Chapter vi
. is chiefly devoted to the organistrum or hurdy-gurdy (Plate
V.). This is a stringed instrument which differs from the rest of its class by being sounded neither with fingers like the lute nor with a bow like the viol, but by means of a rotating wooden wheel. The melody string (or strings) is not stopped directly by the finger as in the violin, but by a series of keys manipulated by the performer, who need not necessarily possess a musical ear since the stopping is arranged for him. The Swedish nyckel-harpa--which I remember to have heard in Stockholm--is the only other instrument in which the strings are stopped by mechanical means. This instrument differs from the organistrum in the fact that it is sounded by the ordinary fiddle-bow, and not by means of a wheel. The organistrum is remarkable for having been "in constant and popular use" from the tenth century up to the present day.
Clavichord and Virginal.
The clavichord, the earliest progenitor of the piano, originated in an instrument in which the _tangent_ which struck a given string also acted as a bridge to mark off the length of the vibrating portion and therefore to determine the note produced. It is remarkable that (p. 115) this type of instrument remained in use until the time of Sebastian Bach, when the principle of "one tangent one string" replaced the more ancient system.
Of the clavichord Mr Dolmetsch (p. 433) writes that its tone is comparable, as regards colour and power, "rather to the humming of bees than to the most delicate among instruments. But it possesses a soul . . . for under the fingers of some gifted player it reflects every shade of" his "feelings like a faithful mirror. Its tone is alive, its notes can be swelled or made to quiver just like a voice swayed by emotion. It can even command those slight variations in pitch which in all sensitive instruments are so helpful to expression."
[Picture: PLATE V. I. Viola d'Amore. 2. Cither Viol. 3. Hurdy-gurdy or Organistrum]
The best known among the group of instruments to which the clavichord belongs are the spinet and the harpsichord. I think that Browning's musician who "played toccatas stately at the clavichord" must have performed on one of the last-named instruments. In the spinet and the harpsichord the strings are plucked, and therefore sounded, by small points made of leather or of quill which are under the control of the keyboard.
Mr Galpin (who is always interesting on evolution) points out that the progenitor of the spinet is the plucked psaltery, whereas the piano forte (the earliest form of which appeared about 1709) is a descendant of the dulcimer in which the strings were struck.
Wind Instruments.
One of the most ancient of wind instruments is the panpipe, which used to be familiar in the Punch and Judy show of our childhood, when it was accompanied by another ancient instrument--the drum. The panpipe consists of a row of reeds of graduated lengths which are closed at the lower end and into which the performer blows, much as we used, as children, to blow into a key and produce a shrill whistle. It is illustrated in an Anglo-Saxon Psalter of the early eleventh century, which is preserved in the Cambridge University Library. The whistle which we have all made in our childhood by removing a tube of bark from a branch in which the sap is rising, is an advance on the panpipes, since it includes a method of producing a thin stream of air which impinges on a sharp edge, whereas in the panpipes we depend on our lips for the stream of air. These whistles are closed at the lower end, and yield but a single note. But in the tin penny whistle the tube is pierced by six holes for the fingers, and on this instrument one may hear the itinerant artist perform wonders. An instrument of this type, known as the recorder, played a great part in the early orchestra. It differs from the penny whistle in being made of wood, and in having eight instead of six finger-holes; the additional ones being for the left thumb and the little-finger of the right hand. The recorder seems to have been especially popular in England, indeed it was sometimes known as the _fistula anglica_, _i.e._ the English pipe. The instrument was made in different sizes; and I shall not easily forget the astonishing beauty of a quartette of recorders played by Mr Galpin and his family. In Plate VI. are shown the great bass recorders, in regard to which the author is careful to point out that the bassoon-like form shown in No. 1 and No. 5 does not alter the pitch of the instrument, which depends on the length of the tube measured from the fipple.
[Picture: Plate VI. Recorders]
Mr Dolmetsch, in his book _The Interpretation of the Music of the XVIlth and XVIIIth Centuries_, p. 457, writes:--
"At the first sound the recorder ingratiates itself into the hearer's affection. It is sweet, full, profound, yet clear, with just a touch of reediness, lest it should cloy."
