Well, you see I am as good as my word, Bertie; and here is a full
account of this queer little sample gouged out of real life, never to be
seen, I should fancy, by any eye save your own. I have written to Horton
also, and of course to my mother; but I don’t go into detail with them,
as I have got into the way of doing with you. You keep on assuring me
that you like it; so on your own head be it if you find my experiences
gradually developing into a weariness.
When I woke in the morning, and looked round at the bare walls and the
basin on the packing case, I hardly knew where I was. Cullingworth came
charging into the room in his dressing gown, however, and roused me
effectually by putting his hands on the rail at the end of the bed, and
throwing a somersault over it which brought his heels on to my pillow
with a thud. He was in great spirits, and, squatting on the bed, he held
forth about his plans while I dressed.
“I tell you one of the first things I mean to do, Munro,” said he. “I
mean to have a paper of my own. We’ll start a weekly paper here, you and
I, and we’ll make them sit up all round. We’ll have an organ of our own,
just like every French politician. If any one crosses us, we’ll make
them wish they had never been born. Eh, what, laddie? what d’you think?
So clever, Munro, that everybody’s bound to read it, and so scathing
that it will just fetch out blisters every time. Don’t you think we
could?”
“What politics?” I asked.
“Oh, curse the politics! Red pepper well rubbed in, that’s my idea of a
paper. Call it the Scorpion. Chaff the Mayor and the Council until they
call a meeting and hang themselves. I’d do the snappy paragraphs, and
you would do the fiction and poetry. I thought about it during the
night, and Hetty has written to Murdoch’s to get an estimate for the
printing. We might get our first number out this day week.”
“My dear chap!” I gasped.
“I want you to start a novel this morning. You won’t get many patients
at first, and you’ll have lots of time.”
“But I never wrote a line in my life.”
“A properly balanced man can do anything he sets his hand to. He’s
got every possible quality inside him, and all he wants is the will to
develop it.”
“Could you write a novel yourself?” I asked.
“Of course I could. Such a novel, Munro, that when they’d read the first
chapter the folk would just sit groaning until the second came out.
They’d wait in rows outside my door in the hope of hearing what was
coming next. By Crums, I’ll go and begin it now!” And, with another
somersault over the end of the bed, he rushed from the room, with the
tassels of his dressing gown flying behind him.
I daresay you’ve quite come to the conclusion by this time that
Cullingworth is simply an interesting pathological study--a man in the
first stage of lunacy or general paralysis. You might not be so sure
about it if you were in close contact with him. He justifies his wildest
flights by what he does. It sounds grotesque when put down in black and
white; but then it would have sounded equally grotesque a year ago if he
had said that he would build up a huge practice in a twelvemonth. Now we
see that he has done it. His possibilities are immense. He has such
huge energy at the back of his fertility of invention. I am afraid, on
thinking over all that I have written to you, that I may have given you
a false impression of the man by dwelling too much on those incidents
in which he has shown the strange and violent side of his character, and
omitting the stretches between where his wisdom and judgment have had a
chance. His conversation when he does not fly off at a tangent is
full of pith and idea. “The greatest monument ever erected to Napoleon
Buonaparte was the British National debt,” said he yesterday. Again,
“We must never forget that the principal export of Great Britain to the
United States IS the United States.” Again, speaking of Christianity,
“What is intellectually unsound cannot be morally sound.” He shoots off
a whole column of aphorisms in a single evening. I should like to have
a man with a note book always beside him to gather up his waste. No; you
must not let me give you a false impression of the man’s capacity.
On the other hand, it would be dishonest to deny that I think him
thoroughly unscrupulous, and full of very sinister traits. I am much
mistaken, however, if he has not fine strata in his nature. He is
capable of rising to heights as well as of sinking to depths.
Well, when we had breakfasted we got into the carriage and drove off to
the place of business.
“I suppose you are surprised at Hetty coming with us, said Cullingworth,
slapping me on the knee. Hetty, Munro is wondering what the devil you
are here for, only he is too polite to ask.”
In fact, it HAD struck me as rather strange that she should, as a matter
of course, accompany us to business.
“You’ll see when we get there,” he cried chuckling. “We run this affair
on lines of our own.”
It was not very far, and we soon found ourselves outside a square
whitewashed building, which had a huge “Dr. Cullingworth” on a great
brass plate at the side of the door. Underneath was printed “May be
consulted gratis from ten to four.” The door was open, and I caught a
glimpse of a crowd of people waiting in the hall.
