He is not a very romantic Damon is Doctor Jolly, nor is he at the
present time to be seen under favourable circumstances, or in the most
picturesque of situations.
The fact is, Dr Jolly has got an attack of the gout, "his old friend,"
as he calls that hereditary and choleric disease; and here he is, seated
in his snug parlour--he knew how to live well and be comfortable did the
doctor--with his feet in a pail of cold water, like Patience on a
monument smiling at grief; (one can't help quoting the "noble bard.") He
was pursuing a rather violent method for reducing the inflammation in
his pedal extremities in order that he might be able to go out and pay
his usual pharmaceutical round of visits, and he was writhing and
swearing inwardly, most probably, and often aloud, from the pain of the
gout and remedy combined.
"Bless my soul! Deb!" he exclaimed, as irascibly as his natural good
temper would allow, to his sister Deborah, our Pythias, who was in the
room along with him. "Bless my soul! Whew I what a twinge. Confound
the gout, Deborah!"
"Confound it with all my heart, Richard, if it will do you any good,"
she replied, calmly, drawing the thread through the heel of a stocking
which she was darning; "but you know, Richard, it's your own fault. You
_will_ drink that port wine, and you must take the consequences."
"Bosh, Deb; don't preach. Why, I only drank two glasses yesterday at
lunch, and--"
"How about the bottle after dinner?"
"Well, you know, Pringle was here, and hospitality you know, Deb,
hospitality you know--"
"Hospitality won't preserve your health, Richard."
"True Deb, quite true; but I couldn't help it, and the gout's getting
better now, the pain's nearly gone. Whew! there's another twinge.
Confound the gout, I say!"
Damon was a stout, florid, jolly-looking--there is no other word so
expressive--man of forty-five or thereabouts; Pythias--some apology is
due for her sex in carrying out the classical metaphor, although when
you know her better you will acknowledge the propriety of the allusion--
was some five years the elder, as she could look back with complacency
or otherwise on her fiftieth birthday. She was tall and ungainly, and
her face was so set and deficient of mobility that it looked as if it
were carved out of mahogany, to which wood indeed its colour bore some
resemblance. She evidently took after her male parent more than her
mother, and her brother was right when he called her a "chip of the old
block."
Damon was genial and hearty; Pythias cold and formal, as befitted an
austere virgin of her years; but both possessed the same kind heart, and
you would rarely find such a good-natured pair, who were so fond of each
other, and so considerate and charitable in every sense of the word, to
those around them.
Doctor Jolly was emphatically one of the jolliest country-practitioners
in the country, and had one of the best practices, and was better liked
than any other disciple of Aesculapius in the county. For miles round
the farmers and well-to-do, as well as poorer people, knew his pleasant
weather-beaten face and hearty voice. He "was so sociable and
pleasant-like," as the country folk would say; and his well-known portly
form--he rode about sixteen stone--and cheery "How de-do!" used to be
eagerly welcomed when he came riding round on his thorough-bred
heavy-weight hunter, with his two favourite little black and tan
terriers, "Huz, and Buz his brother," scudding at its heels.
He and his sister had lived together at Bigton for many years past. The
doctor had succeeded his father, and he his father, as far back as lay
within the memory of "the oldest inhabitant"--the practice with its
connection having been kept in the family for nearly a century.
Bigton is a very quiet rising little watering place, situated some five
or six miles from The Poplars and Hartwood village, at the mouth of the
river, wherein Tom Hartshorne was catching his perch under the eyes of
Miss Lizzie. Bigton is by no means an ostentatious sort of place: it
lacks self-assertion, and is content to occupy a back seat, as it were,
in the assembly of "Fashionable Resorts," when, if it would but only put
itself forward it might be bidden to "come up higher."
It is really a pleasant little place, and has all the requirements to
make it an agreeable retreat for the hot summer months, when one longs
for the seaside with that intense ardour which only a Londoner knows.
