Part 6

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?”

XXIII.

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 practice with 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 and taught. 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 others of 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.

XXIV.

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 in London 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 drunken _Noctes 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 the _Cryptogamia_; 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 was an 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 where Dr. 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.

XXV.

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 one could 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 he was 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 they could 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!

XXVI.

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 more striking 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.

XXVII.

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 gave me 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 experiences of it, such as having learned what coffee was for the first time in my life, and what _fricandeau de veau lardé_ meant, 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 entrust it 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.