school and gave up the mediæval costume, I was put into fine clothes, and spent a fortnight at Woolwich, taken about from sight to sight by my uncle, dining often at the artillery mess, taking a spare bed at the quarters of Colonel Wylde, and waited on by his man, when I learned, and have since often found, that a soldier makes the best valet in the world. Whatever familiarity you may show him, he never becomes familiar with you; he is always respectful. No one knew this better than my famed cousin, Charles Gordon. He, when at home, would talk to the soldier-footman of certain members of his mother’s family, who were expected as guests, and, calling them good-naturedly by opprobrious names, would ask if they were in the house; but the servant, however hard driven by the persistency of his young master, would to the last pretend not to understand to whom he made allusion.
I did not like that visit to Woolwich: my uncle was very severe, though only at the moment, on the faults of young people, though a kinder heart could not well be. The evenings were formal; we sat round a table, every one in some manner occupied.Unused to fine furniture I kicked the leg of the table. The uncle showed anger on his expressive face, while he asked, “Can’t you reconnoitre?” I was given an elegant copy of “Gil Bias” to read; unused to such editions, unused to reading in the presence of fine people, I damped my finger at my lips. “Give me the book,” shouted the good uncle; “I’ll show you how to turn over the leaves!” In this he performed the feat as any other gentleman would do, and handed the book back.
This and similar incidents so troubled me that I contemplated taking flight; but my patience under trial prevailed, and I bided the time for a visit to Seaford, which soon came about.
This was in 1824, when Charles Gordon was not yet a denizen of our world.
Colonel Wylde, my host at the barracks when the family house on the common was full, played a part which relieved him from the humdrum of military life. He spoke Spanish fluently, and, at a time when such a man was much wanted by the Government, he was employed on a mission to Spain; and afterwards, when Prince Albert became one of our royal family, he was appointed as his equerry, and became a great favourite at court. He was my uncle’s closest friend; but on the command of a brigade falling vacant, Wylde, then general, was given the appointment, though one below my uncle in seniority, on whom by custom it should have devolved, and this one incident cooled the warm friendship of a long life.
Owing to his urbanity, his knowledge of life, and his pleasant face, Wylde became a great favourite with the royal family, the queen, the princes and princesses, all of whom loaded him with presents. Prince Albert pressed on him a baronetcy, which, from a mistake in the bestowal of his early affections, he could not accept. It was an arbitrary act of the Duke of Cambridge to break through the rules of the service and give him a brigade which was due to another, to a friend; perhaps he should have refused, but doubtless the pressure on all sides was heavy, not to mention that Wylde had a family which would have been large if divided between two.
What made this brigade business more aggravating was, that the duke had contracted an intimacy with my uncle and his family, and was really his friend.
Leaving Woolwich, I went on a long visit to my relations, the Wallingers, with whom I had passed so many happy holidays while at school.
Seaford occupies a line on the southern coast most charming to the eye, but its beauty has been its ruin. A picturesque expanse of back water extends from its magnificent cliff to Newhaven, and the time came when its decaying vegetation generated typhoid fever, which destroyed the reputation of the place, while it decimated the inhabitants.
Another calamity followed: a high spring tide, not so many years ago, washed away the houses in front of the sea, and overflowed the streets. Repairs have been made, new structures raised, private houses, hotels, and a convalescent hospital; but it is no longer the Seaford it was of old, in its rotten-borough days.
I was once more there with my kind aunt, and an uncle whose brow smiled while it frowned. There were two branches of Wallinger; my uncle was a cadet of the elder branch, then represented by the Rev. John Wallinger, the disinherited heir of Hare Hall, who went from the law to the Church for the love of Calvin.
The younger branch was represented more to one’s taste by the Rev. William Wallinger and his brother Arnold, a sergeant-at-law. John was too busily engaged on Calvin’s affairs to visit Seaford at this time, but William was in a manner settled there with his pupil, the young Lord Pelham. Other members of the family came there to make up a seaside season; among them the wife and daughters of William Roberts, who was Teller of the Exchequer, an office held by his father before him, both renowned epicures, who held to the axiom that a good cook was three hundred and sixty-five blessings a year. Mrs. Roberts was a sister of the Rev. John, and brought with her a string of seven daughters, all less beautiful than their mother. Then the family of Mr. Nussey, the king’s apothecary, added to the list of visitors, he being an old friend of all.
Mrs. Nussey was a very lovely woman. She was the daughter of Mr. Walker, her husband’s predecessor at court; in fact, the Walkers and Nusseys, in turn or together, had been apothecaries to the royal family time out of mind, and it was said that the late Mr. Walker was the only man who knew how to reach the vein in George the Fourth’s fat arm.
Nussey, whom I knew very intimately later in life, told me that the king confided to him all his secrets, and that the knowledge, if written down, would set all England in a blaze. He was with the royal patient to the last, the king never letting go of his hand for twenty-four hours, which gave him an agony of cramp all but insupportable.
Nussey was a man deservedly esteemed; he had that gracious manner which comes often from enjoying the confidence of the great.
I must say a few words more about William Wallinger. Any attempt to describe his countenance would be made utterly in vain; it is in this that the artist may assert his superiority to the writer. No one ever saw him without surprise to find himself in company with so much grace and manly beauty. He was too gentlemanly for a king, too quietly self-possessed for a noble, too impressive in manner for any other human being but himself. He inherited a good fortune; he might have had the pick of the country in preferment had he so chosen, but he refused profitable livings, among others that of Stanmer, a village in Lord Chichester’s park, preferringmodest pulpits and independence. He was much thought of by the people at Hastings for a period. There Lord Chichester had a chapel built for him; but he often changed his residence and varied his duties. He was attached to Tunbridge Wells, where his sister, Mrs. Jederé Fisher, resided at her seat called Great Culverden. She was the widow of Mr. Jederé Fisher, of Ealing Park, Middlesex, a charming residence, sold later on to Sir William Lawrence, the eminent surgeon, now cut up into streets and villas.
