A Book about Doctors Part 31

"Why, ma.s.sa, to hear your good sermon and all de prayer ob de church."

"Would not a _bit_ or two do you more good?"

"Yes, ma.s.sa doctor--me lub prayer much, but me lub money too."

The "bit or two" would then be paid, and the devotee would retire speedily from the scene. For an entire twelve-month was this _black_-mail exacted.

On his return to England, Wolcot, after a few unsuccessful attempts to establish himself in practice, relinquished the profession of physic as well as that of divinity, and, settling himself in London, made both fame and a good income by his writings. As a political satirist he was in his day almost without a rival, and the popularity of his numerous works would have placed a prudent man in lasting affluence.

Improvidence, however, necessitated him to sell the copyright of his works to Messrs. Robinson, Golding, and Walker for an annuity of ?250, payable half-yearly, during the remainder of his life. Loose agreements have always been the fashion between authors and publishers, and in the present case it was not clearly stated what "copyright of his works" meant. The publishers interpreted it as the copyright of both what the author had written at the time of making the agreement, and also of what he should subsequently write. Wolcot, however, declared that he had in the transaction only had regard to his prior productions. After some litigation and more squabbling, the publishers consented to take Wolcot's view of the case; but he never forgave them the discomfort they had caused him. His rancour against "the trade" increased with time, and inspired some of his most violent and unjust verses:--

"Fired with the love of rhyme, and, let me say, Or virtue, too, I sound the moral lay; Much like St. Paul (who solemnly protests He battled hard at Ephesus with beasts), I've fought with lions, monkeys, bulls, and bears, And got half Noah's ark about my ears; Nay, more (which all the courts of justice know), Fought with the brutes of Paternoster Row."

For medicine Peter Pindar had even less respect than Garth had. He used to say "that he did not like the practice of it as an art. He was entirely ignorant, indeed, whether the patient was cured by the vis _medicatrix natur?_, or the administration of a little pill, which was either directly or indirectly to reach the part affected." And for the pract.i.tioners of the art held in such low esteem, he cherished a contempt that he would at times display with true Pindaric warmth. In his two-act farce, "Physic and Delusion; or Jezebel and the Doctors,"

the dialogue is carried on in the following strain:--

"_Blister._-- By G.o.d, old prig!

Another word, and by my wig----

"_Bolus._--Thy wig? Great accoucheur, well said, 'Tis of more value than thy head; And 'mongst thy customers--poor ninnies!

Has helped thee much to bag thy guineas."

Amongst Peter Pindar's good services to the world was the protection he afforded to Opie (or Oppy, as it was at one time less euphoniously spelt and p.r.o.nounced) the artist, when he was a poor country clown, rising at three o'clock in the summer mornings, to pursue his art with rude pieces of chalk and charcoal. Wolcot presented the boy with his first pencils, colours, and canvas, and put him in the way to paint portraits for the magnificent remuneration of half-a-guinea, and subsequently a guinea a-head. And it was to the same judicious friend that Opie, on leaving the provinces, owed his first success in London.

Wolcot used to tell some droll stories about his artist friend. Opie's indiscreet manner was a source of continual trouble to those who endeavoured to serve him; for, priding himself on being "a rough diamond," he took every pains that no one should fail to see the roughness. A lady sitter was anxious that her portrait should be "very handsome," and frankly told the painter so. "Then, madam," was the reply, "you wish to be painted otherwise than you are. I see you do not want your own face." Not less impudent was he at the close of his first year in London, in taking out writs against several sitters who were rather tardy in their payments.

Opie was not the only artist of celebrity deeply indebted to Peter Pindar. Bone, the painter in enamel, found an efficient friend in the same discerning lover of the arts. In this respect Wolcot was worthy of the profession which he deserted, and affected to despise; and his name will ever be honourably mentioned amongst those physicians who have fostered art, from the days of picture-loving Mead, down to those of the writer's very kind friend, Dr. Diamond, who gathered from remote quarters "The Diamond Collection of Portraits," which may be seen amongst the art treasures of Oxford.

