A handsome person is not alone requisite to win the affections of a
sensible lady. Radcliffe, who was as great a humbug in affairs matrimonial
as in all other matters, was represented as being "handsome and imposing
in person;" but his overbearing manner, and his coarse flings at the
softer sex, made him anything but a favorite with the ladies. While he
professed to be a misogynist, he made several unsuccessful attempts,
particularly late in life, to commit himself to matrimony.
A lady, with "a singing noise in her head," asked what she should do for
it. "Curl your hair at night with a ballad," was the coarse reply.
Once, when sitting over a bottle of wine at a public house, Queen Anne
sent her servant for Dr. Radcliffe to hasten to her Royal Highness, who
was taken suddenly ill with what was vulgarly called "the blue devils," to
which gormandizers are subject, but more properly termed indigestion.
"When the wine is in, the wits are out," was readily demonstrated in this
case; for, on a second messenger arriving from the queen for her physician
to make all haste, Radcliffe banged his fist down on the board, at which
other physicians also sat, and exclaimed,--
"Go tell her Royal Highness that she has nothing but the vapors."
When, on the following morning, the process being reversed,--the "wine was
out, and wits were in"--the doctor presented himself, with pomp and a show
of dignity, at St. James', judge of his mortification, when the
chamberlain stopped him in the anteroom, and informed him that he was
already succeeded by Dr. Gibbons.
The queen never forgave him for saying she had the "vapors." Radcliffe
never forgave Dr. Gibbons for superseding him. "Nurse Gibbons," he would
bitterly exclaim, "is only fit to look after nervous women, who only fancy
sickness."
When the doctor was forty-three years of age, he made love to a lady of
half his years, and followed with an offer of marriage, which was
accepted. As the fact became public, the doctor was warmly congratulated
upon his good fortune, for the lady was not only young, but was a beauty,
and an heiress to seventy-five thousand dollars.
The wedding day was set, which was to crown Radcliffe's happiness, when a
little drawback arose, which was not previously mentioned in the bills.
The peculiar condition of the beauty's health rendered it expedient that,
instead of the doctor, she should marry her father's book-keeper.
The doctor's acetous temper towards the fair sex was not lessened by this
mishap, nor were the ladies backward in giving him an occasional reminder
of the fact. Nevertheless, unlike the burnt child, that avoided the fire,
Radcliffe, sixteen years afterwards, made a second conspicuous throw of
the dice. He was then about sixty. He came out with a new and elegant
equipage, employed the most fashionable tailors, hatters, and wig-makers,
"who arrayed him in the newest modes of foppery, which threw all London
into fits of laughter, while he paid his addresses, with the greatest
possible publicity, to a lady who possessed every requisite charm,--youth,
beauty, and wealth,--except a tenderness for her aged suitor.
"Behold, love has taken the place of avarice [the affair was thus aired in
a public print]; "or, rather, is become avarice of another kind, which
still urges him to pursue what he does not want. But behold the
metamorphosis! The anxious, mean cares of a usurer are turned into the
languishments and complaints of a lover. 'Behold,' says the aged
Æsculapian, 'I submit; I own, great Love, thy empire. Pity, Hebe, the fop
you have made. What have I to do with gilding but on pills? Yet, O Fate,
for thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on my chariot, buttoned
in gold, clasped in gold, without having any value for that beloved
metal, but as it adorns the hat, person, and laces of the dying lover. I
ask not to live, O Hebe! Give me gentle death. Euthanasia, Euthanasia!
That is all I implore.'
"O Wealth, how impotent art thou, and how little dost thou supply us with
real happiness, when the usurer himself cannot forget thee for the love of
what is foreign to his felicity, as thou art!"
Although Radcliffe denied his own sisters during his life, "lest they
should show their affection for him by dipping their hands in his
pockets," some stories of his benevolence are told, one of which is, that
finding one Dr. James Drake, when "each had done the utmost to injure the
other," broken down and in distressed circumstances, he sent by a lady
fifty guineas to his unfortunate enemy, saying,--
"Let him by no means learn who sent it. He is a gentleman who has often
done his best to hurt me, and would by no means accept a benefit from one
whom he had striven to make an enemy."