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 was more 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
suppurative epididymitis, 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. The _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ shows
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 general effect 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 a
_chronique 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
another _Decline 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
potent than 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.
Jean Paul Marat
It has always been the pride of the medical profession that its aim
is to benefit mankind; but opinions may differ as to how far this aim
was fulfilled by one of our most eminent confrères, Jean Paul Marat.
He was born in Neufchatel of a marriage between a Sardinian man and a
Swiss woman, and studied medicine at Bordeaux; thence, after a time
at Paris, he went to London, and for some years practised there. In
London he published _A Philosophical Essay on Man_, wherein he showed
enormous knowledge of the English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish
philosophers; and advanced the thesis that a knowledge of science was
necessary for eminence as a philosopher. By this essay he fell foul of
Voltaire, who answered him tartly that nobody objected to his opinions,
but that at least he might learn to express them more politely,
especially when dealing with men of greater brains than his own.
The French Revolution was threatening; the coming storm was already
thundering, when, in 1788, Marat’s ill-balanced mind led him to abandon
medicine and take to politics. He returned to Paris, beginning the
newspaper _L’Ami du Peuple_, which he continued to edit till late
in 1792. His policy was simple, and touched the great heart of the
people. “Whatsoever things were pure, whatsoever things were of good
repute, whatsoever things were honest”--so be it that they were not
Jean Paul Marat’s, those things he vilified. He suspected everybody,
and constantly cried, “Nous sommes trahis”--that battle-cry of Marat
which remained the battle-cry of Paris from that day to 1914. By his
violent attacks on every one he made Paris too hot to hold him, and
once again retired to London. Later he returned to Paris, apparently
at the request of men who desired to use his literary skill and
violent doctrines; he had to hide in cellars and sewers, where it was
said he contracted that loathsome skin disease which was henceforth
to make his life intolerable, and to force him to spend much of his
time in a hot-water bath, and would have shortly killed him only for
the intervention of Charlotte Corday. In these haunts he was attended
only by Simonne Everard, whose loyalty goes to show either that there
was some good even in Marat, or that there is no man so frightful but
that some woman may be found to love him. Finally, he was elected to
the Convention, and took his seat. There he continued his violent
attacks upon everybody, urging that the “gangrene” of the aristocracy
and bourgeoisie should be amputated from the State. His ideas of
political economy appear to have foreshadowed those of Karl Marx--that
the proletariat should possess everything, and that nobody else should
possess anything. Daily increasing numbers of heads should fall in the
sacred names of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality. At first a mere
600 would have satisfied him, but the number rapidly increased, first
to 10,000, then to 260,000. To this number he appeared faithful, for
he seldom exceeded it; his most glorious vision was only of killing
300,000 daily.
He devoted his energies to attacking those who appeared abler and
better than himself, and the most prominent object of his hatred was
the party of the Girondins. These were so called because most of them
came from the Gironde, and they are best described as people who wished
that France should be governed by a sane and moderate democracy, such
as they wrongly imagined the Roman Republic to have been. They were
gentle and clever visionaries, who dreamed dreams; they advised, but
did not dare to perform; the most famous names which have survived
are those of Brissot, Roland, and Barbaroux. Madame Roland, who has
become of legendary fame, was considered their “soul”; concerning
her, shouts Carlyle: “Radiant with enthusiasm are those dark eyes, is
that strong Minerva-face, looking dignity and earnest joy; joyfullest
she where all are joyful. Reader, mark that queen-like burgher-woman;
beautiful, Amazonian-graceful to the eye; more so to the mind.
Unconscious of her worth (as all worth is), of her greatness, of her
crystal-clearness, genuine, the creature of Sincerity and Nature, in an
age of Artificiality, Pollution and Cant”--and so forth. But Carlyle
was writing prose-poetry, sacrificing truth to effect, and it is unwise
to take his poetical descriptions as accurate. Recent researches
have shown that possibly Manon Roland was not so pure, honest, and
well-intentioned as Carlyle thought--nor so “crystal-clear.” Summed up,
the Girondins represented the middle classes, and the battle was now
set between them and the “unwashed,” led by Robespierre, Danton, and
Marat.
What manner of man, then, was this Marat, physically? Extraordinary!
