FAMOUS ENGLISHMEN NOT IN POLITICS
I
There are, perhaps, a few names of to-day which it is possible to
mention without becoming involved in the politics of to-day. The
English, it is true, draw a broader line between what is purely
political and what is personal than we do. They can give and take
hard knocks, whether in Parliament or on the platform or even in the
Press, without animosity or resentment. But since in America it
seems to be supposed that any reference to these encounters may have
its danger side I avoid them for the present. I turn away from the
Revolutionary present, of which one's stock of Memories increases day
by day, to the more peaceful past or to a more peaceful world in the
present; a world unravaged by political passions. True, the past was
not always a peaceful past while it lasted. We do not always
remember how fierce were the storms which have subsided. But where
Death has made a solitude we call it peace.
In two, at least, of the great contests waged these periods of peace
I had a share, which {353} I must mention again for the sake of
another story I have to tell. One was the conflict about Irish Home
Rule which became critical and revolutionary in 1881 and 1886; when I
was allowed to state my own views, unpopular as they were in America,
in _The Tribune_ week by week or day by day; a policy of generous and
far-sighted courage on the part of that journal; honourable to its
editor and I hope in the long run not injurious to the paper.
The second was in 1895 and 1896, in _The Times_ of London. When
President Cleveland flung his message of war upon the floor of the
House at Washington in December, 1895, I necessarily had much to say
about it in _The Times_. There again I was given a free hand. It is
sometimes said that the correspondents of this journal frame their
news dispatches in accordance with orders issued to them from the
home office. I can only say, if indeed I may say so much without
violating obligations of secrecy, that during a service which lasted
ten years I never knew of or heard of any such orders.
Coming to England in the summer of 1896 on a holiday, I had some
slight illness and asked a friend whom I should consult. My own
doctor was by that time attending patients, I suppose, in another and
better world. My friend said he had lately seen fourteen physicians
about his son and each of the fourteen had given a different name to
his son's disease.
"Then I went to Dr. Barlow, who said, after a {354} long examination,
'I do not know what is the matter with your son nor what to prescribe
for him.' Then I felt I had found a doctor whom I could trust."
So I went to Dr. Barlow, without an introduction. At the end of a
rather long consultation and a definite opinion and a settled
prescription, I asked what his fee was.
"Nothing."
I thought he had misunderstood my question, and repeated it.
"Nothing. I can take no money from a man who has done as much as you
have to keep the peace between the two countries."
When I next saw the manager of _The Times_ I told him of this
incident, which he seemed to think interesting. He said:
"Such evidences of good feeling from a man so distinguished as Barlow
and so far removed from politics do indeed make for good feeling on
both sides. I hope you will tell all your own people."
It is difficult, for I cannot tell it without more or less directly
paying a compliment to myself. But many years have since ebbed away.
Modesty is at best but an inconvenient handmaiden, from whom I would
part company if I could. Let her keep to her proper place. An
obligation of honour is peremptory; and this, perhaps, is one. I did
tell a certain number of friends at the time, and now I repeat the
anecdote to a larger number. I set it against Mr. Price Collier's
mischievous dictum that English and Americans do not like each {355}
other. The dictum already seems to belong to a distant and misty and
mythical past.
Since that year of 1896 Dr. Barlow has become (in 1902) Sir Thomas
Barlow, Bart., and Physician to the King's Household; about as high
as anybody can go in the medical profession. A Lancashire lad to
begin, with, he has had a vast hospital experience, and still keeps
up his hospital work; he has a vast private practice; Harvard and two
Canadian universities have given him their LL.D.; he is an F.R.S., a
K.C.V.O., and other parts of the alphabet pay him tribute. All these
and many other titles and distinctions have their value, though the
late Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, who had more than most men, did say:
"They give me every kind of letter to my name except L.S.D." But the
essential thing in Sir Thomas Barlow's case is that he has the
confidence of the public and of his profession.
One thing, it seems to me, the great surgeons and physicians I have
known had in common. They were great men, first of all. They had
great qualities outside of their profession. Two years ago last
September, a time when the big men are mostly away, I wanted a
surgeon and knew not where to find one. A chemist finally gave me a
name, Mr. Henry Morris, and an address; name wholly unknown to me,
though the address, Cavendish Square, implied at least professional
prosperity. I had had a fall at the Playhouse, as Mr. Maude calls
his little theatre, the night before, leaving a box by what I
supposed {356} to be steps and in the absence of steps coming down on
the floor, bruised, and I knew not what else. My surgeon made his
examination. What struck me was that he wasted never a word nor a
gesture. The touch of his hands, of his fingers, had a mathematical
or instrumental precision. So had his questions. In five minutes or
less he had covered the ground and delivered his opinion. Anything
might have happened, but nothing had, bar the bruised muscles.
