beloved visitors--there have been fewer this year than usual, though it
is I, and not the books, that must bear the chief blame for this. The
two latest of these, separated by an interval of months, and both, I
believe, already elderly as the lives of modern novels go, are "The
Cliff End" and "Captain Margaret." The first of these delighted me from
cover to cover, in spite of some exaggerations of character-drawing and
dialogue; and I reverently bow my head to its author as having made
himself at a bound the laureate, not only of the bath-tub, but of that
peculiarly distressing variety of it that is very wide and shallow, with
a dimple in it that cracks when you stand upon it, and a capacity for
water that no housemaid has ever satisfied. It is perhaps too late for
the nature of this vessel to change. But never more, with that rosy
vision of sponging maidenhood before my eyes, shall I regard it as
anything but blessed.
So it's a book for which I should like to prophesy life, though with
less certainty, perhaps, than "Captain Margaret," upon the deck of his
_Broken Heart_, carries the very germ of it in his delicate hands. For
to his eldorado of dreams we have all of us, at one time or another,
turned our eyes. And in his schooner might have sailed any Quixote of
history, lucky indeed to find a Cammock for his navigator.
And yet who am I to be thus prophesying so boldly? For the third of my
books has been a collection of Oscar Wilde's contributions to the "Pall
Mall Gazette," full of such forecasts, and written, too, by a practised
hand. Has one half of them been verified? I think not. And yet I suspect
that few critics could more equably confront a reprinting of their
twenty-year-old opinions. Looking through this book, I read, for
example, whole pages devoted to the novel of Miss So-and-so whom one
would have supposed, in the eighties, to have been an emerging George
Eliot. And how desperately must the praise have fired her to further
efforts. Yet what, in 1910, has become of poor Miss So-and-so; and where
are those great works that were so certainly to be? There is the writer
himself too, so young then, with his brilliant flippancies--his
impeachment of the British Cook, for instance, with her passion for
combining pepper and gravy and calling it soup, and her inveterate habit
of sending up bread poultices with pheasant--and all his promises of
grace.
So, upon the whole, it's a sad book; and here, for a brisker comment
upon all that I have been writing, comes a volume of American essays
that has just been lent to Esther, wherein I am positively assured that
the volumes of Mrs. Humphry Ward are quite dangerously immoral! While
there, upon a chair, lies a novel, "Mr. Meeson's Will," that Rupert
Morris has just recommended to me as being his beau-ideal of a really
outstanding story. So let me lie low. I have spoken out my literary
heart to you, as any man, on occasion, should have the courage to do.
But now let me lie low. For by what standards am I judging, after all,
who have only spent an hour in Chicago, and never a moment east of Suez?
You will remember Morris, whom you met here during his last visit to
England. And as you remember him so he is, with perhaps an added grey
hair or two in his moustache, and a few more upon his temples. For the
rest, he is just as lean and brown and boyish as he has always been, and
with a touch of deference in his first greetings to Esther and me that
has survived from the school-days, when he was a comparative nipper, and
that he will carry, I suppose, since he is English of the English, until
common earth shall level us all. He was looking, when he first came in,
rather hesitating and ill at ease, with his title, as it were, tucked
awkwardly under his arm. Much like this I have seen him at school, on
some Old Boys' Day, coming back to the pavilion after making his
century, with an uncomfortable shove at his cap, and something about the
bowlers having been "dead off their luck."
Finding us alone however, and not disposed to worry him, he cheered up
amazingly, and was soon chattering to us briskly about his various
adventures. His personal part in these would seem as a rule to have been
conspicuous by its dullness; but the adventures themselves were well
worth hearing about. And it was only quite accidentally, as he was
leaving for Stoke, that we discovered him to be seconded for some
special duties in the colonies--"imperial defence, don't you know, and
all that sort of thing; rather an interesting job."
And did I tell you, by the way, that the Poles have bequeathed us their
baby during their visit to Italy? Esther has just brought her in, and
she is staring at me now with the solemnest eyes in creation--little
pools of Siloam, but with the angels just going to be busy. I must go to
them, and be healed.
Ever yrs.,
P. H.
XXVI
_To John Summers, M.B., c/o the Rev. W. B. La Touche, High Barn,
Winchester._
91B HARLEY STREET, W.,
_October_ 18, 1910.
