THE LOVES OF PHYSICIANS.
Honour has flowed to physicians by the regular channels of
professional duty in but scant allowance. Their children have been
frequently ennobled by marriage or for political services. Sir Hans
Sloane's daughter Elizabeth, and manor of Chelsea, passed into the
Cadogan family, the lady marrying the second Baron Cadogan. Like Sir
Hans, Dr. Huck Sanders left behind him two daughters, co-heiresses of
his wealth, of whom one (Jane) was ennobled through wedlock, the tenth
Earl of Westmoreland raising her to be his second wife. Lord
Combermere married the heiress of Dr. Gibbings, of Cork. In the same
way Dr. Marwood's property came to the present Sir Marwood Elton by
the marriage of his grandfather with Frances, the daughter and heiress
of the Devonshire doctor. On the other hand, as instances of the
offspring of physicians exalted to the ranks of the aristocracy for
their political services, the Lords Sidmouth, Denman, and Kingsdown
may be mentioned. Henry Addington, created Viscount Sidmouth, of the
county of Devon, was the eldest son of Anthony Addington, M.D., of
Reading--the physician who objected to fighting any brother physician
who had not graduated at either Oxford or Cambridge. Dr. Anthony was
the enthusiastic toady of the great Earl of Chatham. Devoted to his
own interests and the Pitt family, he rose from the humble position of
keeper of a provincial lunatic asylum to eminence in the medical
profession. Coming up to town in 1754, under the patronage of Pitt, he
succeeded in gaining the confidence of the Court, and was, with Dr.
Richard Warren, Dr. Francis Willis, Dr. Thomas Gisborne, Sir Lucas
Pepys, and Dr. Henry Revell Reynolds, examined, in 1782, by the
committee appointed to examine "the physicians who attended his
illness, touching the state of his Majesty's health." He took a very
hopeful view of the king's case; and on being asked the foundation of
his hopes, alluded to his experience in the treatment of the insane at
Reading. The doctor had himself a passion for political intrigue,
which descended to his son. The career of this son, who raised himself
to the Speaker's chair in the House of Commons, to the dignity of
First Minister of the Crown, and to the peerage of the realm, is
matter of history.
Lord Denman was closely connected with the medical profession by
family ties: his father being Dr. Denman, of Mount Street, Grosvenor
Square, the author of a well-known work on a department of his
profession; his uncle being Dr. Joseph Denman of Bakewell; and his two
sisters having married two eminent physicians, Margaret being the wife
of Sir Richard Croft, Bart., and Sophia the wife of Dr. Baillie. Lord
Kingsdown's medical ancestor was his grandfather, Edward Pemberton,
M.D., of Warrington.
But though the list of the ennobled descendants of medical
practitioners might be extended to the limits of a volume, the writer
of these pages is not aware of any case in which a doctor has, by the
exercise of his calling, raised himself to the peerage. As yet, the
dignity of a baronetcy is the highest honour conferred on the most
illustrious of the medical faculty, Sir Hans Sloane being the first of
the order to whom that rank was presented. More than once a physician
has won admission into the _noblesse_, but the battle resulting in
such success has been fought in the arena of politics or the bustle of
the law courts. Sylvester Douglas deserted the counter, at which he
commenced life an apothecary, and after a prolonged servitude to, or
warfare with, the cliques of the House of Commons, had his exertions
rewarded and his ambition gratified with an Irish peerage and a
patrician wife. On his elevation he was of course taunted with the
humility of his origin, and by none was the reproach flung at him with
greater bitterness than it was by a brother _parvenu_ and brother
poet.
"What's his title to be?" asked Sheridan, as he was playing at cards;
"what's Sylvester Douglas to be called?"
"Lord Glenbervie," was the answer.
"Good Lord!" replied Sheridan; and then he proceeded to fire off an
_impromptu_, which he had that morning industriously prepared in bed,
and which he subsequently introduced into one of his best satiric
pieces.
"Glenbervie, Glenbervie,
What's good for the scurvy?
For ne'er be your old trade forgot.
In your arms rather quarter
A pestle and mortar,
And your crest be a spruce gallipot."
The brilliant partizan and orator displayed more wit, if not better
taste, in his ridicule of Addington, who, in allusion to the rise of
his father from a humble position in the medical profession, was
ordinarily spoken of by political opponents as "The Doctor." On one
occasion, when the Scotch members who usually supported Addington
voted in a body with the opposition, Sheridan, with a laugh of
triumph, fired off a happy mis-quotation from Macbeth,--"Doctor, the
Thanes fly from thee."
