It was after the good Lord Ripon’s death, which happened only too soon,
that I went to Spring Gardens to live, purposing to resume my medical
connection with the public, and to continue my duties as physician at the
West London Hospital, to which I was attached. It then had not long been
instituted, but it is now an extensive and flourishing establishment in
a populous suburb, where it is much needed.
Mr. Cowell, a good and chivalrous benefactor of the sick poor, now senior
surgeon of the Westminster Hospital, was resident surgeon of the West
London at that time; and Mr. Bird, who, in conjunction with his father,
was its founder, was one of the surgical staff.
The Countess Dowager of Ripon spent the season at Carlton Gardens, in the
family mansion; and, continuing my professional engagement, after the
earl’s death, to her, I had the pleasure of visiting her daily.
Lady Ripon was a woman who deserved to be remembered as long as the lives
of the good and great have an interest for mankind, and let us hope that
may be as long as the human race endures. Her belief was as implicit in
a happy future, as it was in the morrow of every day; and she regulated
her actions accordingly, as inseparable from the duties devolving on her
responsible position.
There are many such women in every class who, if they changed places,
would remain the same; but they have not an equal opportunity of making
it manifest how true they are. The countess felt her position as the
daughter and the wife of an earl; it made her feel the more for those
whom circumstances made dependent on her. She had been a great heiress,
born to the inheritance of Nocton and other estates, in Lincolnshire; and
she firmly regarded herself as appointed by Heaven, or rather entrusted,
to administer the large means that belonged to her for the good of those
who had a claim on her for support.
When at Stutgard in 1833, during a wide continental tour, not so commonly
made in those days as now, I became acquainted with Sir Edward Disbrowe,
the British minister, and the other members of the embassy. These were
Mr. Wellesley, the eldest son of Lord Cowley, and Mr. Gordon, the eldest
son of Gordon, of Ellon Castle. At that house I met Count Pozzo di Borgo,
and a young Buonaparte, who was a guest of the King of Wurtemburg.
Mr. Wellesley was quite a young man and very sociable; Mr. Gordon was
yet younger, and of very engaging ways. Count Pozzo di Borgo was getting
on in life, but very upright, and, with his orders on, made a brilliant
show. He was perfectly free in his conversation, and spoke on political
matters without any reserve. He remarked pretty plainly, but with a
playful _naïveté_, to the young Prince Buonaparte, who was present,
that if his advice had been followed in the days of Elba, the battle of
Waterloo would not have been fought.
Some say how small the world is: certainly, in its fortuitous concourse
of live atoms. There is not so much room but that many meet after long
intervals again. So, after a lapse of some thirty years, the youthful
Gordon, whom I knew so well as Sir Edward Disbrowe’s _attaché_, then as
much boy as man, turns up again on a visit to Lady Ripon, with a grisly
beard, and a face that showed no marks of having once been young. But
this is not all: on a similar visit appeared two young ladies of fashion
as daughters of Sir Edward Disbrowe. They were either babes or not born
at the time when I knew their father so well.
The Gordons were cousins of Lady Ripon. A Colonel Gordon, the brother of
Gordon who was soon to be Gordon of Ellon, was my particular friend as
long as he lived. He had retired from active service on returning finally
from India, but his desire was to die in the army, though, by not selling
out, he was the loser by several thousand pounds.
I would mention one lady in particular, who consulted me while I was in
Spring Gardens, because she was the Queen of Beauty at Lord Eglinton’s
tournament, besides being the grand-daughter of Sheridan, and the wife
of the Duke of Somerset. A beautiful youth, Lord Edward St. Maur, one
afternoon drove up to my house and asked me if I would go with him to
the Admiralty and see his mother, the duchess. It was on a slight matter
affecting her daughter, and she afterwards asked me to see her son, Lord
St. Maur. All this was easy work, but I was pleased at seeing another
grandchild of Sheridan, for I had known Mrs. Norton over a quarter of a
century before.
But the young man, Lord Edward, for him a sad fate was in waiting; more
sad than that which later befel his elder brother.
The sons of great houses have few means of distinction, however
ambitious, except in politics, which many of them abhor. They are shut
out from the nobler professions. Lord Edward, a young man of courage,
sought excitement in the jungles of India, and this ended in his being
torn to pieces by a tiger.
Having an acute mind, which at all times lay parallel with truth, I was
a good diagnostic of disease (agnostics were then in their infancy),
and I was able to weigh a good many experiences under one in the same
balance. I made this remarkably evident during the last illness of Lord
Ripon, which was a very costly one, for all the celebrities in Physic
were in attendance at Putney. Perhaps I took an unfair advantage, for
I was so absolutely independent in my position that I could give an
unbiassed opinion, while the physicians and surgeons, under the influence
of expediency, agreed on a still favourable view of the case. That such
could happen is the fault of the patient’s friends. If the physicians
abandon hope while there is life, others are uselessly called in. After
they left, with the assurance that the patient was all right, Lord
Goderich and Sir Charles Douglas, who was a friend of the family, asked
me to take a turn with them in the grounds, wishing to hear my opinion,
which I frankly gave, to the effect that in a fortnight the earl would no
longer be living.
But I was wrong, too, in my way, for he lived just seventeen days from
that time.