Memoirs of Eighty Years

by Thomas Gordon Hake

It was after the good Lord Ripon’s death, which happened only too soon, that I went to Spring Gardens to live, purposing to resume my medical connection with the public, and to continue my duties as physician at the West London Hospital, to which I was attached. It then had not long been instituted, but it is now an extensive and flourishing establishment in a populous suburb, where it is much needed.

Mr. Cowell, a good and chivalrous benefactor of the sick poor, now senior surgeon of the Westminster Hospital, was resident surgeon of the West London at that time; and Mr. Bird, who, in conjunction with his father, was its founder, was one of the surgical staff.

The Countess Dowager of Ripon spent the season at Carlton Gardens, in the family mansion; and, continuing my professional engagement, after the earl’s death, to her, I had the pleasure of visiting her daily.

Lady Ripon was a woman who deserved to be remembered as long as the lives of the good and great have an interest for mankind, and let us hope that may be as long as the human race endures. Her belief was as implicit in a happy future, as it was in the morrow of every day; and she regulated her actions accordingly, as inseparable from the duties devolving on her responsible position.

There are many such women in every class who, if they changed places, would remain the same; but they have not an equal opportunity of making it manifest how true they are. The countess felt her position as the daughter and the wife of an earl; it made her feel the more for those whom circumstances made dependent on her. She had been a great heiress, born to the inheritance of Nocton and other estates, in Lincolnshire; and she firmly regarded herself as appointed by Heaven, or rather entrusted, to administer the large means that belonged to her for the good of those who had a claim on her for support.

When at Stutgard in 1833, during a wide continental tour, not so commonly made in those days as now, I became acquainted with Sir Edward Disbrowe, the British minister, and the other members of the embassy. These were Mr. Wellesley, the eldest son of Lord Cowley, and Mr. Gordon, the eldest son of Gordon, of Ellon Castle. At that house I met Count Pozzo di Borgo, and a young Buonaparte, who was a guest of the King of Wurtemburg.

Mr. Wellesley was quite a young man and very sociable; Mr. Gordon was yet younger, and of very engaging ways. Count Pozzo di Borgo was getting on in life, but very upright, and, with his orders on, made a brilliant show. He was perfectly free in his conversation, and spoke on political matters without any reserve. He remarked pretty plainly, but with a playful naïveté, to the young Prince Buonaparte, who was present, that if his advice had been followed in the days of Elba, the battle of Waterloo would not have been fought.

Some say how small the world is: certainly, in its fortuitous concourse of live atoms. There is not so much room but that many meet after long intervals again. So, after a lapse of some thirty years, the youthful Gordon, whom I knew so well as Sir Edward Disbrowe’s attaché, then as much boy as man, turns up again on a visit to Lady Ripon, with a grisly beard, and a face that showed no marks of having once been young. But this is not all: on a similar visit appeared two young ladies of fashion as daughters of Sir Edward Disbrowe. They were either babes or not born at the time when I knew their father so well.

The Gordons were cousins of Lady Ripon. A Colonel Gordon, the brother of Gordon who was soon to be Gordon of Ellon, was my particular friend as long as he lived. He had retired from active service on returning finally from India, but his desire was to die in the army, though, by not selling out, he was the loser by several thousand pounds.

I would mention one lady in particular, who consulted me while I was in Spring Gardens, because she was the Queen of Beauty at Lord Eglinton’s tournament, besides being the grand-daughter of Sheridan, and the wife of the Duke of Somerset. A beautiful youth, Lord Edward St. Maur, one afternoon drove up to my house and asked me if I would go with him to the Admiralty and see his mother, the duchess. It was on a slight matter affecting her daughter, and she afterwards asked me to see her son, Lord St. Maur. All this was easy work, but I was pleased at seeing another grandchild of Sheridan, for I had known Mrs. Norton over a quarter of a century before.