Henry Bickersteth, Lord Langdale, was the luckiest of physicians and
lawyers. He used the medical profession as a stepping-stone, and the
legal profession as a ladder, and had the fortune to win two of the
brightest prizes of life--wealth and a peerage--without the
humiliation and toil of serving a political party in the House of
Commons. The second son of a provincial surgeon, he was apprenticed to
his father, and educated for the paternal calling. On being qualified
to kill, he became medical attendant to the late Earl of Oxford,
during that nobleman's travels on the Continent. Returning to his
native town, Kirby Lonsdale, he for awhile assisted his father in the
management of his practice; but resolved on a different career from
that of a country doctor, he became a member of Caius College,
Cambridge, and devoted himself to mathematical study with such success
that, in 1808, when he was twenty-eight years old, he became Senior
Wrangler and First Smith's prizeman. As late as the previous year he
was consulted medically by his father. In 1811 he was called to the
bar by the Inner Temple, and from that time till his elevation to the
Mastership of the Rolls he was both the most hard-working and
hard-worked of the lawyers in the Equity Courts, to which he confined
his practice. In 1827 he became a bencher of his Inn; and, in 1835,
although he was a staunch and zealous liberal, and a strenuous
advocate of Jeremy Bentham's opinions, he was offered a seat on the
judicial bench by Sir Robert Peel. This offer he declined, though he
fully appreciated the compliment paid him by the Tory chieftain. He
had not, however, to wait long for his promotion. In the following
year (1836) he was, by his own friends, made Master of the Rolls, and
created a peer of the realm, with the additional honour of being a
Privy-Councillor. His Lordship died at Tunbridge Wells, in 1851, in
his sixty-eighth year. It would be difficult to point to a more
enviable career in legal annals than that of this medical lawyer, who
won the most desirable honours of his profession without ever sitting
in the House of Commons, or acting as a legal adviser of the
Crown--and when he had not been called quite twenty-five years. To
give another touch to this picture of a successful life, it may be
added, that Lord Langdale, after rising to eminence, married
Elizabeth, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, to whom he had formerly
been travelling medical attendant.
Love has not unfrequently smiled on doctors, and elevated them to
positions at which they would never have arrived by their professional
labours. Sir Lucas Pepys, who married the Countess De Rothes, and Sir
Henry Halford, whose wife was a daughter of the eleventh Lord St. John
of Blestoe, are conspicuous amongst the more modern instances of
medical practitioners advancing their social condition by aristocratic
alliances. Not less fortunate was the farcical Sir John Hill, who
gained for a bride the Honourable Miss Jones, a daughter of Lord
Ranelagh--a nobleman whose eccentric opinion, that the welfare of the
country required a continual intermixture of the upper and lower
classes of society, was a frequent object of ridicule with the
caricaturists and lampoon-writers of his time. But the greatest prize
ever made by an Æsculapius in the marriage-market was that acquired by
Sir Hugh Smithson, who won the hand of Percy's proud heiress, and was
created Duke of Northumberland. The son of a Yorkshire baronet's
younger son, Hugh Smithson was educated for an apothecary--a vocation
about the same time followed for several years by Sir Thomas Geery
Cullum, before he succeeded to the family estate and dignity. Hugh
Smithson's place of business was Hatton Garden, but the length of time
that he there presided over a pestle and mortar is uncertain. In 1736
he became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, but he withdrew from
that learned body, on the books of which his signature may be found,
in the year 1740. A few months after this secession, Sir Hugh led to
the altar the only child and heiress of Algernon Seymour, Duke of
Somerset. There still lives a tradition that the lady made the offer
to Sir Hugh immediately after his rejection by a famous belle of
private rank and modest wealth. Another version of the story is that,
when she heard of his disappointment, she observed publicly, "that the
disdainful beauty was a fool, and that no other woman in England would
be guilty of like folly." On hearing this, the baronet, a singularly
handsome man, took courage to sue for that to which men of far higher
rank would not have presumed to aspire. The success that followed his
daring, of course, brought upon him the arrows of envy. He had won so
much, however, that he could, without ill-humour, bear being laughed
at. On being created Duke of Northumberland in 1766, he could afford
to smile at a proposition that his coronet should be surrounded with
senna, instead of strawberry-leaves; for, however much obscure
jealousy might affect to contemn him, he was no fit object for
disdain--but a gentleman of good intellect and a lordly presence, and
(though he had mixed drugs behind a counter) descended from an old and
honourable family. The reproach of being a Smithson, and no Percy, had
more force when applied to the second duke in the Anti-Jacobin, than
it had when hurled vindictively at the ex-doctor himself by the
mediocrities of the _beau monde_, whom he had beaten on their own
ground by superior attractions and accomplishments.
"Nay," quoth the Duke, "in thy black scroll
Deductions I espye--
For those who, poor, and mean, and low,
With children burthen'd lie.
"And though full sixty thousand pounds
My vassals pay to me,
From Cornwall to Northumberland,
Through many a fair countree;
"Yet England's church, its king, its laws,
Its cause I value not,
Compared with this, my constant text,
_A penny saved is got_.
"No drop of princely Percy's blood
Through these cold veins doth run;
With Hotspur's castles, blazon, name,
I still am _poor_ Smithson."
Considering the opportunities that medical men have for pressing a
suit in love, and the many temptations to gentle emotion that they
experience in the aspect of feminine suffering, and the confiding
gratitude of their fair patients, it is perhaps to be wondered at that
only one medical duke is to be found in the annals of the peerage.
