A SCIENTIFIC OPINION
THE Duke of Trent and Colonsay sat at his great office table in his
room at the Home Office thinking.
The table was piled high with official papers. The permanent staff
of a Government Department are quick to detect the weakness of each
new chief put over their heads by the changing tide of parliamentary
warfare. The weakness of the new Home Secretary was for details and
statistics. A return of a hundred foolscap pages showing exactly how
many pounds of beef and how many pounds of rice are consumed in the
prisons of the country every year, or how many miles a policeman tramps
over in the same period in the course of his beat, afforded a real
satisfaction to his intellect. His staff catered for this taste as if
they had been the conductors of a popular magazine. They kept their new
chief busy and contented, and he let them alone.
But it was not about his important functions in the State that the
Minister was thinking at this moment, but about a more personal concern.
His discovery of his mother’s project had left him for some time in a
state of indecision, due partly to the fact that his desire was not
so much to marry Hero Vanbrugh as to prevent his brother from marrying
her. The appearance of a rival on the scene is generally sufficient to
decide a hesitating wooer, but then the Duke had not been exactly a
wooer, and this was another cause of embarrassment. Suddenly to begin
paying the attentions of a lover to a girl whom he had been accustomed
to treat familiarly as his mother’s friend seemed to a man of the
Duke’s stiff habit of mind an awkward, and possibly a ridiculous,
proceeding.
On the other hand, he saw that his mother was actively pushing her
design, and he could not shut his eyes to the fact that Alistair was a
rival to be feared.
It is difficult at all times for a man with a strong sense of his own
dignity to make love, and for a man animated by the calm and temperate
regard of the Duke of Trent to try to make love according to the
accepted English convention struck even his imagination as dangerously
foolish.
He condemned in his own mind the national custom which requires the man
to do his own love-making.
“Now, in France,” he reflected, “there would be no trouble about the
matter. I should tell my mother to send for Sir Bernard Vanbrugh, and
they would settle it between them.”
Sir Bernard’s name suggested an alternative which recommended itself
the more the longer he considered it. He would carry his proposal to
Hero’s father, and leave it to him to break the ice with Hero herself.
His acquaintance with the great scientist and physician was of the
slightest, but he could hardly distrust the reception such a son-in-law
as himself was likely to receive, and he might count on the father’s
influence with his daughter to overcome any possible hesitation on her
part.
Desirous to give every possible distinction to his overture, the Home
Secretary drew towards him a sheet of the official notepaper, and
wrote a few lines requesting the physician to name an hour at which he
would receive him on a private matter. The note folded and sealed, he
handed it to his private secretary, with injunctions to send it by a
messenger, and bring back the reply.
Sir Bernard Vanbrugh’s answer, which arrived within half an hour, was
even more formal than the Duke’s request, simply stating that the
physician would be at liberty that day at five o’clock.
The Duke ordered his carriage, and alighted at Sir Bernard’s door in
Stratford Place punctually at the hour named. Rather to his surprise,
but even more to his relief, he was taken, not into the drawing-room,
but into the physician’s consulting-room, and offered the patient’s
chair.
The man whose grey powerful eyes, under their square wall of forehead,
were turned on him with something of the penetrative power of a
searchlight, across a fragile-looking desk in some decorative wood,
was a man with a remarkable history.
There are some men of whom their friends are accustomed to say that
they should like them better if they were not so clever. Vanbrugh had
started in life with this handicap. He was an intellectual monster,
a brain-giant whose understanding was to the understandings of those
about him what the magnesium light is to a tallow candle.
Those into whose company he was thrown suffered somewhat as they
would have done in a strong light. Moreover, they were conscious that
Vanbrugh silently looked through them and over them, and they resented
the process in proportion to their conceit of themselves.
Thus it happened that the ablest man of his time was the most unpopular.
The unpopularity was the most marked among the members of his own
profession. To Vanbrugh the usages and traditions of his class were
so much rubbish. He saw in the etiquette of medicine nothing but the
precautions of dunces to protect their incapacity from discovery. He
was unable to make allowance for that infirmity of the human mind which
clings to custom through sheer terror of the unknown. Where he ought to
have imputed cowardice he imputed fraud.
