JOHN RADCLIFFE.
Radcliffe, the Jacobite partisan, the physician without learning, and
the luxurious _bon-vivant_, who grudged the odd sixpences of his
tavern scores, was born at Wakefield in Yorkshire, in the year 1650.
His extraction was humble, his father being only a well-to-do yeoman.
In after life, when he lived on intimate terms with the leading
nobility of the country, he put in a claim for aristocratic descent;
and the Earl of Derwentwater recognized him as a kinsman deriving his
blood from the Radcliffes of Dilston, in the county of Northumberland,
the chiefs of which honourable family had been knights, barons, and
earls, from the time of Henry IV. It may be remembered that a similar
countenance was given to Burke's patrician pretensions, which have
been related by more than one biographer, with much humorous pomp. In
Radcliffe's case the Heralds interfered with the Earl's decision; for
after the physician's decease they admonished the University of Oxford
not to erect any escutcheon over or upon his monument. But though
Radcliffe was a plebeian, he contrived, by his shrewd humour,
arrogant simplicity, and immeasurable insolence, to hold both Whigs
and Tories in his grasp. The two factions of the aristocracy bowed
before him--the Tories from affection to a zealous adherent of regal
absolutism; and the Whigs, from a superstitious belief in his remedial
skill, and a fear that in their hours of need he would leave them to
the advances of Death.
At the age of fifteen he became a member of the University College,
Oxford; and having kept his terms there, he took his B. A. degree in
1669, and was made senior-scholar of the college. But no fellowship
falling vacant there, he accepted one on the foundation of Lincoln
College. His M. B. degree he took in 1675, and forthwith obtained
considerable practice in Oxford. Owing to a misunderstanding with Dr.
Marshall, the rector of Lincoln College, Radcliffe relinquished a
fellowship, which he could no longer hold, without taking orders, in
1677. He did not take his M. D. degree till 1682, two years after
which time he went up to London, and took a house in Bow Street, next
that in which Sir Godfrey Kneller long resided; and with a facility
which can hardly be credited in these days, when success is achieved
only by slow advances, he stept forthwith into a magnificent income.
The days of mealy-mouthed suavity had not yet come to the Faculty.
Instead of standing by each other with lip-service, as they now do in
spite of all their jealousies, physicians and surgeons vented their
mutual enmities in frank, honest abuse. Radcliffe's tongue was well
suited for this part of his business; and if that unruly member
created for him enemies, it could also contend with a legion of
adversaries at the same time. Foulks and Adams, then the first
apothecaries in Oxford, tried to discredit the young doctor, but were
ere long compelled to sue for a cessation of hostilities. Luff, who
afterwards became Professor of Physic in the University, declared that
all "Radcliffe's cures were performed only by guesswork"; and Gibbons,
with a sneer, said, "that it was a pity that his friends had not made
a scholar of the young man." In return Radcliffe always persisted in
speaking of his opponent as _Nurse_ Gibbons--because of his slops and
diet drinks, whereas he (Radcliffe the innovator) preached up the good
effects of fresh air, a liberal table, and cordials. This was the Dr.
Gibbons around whom the apothecaries rallied, to defend their
interests in the great Dispensarian contest, and whom Garth in his
poem ridicules, under the name of "Mirmillo," for entertaining
drug-venders:--
"Not far from that frequented theatre,
Where wandering punks each night at five repair,
Where purple emperors in buskins tread,
And rule imaginary worlds for bread;
Where Bentley, by old writers, wealthy grew,
And Briscoe lately was undone by new;
There triumphs a physician of renown,
To none, but such as rust in health, unknown.
. . . . .
The trading tribe oft thither throng to dine,
And want of elbow-room supply in wine."
Gibbons was not the only dangerous antagonist that Radcliffe did
battle with in London. Dr. Whistler, Sir Edmund King, Sir Edward
Hannes, and Sir Richard Blackmore were all strong enough to hurt him
and rouse his jealousy. Hannes, also an Oxford man, was to the last a
dangerous and hated rival. He opened his campaign in London with a
carriage and four horses. The equipage was so costly and imposing that
it attracted the general attention of the town. "By Jove! Radcliffe,"
said a kind friend, "Hannes's horses are the finest I have ever seen."
"Umph!" growled Radcliffe savagely, "then he'll be able to sell them
for all the more."
To make his name known Hannes used to send his liveried footmen
running about the streets with directions to put their heads into
every coach they met and inquire, with accents of alarm, if Dr. Hannes
was in it. Acting on these orders, one of his fellows, after looking
into every carriage between Whitehall and the Royal Exchange, without
finding his employer, ran up Exchange Alley into Garraway's
Coffee-house, which was one of the great places of meeting for the
members of the medical profession. (Apothecaries used regularly to
come and consult the physicians, while the latter were over their
wine, paying only half fees for the advice so given, without the
patients being personally examined. Batson's coffee-house in Corn-hill
was another favourite spot for these Galenic re-unions, Sir William
Blizard being amongst the last of the medical authorities who
frequented that hostelry for the purpose of receiving apothecaries.)
"Gentlemen, can your honours tell me if Dr. Hannes is here?" asked the
man, running into the very centre of the exchange of medicine-men.
"Who wants Dr. Hannes, fellow?" demanded Radcliffe, who happened to be
present. "Lord A---- and Lord B----, your honour!" answered the man.
"No, no, friend," responded the doctor slowly, and with pleasant
irony, "you are mistaken. Those lords don't want your master--'tis he
who wants them."
But Hannes made friends and a fine income, to the deep chagrin of his
contemptuous opponent. An incessant feud existed between the two men.