One of the worthies of Dr. Diamond's family was Robertus Fludd, or De Fluctibus, the writer of Rosicrucian celebrity who gave Sterne more than one lesson in the arts of eccentricity. Sir Thomas Fludd of Milgate, Bearsted, co. Kent (grandson of David Fludd, _alias_ Lloyd of Morton, in Shropshire), had five sons and a daughter. Of this offspring, one son, Thomas, purchased Gore Court, and fixed there a family, the vicissitudes of which may be learnt by a reference to Hasted's Kent. From this branch of the Fludds descended Dr. Diamond, who, amongst other curious family relics, possesses the diploma of Robertus de Fluctibus.

When Robertus de Fluctibus died, Sept. 8, 1637, in Coleman St., London, his body, under the protection of a herald of arms, was conveyed to the family seat in Kent, and was then buried in Bearsted Church, under a stone which he had before laid for himself. The monument over his ashes was ordered by him in his last will to be made after that of William Camden in the Abbey at Westminster. The inscription which marks his resting-place declares his, rather than our, estimate of his intellectual greatness;

Magnificus non h?c sub odoribus urna vaporat, Crypta tegit cineres nec speciosa tuos.

Quod mortale minus, tibi te committimus unum; Ingenii vivent hic monumenta tui Nam tibi qui similis scribit, moriturque, sepulchrum Pro tot? ?ternum posteritate facit.

More modest, and at the same time more humorous, is the epitaph, in Hendon Church, of poor Thomas Crossfield, whose name, alike as surgeon and politician, has pa.s.sed from among men:--

"Underneath Tom Crossfield lies, Who cares not now who laughs or cries.

He always laughed, and when mellow Was a harum scarum sort of fellow.

To none gave designed offence, So--_Honi soit qui mal y pense_."

Amongst the medical poets there is one whom all scholarly physicians jealously claim as of their body--John Keats; he who, dying at Rome, at the age of twenty-six, wished his epitaph to be, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." After serving his apprenticeship under an Edmonton surgeon, the author of "Endymion" became a medical student at St. Thomas's hospital.

Mention here, too, may be made of Dr. Macnish, the author of "The Anatomy of Drunkenness," and "The Modern Pythagorean"; and of Dr.

Moir, the poet, whose death, a few years since, robbed the world of a simple and pathetic writer, and his personal acquaintance of a n.o.ble-hearted friend.

But of all modern English poets who have had an intimate personal connection with the medical profession, the greatest by far is Crabbe--

"Nature's sternest painter, yet the best."

In 1754 George Crabbe was born in the old sea-faring town of Aldborough, in the county of Suffolk. His father, the collector of salt-duties, or salt-master of the town, was a churlish sullen fellow at the best of times; but, falling upon adversity in his old days, he became the _beau-ideal_ of a domestic tyrant. He was not, however, without his respectable points. Though a poor man, he did his best to educate his children above the ranks of the very poor. One of them became a thriving glazier in his native town; another went to sea, and became captain of a Liverpool slave-ship; and a third, also a sailor, met with strange vicissitudes--at one time enjoying a very considerable amount of prosperity, and then suffering penury and persecution. A studious and a delicate lad, George, the eldest of the party, was designed for some pursuit more adapted to his disposition and physical powers than the avocations of working mechanics, or the hard duties of the marine service. When quite a child, he had, amongst the inhabitants of Aldborough, a reputation for mental superiority that often did him good service. On one occasion he chanced to offend a playmate--his senior and "master," as boys and savages term it--and was on the point of receiving a good thrashing nigh the roaring waves of old ocean, when a third boy, a common acquaintance, exclaimed in a voice of affright:--

"Yar marn't middle a' him; lit him aloone--he ha' got l'arning."

The plea was admitted as a good one, and the future bard, taking his benefit of clergy, escaped the profanation of a drubbing.