Semi-human from most accounts. Says Carlyle: “O Marat, thou
remarkablest horse-leech, once in d’Artois’ stable, as thy bleared
soul looks forth through thy bleared, dull-acrid, woe-stricken face,
what seest thou in all this?” Again: “One most squalidest bleared
mortal, redolent of soot and horse-drugs.” There appears to have been
a certain amount of foundation for the lie that Marat had been nothing
more than a horse-doctor, for once when he was brevet-surgeon to the
bodyguard of the Compte d’Artois he had found that he could not make a
living, and had been driven to dispense medicines for men and horses;
his enemies afterwards said that he had never been anything more than
a horse-leech. Let us not deprive our own profession of one of its
ornaments. His admirer Panis said that while Marat was hiding in the
cellars, “he remained for six weeks on one buttock in a dungeon”;
immediately, therefore, he was likened to St. Simeon Stylites, who,
outside Antioch, built himself a high column, repaired him to the top,
and stood there bowing and glorifying God for thirty years, until he
became covered with sores. Dr. Moore gives the best description of him.
“Marat is a little man of a cadaverous complexion, and countenance
exceedingly expressive of his disposition; to a painter of massacres
Marat’s head would be invaluable. Such heads are rare in this country
(England), yet they are sometimes to be met with in the Old Bailey.”
Marat’s head was enormous; he was less than five feet high, with
shrivelled limbs and yellow face; one eye was higher placed than the
other, “so that he looked lop-sided.” As for his skin disease, modern
writers seem to consider that we should nowadays call it “dermatitis
herpetiformis,” though his political friends artlessly thought it was
due to the humours generated by excessive patriotism in so small a body
attacking his skin, and thus should be counted for a virtue. Carlyle
hints that it was syphilis, thus following in the easy track of those
who attribute to syphilis those things which they cannot understand.
But syphilis, even if painful, would not have been relieved by sitting
for hours daily in a hot bath.
Mentally he appears to have been a paranoiac, to quote a recent
historical diagnosis by Dr. Charles W. Burr, of Philadelphia.
Marat suffered for many years from delusions of persecution, which
some people appear to take at their face value; the _New Age
Encyclopedia_ specially remarks on the amount of persecution that he
endured--probably all delusional, unless we are to consider the natural
efforts of people in self-defence to be persecution. He suffered from
tremendous and persistent “ego-mania,” and appears to have believed
that he had a greater intellect than Voltaire. Marat, whom the mass of
mankind regarded with horror, fancied himself a popular physician, whom
crowds would have consulted but for the unreasonable and successful
hatred of his enemies. Possibly failure at his profession, combined
with the unspeakable irritation of his disease, may have embittered his
mind, and for the last few months of his life there can be little doubt
that Marat was insane.
It seems to be certain that he organized, if he did not originate, the
frightful September massacres. There were many hundreds of Royalists in
the prisons, who were becoming a nuisance. The Revolution was hanging
fire, and well-meaning enthusiasts began to fear that the dull clod
of a populace would not rise in its might to end the aristocracy; so
it was decided to abolish these unfortunate prisoners. A tribunal was
formed to sit in judgment; outside waited a great crowd of murderers
hired for the occasion. The prisoners were led before the tribunal, and
released into the street, where they were received by the murderers
and were duly “released”--from this sorrowful world. The most famous
victim was the good and gentle Princess de Lamballe, Superintendent of
the Queen’s Household. The judge at her trial was the notorious Hébert,
anarchist, atheist, and savage, afterwards executed by his friend
Robespierre when he had served his turn. Madame collapsed with terror,
and fainted repeatedly during the mockery of a trial, but when Hébert
said the usual ironical, “Let Madame be released,” she walked to the
door. When she saw the murderers with their bloody swords she shrank
back and shrieked, “Fi--horreur.” They cut her in pieces; but decency
forbids that I should say what they did with all the pieces. Carlyle,
who here speaks truth, has a dark saying about “obscene horrors with
moustachio _grands-levres_,” which is near enough for anatomists to
understand. The murderers then stuck her head on a pike, and held her
fair curls before the Queen’s window as an oriflamme in the name of
Liberty. Madame was but one of 1,100 whose insane butchery must be laid
to the door of Marat; though some friends of the Bolsheviks endeavour
to acquit him we can only say that if it was not his work it looks
uncommonly like it.
The battle between the Girondins, who were bad fellows, but less
bad than their enemies of the “Mountain”--Robespierre, Danton, and
Marat--continued; it was a case of _arcades ambo_, which Bryon
translates “blackguards both,” though Virgil, who wrote the line--in
the Georgics--probably meant something much coarser. The “Mountain”
began to get the upper hand, and the Girondins fled for their lives,
or went to the guillotine. The Revolution was already “devouring its
children.”
At Caen in Normandy there lived a young woman, daughter of a decayed
noble family which in happier days had been named d’Armont, now Corday.