Bigton has a pier--a shabby little pier it must be confessed--a sort of
esplanade, which is as long as that of its Brobdignagian rival, where
George's Pavilion, that hideous monstrosity, used once to attract
admirers--an excellent beach of fine grey sand, and a splendid common,
all covered with gorse and furze, whereon juveniles can play "the
criquette," as Monsieur Jeune France calls our national game. Beyond
that, it has a splendid country around for jaunts and pic-nics; and, as
for antiquities, why, is it not within a decent drive of one of the most
historic old castles in the kingdom, a castle which has its ancient old
keep still in preservation, and which was one of the few Royalist
strongholds that held out successfully against the Puritan general and
his myrmidon Roundheads?
Yet, with all these advantages, Bigton has not yet become a favourite
with the multitude who annually adjourn to the seaside, and this neglect
is not by any means complained of by the quiet few who wish to avoid the
racket of a fashionable watering place, and come down here in order to
have a quiet enjoyable holiday. The fact is, Bigton reckons for its
standing more upon the support of its residents than on stray birds of
passage; and, of these, it has a larger proportion perhaps than some of
its better known and more highly cracked-up rivals. It has nice trim
rows of terraces facing the sea, and plenty of comfortable detached
houses which are generally let to people who stay for mouths, and even a
year or two, instead of hiring for merely a six week's occupation.
Bigton is therefore busy all the year round, instead of having a season
of three months, and being a necropolis for the rest of the year:
indeed, the annual visitors who come down in summer do not alter the
look of the place much: it is too respectable a town to bother itself
about casual tourists or London holiday-makers. In the summer the
landholders and great people of the surrounding country come from their
inland homes, and take lodgings for the bathing: so Bigton is very
exclusive and keeps entirely to its own set.
Among not only the residents--returning to our story--but also the
regular visitors, Doctor Jolly was a general favourite, and the doctor
supreme of the locality; and he was as good a surgeon and physician as
he was a favourite. He was not the man to nurse a hypochondriacal
patient by giving him various bottles of medicine containing coloured
water, or pills "as before," consisting of harmless dough. No, he would
tell them to get out and take plenty of exercise and mayhap dip in the
sea, and above all to get good food and plenty of it. No gruel and
arrowroot from him. "All damned slops and dishwater," he would say; but
a mutton chop three times a day, and a glass or two of really good port
wine. "Stop, I'll send you over some of my own, and you may bet your
boots that that's prime stuff," he would offer with a knowing wink of
his eye, riding off to escape a denial.
He was a jolly, good-natured man, and such a really good minister to the
ills of human nature, that he had it all his own way at Bigton, and
almost throughout the entire county. His practice was so large, that he
had to ride miles every day to do justice to his patients; and yet he
would hire no assistant, except a mild, gentlemanly pupil, whom he kept
to do the home business in his surgery.
"Catch me!" he would say, "having a fellow to cut me out with all the
pretty girls and old ladies! No, sir, as long as I can cross a horse,
no other sawbones shall rule here but myself. I'm hanged if they shall,
sir?"
One or two other medical men had tried rashly to set up to him in
opposition at Bigton; but never getting anyone who was ill to patronise
them, they had to give up at length in disgust. One, indeed, still hung
on, as he had bought a house and could not sell it; but he had to take
to the coal trade to support his family. Not that Doctor Jolly grudged
him a living, for no matter what he said, he would cheerfully have lent
his brother practitioner a helping hand; but then no one would let
anyone else visit them in Bigton but our Damon, so the poor--
Othello's-occupation's-gone-M.D. had to buy and sell chaldrons of the
best Wallsend and Seaborne, and fed his family in that way.
Dr Jolly's house was one of the best and nicest kept mansions in
Bigton, for the doctor loved to live well, as he could afford it; and
his sister Deborah was one of the most valuable housewives that could be
cited. It was a long, low, old-fashioned house, with a splendid garden
and paddock adjoining, for the doctor's horses, of which he kept three--
he used to follow the harriers in the time of the old squire, Roger
Hartshorne--but he was getting too heavy for that now, besides having
too much to do. Now he was devoted to poultry and pet deer, pet hares,
pet dogs, pet animals of all kinds, even cats, and had all his
out-houses, yards, and paddocks filled with his various adopted
nurslings.