He was a revolutionist by sheer force of insight. His mind covered at
a single bound the slow progress of years, and he was too impatient
to wait for the laggards to catch him up. The stupid are in a great
majority at all times, and in all situations, but some men, not less
great than Vanbrugh, have possessed the art of coaxing them, and
leading them on. It was just this art that Vanbrugh lacked. Unconscious
of his own brutality, he trampled on folly and dullness with feet of
iron, and the dull and foolish turned and rent him.
Up to the age of forty Bernard Vanbrugh’s life had been one long record
of disaster.
As a student he had been deeply unpopular, even with his professors,
who saw that they had in him a critic rather than a pupil. While
still walking the hospitals, the young man had ventured to argue
with the great lights of the profession whom he was there to watch
reverently and believe implicitly. He had had the audacity to suggest
to a celebrated gynecologist the use of ice at a critical stage of a
well-known operation; and though the specialist found himself obliged
to act on the advice, and subsequently enhanced his reputation by
adopting the treatment in his private practice, he never forgave the
young man’s presumption.
The medical authorities treated Vanbrugh with strict justice, up to the
point at which justice ceased to be obligatory; that is to say, they
awarded him as examiners every prize for which he chose to enter, but
they refused him a house-surgeoncy. When the astonished and mortified
young man tried to learn the reason for this refusal, he was met by
polite excuses and the recommendation that he should start in practice
as a consultant.
One old professor told him the truth.
“Our honorary staff will not have you,” he said bluntly. “Not because
they haven’t confidence in you, but because they think you haven’t
confidence in them.”
With a bitter smile Vanbrugh acknowledged the justice of the excuse.
He made up his mind that he must accept a house-surgeoncy in the
provinces. But when he came to apply for the usual testimonials from
those who had superintended his education, he received documents so
frigidly worded as to show clearly that they were given as a matter
of obligation merely, and not with any good will. The local doctors
in whose hands the appointments lay discerned the actual disapproval
beneath the formal recommendation. Vanbrugh, the most distinguished
student of his year, or for many years, was not even invited to present
himself for a personal interview when he applied for a post of two
hundred a year in a small country town.
He abandoned this useless attempt without much regret. He knew well
enough that London contained his destiny, and that he had been guilty
of treason to his own powers in seeking to escape it.
His enemies had advised him to become a consultant--that is to say, to
take rooms in an expensive street in the West End, and wait for other
doctors to send him patients as to a superior. Vanbrugh took this
advice, and for fifteen years no patient ever crossed his threshold.
A consultant depends absolutely on the support of his own profession,
and in his own profession Vanbrugh was hated as few men are hated.
There were men who, if they had heard of a patient intending to consult
him, would have walked across London to prevent it.
Vanbrugh was a poor man. The whole of the funds remaining from his
scholarships, together with the remittances doled out grudgingly by his
family, were set aside to pay the rent of the rooms in Brook Street.
His brass-plate, once affixed to the doorpost there, became his flag,
which he would not strike while life remained. In the meantime he had
to live.
After endless trials in all directions, Bernard Vanbrugh succeeded in
getting employment on the staff of one of those bureaus which undertake
to supply information on any subject. Vanbrugh’s was the medical
department, and he was paid at the rate of half a crown an hour. The
work had mostly to be done at the British Museum, and his weekly
earnings averaged about two pounds.
This, then, was the situation. The most brilliant follower of medicine
in Europe, perhaps the keenest intellect of his time, was compelled to
spend the best years of his life among broken-down journalists, and
stranded governesses, and all the sad jetsam of the educated class,
doing drudge’s work for the wages of a drudge. The celebrated Huxley
had a narrow escape from the same fate. How many other Huxleys and
Vanbrughs are to-day dreeing the same weird, while the millions of
philanthropy roll about the gutters, and the billions of endowments
pass into the pockets of the dunce?
Vanbrugh divided his scanty earnings into two equal portions. Fifty
pounds a year paid for his food and clothes and the rare holidays
conceded to health, with the other fifty he bought books and scientific
instruments.
