The Academic Gregories

by Agnes Grainger Stewart

To begin his study at Edinburgh, to continue it at Leyden, was the best suggestion that they could offer him, and it turned out excellently.

His professors in Edinburgh were Professor Monro, (the first), who daily strove to make dry bones live, and succeeded; Professor Sinclair, who expressed Boerhaave’s teaching in his own very beautiful Latin; Dr Rutherford, the grandfather of Sir Walter Scott, who taught the Practice of Physic, and Dr Alston, the strangeness of whose prescriptions makes it possible for us to grasp what an advance Cullen and Gregory accomplished in medicine. These were very nearly the same professors as lectured when Goldsmith attended the university some ten years afterwards, and he did not think much of any of them, except Professor Monro, to whom he gave his heart’s admiration. ‘This man,’ he wrote, ‘has brought the science he teaches to as much perfection as it is capable of; ‘tis he, I may venture to say, that draws hither such a number of students from most parts of the world, even from Russia.’

As for Professor Alston, he has left behind him the notes of his lectures, and they are very curious, though not laughable, for after all it was what everyone believed in those days. ‘Earthworms, large and fat ones especially, were dried and used in cases of jaundice and gout: the juice of slaters passed through a muslin bag was recommended for cancer, convulsions and headache.’ But, all the same, think of John Gregory taking notes of such teaching, sitting up late at night to write down how vipers must be used for ague and small-pox, and picture his watching the cure of the lady with a headache who could be induced to drink the wood-lice-juice. No wonder she was cured when you think what faith she must have brought to her physician.

Though these notes from Alston’s lectures seem only worthy of a medicine-man, there was yet throughout the university an awakening spirit of life and of enquiry. The Royal Medical Society, which Cullen had founded in 1735, and which John Gregory attended in 1742, was the scene of the most lively debates upon every subject in medicine and philosophy. Little was taken for granted, and everything was questioned. In Gregory’s year its charm was greatly enhanced by the presence of Mark Akenside, who was a member, and the best company possible. Amusing, poetical, his oratory drew many persons to the Society. Robertson, the historian, came every night when Akenside was going to speak, and the racy talk was enjoyed by him almost as much as it was by the speakers.

Gregory spent three years in Edinburgh at this time, and then went to Leyden to study under Albinus, Gaubius, and Van Royen. Albinus was an anatomist. His engravings were much clearer than those procured by anyone else at that time, but he was not a great lecturer, only painstaking and observant. In Gaubius, however, the university had a strong man, a vivid teacher, and an original thinker, and if Gregory had needed inspiration, he would have found it in his teaching.

To John Gregory Holland was delightful country when contrasted with the cold east of Scotland, where even the roads were almost impassable in bad weather. In Holland he made his way along sunlit canals, through villages gay with gardens, and when he reached Leyden his enjoyment was complete.

Full of delight he went about the quiet squares of the university town, along the banks of the old Rhine, and round the path on the top of the wall. Everything was new, and everything was foreign. He chose rooms for himself at a well-known lodging on the Long Bridge. Mademoiselle van der Tasse arranged her house especially for English-men. It paid her better, and besides, the fat little French-woman could talk English, and knew how to please, and her coffee was famous in the town. Gregory’s companions in Leyden were Alexander Carlyle, afterwards minister of Inveresk, Dr Nicholas Monckly, Charles Townshend, John Wilkes, and a few Scotsmen. Some of them were studying law, some divinity, and the others medicine. But alas for the great fame of Albinus and Van Royen. ‘I asked Gregory,’ wrote Alexander Carlyle, ‘why he did not attend the lectures,’ which he answered by asking in his turn why I did not attend the divinity professors. ‘Having heard all they could say in a much better form at home, we went but rarely, and for form’s sake only to hear the Dutchmen.’ So after all it was not the Professors of Leyden that taught John Gregory so much. Albinus was no doubt worthy, but in his portrait he looks a little dead, a little like a mummy. He looks as if he had forgotten that men were anything more than bones.

The students who most enlivened the university were Charles Townshend and Wilkes, both of whom became notorious in after life, Townshend as a statesman, and Wilkes as Wilkes. On the first Sunday after Carlyle joined the party at Leyden, Gregory took him out for a walk along the Cingle, and introduced him to the English colony. As Wilkes drew near the newcomer asked eagerly about him. His face was so remarkable, not only for its ugliness, but for its self-assurance and interest, that no one could pass him without notice. Gregory’s answer was that ‘he was the son of a London distiller or brewer, who wanted to be a fine gentleman and man of taste, which he could never be, for God and Nature had been against him.’ And famous and popular as he afterwards became, this estimate of him remained true, for he never succeeded in becoming either a gentleman or a man of taste. What a clear insight Gregory had, and what a sharp tongue! He carried things all his own way in Holland, but in Edinburgh it was different; there his rapid way of expressing his thoughts even about the things for which he cared most deeply, was often put down to shallowness and hypocrisy.

The conversation among these men was often brilliant, but most of all at their students’ supper parties—these Leyden suppers of red herring, eggs and salad. Gregory’s great subjects were religion, and the equal, if not superior, talents of women as compared with men. Everybody made fun of him, for ‘he could hardly be persuaded to go to church, and there were no women near whom he could have wished to flatter;’ but he would not change his mind. Nicholas Monckly was a great friend of Gregory’s, but more because it brought him into notice than because of any love. He saw that Gregory could be witty, so he used to talk to him in private about subjects of interest, and then bringing the same matter up for discussion at their evening entertainments, would give out his friend’s opinions as if they had been his own. Gregory was much amused with this, and after a few evenings took Carlyle into his confidence, whereupon these two played many pranks upon poor Monckly, leading him out of his depth, or contradicting him. The sport was given up, because the victim was too unconscious of their satire, and when they made their chaff plain, he would come into Gregory’s bedroom, and complain even with tears. Wilkes, who tried too, but with greater success, to be a leader among the students, used to leave Leyden when he felt tired of it, and spend a few days in Utrecht with ‘Immateriality Baxter.’ These two men were really attached to one another, and what an ideal retreat it was to go to the house of that quaint Scotsman, even though he was in exile. King’s College in Aberdeen honoured John Gregory in his absence by sending him the degree of M.D., and thus distinguished, he turned his face again towards home. He, along with Carlyle and Monckly, travelled via Helvoet, Harwich, and London. In the boat they found a charming companion in Violetti, who was on her way to fulfil an engagement at the Haymarket Theatre, and to fame. She became Mrs Garrick, and lived happily in her villa, near London, till 1822, but except on the stage, Gregory never saw her again.

Now there happened to John Gregory, what so seldom befalls anyone, that he was put into the right place for him without any effort on his part. When he returned to Aberdeen he was offered the Chair of Philosophy, which meant in those days that he should teach mathematics, natural philosophy and moral philosophy, and be a regent. His former study did not exactly lead to this, and people must sometimes have asked of what use had his apprenticeship to his doctor brother been to him if he were to turn into a philosopher. But there was plenty of time to be several things in the leisurely eighteenth century. That was what John Gregory thought, so from 1747 to 1749 he was a Regent of Philosophy.