"The intonation . . . right through the chromatic compass of two octaves and one note is perfect, if you know how to manage the instrument; but its fingering is complicated, and requires study."
The flageolet is the nearest living relative of the recorder. What is known as the French flageolet is especially reminiscent of the ancient instrument in having a thumb-hole, or rather two such holes. It has the pleasant archaic feature of its lowest note being produced by thrusting the little finger of the right hand into the open end of the tube. The most curious development of the flageolet is found in the double or triple pipes which were made in the closing years of the eighteenth century. I remember Mr Galpin demonstrating the truth of his assertion that duets and trios can be played on one of these curious instruments.
A much simpler instrument known as the tabor pipe {85} was in general use in the twelfth century. Its essential feature is that it has but three holes, so that it can be played with one hand, thus leaving the other hand free to accompany the melody on the tabor or small drum hung round the neck of the performer or from his wrist. Its working compass is an octave and three notes, though two shrieking higher notes can be produced. The French form of three-holed pipe is known as the galoubet. There was also a bass galoubet, which is known from the figures in Praetorius (1618), and from one solitary instrument which has escaped destruction. Mr Galpin has a copy of it in his great collection, and I have had the pleasure of playing on it. The instruments of the genus recorder have been finally beaten in the struggle for life by the flageolet, and perhaps especially by the true flute, which Mr Galpin, for the sake of clearness, distinguishes as the cross flute. It seems to be a mistake to consider the flute as a modern instrument, as it was popular about the year 1500, and is shown in an illuminated MS. of 1344 preserved at Oxford.
The flute as used about 1600 had but six holes, but the D# key for the little finger of the right hand came into use about the end of the seventeenth century, and about 1800 several keys had been added to enable the performer to play with less cross-fingering.
Dolmetsch, _op. cit._, p. 458, claims that although the one-keyed flute of the eighteenth century has a weak tone, it is more beautiful than the modern flute.
He adds that a flautist has recently studied this instrument, guided by Hotteterre le Romain's book (1707), and can play more perfectly in tune than "he ever did before upon a highly improved and most expensive modern instrument."
The concert-flute of the present day is an elaborate instrument covered with keys, and it has, I believe, been suggested that its tone is injured by this elaboration. Bass flutes have been made, one 3 ft. 7 ins. in length is mentioned, whose lowest note was an octave below middle C.
Shawms. {87}
The next class of wind instruments dealt with by the author is that of which the oboe and bassoon are typical. Mr Galpin refers to a reed-pipe with which I am very familiar; it is made from a dandelion stalk pinched flat at one end. Its principle is that of the oboe. I well remember admiring its tone as a child, and lamenting its very brief life, for it soon got spoiled. The reed of serious musical instruments is made of two pieces of cane which are flat at the free or upper end and terminate below in a tube which fits on to the instrument. This is an ancient type of instrument, for the Roman _tibia_ is believed to have been played with the "double reed," _i.e._ of oboe-type. I may here be allowed to quote from my _Rustic Sounds_, p. 5: "The most truly rustic instrument (and here I mean an instrument of polite life--an orchestral instrument) is undoubtedly the oboe. The bassoon runs it hard, but has a touch of comedy and a strong flavour of necromancy, while the oboe is quite good and simple in nature and is excessively in earnest; it seems to have in it the ghost of a sun-burnt boy playing to himself under a tree, in a ragged shirt unbuttoned at the throat." A figure is given (Galpin, p. 159) of a goat playing on a shawm {88} from a carving of the twelfth century at Canterbury. The name is believed to be derived from _calamaula_, a reed-pipe, which was corrupted to _chalem-elle_ and then to _shawm_. Shawms were made of various sizes, from the small treble instrument, one foot long, to the huge affair, six feet in length. The name Howe-boie, _i.e._ probably Haut-bois, was applied to the treble instrument as early as the reign of Elizabeth; while the deeper-toned instruments retained the name shawm. The bassoon is only a bass oboe rendered less cumbrous by the tube being bent sharply on itself. A tenor bassoon, known as the oboe da caccia, or teneroon, also existed, and if my memory serves me right, Mr Stone rescued one of these instruments from the band of a London boys' school. A teneroon of Mr Galpin's is shown at p. 168 of his book, where it appears to be about seven-tenths of the size of the ordinary bassoon.
