Part 9

Buffon was seventy years of age (this was young for Buffon, he lived to eighty-one) when he wrote _The Epochs of Nature_, in which he calls old age a prejudice. Without our arithmetic we should not, according to Buffon, know that we were old. “Animals,” he says, “do not know it; it is only by our arithmetic that we judge otherwise.”

Buffon having settled on his estate at Montbard, in Burgundy, there pursued his studies with such regularity that the history of one day seems to have been that of all the others through a period of fifty years. After he was dressed, he dictated letters, and regulated his domestic affairs; and at six o’clock he retired to his studies in a pavilion in his garden, about a furlong from the house. This pavilion was only furnished with a large wooden secretary and an arm-chair; and within it was another cabinet, ornamented with drawings of birds and beasts. Prince Henry of Prussia called it the cradle of natural history; and Rousseau, before he entered it, used to fall on his knees, and kiss the threshold. Here Buffon composed the greater number of his works. At nine o’clock he usually took an hour’s rest; and his breakfast, a piece of bread and two glasses of wine, was brought to him. When he had written two hours after breakfast, he returned to the house. At dinner he enjoyed the gaieties and trifles of the table. After dinner he slept an hour in his room; took a solitary walk; and during the rest of the evening he either conversed with his family or guests, or examined his papers at his desk. At nine o’clock he went to bed, to prepare himself for the same routine of judgment and pleasure. He had a most fervid imagination; and his anxious solicitude for a literary immortality, “that last infirmity of noble minds,” continually betrayed him to be a vain man.

“Every day that I rise in good health,” said Buffon to a conceited young man, “have I not the enjoyment of this day as fully as you? If I conform my actions, my appetites, my desires, to the strict impulses of wise nature, am I not as wise and happy as you are? And the view of the past, which causes so much regret to old fools, does it not afford me, on the contrary, the pleasures of memory, agreeable pictures of precious images, which are equal to your objects of pleasure? For these images are sweet; they are pure; they leave upon the mind only pleasing remembrances; the uneasiness, the disappointments, the sorrowful troop which accompanies your youthful pleasures, disappear from the picture which presents them to me. Regrets must disappear also; they are the last sparks of that foolish vanity that never grows old.

“Some one asked Fontenelle, when ninety-five years old, which were the twenty years of his life he most regretted. He replied that he had little to regret; but the age at which he had been most happy was that from forty-five to seventy-five. He made this avowal in sincerity, and he proved what he said by natural and consoling truths. At forty-five, fortune is established; reputation made; consideration obtained; the condition of life established; dreams vanished or fulfilled; projects miscarried or matured; most of the passions calmed, or at least cooled; the career in the work that every man owes to society nearly completed; enemies, or rather the enemies, are fewer, because the counterpoise of merit is known by the public voice,” &c.

Galen, speaking of Hippocrates, and wishing to represent in one word the man who, in his eyes, constitutes the most perfect type of slowly matured wisdom and profound experience, simply calls him _the old man_.

The first rule of the Art of Preserving Life is to know how to be old. “Few men know how to be old,” said La Rochefoucauld. Voltaire has—

Qui n’a pas l’esprit de son âge, De son âge a tous les malheurs.

The first rule is more philosophic than medical, but is perhaps none the less valuable.

The second rule is to know yourself well; which is also a philosophical precept applied to medicine.

The third rule is properly to conform to regular habits. Old men, who spend one day like another, with the same moderation, the same appetites, live always. “My miracle is existence,” said Voltaire; and if that foolish vanity which never grows old had not induced him, when eighty-four years of age, to make a ridiculous journey to Paris, his miracle would have continued a century, as was the case with Fontenelle.

“Few would believe,” said M. Reveillé-Parise, “how far a little health, well managed, may be made to go.” And Cicero said: “To use what we have, and to act in every thing according to our strength,—such is the rule of the sage.”

Most men die of disease, very few die of mere age. Man has made for himself a sort of artificial life, in which the moral is often worse than the physical; and the physical itself often worse than it would be with habits more serene and calm, more regularly and judiciously exercised.

