Aubrey Beardsley flashed into fame with black and white drawings of extraordinary originality and beauty. His peculiar technique has been widely imitated but never approached. After twenty years his reputation has not yet reached its zenith. Aubrey Beardsley during the whole of his meteoric career suffered from consumption. He died at the age of twenty-six.
XII
MUSICIANS
One would expect deafness to be an insuperable obstacle to a musician, yet Beethoven produced a large part of his work while handicapped by it, and some of his greatest compositions when his deafness had become complete. Mozart was delicate and subject to fevers; his last work and his best was written just before his death. It was said of Händel: “He was never greater than when, warned by palsy of the approach of death, and struggling with distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works which have made his name immortal in music.” Schubert was barely five feet one and walked with a strange shuffling gait; his eyesight was so defective that he slept in his spectacles. He suffered from digestive trouble and died young. So also did Chopin, having been an invalid the greater part of his short life. Mendelssohn was very frail and delicate. Carl Maria von Weber was not only ravaged by disease but also deformed and lame. Paganini, the most extraordinary violinist the world has ever heard, suffered from phthisis of the larynx and was constantly ill.
The case of Robert Schumann is very curious. He was studying to be a pianist, when, in attempting to strengthen his fingers, he accidentally paralyzed his right hand. To this apparent misfortune we owe one of the greatest composers.
XIII
THREE PHYSICIANS, A NATURALIST AND A CHEMIST
“Physician, heal thyself,” might have been said to Sir William Harvey, the famous discoverer of the circulation of the blood; and to Albert von Haller, the great Swiss doctor, who is considered the father of modern physiology.
To Louis Pasteur the world is indebted for the introductions of methods which have already worked wonders and bid fair to render possible the preventive treatment of all infectious disease. His most sensational discovery was the cure of hydrophobia, which he accomplished despite the fact that the special microbe causing this dread disease had not yet been isolated. Pasteur’s motto was, “Travaillez, travaillez toujours.” On his death-bed he turned to his devoted pupils and exclaimed: “Oú en êtes-vous? Que faîtes-vous?” and ended by repeating: “Il faut travailler.” He once said: “In the field of observation, chance only favors those who are prepared.” This great benefactor of the human race, though loaded with honors, remained to the last simple and affectionate as a child. Pasteur was subject to fits of apoplexy and it is curious that some of his most important discoveries were made immediately after such attacks.
Darwin, from the age of thirty, was a great sufferer. His daughter writes: “No one indeed, except my mother, knows the full amount of suffering he endured, or the full amount of his wonderful patience.” Dr. Darwin, however, once said to a friend: “If I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done nearly so much work as I have accomplished.”
Dr. Trudeau, who worked such miracles for the cure of consumption, was himself consumptive.