MY DEAR JACK,
I have just received your letter, and also the accountant's statement as
regards Dr. Singleton's books; and I have instructed the solicitors to
sell out enough of your stock to buy the quarter-share of his practice
upon which you and he have agreed. If you can manage to obtain with it
an equal proportion of his skill, kindliness, and cheerful adequacy you
may be quite sure that the advantage of the bargain will not be
altogether upon his side. For though books are important of course, if
the man who keeps them is sound you needn't trouble your head so very
much about them. And Singleton is sound through and through--not exactly
one of those brilliant men, perhaps, of whom, as operating surgeons, Sir
Frederick Treves has declared himself to be so justly timid, but what
is far better, one of those level-headed, big-hearted general
practitioners, tender of hand and essentially careful, in whose
professional history mistakes have been, and will continue to be,
practically unknown.
Moreover he was never, even as a student, one of those people who have
set out to purchase skill in their own profession by the sacrifice of
very nearly every other human interest. _Nihil humani a me alienum puto_
has been his own as well as his hospital's motto. And you must some day
get him to tell you the story of how an odd little insight into esoteric
Buddhism that he was once curious enough to obtain became the means of
saving the life, to say nothing of the sanity, of one of the most
valuable men of our time. That late cut of his, too, is still well worth
seeing; and there are not many of my friends who can go straighter to
the heart of a book or a picture--that is, if the book or the picture
has a heart to be got to.
He may not be able to excise a Gasserian ganglion, or know very much
about the researches of Calmette or von Pircquet. But he knows precisely
when to call in the men who do. And he's just the sort of assistant with
whom they feel safe in setting out to work. While, on the other hand,
upon a hundred points--little everyday problems of medical practice,
unclassified ailments that have never got into the text-books or been
dignified with a Latin name, doubtful beginnings of more definite
illnesses, their home-treatment, and the adequate settlement of the
domestic problems that they involve--there isn't a man in Harley Street
who could give a more valuable opinion. And he has performed a
tracheotomy with his pocket-knife and a hair-pin, five miles from
anywhere, in the heart of the Hampshire downs.
Such men are not only the pillars of our profession, but its topmost
pinnacles, even if the wreaths and the knighthoods but seldom come their
way. I am saying all this because I think that I can detect in your
letter, and certainly in the newer generation of qualifying students, a
kind of reluctance about going into general practice, as if this were in
a way an admission of failure, a sort of _dernier ressort_. Whereas of
course there is no point of view from which such a way of looking at it
is at all justifiable. General practice is at least as difficult, if it
is to be carried on well and successfully, as any special practice can
be, and probably more so; for the G.P. has to live continually, as it
were, with the results of his handiwork. He is always liable to meet his
failures round the next corner; and his mistakes may quite easily rent
the pew behind him in the parish church. The consultant, on the other
hand, comes into the family life from afar, and returns again, an hour
or two later, to the seclusion of his private fastness. He has brought
down his little bit of extra technical skill or knowledge. He has used
it for good or ill. And the results do not follow him, save indirectly,
and at a very comfortable distance. But the G.P. who has taken upon
himself the responsibility of calling him in must needs still bear upon
his shoulders not only the anxiety that heralds ultimate success, but a
large share of the possible obloquy that may follow failure.
Moreover, in all the hundred extraneous interests that are involved, his
advice becomes of paramount importance. This would be the best room for
the patient from the point of view of quietness and aspect. But that, on
the other hand, is the room that he has been used to. His favourite
books and pictures surround him there in the old accustomed order. Does
the doctor think it better for him to be moved? His wife, his mother,
or his sister are anxious to nurse him. Are they strong enough or
skilful enough? What is the doctor's opinion on this point? Here is a
telephone message from the office. A disturbing point has arisen in the
conduct of a great business, and should be dealt with promptly. Are we
to worry the patient with it now, or postpone the settlement, with the
possibilities of greater anxieties later on? Let us wait, at any rate,
until the doctor comes.
