Famous Men of Science

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

"In school hours he was a painstaking and conscientious worker, never leaving his lessons or preparing his task quicker or better than when he had some pet, a dormouse or sometimes a snake, twisting and wriggling inside his college waistcoat, which, having found its way out at his boots, would be carefully replaced under the waistcoat, to go through the same journey again."

While at Winchester, Frank determined to become a surgeon, and chose as a parting gift from one of his tutors, instead of Goldsmith's poems, "Graham's Domestic Medicine." At his request, his parents sent him a lancet, with which he bled his college mates, if they were courageous enough to submit to the operation, offering each one sixpence as an inducement. Nevertheless, when, in vacation, he witnessed an amputation at the Infirmary, he fainted.

When Frank left Winchester, Bishop Moberly said, "I always had the utmost satisfaction in him as a school-boy; and I look back with very great regard to his simple, earnest character, and his devotion to the studies which have made him so well known. To me he was just what I always found him, full of curious information, excellently kind-tempered and affectionate."

In 1844, at the age of eighteen, Frank entered Christ Church, Oxford. Here he turned the court between his college rooms and the canon's gardens into a menagerie. He owned a young bear, Tiglath Pileser, Jacko the monkey, an eagle, a jackal, besides marmots, guinea-pigs, squirrels, and dormice, an adder and other snakes, tortoises, green frogs and a chameleon. Skeletons and stuffed specimens were numerous.

Many of these pets strayed away. The marmot got into the chapter-house, and the eagle stationed himself in the chapel doorway, and attacked those who wished to enter.

Dr. Liddon tells of being invited to Frank's rooms, to breakfast with him. "The marmots, which had hibernated in the cellar below, had just, as he expressed it, 'thawed.' There was great excitement; the creatures ran about the table, as entitled to the honors of the day; though there were other beasts and reptiles in the room too, which in later life would have made breakfasting difficult. Speaking of reptiles, one very early incident in my Oxford life was joining in a hunt of Frank's adder. It had escaped into Mr. Benson's rooms, and was pursued into the bedroom by a group of undergraduates, who had, however, different objects in view. Frank certainly had the well-being of the adder chiefly at heart, the rest of us, I fear, were governed by the lower motive of escaping being bitten anyhow—if consistently with the adder's safely, well—if not, still of escaping. Eventually, the adder was caught, I believe, without great damage.

"One day I met Frank just outside Tom Gate. His trousers pockets were swollen out to an enormous size; they were full of slow-worms in damp moss. Frank explained to me that this combination of warmth and moisture was good for the slow-worms, and that they enjoyed it. They certainly were very lively, poking their heads out incessantly, while he repressed them with the palms of his hands....

"He was certainly one of the most popular men in Christ Church; when he was in the schools, to be examined viva voce, almost the whole undergraduate world of Christ Church was there.... He always struck me, in respect of the most serious matters, as combining strength and simplicity very remarkably; it was impossible to talk to him and not to be sure that God, life, death, and judgment were to him solid and constantly present realities."

Another college friend says: "One evening when I was devoting an hour to coaching him up for his 'little go,' I took care to tuck up my legs, in Turkish fashion, on the sofa, for fear of a casual bite from the jackal which was wandering about the room. After a time I heard the animal munching up something under the sofa, and was relieved that he should have found something to occupy him. When our work was finished, I told Buckland that the jackal had found something to eat under the sofa. 'My poor guinea-pigs!' he exclaimed; and, sure enough, four or five of them had fallen victims."

Tiglath Pileser, the bear, had to be sent away from Christ Church. The dean said, "I hear you keep a bear in college; well, either you or your bear must go." So Tig was sent to Islip, seven miles from Oxford, a living held by Dean Buckland, who had now become Dean of Westminster. The bear did so much mischief at Islip, in grocer's shops and houses, that he was sent to the zoölogical gardens, where he died in cutting his teeth.