Her son is a well-known Kentish magnate.
As a rudiment of that vaulting ambition and its consequences which grew up in me by degrees, and has, I lament to say, remained with me, though now grown prudent and steady, the better aims of which I have striven to fulfil, I may mention here, in taking leave of my boyhood, that there was a bath at Islington called Peerless Pool, to which in summer the boys of the school were sent to bathe. It was a large mass of water, oblong in shape, with a wide promenade. There we would spend a whole afternoon, sent there by the authorities when the half-holiday was at hand. There, to excite the wonder and applause of the other boys, I punished myself by taking the longest run to the water’s edge that was obtainable within the enclosure, and leapingsomersault fashion into the air to a great height, and reaching the water in a seated posture. In doing this I entailed on myself a punishment equal to being flogged. Being somewhat sheepish at the age of fifteen, I did not stand very high in the estimation of my uncle, General Gordon, while staying with him at Woolwich, when one day he took me down to the Thames to bathe. There was a platform, probably for the soldiers to jump from into the water; this afforded me a long run, and I resolved on performing my feat. My uncle was perfectly amazed at it, and often alluded to it with surprise in later years.
After this display of my pluck, he was much in favour of my going into the army.
By this time my mother was gravitating southwards with my sister and brother, that she might be near her sisters; she accordingly took a house at Lewes, where there was a good grammar school suitable for my brother.
The process of intellectual growth in all probability differs in individuals; what it was in me I am able to state. It is my opinion that with the same organism as I now have, with which I can grasp and master any subject, not much matter what it is, I should have made but a poor show of intellect but for certain elements of a moral nature. The first of these is a sense of one’s own nothingness without knowledge; the second is a desire for even more knowledge than most persons possess.
All this is emotional, but it supplies an impulseto intellectual motor power, which, when traced out, proves to be of a very simple kind, consisting of impressions derived from without being reiterated within, and inspected over and over again. Take several brains of the same capacity: one man has not the impulse of ambition or desire. Say to him—
“All the world’s a stage.” His ear takes the words to his brain, and they are lodged there; he can repeat them from memory of sound. Say to another—
“All the world’s a stage.” He will be impressed, first by words, on receiving them, and will repeat them mentally, and in doing so will see that he is reiterating a pre-existing mental impression; one which at some time he had derived through the eye; he will see a stage with men and women on it—the players. He will see these making “their exits and their entrances,” and by reiterated observation of old impressions, which run parallel, he will observe men and women actively employed in the world. By a like process of observing old impressions mentally, he will not only witness the phenomena of human life, but will undergo the appropriate emotion even before the phenomena are realized, the emotion leading up to the idea.
Now all this requires previous knowledge, without which no extended train of thought can be effectively carried out; whence it is that those who are ambitious and have a desire for knowledge, will acquire it at every expense, both of time and labour, and will so become accustomed to keeping their native intellect in play.
I had taken leave of boyhood and entered on the period of youth—a time when neither children nor men were found to be suitable companions. The three epochs in our lives are pretty equally divided: that of childhood, owing to the feebler action of the forces, appears to pass away very slowly, and ending at our fifteenth or sixteenth year seems interminable; longer than the time it takes to advance from forty to seventy years of age, and quite as long as to go onwards from fifteen to forty years.
Of course there is an earlier and a later youth, and it is to the first that the preceding remark chiefly applies, the period when ignorance is not strange.
At this early time we do not recognize nature otherwise than as being ourselves, or in any way apart from us; it is later that the line of demarkation draws itself between the inner and outer world; and it is then that time seems to move.
I suppose it was owing to a species of honesty, but I found, very tryingly, at this time, that my self-assurance and my knowledge were in strict proportion; I was not, in fact, presumptuous; but of great modesty.
I must put to my credit a habit of not allowing a moment of ignorance to pass by without rectifying it by questioning either books or persons, and I often learnt more from others than from books.To this day I never come across a man possessed of special experience without questioning him as if I were engaged in a research. Not long ago, a gentleman who had been twenty years in the Fiji Islands, said of me that I had extracted more information from him respecting the people and country in an hour’s conversation, than had been elicited from him by all his friends put together, during the year he had spent in London as commissioner from the islands during the Colonial Exhibition.
I trace the increase of this habit upon me to the practice of minute diagnosis which belongs to the physician. By its means, at all events, I accumulated corners of knowledge, which few appeared to possess besides myself.
In a country town there is often a man or two of eminent attainments who is buried alive. It was so at Lewes, a feeble, antiquated presentiment of civilization in itself; but it contained Gideon Mantell, the great geologist, who, searching Tilgate Forest, became the discoverer of the Iguanodon, which is now visible in the South Kensington Museum.
In those days all county towns were alike in essentials, and Lewes was not a bad typical example. With a small population it returned two members to Parliament, both baronets, both wearing pigtails, both having parks within a drive. There was Sir John Shelley of Maresfield Park, and Sir George Shiffner of Combe Place. Great men weregreater in those days than they are now, or will ever be again. Sir John looked a great man. Sir George looked only an important one.
Sir John was tall, slim, upright, with the look of a diagnostic, in whose presence a horse resolved itself into its elements. The whip in his hand told the man. When either of these worthies appeared in the quiet streets—and quiet they were, except on market days—the shop-keepers were seen standing at their doors as if they were their own customers. The apparition of Sir John or Sir George was like that of Hermes, when, formerly, the god visited Athens.
Like everything else that is worn out, Lewes was discontented with its lot. Not many miles south was Seaford, a rotten borough, and, in the distance, Old Sarum, and this was more than the less prosperous inhabitants of Lewes could endure. They must have reform, and it came.
Like many individuals, they did not know when they were well off.