When Swift's Stella was on her death-bed, her physician said,
encouragingly--"Madam, you are certainly near the bottom of the hill,
but we shall endeavour to get you up once more," the _naïve_ reply of
the poor lady was, "Doctor, I am afraid I shall be out _of breath_
before I get to the top again." Not less touching was the fear
expressed by Steele's merry daughter to her doctor, that she should
"die _before the holidays_." Both Stella and Sir Richard's child had
left their personal charms behind them when they so addressed their
physicians; but imagine, my brother, what the effect of such words
would be on your susceptible heart, if they came from the lips of a
beautiful girl. Would you not (think you) try to win other such
speeches from her?--and if you tried, dear sir, surely _you_ would
succeed!
Prudence would order a physician, endowed with a heart, to treat it in
the same way as Dr. Glynn thought a cucumber ought to be dressed--to
slice it very thin, pepper it plentifully, pour upon it plenty of the
best vinegar, and then--throw it away. A doctor has quite enough work
on his hands to keep the affections of his patients in check, without
having to mount guard over his own emotions. Thackeray says that girls
make love in the nursery, and practise the arts of coquetry on the
page-boy who brings the coals upstairs--a hard saying for simple young
gentlemen triumphing in the possession of a _first_ love. The writer
of these pages could point to a fair dame, who enjoys rank amongst the
highest and wealth equal to the station assigned her by the heralds,
who not only aimed tender glances, and sighed amorously to a young
waxen-faced, blue-eyed apothecary, but even went so far as to write
him a letter proposing an elopement, and other merry arrangements, in
which a carriage, everlastingly careering over the country at the
heels of four horses, bore a conspicuous part. The silly maiden had,
like Dinah, "a fortune in silvyer and gold," amounting to £50,000, and
her blue-eyed Adonis was twice her age; but fortunately he was a
gentleman of honour, and, without divulging the mad proposition of the
young lady, he induced her father to take her away for twelve months'
change of air and scene. Many years since the heroine of this little
episode, after she had become the wife of a very great man, and the
mother of children who bid fair to become ornaments to their
illustrious race, expressed her gratitude cordially to this Joseph of
the doctors, for his magnanimity in not profiting by the absurd
fancies of a child, and the delicacy with which he had taken prompt
measures for her happiness; and, more recently, she manifested her
good will to the man who had offered her what is generally regarded as
the greatest insult a woman can experience, by procuring a commission
in the army for his eldest son.
The embarrassments Sir John Eliot suffered under from the emotional
overtures of his fair patients are well known. St. John Long himself
had not more admirers amongst the _élite_ of high-born English ladies.
The king had a strong personal dislike to Sir John,--a dislike
possibly heightened by a feeling that it was sheer impudence in a
doctor to capture without an effort the hearts of half the prettiest
women amongst his subjects--and then shrug his shoulders with chagrin
at his success. Lord George Germain had hard work to wring a baronetcy
out of his Majesty for this victim of misplaced affection.
"Well," said the king, at last grudgingly promising to make Eliot a
baronet--"my Lord, since you desire it, let it be; but remember he
shall not be my physician."
"No, sir," answered Lord George--"he shall be your Majesty's baronet,
and my physician."
Amongst other plans Sir John resorted to, to scare away his patients
and patronesses, he had a death's-head painted on his carriage-panels;
but the result of this eccentric measure on his practice and on his
sufferings was the reverse of what he desired. One lady--the daughter
of a noble member of a Cabinet--ignorant that he was otherwise
occupied, made him an offer, and on learning to her astonishment that
he was a married man, vowed that she would not rest till she had
assassinated his wife.
Poor Radcliffe's loves were of a less flattering sort, though they
resembled Sir John Eliot's in respect of being instances of
reciprocity all on one side. But the amorous follies of Radcliffe,
ludicrous though they became under the touches of Steele's pen, are
dignified and manly when compared with the senile freaks of Dr. Mead,
whose highest delight was to comb the hair of the lady on whom, for
the time being, his affections were set.
Dr. Cadogan, of Charles the Second's time, was, like Sir John Eliot, a
favourite with the ladies. His wont was to spend his days in shooting
and his evenings in flirtation. To the former of these tastes the
following lines refer:--
"Doctor, all game you either ought to shun,
Or sport no longer with the unsteady gun;
But like physicians of undoubted skill,
Gladly attempt what never fails to kill,
Not lead's uncertain dross, but physic's deadly pill."
Whether he was a good shot we cannot say; but he was sufficiently
adroit as a squire of dames, for he secured as his wife a wealthy
lady, over whose property he had unfettered control. Against the
money, however, there were two important points figuring under the
head of "set-off"--the bride was old and querulous. Of course such a
woman was unfitted to live happily with an eminent physician, on whom
bevies of court ladies smiled whenever he went west of Charing Cross.
