THE MAN OF ARISTOCRATIC DISEASES.
What a queer thing is pride! Pride, that busy devil that breaks off the point of the lancet, and lets human nature die of the big-head before common sense can bleed freely. Pride, that sticks a pretty foot in a kid slipper in the dead of winter, and the owner shortly in the grave. Pride, that keeps man from acknowledging his error, and makes him a slayer of his kind, without being justified by a doctor's degree. Pride—but enough of philosophy.
I have seen this trait of humanity illustrated in various ways, according to the temperament, education, and habits of individuals, and thought I knew something of the various workings of the foible; but until I saw Major Subsequent, never did I know that man could find his chief glory in the possession of loathsome and incurable afflictions. But such is the fact, or rather was the fact, for the Major one day came in contact with rather a familiar friend of mine, whose known liberality is such that he never fails to give his visiters a fee simple to a small plantation. Yes, the Major is no more! he died in my arms, or rather a portion of him did; for my embrace, to have clasped the whole of his frame, muscle, and fat, would have had to be as comprehensive as the recipe for boiling water. Reader! in all probability you never knew him; if twoscore has not been chalked up against you, I know you never did, for I am now an old, bald-headed, wig-wearing Swamp Doctor, and he was buried when my natural hair was long as a Yankee pedlar's remembrance of a small debt due him. Major Billy Subsequent, F. F. Y. O. K. M. T. R. L. M.
H. M. A. M. J. O. G. First Family Virginia, Olways Kritical, Major third regiment Louisiana Militia. His mother a Miss Jones of Georgia. Hic Jackson. Yes, here is the grave!
“Major Billy Subsequent, here are some friends of mine that wish an introduction to you. Will you rise? You're sleepy! Ah, Billy, you're a grave subject. But my readers are anxious to know you. Read, then, your biography from your posthumous memoirs. You haven't got your nap out yet?”
Reader, Billy won't rise, so I'll have to do as he directs, and call upon your imagination to prepare him from the material I shall offer.
Major Billy Subsequent, to use rather an old witticism, was one of the most classical men I ever knew. Byron must have had him in his eye—rather a large one would have been required to hold him—when he wrote his beautiful lyric, The iles of grease! the iles of grease! for Billy was fat almost to fatuity; nature had set up in his inner man a laboratory to convert everything that entered his mouth into adipose or fatty corpuscles. He would have been a trump at euchre, for in an emergency he could have been played as the right bower at clubs, to which important personage he bore a striking resemblance. It would have been impossible to have hung him, for he had no neck; his head was rather too hard to have suspended him by, and I have yet to learn that a man can be strangulated by tying the rope under his arms; so capital execution was not applicable to him, except when fish, flesh, fowl, or vegetables were to be devoured, and then his execution was capital. He had heard when very young that he, like the balance of the human race, possessed feet; but such was his abdominal rotundity grown to, that to verify the fact by ocular demonstration, was a feat, to accomplish which he would have failed in toto. When we beheld his hands, we were struck with their resemblance to a pair of boiled hams, notched at the ends sufficiently to correspond to fingers and thumbs. He never trusted but one finger in the performance of friendship's manipulation, melancholy experience having demonstrated that human friendship was grown too weak to be intrusted with an entire hand. His face was coveted by every politician in the land, being broad enough to smile upon all parties, and look lovingly to all quarters of the Union at the same time. His wind, like a doctor's visits of charity, was short, but not sweet, his oesophagus being contracted, the proximity of his stomach being supposed to affect it in this respect. Set him to walking, and his puff! puff! sent every inland planter who had cotton to ship to the bayou directly.
Being the lineal descendant of a Scotch prince—who was hung as the finale of an unsuccessful raid—and belonging to F. F. V., it is natural to suppose that he shared in the modesty and personal humility that distinguish his like favoured brethren; in fact, he rather externally accomplished the thing, imitating them in every particular of common glorification, and taking exclusive grounds in things that they never dreamt of as forming subjects for self-gratulation. They referred to tradition, genealogy, or other equally as creditable sources, to prove their purity of blood and excellence of family; but Major Subsequent had another test, which with him was indubitably decisive of the present and past purity of his genealogical tree. Up to the time of my acquaintance with him, his wife, children, and self, all were, and had been from youth, in possession of various incurable and afflicting disorders, but according to the Major's statement not one of them had ever had a plebeian or unfashionable disease. This was the Major's chief source of glory and honour. The blood of his family was so pure, that only aristocratic diseases could make any morbific impression on their susceptible systems.
He prided himself upon his Ciceronian wart and bluff Harry the Eighth proportions; every twinge of the gout was a thrill of exquisite pleasure, for only high living and pure blood could have the gout. His eldest son had the King's Evil—the King's Evil, mind you! Major Subsequent was one of those that believed that kings existed in a perpetual atmosphere of delight, and that consequently the King's Evil was only a play-synonyme for the king's pleasure, so his eldest born had little of his sympathy. His youngest son was terribly humpbacked, but this gave the Major no uneasiness, for were not Alexander and Richard humpbacked kings? One of his daughters was an old maid, “but then,” argued the Major, consoling his child under this terrible disease, “Queen Elizabeth and Cleopatra died old maids, and why not you?” Another had a perpetual leer upon her countenance, “but then,” quoth the Major, turning to a volume of Shakspeare, “there was a king Lear, a kingly precedent, Miss Subsequent; so don't talk of being operated upon for strabismus.” His wife—but enough, you know the man. The Major was very proud of his family, or rather of his family's diseases, cherishing them in much the same spirit that Jenner, the father of vaccination, did his experimental cow, for the scab upon her.