Her name was Marie Charlotte d’Armont, and she is known to history
as Charlotte Corday. She had been well educated, had read Rousseau,
Voltaire, and the encyclopædists, besides being fascinated by a dream
of an imaginary State which she had been taught to call the Roman
Republic, in which the “tyrannicide” Brutus loomed much larger and more
glorious than in reality. Some Girondists fled to Caen to escape the
vengeance of Marat; Charlotte, horrified, resolved that the monster
should die; she herself was then nearly twenty-five years of age.
I have a picture of her which seems to fit in very well with one’s
preconceived ideas of her character. She was five feet one inch in
height, with a well-proportioned figure, and she had a wonderful mass
of chestnut hair; her eyes were large, grey, and set widely apart; the
general expression of her face was thoughtful and earnest. Perhaps it
would hardly be respectful to call her an “intense” young lady; but
there was a young lady who sometimes used to consult me who might very
well have sat for the portrait; she possessed a type of somewhat--dare
I say?--priggish neurosis which I imagine was not unlike the type of
character that dwelt within Charlotte Corday--extreme conscientiousness
and self-righteousness. Such a face might have been the face of a
Christian martyr going to the lions--if any Christian martyrs were ever
thrown to the lions, which some doubt. She went silently to Paris,
attended only by an aged man-servant, and bought a long knife in the
Palais Royal; thence she went to Marat’s house, and tried to procure
admission. Simonne--the loyal Simonne--denied her, and she returned to
her inn. Again she called at the house; Marat heard her pretty voice,
and ordered Simonne to admit her. It was the evening of July 13, four
years all but one day since the storming of the Bastille, and Marat
sat in his slipper-bath, pens, ink, and paper before him, frightful
head peering out of the opening, hot compresses concealing his hair.
Charlotte told him that there were several Girondists hiding at Caen
and plotting against the Revolution. “Their heads shall fall within a
fortnight,” croaked Marat. Then, he being thus convicted out of his own
mouth, she drew forth from her bosom her long knife, and plunged it
into his chest between the first and second ribs, so that it pierced
the aorta. Marat gave one cry, and died; Charlotte turned to face the
two women who rushed in, but not yet was she to surrender, for she
barricaded herself behind some furniture and other movables till the
soldiers arrived. To them she gave herself up without trouble.
At her trial she made no denial, but proudly confessed, saying, “Yes,
I killed him.” Fouquier-Tinville sneered at her: “You must be well
practised at this sort of crime!” She only answered: “The monster!--he
seems to think I am an assassin!” She thought herself rather the agent
of God, sent by Him to rid the world of a loathsome disorder, as Brutus
had rid Rome of Julius Cæsar.
In due course she was guillotined, and an extraordinary thing happened.
A young German named Adam Lux had been present at the trial, standing
behind the artist who was painting the very picture of which I have a
reproduction--it is said that Charlotte showed no objection to being
portrayed--and the young man had been fascinated by the martyresque air
of her. He attended the execution, romance and grief weighing him down;
then he ran home, and wrote a furious onslaught on the leaders of the
Mountain who had executed her, saying that her death had “sanctified
the guillotine,” and that it had become “a sacred altar from which
every taint had been removed by her innocent blood.” He published
this broadcast, and was naturally at once arrested. The revolutionary
tribunal sentenced him to death, and he scornfully refused to accept a
pardon, saying that he wished to die on the same spot as Charlotte, so
they let him have his wish. The incident reminds one of a picture-show,
and it is not remarkable that an American, named Lyndsay Orr, has
written a sentimental article about it.
The people of Paris went mad after Marat’s death; his body, which was
said to be decaying with unusual rapidity, was surrounded by a great
crowd which worshipped it blasphemously, saying, “O Sacred Heart of
Marat!” This worship of Marat, which showed how deeply his teaching
had bitten into the hearts of the people, culminated in the Reign
of Terror, which began on September 5, 1795, whereby France lost,
according to different estimates, between half a million and a million
innocent people. Some superior persons seem to think that Marat had
little or no influence on the Revolution, but to my mind there can be
no doubt that the Terror was largely the result of his preaching of
frantic violence, and it is a lesson that we ourselves should take to
heart, seeing that there are persons in the world to-day who would
emulate Marat if they possessed his enormous courage.
I need not narrate the history of the Reign of Terror, which was
even worse than the terror which the Bolsheviks established in
Russia. Not even Lenin and Trotsky devised anything so atrocious as
the _noyades_--wholesale drownings--in the Loire, or the _mariages
républicains_ on the banks of that river, and it is difficult to
believe that the teaching of Marat had nothing to do with that
frightful outbreak of bestiality, lust, and murder.
The evil that men do lives after them. There was little good to be
buried in Marat’s grave, doctor though he was.
Napoleon I