MESSENGER MONSEY.
Amongst the celebrities of the medical profession, who have left no
memorial behind them more durable or better known than their wills in
Doctors' Commons, was Messenger Monsey, the great-grandfather of our
ex-Chancellor, Lord Cranworth.
We do not know whether his Lordship is aware of his descent from the
eccentric physician. Possibly he is not, for the Monseys, though not
altogether of a plebeian stock, were little calculated to throw éclat
over the genealogy of a patrician house.
Messenger Monsey, who used with a good deal of unnecessary noise to
declare his contempt of the ancestral honours which he in reality
possessed, loved to tell of the humble origin of his family. The first
Duke of Leeds delighted in boasting of his lucky progenitor, Jack
Osborn, the shop lad, who rescued his master's daughter from a watery
grave, in the Thames, and won her hand away from a host of noble
suitors, who wanted--literally, the young lady's _pin_-money. She was
the only child of a wealthy pinmaker carrying on his business on
London Bridge, and the jolly old fellow, instead of disdaining to
bestow his heiress on a 'prentice, exclaimed, "Jack won her, and he
shall wear her!" Dr. Monsey, in the hey-day of his social fame, told
his friends that the first of his ancestors of any note was a baker,
and a retail dealer in hops. At a critical point of this worthy man's
career, when hops were "down" and feathers were "up," to raise a small
sum of money for immediate use he ripped open his beds, sold the
feathers, and stuffed the tick with unsaleable hops. Soon a change in
the market occurred, and once more operating on the couches used by
himself and children, he sold the hops at a profit, and bought back
the feathers. "That's the way, sir, by which my family hopped from
obscurity!" the doctor would conclude.
We have reason for thinking that this ancestor was the physician's
great-grandfather. As is usually found to be the case, where a man
thinks lightly of the advantages of birth, Messenger was by no means
of despicable extraction. His grandfather was a man of considerable
property, and married Elizabeth Messenger, co-heir of Thomas
Messenger, lord of Whitwell Manor, in the county of Norfolk, a
gentleman by birth and position; and his father, the Rev. Robert
Monsey, a Norfolk rector, married Mary, the daughter of Roger Clopton,
rector of Downham. Of the antiquity and importance of the Cloptons
amongst the gentle families of England this is no place to speak; but
further particulars relative to the Monsey pedigree may be found by
the curious in Bloomfield's "History of Norfolk." On such a descent a
Celt would persuade himself that he represented kings and rulers.
Monsey, like Sydney Smith after him, preferred to cover the whole
question with jolly, manly ridicule, and put it out of sight.
Messenger Monsey was born in 1693, and received in early life an
excellent education; for though his father at the Revolution threw his
lot in with the nonjurors, and forfeited his living, the worthy
clergyman had a sufficient paternal estate to enable him to rear his
only child without any painful considerations of cost. After spending
five years at St. Mary's Hall, Cambridge, Messenger studied physic for
some time under Sir Benjamin Wrench, at Norwich. Starting on his own
account, he practised for a while at Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, but
with little success. He worked hard, and yet never managed in that
prosperous and beautiful country town to earn more than three hundred
guineas in the same year. If we examined into the successes of medical
celebrities, we should find in a great majority of cases fortune was
won by the aspirant either annexing himself to, and gliding into the
confidence of, a powerful clique, or else by his being through some
lucky accident thrown in the way of a patron. Monsey's rise was of the
latter sort. He was still at Bury, with nothing before him but the
prospect of working all his days as a country doctor, when Lord
Godolphin, son of Queen Anne's Lord Treasurer, and grandson of the
great Duke of Marlborough, was seized, on the road to Newmarket, with
an attack of apoplexy. Bury was the nearest point where medical
assistance could be obtained. Monsey was summoned, and so fascinated
his patient with his conversational powers that his Lordship invited
him to London, and induced him to relinquish his country practice.
From that time Monsey's fortune was made. He became to the Whigs very
much what, in the previous generation, Radcliffe had been to the
Tories. Sir Robert Walpole genuinely loved him, seizing every
opportunity to enjoy his society, and never doing anything for him;
and Lord Chesterfield was amongst the most zealous trumpeters of his
medical skill. Lively, sagacious, well-read, and brutally sarcastic,
he had for a while a society reputation for wit scarcely inferior to
Swift's; and he lived amongst men well able to judge of wit. Garrick
and he were for many years intimate friends, until, in a contest of
jokes, each of the two brilliant men lost his temper, and they parted
like Roland and Sir Leoline--never to meet again. Garrick probably
would have kept his temper under any other form of ridicule, but he
never ceased to resent Monsey's reflection on his avarice to the
Bishop of Sodor and Man.
