The Academic Gregories

by Agnes Grainger Stewart

John Gregory settled in 15 St John’s Street, Edinburgh, in 1764. His house was pleasantly situated on a hill, and was almost next door to Lord Monboddo’s, between whom and Gregory there presently sprang up a great intimacy. Practice came fast to Gregory, but celebrity greater than that which comes to a practitioner, however successful, made his first year in Edinburgh a year of triumph. Only a few months before, he had sent his manuscript of A Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man with those of the Animal World to Lord Lyttelton, and now the book had been published in London and received with such an enthusiasm that even Gregory and his patron were greatly astonished. London read the book, Aberdeen read the book, and so did Edinburgh, and Gregory was made at once a member of that literary Edinburgh as he had in his youth been received by Mrs Montague and her friends in London.

The matter was good and fresh at the time, but what was most praised was the style. ‘If you wish to see the natural style in the highest perfection, read the works of the late Dr John Gregory.... But in particular his Comparative View, which in respect to natural ease and unaffected elegant simplicity of style is not to be exceeded in any language, and in as far as my reading has extended has not been equalled by any other composition in English.... Gregory’s style may be compared to the acting of Garrick; it is only by a retrospective view that its superior excellence can be discovered.’

This is only one of the many laudatory reviews of the book, and by no means the most flattering, and it says a great deal for John Gregory’s sense that, in spite of this lionising, he came so successfully through the difficulties which crowded round him for the next few years.

Professor Rutherford watched with growing satisfaction the success of the Aberdeen doctor, whom he regarded as a protegé of his own. It was unfortunate for Gregory that he stood as it were as a rival of Cullen, for whom he had throughout life the profoundest regard. But nevertheless this was the case.

In 1766 matters came to a climax in the appointment of Gregory to the Chair of the Practice of Physic, made vacant by the retirement of Professor Rutherford. There was an immediate and furious outcry against this election, which was known to be mostly due to family influence. Gregory was a great man, and proved himself a brilliant teacher, but at this time he was absolutely untried, whereas Cullen had already made himself a name as one of the greatest teachers of the day.

The gift of the chair was in the hands of the Town Council, and to that body an address from the students of medicine was sent after the death of Dr Whytt, Professor of the Theory of Medicine, suggesting the advisability of asking Professor Gregory to resign the Chair of the Practice of Physic, which he then held, and accept the less important one of the Theory of Medicine, in order to make room for Cullen in the Practical Chair.

‘We who make this application are students of medicine in your University.... We are humbly of opinion that the reputation of the University and Magistrates, the good of the city, and our improvement will all in an eminent manner, be consulted by engaging Dr Gregory to relinquish the Professorship of the Practice for that of the Theory of Medicine, by appointing Dr Cullen, present Professor of Chemistry, to the practical chair, and by electing Dr Black Professor of Chemistry.’ After a dissertation on the qualifications of Dr Cullen, they proceed. ‘Nor is this our opinion of Dr Cullen meant in the least to detract from the merits of Dr Gregory. On the contrary, a principal motive to our expressing the sentiments we do on this occasion is the high opinion we entertain of that gentleman’s capacity. By a late very elegant and ingenious performance, by everybody attributed to him, we imagine it is evident what advantages the University must reap from lectures on the Theory of Medicine, delivered by a thinker so just and original, and so universally acquainted with human nature. With pleasure too, we reflect, that his character is not less respectable as a man, than as a Philosopher. We therefore cannot suppose, that were the public emolument to be obtained even at the expense of his private interest, he would not rejoice to make the honourable sacrifice, far less that he would, in the least hesitate to favour a scheme for promoting the public utility, when his private advantage is consistent with it.’

This can hardly have been pleasant reading for Gregory, and the whole proceeding was so entirely out of order that the Town Council took no action in the matter. Meanwhile Gregory was made First Physician to the King for Scotland in the place of Dr Whytt. He lectured for three years on the Practice of Physic, and then he and Cullen agreed to give alternate lectures on the Theory and Practice of Medicine. The university possessing three such able teachers as Gregory, Cullen and Black, grew more and more prosperous. It is impossible to go over the records of these years without admiration for John Gregory, who, amidst all the strife that waged around him and around Cullen, has not left a record of any bitterness. That he must have felt these annoyances is obvious, but his worries were only Edinburgh worries, and outside he knew that both he and Cullen were appreciated and valued for their individual work. On his appointment to the Edinburgh chair he had resigned his King’s College professorship.

When Dr Gregory came to Edinburgh, he came with his six children. Elizabeth, his youngest little girl, died in 1771. His eldest son James was studying medicine, the other boys were at work, and Dorothea and Anna Margaretta, his elder daughters, were growing into more charming companions for him with every day that passed. They were tall, willowy girls, promising great beauty, and full of sweetness. Dorothea, or Dolly as she was called, was a god-daughter of Mrs Montague’s, and when that lady came to stay with Dr Gregory, she was absolutely fascinated by her godchild. Her visit was a great pleasure to the Gregorys, to whom she was ever her most charming self.

Edinburgh society did not take kindly to her, if we are to believe Dr Carlyle, and in fact he is rather bitter upon the subject, calls her ‘a faded beauty,’ ‘a candidate for glory,’ and says she might have been admired by the first order of minds had she not been ‘greedy of more praise than she was entitled to.’ Even he, however, acknowledged her a wit, a critic, an author of some fame, possessing some parts and knowledge, which is praise to a certain point, though not to the point which Mrs Montague would have desired! ‘Old Edinburgh was not a climate for the success of impostures,’ writes the minister of Inveresk, and then to support his judgment with a little legal weight, he added, ‘Lord Kames, who was at first catched with her Parnassian coquetry, said at last that he thought she had as much learning as a well-educated college lad here of sixteen.’ Alas, poor Mrs Montague! and then, too, Dr Carlyle has unwittingly pointed out the rock on which she struck—‘she despised the women’—and by such obvious silliness did she not evoke her fate? Gray the poet was also a visitor at the Gregorys’ and Gregory was asked to meet anyone of interest who came to the town. With Smollett, indeed, who lived in St John Street for a winter, he could have little real friendship, for the novelist had put Lord Lyttleton into Roderick Random in anything but a kindly spirit, and the Gregories were notoriously ‘Love me, love my dog’ people. He lived on terms of close intimacy with Dr Robertson, Dr Blair, David Hume, John Home, Lord Kames, Lord Monboddo, and Lord Woodhouselee. He was a member of the Poker Club, though he went there very seldom, because of the way he was laughed at when he uttered his favourite doctrine of the superiority of women over men. This at least was the gossip of the time, but there is just a possibility that he thought his own company more entertaining than the constant attendance at the Poker from three in the afternoon till eight at night, and though no one knew it, he was busy drawing up a book of advices for his daughters against the time, which he felt could not be very far off, when he would no longer be with them.