“How many here?” asked Cullingworth of the page boy.
“A hundred and forty, sir.”
“All the waiting rooms full?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Courtyard full?
“Yes, sir.”
“Stable full?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Coach-house full?”
“There’s still room in the coach-house, sir.”
“Ah, I’m sorry we haven’t got a crowded day for you, Munro,” said he.
“Of course, we can’t command these things, and must take them as they
come. Now then, now then, make a gangway, can’t you?”--this to his
patients. “Come here and see the waiting-room. Pooh! what an atmosphere!
Why on earth can’t you open the windows for yourselves? I never saw
such folk! There are thirty people in this room, Munro, and not one with
sense enough to open a window to save himself from suffocation.”
“I tried, sir, but there’s a screw through the sash,” cried one fellow.
“Ah, my boy, you’ll never get on in the world if you can’t open a
window without raising a sash,” said Cullingworth, slapping him on the
shoulder. He took the man’s umbrella and stuck it through two of the
panes of glass.
“That’s the way!” he said. “Boy, see that the screw is taken out. Now
then, Munro, come along, and we’ll get to work.”
We went up a wooden stair, uncarpeted, leaving every room beneath us,
as far as I could see, crowded with patients. At the top was a bare
passage, which had two rooms opposite to each other at one end, and a
single one at the other.
“This is my consulting room,” said he, leading the way into one of
these. It was a good-sized square chamber, perfectly empty save for
two plain wooden chairs and an unpainted table with two books and a
stethoscope upon it. “It doesn’t look like four or five thousand a year,
does it? Now, there is an exactly similar one opposite which you can
have for yourself. I’ll send across any surgical cases which may turn
up. To-day, however, I think you had better stay with me, and see how I
work things.”
“I should very much like to,” said I.
“There are one or two elementary rules to be observed in the way of
handling patients,” he remarked, seating himself on the table and
swinging his legs. “The most obvious is that you must never let them see
that you want them. It should be pure condescension on your part seeing
them at all; and the more difficulties you throw in the way of it, the
more they think of it. Break your patients in early, and keep them well
to heel. Never make the fatal mistake of being polite to them. Many
foolish young men fall into this habit, and are ruined in consequence.
Now, this is my form”--he sprang to the door, and putting his two hands
to his mouth he bellowed: “Stop your confounded jabbering down there! I
might as well be living above a poultry show! There, you see,” he added
to me, “they will think ever so much more of me for that.”
“But don’t they get offended?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not. I have a name for this sort of thing now, and they have
come to expect it. But an offended patient--I mean a thoroughly insulted
one--is the finest advertisement in the world. If it is a woman,
she runs clacking about among her friends until your name becomes a
household word, and they all pretend to sympathise with her, and
agree among themselves that you must be a remarkably discerning man. I
quarrelled with one man about the state of his gall duct, and it ended
by my throwing him down the stairs. What was the result? He talked so
much about it that the whole village from which he came, sick and
well, trooped to see me. The little country practitioner who had been
buttering them up for a quarter of a century found that he might as well
put up his shutters. It’s human nature, my boy, and you can’t alter it.
Eh, what? You make yourself cheap and you become cheap. You put a high
price on yourself and they rate you at that price. Suppose I set up in
Harley Street to-morrow, and made it all nice and easy, with hours from
ten to three, do you think I should get a patient? I might starve first.
How would I work it? I should let it be known that I only saw patients
from midnight until two in the morning, and that bald-headed people
must pay double. That would set people talking, their curiosity would
be stimulated, and in four months the street would be blocked all night.
Eh, what? laddie, you’d go yourself. That’s my principle here. I often
come in of a morning and send them all about their business, tell them
I’m going off to the country for a day. I turn away forty pounds, and
it’s worth four hundred as an advertisement!”
“But I understood from the plate that the consultations were gratis.”
“So they are, but they have to pay for the medicine. And if a patient
wishes to come out of turn he has to pay half-a-guinea for the
privilege. There are generally about twenty every day who would rather
pay that than wait several hours. But, mind you, Munro, don’t you make
any mistake about this! All this would go for nothing if you had not
something, slid behind--I cure them. That’s the point. I take cases that
others have despaired of, and I cure them right off. All the rest is
only to bring them here. But once here I keep them on my merits. It
would all be a flash in the pan but for that. Now, come along and see
Hetty’s department.”