[Picture: Plate VII. Pibcorn or Horn-pipe]
The next class of wind-instrument is that of which the clarinet is the modern representative. It has a rich but somewhat cloying tone, and, to my thinking, none of the mysterious charm of the oboe. It is characterised by a single vibrating plate or reed, and the current of air from the performer's mouth passes between it and an immovable surface of wood. In our country this type of reed was found in a most interesting instrument, the horn-pipe {89a} or pibcorn, which is said to have existed in Wales as late as the nineteenth century. One of these curious instruments is in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries, and is shown in Plate VII. It was given to the Society by Daines Barrington, who describes it in the Society's _Archaeologia_ for 1779. In a Saxon vocabulary of the eighth century the word _Sambucus_ (_i.e._ elder-tree) is translated _swegelhorn_. Now the word _swegel_ was applied to the _tibia_ or leg-bone; it is therefore of remarkable interest to find that, according to an old Welsh peasant, the tibia of a deer should be the best tube for the pibcorn. {89b} This name, which means pipe-horn, is very appropriate, since the tube of the instrument bears at either end a cow's horn. To the upper one the performer applied his mouth. He had no means of regulating the reed as a clarinet or oboe-player has; the reed was left to its own sweet will, as is also the case with the reeds in another ancient instrument--the bagpipe, to which a few words must be given.
Mr Henry Balfour believes that both these instruments came to us with the Keltic migration from the East. Or, as Mr Galpin suggests, we may owe the bagpipe to Roman soldiers, "for the _tibia utricularis_ was used in the Imperial army." It is quite a mistake to suppose that the bagpipe is in any special way connected with Scotland. Illuminated missals of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries show how common the bagpipe was in England. But the Scots must at least have a share of the credit of preserving the bagpipe from extinction; and the same may be said of another Keltic race, the Breton, in whose land I have heard the bagpipe accompanied by a rough kind of oboe.
Mr Galpin tells me a pleasant story of a bagpipe hunt in Paris. He discovered, in a shop, an old French musette (bagpipe), the chanter or melody-pipe of which was missing. He did not buy it until in a two days' hunt all over Paris he discovered the lost chanter, when he returned to the first shop, triumphantly carried off the musette, and thus became the owner of this rare and beautiful instrument.
The drone, which forms a continuous bass to the "chanter," was not an original character of the bagpipe, but appeared soon after the year 1300. A second drone "was added about the year 1400, for it is seen in the ancient bagpipe belonging to Messrs Glen of Edinburgh," which bears the date 1409.
The Horn and Cornett.
The horn takes its name from the cow's horn, out of which the instrument was made. The resemblance includes the tapering bore of this instrument, and also the fact that it is curved. {90} In the metal instruments, made in imitation of the natural horn, we find a curvature of about a semi-circle, as in the seventeenth century hunting horn (Galpin, p. 188). While in the horn of the early seventeenth century shown on the same plate, the tube is curved into many circular coils.
[Picture: PLATE VIII. I, 2, 3, 4, 5. Cornetts. 6. Serpent. 7. Bass Horn. 8. Ophicleide. 9. Keyed Bugle]
The cornett, {91} which was blown like a horn or trumpet, seems to have been successful in mediaeval times, because a workable scale was so much more easily attainable with it than in the ordinary trumpet. In Norway a goat's horn pierced with four or five holes stopped by the fingers is still in use as a rustic instrument. This is in fact a cornett which, as early as the twelfth century, was made of wood or ivory, and had a characteristic six-sided form. It seems to have been popular, and Henry VIII. died possessed of many cornetts. We hear, too, of two _Cornetters_ attached to Canterbury Cathedral; and the translators of the Bible gave it a place in Nebuchadnezzar's band. But the cornett was doomed to destruction in the struggle for life. In 1662 Evelyn speaks of the disappearance of the cornett "which gave life to the organ." Lord Keeper North wrote, "Nothing comes so near, or rather imitates so much, an excellent voice as a cornett pipe; but the labour of the lips is too great and is seldom well-sounded." The cornett was given a place in the chorales of Bach and the operas of Gluck after it had become extinct in England.
