For Jenner it has to be said, that if deceived, he had much to excuse his self-deception. There are men possessed of convictions which they maintain in the face of an indifferent or antagonistic world, but Jenner was not such a man. If his Inquiry had gone the way of waste-paper, he would have offered no resistance; but instead, it was proclaimed by Pearson as worthy of universal attention, and the hour being propitious, the middle-aged country doctor suddenly found himself treated as the deliverer of mankind from smallpox, whilst Pearson, his promoter, was swept aside as a half-hearted worshipper of the new divinity. Adulation was administered without measure, and if Jenner took it for true, and was led to imagine that he had more in him than he ever imagined, what marvel! He became the centre of a European craze of a character and intensity that is perhaps without parallel. Emperors and kings, statesmen and philanthropists, men of science, and in short the whole educated world conspired to do him reverence. The craze gradually abated, and the abatement was most decided in the country of its origin, and chiefly in London where cowpox and its advertiser were most closely scrutinised. Jenner abhorred London. There he had proposed to flourish as a West-End physician, and there he had encountered a dismal failure. There, too, his antagonists were active, and their demonstration of the futility of his assertions most conclusive. We see his temper toward London in such a passage as the following from a letter to Dunning, dated Cheltenham, 21st February, 1806—
What havoc the Anti-Vaccinists have made in town by the re-introduction of Variolous Inoculation! It is computed that not less than 6000 persons in the metropolis, and the adjacent villages, have fallen victims to the Smallpox since April last. One would scarcely conceive it possible, but these murders are, for the most part, to be attributed to the absurd productions of Moseley, Rowley, and that pert little Squirrel, to say nothing of Goldson. It is about London that the venom of these deadly serpents chiefly flows.[222]
Whilst the doors of almost every scientific corporation in the world were thrown open to receive him, the Royal College of Physicians of London maintained an honourable reserve; and when in 1814 his claim to admission was strongly urged, the majority insisted that, if received, he should submit to the usual examination—a sufficient check in Jenner’s case.[223] The College has been reproached for its treatment of “the immortal benefactor of the human race,” but it is forgotten how intimately the leading members were acquainted with his immortality, and with what disgust they must have received his confession in 1807 as to the non-existence of spurious cowpox.
Toward the close of his life, Jenner rarely appeared in London. His last visit took place in 1814, when he was presented to the Emperor of Russia. “I am happy to think,” said Alexander, “that you have received the thanks, the applause, and the gratitude of the world;” to which Jenner made answer, “I have received the thanks and the applause, but not the gratitude of the world”—the absent gratitude being a periphrase for absent cash, and a hint to the Czar that he might repeat the superb munificence of his grandmother, Catharine, to her inoculator Dimsdale. The Emperor, however, gave nothing, and Jenner retired keenly disappointed. Whatever the imperial disposition, Jenner did little to render it more propitious by using his audience to denounce Walker and the Friends by whom vaccination was at that time chiefly promoted; for as Alexander said, “I love the good Quakers: they are my friends, indeed;” and whoever slandered them was not likely to advance in his favour.
With all he got Jenner reckoned himself ill-paid; and taking the words of his admirers for sincere, he was ill-paid. Many a successful slayer of his kind had much more from the House of Commons with less fuss than their ideal preserver; but there is often a measure of sincerity within insincerity, and many of those who praised Jenner most rapturously felt that he had not been dealt with illiberally as the advertiser of cowpox.
Jenner’s wife died in 1815, an ailing, pious, affectionate woman, and thenceforth he dwelt in retirement until his death on the 26th of January, 1823, at the age of seventy-four. “Never,” he wrote to his friend Gardner on 13th January, a week before his demise, “Never was I involved in so many perplexities.” Hailed with acclamation in 1800-2 as the saviour of mankind from smallpox, during the remaining twenty years of his life he underwent a steady course of discredit as failure after failure was recorded and attested against vaccination. Appropriate therefore was his farewell to the world in 1823, “Never was I involved in so many perplexities.” There was not enthusiasm left to effect the interment of his remains in Westminster Abbey, and the funeral took place at Berkeley. An attempt was made to obtain a grant from Parliament for a monument, but the proposal fell flat. Baron then set on foot a subscription for the purpose, but it met with little encouragement. The only public bodies which contributed anything were the Edinburgh Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, the first sending £50 and the second £10. With much difficulty sufficient was scraped together to order a statue from Sievier, which was set up at the west end of the nave of Gloucester Cathedral. The front panel of the pedestal originally bore the dates of birth and death, but Baron had them removed, considering the word Jenner all significant.
In latter times, in 1859, a statue was erected to his memory in Trafalgar Square, London, close by the College of Physicians, but it was felt to have an air of possible quackery about it, and by and bye was quietly removed to a corner in Kensington Gardens. There is, as I have remarked, a measure of sincerity even in insincerity; and it is impossible for any one with a lively sense of veracity to know Edward Jenner and entertain for him any respect.
FOOTNOTES:
[205] Vol. ii. p. 136.
[206] Vol. ii. p. 24.