We walked down the passage to the other room. It was elaborately fitted
up as a dispensary, and there with a chic little apron Mrs. Cullingworth
was busy making up pills. With her sleeves turned up and a litter of
glasses and bottles all round her, she was laughing away like a little
child among its toys.
“The best dispenser in the world!” cried Cullingworth, patting her on
the shoulder. “You see how I do it, Munro. I write on a label what the
prescription is, and make a sign which shows how much is to be charged.
The man comes along the passage and passes the label through the pigeon
hole. Hetty makes it up, passes out the bottle, and takes the money.
Now, come on and clear some of these folk out of the house.”
It is impossible for me to give you any idea of that long line of
patients, filing hour after hour through the unfurnished room, and
departing, some amused, and some frightened, with their labels in
their hands. Cullingworth’s antics are beyond belief. I laughed until I
thought the wooden chair under me would have come to pieces. He roared,
he raved, he swore, he pushed them about, slapped them on the back,
shoved them against the wall, and occasionally rushed out to the head
of the stair to address them en masse. At the same time, behind all
this tomfoolery, I, watching his prescriptions, could see a quickness of
diagnosis, a scientific insight, and a daring and unconventional use of
drugs, which satisfied me that he was right in saying that, under all
this charlatanism, there lay solid reasons for his success. Indeed,
“charlatanism” is a misapplied word in this connection; for it would
describe the doctor who puts on an artificial and conventional manner
with his patients, rather than one who is absolutely frank and true to
his own extraordinary nature.
To some of his patients he neither said one word nor did he allow them
to say one. With a loud “hush” he would rush at them, thump them on the
chests, listen to their hearts, write their labels, and then run them
out of the room by their shoulders. One poor old lady he greeted with a
perfect scream. “You’ve been drinking too much tea!” he cried. “You are
suffering from tea poisoning!” Then, without allowing her to get a word
in, he clutched her by her crackling black mantle, dragged her up to the
table, and held out a copy of “Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence” which was
lying there. “Put your hand on the book,” he thundered, “and swear that
for fourteen days you will drink nothing but cocoa.” She swore with
upturned eyes, and was instantly whirled off with her label in her hand,
to the dispensary. I could imagine that to the last day of her life, the
old lady would talk of her interview with Cullingworth; and I could well
understand how the village from which she came would send fresh recruits
to block up his waiting rooms.
Another portly person was seized by the two armholes of his waistcoat,
just as he was opening his mouth to explain his symptoms, and was rushed
backward down the passage, down the stairs, and finally into the street,
to the immense delight of the assembled patients, “You eat too much,
drink too much, and sleep too much,” Cullingworth roared after him.
“Knock down a policeman, and come again when they let you out.” Another
patient complained of a “sinking feeling.” “My dear,” said he, “take
your medicine; and if that does no good, swallow the cork, for there is
nothing better when you are sinking.”
As far as I could judge, the bulk of the patients looked upon a morning
at Cullingworth’s as a most enthralling public entertainment, tempered
only by a thrill lest it should be their turn next to be made an
exhibition of.
Well, with half-an-hour for lunch, this extraordinary business went
on till a quarter to four in the afternoon. When the last patient had
departed, Cullingworth led the way into the dispensary, where all the
fees had been arranged upon the counter in the order of their value.
There were seventeen half-sovereigns, seventy-three shillings, and
forty-six florins; or thirty-two pounds eight and sixpence in all.
Cullingworth counted it up, and then mixing the gold and silver into
one heap, he sat running his fingers through it and playing with it.
Finally, he raked it into the canvas bag which I had seen the night
before, and lashed the neck up with a boot-lace.
We walked home, and that walk struck me as the most extraordinary part
of all that extraordinary day. Cullingworth paraded slowly through the
principal streets with his canvas bag, full of money, outstretched at
the full length of his arm. His wife and I walked on either side,
like two acolytes supporting a priest, and so we made our way solemnly
homewards the people stopping to see us pass.
“I always make a point of walking through the doctor’s quarter,” said
Cullingworth. “We are passing through it now. They all come to their
windows and gnash their teeth and dance until I am out of sight.”
“Why should you quarrel with them? What is the matter with them?” I
asked.