George was sent to two respectable schools, the one at Bungay, in Suffolk, and the other (the better of the two) at Stowmarket, in the same county. The expense of such an education, even if it amounted to no more than ?20 per annum, was no small undertaking for the salt-master of a fishing-village; for Aldborough--now a handsome and much frequented provincial watering-place--was in 1750 nothing better than a collection of huts, whose humble inhabitants possessed little stake in the commonweal beyond the right of sending to parliament two members to represent their interests and opinions. On leaving school, in his fourteenth year, George was apprenticed to a country doctor of a very rough sort, who plied his trade at Wickham Brook, a small village near Bury St. Edmunds. It is a fact worthy of note, as throwing some light on the state of the profession in the provinces, that the apprentice shared the bed of his master's stable-boy. At Wickham Brook, however, the lad did not remain long to endure such indignity. He was removed from that scene of trial, and placed under the tutelage of Mr. Page, a surgeon of Woodbridge, a gentleman of good connections and polite tastes, and through the marriage of his daughter with the late famous Alderman Wood, an ancestor of a learned judge, who is not more eminent as a lawyer than beloved as a man.

It was during his apprenticeship to Mr. Page of Woodbridge that Crabbe made his first important efforts in poetry, publishing, in the year 1772, some fugitive pieces in _Wheble's Magazine_, and in 1775 "Inebriety, a poem, in three parts. Ipswich: printed and sold by C.

Punchard, bookseller, in the b.u.t.ter-market." While at Woodbridge, too, his friend Levett, a young surgeon of the neighborhood, took him over to Framlingham, introducing him to the families of that picturesque old town. William Springall Levett was at that time engaged to Alethea Brereton, a lady who, under the _nom de plume_ of "Eugenia Acton,"

wrote certain novels that created a sensation in their brief day.

Amongst them were "Vicissitudes of Genteel Life," "The Microcosm,"

and "A Tale without a t.i.tle." The love-making of Mr. Levett and Miss Eugenia de Acton was put a stop to by the death of the former, in 1774. The following epitaph, transcribed from the History of Framlingham, the work of the able antiquarian, Mr. Richard Green, is interesting as one of Crabbe's earlier compositions.

"What! though no trophies peer above his dust, Nor sculptured conquests deck his sober bust; What! though no earthly thunders sound his name, Death gives him conquest, and our sorrows fame!

One sigh reflection heaves, but shuns excess, More should we mourn him, did we love him less."

Subsequently Miss Brereton married a gentleman named Lewis, engaged in extensive agricultural operations. However brief her literary reputation may have been, her pen did her good service; for, at a critical period of her husband's career, it brought her sums of much-needed money.

Mr. Levett's romance closed prematurely together with his life, but through him Crabbe first became acquainted with the lovely girl whom he loved through years of trial, and eventually made his wife. Sarah Elmy was the niece of John Tovell, _yeoman_, not _gentleman_--he would have scorned the t.i.tle. Not that the worthy man was without pride of divers kinds, or that he did not hold himself to be a gentleman. He believed in the Tovells as being one of the most distinguished families of the country. A Tovell, by mere right of being a Tovell, could thrash more Frenchmen than any Englishman, not a Tovell, could.

When the good man said, "I am nothing more than a plain yeoman," he never intended or expected any one to believe him, or to regard his words in any other light than as a playful protest against being deemed "a plain yeoman," or that modern hybrid, "a gentleman farmer."

He was a well-made, handsome, pleasant fellow--riding a good horse with the hounds--loving good cheer--enjoying laughter, without being very particular as to the cause of it--a little too much addicted to carousing, but withal an agreeable and useful citizen; and he lived at Parham Lodge, a house that a peer inhabited after him, without making any important alterations in the place.