It was a wonder, considering his disposition, that he had remained a
bachelor so long; but then he had his sister Deborah to take care of
him, and as he would say, "Bless my soul, man, what more do I want?"
His old friends who had known him for years would hint at a
disappointment in early life; but I don't think care sat heavily on the
doctor's brow, as it does on some of us, for he lived well, and enjoyed
life as he found it, and did not seem inclined to give up his present
life for all the unknown sea of troubles into which matrimony might
plunge him. Perhaps he saw too much and too many of the gentler sex to
hazard a selection, but the probable reason was that he was too
comfortable as he was. He and his sister pulled along capitally as
Damon and Pythias, as they had in fact done all their lives; both were
freely outspoken to each other; and if Deborah had the pre-eminence
within, the doctor was master out of doors.
The doctor relished good cheer, and gave capital dinner parties, as he
was the most hospitable man in the county. He had had one the evening
before, and hence his slight attack of the gout; its invariable
consequence this morning. He said he had inherited the aristocratic
infliction from his sire, along with a good digestion and his practice;
but perhaps Pythias, or Deborah, was not far wrong in ascribing it to
his love of good living and partiality for port. The gout made him
swear a little, but he did not really mean anything by it: if all our
oaths were as harmless as his, the recording angel who watches over that
special failing of human nature would have a sinecure.
"Confound the gout, Deb!" he exclaimed, as that sharp twinge caught him
in his left foot, and made him writhe with ill-concealed agony.
"Confound the gout! I'll drink no more of that infernal port! that is,"
he added, shortly afterwards, as the pain subsided, "not beyond a glass
or two at lunch; and perhaps a bottle after dinner, eh, Deb? Ho! ho!
ho!" And he laughed his jolly cheery laugh, as he took his feet out of
the tub of water, in which they had been hitherto reposing; and, drawing
on his boots with difficulty, prepared himself for setting out on his
morning round of visits.
"Better now, Richard?" enquired Pythias, as he stood up fully
caparisoned in the matter of his lower extremities.
"Yes, Deb, all right now; the plaguey thing has gone away for the
present, and won't trouble me again till next time. My `off stepper' is
somewhat sore still, but it'll be as sound as sixpence by the time I get
back."
"Are you going far, Richard?"
"Well, I think I'll pay a call at the dowager's, and all about Hartwood;
and as I shan't be back in time for lunch, I'll drop in and feed at
Pringle's--uncommon pretty little girl his sister is. Bless my soul!
Deb, she's enough to make one think of marrying, although I suspect that
sly dog Tom Hartshorne's after her--we old fellows have got no chance."
"Take care, Richard. She would probably jump to have you. I know what
girls are! But how is that poor girl Susan Hartshorne getting on?"
"Really, Deb, do you know I think she has been looking much brighter
lately. I have observed this within the last week or so--there is a
decided change for the better. She has lost nearly all that frightened
look she used to have; and I would not be surprised if she eventually
recovered her mind. It's a sad pity, Deb, bless my soul! a sad pity!
She was a nice child--confound that old woman! and she's now such an
interesting-looking girl--a sad pity that old hag frightened her senses
away."
"What do you think is the reason of this change in her?" asked Deborah.
"Well, I can hardly tell, Deb; you see, Tom has been down, and there's
that friend of his, too--don't like him--and she has seen more company
than usual--all these things may have something to do with it; but I
think that the improvement is all due to that new governess, Miss
Kingscott--by Jove! she is a fine girl if you like, a--"
"Take care, Richard, take care!" she said, as Doctor Jolly went out of
the room, after poking about vainly in every direction for his gloves.
He mounted his horse which the groom held at the door, and as he rode
away, he murmured to himself, "Dooced fine girl! I wouldn't be
surprised if the artful jade caught me after all!" And off he cantered
down the street, bowing affably, and waving his hand with a cordial
"How-de-do!" to everyone he met, for he knew everybody, on his way to
Hartwood.
Volume 1, Chapter IX.