After spending a few months in alternate fits of jealous hate and
jealous fondness, the poor creature conceived the terrible fancy that
her husband was bent on destroying her with poison, and so ridding his
life of her execrable temper. One day, when surrounded by her friends,
and in the presence of her lord and master, she fell on her back in a
state of hysterical spasms, exclaiming:--
"Ah! he has killed me at last. I am poisoned!"
"Poisoned!" cried the lady-friends, turning up the whites of their
eyes. "Oh! gracious goodness!--you have done it, doctor!"
"What do you accuse me of?" asked the doctor, with surprise.
"I accuse you--of--killing me--ee," responded the wife, doing her best
to imitate a death-struggle.
"Ladies," answered the doctor, with admirable _nonchalance_, bowing to
Mrs. Cadogan's bosom associates, "it is perfectly false. You are quite
welcome to open her at once, and then you'll discover the calumny."
John Hunter administered a scarcely less startling reproof to his
wife, who, though devoted in her attachment to him, and in every
respect a lady worthy of esteem, caused her husband at times no little
vexation by her fondness for society. She was in the habit of giving
enormous routs, at which authors and artists, of all shades of merit
and demerit, used to assemble to render homage to her literary powers,
which were very far from common-place. A lasting popularity has
attested the excellence of her song:--
"My mother bids me bind my hair
With bands of rosy hue;
Tie up my sleeves with ribbons rare,
And lace my boddice blue.
"'For why,' she cries, 'sit still and weep,
While others dance and play?'
Alas! I scarce can go or creep,
While Lubin is away.
"'Tis sad to think the days are gone,
When those we love are near;
I sit upon this mossy stone,
And sigh when none can hear.
"And while I spin my flaxen thread,
And sing my simple lay,
The village seems asleep or dead,
Now Lubin is away."
John Hunter had no sympathy with his wife's poetical aspirations,
still less with the society which those aspirations led her to
cultivate. Grudging the time which the labours of practice prevented
him from devoting to the pursuits of his museum and laboratory he
could not restrain his too irritable temper when Mrs. Hunter's
frivolous amusements deprived him of the quiet requisite for study.
Even the fee of a patient who called him from his dissecting
instruments could not reconcile him to the interruption. "I must go,"
he would say reluctantly to his friend Lynn, when the living summoned
him from his investigations among the dead, "and earn this d----d
guinea, or I shall be sure to want it to-morrow." Imagine the wrath of
such a man, finding, on his return from a long day's work, his house
full of musical professors, connoisseurs, and fashionable idlers--in
fact, all the confusion and hubbub and heat of a grand party, which
his lady had forgotten to inform him was that evening to come off!
Walking straight into the middle of the principal reception-room, he
faced round and surveyed his unwelcome guests, who were not a little
surprised to see him--dusty, toilworn, and grim--so unlike what "the
man of the house" ought to be on such an occasion.
"I knew nothing," was his brief address to the astounded crowd--"I
knew nothing of this kick-up, and I ought to have been informed of it
beforehand; but, as I have now returned home to study, I hope the
present company will retire."
Mrs Hunter's drawing-rooms were speedily empty.
One of the drollest love stories in medical ana is that which relates
to Dr. Thomas Dawson, a century since alike admired by the inhabitants
of Hackney as a pulpit orator and a physician. Dawson was originally a
Suffolk worthy, unconnected, however, with the eccentric John Dawson,
who, in the reign of Charles the Second, was an apothecary in the
pleasant old town of Framlingham, in that county. His father, a
dissenting minister, had seven sons, and educated six of them for the
Nonconformist pulpit. Of these six, certainly three joined the
Established Church, and became rectors--two of the said three,
Benjamin and Abraham, being controversial writers of considerable
merit. Thomas Dawson adhered to the tenets of his father, and,
combining the vocations of divine and physic-man, preached on Sundays,
and doctored during the rest of the week. He was Mead and Mead's
father in one: though the conditions of human existence, which render
it impossible for one person to be in two places at the same time,
prevented him from leaving chapel to visit his patients, and the next
minute urging the congregation to offer up a prayer for the welfare of
the unfortunate sufferers. Amongst the doctor's circle of acquaintance
Miss Corbett of Hackney was at the same time the richest, the most
devout, and the most afflicted in bodily health. Ministering to her
body and soul, Dr. Dawson had frequent occasions for visiting her. One
day he found her alone, sitting with the large family Bible before
her, meditating on perhaps the grandest chapter in all the Old
Testament. The doctor read the words to which the forefinger of her
right hand pointed--the words of Nathan to David: "_Thou art the
man_." The doctor took the hint; and on the 29th of May, 1758, he
found a wife--and the pious lady won a husband. The only offspring of
this strange match was one son, a Mr. Dawson, who still resides at a
very advanced age of life in the charming village of Botesdale, in
Suffolk. When the writer of these pages was a happy little boy, making
his first acquaintance with Latin and Greek, at the Botesdale Grammar
School, then presided over by the pious, manly, and gentle ----, he
was an especial pet with Mr. Dawson. The worthy gentleman's little
house was in the centre of a large garden, densely stocked with apple
and other fruit trees; and in it he led a very retired life, visited
by only a very few friends, and tended by two or three servants--of
whom one, an ancient serving man, acted as a valet, gardener, and
groom to an antique horse which constituted Mr. Dawson's entire stud.