The subject he had chosen to investigate was the cells of the brain.
At the age of forty he completed his work on the brain, and the
fifteen years’ penal servitude to which he had been sentenced by human
stupidity and spite approached its term.
He carried the manuscript to an important publisher, and solicited a
personal interview.
Strange to say, the publisher granted it. Vanbrugh’s name was well
known to him. Some hints of his researches had leaked out from time to
time, and the hospitals were already trembling. The meteoric career of
the student had not been forgotten. Every now and then his brethren
spoke of Vanbrugh as of a man from whom the world was certain to hear
sooner or later. While he was toiling in the dust he was already
reluctantly recognized as the coming man.
Vanbrugh placed his book in the publisher’s hands with something of
his old arrogance, which half a lifetime of hardship had not been able
to crush.
“This is a book which will, directly it appears, supersede every other
book on the brain. But if your reader sees my name on the title-page,
he will tell you it is rubbish. I ask you to submit it to him without
allowing him to know whom it is by, and then he may tell you the truth.”
The publisher smiled. He glanced from his caller’s proud, harsh
countenance to his shabby clothes and patched boots, and thought he
could understand. “The man is a crank,” he said to himself. “His
troubles have unhinged him.”
Nevertheless, he gave the required promise. He even went beyond his
word. Lest his English reader should suspect the authorship of the book
and be prejudiced in consequence, he took the trouble to forward the
manuscript to Vienna, to a renowned specialist in that capital, saying
that his usual advisers differed as to the merit of the work, and
requesting an impartial opinion. This was the first stroke of fortune
in Vanbrugh’s favour.
In less than a month the publisher was astonished by receiving back
the manuscript with a letter in which the Viennese authority repeated
Vanbrugh’s very words.
“I cannot understand what you tell me about your advisers,” the
Austrian wrote. “This is one of the greatest works I have ever had the
good fortune to read. It will supersede every existing work on the
brain. The author has done you a high honour in offering this book to
your house.”
The great publisher winced. It so happened that he had in the
press a voluminous book on this very subject by a baronet and
physician-in-ordinary to the Court, a book on whose preparation he had
already spent a considerable sum. It was clear that one of these two
books must kill the other. In either case he must be at a loss. On the
other hand, if he were to refuse Vanbrugh’s work, it might be taken by
the great rival house which divided the trade with his.
In this uncertainty he decided to submit the manuscript to his reader
in the ordinary way. Scarcely had he sent it off when he received a
second call from Vanbrugh.
The Austrian specialist, not dreaming that his opinion could be
disregarded, and filled with enthusiasm for Vanbrugh’s achievement, had
addressed a letter to him, congratulating him in the warmest terms. The
letter did not elate Vanbrugh in the least, but it brought him round to
the publisher to find out what was being done with his book.
He came, taking it for granted that its acceptance was now out of
doubt. The publisher, compelled to give a definite answer, made up his
mind on the spot, and proposed terms which Vanbrugh accepted.
Two days later his reader returned the manuscript with a brief note,
dismissing it as the work of a charlatan. Vanbrugh had beaten this man
in one of the hospital examinations.
When the book came out, the medical reviewers were staggered. They
dared not attack, and they would not praise it; it was therefore
allowed to fall dead from the press. The distinguished baronet, whose
book had been thrown over by the publisher, was furious. He threatened
to have Vanbrugh’s name taken off the register as a quack.
The publisher was wringing his hands, when suddenly an offer arrived
from Leipzig for the German rights of the book, an offer larger in
amount than what he had paid Vanbrugh for the copyright. Similar offers
came tumbling in from Paris, from Rome, and from St. Petersburg. Rival
editions appeared in New York and Chicago, the publishers of which,
more honest than their legislators, sent considerable sums to the
author. The scientific press on both sides of the Atlantic rang with
the name of Bernard Vanbrugh, and the popular journals followed suit.
As Vanbrugh had foretold, his book superseded every existing treatise
on the brain.
