In those days Brighton was full of charm, more so than now by a long
measure. There was no three-shilling railway; you went to and from London
with blood horses, driven by those nimble whips, Sir St. Vincent Cotton
one-half of the way, and by the Marquis of Worcester the other half,
within five hours. A crowd saw your splendid equipage start, whether from
Piccadilly or Castle Square. It was called “The Age,” and was a wonder of
the age.
Brighton then had a season; November was the choicest month. The weather
then was delicious, and the upper stratum of society, by a mild upheaval,
was moved bodily from the metropolis to the sea, without even a dress
being crumpled or a lace torn.
There were good angels in those days, as there are now; and if one
was not privileged, as I was not, to see them under cover in such a
conservatory as the mansion of the Duchess of St. Albans, one could meet
them in full bloom out of doors on the esplanade.
That beneficent duchess and her worthy successor, Miss Burdett-Coutts,
were constant visitors at Brighton during the autumn.
I had many inducements to be at Brighton. I was acquainted with all
the medical profession there; Dr. Price and the skilful Mr. Taylor,
Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Furner, were my particular friends, and I knew the
principal residents of the place.
I undertook the work of the dispensary, to which I was physician for five
years, and I joined the Committee of the Sussex County Hospital, which
was the pet establishment of such men as Lords Egremont and Chichester
and Munster, of the Duke of Devonshire and Mr. Lawrence Peel, all of whom
would spend a pleasant gossiping hour in the committee-room from time to
time; none of whom forgot the wants of the institution.
While I was chairman of the committee it fell to me to read out a letter
from Mr. Lawrence Peel, announcing his gift of, I think, two thousand
pounds, as a mark of gratitude for Lady Jane Peel’s recovery from illness.
When I see a portrait of Lord Hartington, the massive countenance brings
the Duke of Devonshire back into my mind. I need no portraiture, but the
name to bring the Earl of Munster back to memory. These great men were as
much at home with us all as they were with each other, enjoying the chat
and the laugh without mannerism or _hauteur_.
It is through manners that all our intercourse is carried on, and one
would suppose that they strictly represented the person. It is not so to
any great extent; fashion influences them, and they become modified by
imitation, so that they cease to be anything very different from current
coin; like it, having the different qualities of silvery, coppery, or
golden; the same person expressing himself in all three to different
sorts of men—a guinea’s worth to the physician, a shilling’s worth to the
beggar.
In my early days the tumid young men, rigged out in newest apparel,
would go up and down Bond Street at a snail’s pace, doing no better than
advertising their tailors. Like handsomely bound volumes, the contents
inane, they were just as contemptible as the “sandwichers” who now take
their place, bound in boards. None of these tumefied gentlemen ever
walked in a hurry, confessedly because they would not have it supposed
that they had anything to do. But they had; they smoked cigars in the
open air, holding them in two fingers out of five, the other three spread
out like a fan, the hand encased in lavender-tinted gloves guiltless of
a crease. They smoked weeds which were lighter in weight than the silver
they cost; they smoked them in Bond Street, they smoked them in the park;
but as any lady of their acquaintance approached, they ostentatiously
flung them into the road before raising the host—that is to say, the
hat—a couple of inches nearer heaven.
I remember well the time when no gentleman was supposed to smoke; the
habit was fit only for the vulgarian. By degree the young officer, the
young squire, and the delicate-minded _parvenu_ was seduced into the
allurements of tobacco.
The introduction of the cigar into society was a great trial to the
womenkind. At first a smoker was no gentleman, and he only became
one when no gentleman did otherwise than smoke. The Sybarites at the
commencement of their new epoch smoked only out of doors or in a room
set apart for the purpose; this was still a reason for the separation of
the sexes, but at length some beauties of independent spirit assured the
youth of their set that they liked the perfume of a cigar, and from that
time the revolution set in.
The puppyism of that day was mere fashion, the exercise of the imitative
faculty which the monkey is supposed to still retain. But fashion is not
a very durable religion.
The novelists, clever creatures, have shown a fondness for making such
inanities as I have depicted very heroic on occasions, and as coming out
in quite a new character; but they have not said why. The truth is that
the vanity which begets a dressy snob will ferment itself up into the
leader of a forlorn hope, and be thankful for the chance of a Victoria
Cross instead of the praises of the giggling sex, whose blessedness
threatens to keep them single.
Some men are vain to the last; Addison was when he invited a nobleman to
come and see how a Christian could die; Dr. Donne was before parting with
his last breath but one or two—he was laid out by himself. Women, too,
are supposed to be not free from vanity, not only up to the last, but a
little after, desiring to be called “beautiful corpses;” and to this end
they have directed their maids to rouge their cheeks when they are no
more.
These are the true lovers of art.
As we are on the topic, one may say the least vain are those who die by
their own hand, especially with the aid of a pistol. These instruments
do the work of suicide with a very ill grace; the effect is that however
much the relatives may have wished for a photograph to be taken after
death, even that consolation is forbidden them.
It takes two or three generations for the world to forget it when a great
man kills himself.
“Life is a handsome present—no man earns it;
Ungracious therefore is he who returns it.”
I could never regard a suicide otherwise than as a very remarkable
person, with inscrutable traits of character; in truth, as a singular
anomaly. Napoleon, the most noticeable, perhaps, of men, because the
worst among conspicuous ones, could not reach the courage to kill
himself; bravery seems inadequate to such a purpose. Butcher as he was,
there was not a sprinkling of self-destruction in him; his life was more
to him than the empire of the world which he had lost, though that life
was one of cancer.
I knew a man, a captain in the navy, retired, a C.B., with a private
income of £1200 a year, with no expenses but those of a lodging, no wife
or family, who drowned himself because he was going blind, and this being
so he could no longer superintend his affairs, and felt himself liable
to be cheated, which was more than he could endure—and it certainly is a
trial! This man was old and infirm, cool, unimpassioned, not wanting in
even spirits, and fond of a joke. He had the full use of his faculties,
and had frequent conversations with a weak-minded medical man, in
the club-room over which he lodged, on the nature of various poisons
without his purpose being suspected. It ended in his creeping into a
water-cistern under the boards of an adjoining room.
Most of us grow tired of living, but we prefer the fatigue to nothing,
though we may suffer pain that is all but insupportable.
A man who takes his own life may be mad in some respects, but not in
committing the act, for he always does it in the right way. If he fired
at his own bust instead of at himself, if he swallowed the bottle instead
of the laudanum within it, if he cut his dog’s throat instead of his
own, with a view to self-destruction, it would be madness itself. But he
performs the act rationally and perpetrates it in a strictly methodical
way.
There must be two kinds of courage, one of which is common to most men,
and one which few possess and none comprehend.
I am told that when a certain reporter attends a meeting on behalf of a
journal and finds out, from the speaker’s address, that the purpose for
which the assembly is convened is worthless, he retires; and on taking
up his note-book, looks at the person speaking and says, “Go home and
cut your throat,”—words that might have well been addressed to the Bond
Street swells.