Edward Gibbon
FOR many years it has been taught—I have taught it myself to generations of students—that Gibbon’s hydrocele surpassed in greatness all other hydroceles, that it contained twelve pints of fluid, and that it was, in short, one of those monstrous things which exist mainly in romance; one of those chimeras which grow in the minds of the half-informed and of those who wish to be deceived. For a brief moment this chimera looms its huge bulk over serious history; it is pricked; it disappears for ever, carrying with it into the shades the greatest of historians, perhaps the greatest of English prose writers. What do we really know about it?
The first hint of trouble given by the hydrocele occurs in a letter by Gibbon to his friend Lord Sheffield. It is so delicious, so typical of the eighteenth century, of which Gibbon himself was probably the most typical representative, that I cannot resist re-telling it. Two days before, he has hinted to his friend that he was rather unwell; now he modestly draws the veil. “Have you never observed, through my inexpressibles, a large prominencycirca genitalia,which, as it was not very painful and very little troublesome, I had strangely neglected for many years?” “A large prominencycirca genitalia” is a variation on the “lump in me privits, doctor,” to which we are more accustomed. Gibbon’s is the more graceful, and reminds us of the mind which had described chivalry as the “worship of God and the ladies”; the courteous and urbane turn of speech which refuses to call a spade a spade lest some polite ear may be offended.
Gibbon had been staying at Sheffield House in the preceding June—the letter was written in November—and his friends all noted that “Mr. G.” had become strangely loath to take exercise and very inert in his movements. Indeed, he had detained the house-party in the house during lovely days together while he had orated to them on the folly of unnecessary exertion; and such was his charm that every one, both women as well as men, seems to have cheerfully given up the glorious English June weather to keep him company. Never was he more brilliant—never a more delightful companion; yet all the time he was like the Spartan boy and the wolf, for he knew of his secret trouble, yet he thought that no one else suspected. It is an instance of how little we see ourselves as others see us that this supremely able man, who could see as far into amillstone as anyone, lived for years with a hydrocele that reached below his knees while he wore the tight breeches of the eighteenth century and was in the fond delusion that nobody else knew anything about it. Of course, everybody knew; probably it had been the cause of secret merriment among all his acquaintance; when the tragedy came to its last act it turned out that every one had been talking about it all the time, and that they had thought it to be a rupture about which Mr. Gibbon had of course taken advice.
After leaving Sheffield House the hydrocele suddenly increased, as Gibbon himself says, “most stupendously”; and it began to dawn upon him that it “ought to be diminished.” So he called upon Dr. Walter Farquhar; and Dr. Farquhar was very serious and called in Dr. Cline, “a surgeon of the first eminence,” both of whom “viewed it and palped it” and pronounced it a hydrocele. Mr. Gibbon, with his usual good sense and calm mind, prepared to face the necessary “operation” and a future prospect of wearing a truss which Dr. Cline intended to order for him. In the meantime he was to crawl about with some labour and “much indecency,” and he prayed Lord Sheffield to “varnish the business to the ladies, yet I am much afraid it will become public,” as if anything could any longer concealthe existence of this monstrous chimera. It is hardly credible, but Gibbon had had the hydrocele since 1761—thirty-two years—yet had never even hinted of it to Lord Sheffield, with whom he had probably discussed every other fact connected with his life; and had even forbidden his valet to mention it in his presence or to anyone else. Gibbon, the historian who, more than any other, set Reason and Common Sense on their thrones, seems to have been ashamed of his hydrocele. Once more we wonder how little even able men may perceive the truth of things! In 1761 he had consulted Cæsar Hawkins, who apparently had not been able to make up his mind whether it was a hernia or a hydrocele. In 1787 Lord Sheffield had noticed a sudden great increase in the size of the thing; and in 1793, as we have seen, it came to tragedy.
He was tapped for the hydrocele on November 14; four quarts of fluid were removed, the swelling was diminished to nearly half its size, and the remaining part was a “soft irregular mass.” Evidently there was more there than a simple hydrocele, and straightway it began to refill so rapidly that they had to agree to re-tap it in a fortnight. Mr. Cline must have felt anxious; he would know “how many beans make five” well enough, and his patient was the most distinguishedman in the world. Many students who have at examinations in clinical surgery wrestled with Cline’s splint will probably consider that Cline’s punishment for inventing that weapon really began on the day when he perceived Gibbon’s hydrocele to be rapidly re-filling. The fortnight passed, and the second tapping took place, “much longer, more searching, and more painful” than before, though only three quarts of fluid were removed; yet Mr. Gibbon said he was much more relieved than by the first attempt. Thence he went to stay with Lord Auckland at a place called Eden Farm; thence again to Sheffield House. There, in the dear house which to him was a home, he was more brilliant than ever before. It was his “swan song.” A few days later he was in great pain and moved with difficulty, the swelling again increased enormously, inflammation set in, and he became fevered, and his friends insisted on his return to London. He returned in January, 1794, reaching his chambers after a night of agony in the coach; and Cline again tapped him on January 13. By this time the tumour was enormous, ulcerated and inflamed, and Cline got away six quarts. On January 15 he felt fairly well except for an occasional pain in his stomach, and he told some of his friends that he thought he might probably live for twenty years.That night he had great pain, and got his valet to apply hot napkins to his abdomen; he felt that he wished to vomit. At four in the morning his pain became much easier, and at eight he was able to rise unaided; but by nine he was glad to get back into bed, although he felt, as he said,plus adroitthan he had felt for months. By eleven he was speechless and obviously dying, and by 1 p.m. he was dead.
