I was so delighted, my dear chap, to have your assurance that nothing
that I have said or could say upon the subject of religion could offend
you. It is difficult to tell you how pleased and relieved I was at your
cordial letter. I have no one to whom I can talk upon such matters. I
am all driven inwards, and thought turns sour when one lets it
stagnate like that. It is a grand thing to be able to tell it all to a
sympathetic listener--and the more so perhaps when he looks at it all
from another standpoint. It steadies and sobers one.
Those whom I love best are those who have least sympathy with my
struggles. They talk about having faith, as if it could be done by an
act of volition. They might as well tell me to have black hair instead
of red. I might simulate it perhaps by refusing to use my reason at all
in religious matters. But I will never be traitor to the highest thing
that God has given me. I WILL use it. It is more moral to use it and go
wrong, than to forego it and be right. It is only a little foot-rule,
and I have to measure Mount Everest with it; but it’s all I have, and
I’ll never give it up while there’s breath between my lips.
With all respect to you, Bertie, it is very easy to be orthodox. A man
who wanted mental peace and material advancement in this world would
certainly choose to be so. As Smiles says--“A dead fish can float with
the stream, but it takes a man to swim against it.” What could be more
noble than the start and the starter of Christianity? How beautiful
the upward struggle of an idea, like some sweet flower blossoming out
amongst rubble and cinders! But, alas! to say that this idea was a final
idea! That this scheme of thought was above the reason! That this
gentle philosopher was that supreme intelligence to which we cannot even
imagine a personality without irreverence!--all this will come to rank
with the strangest delusions of mankind. And then how clouded has become
that fine daybreak of Christianity! Its representatives have risen from
the manger to the palace, from the fishing smack to the House of Lords.
Nor is that other old potentate in the Vatican, with his art treasures,
his guards, and his cellars of wine in a more logical position. They are
all good and talented men, and in the market of brains are worth perhaps
as much as they get. But how can they bring themselves to pose as the
representatives of a creed, which, as they themselves expound it, is
based upon humility, poverty, and self-denial? Not one of them who
would not quote with approval the parable of the Wedding Guest. But
try putting one of them out of their due precedence at the next Court
reception. It happened some little time ago with a Cardinal, and England
rang with his protests. How blind not to see how they would spring at
one leap into the real first place if they would but resolutely claim
the last as the special badge of their master!
What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things
peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the
instincts of beasts. But surely all will be well with us. If not, then
He who made us is evil, which is not to be thought. Surely, then, all
must go very well with us!
I feel ashamed when I read this over. My mind fills in all the trains
of thought of which you have the rude ends peeping out from this tangle.
Make what you can of it, dear Bertie, and believe that it all comes from
my innermost heart. Above all may I be kept from becoming a partisan,
and tempering with truth in order to sustain a case. Let me but get a
hand on her skirt, and she may drag me where she will, if she will but
turn her face from time to time that I may know her.
You’ll see from the address of this letter, Bertie, that I have left
Scotland and am in Yorkshire. I have been here three months, and am now
on the eve of leaving under the strangest circumstances and with the
queerest prospects. Good old Cullingworth has turned out a trump, as I
always knew he would. But, as usual, I am beginning at the wrong end, so
here goes to give you an idea of what has been happening.
I told you in my last about my lunacy adventure and my ignominious
return from Lochtully Castle. When I had settled for the flannel vests
which my mother had ordered so lavishly I had only five pounds left out
of my pay. With this, as it was the first money that I had ever earned
im{sic} my life, I bought her a gold bangle, so behold me reduced at
once to my usual empty pocketed condition. Well, it was something just
to feel that I HAD earned money. It gave me an assurance that I might
again.
I had not been at home more than a few days when my father called me
into the study after breakfast one morning and spoke very seriously as
to our financial position. He began the interview by unbuttoning his
waistcoat and asking me to listen at his fifth intercostal space, two
inches from the left sternal line. I did so, and was shocked to hear a
well-marked mitral regurgitant murmur.