Haller, the physiologist, says: “Man should be placed among the animals that live the longest: how very unjust, then, are our complaints of the brevity of life!” He then inquires what can be the extreme limit of the life of man; and he gives it as his opinion that man might live not less than two centuries. M. Flourens,[36] however, decides on a century of ordinary life; and at least half a century of extraordinary life is the prospect science holds out to man. Still, as these inferences are drawn from the exceptions of Jenkins and Parr, the opinions must be received accordingly.

Haller, who has collected a great number of examples of Longevity, says that he has found more than

1000 who have lived from 100 to 110 years 60 ” ” 110 to 120 ” 29 ” ” 120 to 130 ” 15 ” ” 130 to 140 ” 6 ” ” 140 to 160 ”

and one who reached the astonishing age of 169 years.

Footnote 36:

_Human Longevity and the Amount of Life upon the Globe._ By P. Flourens, Perpetual Secretary to the Academy of Sciences, Paris, 1855.

LENGTH OF DAYS.

There are few records so generally interesting as those of human existence being protracted beyond “threescore years and ten,” and the Psalmist’s limit of “fourscore years.” It is natural to expect every man, woman, and child to take a kindred interest in such matters: the girl or boy reads with wonder the dates upon the tombstones of very aged persons; and old men and women approach these memorials with awe, in proportion to their fancied distance from the same earthly bourn. All cannot alike read the story of the pictured urn, or the mysteries of the inverted torch or the winged mundus; but the uneducated young and old are sensible of the solemnity of the line, “Aged 102 years;” whilst the more pretentious “Hic jacet” only teaches the comparatively few that

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

We are not, therefore, surprised at the implicit belief in such records in times gone by, when no populous village in England was without a man or woman of fourscore years old. It has, however, become of late a matter of some moment to inquire into the authority on which statements of extreme old age have usually rested; and the result has been to shake the testimony of many recorded cases of great longevity.

Lord Bacon, in his _History of Life and Death_, quotes as a fact unquestioned, that a few years before he wrote, a morris-dance was performed in Herefordshire, at the May-games, by eight men, whose ages in the aggregate amounted to eight hundred years! In the seventeenth century, some time after Bacon wrote, two Englishmen are reported to have died at ages greater than almost any of those which have been attained in other nations. According to statements which are printed in the _Philosophical Transactions_ of the Royal Society, as well as his epitaph in Westminster Abbey, Thomas Parr lived 152 years and 9 months; Henry Jenkins, 169 years. The testimony in these extraordinary instances is, however, considered by the Registrar-General by no means conclusive, as it evidently rests on uncertain tradition, and on the very fallible memories of illiterate old men; for there is no mention of documentary evidence in Parr’s case, and the births date back to a period (1538) before the parish registers were instituted by Cromwell.

Yet parish registers are sometimes astounding; for in that of Evercreech, in Somersetshire, occurs this entry: “1588, 20th Dec., Jane Britton, of Evercriche, a Maidden, as she afirmed, of the age of 200 years, was buried.”

Here is a difficulty of belief cleared up. In the register of the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, is entered, among the “Burialles, Thomas Cam, y^e 22d inst. of January 1588 (curiously enough the date of the Somersetshire entry), Aged 207 years, Holywell-street. George Garrow, parish clerk.” In a newspaper paragraph of 1848, this entry is stated to add: “he was born in the year 1381, in the reign of King Richard II., and lived in the reigns of twelve kings and queens.” These words are not, however, in the register; and it is evident that some mischievous person has altered the figure 1 into 2. Sir Henry Ellis, in his _History of Shoreditch_, gives the entry correctly as follows: “Thomas Cam, aged 107, 28 January 1588.”

Another instance, less known, but better authenticated, is that of Sir Ralph Vernon, of Shipbrooke, who was born some time in the thirteenth century, died at the great age of 150; and is said to have been succeeded by his descendant in the sixth generation; he was called “Old Sir Ralph,” or Sir R. “the long-liver.” A deed of settlement by him was the cause of long litigation; and it is said that the papers respecting this law-suit still exist, to prove the fact of the old knight’s patriarchal age.[37]

In Conway churchyard is the tombstone of Lowry Owens, stated to have died “May the 1st, 1766, aged 192;” but the inscription has evidently been recut, and, it is presumed, with a difference, especially as the round of the “9” is above the date-line.