"We'll attend to those for you." He asked if I was leaving town and
when I said I was sailing for New York on Saturday he remarked:
"If you were a working-man I should send you to the hospital and you
would be kept in bed till you were well. But if you choose to sail
on the _Lusitania_ you must bear the pain. Now, as you are here, you
might as well let me overhaul you."
Then, as before, the same precision, the same delicacy of touch, the
same rapidity, nothing hurried, nothing missed; his examination a
work of art as well as of science. Then he began to talk of other
things; and again, and even stronger, was the impression of being in
contact with a master mind. Seldom have I spent a more stimulating
hour. He was, I found later, Mr. Henry Morris, Consulting Surgeon to
the Middlesex Hospital and President of the Royal College of
Surgeons. In other words, Mr. Henry Morris, about whom I ought to
have known, but did not, was, and is, in the very front rank of his
profession. His eminence has since been recognized and {357}
rewarded by the King, and he is now Sir Henry Morris, Bart. I
suppose even a Republican may admit that if titles are to be
conferred they are well conferred on men eminent in science.
II
Sir Thomas Barlow has since been elected President of the Royal
College of Physicians in succession to Sir Douglas Powell. This is
the Blue Ribbon of the profession, perhaps a greater honour than a
knighthood or baronetcy, though the knighthood or the baronetcy is
from the King, the source and fountain of all such distinctions. But
the Presidency of the Royal College of Physicians is conferred by the
Profession itself. The Fellows of the College, who number some three
hundred, are the choosing body. They vote by ballot and the man whom
they elect is the man by whom they wish to be represented before the
public; the man by whom they are content to be judged. They say, in
effect, of him whom they choose: "This is the Head of the Medical
Profession for the time being." The public, which really and rightly
has much more confidence in the judgment of the doctors upon each
other than in any lay reputation, accepts that. When you say of a
physician, "He is a doctors' doctor," you have said about all you can.
The President of the Royal College of Physicians has, no doubt,
duties which are not medical. He has executive, administrative,
consultative {358} duties; and the very important duty of dining with
the Lord Mayor, the Corporation of the City of London, and the City
Companies. In discharging these latter functions he incurs, I
suppose, less risk than most men incur. But risk or no risk these
feasts have to be faced. Between all Corporations, Guilds, and
Colleges there is a kind of freemasonry. They have points of
contact, of sympathy, and are likely to stand by each other in
difficulties. Whether dinners were invented as a test and standard
of friendship, I cannot say. But go to which of them you like, you
will find a collection of the Heads of other Companies, Colleges,
etc.; not all, perhaps, dinner-giving, but all willing victims of
others' hospitality.
The Royal College of Physicians is also a Senate or Parliament; with
powers of legislation and of professional guidance and discipline.
The Fellows of this College are Trustees for the whole Profession.
The President has an authority of his own, depending in part on
statutes and on custom, in part on his personal authority. In the
latter Sir Thomas Barlow will not be found wanting. It is not the
less, it is perhaps the greater, for the genial good nature which
accompanies it. I said to him once:
"Sir Thomas, you have one quality which must be a great drawback to
your success."
"Dear me, what is that?"
"When you come into a room your patient at once thinks himself
better, and even doubts whether he need have sent for you at all, and
so {359} gets well much quicker than he ought. It's taking money out
of your pocket."
"Very good. I'll take care you don't get well too soon."
There was an electioneering story--oh, no politics in it--the other
day with an equally serious but not more serious, side to it. Men
were discussing the system of plural voting still prevailing in this
country and certain to prevail so long as votes, or any votes, are
based on property qualification. Said a well-known doctor:
"I have sixteen votes, all of which I am going to poll."
"But how?"
"Oh, I have two votes of my own and I have fourteen patients who are
of the wrong party and not one of them will be well enough to go out
till after election."
Think how completely non-political must be a profession of which an
eminent member can tell a story like that and run no risk of being
misunderstood. The traditions of honour are indeed high among
English doctors, nor could they be in better keeping than now in Sir
Thomas Barlow's.