“It is of old standing,” said he, “but of late I have had a puffiness
about the ankles and some renal symptoms which show me that it is
beginning to tell.”
I tried to express my grief and sympathy, but he cut me short with some
asperity.
“The point is,” said he, “that no insurance office would accept my
life, and that I have been unable, owing to competition and increased
expenses, to lay anything by. If I die soon (which, between ourselves,
is by no means improbable), I must leave to your care your mother and
the children. My practice is so entirely a personal one that I cannot
hope to be able to hand over to you enough to afford a living.”
I thought of Cullingworth’s advice about going where you are least
known. “I think,” said I, “that, my chances would be better away from
here.”
“Then you must lose no time in establishing yourself,” said he. “Your
position would be one of great responsibility if anything were to happen
to me just now. I had hoped that you had found an excellent opening with
the Saltires; but I fear that you can hardly expect to get on in the
world, my boy, if you insult your employer’s religious and political
view at his own table.”
It wasn’t a time to argue, so I said nothing. My father took a copy of
the Lancet out of his desk, and turned up an advertisement which he had
marked with a blue pencil. “Read this!” said he.
I’ve got it before me as I write. It runs thus: Qualified Assistant.
Wanted at once in a large country and colliery practice. Thorough
knowledge of obstetrics and dispensing indispensable. Ride and drive.
L70 a year. Apply Dr. Horton Merton on the Moors, Yorkshire.”
“There might be an opening there,” said he. “I know Horton, and I am
convinced that I can get you the appointment. It would at least give
you the opportunity of looking round and seeing whether there was any
vacancy there. How do you think it would suit you?”
Of course I could only answer that I was willing to turn my hand
to anything. But that interview has left a mark upon me--a heavy
ever-present gloom away at the back of my soul, which I am conscious of
even when the cause of it has for a moment gone out of my thoughts.
I had enough to make a man serious before, when I had to face the world
without money or interest. But now to think of the mother and my sisters
and little Paul all leaning upon me when I cannot stand myself--it is
a nightmare. Could there be anything more dreadful in life than to have
those whom you love looking to you for help and to be unable to give it?
But perhaps it won’t come to that. Perhaps my father may hold his
own for years. Come what may, I am bound to think that all things are
ordered for the best; though when the good is a furlong off, and we with
our beetle eyes can only see three inches, it takes some confidence in
general principles to pull us through.
Well, it was all fixed up; and down I came to Yorkshire. I wasn’t in the
best of spirits when I started, Bertie, but they went down and down as
I neared my destination. How people can dwell in such places passes my
comprehension. What can life offer them to make up for these mutilations
of the face of Nature? No woods, little grass, spouting chimneys,
slate-coloured streams, sloping mounds of coke and slag, topped by
the great wheels and pumps of the mines. Cinder-strewn paths, black as
though stained by the weary miners who toil along them, lead through
the tarnished fields to the rows of smoke-stained cottages. How can any
young unmarried man accept such a lot while there’s an empty hammock in
the navy, or a berth in a merchant forecastle? How many shillings a week
is the breath of the ocean worth? It seems to me that if I were a poor
man--well, upon my word, that “if” is rather funny when I think that
many of the dwellers in those smoky cottages have twice my salary with
half my expenses.
Well, as I said, my spirits sank lower and lower until they got down
into the bulb, when on looking through the gathering gloom I saw
“Merton” printed on the lamps of a dreary dismal station. I got out, and
was standing beside my trunk and my hat-box, waiting for a porter, when
up came a cheery-looking fellow and asked me whether I was Dr. Stark
Munro. “I’m Horton,” said he; and shook hands cordially.
In that melancholy place the sight of him was like a fire on a frosty
night. He was gaily dressed in the first place, check trousers, white
waistcoat, a flower in his button hole. But the look of the man was
very much to my heart. He was ruddy checked and black eyed, with a jolly
stout figure and an honest genial smile. I felt as we clinched hands in
the foggy grimy station that I had met a man and a friend.