After having two baronets at their command, both with pigtails, they are no longer a parliamentary borough; even their ancient grammar school is turned into a commercial Academy, no longer a Plato at its head.
What need is there of eternal retribution when men are everlastingly punishing themselves?
Like most other county towns Lewes had many mansions. These in olden times were the winter residences of nobles and squires, and, at their death, of their relicts, for the women always survived the men. It was considered in those days that the taste of port wine struck the highest note on the palatal gamut, and that gout, though painful, was a distinction. The best lives seldom exceeded sixty-nine. The vesical and gall compartments at that age, generally, had completed their mineralogical collection, and death was not pleasant.
Many of these mansions had the charms of not having been decorated or repaired for a hundred years, whence they looked much the same as when inhabited by the dowagers of bygone generations. So sensible were some of the later occupants of this, that they preserved them in their pristine state, and sat in them in old armchairs till they imagined themselves to be ancestors; and in an instance or two donned the pigtail to complete the illusion. So honourable was this emblem, that no tradesman, however mean his calling, could wear it without being spoken of as the old gentleman, and he doubtless felt himself to be such, though he might be serving a customer with a jar of spermaceti oil.
As aforesaid, Gideon Mantell was an inhabitant of Lewes, struggling for fame by his researches within the chalk strata, and for a livelihood by hispractice as a surgeon and apothecary, in which he had a fair amount of success, no doubt due to his great abilities, but in the estimation of many to the flash of his surroundings. His gig and groom were models as they waited at his door. His coat of arms embraced your vision as it shone in the fan-light and whispered of greatness within. He was tall, graciously graceful, and flexible, a naturalist, realizing his own lordship of the creation.
Mantell had a brother in his business, a man, short and deformed, of a quiet, obliging manner. His name was Joshua. He had a son who also made himself heard in later times from the wilds of New Zealand, as a successful scientific explorer.
Some years later the good Earl of Egremont, lord of Petworth Castle, great in his generosity, presented Mantell with a large sum of money to start him in a spacious mansion at Brighton, where he might set up his fine museum, and pursue his profession in a wider field. Removing to this from Lewes he still pursued his science, but the sort of ground he needed was preoccupied, and, disposing of his collection to the trustees of the British Museum, he migrated finally to a suburb of London, I think it was to Clapham.
Had Government allowed such a man as Mantell a thousand a year for the purposes of science, he would have brought the geology of his day to perfection! How creditably they might have amended the sacrifice by withholding the £70,000 from the British Gallery for the purchase of a sham Raphael,and a preposterous Rembrandt, which the pencils of those artists never touched—an invalid housemaid on a throne as Virgin, and a Charles the King on a cart-horse! Raphael painted only beauty, Rembrandt only grace. But the English are the meanest judges of art in Europe. An Italian picture-dealer would have set them right in a few minutes.
What have the trustees done with those fabulous Correggios, which once made such a figure and were shelved to the entrance passage, when the National Gallery was still in Mr. Angerstein’s mansion in Pall Mall?
“Per arte e l’inganno,Si vive mezzo l’anno;Per inganno e l’arteSi vive l’altro parte.”
“Per arte e l’inganno,Si vive mezzo l’anno;Per inganno e l’arteSi vive l’altro parte.”
“Per arte e l’inganno,Si vive mezzo l’anno;Per inganno e l’arteSi vive l’altro parte.”
“Per arte e l’inganno,
Si vive mezzo l’anno;
Per inganno e l’arte
Si vive l’altro parte.”
There were other worthies in this town of Lewes: Mr. Horsfield, author of the “History and Antiquities of Lewes;” Mr. Lower, a stationer, who wrote on Sussex worthies; and the master of the Grammar School, Dr. Proctor, whose voice crackled emphasis and accent. He was one of the rolling stones that gather no moss; Lewes failed him and he took a mansion towards Kemp town; he was tempted from his school there to Jersey, and became Principal of its College, but this did not fit him for any length of time. My brother, who was his pupil, met him now and then in after days in the streets of London; he was then always on his way to see the bishop.
All this time I was a student of medical science under a truly eminent man, Thomas Hodson, the highest authority in his profession within the bounds of Sussex. His career and station gave him every claim to be classed with the worthies of his age. He was the friend and fellow-student of Astley Cooper, and the other aristocrats of surgical art. All acknowledged him as their equals, though his skill and abilities were in a measure hidden from the admiration of the world. He was numbered among the leading lithotomists, having extracted the stone by means of the greatest operation in surgery, somewhere about a hundred times, with unvarying success.
It was in reflecting on the skill of such men that I always regarded surgery as a science far above all that physic can attain to.
Thomas Hodson is a name not to be forgotten. He loved his art passionately, and he would discourse on it with all the fervour it deserved. It is an art; but look at its foundation! The human frame is a transparency to the surgeon’s eyes. He is never in the dark, but sees his way clearly, with a perfect knowledge of what has to be done from first to last. It is otherwise with physic: the physician can fulfil certain indications, with certain remedies; these very few in number. For the rest, how these operate, what work they perform in modifying function hecan never fully foresee. Nor will science ever reach such a pitch as to enable him to trace the changes which occur in the system, under the influence of a single dose.
He can swim, but he is mostly out of his depth, and that too often in troubled waters.
On the other hand, physicians generally used to receive a better education than surgeons; such of them as respect their position, make themselves acquainted with every branch of knowledge, whether in literature, science, or art; in social life all doubtful questions, when all others are at a loss, are referred to them; and it is fully expected of them that they will have a ready reply.
Hodson was one of the most amiable men I ever knew, and his manners were sweet and elegant to such a degree as to make it deserving of mention that on being thwarted he became the most passionate of men. The world, then, seemed hardly large enough to hold him. Such a trifle as the loss of a letter, or of a book, would set him off. Smiling, pale with anger, he would exclaim, “Will you look about for me?” Then, rapping on the table with his bent forefinger, forcibly enough to crack the mahogany, he would shout, “I have looked high, I have looked low; I have looked uphill, I have looked downhill, and I have looked on level ground. Help me for my sake; if you won’t do so for my sake, help me for God’s sake; and if you won’t help me for God’s sake, do so for Jesus Christ’s sake; for they say he was a good ⸺!”