And from this household he has to drive home by a private school where
lies some boy with a cheerful countenance and a suspicious red rash on
his chest. It would never do to create a false alarm. But, on the other
hand, it would be more than disastrous to let the origin of some
sweeping epidemic go free for convenience' sake. And here is a
servant-maid in the surgery with a throat that looks as diphtheritic as
a throat can well be; and she comes from a dairy farm that supplies half
the town with milk, under the eyes of a government inspector; while the
rector's wife, nervous, and uncomfortably near forty, is expecting her
first, long-looked-for baby some time this afternoon.
It may take a good man to remove successfully an adherent appendix or
an obscure tumour of the brain, or to diagnose some out-of-the-way
lesion of a heart valve. But such a man, after all, has spent the
greater portion of his professional life in dealing with no other
subjects but these. And it must surely require at least an equal
equipment, after its own kind, to deal wisely and rapidly with such
variously conflicting problems as I have just been describing.
You are probably becoming a little bored by these commonplace remarks of
mine. But they are the sort of truism that will generally bear an
occasional reconsideration. And if I have a very private opinion, to
which you cannot subscribe, that the really able general practitioner is
perhaps the very best man in our ranks bar none, I am quite willing to
concede this extra superiority if you will grant him at least an equal
eminence to that of Sir Grosvenor le Draughte, as Mr. Russell has called
him in one of his recent books.
So go into your practice with a good heart. Your experience as a locum
in Bristol and Shropshire will have prepared you for any little
mortifications that may be in waiting during your first few months. You
will be used to the disheartening fall of the countenance that greets
the junior partner when his senior was expected. And you will accept
with a grave countenance and an inward chuckle your knowledge of the
extremely frank criticism that is likely to herald and succeed your
first few visits. Even now there's a letter upon my desk from a
disrespectful young lady who shall be nameless. A new curate has made
his initial appearance in an Eastbourne drawing-room. "He shook hands
just like a baby," she writes, "and he stopped to tea, and he sprawled
all over the table, and he has quite nice eyes, but his mouth is just
like cook's when she's having one of her windy spasums." And if sixteen
can rise to heights like this, what about eighteen and twenty and
twenty-two? Nor are curates, alas, the only legitimate prey. I wonder if
there's a girls' school in your practice?
You may lament too, for a little while perhaps, the slow dawning of
confidence in your new patients. But before very long you may even be
rather overwhelmed (quite privately of course) by the freedom and
completeness with which it is accorded you. And above all things, be
just your natural self in dealing with them, forgetting, if you can,
that you have ever even heard of such an attribute as a good bedside
manner.
This reminds me that only last week, in a railway carriage, I overheard
two young ladies discussing a very sympathetic physician well known to
us both. One of them was wondering why he had always been so successful.
"Oh, that," said the other cheerfully, "is because he's so frightfully
good at comforting the relatives--_afterwards_, you know."
If your news must be bad, tell it soberly and promptly. It's
seldom--very seldom--wise to conceal it for some dubious temporary
benefit. And if you are in doubt about any of their maladies let them
know it quite frankly, explaining to them in language suited to their
degree of education and intelligence exactly why this should be the
case.
There's been a good deal written lately about the personal factor in
treatment, the Psychology of the Physician, and the mental therapeutics
at his command. And I even saw a letter in the "Lancet," a few weeks
ago, urging that the practical application of Personality in the
sick-room should form one of the recognised subjects of the medical
curriculum. But in the first place, I'm exceedingly doubtful if the
modesty of our profession is so excessively marked as to demand for its
correction a course of instruction in the conscious prescribing of its
own personality. And in the second, I fail to see how this latter could
ever be done without, by the very act, considerably altering that
uncertain quantity, at any rate so far as its victim was concerned. And
what would one's _ego_ be like, I wonder, after ten years' conscientious
labour? So I shouldn't worry too much about your personality if I were
you. It will be a good thing, no doubt, to get all you can into it by
encouraging such tentacles as it may put forth to the sun and the
breeze. But what other people are to get out of it is a matter with
which you may quite properly, I think, be too busy to concern yourself.