“Pooh! what’s the use of being mealy-mouthed about it?” said he. “We
are all trying to cut each other’s throats, and why should we be
hypocritical over it? They haven’t got a good word for me, any one of
them; so I like to take a rise out of them.”
“I must say that I can see no sense in that. They are your brothers
in the profession, with the same education and the same knowledge. Why
should you take an offensive attitude towards them?”
“That’s what I say, Dr. Munro,” cried his wife. “It is so very
unpleasant to feel that one is surrounded by enemies on every side.”
“Hetty’s riled because their wives wouldn’t call upon her,” he cried.
“Look at that, my dear,” jingling his bag. “That is better than having
a lot of brainless women drinking tea and cackling in our drawing-room.
I’ve had a big card printed, Munro, saying that we don’t desire to
increase the circle of our acquaintance. The maid has orders to show it
to every suspicious person who calls.”
“Why should you not make money at your practice, and yet remain on good
terms with your professional brethren?” said I. “You speak as if the two
things were incompatible.”
“So they are. What’s the good of beating about the bush, laddie?
My methods are all unprofessional, and I break every law of medical
etiquette as often as I can think of it. You know very well that the
British Medical Association would hold up their hands in horror if it
could see what you have seen to-day.”
“But why not conform to professional etiquette?”
“Because I know better. My boy, I’m a doctor’s son, and I’ve seen too
much of it. I was born inside the machine, and I’ve seen all the wires.
All this etiquette is a dodge for keeping the business in the hands of
the older men. It’s to hold the young men back, and to stop the holes by
which they might slip through to the front. I’ve heard my father say so
a score of times. He had the largest practice in Scotland, and yet he
was absolutely devoid of brains. He slipped into it through seniority
and decorum. No pushing, but take your turn. Very well, laddie, when
you’re at the top of the line, but how about it when you’ve just taken
your place at the tail? When I’m on the top rung I shall look down and
say, ‘Now, you youngsters, we are going to have very strict etiquette,
and I beg that you will come up very quietly and not disarrange me from
my comfortable position.’ At the same time, if they do what I tell
them, I shall look upon them as a lot of infernal blockheads. Eh, Munro,
what?”
I could only say again that I thought he took a very low view of the
profession, and that I disagreed with every word he said.
“Well, my boy, you may disagree as much as you like, but if you are
going to work with me you must throw etiquette to the devil!”
“I can’t do that.”
“Well, if you are too clean handed for the job you can clear out. We
can’t keep you here against your will.”
I said nothing; but when we got back, I went upstairs and packed up
my trunk, with every intention of going back to Yorkshire by the night
train. He came up to my room, and finding what I was at, he burst into
apologies which would have satisfied a more exacting man than I am.
“You shall do just exactly what you like, my dear chap. If you don’t
like my way, you may try some way of your own.”
“That’s fair enough,” said I. “But it’s a little trying to a man’s
self-respect if he is told to clear out every time there is a difference
of opinion.”
“Well, well, there was no harm meant, and it shan’t occur again. I can’t
possibly say more than that; so come along down and have a cup of tea.”
And so the matter blew over; but I very much fear, Bertie, that this is
the first row of a series. I have a presentiment that sooner or later my
position here will become untenable. Still, I shall give it a fair trial
as long as he will let me. Cullingworth is a fellow who likes to have
nothing but inferiors and dependants round him. Now, I like to stand on
my own legs, and think with my own mind. If he’ll let me do this we’ll
get along very well; but if I know the man he will claim submission,
which is more than I am inclined to give. He has a right to my
gratitude, which I freely admit. He has found an opening for me when I
badly needed one and had no immediate prospects. But still, one may pay
too high a price even for that, and I should feel that I was doing so if
I had to give up my individuality and my manhood.
We had an incident that evening which was so characteristic that I must
tell you of it. Cullingworth has an air gun which fires little steel
darts. With this he makes excellent practice at about twenty feet, the
length of the back room. We were shooting at a mark after dinner, when
he asked me whether I would hold a halfpenny between my finger and
thumb, and allow him to shoot it out. A halfpenny not being forthcoming,
he took a bronze medal out of his waistcoat pocket, and I held that
tip as a mark. “Kling!” went the air gun, and the medal rolled upon the
floor.
“Plumb in the centre,” said he.
“On the contrary,” I answered, “you never hit it at all!”
“Never hit it! I must have hit it!”
“I am confident you didn’t.”
“Where’s the dart, then?”