The virulence of their mutual animosity may be estimated by the
following story. When the poor little Duke of Gloucester was taken
ill, Sir Edward Hannes and Blackmore (famous as Sir Richard Blackmore,
the poet) were called in to attend him. On the case taking a fatal
turn, Radcliffe was sent for; and after roundly charging the two
doctors with the grossest mismanagement of a simple attack of rash,
went on, "It would have been happy for this nation had you, sir, been
bred up a basket-maker--and you, sir, had remained a country
schoolmaster, rather than have ventured out of your reach, in the
practice of an art which you are an utter stranger to, and for your
blunders in which you ought to be whipped with one of your own rods."
The reader will not see the force of this delicate speech if he is not
aware that Hannes was generally believed to be the son of a
basket-maker, and Sir Richard Blackmore had, in the period of his
early poverty, like Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, been a teacher of
boys. Whenever the "Amenities of the Faculty" come to be published,
this consultation, on the last illness of Jenkin Lewis's little
friend, ought to have its niche in the collection.
Towards the conclusion of his life, Radcliffe said that, "when a young
practitioner, he possessed twenty remedies for every disease; and at
the close of his career he found twenty diseases for which he had not
one remedy." His mode of practice, however, as far as anything is
known about it, at the outset was the same as that which he used at
the conclusion of his career. Pure air, cleanliness, and a wholesome
diet were amongst his most important prescriptions; though he was so
far from running counter to the interests of the druggists, that his
apothecary, Dandridge, whose business was almost entirely confined to
preparing the doctor's medicines, died worth 50,000_l_. For the
imaginary maladies of his hypochondriacal male and fanciful female
patients he had the greatest contempt, and neither respect for age or
rank, nor considerations of interest, could always restrain him from
insulting such patients. In 1686 he was appointed physician to
Princess Anne of Denmark, and was for some years a trusted adviser of
that royal lady; but he lacked the compliant temper and imperturbable
suavity requisite for a court physician. Shortly after the death of
Queen Mary, the Princess Anne, having incurred a fit of what is by the
vulgar termed "blue devils," from not paying proper attention to her
diet, sent in all haste to her physician. Radcliffe, when he received
the imperative summons to hurry to St. James's was sitting over his
bottle in a tavern. The allurements of Bacchus were too strong for
him, and he delayed his visit to the distinguished sufferer. A second
messenger arrived, but by that time the physician was so gloriously
ennobled with claret, that he discarded all petty considerations of
personal advantage, and flatly refused to stir an inch from the room
where he was experiencing all the happiness humanity is capable of.
"Tell her Royal Highness," he exclaimed, banging his fist on the
table, "that her distemper is nothing but the vapours. She's in as
good state of health as any woman breathing--only she can't make up
her mind to believe it."
The next morning prudence returned with sobriety; and the doctor did
not fail to present himself at an early hour in the Princess's
apartment in St. James's Palace. To his consternation he was stopped
in the ante-room by an officer, and informed that he was dismissed
from his post, which had already been given to Dr. Gibbons. Anne never
forgave the sarcasm about "the vapours." It so rankled in her breast,
that, though she consented to ask for the Doctor's advice both for
herself and those dear to her, she never again held any cordial
communication with him. Radcliffe tried to hide the annoyance caused
him by his fall, in a hurricane of insolence towards his triumphant
rival: Nurse Gibbons had gotten a new nursery--Nurse Gibbons was not
to be envied his new acquisition--Nurse Gibbons was fit only to look
after a woman who merely fancied herself ill.
Notwithstanding this rupture with the Court, Radcliffe continued to
have the most lucrative practice in town, and in all that regarded
money he was from first to last a most lucky man. On coming to town he
found Lower, the Whig physician, sinking in public favour--and Thomas
Short, the Roman Catholic doctor, about to drop into the grave.
Whistler, Sir Edmund King, and Blackmore had plenty of patients. But
there was a "splendid opening," and so cleverly did Radcliffe slip
into it, that at the end of his first year in town he got twenty
guineas per diem. The difference in the value of money being taken
into consideration, it may be safely affirmed that no living
physician makes more. Occasionally the fees presented to him were very
large. He cured Bentinck, afterwards Earl of Portland, of a
diarrhœa, and Zulestein, afterwards Earl of Rochford, of an attack
of congestion of the brain. For these services William III. presented
him with 500 guineas out of the privy-purse, and offered to appoint
him one of his physicians, with £200 per annum more than he gave any
other of his medical officers. Radcliffe pocketed the fee, but his
Jacobite principles precluded him from accepting the post. William,
however, notwithstanding the opposition of Bidloe and the rest of his
medical servants, held Radcliffe in such estimation that he
continually consulted him; and during the first eleven years of his
reign paid him, one year with another, 600 guineas per annum. And when
he restored to health William, Duke of Gloucester (the Princess of
Denmark's son), who in his third year was attacked with severe
convulsions, Queen Mary sent him, through the hand of her Lord
Chamberlain, 1000 guineas. And for attending the Earl of Albemarle at
Namur he had 400 guineas and a diamond ring, 1200 guineas from the
treasury, and an offer of a baronetcy from the King.
For many years he was the neighbour of Sir Godfrey Kneller, in Bow
Street. A dispute that occurred between the two neighbours and friends
is worth recording. Sir Godfrey took pleasure in his garden, and
expended large sums of money in stocking it with exotic plants and
rare flowers. Radcliffe also enjoyed a garden, but loved his fees too
well to expend them on one of his own. He suggested to Sir Godfrey
that it would be a good plan to insert a door into the boundary wall
between their gardens, so that on idle afternoons, when he had no
patients to visit, he might slip into his dear friend's
pleasure-grounds. Kneller readily assented to this proposition, and
ere a week had elapsed the door was ready for use. The plan, however,
had not been long acted on when the painter was annoyed by Radcliffe's
servants wantonly injuring his parterres. After fruitlessly
expostulating against these depredations, the sufferer sent a message
to his friend, threatening, if the annoyance recurred, to brick up the
wall. "Tell Sir Godfrey," answered Radcliffe to the messenger, "that
he may do what he likes to the door, so long as he does not paint it."