On Crabbe's first introduction to Parham Lodge he was received with cordiality; but when it was seen that he had fallen in love with the squire's niece, it was only natural that "his presumption" should not at first meet the approval either of Mrs. Tovell or her husband. But the young people plighted troth to each other, and the engagement was recognized by the lady's family. It was years, however, before the wedding bells were set ringing. Crabbe's apprenticeship to Mr. Page finished, he tried ineffectually to raise the funds for a regular course of hospital instruction in London. Returning to Aldborough, he furnished a shop with a few bottles and a pound's worth of drugs, and set up as "an apothecary." Of course it was only amongst the poor of his native town that he obtained patients, the wealthier inhabitants of the borough distrusting the knowledge of a doctor who had not walked the hospitals. In the summer of 1778, however, he was appointed surgeon to the Warwickshire militia, then stationed at Aldborough, and in the following winter, on the Warwickshire militia being moved and replaced by the Norfolk militia, he was appointed surgeon to the latter regiment also. But these posts were only temporary, and conferred but little emolument on their holder. At length poverty drove the poet from his native town. The rest of his career is matter of notoriety. Every reader knows how the young man went to London and only escaped the death of Otway or Chatterton by the generous patronage of Burke, how through Burke's a.s.sistance he was ordained, became the Duke of Rutland's chaplain, obtained comfortable church preferment, and for a long span enjoyed an amount of domestic happiness that was as great and richly deserved as his literary reputation.

Crabbe's marriage with Sarah Elmy eventually conferred on him and his children the possession of Parham Lodge, which estate, a few years since, pa.s.sed from them into the hands of wealthy purchasers. The poet also succeeded to other wealth through the same connection, an old-maid sister of John Tovell leaving him a considerable sum of money. "I can screw Crabbe up and down like an old fiddle," this amiable lady was fond of saying; and during her life she proved that her boast was no empty one. But her will was a handsome apology for all her little tiffs.

CHAPTER XXV.

NUMBER ELEVEN--A HOSPITAL STORY.

"Then, sir," said Mrs. Mallet, "if you'll only not look so frightened, I'll tell you how it was. It is now twenty years ago that I was very unfortunate. I was not more than thirty years of age, but I was old enough to have just lost a good husband and a dear little babe; and then, when I hadn't a sixpence in my pocket, I caught the fever, and had to go to a hospital. I wasn't used to trouble; for although I was nothing better than a poor man's child, I had known all my life nothing but kindness. I never had but one mistress,--my lady, who when she was the most beautiful young lady in all Devonshire, took me out of a village school, and raised me to be her maid; and her maid I was for twelve years--first down in Devonshire, and afterwards up in London, when she married (somewhat against the will of her family) a thorough good gentleman, but a poor one, who after a time took her out to India, where he became a judge, and she a grand lady. My dear mistress would have taken me out to India with her, only she was then too poor to pay for my pa.s.sage out, and bear the expense of me there, where labour can be got so cheap, and native servants can live on a handful of rice a day. She, sir, is Lady Burridge--the same who gave me the money to start in this house with, and whose carriage you saw yesterday at my door.

"So my mistress went eastward, and I was left behind to marry a young man I had loved for some few years, and who had served during that time as clerk to my lady's husband. I was a young woman, and young women, to the end of the chapter, will think it a brave thing to fall in love. I thought my sweetheart was a handsomer and cleverer man than any other of his station in all London. I wonder how many girls have thought the same of their favourites! I went to church one morning with a fluttering heart and trembling knees, and came out under the porch thinking that all my life would ever afterwards be brighter, and lighter, and sunnier than it had been before. Well! in dancing into that pretty blunder, I wasn't a bigger fool than lots of others.

"And if a good husband is a great blessing (and she must be a paltry woman who can say nay to that), I was born to luck; for my husband was kind, good, and true--his temper was as sweet at home as his manners were abroad--he was hard-working and clever, sober and devout; and--though you may laugh at a woman of my age talking so like a romance--I tell you, sir, that if my life had to come all over again, I'd rather have the mischance of marrying my dear Richard, that the good fortune of wedding a luckier man.