His carriage was waiting, and we drove out to his residence, The
Myrtles, where I was speedily introduced both to his family and his
practice. The former is small, and the latter enormous. The wife is
dead; but her mother, Mrs. White, keeps house for him; and there are two
dear little girls, about five and seven. Then there is an unqualified
assistant, a young Irish student, who, with the three maids, the
coachman, and the stable boy, make up the whole establishment. When I
tell you that we give four horses quite as much as they can do, you will
have an idea of the ground we cover.
The house, a large square brick one, standing in its own grounds, is
built on a small hill in an oasis of green fields. Beyond this, however,
on every side the veil of smoke hangs over the country, with the mine
pumps and the chimneys bristling out of it. It would be a dreadful place
for an idle man: but we are all so busy that we have hardly time to
think whether there’s a view or not.
Day and night we are at work; and yet the three months have been very
pleasant ones to look back upon.
I’ll give you an idea of what a day’s work is like. We breakfast about
nine o’clock, and immediately afterwards the morning patients begin to
drop in. Many of them are very poor people, belonging to the colliery
clubs, the principle of which is, that the members pay a little over a
halfpenny a week all the year round, well or ill, in return for which
they get medicine and attendance free. “Not much of a catch for the
doctors,” you would say, but it is astonishing what competition there
is among them to get the appointment. You see it is a certainty for
one thing, and it leads indirectly to other little extras. Besides, it
amounts up surprisingly. I have no doubt that Horton has five or six
hundred a year from his clubs alone. On the other hand, you can imagine
that club patients, since they pay the same in any case, don’t let their
ailments go very far before they are round in the consulting room.
Well, then, by half-past nine we are in full blast. Horton is seeing
the better patients in the consulting room, I am interviewing the
poorer ones in the waiting room, and McCarthy, the Irishman, making up
prescriptions as hard as he can tear. By the club rules, patients are
bound to find their own bottles and corks.
They generally remember the bottle, but always forget the cork. “Ye must
pay a pinny or ilse put your forefinger in,” says McCarthy. They have an
idea that all the strength of the medicine goes if the bottle is open,
so they trot off with their fingers stuck in the necks. They have the
most singular notions about medicines. “It’s that strong that a spoon
will stand oop in’t!” is one man’s description. Above all, they love to
have two bottles, one with a solution of citric acid, and the other with
carbonate of soda. When the mixture begins to fizz, they realise that
there is indeed a science of medicine.
This sort of work, with vaccinations, bandagings, and minor surgery,
takes us to nearly eleven o’clock, when we assemble in Horton’s room to
make out the list. All the names of patients under treatment are pinned
upon a big board. We sit round with note books open, and distribute
those who must be seen between us. By the time this is done and the
horses in, it is half-past eleven. Then away we all FLY upon our several
tasks: Horton in a carriage and pair to see the employers; I in a dog
cart to see the employed; and McCarthy on his good Irish legs to see
those chronic cases to which a qualified man can do no good, and an
unqualified no harm.
Well, we all work back again by two o’clock, when we find dinner waiting
for us. We may or may not have finished our rounds. If not away we go
again. If we have, Horton dictates his prescriptions, and strides off
to bed with his black clay pipe in his mouth. He is the most abandoned
smoker I have ever met with, collecting the dottles of his pipes in
the evening, and smoking them the next morning before breakfast in the
stable yard. When he has departed for his nap, McCarthy and I get to
work on the medicine. There are, perhaps, fifty bottles to put up, with
pills, ointment, etc. It is quite half-past four before we have them all
laid out on the shelf addressed to the respective invalids. Then we have
an hour or so of quiet, when we smoke or read, or box with the coachman
in the harness room. After tea the evening’s work commences. From six to
nine people are coming in for their medicine, or fresh patients wishing
advice. When these are settled we have to see again any very grave cases
which may be on the list; and so, about ten o’clock, we may hope to have
another smoke, and perhaps a game of cards. Then it is a rare thing for
a night to pass without one or other of us having to trudge off to a
case which may take us two hours, or may take us ten. Hard work, as you
see; but Horton is such a good chap, and works so hard himself, that one
does not mind what one does. And then we are all like brothers in the
house; our talk is just a rattle of chaff, and the patients are as
homely as ourselves, so that the work becomes quite a pleasure to all of
us.