The bass cornett was known as the serpent from its curved form, and this character was in fact necessary in order that the performer's hands might be nearer together. Mr Galpin writes:--"If not overblown it yields a peculiarly soft _woody_ tone which no longer has its counterpart in the orchestra." He quotes from Thomas Hardy's _Under the Greenwood Tree_, where the village shoemaker remarks, "There's worse things than serpents." Dr Stone (_Dictionary of Music_, 1883) wrote:--"There were till a few years ago two serpents in the band of the Sacred Harmonic Society, played by Mr Standen and Mr Pimlett." The serpent {92} was driven out of the orchestra by the Ophicleide, which again has been extinguished by the valved Tubas of Adolphe Sax.
Trumpet and Sackbut.
"The story of the trumpet is the story of panoply and pomp," says Mr Galpin, and goes on to explain how the trumpeters with drummers formed an exclusive guild. Trumpets served as war-like instruments, but also for domestic pomp. Thus twelve trumpets and two kettle-drums sounded while Queen Elizabeth's dinner was being brought in. That monarch had certainly no excuse for being late for her meals.
The trumpet was originally a long straight cylindrical tube, but as early as 1300 the tube was bent into a loop, thus combining length with handiness. This form of the instrument was known as a clarion, a word which has degenerated in our day into a picturesque word for a trumpet. It was for the clarion that Bach and Handel wrote trumpet parts which, I gather, are almost unplayable on the modern instrument. The clarion seems to have been soon beaten in the struggle for life by the clarinet, "which, as its name implies, was considered an effective substitute for the high clarion notes."
The sackbut, _i.e._ trombone, is an important offshoot from the trumpet. The essential feature of this splendid instrument is that the length of the tube can be altered at will. Thus the performer is not--like the trumpeter--confined to one series of harmonics, but can take advantage of a whole series of these accessory notes.
The Organ.
This is one of the most ancient of instruments. Thus in the second century before our era Ctesibius of Alexandria had a simple type of organ, in which the wind from the bellows was admitted at will into whistle-like tube by keys which the performer depressed with his fingers. It is a remarkable fact that keys should afterwards have been replaced by cumbersome _sliders_ which had to be pushed in and out to produce the desired note. But so it was, and the keyboard had to be rediscovered in the twelfth century. The keys were first applied to the little portatives, {94a} one of which is figured by Galpin, p. 221, where the organist works the wind supply with one hand and manipulates the keys with the other. In Galpin, p. 222, a monk is shown playing a simple organ of apparently two octave compass, while another tonsured person is blowing a pair of bellows, one with the left and the other with the right hand. Another artist is shown by Galpin, p. 226, from a thirteenth century Psalter, who is accompanying a player of the symphony (hurdy-gurdy). The bellows are blown by the feet of an assistant.
The regal, figured by Galpin at p. 230, was a simple form of organ in which the pipes were not of the whistle-type, but consisted principally of reed-pipes.
Tabors and Nakers.
In my essay on war music {94b} I wrote of the band of a French regiment at the beginning of the war: "When the buglers were out of breath, the drums thundered on with magnificent fire, until once more the simple and spirited fanfare came in with its brave out-of-doors flavour--a romantic dash of the hunting-song, and yet with something of the seriousness of battle. . . . As I watched these men, so soon to fight for their country, I was reminded of that white-faced boy pictured by Stevenson, striding over his dead comrades, the roll of his drum leading the living to victory or death." I have ventured to quote the above passage in illustration of Mr Galpin's striking remark that the drum has probably entered more largely than any other instrument into the destinies of the human race.
The historian of musical instruments in the far north has an easy task, since it appears that the Eskimoes confine themselves to the drum, which they sound on all possible occasions, from prosperous huntings to the death of a comrade.
The instruments of the class here dealt with are divided into three types:--
(i.) The timbrel or tambourine, which is characterised by having only one membrane stretched on a shallow wooden frame.
(ii.) The drum with two membranes, one at each end of a barrel-shaped frame.