Hodson was a man of middle stature, fair, although old; bald, with a finely shaped head, and silvery hair; with classic features, and a most intelligent expression. His manner was courteous and, in its particular fashion, graceful. It is no wonder that such a man, gifted as he was, should have been the delight of the neighbouring gentry, and of the greater men of the town. When summoned to Glynde or Firle, the residences of Lords Hampden and Gage, he was always a desired guest at the table of those nobles; and no more genial and amusing one was anywhere to be found.
Glynde, the inheritance of the late Speaker, Lord Hampden by creation, sad to say at this hour dead, a descendant of the great patriot, is the most charming house, perhaps, of any in the south. A large Elizabethan mansion, a pleasant park, downs covered with the choicest breed of sheep in the known world, was even made more celebrated by the tenant farmer John Ellman, than by the lords of the soil.
In those times there was such a thing as south-down mutton!
John Ellman, of Glynde, was a man known to the whole agricultural world. To those who never saw him, he was known by his full-length portrait, as was Coke of Norfolk, and other celebrities of his day, to be seen in the window of a corner shop, between St. James’s Street and Pall Mall, kept by a gentleman who had the aspect of Georgethe Fourth, and was supposed to be a son of the monarch; giving one a good idea of what the king would have been, had he been born a commoner.
Ellman, of Glynde, was a knee-breeches man, with top-boots, tall, coated for horseback, and with a characteristic farmer’s hat, not scanty of brim. As such I remember him; but when alone, or even speaking to another, there seemed something wanting to him, and this was a—Cattle Show.
I recollect his daughter—an extremely pretty girl, sixty-five years ago. I used to wonder how such a delicacy could come of so purely masculine a breed of men.
The south-down sheep is no doubt fully kept on at Glynde; the late Earl of Chichester, too, is said to have kept up the breed, but it is to be feared that it is less profitable than the fat, or wool-growing sorts, which yield the worst mutton to the market, and the best wool; matured for the butcher within a year.
“Sic transit gloria brebis.”
“Sic transit gloria brebis.”
“Sic transit gloria brebis.”
“Sic transit gloria brebis.”
Mr. Hodson took me with him to the funeral of the then last Lord Hampden, who only enjoyed his estate for twelve months. I entered the vault; the crimson velvet and gilt nails were as fresh on the coffin of the previous lord as on the one now placedby its side. All the other red velvet coffins had gone brown.
A gentleman, it was Mr. Cumberland, of the mint, who was related to Lord Hampden, and used to stay with him at the old family seat in Buckinghamshire, told me that there was always a table in the family pew on Sunday morning, with wine glasses on it, and a bottle of port wine, with which the friends regaled themselves during the weary service at church, which, as a duty, they attended, so setting a good example to the village folk.
It is a useless fashion to bury the dead in red velvet, as a finish off to the oak, and the leaden coffins. However, all this cost is met out of the pockets of the dead, who can no longer manage their own affairs, and have all the appearance of bearing it with patient submission, whatever their last wish might be!
Lewes stands on a spur of the downs, the river Ouse runs at its base. Between this and the ascent, School Hill, a turning to the left leads to an adjoining village, Southover, deserving of mention, as once the seat of a monastery of historic interest. There, too, is what was Mr. Newton’s residence, the Priory, a fine old Gothic structure, that is to say, if it still is there.
In the parish of St. Anns, there are the remains of a castle, worthy the attention only of antiquarians, and thence the road leads on to Brighton, a journey of eight miles; but all this is sixty-five or sixty-six years ago.
My uncle and aunt, Captain and Mrs. Wallinger, at this time left Seaford and settled at Southover, where Mrs. Gwynne, having become a widow, settled likewise. So there were three weird sisters who had never lived in the same place since their marriage, once more grouped together.
I had acquired some anatomical knowledge, Mr. Hodson having recently purchased a new skeleton, a very gentlemanly one, which gave one the idea of its having been in very good society. I had induced it to yield me a very substantial knowledge of its bones.
I had also fully mastered the “Pharmacopœia Collegii Regalis Medicorum Londinensis,” not only the last but some preceding issues of the work. I knew all the drugs, and the tinctures, and the spirits; so I was in some measure prepared to study disease, and learn the uses of medicines. This was in 1827, when I entered myself at St. George’s Hospital, and took a room at 191, Sloane Street, over a hair-dresser’s shop. The name of my landlord was Bloxup; of my landlady, Jones; from which it may be inferred that it was Bloxup and Co., Limited.
I have noticed that happy couples who marry themselves to each other often lead a more decent life than those who take the pledge. I never lodged with a better conducted couple than the Bloxup-Joneses. Mrs. Jones had all the ready ways of handling fronts for lady-customers, while Mr. Bloxup attended to the hair-crop in a room behind.
Dr. Thomas Young, the illustrious inventor of the Undulatory Theory of Light, was then a physician at St. George’s. I used to go round the wards with him. He was thought to be very undecided in his opinions of a case; the fact is, medicine is so uncertain a science, it was not good enough for such an intellect as his to work on. Pupils learnt very little by going round with the physicians; they heard nothing from them, and it was regarded as a somewhat daring venture to put a question. The best plan was to go round with the house-physician early in the day; he would explain to the pupils the nature of the cases and what was being done for their cure. A friend of mine told me that he asked Dr. Warren, while going the round of the wards, what was the name of a skin-disease for which he was prescribing; and that the doctor looked at him blandly, and replied, “I am sure I don’t know, do you?”