In the church of Abbey Dore, Herefordshire, is a slab to the memory of Elizabeth Lewis, who died “aged 141 years,” which is stated to be confirmed by the parish register.

In the churchyard of Cheve Prior, Worcestershire, is a record of a man who died at the age of 309; doubtless meant for 39, the blundering stonecutter having put the 30 first and 9 afterwards.

In these and similar cases our belief should be in proportion to the trustworthiness of the record, allowance being made for the imperfect state of documents of times when writing was a comparatively rare accomplishment. It is curious to contrast this state of things with the chronicle of our times, when, occasionally, one day’s newspaper records several instances of longevity:

In the _Morning Post_, January 30th, 1858, out of thirty-five deaths recorded, with the ages, there were five upwards of 60 and under 70; 70 and under 80, seven; in 80th year and upwards, nine; one female, 95; and Mrs. E. Miles, of Bishop Lidyard, near Taunton, 112.

In the obituary of the _Times_, February 20th, 1862, were recorded the deaths of persons who had attained the following ages: one of 103, one of 94, two of 90, one of 85, one of 84, one of 82, and eight of 70 years and upwards. And, on April 20th of the same year, were recorded the deaths of ten persons, whose united ages amount to 828 years, or an average of nearly 83. They comprise one of 100 and one of 99.

Footnote 37:

See Burke’s _Peerage and Baronetage_, ed. 1848.

HISTORIC TRADITIONS THROUGH FEW LINKS.

Of late years considerable interest has been added to the attraction of records of Longevity, by showing through how few individuals may be traced the evidence of far-distant events and incidents in our history.

Mr. Sidney Gibson, F.S.A., relates some curious instances of this class. A person living in 1847, then aged about 61, was frequently assured by his father that, in 1786, he repeatedly saw one Peter Garden, who died in that year at the age of 127 years; and who, when a boy, heard Henry Jenkins give evidence in a court of justice at York, to the effect that, when a boy, he was employed in carrying arrows up the hill before the battle of Flodden Field.

This battle was fought in 1513

Henry Jenkins died in 1670,

at the age of 169

Deduct for his age at the time of

the battle of Flodden Field 12

——— 157

Peter Garden, the man who heard

Jenkins give his evidence, died at 127

Deduct for his age when he saw 11 Jenkins

——— 116

The person whose father knew Peter

Garden was born shortly before 1786,

or seventy years since 70

————

A.D. 1856

So that a person living in 1786 conversed with a man that fought at Flodden Field.

Mr. Gibson then passes on to some remarkable instances of longevity from the Scrope and Grosvenor Roll, the record of the celebrated cause in the reign of Richard II., when, among the noble and knightly deponents who gave evidence in the following year, 1386, were:

Sir John Sully, Knight of the Garter and a distinguished soldier of the cross, who had served for eighty years, was then, by his own account, 105 years of age, and who is supposed to have died in his 108th year.

But, more remarkable, John Thirlwall, an esquire of an ancient Northumbrian house, deposes to what he heard from his father, who died forty-four years before, at the age of 145.

Not far from Thirlwall Castle, at Irthington, Mr. B. Gibson has seen the register of the burial of Robert Bowman, one of the most remarkable of the long-lived yeomen of that parish, who died in the year 1823, at the age of 118.

Mr. John Bruce, F.S.A., has also illustrated our subject by the following curious evidence. Lettice, Countess of Leicester, was born in 1539 or ’40, and was consequently 7 years old at the death of Henry VIII. She may very well have had a recollection of the bluff monarch, who cut off the head of her great-aunt, Anne Boleyn. She was thrice married, and had seen six English sovereigns, or seven if Philip be counted; her faculties were unimpaired at 85; and until a year or two of her death, on Christmas-day 1634, at the age of 94, she “could yet walk a mile of a morning.” Lettice was one of a long-lived race: her father lived till 1596; two of her brothers attained the ages of 86 and 99.