While I'm still in the pulpit, let me recommend you to husband your
energies. Don't play tennis all the afternoon (even with Amaryllis) if
you have been up all night. Go to sleep in the hammock, instead, over a
book or a paper or a letter from Uncle Peter. And don't forget sometimes
to say your prayers. For whatever may be one's private notions as to
their ultimate Destination; whether one affects a belief in some
beneficent Overlord, once incarnate; or regards God as the ever-growing
sum of all higher human volitions; or, remembering this infinitesimal
particle of earth in the greatness of the universe, considers such a
conception to be inadequate; or admits only some possible
Starting-point, a kind of Divine Convenience upon which to found
theories; or has never thought about the matter at all--it's always a
gracious and comforting act to remove one's moral hat, as it were (even
if reverence goes no further) to Something at any rate bigger than most
of us. While even on the very chilliest of auto-suggestion grounds there
is still a word to be said for it as a vehicle wherein to despatch one's
extra troubles to some handy mental cemetery. For prayer, whether we
look upon it as sacred or superstitious, must still, as the hymn says,
be the soul's sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed. And occasional
expression is about as valuable a prelude to the acquiring of knowledge
as any that are going.
So I may as well tell you at once that I know nothing whatever about
motor-cars, and therefore find the last half of your letter entirely
unintelligible. But I gather that the one you mean to purchase combines
speed, silence, and freedom from odour in a quite unusual degree. Some
day, no doubt, I shall be sponging upon you for a lesson in driving
it--or him--or do you call the thing her?
Yr. affect. uncle,
PETER HARDING.
XXVII
_To Miss Sarah Harding, The Orphanage, Little Blessington, Dorset._
91B HARLEY STREET, W.,
_November_ 7, 1910.
MY DEAR SALLY,
This is going to be a short letter because the news that it contains is
probably speeding to you already--from Esther, to whom its greatness is
not unmixed with tears; and from Molly, to whom its joy is of the
eternal gold. Ten days ago she came back to us from Stoke, where, as she
told us, she had been having a good time, but seemed now to have
fulfilled her little contract. For the house-party had broken up: Horace
had long ago made a late return to Cambridge; Carthew was in the Temple,
and Pole in Fleet Street; Hilary and Norah were off to Spain; and the
one or two extra guns, just leisurely shooting men, had betaken
themselves, at any rate superficially regretful, to other people's
houses. Lady Wroxton was better--very nearly her old self, and for the
moment wrapped up, heart and soul, in her nephew Rupert. It had been a
pleasant visit. She kissed us very tenderly. And now it was high time
that she was back again among her girls at Hoxton.
Two days later came a wire from Rupert asking if he might spend a night
with us on his way to Yorkshire. And in the evening he duly arrived.
Nobody else was dining with us that night, and our little party at the
table was perhaps quieter than usual. After dinner we were going to
smoke our pipes in the library with Esther and Molly, when Rupert drew
me aside and asked me to take him into the consulting-room.
"I want you just to run over me," he said, with his eyes on a dangling
stethoscope, "to run over me rather thoroughly."
I glanced at him anxiously. But in his evening clothes he seemed even
lither and more bronzed than ever.
"Feeling bad anywhere?" I inquired. But he shook his head.
"Rather fit," he admitted, as he took off his coat and waistcoat. And as
I suspected, I could find nothing wrong with him. On the contrary, he
appeared to be in the very pink of condition, for all his tropical
sojournings.
"Good," he said; "and, as a matter of fact, I saw Manson this morning,
and West this afternoon, and they both told me the same thing."
I began to laugh at him, though he was speaking very seriously. "You're
surely not becoming a hypochondriac?" I asked.
"No," he said gravely; "I don't think so. But I'm forty-seven, you see.
And I want to get married."
I was, perhaps, rather taken aback at this, though I scarcely knew why.
And he himself appeared to consider the idea as savouring somewhat of
presumption. For he blushed a little as he slowly collected his clothes.
Somehow we had neither of us thought of him as being a marrying man.
Then, as he began to dress himself again, I congratulated him, and asked
him if the lady was known to me. He hesitated for a moment, and then
smiled.
"Yes, I think she is," he said; "though I doubt if you'd consider me
much of a husband for her."
He filled his pipe thoughtfully.
"For though in some ways she seems to me to be rather old for her
years--old-fashioned, you know, and womanly, and all that--she's really
rather young."
He seemed to consider this a difficulty. Then he looked at me with a
kind of deprecating straightness.
"You'd be giving her," he said, "to a fellow who's old enough to be her
father."