"Garrick is going to quit the stage," observed the Bishop.
"That he'll never do," answered Monsey, making use of a Norfolk
proverb, "so long as he knows a guinea is cross on one side and pile
on the other."
This speech was never forgiven. Lord Bath endeavoured to effect a
reconciliation between the divided friends, but his amiable intention
was of no avail.
"I thank you," said Monsey; "but why will your Lordship trouble
yourself with the squabbles of a Merry Andrew and quack doctor?"
When the tragedian was on his death-bed, Monsey composed a satire on
the sick man, renewing the attack on his parsimony. Garrick's illness,
however, terminating fatally, the doctor destroyed his verses, but
some scraps of them still remain to show their spirit and power. A
consultation of physicians was represented as being held over the
actor:--
"Seven wise physicians lately met,
To save a wretched sinner;
Come, Tom, said Jack, pray let's be quick,
Or I shall lose my dinner.
. . . . .
"Some roared for rhubarb, jalap some,
And some cried out for Dover;
Lets give him something, each man said--
Why e'en let's give him--over."
After much learned squabbling, one of the sages proposed to revive the
sinking energies of the poor man by jingling guineas in his ears. The
suggestion was acted upon, when--
"Soon as the fav'rite sound he heard,
One faint effort he try'd;
He op'd his eyes, he stretched his hands,
He made one grasp--and dy'd."
Though, on the grave closing over his antagonist, Monsey suppressed
these lines, he continued to cherish an animosity to the object of
them. The spirit in which, out of respect to death, he drew a period
to their quarrel, was much like that of the Irish peasant in the song,
who tells his ghostly adviser that he forgives Pat Malone with all his
heart (supposing death should get the better of him)--but should he
recover, he means to pay the rascal off roundly. Sir Walter Scott
somewhere tells a story of a Highland chief, in his last moments
declaring that he from the bottom of his heart forgave his old enemy,
the head of a hostile clan--and concluding this Christian avowal with
a final address to his son--"But may all evil light upon ye, Ronald,
if ye e'er forgie the heathen."
Through Lord Godolphin's interest, Monsey was appointed physician to
Chelsea College, on the death of Dr. Smart. For some time he continued
to reside in St. James's: but on the death of his patron he moved to
Chelsea, and spent the last years of his life in retirement--and to a
certain extent banishment--from the great world. The hospital offices
were then filled by a set of low-born scoundrels, or discharged
servants, whom the ministers of various Cabinets had had some reason
of their own for providing for. The surgeon was that Mr. Ranby who
positively died of rage because Henry Fielding's brother (Sir John)
would not punish a hackney coachman who had been guilty of the high
treason of--being injured and abused by the plaintiff. With this man
Monsey had a tremendous quarrel; but though in the right, he had to
submit to Ranby's powerful connections.
This affair did not soften his temper to the other functionaries of
the hospital with whom he had to associate at the hall table. His
encounter with the venal elector who had been nominated to a Chelsea
appointment is well known, though an account of it would hurt the
delicacy of these somewhat prudish pages. Of the doctor's insolence
the following is a good story:--
A clergyman, who used to bore him with pompous and pedantic talk, was
arguing on some point with Monsey, when the latter exclaimed:--
"Sir, if you have faith in your opinion, will you venture a wager upon
it?"
"I could--but I won't," was the reply.
"Then," rejoined Monsey, "you have very little wit, or very little
money." The logic of this retort puts one in mind of the eccentric
actor who, under somewhat similar circumstances, asked indignantly,
"Then, sir, how _dare_ you advance a statement in a public room which
you are not prepared to substantiate with a bet!"
Monsey was a Unitarian, and not at all backward to avow his creed. As
he was riding in Hyde Park with a Mr. Robinson, that gentleman, after
deploring the corrupt morals of the age, said, with very bad taste,
"But, Doctor, I talk with one who believes there is no God." "And I,"
retorted Monsey, "with one who believes there are three." Good Mr.
Robinson was so horrified that he clapped spurs to his horse, galloped
off, and never spoke to the doctor again.