The first part of the work was a careful and exhaustive monograph
on the brain-cells, their morphology and physiology. Vanbrugh had
applied every available tool of scientific investigation in his
experiments--chemical agents, electric discharges, the microscope, and
the photograph. The reaction under the different rays of the spectrum
had been tested separately and in combination, and results of the
highest interest obtained. But the epoch-making character of the book
was given to it by the second part.
Here Vanbrugh had boldly essayed the feat of building a bridge between
physiology and what is called psychology. He had explored what are
known as mental phenomena in the light of his physical analysis. Into
this dim and distrusted region of knowledge Vanbrugh had projected the
searchlight of his merciless intellect, and had made it scientific
ground.
Even the lay reader could follow him here, and understand most of his
conclusions. Vanbrugh disdained the hieroglyphic vocabulary of the new
priesthood of science, and forced the words of daily life into the
service. In this part of the book occurred his famous comparison of the
brain to a biograph, with the process of thought carried on by a series
of films, succeeding each other with inconceivable rapidity, but yet
with a gap of pure annihilation after each.
“Science is measured knowledge,” was the keynote of his triumphant
peroration.
“Science is measured knowledge, and the only measures we can apply are
physical ones, and we can only apply them to physical phenomena. Slowly
but surely, as we succeed in identifying these processes called mental
with the processes of the brain-cells, we shall be enabled to reduce
them to a plan, to evolve order out of confusion, and to regulate human
passion and intelligence as we regulate the secretions of the stomach
and the circulation of the blood, the alternation of the harvests, and
the courses of the tides.”
Such thorough-going materialism shocked and terrified not a few
readers, but the day was gone by for any objection to be raised on that
score in scientific circles. Before the book had been out a year it was
the recognized authority on the subject with which it dealt in every
civilized country, and the London colleges were obliged to give it a
place upon their shelves.
Honours and distinctions flowed in upon the author from abroad.
Vienna was the first to offer him the honorary membership of her
first learned society, and other capitals hastened to do the same. A
great foreign ruler, who considered it a part of his own greatness to
befriend greatness in others, sent his most coveted Order to the poor
English doctor, of whom his Ambassador in London had never so much as
heard till he was directed to call upon him with the decoration. Not
content with that, the Emperor wrote privately to the English Court,
remonstrating with it warmly on its neglect of so illustrious a subject.
The English Court took the hint, and Sir Bernard Vanbrugh figured in
the next list of birthday honours. Then at last the sullen opposition
of the profession gave way. His brethren realized that they were
compromising their own reputation in the eyes of the world, and on the
next vacancy Vanbrugh was offered, and he accepted, the Presidency of
his College.
He was now sixty years of age; his appointment-book was filled up for
weeks in advance, and his only child was an heiress.
The Duke of Trent, with all the prestige of his rank and office,
yielded to the same involuntary fear that Vanbrugh always inspired, and
sat down like a schoolboy in the master’s presence.
“I don’t think we have met very often,” he began, “but I dare say you
know that Miss Vanbrugh is a great friend of my mother’s.”
At the mention of his daughter the scientist moved slightly, and his
expression became less severe.
“I have had many opportunities of seeing her at Colonsay House,” the
Minister pursued, his tone unconsciously betraying his intimate sense
of a favour about to be conferred, “and, so far as I am able to judge,
she is disposed to like me. I will come to the point at once, and say
that the object of my visit is to ask you to give her to me. I don’t
suppose it is necessary for me to say anything to you on the subject of
my own feelings. I show them sufficiently by my proposal. I am not a
sentimental schoolboy, but you may believe me when I say that, should
your daughter honour me by becoming my wife, I shall do the utmost in
my power to make her happy.”
Sir Bernard listened without any further sign of emotion to this
speech, the formality of which did the wooer less harm in his eyes than
it might have done in Hero’s.
“What does Hero say?” was his sole observation in reply.
“I have not spoken to her yet. In fact, I have never given her any
reason to expect this proposal. We have been friends, and nothing more,
so far. I confess I have felt some difficulty about approaching her. I
have had no experience in love-making, and it occurred to me that you
might be willing to sound Miss Vanbrugh on my behalf.”