When this vulgar jeer was reported to Kneller, he replied, with equal
good humour and more wit, "Go back and give my service to Dr.
Radcliffe, and tell him, I'll take anything from him--but physic."
Radcliffe was never married, and professed a degree of misogyny that
was scarcely in keeping with his conduct on certain occasions. His
person was handsome and imposing, but his manners were little
calculated to please women. Overbearing, truculent, and abusive, he
could not rest without wounding the feelings of his companions with
harsh jokes. Men could bear with him, but ladies were like Queen Anne
in vehemently disliking him. King William was not pleased with his
brutal candour in exclaiming, at the sight of the dropsical ancles
uncovered for inspection, "I would not have your Majesty's legs for
your three kingdoms"; but William's sister-in-law repaid a much
slighter offence with life-long animosity. In 1693, however, the
doctor made an offer to a citizen's daughter, who had beauty and a
fortune of £15,000. As she was only twenty-four years of age, the
doctor was warmly congratulated by his friends when he informed them
that he, though well advanced in middle age, had succeeded in his
suit. Before the wedding-day, however, it was discovered that the
health of the lady rendered it incumbent on her honour that she should
marry her father's book-keeper. This mishap soured the doctor's temper
to the fair sex, and his sarcasms at feminine folly and frailty were
innumerable.
He was fond of declaring that he wished for an Act of Parliament
entitling nurses to the sole and entire medical care of women. A lady
who consulted him about a nervous singing in the head was advised to
"curl her hair with a ballad." His scorn of women was not lessened by
the advances of certain disorderly ladies of condition, who displayed
for him that morbid passion which medical practitioners have often to
resist in the treatment of hysterical patients. Yet he tried his luck
once again at the table of love. "There's no fool so great as an old
fool." In the summer of 1709, Radcliffe, then in his sixtieth year,
started a new equipage; and having arrayed himself in the newest mode
of foppery, threw all the town into fits of laughter by paying his
addresses, with the greatest possible publicity, to a lady who
possessed every requisite charm--(youth, beauty, wealth)--except a
tenderness for her aged suitor. Again was there an unlucky termination
to the doctor's love, which Steele, in No. 44 of _The Tatler_,
ridiculed in the following manner:--
"This day, passing through Covent Garden, I was stopped in the Piazza
by Pacolet, to observe what he called _The Triumph of Love and Youth_.
I turned to the object he pointed at, and there I saw a gay gilt
chariot, drawn by fresh prancing horses, the coachman with a new
cockade, and the lacqueys with insolence and plenty in their
countenances. I asked immediately, 'What young heir, or lover, owned
that glittering equipage!' But my companion interrupted, 'Do not you
see there the mourning Æsculapius?' 'The mourning!' said I. 'Yes,
Isaac,' said Pacolet, 'he is in deep mourning, and is the languishing,
hopeless lover of the divine Hebe, the emblem of Youth and Beauty.
That excellent and learned sage you behold in that furniture is the
strongest instance imaginable that love is the most powerful of all
things.
"'You are not so ignorant as to be a stranger to the character of
Æsculapius, as the patron and most successful of all who profess the
Art of Medicine. But as most of his operations are owing to a natural
sagacity or impulse, he has very little troubled himself with the
Doctrine of Drugs, but has always given Nature more room to help
herself than any of her learned assistants; and consequently has done
greater wonders than in the power of Art to perform; for which reason
he is half deified by the people, and has ever been courted by all the
world, just as if he were a seventh son.
"'It happened that the charming Hebe was reduc'd, by a long and
violent fever, to the most extreme danger of Death; and when all skill
failed, they sent for Æsculapius. The renowned artist was touched with
the deepest compassion, to see the faded charms and faint bloom of
Hebe; and had a generous concern, too, in beholding a struggle, not
between Life, but rather between Youth, and Death. All his skill and
his passion tended to the recovery of Hebe, beautiful even in
sickness; but, alas! the unhappy physician knew not that in all his
care he was only sharpening darts for his own destruction. In a word,
his fortune was the same with that of the statuary who fell in love
with an image of his own making; and the unfortunate Æsculapius is
become the patient of her whom he lately recovered. Long before this,
Æsculapius was far gone in the unnecessary and superfluous amusements
of old age, in the increase of unwieldy stores, and the provision in
the midst of an incapacity of enjoyment, of what he had for a supply
of more wants than he had calls for in Youth itself. But these low
considerations are now no more; and Love has taken place of Avarice,
or rather is become an Avarice of another kind, which still urges him
to pursue what he does not want. But behold the metamorphosis: the
anxious mean cares of an usurer are turned into the languishments and
complaints of a lover. "Behold," says the aged Æsculapius, "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,
clasp'd in gold, without having any value for that beloved metal, but
as it adorns the person and laces the hat of the dying lover. I ask
not to live, O Hebe! Give me but gentle death. Euthanasia, Euthanasia!
that is all I implore."' When Æsculapius had finished his complaint,
Pacolet went on in deep morals on the uncertainty of riches, with
this remarkable explanation--'O wealth! how impatient 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!'"
