If London was unjust to him, the wiseacres of Gloucestershire thought that burning was his fit punishment. One dear old lady, whenever she saw him leaving his house, used to run out and attack him with indescribable vivacity. "So your book," cried this charming matron, in genuine Gloucestershire dialect, "is out at last. Well! I can tell you that there bean't a copy sold in our town, nor shan't neither, if I can help it." On hearing, subsequent to the publication of the book (a great offence to the old lady!), some rumours of vaccination failures, the same goodie bustled up to the doctor and cried, with galling irony, "Shan't us have a general inoculation now?"
But Jenner was compensated for this worthy woman's opposition in the enthusiastic support of Rowland Hill, who not only advocated vaccination in his ordinary conversation, but from the pulpit used to say, after his sermon to his congregation, wherever he preached, "I am ready to vaccinate to-morrow morning as many children as you choose; and if you wish them to escape that horrid disease, the small-pox, you will bring them." A Vaccine Board was also established at the Surrey Chapel—i. e. the Octagon Chapel, in Blackfriars Road.
"My Lord," said Rowland Hill once to a nobleman, "allow me to present to your Lordship my friend, Dr. Jenner, who has been the means of saving more lives than any other man."
"Ah!" observed Jenner, "would that I, like you, could say—souls."
There was no cant in this. Jenner was a simple, unaffected, and devout man. His last words were, "I do not marvel that men are grateful to me, but I am surprised that they do not feel gratitude to God for making me a medium of good."
Of Jenner's more sprightly humour, the following epigrams from his pen (communicated to the writer of these pages by Dr. E. D. Moore of Salop), are good specimens.
"TO MY SPANISH CIGAR.
"Soother of an anxious hour!
Parent of a thousand pleasures!
With gratitude I owe thy power
And place thee 'mongst my choicest treasures.
Thou canst the keenest pangs disarm
Which care obtrudes upon the heart;
At thy command, my little charm,
Quick from the bosom they depart."
"ON THE DEATH OF JOHN AND BETTY COLE.
"Why, neighbours, thus mournfully sorrow and fret?
Here lie snug and cosy old John and his Bet;
Your sighing and sobbing ungodly and rash is,
For two knobs of coal that have now gone to ashes."