The small urchin before-mentioned had free access at all times to the
venerable gentleman, and used to bring him the gossip of the town and
school, in exchange for apples and other substantial gifts. Thin and
attenuated, diminutive, so as to be little more than a dwarf, with
vagrant eager eye, hooked as to his nose, and with a long beard,
snowy-white, streaming over his waistcoat, the octogenarian used to
receive his fair-haired child-visitor. May he be happy--as may all old
gentlemen be, who are kind to little schoolboys, and give them apples
and "tips!"
The day that Abernethy was married he went down to the lecture-room to
deliver his customary instruction to his pupils. His selection of a
wife was as judicious as his marriage was happy; and the funny
stories for long current about the mode in which he made his offer are
known to be those most delusive of fabrications, fearless and extreme
exaggerations of a little particle of the truth. The brutality of
procedure attributed to the great surgeon by current rumour was
altogether foreign to his nature. The Abernethy biscuit was not more
audaciously pinned upon his reputation, than was the absurd falsehood
that when he made his offer to his future wife he had only seen her
once, and then wrote saying he should like to marry her, but as he was
too busy to "make love," she must entertain his proposal without
further preliminaries, and let him know her decision by the end of the
week.
Of Sir John Eliot the fortunate, mention has already been made in this
chapter. Let us now speak of John Eliot, the luckless hero of a
biography published in 1787, under the title of "A Narrative of the
Life and Death of John Eliot, M.D., containing an account of the Rise,
Progress, and Catastrophe of his unhappy passion for Miss Mary
Boydell." A native of Somersetshire, John Elliot wrote a tragedy when
only twelve years of age, and after serving an apprenticeship to a
London apothecary, fell in love with one Miss Mary Boydell, a niece of
a city alderman. The course of this gentleman's love ran smoothly till
he chanced, by evil fortune, to read an announcement in a newspaper,
that a Miss Boydell had, on the previous day, been led to the altar by
some gentleman--not called Dr. John Elliot, certainly not himself.
Never doubting that _the_ Miss Boydell of the newspaper was _his_ Miss
Boydell, the doctor, without making any further inquiries after the
perfidious fair one, sold his shop and fixtures, and ran off from the
evil city of heartless women, to commune with beasts of the field and
birds of the air in sylvan retirement. Not a little chagrined was Miss
Boydell at the sudden disappearance of her ideal apothecary, whom her
uncle, the alderman, stigmatized in round, honest, indignant language,
as a big blackguard. After twelve years spent in wandering, "a forlorn
wretch, over the kingdom," Dr. Elliott returned to London, set up once
more in business, and began, for a second time, to drive a thriving
trade, when Delilah again crossed his path. "One day," he says,
telling his own story, "entering my shop (for I had commenced again
the business of apothecary) I found two ladies sitting there, one of
whom I thought I could recognize. As soon as she observed me, she
cried out, 'Mr. Elliot! Mr. Elliot!' and fell back in a swoon. The
well-known voice struck me like a shock of electricity--my affections
instantly gushed forth--I fell senseless at her feet. When I came to
myself, I found Miss Boydell sitting by my side." And _his_ Miss
Boydell was Miss Boydell still--innocent of wedlock.
Imogene being proved true, and Alonzo having come to life, the
youthful couple renewed the engagement entered into more than twelve
years before. The wedding-day was fixed, the wedding-clothes were
provided, when uncle (the alderman), distrustful that his niece's
scranny lover would make a good husband, induced her at the last
moment to jilt him, and marry Mr. Nicols, an opulent bookseller. The
farce was now to wear an aspect of tragedy. Infuriated at being,
after all, _really_ deceived, Dr. Elliot bought two brace of pistols,
and bound them together in pairs. One pair he loaded only with powder;
into the other he put the proper quantum of lead, as well as the
pernicious dust. Armed with these weapons, he lay in wait for the
destroyer of his peace. After some days of watching he saw her in
Prince's Street, walking with the triumphant Nicols. Rushing up, he
fired at her the two pistols (not loaded with ball), and then
snatching the other brace from his pocket, was proceeding to commit
suicide, when he was seized by the bystanders and disarmed.
The next scene in the drama was the principal court of the Old Bailey,
with Dr. Elliot in the dock, charged with an attempt to murder Miss
Boydell. The jury, being satisfied that the pistols were not loaded
with ball, and that the prisoner only intended to create a startling
impression on Miss Boydell's mind, acquitted him of that charge, and
he was remanded to prison to take his trial for a common assault.
Before this second inquiry, however, could come off, the poor man died
in Newgate, July 22, 1787, of a broken heart--or jail fever. Ere his
death, he took a cruel revenge of the lady, by writing an
autobiographic account of his love experiences, in which appeared the
following passage:--"Fascinated as I was by the charms of this
faithless woman, I had long ceased to be sensible to these defects, or
rather my impassioned imagination had converted them into perfections.