Seven days after the _Tatler_ resumed the attack, but with less happy
effect. In this picture, the justice of which was not questioned, even
by the Doctor's admirers, the avarice of the veteran is not less
insisted on as the basis of his character, than his amorousness is
displayed as a ludicrous freak of vanity. Indeed, love of money was
the master-defect of Radcliffe's disposition. Without a child, or a
prospect of offspring, he screwed and scraped in every direction. Even
his debaucheries had an alloy of discomfort that does not customarily
mingle in the dissipations of the rich. The flavour of the money each
bottle cost gave ungrateful smack to his wine. He had numerous poor
relations, of whom he took, during his life, little or no notice. Even
his sisters he kept at arm's distance, lest they should show their
affection for him by dipping their hands in his pockets. It is true,
he provided liberally for them at his death--leaving to the one (a
married lady--Mrs. Hannah Redshaw) a thousand a year for life, and to
the other (a spinster lady) an income of half that amount as long as
she lived. But that he treated them with unbrotherly neglect there is
no doubt.
After his decease, a letter was found in his closet, directed to his
unmarried sister, Millicent Radcliffe, in which, with contrition, and
much pathos, he bids her farewell. "You will find," says he, in that
epistle, "by my will that I have taken better care of you than
perhaps you might expect from my former treatment of you; for which,
with my dying breath, I most heartily ask pardon. I had indeed acted
the brother's part much better, in making a handsome settlement on you
while living, than after my decease; and can plead nothing in excuse,
but that the love of money, which I have emphatically known to be the
root of all evil, was too predominant over me. Though, I hope, I have
made some amends for that odious sin of covetousness, in my last
dispositions of those worldly goods which it pleased the great
Dispenser of Providence to bless me with."
What made this meanness of disposition in money matters the more
remarkable was, that he was capable of occasional munificence, on a
scale almost beyond his wealth, and also of a stoical fortitude under
any reverse of fortune that chanced to deprive him of some of his
beloved guineas.
In the year 1704, at a general collection for propagating the Gospel
in foreign parts, he settled on the Society established for that
purpose £50 per annum for ever. And this noble gift he unostentatiously
made under an assumed name. In the same year he presented £520 to the
Bishop of Norwich, to be distributed among the poor non-juring clergy;
and this donation he also desired should be kept a secret from the
world.
His liberality to Oxford was far from being all of the _post-mortem_
sort. In 1687 he presented the chapel of University College with an
east window, representing, in stained glass, the Nativity, and having
the following inscription:--"D.D. Johan Radcliffe, M.D., hujus
Collegii quondam Socius, Anno Domini MDCLXXXVII." In 1707 he gave
Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, bills for £300, drawn under the assumed
name of Francis Andrews, on Waldegrave the goldsmith, of Russell
Street, Covent Garden, for the relief of distressed Scotch Episcopal
clergy.
As another instance of how his niggard nature could allow him to do
good by stealth, and blush to find it fame, his liberality to James
Drake, the Tory writer, may be mentioned. Drake was a physician, as
well as a political author. As the latter, he was well liked, as the
former he was honestly hated by Radcliffe. Two of a trade--where one
of the two is a John Radcliffe--can never agree. Each of the two
doctors had done his utmost to injure the reputation of the other. But
when Drake, broken in circumstances by a political persecution, was in
sore distress from want of money, Radcliffe put fifty guineas into a
lady's hands, and begged her to convey it to Drake. "Let him," said
Radcliffe, with the delicacy of a fine heart, "by no means be told
whence it comes. He is a gentleman, and has often done his best to
hurt me. He could, therefore, by no means brook the receipt of a
benefit from a person whom he had used all possible means to make an
enemy."
After such instances of Ratcliffe's generosity, it may seem
unnecessary to give more proofs of the existence of that quality,
disguised though it was by miserly habits. His friend Nutley, a loose
rollicking gentleman about town, a barrister without practice, a man
of good family, and no fortune, a jovial dog, with a jest always on
his lips, wine in his head, and a death's-head grinning over each
shoulder [such bachelors may still be found in London], was in this
case the object of the doctor's benevolence. Driven by duns and
tippling to the borders of distraction, Nutley crept out of his
chambers under the cover of night to the "Mitre Tavern," and called
for "a bottle." "A bottle" with Nutley meant "many bottles." The end
of it was that the high-spirited gentleman fell down in a condition of
---- well! in a condition that Templars, in this age of earnest
purpose and decent morals, would blush to be caught in. Mr. Nutley was
taken hold of by the waiters, and carried up-stairs to bed.
The next morning the merry fellow is in the saddest of all possible
humours. The memory of a few little bills, the holders of which are
holding a parliament on his stair-case in Pump-court; the recollection
that he has not a guinea left--either to pacify those creditors with,
or to use in paying for the wine consumed over night; a depressing
sense that the prominent features of civilized existence are
tax-gatherers and sheriff's officers; a head that seems to be falling
over one side of the pillow, whilst the eyes roll out on the
other;--all these afflict poor Mr. Nutley! A knock at the door, and
the landlady enters. The landlady is the Widow Watts, daughter of the
widow Bowles, also in the same line. As now, so a hundred and fifty
years ago, ladies in licensed victualling circles played tricks with
their husbands' night-caps--killed them with kindness, and reigned in
their stead. The widow Watts has a sneaking fondness for poor Mr.