"There's no doubt the game turned out ill for me. At first it seemed as if it would be just otherwise, for my husband had good health, plenty of work, and sufficient pay; so that, when my little girl came, her sweet face brought no shadow of anxiety with it, and we hoped she would be followed in due course by half-a-dozen more. But ere the dear babe had learned to prattle, a drear change came over the happy prospect. The fever crept over the gentle darling, and after she had suffered for a week or more, lying on my arms, G.o.d raised her from me into his happy home, where the beauty of summer reigns for ever, and the coldness of winter never enters. Richard and I took the body of our babe to the burial-ground, and saw it covered up in the earth which by turns gives all we get, and takes away from us all we have; and as we walked back to our deserted home, arm-in-arm, in the light of the summer's evening, we talked to each other more solemnly and tenderly than we had done for many a day. And the next morning he went back to his work in the office, from which he had absented himself since our child's death; and I encouraged him to cheer up, and not to give way to sorrow when I was not nigh to comfort him, but toil bravely and hopefully, as a man should; and in so advising him, I do not blush to say that I thought not only of what was best for his spirits, but also of what our necessity required--for we were only poor people, not at any time beforehand in the world, and now reduced by the cost of our little one's illness and funeral; and, sir, in this hard world we women, most times, have the best of it, for when the house is full of sorrow, we have little else to do but weep, but the men have to grieve and toil too.

"But poor Richard could not hold up his head. He came back from work that day pale and faint, and in the evening he had a chill and a heat-fit, that let me know the fever which had killed our little one had pa.s.sed into him. The next day he could not leave his bed, and the doctor (a most kind man, who was always making rough jokes in a rough voice--just to hide his womanliness) said to me, 'If your husband goes down to his master's chambers in the Temple to-day, he had better stop at the coffin-maker's, in the corner of Chancery Lane, and leave his measure.' But Richard's case was not one for a jest, and he rapidly became worse than the doctor fancied he would be when he made that light speech. He was ill for six weeks, and then began slowly to mend; he got on so far as to sit up for two days for half-an-hour while he had his tea, and we were hoping that soon he would be able to be moved into the country--to my sister's, whose husband was an engineer at Stratford; but, suddenly, he had a relapse, and on the morning that finished the tenth week from his being seized, his arms let go their hold on my neck--and I was left alone!

"All during my babe's and Richard's long illness my sister Martha had behaved like a true sister to me. She was my only sister, and, to the best of my knowledge, the only relation I had in the world--and a good one she was; from girl to woman her heart always rung out clear like a bell. She had three young children, but even fear of contagion reaching them could not keep her from me in my trouble. She kept making the journey backwards and forwards, at least once a week, in the carrier's cart; and, though she had no money to spare, she brought me, with her husband's blessing, presents of wine, and jellies, and delicate meat, to buy which, I knew right well, she and her husband and her children must have pinched themselves down to scanty rations of bread and water. Her hands helped mine to put the flowers in poor Richard's coffin; she bore me up while I followed it, pale and trembling, to the grave; and when that horrible day was coming to an end, and she was about to return home, she took me into her arms, and covering me with kisses and caressings, and a thousand gentle sayings, as if I had been a child of her own, instead of her sister and a grown woman, she made me promise to come down to her at Stratford at the end of the week, and stay with her till G.o.d should give me strength and spirits and guidance, to work for myself again.

"But that promise was not kept. Next morning the rough-tender doctor came in, out of his mere goodness, to give me a friendly look, and a 'G.o.d speed you,' and found me, too, sickening for an illness. I knew, sir, he had made the discovery before his lips confessed a word; for when he had taken my wrist and felt my pulse, and looked up into my worn face, he turned pale, as if almost frightened, and such a look of grief came on his eyes and lips that he could not have said plainer, 'My poor woman! my poor woman! what I feared from the beginning, and prayed G.o.d not to permit, has come to pa.s.s at last.'