In those palmy days the physicians formed a very aristocratic class as constituting the gentlemanly branch of the profession. Halford, Warren, Chambers, and their compeers, were dictators. When out of town they left a list of names in the order in which another should be sent for in their absence when any patient summoned them, not knowing they were away. They began practicewith a house and a carriage, prepared to spend ten thousand pounds, and wait; having nothing to do, except to dance attendance at the hospital from year to year, until their turn came round for election. They never wrote a book, that would have been to give their knowledge away, whereas, what they wanted was, to be paid. The public at that time was fully of opinion that a man who wrote had nothing else to do. Their turn came as soon as could be expected. Among these tide-waiters some were left fortunes and retired, while some were worn out and gave up the contest.
These men were often fellows of their college, always from Oxford or Cambridge; a degree from either qualified them to become fellows of the college of physicians, while all others were only licentiates.
The revolution came, and all this was overthrown. The young and active physicians reported cases, and advertised their abilities by writing books. To crown all, the queen succeeded to the throne, and Dr. James Clark, her physician, only a licentiate of the college, had all the royal appointments of the profession placed in his hands! With this, nepotism was at an end. It may be boasted that free-trade in physic came before free-trade in corn, and from that time medical science began to flourish in this country.
There was no medical school at St. George’s; the anatomical students went to Great Windmill Street, where Mr. Cæsar Hawkins lectured andtaught. The chemical students went to the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, where Faraday and Brand were professors. The lectures there were delivered at eight in the morning; beautiful and perfect they were; the attendance was very thin. I am proud to remember that I imbibed my first ideas of chemistry at such a fountain head. Faraday was most charming, most unpretending; his experiments never failed, nor did those of his colleague, who was a model lecturer; gentlemanly, perfect of expression, exact of execution.
While attending the prescribed courses, I went often to hear the eminent lecturers of the various schools. Sir Astley Cooper was the popular man, but neither he, with his noble figure, nor Green, with his oratory, approached Abernethy, who was by nature a perfect master of the comic.
There was an unassumed drollery and archness in his way of looking up with his head bent down, in the absence of a smile, nay in the solemnity of his face, while he narrated cases in all the humour of circumstance and situation. It was his own unstudied manner, and great would the actor have been who could have imitated it.
Mr. Abernethy found his match in a friend of mine, Sir David Scott, then a young baronet just beginning to enjoy his position in life. Visiting the great surgeon, he was received with the usual contempt that was bestowed on patients by him, who remarked, “I suppose you are an idle man about town, perhaps an officer in the Guards?”He asked a few questions, prescribed and told the patient, as usual, to read his book. Sir David rose and depositing the fee, crumpled up the prescription and flung it in the air.
“Why do you do that?” asked Abernethy.
“Because,” answered Scott, “you have not gone into my case.”
On this Abernethy called him back, investigated his complaint carefully, and gave him a fresh prescription, saying, “Excuse me, but I cannot tell you with what nonsense I have to bear from the fools who come here for my advice!”
I heard this from Sir David, one of my earliest friends, whom I shall have occasion to speak of at large.
It was now that my uncle, Captain Wallinger, died, and the four sisters were all widows. Close upon this the great event in their family happened; the death of the uncle, William Clarke, who left considerable wealth which was divided among his nephews and nieces, of which my mother was one.
William Clarke reached the age of 95; he was well known in the city, but he had no calling except that of belonging to the Mercers’ Company in whose grounds in Cheapside he rests.
My mother, with my brother and sister, came to town and we settled in a house in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Place, at which time Belgrave Square was in the course of being built. Grosvenor Place was at that period a picturesque row of brick-built houses, which have since been replaced by othersof a more stately kind. No. 1 was Tattersall’s, approached by an archway at the side of the front door, the house being occupied by Mr. Lane, who had been house-surgeon at St. George’s, next door. The hospital itself was of old brick, but occupied its present large area with one entrance in Grosvenor Place and another at Hyde Park Corner.
The Iron Duke’s house opposite, which was the said corner, was of as dingy a brick as the hospital. His good taste encased it in stone on his own account, and employed the architect, Mr. Burton, to erect the fine entrance to the park adjoining on account of the Government.
I was in London more or less until I reached my 21st year (1830); by that time the hospital and its teachers had gone stale, when the idea occurred to me to visit the Scotch Universities. I took my way to Edinburgh by steamer, and very pleasant the voyage was. There were pretty young ladies on board, who soon became as friendly as if they had been relations. But not to be forgotten was a gentleman who had wit and vivacity; I remember his name quite well. He told me that he was crossing to get out of the way of his creditors for a little time, and to visit his kinsfolk. He looked to me about 45 years old, when he told me, as a sort of joke, that he was a classical tutor inLondon and had been spending too much money, adding, with self-apologetic glee, “You see what it is to be a young fellow!” I did not know at the moment that he had been spending five pounds of mine, nevertheless such proved to be the case before we parted, for that was the trifle he—“by-the-bye”—wanted of me for a few days, his days very much resembling the six notable ones during which the world was created. He took me to Ambrose’s Hotel, a very comfortable one, the scene of Wilson’s drunkenNoctes Ambrosianæ, and we had a double-bedded room. I was in bed first and it was left to him to extinguish the light, which he did by blowing it out. It was a candle of tallow, and, to my disgust, the stench of it soon filled the room. I protested vehemently against his proceeding, when his reply was, “You don’t know now what you may get to like in time!”
I acquired the friendly acquaintance, at Edinburgh, of Dr. Greville, the eminent author of a work on theCryptogamia; he was married to an Eden, the sister of Mrs. Northmore of Cleve, whose husband I have already spoken of, a noble old Devonshire squire.
Dr. Robert Knox was in his glory in those days, the greatest anatomist of the time, whose splendid intellect, in opposition to Lyell and the rest, foresaw that we had only to abide scientific progress to discover that man belonged to an early period of time.
