The Academic Gregories

by Agnes Grainger Stewart

Although regents had been abolished both in Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities before 1746, in Aberdeen they were still retained, and from the statement quoted in Mr Rait’s book on the Universities of Aberdeen, I take the following paragraph, descriptive of the attitude of King’s College in regard to this subject. ‘Every Professor of Philosophy in this University is also tutor to those who study under him, has the whole direction of their studies, the training of their minds, and the oversight of their manners; and it seems to be generally agreed that it must be detrimental to a student to change his tutor every session ... and though it be allowed that a professor who has only one branch of philosophy for his province, may have more leisure to make improvements in it for the benefit of the learned world, yet it does not seem at all extravagant to suppose that a professor ought to be sufficiently qualified to teach all that his pupils can learn in philosophy in the course of three sessions.’ So it was not only to teach, but to train the minds, and ‘overlook’ the manners of his students, that John Gregory was called. He was the only Gregory who ever was a regent, and he came to his work with a clear insight into students’ ways, being indeed hardly more than a student himself. But the life must have been unattractive. To quote from a letter dated September 4th, 1765, from Thomas Reid, who held the Chair of Philosophy shortly after his cousin, which is full of much interesting information as to what the work of a regent was like:—‘The students here,’ he says, ‘have lately been compelled to live within the College. We need but look out at our windows to see when they rise and when they go to bed. They are seen nine or ten times throughout the day statedly, by one or other of the masters—at public prayers, school hours, meals, in their rooms, besides occasional visits which we can make with little trouble to ourselves.’

‘They are shut up within walls at 9 at night. This discipline hath indeed taken some pains and resolution, as well as some expense, to establish it.’

Along with this work in King’s College, John Gregory engaged in general practice as a physician. He found it very engrossing, much more so than the philosophical teaching which he had to give, and he determined to resign his regentship, and to go abroad for a few months.

On his return he fell in love with the Hon. Elizabeth Forbes, a daughter of William, Lord Forbes. She was a beautiful girl, very clever, and she was besides an heiress, and there is a story that her father did not at all approve of the marriage. ‘What do you propose to keep her on?’ said he, and Gregory, getting angry, took his lancet out of his pocket, and said, ‘on this.’ They were married in 1752. Their life was a singularly happy one, to use the expression of their own day, ‘they mutually enjoyed a high degree of felicity.’ For two years they were in Aberdeen, and then Gregory got impatient of his small practice, for there was only room there for one Dr Gregory, and he made up his mind to seek his fortune in London. This was a step which he was glad of all his days, for it brought him into contact with so many interesting people. ‘In London,’ says Lord Woodhouselee, he was ‘already known by reputation as a man of genius.’ How this could be, seeing that he had done little to show his talents, it is difficult to understand. Perhaps some one who knew him in the old Leyden days had spread a report of his brilliancy, or some Aberdonian may have named him as a coming power. However it happened, the effect was most fortunate, for not only was he recognised by the scientific world, and made a Fellow of the Royal Society, but Sir George Lyttelton and Mrs Montague, ‘that fascinating humbug,’ made friends with him, and whatever Mrs Montague was to other people, she was most sincerely kind to the Gregories.

These were the days of Samuel Johnson, of Sir Joshua Reynolds and his sister, of Miss Burney, of Garrick and of Lyttelton, and it was to this society that Mrs Montague introduced her new Scottish friends. It is true that there were days when ‘Mrs Montague kept aloof from Johnson like the west from the east,’ and when the sage said bitter things about ‘Mrs Montague for a penny’; but there were also the other days when they smiled upon one another, when Johnson forgot that she had called Rasselas a narcotic, and listened while Mrs Thrale compared her conversation with that of Burke. Reynolds thought her beauty classical. Miss Burney once called her the glory of her sex, and all the world reading her essay on Shakespeare believed that she had saved his fame from the calumnies of Voltaire. Into this admiring circle Gregory was admitted and was himself enjoyed and appreciated, and it is possible that he might also in the end have secured a practice if he had continued to live in the south. But in 1756 his brother James died leaving a vacancy in the Chair of Medicine in Aberdeen. To this chair Gregory was appointed and half reluctantly he turned his back upon London, and took up his new duties at King’s College, He returned unchanged except for his broader ideas and wider culture; and, although the rest of his life was passed within the somewhat narrow limits of university towns, he never became provincial.

Teaching was not one of his duties as mediciner. A few years apprenticeship to any doctor sufficed for training, and gave the students all the preparation they desired for a degree. John Gregory and Dr Skene fretted against this, and in the hope of founding a Medical School opened Lectures on Medicine. But the students did not attend. It was an indignity to the university, keenly felt by these professors, that an Aberdeen degree should be the laughing stock of all the other universities; but without an Infirmary it was impossible to teach the Practice of Physic, and the attempt had to be given up for the time.