“Here,” said I, holding up a bleeding forefinger, from which the tail
end of the fluff with which the dart was winged was protruding.
I never saw a man so abjectly sorry for anything in my life. He used
language of self-reproach which would have been extravagant if he had
shot off one of my limbs. Our positions were absurdly reversed; and it
was he who sat collapsed in a chair, while it was I, with the dart
still in my finger, who leaned over him and laughed the matter off. Mrs.
Cullingworth had run for hot water, and presently with a tweezers we
got the intruder out. There was very little pain (more to-day than
yesterday), but if ever you are called upon to identify my body you may
look for a star at the end of my right forefinger.
When the surgery was completed (Cullingworth writhing and groaning all
the time) my eyes happened to catch the medal which I had dropped, lying
upon the carpet. I lifted it up and looked at it, eager to find some
topic which would be more agreeable. Printed upon it was--“Presented to
James Cullingworth for gallantry in saving life. Jan. 1879.”
“Hullo, Cullingworth,” said I. “You never told me about this!”
He was off in an instant in his most extravagant style.
“What! the medal? Haven’t you got one? I thought every one had. You
prefer to be select, I suppose. It was a little boy. You’ve no idea the
trouble I had to get him in.”
“Get him out, you mean.”
“My dear chap, you don’t understand! Any one could get a child out.
It’s getting one in that’s the bother. One deserves a medal for it. Then
there are the witnesses, four shillings a day I had to pay them, and
a quart of beer in the evenings. You see you can’t pick up a child and
carry it to the edge of a pier and throw it in. You’d have all sorts of
complications with the parents. You must be patient and wait until you
get a legitimate chance. I caught a quinsy walking up and down Avonmouth
pier before I saw my opportunity. He was rather a stolid fat boy, and he
was sitting on the very edge, fishing. I got the sole of my foot on to
the small of his back, and shot him an incredible distance. I had some
little difficulty in getting him out, for his fishing line got twice
round my legs, but it all ended well, and the witnesses were as staunch
as possible. The boy came up to thank me next day, and said that he was
quite uninjured save for a bruise on the back. His parents always send
me a brace of fowls every Christmas.”
I was sitting with my finger in the hot water listening to this
rigmarole. When he had finished he ran off to get his tobacco box, and
we could hear the bellowing of his laughter dwindling up the stair. I
was still looking at the medal, which, from the dents all over it, had
evidently been often used as a target, when I felt a timid touch upon my
sleeve; it was Mrs. Cullingworth, who was looking earnestly at me with a
very distressed expression upon her face.
“You believe far too much what James says,” said she. “You don’t know
him in the least, Mr. Munro. You don’t look at a thing from his point
of view, and you will never understand him until you do. It is not, of
course, that he means to say anything that is untrue; but his fancy is
excited, and he is quite carried away by the humour of any idea, whether
it tells against himself or not. It hurts me, Mr. Munro, to see the
only man in the world towards whom he has any feeling of friendship,
misunderstanding him so completely, for very often when you say nothing
your face shows very clearly what you think.”
I could only answer lamely that I was very sorry if I had misjudged her
husband in any way, and that no one had a keener appreciation of some of
his qualities than I had.
“I saw how gravely you looked when he told you that absurd story about
pushing a little boy into the water,” she continued; and, as she spoke,
she drew from somewhere in the front of her dress a much creased slip of
paper. “Just glance at that, please, Dr. Munro.”
It was a newspaper cutting, which gave the true account of the incident.
Suffice it that it was an ice accident, and that Cullingworth had really
behaved in a heroic way and had been drawn out himself insensible, with
the child so clasped in his arms that it was not until he had recovered
his senses that they were able to separate them. I had hardly finished
reading it when we heard his step on the stairs; and she, thrusting
the paper back into her bosom, became in an instant the same silently
watchful woman as ever.
Is he not a conundrum? If he interests you at a distance (and I take
for granted that what you say in your letters is not merely conventional
compliment) you can think how piquant he is in actual life. I must
confess, however, that I can never shake off the feeling that I am
living with some capricious creature who frequently growls and may
possibly bite. Well, it won’t be very long before I write again, and
by that time I shall probably know whether I am likely to find
any permanent billet here or not. I am so sorry to hear about Mrs.
Swanborough’s indisposition. You know that I take the deepest interest
in everything that affects you. They tell me here that I am looking very
fit, though I think they ought to spell it with an “a.”