Nutley, and is much affected when, in answer to her inquiry how "his
honour feels his-self," he begins to sob like a child, narrate the
troubles of his infancy, the errors of his youth, and the sorrows of
his riper age. Mistress Watts is alarmed. Only to think of Mr. Nutley
going on like that, talking of his blessed mother who had been dead
these twenty years, and vowing he'd kill himself, because he is an
outcast, and no better than a disgrace to his family. "To think of it!
and only yesterday he were the top of company, and would have me drink
his own honourable health in a glass of his own wine." Mistress Watts
sends straightway for Squire Nutley's friend, the Doctor. When
Radcliffe makes his appearance, he sees the whole case at a glance,
rallies Billy Nutley about his rascally morals, estimates his
assertion that "it's only his liver a little out of order" exactly at
its worth, and takes his leave shortly, saying to himself, "If poor
Billy could only be freed from the depression caused by his present
pecuniary difficulties, he would escape for this once a return of the
deliri...." At the end of another half hour, a goldsmith's man enters
the bed-room, and puts into Nutley's hand a letter and a bag of gold
containing 200 guineas. The epistle is from Radcliffe, begging his
friend to accept the money, and to allow the donor to send him in a
few days 300 more of the same coins. Such was the physician's
prescription, in dispensing which he condescended to act as his own
apothecary. Bravo, doctor!--who of us shall say which of the good
deeds--thy gift to Billy Nutley or thy princely bequest to Oxford--has
the better right to be regarded as the offspring of sincere
benevolence? Some--and let no "fie!" be cried upon them--will find in
this story more to make them love thy memory than they have ever found
in that noble library whose dome stands up amidst the towers, and
steeples, and sacred walls of beloved Oxford.
It would not be hard to say which of the two gifts has done the
greater good. Poor Will Nutley took his 500 guineas, and had "more
bottles," went a few more times to the theatres in lace and velvet and
brocade, roared out at a few more drinking bouts, and was carried off
by [his biographer calls it "a violent fever"] in the twenty-ninth
year of his age. And possibly since Willy Nutley was Willy Nutley, and
no one else, this was the best possible termination for him. That
Radcliffe, the head of a grave profession, and a man of fifty-seven
years of age, should have conceived an enthusiastic friendship for a
youngster of half his age, is a fact that shows us one of the
consequences of the tavern life of our great-grandfathers. It puts us
in mind of how Fielding, ere he had a beard, burst into popularity
with the haunters of coffee-houses. When roistering was in fashion, a
young man had many chances which he no longer possesses. After the
theatres were closed, he reeled into the hostels of the town, singing
snatches with the blithe, clear voice of youth, laughing and jesting
with all around, and frequently amongst that "all" he came in contact
with the highest and most powerful men of the time. A boy-adventurer
could display his wit and quality to statesmen and leaders of all
sorts; whereas now he must wait years before he is even introduced to
them, and years more ere he gets an invitation to their formal
dinners, at which Barnes Newcome cuts as brilliant a figure as the
best and the strongest.
Throughout his life Radcliffe was a staunch and manly Jacobite. He was
for "the king"; but neither loyalty nor interest could bind him to
higher considerations than those of attachment to the individual he
regarded as the rightful head of the realm. In 1688, when Obadiah
Walker tried to wheedle him into the folly of becoming a Romanist, the
attempt at perversion proved a signal failure. Nothing can be more
truly manly than his manner of rejecting the wily advances of the
proselytizing pervert. "The advantages you propose to me," he writes,
"may be very great, for all that I know; God Almighty can do very much
and so can the king; but you'll pardon me if I cease to speak like a
physician for once, and, with an air of gravity, am very apprehensive
that I may anger the one in being too complaisant to the other. You
cannot call this pinning my faith to any man's sleeve; those that know
me are too well apprized of my quite contrary tendency. As I never
flattered a man myself, so 'tis my firm resolution never to be
wheedled out of my real sentiments--which are, that since it has been
my good fortune to be educated according to the usage of the Church of
England, established by law, I shall never make myself so unhappy as
to shame my teachers and instructors by departing from what I have
imbibed from them."
Thus was Walker treated when he abused his position as head of
University College. But when the foolish man was deprived of his
office, he found a good friend in him whom he had tried to seduce from
the Church in which he had been reared. From the time of his first
coming to London from Oxford, on the abdication of James the Second,
up to the time of his death, Walker subsisted on a handsome allowance
made to him out of Radcliffe's purse. When, also, the discarded
principal died, it was the doctor who gave him an honourable interment
in Pancras churchyard, and years afterwards erected a monument to his
memory.
As years passed on, without the restitution of the proscribed males of
the Stuart House, Radcliffe's political feelings became more bitter.
He was too cautious a man to commit himself in any plot having for its
object a change of dynasty; but his ill-humour at the existing state
of things vented itself in continual sarcasms against the chiefs of
the Whig party with whom he came in contact. He professed that he did
not wish for practice amongst the faction to which he was opposed. He
had rather only preserve the lives of those citizens who were loyal to
their king. One of the immediate results of this affectation was
increased popularity with his political antagonists. Whenever a Whig
leader was dangerously ill, his friends were sure to feel that his
only chance of safety rested on the ministrations of the Jacobite
doctor. Radcliffe would be sent for, and after swearing a score of
times that nothing should induce him to comply with the summons, would
make his appearance at the sick-bed, where he would sometimes tell the
sufferer that the devil would have no mercy on those who put
constitutional governments above the divine right of kings. If the
patient recovered, of course his cure was attributed to the Tory
physician; and if death was the result, the same cause was pointed
to.
It might be fancied that, rather than incur a charge of positively
killing his political antagonists, Radcliffe would have left them to
their fates. But this plan would have served him the reverse of well.
If he failed to attend a Whig's death-bed to which he had been
summoned, the death was all the same attributed to him. "He might,"
exclaimed the indignant survivors, "have saved poor Tom if he had
liked; only poor Tom was a Whig, and so he left him to die." He was
charged alike with killing Queen Mary, whom he did attend in her dying
illness--and Queen Anne, whom he didn't.
The reader of the Harleian MS. of Burnet's "History" is amused with
the following passage, which does not appear in the printed
editions:--"I will not enter into another province, nor go out of my
own profession, and so will say no more of the physician's part, but
that it was universally condemned; so that the Queen's death was
imputed to the unskilfulness and wilfulness of Dr. Radcliffe, an
impious and vicious man, who hated the Queen much, but virtue and
religion more. He was a professed Jacobite, and was, by many, thought
a very bad physician; but others cried him up to the highest degree
imaginable. He was called for, and it appeared but too evident that
his opinion was depended on. Other physicians were called when it was
too late; all symptoms were bad, yet still the Queen felt herself
well."