Monsey's Whiggism introduced him to high society, but not to lucrative
practice. Sir Robert Walpole always extoled the merits of his "Norfolk
Doctor," but never advanced his interests. Instead of covering the
great minister with adulation, Monsey treated him like an ordinary
individual, telling him when his jokes were poor, and not hesitating
to worst him in argument. "How happens it," asked Sir Robert, over his
wine, "that nobody will beat me at billiards, or contradict me, but
Dr. Monsey!" "Other people," put in the doctor, "get places--I get a
dinner and praise." The Duke of Grafton treated him even worse. His
Grace staved off paying the physician his bill for attending him and
his family at Windsor, with promises of a place. When "the little
place" fell vacant, Monsey called on the duke, and reminded him of his
promise. "Ecod--ecod--ecod," was the answer, "but the Chamberlain has
just been here to tell me he has promised it to Jack ----." When the
disappointed applicant told the lord-chamberlain what had transpired,
his Lordship replied, "Don't, for the world, tell his Grace; but
before he knew I had promised it, here is a letter he sent me,
soliciting for _a third person_."
Amongst the vagaries of this eccentric physician was the way in which
he extracted his own teeth. Round the tooth sentenced to be drawn he
fastened securely a strong piece of catgut, to the opposite end of
which he affixed a bullet. With this bullet and a full measure of
powder a pistol was charged. On the trigger being pulled, the
operation was performed effectually and speedily. The doctor could
only rarely prevail on his friends to permit him to remove their teeth
by this original process. Once a gentleman who had agreed to try the
novelty, and had even allowed the apparatus to be adjusted, at the
last moment exclaimed, "Stop, stop, I've changed my mind!" "But I
haven't, and you're a fool and a coward for your pains," answered the
doctor, pulling the trigger. In another instant the tooth was
extracted, much to the timid patient's delight and astonishment.
At Chelsea, to the last, the doctor saw on friendly terms all the
distinguished medical men of his day. Cheselden, fonder of having his
horses admired than his professional skill extolled, as Pope and
Freind knew, was his frequent visitor. He had also his loves. To Mrs.
Montague, for many years, he presented a copy of verses on the
anniversary of her birth-day. But after his quarrel with Garrick, he
saw but little of the lady, and was rarely, if ever, a visitor at her
magnificent house in Portman Square. Another of his flames, too, was
Miss Berry, of whom the loss still seems to be recent. In his old age,
avarice--the very same failing he condemned so much in Garrick--developed
itself in Monsey. In comparatively early life his mind was in a
flighty state about money matters. For years he was a victim of that
incredulity which makes the capitalist imagine a great and prosperous
country to be the most insecure of all debtors. He preferred investing
his money in any wild speculation to confiding it to the safe custody
of the funds. Even his ready cash he for long could not bring himself
to trust in the hands of a banker. When he left town for a trip, he
had recourse to the most absurd schemes for the protection of his
money. Before setting out, on one occasion, for a journey to Norfolk,
incredulous with regard to cash-boxes and bureaus, he hid a
considerable quantity of gold and notes in the fireplace of his study,
covering them up artistically with cinders and shavings. A month
afterwards, returning (luckily a few days before he was expected), he
found his old house-maid preparing to entertain a few friends at tea
in her master's room. The hospitable domestic was on the point of
lighting the fire, and had just applied a candle to the doctor's
notes, when he entered the room, seized on a pail of water that
chanced to be standing near, and, throwing its contents over the fuel
and the old woman, extinguished the fire and her presence of mind at
the same time. Some of the notes, as it was, were injured, and the
Bank of England made objections to cashing them.
To the last Monsey acted by his own rules instead of by those of other
people. He lived to extreme old age, dying in his rooms in Chelsea
College, on December 26th, 1788, in his ninety-fifth year; and his
will was as remarkable as any other feature of his career. To a young
lady mentioned in it, with the most lavish encomiums on her wit,
taste, and elegance, was left an old battered snuff-box--not worth
sixpence; and to another young lady, whom the testator says he
intended to have enriched with a handsome legacy, he leaves the
gratifying assurance that he changed his mind on finding her "a pert,
conceited minx." After inveighing against bishops, deans, and
chapters, he left an annuity to two clergymen who had resigned their
preferment on account of the Athanasian doctrine. He directed that his
body should not be insulted with any funeral ceremony, but should
undergo dissection; after which, the "remainder of my carcase" (to use
his own words) "may be put into a hole, or crammed into a box with
holes, and thrown into the Thames." In obedience to this part of the
will, Mr. Forster, surgeon, of Union Court, Broad Street, dissected
the body, and delivered a lecture on it to the medical students in the
theatre of Guy's Hospital. The bulk of the doctor's fortune, amounting
to about £16,000, was left to his only daughter for life, and after
her demise, by a complicated entail, to her _female_ descendants. This
only child, Charlotte Monsey, married William Alexander, a
linen-draper in Cateaton Street, City, and had a numerous family. One
of her daughters married the Rev. Edmund Rolfe, rector of Cockley
Clay, Norfolk, of which union Robert Monsey Rolfe, Baron Cranworth of
Cranworth, county of Norfolk, is the offspring.