But those who did not labour under the power of this magic were struck
by her ungraceful exterior, and mine ears have not unfrequently been
shocked to hear the tongue of indifference pronounce that the object
of my passion was _ugly and deformed_. Add to this, that Miss Boydell
has long since ceased to boast the bloom of youth, and then let any
person, impartial and unprejudiced, decide whether a passion for her,
so violent as that I have manifested, could be the produce of a slight
and recent acquaintance, or whether it must not rather be the
consequence of a long habit and inveterate intimacy." Such was the
absurd sad story of John Elliot, author of "The Medical Almanack,"
"Elements of the Branches of Natural Philosophy," and "Experiments and
Observations on Light and Colours."
The mournful love-story of Dr. John Elliot made a deep impression on
the popular mind. It is found alluded to in ballads and chap-books,
and more than one penny romance was framed upon it. Not improbably it
suggested the composition of the following parody of Monk Lewis's
"Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene," which appeared at the close
of the last century, during the first run of popularity which that
familiar ballad obtained:--
"GILES BOLUS THE KNAVE AND BROWN
SALLY GREEN.
"A ROMANCE BY M. G. LEWIS.
"A Doctor so grave and a virgin so bright,
Hob-a-nobbed in some right marasquin;
They swallowed the cordial with truest delight,
Giles Bolus the knave was just five feet in height,
And four feet the brown Sally Green.
"'And as,' said Giles Bolus, 'to-morrow I go
To physic a feverish land,
At some sixpenny hop, or perhaps the mayor's show,
You'll tumble in love with some smart city beau,
And with him share your shop in the Strand.'
"'Lord! how can you think so?' Brown Sally Green said,
'You must know mighty little of me;
For if you be living, or if you be dead,
I swear, 'pon my honour, that none in your stead,
Shall husband of Sally Green be.
"'And if e'er I by love or by wealth led aside
Am false to Giles Bolus the knave;
God grant that at dinner so amply suppli'd,
Over-eating may give me a pain in the side,
May your ghost then bring rhubarb to physic the bride,
And send her well-dosed to the grave.'
"To Jamaica the doctor now hastened for gold,
Sally wept till she blew her nose sore;
Yet scarce had a twelvemonth elaps'd, when behold!
A brewer quite stylish his gig that way roll'd,
And stopped it at Sally Green's door.
"His barrels, his bungs, and his brass-headed cane,
Soon made her untrue to his vows;
The stream of small beer now bewildered her brain;
He caught her while tipsy--denials were vain--
So he carried her home as his spouse.
"And now the roast-beef had been blest by the priest,
To cram now the guests had begun;
Tooth and nail, like a wolf, fell the bride on the feast
Nor yet had the clash of her knife and fork ceased,
When a bell (t'was the dustman's) toll'd one.
"Then first, with amazement, brown Sally Green found,
That a stranger was stuck by her side.
His cravat and his ruffles with snuff were embrown'd;
He ate not--he drank not--but, turning him round,
Sent some pudding away to be fried.
"His wig was turned forwards, and wort was his height,
His apron was dirty to view;
The women (oh! wondrous) were hushed at the sight,
The cats as they eyed him drew back (well they might),
For his body was pea-green and blue.
"Now, as all wish'd to speak, but none knew what to say,
They look'd mighty foolish and queer:
At length spoke the lady with trembling--'I pray,
Dear sir, that your peruke aside you would lay,
And partake of some strong or small beer.'
"The bride shuts her fly-trap--the stranger complies,
And his wig from his phiz deigns to pull.
Adzooks! what a squall Sally gave through surprise!
Like a pig that was stuck, how she opened her eyes,
When she recognized Giles's bare skull.
"Each miss then exclaimed, while she turn'd up her snout,
'Sir, your head isn't fit to be seen!'--
The pot-boys ran in, and the pot-boys ran out,
And couldn't conceive what the noise was about,
While the doctor addressed Sally Green.
"'Behold me, thou jilt-flirt! behold me!' he cri'd--
'I'm Bolus, whom some call the 'knave!'
God grant, that to punish your falsehood and pride,
You should feel at this moment a pain in your side.
Quick, swallow this rhubarb!--I'll physic the bride,
And send her well-dosed to the grave!'
"Thus saying, the physic her throat he forced down,
In spite of whate'er she could say:
Then bore to his chariot the maiden so brown,
Nor ever again was she seen in that town,
Or the doctor who whisked her away.
"Not long lived the brewer, and none since that time
To inhabit the brew-house presume;
For old women say that by order sublime
There Sally Green suffers the pain of her crime,
And bawls to get out of the room.
"At midnight four times in each year does her sprite
With shrieks make the chamber resound.
'I won't take the rhubarb!' she squalls in affright,
While a cup in his left hand, a draught in his right,
Giles Bolus pursues her around.