Radcliffe's negative murder of Queen Anne was yet more amusing than
his positive destruction of Mary. When Queen Anne was almost _in
extremis_, Radcliffe was sent for. The Queen, though she never forgave
him for his drunken ridicule of her vapours, had an exalted opinion
of his professional talents, and had, more than once, winked at her
ladies, consulting him about the health of their royal mistress. Now
that death was at hand, Lady Masham sent a summons for the doctor; but
he was at Carshalton, sick of his dying illness, and returned answer
that it would be impossible for him to leave his country-seat and wait
on her Majesty. Such was the absurd and superstitious belief in his
mere presence, that the Queen was popularly pictured as having died
because he was not present to see her draw her last breath. Whom he
liked he could kill, and whom he liked could keep alive and well. Even
Arbuthnot, a brother physician, was so tinctured with the popular
prejudice, that he could gravely tell Swift of the pleasure Radcliffe
had "in preserving my Lord Chief Justice Holt's wife, whom he attended
out of spite to her husband, who wished her dead."
It makes one smile to read Charles Ford's letter to the sarcastic Dean
on the subject of the Queen's last illness. "She continued ill the
whole day. In the evening I spoke to Dr Arbuthnot, and he told me that
he did not think her distemper was desperate. Radcliffe was sent for
to Carshalton about noon, by order of council; but said he had taken
physic and could not come. _In all probability he had saved her life;
for I am told the late Lord Gower had been often in the condition with
the gout in the head, and Radcliffe kept him alive many years after._"
The author of Gulliver must have grinned as he read this sentence. It
was strange stuff to write about "that puppy Radcliffe" (as the Dean
calls the physician in his journal to Stella) to the man who coolly
sent out word to a Dublin mob that he had put off an eclipse to a
more suitable time. The absurdity of Ford's letter is heightened by
the fact that it was written before the Queen's death. It is dated
July 31, 1714, and concludes with the following postscript:--"The
Queen is something better, and the council again adjourned till eight
in the morning." Surely the accusation, then, of negative
womanslaughter was preferred somewhat prematurely. The next day,
however, the Queen died; and then arose a magnificent hubbub of
indignation against the impious doctor. The poor man himself sinking
into the grave, was at that country-seat where he had entertained his
medical friends with so many noisy orgies. But the cries for vengeance
reached him in his retreat. "Give us back our ten days!" screamed the
rabble of London round Lord Chesterfield's carriage. "Give us back our
Queen!" was the howl directed against Radcliffe. The accused was a
member of the House of Commons, having been elected M.P. for the town
of Buckingham in the previous year; and positively a member (one of
Radcliffe's intimate personal acquaintances) moved that the physician
should be summoned to attend in his place and be censured for not
attending her late Majesty. To a friend the doctor wrote from
Carshalton on August 7, 1714:--"Dear Sir,--I could not have thought so
old an acquaintance, and so good a friend as Sir John always professed
himself, would have made such a motion against me. God knows my will
to do her Majesty any service has ever got the start of my ability,
and I have nothing that gives me greater anxiety and trouble than the
death of that great and glorious Princess. I must do that justice to
the physicians that attended her in her illness, from a sight of the
method that was taken for her preservation, transmitted to me by Dr
Mead, as to declare nothing was omitted for her preservation; but the
people about her (the plagues of Egypt fall upon them!) put it out of
the power of physick to be of any benefit to her. I know the nature of
attending crowned heads to their last moments too well to be fond of
waiting upon them, without being sent for by a proper authority. You
have heard of pardons signed for physicians before a sovereign's
demise. However, as ill as I was, I would have went to the Queen in a
horse-litter, had either her Majesty, or those in commission next to
her, commanded me so to do. You may tell Sir John as much, and assure
him, from me, that his zeal for her Majesty will not excuse his ill
usage of _a friend who has drunk many a hundred bottles with him_, and
cannot, even after this breach of good understanding, that was ever
preserved between us, but have a very good esteem for him."
So strong was the feeling against the doctor, that a set of maniacs at
large formed a plan for his assassination. Fortunately, however, the
plot was made known to him in the following letter:--
"Doctor,--Tho' I am no friend of yours, but, on the contrary, one that
could wish your destruction in a legal way, for not preventing the
death of our most excellent Queen, whom you had it in your power to
save, yet I have such an aversion to the taking away men's lives
unfairly, as to acquaint you that if you go to meet the gentlemen you
have appointed to dine with at the 'Greyhound,' in Croydon, on
Thursday next, you will be most certainly murthered. I am one of the
persons engaged in the conspiracy, with twelve more, who are resolved
to sacrifice you to the _Ghost of her late Majesty, that cries aloud
for blood_; therefore, neither stir out of doors that day, nor any
other, nor think of exchanging your present abode for your house at
Hammersmith, since there and everywhere else we shall be in quest of
you. I am touched with remorse, and give you this notice; but take
care of yourself, lest I repent of it, and give proofs of so doing, by
having it in my power to destroy you, who am your sworn enemy.--N. G."
That thirteen men could have been found to meditate such a ridiculous
atrocity is so incredible, that one is inclined to suspect a hoax in
this epistle. Radcliffe, however, did not see the letter in that
light. Panic-struck, he kept himself a close prisoner to his house and
its precincts, though he was very desirous of paying another visit to
London--the monotony of his rural seclusion being broken only by the
customary visits of his professional associates who came down to
comfort and drink with him. The end, however, was fast approaching.