Yes, Horton is a real right-down good fellow. His heart is broad and
kind and generous. There is nothing petty in the man. He loves to see
those around him happy; and the sight of his sturdy figure and jolly red
face goes far to make them so. Nature meant him to be a healer; for he
brightens up a sick room as he did the Merton station when first I set
eyes upon him. Don’t imagine from my description that he is in any
way soft, however. There is no one on whom one could be less likely to
impose. He has a temper which is easily aflame and as easily appeased.
A mistake in the dispensing may wake it up and then he bursts into
the surgery like a whiff of cast wind, his checks red, his whiskers
bristling, and his eyes malignant. The daybook is banged, the bottles
rattled, the counter thumped, and then he is off again with five doors
slamming behind him. We can trace his progress when the black mood is on
him by those dwindling slams. Perhaps it is that McCarthy has labelled
the cough mixture as the eye-wash, or sent an empty pillbox with an
exhortation to take one every four hours. In any case the cyclone comes
and goes, and by the next meal all is peace once more.
I said that the patients were very homely. Any one who is over-starched
might well come here to be unstiffened. I confess that I did not quite
fall in with it at once. When on one of my first mornings a club patient
with his bottle under his arm came up to me and asked me if I were the
doctor’s man, I sent him on to see the groom in the stable. But soon one
falls into the humour of it. There is no offence meant; and why should
any be taken? They are kindly, generous folk; and if they pay no respect
to your profession in the abstract, and so rather hurt your dignity,
they will be as leal and true as possible to yourself if you can win
their respect. I like the grip of their greasy and blackened hands.
Another peculiarity of the district is that many of the manufacturers
and colliery owners have risen from the workmen, and have (in some cases
at least) retained their old manners and even their old dress. The other
day Mrs. White, Horton’s mother-in-law, had a violent sick headache,
and, as we are all very fond of the kind old lady, we were trying to
keep things as quiet as possible down-stairs. Suddenly there came
a bang! bang! bang! at the knocker; and then in an instant another
rattling series of knocks, as if a tethered donkey were trying to kick
in the panel. After all our efforts for silence it was exasperating. I
rushed to the door to find a seedy looking person just raising his hand
to commence a fresh bombardment. “What on earth’s the matter?” I asked,
only I may have been a little more emphatic. “Pain in the jaw,” said he.
“You needn’t make such a noise,” said I; “other people are ill besides
you.” “If I pay my money, young man, I’ll make such noise as I like.”
And actually in cold blood he commenced a fresh assault upon the door.
He would have gone on with his devil’s tattoo all morning if I had not
led him down the path and seen him off the premises. An hour afterwards
Horton whirled into the surgery, with a trail of banged doors behind
him. “What’s this about Mr. Usher, Munro?” he asked. “He says that you
were violent towards him.” “There was a club patient here who kept on
banging the knocker,” said I; “I was afraid that he would disturb Mrs.
White, and so I made him stop.” Horton’s eyes began to twinkle. “My
boy,” said he, “that club patient, as you call him, is the richest man
in Merton, and worth a hundred a year to me.” I have no doubt that he
appeased him by some tale of my disgrace and degradation; but I have not
heard anything of the matter since.
It has been good for me to be here, Bertie. It has brought me in close
contact with the working classes, and made me realise what fine people
they are. Because one drunkard goes home howling on a Saturday night,
we are too apt to overlook the ninety-nine decent folk by their own
firesides. I shall not make that mistake any more. The kindliness of the
poor to the poor makes a man sick of himself. And their sweet patience!