I suppose that I looked a little surprised.
"Yes, I do," he said humbly; "I mean Molly."
We sucked our pipes in silence for a minute or two, looking at one
another through the tobacco smoke. Then I asked him if he had ever
pointed out to Molly her striking lack of modernity. He shook his head.
"Hadn't the pluck," he confessed; "but it's so obvious, isn't it?"
He glanced at me anxiously.
"But you mustn't think I'm against it," he said. "It's so rare nowadays.
And I think it's beautiful; and anyway, it's just what I've been wanting
all my life."
"You'll let me talk to Esther?" I asked presently.
"I should like to talk to her myself," he answered, "only I'm such a
fool at these things."
He lit another match.
"Look here," he went on, "I don't want you to tell me what you both
think for a week--till I come back from Yorkshire. I'm too old for her,
I know. But I seem to be pretty sound, and I--well, dash it all, Peter,
you know her better than I do, although you--d'you know, by the way,
that you rather put me off her in that last letter of yours?"
"Did I?" I asked. "Perhaps that was because I don't really know her so
well."
"Well, first," he said, "there was that Lynn affair, of course. But
that's dead, isn't it?"
"Quite," I told him; "and they've both gone out of mourning."
"And then," he went on, "you made me think of a rather up-to-date young
woman, quite nice, of course," he looked at me apologetically, "but
perhaps just a little bit self-complacent. Whereas I found in her,
instead, everything that I've always worshipped most, you know--from
rather a long way off."
* * * * *
That was a week ago. And since he left, as you will imagine, both Esther
and I have done a good deal of thinking. For on the one side we
couldn't help feeling the absurdity of regarding Rupert as a son-in-law.
And on the other we should be giving our daughter--or rather watching
her go--into the hands of one of our oldest friends. Given love too, how
well should they be mated; both so strong, but he so abidingly simple,
so unchallenged by surrounding mysteries, and she so eager, so
delicately tuned to each passing subtlety of thought.
Characteristically enough, he had neither told us, before he went, how
clearly he had shown Molly his feelings, nor asked us to discuss with
her, or to withhold, his announcement to ourselves. And so we said
nothing to her about it. But just now, as we were expecting his arrival,
I discovered, I think, that our desire for her had been fulfilled. For
with a shyness bringing back to me a little girl that I had forgotten,
she had perched herself on the arm of my chair; so that when his voice
was in the hall there wasn't very far to bend.
"You told me to wait for Heaven, you know," she reminded me. And her
eyes confessed that it was standing at the door.
Your affect. brother,
PETER.
P.S.--I can see you pursing those wise lips of yours, and muttering that
Heaven has been a little sudden. But I believe that there are precedents
for this.
XXVIII
_To Miss Josephine Summers, The Cottage, Potham, Beds._
91B HARLEY STREET, W.,
_November_ 26, 1910.
MY DEAR AUNT JOSEPHINE,
We shall be very disappointed if you don't come to Molly's wedding,
although it is to be rather a quiet one, or at any rate as quiet as we
can manage to keep it--not because we are anything but desirous that as
many people as are kind enough to do so may rejoice with us over the
occasion; but because, from Molly downwards, we have a temperamental
shrinking from crowded churches, pavement druggets, hired exotics, and
paid choir-boys. And you mustn't worry because your favourite porter has
been transferred to Leeds, and therefore won't be able to look after
your luggage at St. Pancras. Because one of us will be sure to meet you
with the carriage, and escort both you and it quite safely to Harley
Street.
I have received your cheque, and will buy the little medicine-chest for
Rupert to-morrow. As you say, it's most important that the breadwinner
should try to keep himself in as good a state of health as possible,
even if he is so liable, as Rupert is, to be suddenly shot. And we all
think the old bracelet that you have sent to Molly very beautiful. Both
of them will so much want to thank you personally for your gifts that
you must really make up your mind, I think, to take the risks of the
journey (the most recent statistics show these to be quite small) and
stay with us here for a couple of nights from December 6th.
Yr. affect. nephew,
PETER HARDING.
XXIX
_To the Rev. Bruce Harding, S. Peter's College, Morecambe Bay._
91B HARLEY STREET, W.,
_December_ 2, 1910.
MY DEAR BRUCE,