The physician made no objection to this suggestion. He remained
thinking for some little time, and then answered deliberately:
“You have done me an honour, of which I am entirely sensible, in asking
for my daughter’s hand. As your wife her position would be a very proud
one, and perhaps most fathers in my place would accept your offer
without a moment’s hesitation. But Hero is my only child, and I am a
man who has always held strong views on the question of marriage. I
trust you will not think me wanting in appreciation of your high claims
to consideration if I put exactly the same questions to you which I
have always intended to put to any man who came to me in the character
of a future son-in-law.”
The Secretary of State was a little surprised by this reception of his
offer, but on the whole he was pleased by it. He told himself that few
candidates for matrimony would be better able to withstand a father’s
scrutiny than he.
“I shall be very pleased to answer any questions you wish to put to me.
You are most fully entitled to know everything I can tell, and I have
nothing to conceal.”
Sir Bernard Vanbrugh nodded. Opening a drawer in his desk, he took out
a large printed form and spread it out in front of him.
“I had better begin, perhaps,” the suitor suggested, “by giving you the
names of my solicitor and banker. They will give you every information
with regard to my financial circumstances.”
The physician shook his head slightly.
“I do not doubt that your means are ample, and my daughter will not be
a portionless girl. I am the medical adviser to a number of insurance
companies, and this paper contains the questions it is my duty to put
to a person who desires to insure his life. In my view, I ought not to
have to say, marriage is an infinitely more important step than the
granting of a policy. Are you willing for me to examine you with the
same care as if you were asking my employers to insure you for a few
thousand pounds?”
The Duke opened his eyes. Not even Sir Bernard Vanbrugh’s
reputation for originality--eccentricity it is called in Government
departments--had prepared him for such a proposition. But any momentary
irritation was quickly swallowed up in the comforting reflection: What
sort of reception would this man give to Alistair!
“I am at your disposal, Sir Bernard!”
The physician began his methodical examination exactly as if he were
dealing with an ordinary patient. He weighed the Cabinet Minister, he
measured him, he took his pulse and temperature, and sounded his heart
and lungs. As test after test was applied the examiner did not conceal
his interest and satisfaction, and at the close of the ordeal his
manner became almost enthusiastic.
“I can congratulate you,” he reported, “on being an almost perfect
life--I may say, a remarkable life. Do you know that you are as nearly
as possible a normal man?”
The twelfth subject of the Queen looked ever so slightly disconcerted
by the compliment.
“You don’t understand, I see,” said Vanbrugh. “I must explain to you
that scientific anthropologists have arrived at certain standards of
bodily proportion, of the energy of the vital functions, and so on,
which they have fixed as constituting the norm of humanity--that is
to say, the perfect balance which ought to be found in every member
of the species. The normal man is therefore a scientific abstraction:
he is the imaginary type with which actual individuals are to be
compared, and to which they should as far as possible conform. Now
I find that you fulfil to an extraordinary degree every requirement
which anthropological science has laid down for the species. You are,
therefore, a normal man--the first I have ever been fortunate enough to
come across.”
The Duke of Trent tried to persuade himself that this was a flattering
report, though in his ear the word “normal” sounded disagreeably like
commonplace.
“At all events, you are satisfied?” he asked.
“I am more than satisfied so far. Now as to your family history----”
For the first time a misgiving stole into the Duke’s mind, as he
remembered Lord Alexander Stuart’s career. Surely this scientific
inquisitor was not going to visit the sins of the father on the son, as
his words foreboded?
“Is your father living?”
“No; I have the title,” the Duke reminded him.
“True. At what age did he die?”
“As far as I can recollect, at about thirty-eight or forty. I could
easily ascertain.”
“That may not be necessary. What did he die of?”
The Duke’s cheeks burned. But he saw the folly of temporizing with a
man like Vanbrugh. The story of Lord Alexander was perfectly well known
in London.
“Of _delirium tremens_, I am afraid.”
Sir Bernard’s eyebrows lifted, and he shot a painful glance at the
unfortunate son.
“Your mother,” he hastened to say, “I know is alive. What is her state
of health?”
The Duke was glad to be able to reply altogether satisfactorily. He was
beginning to breathe again when the scientist put the fatal question:
“Have you any brothers or sisters?”