"With wigs so well powdered, twelve doctors so grave,
Dancing hornpipes around them are seen;
They drink chicken-broth, and this horrible stave
Is twanged through each nose, 'To Giles Bolus the knave,
And his patient the sick Sally Green.'"
In the court of love, Dr. Van Buchell, the empiric, may pass muster as
a physician. When that droll charlatan lost his first wife, in 1775,
he paid her the compliment of preserving her body with great care. Dr.
Hunter, with the assistance of Mr. Cruikshank, injected the
blood-vessels of the corpse with a carmine fluid, so that the cheeks
and lips had the hue of healthy life; the cavities of the body were
artistically packed with the antiseptics used by modern embalmers; and
glass eyes were substituted in place of the filmy balls which Death
had made his own. Decked in a dainty apparel of lace and finest linen,
the body was then placed in a bed of thin paste of plaster of Paris,
which, crystallizing, made a most ornamental couch. The case
containing this fantastic horror had a glass lid, covered with a
curtain; and as Van Buchell kept it in his ordinary sitting-room, he
had the pleasure of introducing his visitors to the lifeless form of
his "dear departed." For several years the doctor lived very happily
with this slough of an immortal soul--never quarrelling with it, never
being scolded by it--on the whole, enjoying an amount of domestic
tranquility that rarely falls to one man's lot. Unwisely he made in
advanced years a new alliance, and manifested a desire to be on with
the new and the old love at the same time. To this Mrs. Van Buchell
(No. 2) strongly objected, and insisted that the quaint coffin of Mrs.
Van Buchell (No. 1) should be removed from the parlour in which she
was expected to spend the greatest part of her days. The eccentric
mode in which Buchell displayed his affection for his first wife was
scarcely less repulsive than the devotion to the interests of
anatomical science which induced Rondeletius to dissect the dead body
of his own child in his theatre at Montpelier.
Are there no more loves to be mentioned? Yes; let these concluding
pages tell an interesting story of the last generation.
Fifty years ago the picturesque, sunny town of Holmnook had for its
physician one Dr. Kemp, a grave and reverend Æsculapius, punctilious
in etiquette, with an imposing formality of manner, accurate in
costume, in every respect a courtier of the old school. Holmnook is an
antique market-town, square and compact, a capital in miniature, lying
at the foot of an old feudal castle, in which the Bigods once held
sway. That stronghold of moated towers was three centuries since the
abode of a mighty Duke; Surrey, the poet earl, luckless and inspired,
was born within its walls. The noble acres of the princely house fell
into the hands of a _parvenu_--a rich, grasping lawyer;--that was bad.
The lawyer died and went to his place, leaving the land to the
poor;--that was better. And now the produce of the rich soil, which
whilom sent forth a crop of mailed knights, supports a college of toil
and time-worn peasants, saving their cold thin blood from the penury
of the poor-house, and sheltering them from the contumelies
of--Guardians of the Poor. Hard by the college, housing these ancient
humble children of man, is a school, based on the same beneficent
foundation, where the village lads are taught by as ripe a scholar and
true a gentleman as ever came from the banks of Isis; and round which
temple of learning they play their rough, noisy games, under the
observation of the veterans of the bourg--the almsmen and almswomen
who sit in the sun and on benches before their college, clad in the
blue coats of the charity, and feeling no shame in them, though the
armorial badge of that old lawyer is tacked upon them in red cloth.
Holmnook is unlike most other English towns of its size, abounding as
it does in large antique mansions, formerly inhabited by the great
officers and dependents on the ducal household, who in many cases were
blood relations of the duke himself. Under the capacious windows of
these old houses, in the streets, and round the market-square, run
rows of limes, spreading their cool shade over the pinnacles of gabled
roofs, and flinging back bars across the shining shingle which
decorates the plaster walls of the older houses. In the centre of the
town stands an enormous church, large enough to hold an entire army of
Christians, and containing many imposing tombs of earls and leaders,
long since gone to their account.
Think of this old town, its venerable dwellings--each by itself
suggesting a romance. Hear the cooing and lazy flapping of pigeons,
making continual holiday round the massive chimneys. Observe, without
seeming to observe, the mayor's pretty daughter sitting at the open
oriel window of the Guild-hall, merrily singing over her needle-work,
and wondering if her bright ribbon has a good effect on passers below.
Heed the jingle of a harpsichord in the rector's parlour. Be pleased
to remember that the year is 1790--not 1860. Take a glass of stinging
ale at "The Knight of Armour" hostelry--and own you enjoy it. Take
another, creaming good-naturedly up under your lip, and confess you
like it better than its predecessor. See the High Sheriff's carriage
pass through the excited town, drawn by four enormous black horses,
and having three Bacchic footmen hanging on behind. Do all this, and
then you'll have a faint notion of Holmnook, its un-English
picturesqueness, its placid joy, and experience of pomp.
Who is the gentleman emerging from the mansion on the causeway, in
this year 1790--with white peruke and long pig-tail, snuff-coloured
coat and velvet collar, tight dark nether garments, silk stockings,
and shoes with buckles, volumes of white shirt-frill rising up under
his chin? As he taps his shoes on his doorstep you can see he is proud
of his leg, a pleasant pride, whether one has reason for it or not!