There is nothing (says Mr. Bruce) incredible, or even very extraordinary, in Lettice’s age; but even her years will produce curious results if applied to the subject of possible transmission of knowledge through few links. I will give one example: “Dr. Johnson, who was born in 1709, might have known a person who had seen the Countess Lettice. If there are not now (1857), there were amongst us within the last three or four years, persons who knew Dr. Johnson. There might, therefore, be only two links between ourselves and the Countess Lettice, who saw Henry VIII.”[38]

Mr. John Pavin Philips writes from Haverfordwest: “A friend of mine, now (1857) in his 80th year, knew an old woman resident in his parish who remembered her grandmother, who saw Cromwell when he was in Pembrokeshire, in 1648. I myself, when a student in Edinburgh in 1837, knew a centenarian lady, named Butler, who well recollected being taken by her mother to witness the public entry of Prince Charles Edward into the city in 1745.” And in Haverfordwest might be seen daily walking, in 1857, in perfect health, a man who was born four years previous to the death of George II.[39]

Mary Yates, of Shiffnal, Salop, who died 1776, aged 128, well remembered walking to view the ruins of the Great Fire of London, 1666.

In the _News Letter_ of June 1st, 1724, Bodl. Mss., Rawl. C., it is related, that on the King’s birthday, as the nobility and others of distinction passed through Pall Mall to Court at St. James’s, there sat in the street one Elinor Stuart, being 124 years old. She had kept a linen-shop at Kendal, and had nine children living at the time King Charles I. was beheaded, and was undone by adhering to the royal cause. “She is reckoned,” says the account (Jane Skrimshaw, who was now dead, being 128), “the oldest woman in London.”[40]

Margaret Mapps, of Eaton, near Leominster, who died in 1800, aged 109, had so retentive a memory, that to her last hours she could relate many incidents which she had witnessed in the reign of Queen Anne.

In 1858 died Mrs. Milward, of Blackheath, at the age of 102. She was, consequently, born four years previous to the accession of George III.; she saw the separation of the American colonies from the mother country; the three French revolutions, and the great war with France; she well remembered the London riots of 1780, and was placed in some jeopardy in Hyde-park in one of the incidents.

Jane Forrester, of Cumberland, is stated in the _Public Advertiser_, March 9th, 1766, as then living in her 138th year: she remembered Cromwell’s siege of Carlisle, in 1646; and in 1762 she gave evidence in a Chancery-suit of an estate having been enjoyed by the ancestors of the then heir 101 years.

One Evans, of Spitalfields, who died 1780, is stated to have reached the age of 139 years: he remembered the execution of Charles I., at which time he was 7 years old.

In the London newspapers of November 7th, 1788, is recorded the celebration of the centenary of the Revolution, at which was present a person who remembered that glorious event; he was 112 years old, and belonged to the French Hospital, Old Street-road, where were then ten persons whose ages together were 1000 years.

In 1826 there died at Corby, near Carlisle, aged 102, one Joseph Liddle, a shoemaker, who was at work in his shop, in the market-place of Carlisle, when the Scotch rebels entered the town, in 1745; he was very fond of horticulture, and, with little help, kept in order a large garden nearly until the day of his death.

Samuel Rogers, the banker-poet, who died on December 18th, 1855, aged 96, among many accomplishments possessed a most retentive memory; and his sweep of recollections was very wide.

He remembered when one of the Rebels’ heads remained on Temple Bar; when schoolboys chased butterflies in the fields in cocked hats; when gentlemen universally wore wigs and swords; when Ranelagh was in all its glory, and ladies going thither had head-dresses so preposterously high that they had to sit on stools placed in the bottom of the coach; when Garrick crowded the theatre, Reynolds crowded the lecture-room, and Johnson crowded the club; he had heard the Duke of York relate how he and his brother George, when young men, were robbed by footpads on Hay-hill, Berkeley-street; he had shaken hands with John Wilkes, dined with Lafayette, Condorcet, &c. at Paris, before the great Revolution began, and been present at Warren Hastings’ trial in Westminster Hall; he had seen Lady Hamilton go through her “attitudes” before the Prince of Wales, and Lord Nelson spin a teetotum with his _one_ hand for the amusement of children.—_R. Carruthers._