“One brother.” As the admission escaped him all his old bitterness
against his junior returned with ten-fold force.
“Living?”
“Yes, he is living.”
“Surely I have heard something about him lately?” Sir Bernard said
reflectively. “What is he called?”
“Lord Alistair Stuart.”
The words might have been red-hot coals on the Duke’s lips and not have
given him a greater wrench to utter.
Sir Bernard Vanbrugh laid down his paper and leant back in his chair.
“I cannot congratulate you on your family history,” he said gravely.
“Surely, sir, you will not hold me responsible because I had an
unworthy father, and have a brother who takes after him? I am not like
them. Ask anyone who has ever known me, and they will tell you that
my life has been absolutely free from reproach. I neither drink nor
gamble; I have never indulged in any kind of vice----”
The physician interrupted him with a quiet gesture.
“I am not a priest, Duke, but a scientist. I am not here to deal in
moral blame or praise, but to decide whether you are a man whom I can
welcome as the father of my grandchildren. Your family history is
against you.”
“Every family has its black sheep,” the unfortunate suitor urged.
“Every existing family is the result of ill-assorted marriages,
brought about by any consideration rather than the desire to have
healthy offspring. You must forgive my saying that Lord Alistair Stuart
is a very black sheep indeed.”
“Alistair is not hopeless,” said the Duke, astonished to find himself
defending his brother. “He is young yet, and he may settle down and
marry some respectable woman.”
“Heaven forbid!” Sir Bernard Vanbrugh noted his listener’s bewilderment
at this unexpected rejoinder. “The greatest service a man like your
brother can render to society is to lead the life he is leading. Nature
understands these things better than we do. She takes a man like that
and unites him with a woman like Molly Finucane in order that the
vicious strain may die out. To take your brother away and marry him to
a healthy woman, in order that they might have diseased children, would
be the worst of crimes.”
James Stuart shuddered as he listened to the voice of the new morality
preaching its relentless gospel.
“But you didn’t find any strain of disease in me?” he pleaded.
“These things often pass over a generation. The law of heredity is
still mysterious. It is the most important of all the problems awaiting
scientific solution. You ask me to take a risk--a tremendous risk. I
can only promise to consider it carefully.”
Of his own accord Sir Bernard added:
“As far as you are personally concerned, I could not hope to meet a
man to whom I should give my daughter with greater confidence. Your
temperament is exactly what she needs to correct her own tendency to
emotionalism. You see, I am frank with you, Duke, as frank as you have
been with me. I have watched over my daughter with all the powers of
observation I possess from her earliest years, and I cannot shut my
eyes to her weakness.”
“Miss Vanbrugh is as near perfection as any girl I have seen!”
exclaimed the wooer, with unwonted enthusiasm. “If she has a weakness
it is in being too ready to sacrifice herself for others.”
“That is the weakness I mean,” the scientist resumed calmly. “Her
attraction towards Catholicism has given me some anxiety, and would
give me more if I thought it went below the surface.”
“But you are not a Protestant?”
Sir Bernard Vanbrugh smiled at the old-fashioned word.
“There are no more Protestants,” he pronounced. “There is Science
and there is Superstition. Religion, as I understand it, is a form
of hysteria, skilfully exploited in the interests of the clerical
class. To me as a physician this Catholic revival is the symptom of
a widespread cerebral disease which attacks individuals of morbid
temperament. I have watched the class of persons who exhibit the
symptom, and I have seldom failed to trace the disease. On the whole I
am inclined to diagnose it as an obscure form of sexual perversion.
A woman does not want to go to confession unless she has something to
confess.”
The Home Secretary shivered, as he listened to this brutal analysis,
with the same sense of discomfort as a thinly-clad man exposed to a
cold blast of air. He was not the first man who had experienced the
same sensation in listening to Bernard Vanbrugh.
A week later he received the scientist’s decision.
“It gives me great pain,” Sir Bernard wrote, “not to be able to accept
your proposal for my daughter’s hand, but your family history is too
bad. Personally, you are everything that a father could desire, but
my grandchildren must not have in their veins the same blood as Lord
Alistair Stuart.”