Then it was that Thomas Reid and Gregory planned the Philosophical Society, which was nicknamed by the people who did not belong to it ‘the Wise Club.’ It met after five o’clock dinner at a queer little tavern called the Red Lion Inn. A paper was read and its subject discussed. There was wine on a side table, but no healths were allowed to be drunk, and at an early hour the discussions ended. Among the members were Gregory, Reid, David Skene, Gerard, and Beattie the poet, who became a great friend of Gregory’s. The evenings were merry and the little parlour of the inn echoed to many a peal of laughter. The commonest entry about Gregory is ‘discourse not readie,’ which his cousin the philosopher, who kept the minutes never failed to insert, and also for the benefit of the Society the fine was always claimed by the members present, and laughingly paid by the unready professor. On these nights when no essay was read the Society had to content itself with philosophic discussion, the nature of which was arranged at the previous meeting. There was for them always, however, one never failing subject in David Hume’s Sceptical Speculation. ‘Your company, although we are all good Christians, would be more acceptable than that of Athanasius,’ wrote Reid in 1763 to his great opponent, and it was true. To Gregory there were moreover fields for speculation on education, on what medicine had done for men, on the distinction between Wit and Humour, on agriculture, and in his two books which attained such popularity there are chapters which do nothing more than follow out the ideas which he uttered at the Philosophical Society. Many books had their origin in this club. Gerard’s on Taste, Beattie’s Essay on Truth, Campbell’s Treatise on Miracles, and Philosophy of Rhetoric, and John Gregory’s Comparative View of Man and the Animal World, all books with a great name in their day, but Gregory’s for one sadly uninteresting now, when his startling views upon education have been universally accepted, and there remains of what is unusual only pedantic comparison and prosy sentiment. It is forgotten that John Gregory was an innovator when he advocated keeping children warm and when he refused to recognise the necessity of the icy morning bath, which before his day was de rigueur in every nursery. Long after his teaching days were over there were still found homes where his broad sensible views had not penetrated, and in the Memoirs of a Highland Lady Miss Grant gives a terrible description of her own early days (1806).

‘A large long tub stood in the kitchen-court, the ice on the top of which had often to be broken before our horrid plunge into it; we were brought down from the very top of the house, four pair of stairs, with only a cotton cloak over our night gowns, just to chill us completely before the dreadful shock. How I screamed, begged, prayed, entreated to be saved, half the tender-hearted maids in tears beside me, all no use, Millar had her orders. Nearly senseless, I have been taken to the house-keeper’s room, which was always warm, to be dried, then we dressed, without any flannel, and in cotton frocks with short sleeves and low necks. Revived by the fire, we were enabled to endure the next bit of martyrdom, an hour upon the low sofa, so many yards from the nursery hearth, our books in our hands, while our cold breakfast was preparing.’ What a changed life have the little folks of to-day! But, ah me! this name of Gregory to childhood. ‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones ...’ the son’s mixture made the name of Gregory abhorred in every nursery, and all the father’s good deeds are forgotten.

On the 29th of September 1763 Dr Gregory’s wife died. It was the greatest sorrow of his life, and afterwards when high honours came to him in his profession, and when the world praised him, he never ceased to think with longing of the early joyous days of his love. Elizabeth Gregory was very happy, and even in her memory there is something tender and simple, something to make one smile, and feel the better of it. Picture this peer’s daughter, as she stood one afternoon, making impotent appeals to her little boy (who was dressed in white for a party,) to leave the herd of small ragamuffins whom he was leading to a glorious mud-damming of the gutter. Little James paid no attention to his mother—I doubt whether he heard her—for the dam was breaking, hope was almost gone, when with a shout of joy he remembered that he himself was a solid body, and sitting down in the breach, cried out in broad Scots to his admiring followers, ‘Mair dubs, laddies, mair dubs.’

Some years after his wife’s death Dr Gregory was invited to go to Edinburgh. Professor Rutherford, who held the chair of the Practice of Physic, wished to retire, but he would not resign his place to Cullen, whom he held a heretic in medicine. So the old professor arranged that John Gregory should be asked to come from Aberdeen, and set up practice in Edinburgh. At another time Professor Gregory would have hesitated, but in his distress and despondency he thought of what a benefit it would be to himself to leave the sad associations of Aberdeen and allay his sorrows in the fulness of work which he knew would await him. His university did not ask him to resign his chair at King’s College, but in 1765 Sir Alexander Gordon of Lesmore was appointed as joint-professor.