The Young Physician

by Francis Brett Young

The inhabitants of North Bromwich, who are a tolerant people, and proud of the fact, would smile at this reflection. They are not in the habit of surveying the midden in which they are bred from remote hilltops, except on Bank Holidays, at which time they have discovered a truth from which they might learn more: that with the aid of hill air and exercise, whether it be that of cocoanut shies or swing-boats, or the more hazardous pursuit of donkey-riding, it is possible to absorb a greater quantity of alcohol in a given time without unduly suffering than in the atmosphere of their own streets. But they have not time to learn, and since they have never known any other conditions of living, they exhibit the admirable human characteristic of making the best of their surroundings and persuading themselves that their hallucinated existence is typical of human life. They are even eager, pathetically eager, to find and to proclaim its virtues, and that they may do this more easily they have invented specious names for the disease and its results: Industry for the first, and, for the second, Progress.

In the vindication of a Municipal Conscience (making the best of a bad job) they periodically extend the area over which their coat of arms, a reminder of days when chivalry existed, is displayed. The coat of arms itself is an unfortunate symbol, for it is supported by the figure of a brawny slave who carries the hammer with which his chains have been forged; but the motto at least is encouraging. It is the word “Forward,” expressing the aspirations of the citizens towards the day when all England may be as the Black Country. The watcher on Uffdown may give it a more far-sighted significance: “forward, to the day when there shall be no more coal, and the evil, of its own inanition, perish.”

For the present, at any rate, the city showed no signs of perishing. During the last year or two, its tentacles had spread farther than ever before, swarming into the wet and lonely valley of the Dulas Fechan, a deep cleft in the mountains beyond Felindre where a noisy river ran through undergrowth older than man’s memory. From this valley, the council had decreed, the rain of the Savaddan watershed, which geology had destined for the Wye and later for the Atlantic, must now traverse eighty miles or more of conquered territory, and after being defouled by the domestic usages of North Bromwich, must find its way into the Trent, and so to the German Ocean, as the Romans thoughtlessly labelled the North Sea. “Water,” said the Mayor, who was also known as Sir Joseph Astill, the brewer, “water is one of the necessities of life. It is our duty to the public to see that they have it, and that they have it pure and unadulterated.”

So the Welsh water came, and the altruistic baronet took the credit for it. Indeed the progressive spirit of North Bromwich found its incarnation in this fleshy gentleman. It was he who presented the municipal art gallery with their unrivalled collection of Madox-Jones cartoons, to say nothing of three portraits of himself exemplifying (he had an elegant vocabulary) the styles of the three greatest portrait painters of modern times. It was he who saved the art of music from degradation by fighting, with all the weight of his personal influence, against the performance of secular music, music, that is, divorced from “sacred” words, upon the Sabbath. It was he, again, who aroused public feeling on the question of the university: “the first Modern university,” he called it.

He accomplished its endowment, equipped it with a principal whose name was a household word in the homes of the great middle classes; and finally set the seal of modernity on his creation, less than twenty years before the total prohibition of alcohol became law in retrograde America, by instituting a learned faculty and providing a degree in the science of . . . brewing. Just as an example of the city’s liberality, there was also a faculty of Arts. The faculty of Science, of course, was important, if only as an appendage to the brewing school; those of Engineering and Mining flattered the industries of the district; that of Commerce taught its graduates to write business letters in every spoken tongue and give the Yankees what for; and lastly, that of Medicine, supplied a necessary antidote to the activities of most of the others.

Sir Joseph Astill was proud, as well he might be, of the Medical School. “In this city,” he boasted, “there are actually more hospital beds per centum of inhabitants than in any other in the whole country. The North Bromwich medical student has a greater opportunity of studying disease, in all its aspects, than the alumnus of any other school in the world. Thousands of beds lie waiting for his scrutiny; and I am glad to say that very few of them are ever empty.”

Edwin’s first serious acquaintance with North Bromwich had begun at the end of the summer holidays, through which he had worked with a good deal less than the fiery enthusiasm that he would have put into his reading for the Balliol scholarship. The syllabus of the examination for the Astill Exhibition had amazed him by its simplicity: the prescribed books were works that he had absorbed some years before at St. Luke’s, and though the mathematical side of the business worried him, as it had always done, it was clear that in North Bromwich the classics were regarded really as a polite accomplishment rather than as an integral part of a gentleman’s equipment in life: so that these drowsy summer months were really a period of comparative idleness in which he had time to brood on his regrets and become gradually reconciled to his new fate. In this spirit he approached the examination. Even the capitoline eminence on which the university buildings were placed, with the tremendous renaissance buildings of the Council House and the Corinthian Town Hall, did not greatly impress him. He saw rather the squalid slums from which these pretentious buildings rose. It was so different, he thought, from Oxford, and he passed the flagged courtyard with its cool fountain and the benevolent statue of Sir Joseph Astill in a frock coat and carrying a rolled umbrella on which the sculptor had lavished all the feeling of his art, without the least shadow of spiritual obeisance.

With two other long-legged candidates he had worked through his papers in a small room whose windows overlooked the quiet square and a phantom stream of noiseless traffic beyond. The first paper had been mathematical, and its intricacies kept his mind so busy that he had little time for reflection. From time to time he would see one of the long-legged competitors reducing the end of his penholder to wood-pulp in the earnestness of ruminant thought; and occasionally the deep boom of the clock in the tower of the Art Gallery would remind him that time was veritably passing; but time passed swiftly, and he was almost surprised to find himself once more in an air that for all its vitiation was less sleepy than that of the sealed examination room. By the end of the first evening all that he feared in the examination papers was over. To-morrow he would be on his own ground and the modern university could do its damnedest.

Next day the classical papers were distributed and Edwin, who found them easy, could see that his pen-chewing friend was in a bad way. All the passages set for translation were familiar: the grammatical questions consisted of old catches that had been drilled into him by Mr. Leeming in the Upper Fourth. As far as he was concerned, it was a walk over. He had time to take in more of his surroundings and to watch the silent coloured stream of traffic filtering through the narrows where the bulk of the Town Hall constricted the street. At the end of each day he found his father anxiously awaiting him. He was eager to see and handle the examination papers for himself. He seemed impressed by their difficulty, and Edwin found it hard to reassure him without appearing objectionably superior. He seemed rather surprised that Edwin, on the eve of such a formidable ordeal, should choose to take out his bicycle and ride towards the hills, so surprised that it became a matter for serious debate with Edwin whether he should do as he wanted to do and appear priggish, or affect an anxiety that didn’t exist merely to please his father. In the end he decided to be honest at all costs.

The part of the examination that he enjoyed most was the viva-voce in Classics. For this trial he was led up many flights of stone steps to a room full of books in which the Dean of the Faculty of Arts awaited him: a kindly, nervous old man with a grey beard, with whom Edwin immediately felt at home. His nervousness seemed to Edwin appropriate: it implied the indubitable fact that in North Bromwich Arts was a sideshow that counted for nothing, and that the professor’s dignity, as Dean of a learned Faculty, was a precarious and unsubstantial thing. “Your papers were excellent, . . . excellent,” he said to begin with. “Now, I should like you to read me something.” He pointed to a bookshelf. “Let us start with some Greek.”