But the young man, Lord Edward, for him a sad fate was in waiting; more sad than that which later befel his elder brother.
The sons of great houses have few means of distinction, however ambitious, except in politics, which many of them abhor. They are shut out from the nobler professions. Lord Edward, a young man of courage, sought excitement in the jungles of India, and this ended in his being torn to pieces by a tiger.
Having an acute mind, which at all times lay parallel with truth, I was a good diagnostic of disease (agnostics were then in their infancy), and I was able to weigh a good many experiences under one in the same balance. I made this remarkably evident during the last illness of Lord Ripon, which was a very costly one, for all the celebrities in Physic were in attendance at Putney. Perhaps I took an unfair advantage, for I was so absolutely independent in my position that I could give an unbiassed opinion, while the physicians and surgeons, under the influence of expediency, agreed on a still favourable view of the case. That such could happen is the fault of the patient’s friends. If the physicians abandon hope while there is life, others are uselessly called in. After they left, with the assurance that the patient was all right, Lord Goderich and Sir Charles Douglas, who was a friend of the family, asked me to take a turn with them in the grounds, wishing to hear my opinion, which I frankly gave, to the effect that in a fortnight the earl would no longer be living.
But I was wrong, too, in my way, for he lived just seventeen days from that time.
LII.
While in Spring Gardens—this was in 1860—I got together my researches on “The Bones in Scrofula,” which Dr. Baly presented to the Medico-Chirurgical Society, before which it was read, and a very full abstract of it was published in their “Proceedings,” and in all the medical journals of the day.
Lord Goderich, a young man of great promise, then member for one of the Yorkshire Ridings, succeeded his father in the House of Lords, very unwillingly, as he liked the Commons better, and he humorously declared himself disfranchised. Three months later his uncle, Earl de Grey, died, whose title he took, and he then became sole owner of Studley Royal, which before him belonged to the two brothers.