Depend upon it, if ever there is a popular rising, the wrongs which lead
to it must be monstrous and indefensible. I think the excesses of the
French Revolution are dreadful enough in themselves, but much more so as
an index to the slow centuries of misery against which they were a mad
protest. And then the wisdom of the poor! It is amusing to read the glib
newspaper man writing about the ignorance of the masses. They don’t
know the date of Magna Charta, or whom John of Gaunt married; but put
a practical up-to-date problem before them, and see how unerringly they
take the right side. Didn’t they put the Reform Bill through in the
teeth of the opposition of the majority of the so-called educated
classes? Didn’t they back the North against the South when nearly all
our leaders went wrong? When universal arbitration and the suppression
of the liquor traffic comes, is it not sure to be from the pressure of
these humble folks? They look at life with clearer and more unselfish
eyes. It’s an axiom, I think, that to heighten a nation’s wisdom you
must lower its franchise.
I often have my doubts, Bertie, if there is such a thing as the
existence of evil? If we could honestly convince ourselves that there
was not, it would help us so much in formulating a rational religion.
But don’t let us strain truth even for such an object as that. I must
confess that there are some forms of vice, cruelty for example, for
which it is hard to find any explanation, save indeed that it is a
degenerate survival of that war-like ferocity which may once have been
of service in helping to protect the community. No; let me be frank, and
say that I can’t make cruelty fit into my scheme. But when you find that
other evils, which seem at first sight black enough, really tend in
the long run to the good of mankind, it may be hoped that those which
continue to puzzle us may at last be found to serve the same end in some
fashion which is now inexplicable.
It seems to me that the study of life by the physician vindicates the
moral principles of right and wrong. But when you look closely it is a
question whether that which is a wrong to the present community may not
prove to have been a right to the interests of posterity. That sounds
a little foggy; but I will make my meaning more clear when I say that
I think right and wrong are both tools which are being wielded by those
great hands which are shaping the destinies of the universe, that both
are making for improvement; but that the action of the one is immediate,
and that of the other more slow, but none the less certain. Our own
distinction of right and wrong is founded too much upon the immediate
convenience of the community, and does not inquire sufficiently deeply
into the ultimate effect.
I have my own views about Nature’s methods, though I feel that it is
rather like a beetle giving his opinions upon the milky way. However,
they have the merit of being consoling; for if we could conscientiously
see that sin served a purpose, and a good one, it would take some of the
blackness out of life. It seems to me, then, that Nature, still working
on the lines of evolution, strengthens the race in two ways. The one is
by improving those who are morally strong, which is done by increased
knowledge and broadening religious views; the other, and hardly less
important, is by the killing off and extinction of those who are morally
weak. This is accomplished by drink and immorality. These are really two
of the most important forces which work for the ultimate perfection of
the race. I picture them as two great invisible hands hovering over the
garden of life and plucking up the weeds. Looked at in one’s own day,
one can only see that they produce degradation and misery. But at the
end of a third generation from then, what has happened? The line of the
drunkard and of the debauchee, physically as well as morally weakened,
is either extinct or on the way towards it. Struma, tubercle, nervous
disease, have all lent a hand towards the pruning off of that rotten
branch, and the average of the race is thereby improved. I believe from
the little that I have seen of life, that it is a law which acts with
startling swiftness, that a majority of drunkards never perpetuate
their species at all, and that when the curse is hereditary, the second
generation generally sees the end of it.
Don’t misunderstand me, and quote me as saying that it is a good thing
for a nation that it should have many drunkards. Nothing of the kind.
What I say is, that if a nation has many morally weak people, then it
is good that there should be a means for checking those weaker strains.
Nature has her devices, and drink is among them. When there are no more
drunkards and reprobates, it means that the race is so advanced that it
no longer needs such rough treatment. Then the all-wise Engineer will
speed us along in some other fashion.
I’ve been thinking a good deal lately about this question of the uses of
evil, and of how powerful a tool it is in the hands of the Creator. Last
night the whole thing crystallised out quite suddenly into a small set
of verses. Please jump them if they bore you.