The maladies under which he suffered were exacerbated by mental
disquiet; and his powers suddenly failing him, he expired on the 1st
of November, 1714, just three months after the death of the murdered
Queen, of whose vapours he had spoken so disrespectfully.
His original biographer (from whose work all his many memoirs have
been taken) tells the world that the great physician "_fell a victim
to the ingratitude of a thankless world, and the fury of the gout_."
Radcliffe was an ignorant man, but shrewd enough to see that in the
then existing state of medical science the book-learning of the
Faculty could be but of little service to him. He was so notoriously
deficient in the literature of his profession, that his warmest
admirers made merry about it. Garth happily observed that for
Radcliffe to leave a library was as if a eunuch should found a
seraglio. Nor was Radcliffe ashamed to admit his lack of lore. Indeed,
he was proud of it; and on the inquiry being made by Bathurst, the
head of Trinity College, Oxford, where his study was, he pointed to a
few vials, a skeleton, and an herbal, and answered, "This is
Radcliffe's library." Mead, who rose into the first favour of the town
as the doctor retired from it, was an excellent scholar; but far from
assuming on that ground a superiority to his senior, made it the means
of paying him a graceful compliment. The first time that Radcliffe
called on Mead when in town he found his young friend reading
Hippocrates.
"Do you read Hippocrates in Greek?" demanded the visitor.
"Yes," replied Mead, timidly fearing his scholarship would offend the
great man.
"I never read him in my life," responded Radcliffe, sullenly.
"You, sir," was the rejoinder, "have no occasion--you are Hippocrates
himself."
A man who could manufacture flattery so promptly and courageously
deserved to get on. Radcliffe swallowed the fly, and was glad to be
the prey of the expert angler. Only the day before, Mead had thrown
in his ground-bait. As a promising young man, Radcliffe had asked him
to a dinner-party at Carshalton, with the hospitable resolve of
reducing such a promising young man to a state of intoxication, in the
presence of the assembled elders of his profession. Mead, however, was
not to be so managed. He had strong nerves, and was careful to drink
as little as he could without attracting attention by his abstinence.
The consequence was that Mead saw magnate after magnate disappear
under the table, just as he had before seen magnum after magnum
disappear above it; and still he retained his self-possession. At last
he and his host were the only occupants of the banqueting-room left in
a non-recumbent position. Radcliffe was delighted with his youthful
acquaintance--loved him almost as well as he had loved Billy Nutley.
"Mead," cried the enthusiastic veteran to the young man, who anyhow
had not _fallen_ from his chair, "you are a _rising_ man. You will
succeed me."
"That, sir, is impossible," Mead adroitly answered; "You are Alexander
the Great, and no one can succeed Radcliffe; to succeed to one of his
kingdoms is the utmost of my ambition."
Charmed with the reply, Radcliffe exclaimed,
"By ----, I'll recommend you to my patients."
The promise was kept; and Mead endeavoured to repay the worldly
advancement with spiritual council. "I remember," says Kennett (_vide_
Lansdowne MSS., Brit. Mus.), "what Dr Mede has told to several of his
friends, that he fell much into the favour of Dr Radcliffe a few years
before his death, and visited him often at Carshalton, where he
observed upon occasion that there was no Bible to be found in the
house. Dr Mede had a mind to supply that defect, without taking any
notice of it; and therefore one day carried down with him a very
beautiful Bible that he had lately bought, which had lain in a closet
of King William for his Majesty's own use, and left it as a curiosity
that he had picked up by the way. When Dr Mede made the last visit to
him he found that Dr R. had read in it as far as the middle of the
Book of Exodus, from whence it might be inferred that he had never
before read the Scriptures; as I doubt must be inferred of Dr Linacre,
from the account given by Sir John Cheke."
The allusion to "the kingdom of Alexander the Great" reminds one of
Arbuthnot's letter to Swift, in which the writer concludes his sketch
of the proposed map of diseases for Martinus Scriblerus with--"Then
the great diseases are like capital cities, with their symptoms all
like streets and suburbs, with the roads that lead to other diseases.
It is thicker set with towns than any Flanders map you ever saw.
Radcliffe is painted at the corner of the map, contending for the
universal empire of this world, and the rest of the physicians
opposing his ambitious designs, with a project of a treaty of
partition to settle peace."
As a practitioner, Radcliffe served the public as well as he did his
own interests. The violent measures of bleeding, and the exhibition of
reducing medicines, which constituted the popular practice even to the
present generation, he regarded with distrust in some cases and horror
in others. There is a good story told of him, that well illustrates
his disapproval of a kill-or-cure system, and his hatred of Nurse
Gibbons. John Bancroft, the eminent surgeon, who resided in Russell
Street, Covent Garden, had a son attacked with inflammation of the
lungs. Gibbons was called in, and prescribed the most violent
remedies, or rather the most virulent irritants. The child became
rapidly worse, and Radcliffe was sent for. "I can do nothing, sir,"
observed the doctor, after visiting his patient, "for the poor little
boy's preservation. He is killed to all intents and purposes. But if
you have any thoughts of putting a stone over him, I'll help you to an
inscription." The offer was accepted, and over the child's grave, in
Covent Garden churchyard, was placed a stone sculptured with a figure
of a child laying one hand on his side, and saying, "Hic dolor," and
pointing with the other to a death's head on which was engraved, "Ibi
medicus." This is about the prettiest professional libel which we can
point to in all the quarrels of the Faculty.
The uses to which the doctor applied his wealth every one knows.
