DOCTOR GLYNN-CLOBERY
This amiable and good man was born at Helland, 5th August, 1719, and was the son of Robert Glynn, by Lucy, fourth daughter of John Clobery, of Bradstone, in Devon. A singular fatality attended this ancient family, that possessed a very interesting Elizabethan mansion. John Clobery had eight daughters and only one son and heir, and that son died without issue, and only three of the daughters married. Lucy had but the one son, Robert Glynn, and the fifth daughter, Mary, also only a son; and as these sons died unmarried, the estate passed to remote connections.
Robert Glynn assumed his mother's name and succeeded to the estates on the death of his uncle, William Clobery. Robert Glynn was an M.D. and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, where he resided. He was a simple-minded man, and was completely taken in by the Chatterton forgeries, and for some time strenuously defended them. On which account Horace Walpole speaks of him with great contempt as "an old doting physician and Chattertonian at Cambridge." "I neither answer Dr. Glynn, nor a poissarde. Twenty years ago I might have laughed at both, but they are too small fry, and I am too old to take notice of them. Besides, when leviathans and crocodiles and alligators tempest and infest the ocean, I shall not go a-privateering in a cockboat against a smuggling pinnace." That was in August, 1792.
Dr. Glynn was very fond of seeing young gownsmen at his rooms, and had tea for them and conversed with them; but he never drank tea himself. C. Carlyon says: "His custom was to walk about the room and talk most agreeably upon such topics as he thought likely to interest his company, which did not often consist of more than two or three persons. As soon as the tea-table was set in order, and the boiling water ready for making the infusion, the fragrant herb was taken, not from an ordinary tea-caddy, but from a packet, consisting of several envelopes curiously put together, in the centre of which was the tea. Of this he used, at first, as much as would make a good cup for each of the party; and, to meet fresh demands, I observed that he invariably put an additional teaspoonful in the teapot; the excellence of the beverage, thus prepared, ensuring him custom. He had likewise a superior knack of supplying each cup with sugar from a considerable distance, by a jerk of the hand which discharged it from the sugar-tongs into the cup with unerring certainty, as he continued his walk around the table, scarcely seeming to stop whilst he performed these and other requisite evolutions of the entertainment."
Dr. Glynn or Clobery would only eat when his appetite summoned him imperiously for a meal. A faithful old servant was in constant attendance upon him, and, whenever his master called out for food, he was prepared to set before him some plain dish and a pewter of porter.
Nothing would induce the doctor to believe that gout was hereditary. He once took occasion to mark this with peculiar emphasis, when a writer signing himself W. A. A. consulted him in his first attack, then in his nineteenth year. He observed, "My young friend, you call this gout! Pooh, pooh! You have not yet earned the costly privilege; you must drink your double hogshead first."
"But my father, sir; it is in my blood by right of inheritance."