ANNUAL BIOGRAPHY AND OBITUARY OF 1831.
Within this volume, it may almost be said, "keeps death his antic court." It comprises biographies of celebrated persons, who have died within the year, as well as a General Biographical List of others lower in the roll of fame. The biographies are 31 in number: among them are memoirs of Henry Mackenzie, Elliston, Jackson the artist, Abernethy, Mrs. Siddons, Rev. Robert Hall, Thomas Hope, Carrington, the poet of Dartmoor, Northcote the artist, and the Earl of Norbury, and William Roscoe. These names alone would furnish a volume of the most interesting character, and they are aided by others of almost equal note. The memoirs are from various sources, in part original; but, as we have cause to know the difficulty of procuring biographical particulars of persons recently deceased, from their surviving relatives, we are not surprised at the paucity of such details in the present volume. Nevertheless some of the papers are stamped with this original value; as the memoirs of Mrs. Siddons and Mr. Thomas Hope. Our extracts are of the anecdotic turn.
Abernethy.
An anecdote illustrative of the sound integrity, as well as of the humour, of Mr. Abernethy's character, may here be introduced. On his receiving the appointment of Professor of Anatomy and Surgery to the Royal College of Surgeons, a professional friend observed to him that they should now have something new.—"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Abernethy. "Why," said the other, "of course you will brush up the lectures which you have been so long delivering at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and let us have them in an improved form."—"Do you take me for a fool or a knave?" rejoined Mr. Abernethy. "I have always given the students at the Hospital that to which they are entitled—the best produce of my mind. If I could have made my lectures to them better, I would certainly have made them so. I will give the College of Surgeons precisely the same lectures, down to the smallest details:—nay, I will tell the old fellows how to make a poultice." Soon after, when he was lecturing to the students at St. Bartholomew's, and adverting to the College of Surgeons, he chucklingly exclaimed, "I told the big wigs how to make a poultice!" It is said by those who have witnessed it, that Mr Abernethy's explanation of the art of making a poultice was irresistibly entertaining.
"Pray, Mr. Abernethy, what is a cure for gout?" was the question of an indolent and luxurious citizen. "Live upon sixpence a-day—and earn it!" was the pithy answer.
A scene of much entertainment once took place between our eminent surgeon and the famous John Philpot Curran. Mr. Curran, it seems, being personally unknown to him, had visited Mr. Abernethy several times without having had an opportunity of fully explaining (as he thought) the nature of his malady: at last, determined to have a hearing, when interrupted in his story, he fixed his dark bright eye on the "doctor," and said—"Mr. Abernethy, I have been here on eight different days, and I have paid you eight different guineas; but you have never yet listened to the symptoms of my complaint. I am resolved, Sir, not to leave this room till you satisfy me by doing so." Struck by his manner, Mr. Abernethy threw himself back in his chair, and assuming the posture of a most indefatigable listener, exclaimed, in a tone of half surprise, half humour,—"Oh! very well, Sir; I am ready to hear you out. Go on, give me the whole—your birth, parentage, and education. I wait your pleasure; go on." Upon which Curran, not a whit disconcerted, gravely began:—"My name is John Philpot Curran. My parents were poor, but I believe honest people, of the province of Munster, where also I was born, at Newmarket, in the County of Cork, in the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty. My father being employed to collect the rents of a Protestant gentleman, of small fortune, in that neighbourhood, procured my admission into one of the Protestant free-schools, where I obtained the first rudiments of my education. I was next enabled to enter Trinity College, Dublin, in the humble sphere of a sizer:"—and so he continued for several minutes, giving his astonished hearer a true, but irresistibly laughable account of his "birth, parentage, and education," as desired, till he came to his illness and sufferings, the detail of which was not again interrupted. It is hardly necessary to add, that Mr. Abernethy's attention to his gifted patient was, from that hour to the close of his life, assiduous, unremitting, and devoted.
In lecturing, Mr. Abernethy's manner was peculiar, abrupt, and conversational; and often when he indulged in episodes and anecdotes he convulsed his class with laughter, especially when he used to enforce his descriptions by earnest gesticulation. Frequently, while lecturing, he would descend from his high stool, on which he sat with his legs dangling, to exhibit to his class some peculiar attitudes and movements illustrative of the results of different casualties and disorders; so that a stranger coming in, unacquainted with the lecturer's topics, might easily have supposed him to be an actor entertaining his audience with a monologue, after the manner of Matthews or Yates. This disposition, indeed, gave rise to a joke among his pupils of "Abernethy at Home," whenever he lectured upon any special subject. In relating a case, he was seen at times to be quite fatigued with the contortions into which he threw his body and limbs; and the stories he would tell of his consultations, with the dialogue between his patient and himself, were theatrical and comic to the greatest degree.
Northcote and the present King.
A certain Royal Duke was at the head of those who chaperoned Master Betty, the young Roscius, at the period when the furor of fashion made all the beau monde consider it an enviable honour to be admitted within throne-distance of the boy-actor. Amongst others who obtained the privilege of making a portrait of this chosen favourite of fortune, was Mr. Northcote.