Notwithstanding his occasional acts of munificence, and a loss of
£5000 in an East Indian venture, into which Betterton, the tragedian,
seduced him, his accumulations were very great. In his will, after
liberally providing for the members of his family and his dependents,
he devoted his acquisitions to the benefit of the University of
Oxford. From them have proceeded the Radcliffe Library, the Radcliffe
Infirmary, the Radcliffe Observatory, and the Radcliffe Travelling
Fellowships. It is true that nothing has transpired in the history of
these last-mentioned endowments to justify us in reversing the
sentiment of Johnson, who remarked to Boswell: "It is wonderful how
little good Radcliffe's Travelling Fellowships have done. I know
nothing that has been imported by them."
After lying in state at his own residence, and again in the
University, Radcliffe's body was interred, with great pomp, in St.
Mary's Church, Oxford. The royal gift of so large an estate (which
during life he had been unable thoroughly to enjoy) to purchase a
library, the contents of which he at no time could have read, of
course provoked much comment. It need not be said that the testator's
memory was, for the most part, extolled to the skies. He had died
rich--a great virtue in itself. He was dead; and as men like to deal
out censure as long as it can cause pain, and scatter praise when it
can no longer create happiness, Radcliffe, the physician, the friend
of suffering humanity, the benefactor of ancient and Tory Oxford, was
spoken of in "most handsome terms." One could hardly believe that this
great good man, this fervent Christian and sublime patriot, was the
same man as he whom Steele had ridiculed for servile vanity, and to
bring whom into contempt a play was written, and publicly acted, only
ten years before, to the intense delight of the Duchess of
Marlborough, and the applauding maids of honour.
The philosophic Mandeville, far from approving the behaviour of the
fickle multitude, retained his old opinion of the doctor, and gave it
to the world in his "Essay on Charity and Charity Schools." "That a
man," writes Mandeville, "with small skill in physic, and hardly any
learning, should by vile arts get into practice, and lay up great
wealth, is no mighty wonder; but that he should so deeply work
himself into the good opinion of the world as to gain the general
esteem of a nation, and establish a reputation beyond all his
contemporaries, with no other qualities but a perfect knowledge of
mankind, and a capacity of making the most of it, is something
extraordinary.
"If a man arrived to such a height of glory should be almost
distracted with pride--sometime give his attendance on a servant, or
any mean person, for nothing and at the same time neglect a nobleman
that gives exhorbitant fees--at other times refuse to leave his bottle
for his business, without any regard to the quality of the persons
that sent for him, or the danger they are in; if he should be surly
and morose, affect to be an humourist, treat his patients like dogs,
though people of distinction, and value no man but what would deify
him, and never call in question the certainty of his oracles; if he
should insult all the world, affront the first nobility, and extend
his insolence even to the royal family; if to maintain, as well as to
increase, the fame of his sufficiency, he should scorn to consult his
betters, on what emergency soever, look down with contempt on the most
deserving of his profession, and never confer with any other physician
but what will pay homage to his genius, creep to his humour, and ever
approach him with all the slavish obsequiousness a court flatterer can
treat a prince with; if a man in his life-time should discover, on the
one hand, such manifest symptoms of superlative pride, and an
insatiable greediness after wealth at the same time; and, on the
other, no regard to religion or affection to his kindred, no
compassion to the poor, and hardly any humanity to his fellow-creatures;
if he gave no proofs that he loved his country, had a public spirit,
or was a lover of the arts, of books, or of literature--what must we
judge of his motive, the principle he acted from, when, after his
death, we find that he has left a trifle among his relations who stood
in need of it, and an immense treasure to a University that did not
want it.
"Let a man be as charitable as it is possible for him to be, without
forfeiting his reason or good sense, can he think otherwise, but that
this famous physician did, in the making of his will, as in everything
else, indulge his darling passion, entertaining his vanity with the
happiness of the contrivance?"
This severe portrait is just about as true as the likeness of a man,
painted by a conscientious enemy, usually is. Radcliffe was not
endowed with a kindly nature. "Mead, I love you," said he to his
fascinating adulator; "and I'll tell you a sure secret to make your
fortune--use all mankind ill." Radcliffe carried out his rule by
wringing as much as possible from, and returning as little as possible
to, his fellowmen. He could not pay a tradesman's bill without a sense
of keen suffering. Even a poor pavior, who had been employed to do a
job to the stones before the doctor's house in Bloomsbury Square
(whither the physician removed from Bow Street), could not get his
money without a contest. "Why, you rascal!" cried the debtor, as he
alighted from his chariot, "do you pretend to be paid for such a piece
of work! Why, you have spoiled my pavement, and then covered it over
with earth to hide the bad work."
"Doctor," responded the man, dryly, "mine is not the only bad work the
earth hides."
Of course, the only course to pursue with a creditor who could dun in
this sarcastic style was to pay, and be rid of him. But the doctor
made up for his own avarice by being ever ready to condemn it in
others.
Tyson, the miser, being near his last hour, magnanimously resolved to
pay two of his 3,000,000 guineas to Radcliffe, to learn if anything
could be done for his malady. The miserable old man came up with his
wife from Hackney, and tottered into the consulting-room in Bloomsbury
Square, with two guineas in his hand--
"You may go, sir," exclaimed Radcliffe, to the astonished wretch, who
trusted he was unknown--"you may go home, and die, and be ----,
without a speedy repentance; for both the grave and the devil are
ready for Tyson of Hackney, who has grown rich out of the spoils of
the public and the tears of orphans and widows. You'll be a dead man,
sir, in ten days."
There are numerous stories extant relative to Radcliffe's practice;
but nearly all those which bear the stamp of genuineness are unfit for
publication in the present polite age. Such stories as the
hasty-pudding one, re-edited by the pleasant author of "The
Gold-headed Cane," can be found by the dozen, but the cumbrous
workmanship of Mr. Joseph Miller is manifest in them all.