I am sorry that I never saw Dr. Knox; he wasan enthusiast in his devotion to anatomical science; it was his calling and his hobby in one. A dentist once remarked to me that every man should have a hobby besides his profession, and smilingly admitted that his was “making money.” I have observed that surgery has engaged many enthusiasts in its pursuit—anatomy and pathology may be added; but I do not remember a physician of whom this could be so flatteringly said, unless it were Sydenham, a true devotée. But formerly the practice of medicine was in the dark: not altogether so now, since the introduction of physical and chemical diagnosis, the work of Laenec and Bright. It is no want of enthusiasm in character itself; it is not so very long since all the science of the country was carried out and sustained by physicians.
At Aberdeen I enriched myself with the acquaintance of Principal Jack, who showed me many attentions—not the least of which was that of introducing me to his charming wife and daughter. Our acquaintance did not then cease, but continued for some years.
I visited St. Andrews. What distressed me there, was to see a large college building without windows or roof, announcing itself to be a ruin. It is true the university is very old, but a seat of learning ought to last for ever, and not be allowed to become a mere memorial of some intellectual famine.
I then went to Glasgow, where Dr. Hooker was the professor of botany in the university, and whereDr. Badham—a scholarly gentleman—was the professor of physic, an appointment which, as I understood, was in the gift of the London College of Physicians. Except Dr. Thompson, who had the chair of chemistry, the other professors were of no account.
The college, a double quadrangle, stood in the middle of the town, where it was established by an edict of the Pope in one of the middle ages. It was a quaint old building, a credit to the learning of the city: the present building being more a credit to its wealth. The ancient structure, I presume, was pulled down and the site disposed of.
The manager of the Glasgow theatre was one Alexander, a long-legged, long-armed Scotchman of great mobility. He pleased the public, so I suppose he had a fairly good troupe of actors. However that may be, he had Edmund Kean with him for two nights, once as Richard III., once as Macbeth. I was deeply impressed by the acting of this great tragedian, though I believe he was on his last legs. It was said that he was dosed with brandy every time he went on the stage, and that on quitting it he sank exhausted into another’s arms; yet, once on the boards, he was firm of step and voice. Knowing his condition, the pathos of the scene was the more touching, though no onecould have judged that he was a sick, much less a dying man. His voice now clear, soft, touching; then stentorian and explosive in its rattle, according to the necessity of the situation.
With what an eye he gazed! And his demeanour! He could bring more tragic feeling out of stillness, and the silence of deep thought, than was to be found in the play he performed in. It was as if the persons he represented had escaped the grave and thrown themselves once more into the struggle.
At an advanced period of the summer, my brother came to Glasgow, and very wisely proposed that we should make a tour; and this we did principally on foot. We visited some of the lochs and bens, climbed Grampian hills, and worked our way to Breadalbane Castle, returning by Loch Long. This I mention merely to note an incident connected with it which was, that by the action of the fresh air, the exercise, and the scenery on mind and body, I imagined my emotions had a poetic cast, and accordingly I composed verses. These my brother, who was as little experienced in human affairs as myself, though he was deep in the study of law, proposed my sending to Sir Walter Scott, the all-powerful author, soliciting his perusal, with the hope of being taken heed of as a poet. What led to this folly on our part was, the facility with which Crabbe rose to fame and fortune by a similar act of impertinence. All know that he sent some verses to the generous Burke, which were very fresh, asking for the patronage of that great statesman, to whom hewas utterly unknown. Burke, wonderful to relate, took him under his notice, and finally procured him a living in the gift of the Duke of Rutland. This was very noble of Burke, but it did a great deal of harm by leading innocent young authors, like myself, to suppose that the nobility and other powerful men were still the patrons of literary men, especially of the useless poets. If one looks back, one perceives that the majority of our poetic authors owed their success to patrons who made their works a fashion. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, had noble or royal patrons; Milton there was no one to patronize, whence the market value of “Paradise Lost” rose only to ten pounds. Dryden belonged to the upper class, so he had a patron in himself; Pope was made a fashion through patronization: Bolingbroke alone would have sufficed to lift him up into fame.
In modern times poetry became noble itself. There was Byron, a peer; Shelley was a sprig of baronetcy, and a rebel in Church and State, which was a great assistance; while Keats, being a vulgarian, was left out in the cold to die for want of flattery and flannel.
Coleridge never met with a patron; he who surpassed every poet but one in genius; so he famished, exclaiming, “Work without hope, draws nectar in a sieve!”
And Wordsworth, with his narrow intellect and wide emotions,—he had patrons; the cloth took him up, and the public followed suit, an act theycould only have performed for a third-rate poet, the first and second-rate being much above their comprehension.
The course of such human events will not have the slightest influence on men endowed with true poetic genius. They know the wording of their commission; they know its signature, written as it is in invisible ink; they know its seal, on which the six days of creative work is engraved, with Some One resting on the seventh.
The upshot of all this is, a poet is born to celebrate Nature, who is everlasting. He informs himself that nations fulfil only a given series of events, and that all concerning them, except their history and literature, is lost. He makes himself acquainted with the bulky circumstance that Greece and Rome were once as lively and self-confident as ourselves, as frivolous and as fashionable, but that in the midst of their greatness and their rubbish there were predestined poets; that Homer was one and Horace another, and that the legacy of their work is the only legacy they could leave us. He tells himself that he is appointed to do certain work that shall hereafter celebrate the existence of his own beloved and glorious land, the country, the beloved country of his birth and death!
We found ourselves in the park at Breadalbane, where there was no living being in sight. The handsome castle stood silent and solitary, as if it had been erected for its own accommodation. It was a large, elegant, white structure, but had an architectural expression not sufficiently imposing to contend with the bold scenery around. There was the river, making a rush for Loch Long; there were the mountains;—these were masters of the situation and of the castle, which seemed more like a looker-on.
This was my impression then; it might not be so now.