Seventy years of age, staid, decorous, and thoroughly versed in the
social proprieties of the old world, now gone clean from us, like
chivalry or chartism, Dr. Kemp was an important personage in Holmnook
and its vicinity. An _éclat_ was his that a country doctor does not
usually possess. For he was of gentle blood, being a cadet of an old
and wealthy family on the other side of the country, the
representative of which hailed him "cousin," and treated him with the
intimacy of kinship--the kinship of 1790.
Michael Kemp's youth had been spent away from Holmnook. Doubtless so
polite and dignified a gentleman had once aimed at a brighter lot than
a rural physician's. Doubtless he had a history, but he kept it to
himself. He had never married! The rumour went that he had been
disappointed--had undertaken the conquest of a high-born lady, who
gave another ending to the game; and having conquered him, went off to
conquer others. Ladies could do such things in the last century--when
men had hearts.
Anyhow, Michael Kemp, M.D., was an old bachelor, of spotless honour,
and a reputation that scandal never dared to trifle with.
A lady, much respected by the simple inhabitants of Holmsnook, kept
his house.
Let us speak of her--fair and forty, comely, with matronly outlines,
but graceful. Pleasant of voice, cheerful in manner, active in
benevolence, Mistress Alice was a great favourite; no christening or
wedding could go off without her for miles around. The doctor's
grandest patients treated her as an equal; for apart from her personal
claims to respect and good-will, she was, it was understood, of the
doctor's blood--a poor relation, gentle by birth as she was by
education. Mistress Alice was a great authority amongst the Holmnook
ladies, on all matters pertaining to dress and taste. Her own ordinary
costume was an artistic one. A large white kerchief, made so as to sit
like a jacket, close and high round the throat, concealed her fair
arms and shoulders, and reached down to the waist of her dress, which,
in obedience to the fashion of the time, ran close beneath her arms.
In 1790 a lady's waist at Holmnook occupied just about the same place
where the drapery of a London belle's Mazeppa harness offers its first
concealment to its wearer's charms. But it was on her foot-gear that
Mistress Alice devoted especial care. The short skirts of that day
encouraged a woman to set her feet off to the best advantage. Mistress
Alice wore natty high-heeled shoes and clocked stockings--bright
crimson stockings with yellow clocks.
Do you know what clocked stockings were, ladies? This writer is not
deeply learned on such matters, but having seen a pair of Mistress
Alice's stockings, he can tell you that they had on either side,
extending from the heel upwards some six inches, flowers gracefully
embroidered with a light yellow silk on the crimson ground. And these
wreaths of broidery were by our ancestors called clocks. This writer
could tell something else about Mistress Alice's apparel. She had for
grand evenings of high festivity white kid gloves reaching up to the
elbow, and having a slit at the tips of the forefinger and thumb of
each hand. It was an ordinary fashion long syne. So, ladies could let
out the tips of those digits to take a pinch of snuff!
One night Michael Kemp, M.D., Oxon., was called up to come with every
possible haste to visit a sick lady, urgently in want of him. The
night-bell was rung violently, and the messenger cried to the doctor
over and over from the pavement below to make good speed. The doctor
did his best to comply; but, as ill-luck would have it, after he had
struck a light the candle illumined by it fell down, and left the
doctor in darkness. This was very annoying to the good man, for he
could not reconcile it to his conscience to consume time in lighting
another, and yet it was hard for such a decorous man to make his hasty
toilet in the dark.
He managed, however, better than he expected. His peruke came to hand
all right; so did the tight inexpressibles; so did the snuff-coloured
coat with high velvet collar; so did the buckled shoes. Bravo!
In another five minutes the active physician had groped his way
down-stairs, emerged from his stately dwelling, and had run to his
patient's house.
In a trice he was admitted; in a twinkle he was up the stairs; in
another second he was by the sick lady's bedside, round which were
seated a nurse and three eminent Holmnook gossips.
He was, however, little prepared for the reception he met with--the
effect his appearance produced.
The sick lady, struggling though she was with severe pain, laughed
outright.
The nurse said, "Oh my!--Doctor Kemp!"
Gossip No. 1 exclaimed, "Oh, you'll kill me!"
Gossip No. 2 cried, "I can't believe my eyes!"
Gossip No. 3 exploded with--"Oh, Doctor Kemp, do look at your
stockings!"
And the doctor, obeying, did look at his stockings. One was of black
silk--the other was a crimson one, with yellow clocks.
Was there not merry talk the next day at Holmnook! Didn't one hear
blithe hearty laughter at every street corner--at every window under
the limes?
What did they laugh about? What did they say?
Only this, fair reader--
"_Honi soit qui mal y pense_."
God bless thee, Holmnook! The bells of thy old church-tower are
jangling in my ears though thou art a hundred miles away. I see the
blue heavens kissing thy limes!