I became a great favourite with the Major, not that I was diseased in any way, but on the contrary always enjoyed good health, but he said that as I was one of the chivalry, he was certain if I ever got sick, it would be a gentlemanly disease, and none of your d——n plebeian, chill-and-fever, poor folks' affections.
I used to visit the Major's house often, for the purpose of studying his character, and getting a good dinner; for the Major fed well, all but horses, and they had to trust the chances of a stray nubbin falling through the chinks of the stable loft. Taking good care of a horse meant, with him, tying him to a fence, with nothing to eat but the dead wood. Taking extraordinary care signified hitching him to a green sapling, where he could have the privilege of gnawing the bark.
My open admiration of his character soon elevated me to the post of family physician—nearly a sinecure—for the Major was afraid to take medicine, not wishing to part with his hereditary honours.
One day, I had just finished my dinner at home, and had taken, cigar in mouth, my usual seat beneath a favourite oak, to indulge in a fit of meditation, when I saw the dust up the bayou road shaken up by a half-naked negro, who, having no pockets in his shirt, and being hat-less, holding a letter in his teeth, was urging his mule along at the top of his speed. At a glance, I knew it was the Major's boy, or rather mule, for no one in the settlement save him owned an animal, the ribs of which could be counted at almost any distance.
They arrived; and first asking me for a chaw of tobacco, the negro delivered the note, which, true to my surmise, was from the Major, and written apparently under high excitement, requesting me to come up immediately, as he apprehended something terrible had either happened, or was going to occur.
My horse being ready saddled, in a short time I was at the Major's, whom I found waddling up and down his long gallery, his path distinctly marked by the huge drops of sweat that had fallen from his brow.
“Doctor, I am truly rejoiced at your arrival; my worst apprehensions have been excited upon a subject, upon which the honour of my family depends, and the firm fame of my ancestors.”
Thinking from his language there was a lady in the case, I told him that marriage would cure all indiscretions, and muttered something about accidents and the best of families. The Major understood only the conclusion.
“Best of families!” repeated he. “Yes, doctor, not only of the best, but the very best. I pride myself upon my blood. Mine is no upstart claim of a thousand years or so, but, doctor, drawn from the very creation, and transmitted in a stream of pure brilliancy down to me. But, doctor, something has occurred to-day, I fear, which, if it be as my darkest and gloomiest thoughts suggest, will prove my death, bring ruin and disgrace upon my house, and extinguish the ancient torch of the Subsequents like a farthing dip. I have looked over my list of ancestors, from the creation up, and find to my ineffable horror not one of them ever died with any but a noble and kingly disease. I know I have received the stream in all its pristine purity—and oh, doctor, on your honour as a man, on the awful sanctity of your calling, never reveal to mortal the terrible disclosure I am about to make. Doctor Tensas, I fear my eldest born has got—faugh! I sicken at the thought—the chill and fever! Oh, Lord, terrible! awful! horrible! Is it not enough to madden a man, to think, after having only noble diseases in his family, for twenty thousand years at least, that a cursed, plebeian, vulgar disease, which every negro and low poor man can have, should dare present itself in the habitation of aristocratic and kingly affections. Doctor, if it be as I fear, I shall go deranged! I shall die! I will disinherit the rascal! He shall change his name! To think of gout, king's evil, humpback, and their royal brethren, to attest my purity of blood, and then for chi—faugh! it is too horrible to be true! Go, doctor, examine him. Heaven grant my fears may be groundless, or I shall certainly die. I cannot survive the disgrace.”
Going into the room where the patient lay, I examined him, and sure enough chill and fever was there in all its perfection.
Fearing the effect the revelation might have upon the Major, I attempted a pious fraud, and blundered out something about its being a strange, singular, and anomalous affection, not laid down in the books—never had seen anything like it before. Certainly not chill and fever, though even if it were—ha! ha!—it was still a disease, though debased very much in modern times, I must confess, not to be looked on with coolness, as James the Second and Oliver Cromwell were said to have died of it.
“Doctor Tensas, don't deceive me,” said the Major. I assured him that I did not—that his son had not the chill and fever. I was not fully assured of the nature of his disease, but he might rest easy, as far as ague was concerned.
Reassured and comforted by my positive declaration and manner, the Major heaved a deep sigh of relief, and asked me to stay all night. I would have assented, but my old sorrel, remembering his well filled trough at home, and fearing some such arrangement, put in an impatient and positive nay, and I departed.
A day passed in quietude; but who knows what the morrow will bring forth? I was summoned, in greater haste than before, to the Major's. On reaching there, I found him writhing in pain, both bodily and mentally, with a handful of buttons, and a couple of jaw-teeth with them, somewhat decayed.
“Doctor Tensas,” he thundered out, “by the Eternal you deceived me. My son had the chill and fever. He has it now! Now, sir, now! Look at these buttons off and these teeth shaken out, and then tell me if the blood of a line of noble ancestors is not defiled, and my family disgraced forever?—my son have the chill and fever!” and a shudder ran over his frame. “Chill and fever! Ha! ha! ha!” a fit of hysterical, demoniacal laughter came over him. “Chill and fever! Ha! ha! ha!” gurgled, mixed with the death-rattle from his throat. I looked in his face—and thus died Major Billy Subsequent, F. F. V. &c., of a chill and fever his son had!