Before making the above-named and final disposition of his body, the
old man found vent for his ferocious cynicism and vulgar infidelity in
the following epitaph, which is scarcely less characteristic of the
society in which the writer had lived, than it is of the writer
himself:--
"MOUNSEY'S EPITAPH, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF."
"Here lie my old bones; my vexation now ends;
I have lived much too long for myself and my friends.
As to churches and churchyards, which men may call holy,
'Tis a rank piece of priestcraft, and founded on folly.
What the next world may be never troubled my pate;
And be what it may, I beseech you, O fate,
When the bodies of millions rise up in a riot,
To let the old carcase of Mounsey be quiet."
Unpleasant old scamp though he in many respects was, Monsey retains
even at this day so firm a hold of the affections of all students who
like ferreting into the social history of the last century, that no
chance letter of his writing is devoid of interest. The following
specimen of his epistolary style, addressed to his fair patient, the
accomplished and celebrated Mrs. Montague (his acquaintance with which
lady has already been alluded to), is transcribed from the original
manuscript in the possession of Dr. Diamond:--
"4th of March, a minute past 12.
"DEAR MADAME,
"Now dead men's ghosts are getting out of their graves, and
there comes the ghost of a doctor in a white sheet to wait
upon you. Your Tokay is got into my head and your love into
my heart, and they both join to club their thanks for the
pleasantest day I have spent these seven years; and to my
comfort I find a man may be in love, and be happy, provided
he does not go to book for it. I could have trusted till
the morning to show my gratitude, but the Tokay wou'd have
evaporated, and then I might have had nothing to talk of but
an ache in my head and pain in my heart. Bacchus and Cupid
should always be together, for the young gentleman is very
apt to be silly when he's alone by himself; but when old
toss-pot is with him, if he pretends to fall a whining, he
hits him a cursed knock on the pate, and says: 'Drink about,
you....' 'No, Bacchus, don't be in a passion. Upon my soul
you have knocked out one of my eyes!' 'Eyes, ye scroundrel?
Why, you have never had one since you were born.... Apollo
would have couched you, but your mother said no; for then,
says she, "he can never be blamed for his shot, any more
than the people that are shot at." She knew 'twould bring
grist to her mill; for what with those who pretended they
were in love and were not so, and those who were really so
and wouldn't own it, I shall find rantum scantum work at
Cyprus, Paphos, and Cythera. Some will come to acquire what
they never had, and others to get rid of what they find very
troublesome, and I shall mind none of 'em.' You see how the
goddess foresaw and predicted my misfortunes. She knew I was
a sincere votary, and that I was a martyr to her serene
influence. Then how could you use me so like an Hyrcanian
tygress, and be such an infidel to misery; that though I
hate you mortally, I wish you may feel but one poor
_half-quarter-of-an-hour_ before you slip your breath--how
shall I rejoice at your horrid agonies? _Nec enim lex
justior ulla Quam necis artifices arte perire suâ_--Remember
Me.
"My ills have disturbed my brain, and the revival of old
ideas has set it a-boyling, that, till I have skim'd off
the froth, I can't pretend to say a word for myself; and by
the time I have cleared off the scum, the little grudge that
is left may be burnt to the bottom of the pot.
"My mortal injuries have turned my mind,
And I could hate myself for being blind
But why should I thus rave of eyes and looks?
All I have felt is fancy--all from Books.
I stole my charmers from the cuts of Quarles,
And my dear Clarissa from the grand Sir Charles.
But if his mam or Cupid live above,
Who have revenge in store for injured love,
O Venus, send dire ruin on her head,
Strike the Destroyer, lay the Victress dead;
Kill the Triumphress, and avenge my wrong
In height of pomp, while she is warm and young.
Grant I may stand and dart her with my eyes
While in the fiercest pangs of life she lies,
Pursue her sportive soul and shoot it as it flies,
And cry with joy--There Montague lies flat,
Who wronged my passion with her barbarous Chat,
And was as cruel as a Cat to Rat,
As cat to rat--ay, ay, as cat to rat.
And when you got her up into your house,
Clinch yr, fair fist, and give her such a souse:
There, Hussy, take you that for all your Prate,
Your barbarous heart I do a-bo-mi-nate.
I'll take your part, my dearest faithful Doctor!