I believe that the key to this extraordinary and confused narrative is to be found in the visit to Cæsar Hawkins thirty years before, when that competent surgeon was unable to satisfy himself as to whether he was dealing with a rupture or a hydrocele. It seems now clear that in reality it was both; and Gibbon, who was a corpulent man with a pendulous abdomen, lived for thirty years without taking care of it. But he lived very quietly; he took no exercise; he was a man of calm, placid, and unruffled mind; probably no man was less likely to be incommoded by a hernia, especially if the sac had a large wide mouth and the contents were mainly fat. But the time came when the intra-abdominal pressure of the growing omentum became too great, and the swelling enormously increased, first in 1787 and again in 1793. When Cline first tapped the swelling he was obviously aware that there wasmore present than a hydrocele, because he warned Gibbon that he would have to wear a truss afterwards, and moreover, though he removed four quarts of fluid, yet the swelling was only reduced by a half. Probably the soft irregular mass which he then left behind was simply omentum which had come down from the abdomen. But why did the swelling begin to grow again immediately? That is not the usual way with a hydrocele, whose growth and everything connected with it are usually indolently leisurely. Could there have been a malignant tumour in course of formation? But if so, would not that have caused more trouble? Nor would it have given the impression of being a soft irregular mass. However, the second tapping was longer and more painful than the first, though it removed less fluid; and Gibbon was more relieved. But this tapping was followed by inflammation. What had happened? Possibly Cline had found the epididymis; more probably his trochar was septic, like all other instruments of that pre-antiseptic period; at all events, the thing went from bad to worse, grew enormously, and severe constitutional symptoms set in. The ulceration and redness of the skin, which was no doubt filthy enough—surgically speaking—after thirty years of hydrocele, look uncommonly like suppurativeepididymitis, or suppuration in the hydrocele. Thus Gibbon goes on for a few days, able to move about, though with difficulty, till he cheers up and seems to be recovering; then falls the axe, and he dies a few hours after saying that he thought he had a good chance of living for twenty years.
Could the great septic hydrocele, connected with the abdomen through the inguinal ring, have suddenly burst its bonds and flooded the peritoneum with streptococci? Streptococcic peritonitis is one of the most appalling diseases in surgery. Its symptoms to begin with are vague, and it spreads with the rapidity of a grass fire in summer. After an abdominal section the patient suddenly feels exceedingly weak, there is a little lazy vomiting, the abdomen becomes distended, the pulse goes to pieces in a few hours, and death occurs rapidly while the mind is yet clear. The surgeon usually calls it “shock,” or thinks in his own heart that his assistant is a careless fellow; but the real truth is that streptococci have somehow been introduced into the abdomen and have slain the patient without giving time for the formation of adhesions whereby they might have been shut off and ultimately destroyed. That is what I believe happened to Edward Gibbon.
The loss to literature through this untimely tragedy was, of course, irreparable. Gibbon had taken twenty years to mature his unrivalled literary art. His style was the result of unremitting labour and exquisite literary taste; if one accustoms oneself to the constant antitheses—which occasionally give the impression of being forced almost more for the sake of dramatic emphasis than truth—one must be struck with the unvarying majesty and haunting music of the diction, illumined by an irony so sly, so subtle—possibly a trifle malicious—that one simmers with joyous appreciation in the reading. That sort of irony is more appreciated by the onlookers than by its victims, and it is not to be marvelled at that religious people felt deeply aggrieved for many years at the application of it to the Early Christians. Yet, after all, what Gibbon did was nothing more than to show them as men like others; he merely showed that the evidence concerning the beginnings of Christendom was less reliable than the Church had supposed. TheDecline and Fall of the Roman Empireshows the history of the world for more than a thousand years, so vividly, so dramatically, that the characters—who are great nations—move on the stage like actors, and the men who led them live in a remarkable flood of living light. The generaleffect upon the reader is as if he were comfortably seated in a moving balloon traversing over Time as over continents; as if he were seated in Mr. Wells’s “Time Machine,” viewing the disordered beginnings of modern civilization. I believe that no serious flaw in Gibbon’s history has been found, from the point of view of accuracy. Some people have found it too much achronique scandaleuse, and some modern historians appear to consider that history should be written in a dull and pedantic style rather than be made to live; furthermore, the great advance in knowledge of the Slavonic peoples has tended to modify some of his conclusions. Nevertheless, Gibbon remains, and so far as we can see, will ever remain, the greatest of historians. Though we might not have had anotherDecline and Fall of the Roman Empire, yet we might reasonably have looked for the completion of that autobiography which had such a brilliant beginning. What would we not give if that cool and appraising mind, which had raised Justinian and Belisarius from the dead and caused them to live again in the hearts of mankind, could have given its impressions of the momentous period in which it came to maturity? If, instead of England receiving its strongest impression of the French Revolution from Carlyle—whose powers of declamation were more potentthan his sense of truth—it had been swayed from the beginning by Gibbon? In such a case the history of modern England—possibly of modern Russia—might have been widely different from what we have already seen.