We had passed the night in the cottage of a shepherd which we entered, and we asked the gudewife to give us food and lodging; this she did, adding to them a hearty welcome, uncertificated as we were. She gave us of what she had—a good mess of porridge and milk, with oat cakes as a second course, for porridge makes one hungry, as we found the next morning and the next day. We slept in beds built into recesses. On the morrow, after our breakfast, we asked the hostess what we were in her debt; but she scouted the idea of any payment, so we adopted the alternative of guessing our hotel-bill, and paying it by placing a few shillings on the table.
We proceeded for some hours along Loch Long,and by noon found hunger growing upon us to a ravenous degree. There were no habitations, much less shops, on the way, till at length we saw a villa. A maid-servant stood at the door with her broom. I approached her, saying we were very hungry, and asked her to sell us a loaf. She received my petition with contempt, entered the villa and unsympathetically added the slam of the door to her refusal. To be treated as the tramps which we were, was a new sensation.
That evening we ceased to be footpads, and reached home.
At the end of summer, which was near, my brother returned southwards, while I remained through the winter session to obtain more chemistry and to complete my study of natural philosophy and physics. In the spring, having completed my twenty-second year and passed the last six ones in the study of the sciences, I thought it a good opportunity to graduate on the spot, which I did accordingly, and was highly complimented on my anatomical examination by that delightful gentleman, Dr. Badham. I had answers to all his questions on the tip of my tongue. I may mention that I had acquired anatomy at the then University of London, under Granville Sharpe Pattison, at the first opening of that great institution.
The Scotch character is of a very mixed kind, perhaps too well known to need comment. It is thrifty and extravagant, dissipated and religious, sober and drunken, generous and mean in morestriking contrast than that of the English people, because it runs into greater extremes, the opposite qualities being often united in the same individual. I met with an instance in which even a decent respect for death was wanting. A physician told me he had just left a dying patient who said to him, while breathing gutturally, “I say, doctor, isn’t this the death-rattle?” The doctor answered, “No, my dear sir, it is not that quite yet.” To which the rejoinder was, “Well, if it isn’t, it is damned like it!”
A Scotchman whom I met before long at Florence—he had been one of George the Fourth’s physicians—told me, not with a view to his credit, that he was whistling as he entered a notorious den in Edinburgh on one Sunday morning, when the landlady, to use a mild term, accosted him with the words: “Dr. B⸺, I won’t have any whustling in my house on the sabbath day!”
I have twice been in Scotland since; a country one never tires of unless one is a native.
While my eighty-fourth year has commenced I look back over more than sixty years to the time when studies had ceased to be obligatory. I then took a survey of my stock of knowledge: it was small, but it embraced the rudiments of all that was necessary to progress. A classical education gaveme access to the ancients, but I wanted French, which was the key to modern science. This determined me to pass some time on the Continent, and to get acquainted with other literatures than our own, as well as with other manners and customs.
I returned to London by stage; it was in the cold of the spring season. Two things only left a permanent impression on my mind of that journey. One is that I travelled with Mr. Orby Hunter, and that we were the only two inside passengers on the route. He was a neighbour of my mother; she, after a long visit to her beloved and hated Exeter had grown sick of it and of every one there, and had gone back to town, taking up her residence with my sister and brother in a small house, No. 49, Grosvenor Place.
Mr. Orby Hunter, a great politician of the day, was a gentleman of high caste, which made all he said the more impressive. He was greatly disturbed at the course events were taking. It was the eve of a general election, and a reform bill was hanging in the balance of parties.
From Mr. Orby Hunter I learnt much of the state of feeling in the country, the resolute fight against Peel, Wellington, and the Tories, conducted by Grey and John Russell.
I did not remain long in town, but soon made my way to Italy, remaining the best part of a year at Florence, visiting Paris, Geneva, Milan, and other cities on my way there and back. I shall not give an account of my journey, but only my experiencesof it, such as having learned what coffee was for the first time in my life, and whatfricandeau de veau lardémeant, at Calais. As to the latter, I have not tasted the equal of it since. In those days there was not a railroad on the Continent, and one travelled by diligence, vetturino, or post.
My sensations were new as I trod on the pavement of Paris for the first time. I felt myself somewhat great, and I entered a glover’s shop and bought an elegant pair of gloves to add to my delusion.
I stayed at Meurice’s hotel in the Rue Rivoli. There I got acquainted with Colonel de Courcy, to whom I had a letter of introduction in my portmanteau for Florence, not knowing it then, but there are persons who can make friends with each other without the assistance of a third party. Colonel de Courcy was one of the few extremely charming men that one meets with in the course of a long life, by which I mean gay, amusing, good-natured, gentlemanlike, free from reserve; men who after a few minutes you seem to have known always and would wish to go on knowing to the end.
The late Earl of Albemarle was such a man; I refer to him later in these pages.
Colonel de Courcy was the brother of Lord Kinsale, whose patent of nobility was over seven hundred years old, the most ancient in the Dublin College of Arms. George IV., on hearing about it, greatly desired to see the treasured document, but so precious was it that the heralds would only entrustit to certain commissioners, who were not allowed to part with it for an hour.
The colonel was on his way to England, but lingered at Paris for his pleasure, the invitation to which also detained me, in the company of my new acquaintance.
Leaving Paris in a dreadful diligence by way of Dijon and the golden grapes, I traversed the Jura range and entered Geneva. I stayed there too, for of course I had to set myself up in a musical box that played the “Parisienne” and the “Marseillaise,” as well as in a watch and chain, besides looking at Mont Blanc and sailing on the lake to see where the Rhone rushed in, and to visit Lausanne in memory of Gibbon. Nor did I fail to see the prison of Chillon in compliment to the poet Byron.
My jeweller at Geneva was a very earnest mechanic. He had studied the art of watchmaking in London and in Paris, he had made a chronometer to compete for some great prize and had failed, entirely to his own satisfaction, assuring himself that his work was of the best, but that it was impossible to make allowance for the wear and tear of the sun!