I've told my son, and see how he has mockt her!
He'll fire her soul and make her rant and rave;
See how she groans to be old Vulcan's slave.
The fatal bow is bent. Shoot, Cupid, shoot,
And there's your Montague all over soot.
Now say no more my little Boy is blind,
For sure this tyrant he has paid in kind.
She fondly thought to captivate a lord.
A lord, sweet queen? 'Tis true, upon my word.
And what's his name? His name? Why--
And thought her parts and wit the feat had done.
But he had parts and wit as well as she.
Why then, 'tis strange those folks did not agree.
Agree? Why, had she lived one moment longer,
His love was strong, but madam's grew much stronger.
_Hiatus valde deflendus._
So for her long neglect of Venus' altar
I changed Cu's Bowstring to a silken Halter;
I made the noose, and Cupid drew the knot.
Dear mam! says he, don't let her lie and rot,
She is too pretty. Hold your tongue, you sot!
The pretty blockhead? None of yr. rogue's tricks.
Ask her, she'll own she's turned of thirty-six.
I was but twenty when I got the apple,
And let me tell you, 'twas a cursed grapple.
Had I but staid till I was twenty-five,
I'ad surely lost it, as you're now alive!
Paris had said to Juno and Minerva,
Ladies, I'm yours, and shall be glad to serve yer;
I must have bowed to wisdom and to power.
And Troy had stood it to this very hour,
Homer had never wrote, nor wits had read
Achilles' anger or Patroclus dead.
We gods and goddesses had lived in riot,
And the blind fool had let us all be quiet.
Mortals had never been stunn'd with!!!!!!!--
Nor Virgil's wooden horse play'd Hocus Pocus.
Hang the two Bards! But Montague is pretty.
Sirrah, you lie; but I'll allow she's witty.
Well! but I'm told she was so at fifteen,
Ay, and the veriest so that e'er was seen.
Why that I own; and I myself----
"But, hold! as in all probability I am going to tell a
parcel of cursed lies, I'll travel no further, lay down my
presumptuous pen, and go to bed; for it's half-past two, and
two hours and an half is full long enough to write nonsense
at one time. You see what it is to give a Goth Tokay: you
manure your land with filth, and it produces Tokay; you
enrich a man with Tokay, and he brings forth the froth and
filth of nonsense. You will learn how to bestow it better
another time. I hope what you took yourself had a better, or
at least no bad, effect. I wish you had wrote me a note
after your first sleep. There wou'd have been your sublime
double-distilled, treble-refined wit. I shouldn't have known
it to be yours if it could have been anybody's else.
"Pray don't show these humble rhimes to R----y. That puppy
will write notes upon 'em or perhaps paint 'em upon
sign-posts, and make 'em into an invitation to draw people
to see the Camel and Dromedary--for I see he can make
anything of anything; but, after all, why should I be
afraid? Perhaps he might make something of nothing. I have
wrote in heroics. Sure the wretch will have a reverence for
heroics, especially for such as he never saw before, and
never may again. Well, upon my life I will go to bed--'tis a
burning shame to sit up so. I lie, for my fire is out, and
so will my candle too if I write a word more.
"So I will only make my mark. =X=
"God eternally bless and preserve you from such writers."
"March 5th, 12 o'clock.
"DEAR MRS. MONTAGUE,
"My fever has been so great that I have not had any time to
write to you in such a manner as to try and convince you
that I had recovered my senses, and I could write a sober
line. Pray, how do you do after your wine and its effects on
you, as well as upon me? You are grown a right down rake,
and I never expect you for a patient again as long as we
live, the last relation I should like to stand to you in,
and which nothing could make bearable but serving you, and
that is a _J'ay pays_ for all my misery in serving you ill.
"I am called out, so adieu."
"March 6th.
"How do you stand this flabby weather? I tremble to hear,
but want to hear of all things. If you have done with my
stupid West India Ly., pray send 'em, for they go to-morrow
or next day at latest. 'Tis hardly worth while to trouble
Ld L with so much chaff and so little wheat--then why you!
"Very true. 'Tis a sad thing to have to do with a fool, who
can't keep his nonsense to himself. You know I am a rose,
but I have terrible prickles. Dear madam, adieu. Pray God I
may hear you are well, or that He will enable me to make you
so, for you must not be sick or die. I'll find fools and
rogues enough to be that for you, that are good for nothing
else, and hardly, very hardly, good enough for that. Adieu,
Adieu! I say Adieu, Adieu.
"M. M."
Truly did Dr. Messenger Monsey understand the art of writing a long
letter about nothing.