One of his predecessors, Sir William Gull, was also not merely
fashionable and popular but recognized by his associates as a
scientific practitioner. Sir William Jenner was perhaps reckoned by
the medical profession the best all-round man ever known. Sir
William Gull was not far off, yet there is an anecdote of him which
suggests that he put a very high value on the average capacity {360}
of doctors. He was asked to go a long distance into the country to
see a patient. He declined. He was told that any fee he liked to
name would be gladly paid. Still he declined, saying there were
cases he could not leave, and when he was pressed further the great
man burst out:
"But why do you want me? There are five hundred doctors in London
just as good as I am."
Which perhaps was not quite true.
Sir William Broadbent said almost the same thing to me, twenty years
ago and more, when I asked him to see Mr. Hay whom I had just left in
his rooms, in Ryder Street, St. James's, to all appearance extremely
ill. Hay said in his emotional way:
"Broadbent is the only doctor I believe in. If you don't bring
Broadbent bring nobody. Let me die."
But Broadbent said no. He was starting to catch a train for a life
and death consultation in the country. He must not miss his train.
"But there's time enough. See Hay on your way to the train. Give
him five minutes and let somebody else do the rest."
"I shall let somebody else do the whole."
"Hay will see nobody unless he sees you first."
"There are plenty of men as good as I am. I will give you half a
dozen names."
"I want none of them. I want you. You know you can stop your
carriage for five minutes as you drive to the station."
"My carriage has not come round."
{361}
"My hansom is at the door. Drive with me and let your carriage
follow."
Finally he did. When he came out of Hay's bedroom he was a very
angry man. He said:
"Your friend has a bad attack of indigestion. He will be all right
in an hour."
And away he went. An angry man is not always a just man. Hay--God
bless his memory--thought himself suffering from a heart attack.
There is, I believe, a medical analogy between the symptoms of heart
disease and violent indigestion. I had left him lying on the floor
almost in convulsions. How was he to know it was not heart disease,
to which he believed himself subject? Hay was not then, to the
English, so great a man as he afterwards became. He had not been
Ambassador, nor Secretary of State, nor dictated to the European
Powers a new policy in the East. I ought not to use the word
dictated. It is not descriptive of Hay's methods, which were
persuasive. Nor does one Power dictate to another. Let us say he
had secured by the adroit use of accepted diplomatic methods the
adhesion of the European Powers to his proposals in respect of China.
No American Secretary of State had ever made so original or
beneficent a use of his power. He had brought his country once for
all into the great world-partnership of great Powers the world over.
Sir William Broadbent did not foresee that. He could not. If he had
he might have been less angry, for he was thought to be considerate
of greatness in all its forms or in many of them. He {362} liked
patients of distinction, which is no reproach. He had many of them.
But the odd thing was that he seemed never quite able to overcome his
awe of rank and title. In a company of persons of rank his manner
was not that of an equal. He used to address persons of rank as a
servant addresses them; or it might be kinder to say as inferiors in
position used to address their superiors two or three generations
ago. And always with embarrassment.
Another celebrated man of medicine, Sir Andrew Clark, had an almost
factitious renown as Mr. Gladstone's doctor, and Mr. Gladstone was a
very good patient, in one sense. One thing this famous physician
had; he had absolute confidence in himself. Or, if no doctor has
that, he had enough to give his patient confidence, which is perhaps
not less important. Old Abernethy used to say: "The second best
remedy is best if the patient thinks it best." And I suppose that is
as true of doctors as of remedies. If Sir Andrew doubted, he never
allowed you to see that he doubted. Like all these great men, he had
a social as well as medical popularity and he was very good company
at dinner and after.
One evening I met him at a pleasant house where there was a good cook
and the company, including the host, did not exceed six; all men. We
all noticed that Sir Andrew drank champagne. Presently one of the
men said:
"You don't allow us champagne, Sir Andrew, but you allow it to
yourself."
{363}
"Oh, I have had a long day, and I am very tired, and I must have it.
Besides, when I get home there'll be thirty or forty letters to
answer."
So the champagne flowed on, like the water, as Mr. Evarts said, at
one of President Hayes's White House dinners. Sir Andrew drank no
more than anybody else. It was only because of his habit of
prohibiting it to others that we noticed whether his glass was full
or empty. As we went upstairs I said to him:
"Do you mean that after all that champagne you are going to answer
thirty or forty letters when you get home?"
"No, certainly not."
"Then what did you mean?"
"What I meant was that after my champagne I should not care whether
they were answered or not."
It was Sir Andrew Clark who said of Mr. Gladstone, some fifteen years
before his death at eighty-eight that there was no physiological
reason why he should not live to be 120. If that was meant as a
prophecy it had the fate of most prophecies.
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