The journey from Geneva to the Simplon I found very romantic. The valley, in which lies Martigny, was marked by driftways that looked like roads excavated from solid snow, cut out from the heights to the level, and which, never traversed by travellers, appeared to lead to lands unknown.
At Martigny there had been a deluge, by which every house was dislocated with the exception of thechurch. The flood was caused by the bursting of a mountain lake; the clever priests, foreseeing what would one day happen, so constructed the church, with a prow towards the threatening lake, as to enable it to resist a torrent.
I passed over the Simplon; I saw the Borromean Islands on the other side, and, proceeding to Milan, paid their old owner, the great cardinal, a visit in the cathedral. He was lying, as so many have beheld him, in his comfortable coffin.
Milan even then was a most elegant city, and most tastefully paved. I was so fortunate as to have a letter from Sir James Clark to Dr. Ciceri, who showed me everything, and there is no guide like a native one; but I say now that all I care for in the Lombard capital is the fresco of Leonardo da Vinci.
When a man begins to write and finds he can hardly spell his name, he looks at Bolingbroke for style, or at Goldsmith, and gets help from both; but woe to him if he falls in love with such rickety writers as were De Quincy, or Carlyle! Both had bandy pens. As a man gets older, if he has anything to say, he is contented with being himself, and covering his thoughts with words that exactly fit them, as the skin fits a race-horse. An affected style betrays an affected character, with its self-respect in abeyance.He finds that some long words contain his idea ready made, but he does better to shun them, and express it in his own way, and this I have done in writing these my memoirs.
Whatever my style was before visiting Italy, I cannot now say; probably the word did not then apply. I think that a man who is an agreeable companion should write as he would talk to himself; by such means only can he be what is called a stylist.
Macaulay wrote as he would have preached, had he been a parson; but, as a layman, he used stilts for a pulpit.
Thackeray spent a good deal of his time on stilts. He wrote, too, as he talked; but, then, he was a very disagreeable companion to those who did not want to boast that they knew him. In his society people had to do two things when one would have been quite enough; they had to smile titteringly as well as to listen.
Perhaps the reason why no author has hitherto described a perfect gentleman is, that it would require his being one himself; and some people think that no perfect gentleman ever lived except—not irreverently speaking—the Christian founder. Richardson’s Sir Charles was a muff, Bulwer’s Pelham a prig, Thackeray’s Major a fop, Dickens’s Mr. Dean an unfinished portrait.
Was the true gentleman ever meant to be? The only one accredited with that character—the only Lord—was not unacquainted with the use of irony,even with invective itself which served his end, and that with far greater effect than remonstrance.
I conceive the gentleman, like genius itself, to be fragmentary. How men differ in their conception of the character!
A lady whom I knew at one time very intimately, conceiving that her husband was on his death-bed, asked him to have his sons before him, and to give them some good advice before he died. The husband readily consented. “My sons,” he said, “your dear mother wishes me to say a few words that may be of benefit to you when I am gone, and I am most anxious to acquiesce in her desire. If there is anything that I can advise to your advantage, it would be this: never to repel the advances of women; it is not gentlemanly.”
But a perfect lady—has such a thing ever been? Who has described it?
No one; it is indescribable!
But even the temporary gentleman has a great charm; it is based on a model which may last for an hour, even a day; and then crumble. Amiability goes a long way in constructing this model; it is so conciliating, and sometimes so gentle, that it seems to purr. Henry VIII. no doubt handed Woburn Abbey over to Lord John’s ancestor in a most gentlemanly style; yet, what a wild beast he was; his mouth was always daubed with human blood.
It was amiable of Lord John to bring in the first Reform Bill, because one of its effects will ultimately be to make Henry-Eighths of the people, who willre-confiscate all the Woburns in the land, and all the Convent Gardens.
I was on intimate terms with a man who was private secretary to Lord John, and who obtained a baronetcy of him. That appreciative individual told me that no one knew, really, what a kind, amiable, and gentlemanly man the Lord John Russell was. No one knew it! Did he imply that he was himself no one?
But, happily for us, we have still George IV. left us as a study.
Is it true that the women are to have the franchise—will it come true? Is it true that they are to have cushions in the Houses of Commons and of Lords, because they are fitted for the highest offices of State;—will it come true? If so, it is to be hoped that the perfect lady will be evolved; one who even, for purposes of policy, will not exercise her charms; such a one might be trusted, because, in negotiating with a foreign plenipotentiary she would not use her eyes.
Until that happy evolution is achieved, one might certainly appoint ugly women; they would be obliged to rely on their intellectual gifts alone.
A woman’s style of speaking in private is often very pleasant; less so in public, unless she is a Siddons.
Everything will happen in turn, and awkward things will even come about. The Press might have to hint that Lady Mary, our minister for foreign affairs, has been much talked about of late, as givingtoo frequent interviews to the Home Secretary, Mr. Tristram Shandy; that it is even insinuated, at present only in private circles, that the husband of the right honourable lady contemplates taking law proceedings. This would prove a heavy blow to petticoat government: it would inevitably lead to the breaking up of the administration.
Thus demeanour has its peculiar style, as well as writing.
Women are often great stylists; they have the merit of writing as they would talk. Every one knows when a book is written by a woman; she is so good at drapery, still more at male beauty.
There are two styles of writing derived from anatomy—the nervous, and muscular. Trelawny, about whom I would say something, for his book has come out afresh, had both of these in one—he made them dramatic and pictorial.
Women are the best mistresses of the nervous style; they supply its instances at first hand, from flirting to hysterics; while men, like Borrow and Trelawney, are masters of the muscular style.
I could give a valuable hint to writers who would be effective, exact, and pleasing; let them master the methods followed in the scientific style, as in an article on “Light,” by Herschel in the “Encyclopædia Metropolitana.”