Mr. Peter Cunningham noted, a few days after the death of our Poet: “When Rogers made his appearance as a poet, Lord Byron was unborn—and Byron has been dead thirty-one years! When Percy Bysshe Shelley was born, Rogers was in his 30th year—and Shelley has been dead nearly thirty-four years! When Keats was born, _The Pleasures of Memory_ was looked upon as a standard poem—and Keats has been dead thirty-five years! When this century commenced, the man who died but yesterday, and in the latter half too of the century, had already numbered as many years as Burns and Byron had numbered when they died. Mr. Rogers was born before the following English poets: Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Moore, Campbell, Bloomfield, Cunningham, Hogg, James Montgomery, Shelley, Keats, Wilson, Tom Hood, Kirk White, Lamb, Joanna Baillie, Felicia Hemans, L. E. L.; and he outlived them all.”

On April 24th, 1858, died Mr. James Nolan, at Auchindrane, Carlow, Ireland, aged 115 years and 9 months. There is something more interesting than his being the oldest subject of her Majesty, who had lived in the reigns of five sovereigns of England; and no doubt it is curious to be carried back by two lives—Mr. Nolan and his father—to the reign of Charles II., and almost to the time of Cromwell.

Here is a remarkable instance: Commander Pickernell, R.N., who died April 20th, 1859, aged 87, knew well in his youth a man who was a soldier encamped on Hounslowheath at the time of the Revolution in 1688. This same man played an instrument in the band at Queen Anne’s coronation, and served through Marlborough’s wars; in his old age he returned to the neighbourhood of his native place, Whitby, where he died, considerably over a century, when Commander Pickernell was a boy about 7 or 8 years old.[41]

The venerable President of Magdalen College, Oxford, Dr. Routh, who died 1855, in his hundredth year, brought up old memories of times and men long passed away. Dr. Routh had known Dr. Theophilus Lee, the contemporary of Addison; had seen Dr. Johnson “in his brown wig scrambling up the steps of University College;” and had been told by a lady of her aunt who had been present when Charles II. walked round the parks at Oxford.

Dr. Routh had maintained an immediate and personal connexion with the University of Oxford for upwards of 80 years; and his long life supplied many instructive links between the present and the past. He was born in the reign of King George II., before the beginning of the Seven Years’ War; before India was conquered by Clive, or Canada by Wolfe; before the United States ever dreamt of independence; and before Pitt had impressed the greatness of his own character on the policy of Britain. The life of this college student comprehended three most important periods in the history of the world. Martin Routh saw the last years of the old state of society which introduced the political deluge; he saw the deluge itself—the great French Revolution, with all its catastrophes of thrones and opinions; and he lived to see the more stirring but not less striking changes which forty years of peace had engendered. It is therefore not a little curious to read of such a man, that the times on which his thoughts chiefly dwelt were those of the Stuarts; which is not, however, altogether surprising, as he might himself have shaken hands with the Pretender. This Prince did not die till young Routh was ten years of age; so that, if accident had put the chance in his way, he might easily have had an interview with the representative of James II.[42] What an interval was there between this epoch and Dr. Routh sitting for a photograph on his hundredth birthday!

Footnote 38:

See _Notes and Queries_, 2d series, Nos. 51 and 53.

Footnote 39:

Ibid. No. 58.

Footnote 40:

W. D. Macray; _Notes and Queries_, 2d series, No. 23.

Footnote 41:

_Notes and Queries_, 2d series, No. 169.

Footnote 42:

Condensed from the _Times_ journal.

LONGEVITY IN FAMILIES.

The long life of different members of the same family is remarkable. In 1836, Mrs. H. P., residing near the Edgeware-road, attained her 103d year: she had three sisters,—one 107, another 105; and the other, who died about 1834, 100.

Mr. Bailey records the death of Widow Stephenson, of Wolverton, Durham, in 1816, aged 104: her mother lived to be 106, two sisters 106 and 107, and a brother 97; making an aggregate of 519 years as the age of these five relatives.