(iii.) The naker or kettle-drum, with a single membrane stretched over the opening of a hemispherical frame. The tambourine is an extremely ancient instrument since it was known in Assyria and Egypt as well as in Greece and Rome, and it is especially interesting to learn that the Roman tambourine had the metal discs which make so exciting a jingle in the modern instrument. The mediaeval tambourine also had what, in the case of the drum, is called the _snare_, which is a cord tightly stretched across the membrane, and gives a certain sting to instruments of this class, but now only exists in the drum proper.
Drum.
An ancient Egyptian drum was discovered at Thebes. It was a true drum having a membrane at each end of the hollow cylinder which made the frame, and, what is more remarkable, it had the braces or system of cords by which we still tighten the drum-membranes.
The drum "suspended at the side of the player and beaten on one head only" became, with the accompaniment of the fife, the earliest type of military music. {96a} Mr Galpin concludes {96b} by quoting what Virdung (1511) had to say of drums: "I verily believe that the devil must have had the devising and making of them, for there is no pleasure nor anything good about them. If the noise of the drum-stick be music, then the coopers who make barrels must be musicians."
Kettle-drums. {96c}
Anyone who has seen the band of the Life Guards must have admired (as I do) the splendid personage who plays the kettle-drums. These are not of the ordinary drum-form, being hemispherical instead of cylindrical, and having but a single membrane. They have a right to be called musical instruments since their pitch is alterable: {96d} I have often admired the drummer in an orchestra tuning his instrument at a change of key. One sees him leaning over his children like an anxious mother until he gets his large babies into the proper temper.
The earliest record of kettle-drums in this country is in the list of Edward I.'s musicians, among whom was Janino le Nakerer. Henry VIII. is said to have sent to Vienna for kettle-drums {97} that could be played on horseback in the Hungarian manner. In England, Handel was the first to use the kettle-drum in the concert-room, and he used to borrow from the Tower the drums taken from the French at the battle of Malplaquet in 1709.
Cymbals and Chimes.
The cymbals are of a great antiquity, being depicted on ancient Assyrian monuments, and "in the British Museum may be seen a pair of bronze cymbals which once did duty for the sacred rites of Egyptian deities." They are figured in English MSS. of the thirteenth century, and Mr Galpin gives a figure of a cymbal-player (as shown in a fourteenth century MS.) vigorously clashing his instrument. There was also an apparatus known as a jingling johnny, figured by Galpin at p. 258. It was a pole bearing a number of bells, hence the name which it doubtless deserved. The crescents with which it is decorated are an inheritance from its forbears of the Janizary bands.
Mr Galpin ends his book with a very interesting chapter on the _Consort_, _i.e._ Concert, which, however, does not lend itself to that abbreviation to which the rest of the book has been mercilessly subjected.
THE TRADITIONAL NAMES OF ENGLISH PLANTS
I do not pretend to be a specialist in the study of plant-names. But there is something to be said for ignorance (in moderation), since it brings reader and writer more closely together than is the case when the author knows the last word in a subject of which the reader knows nothing. But we need not consider the case of the blankly ignorant reader, and I can undertake that (for very sufficient reasons) I shall not be offensively learned.
The fact that language is handed on from one generation to the next may remind us of heredity, and the way in which words change is a case of variation. But we cannot understand what determines the extinction of old words or the birth of new ones. We cannot, in fact, understand how the principle of natural selection is applicable to language: yet there must be a survival of the fittest in words, as in living creatures. Language is a quality of man, and just as we can point to big racial groups such as that which includes the English, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and German peoples, so their languages, though differing greatly in detail, have certain well-marked resemblances. Of course I do not mean to imply that language is hereditary, like the form of skull or the colour of the hair. I only insist on these familiar facts in order to show that the wonderful romance inherent in the great subject of evolution also illumines that cycle of birth and death to which existing plant-names are due.
In the case of living creatures we can at least make a guess as to what are the qualities that have made them succeed in the struggle for life. But in the case of the birth and death of words we are surrounded with difficulties.
In some instances, however, it is clear that plant-names were forgotten with the growth of Protestantism. The common milk-wort used to be called the Gang-flower {100a} because it blossoms in what our ancestors called Gang Week,--"three days before the Ascension, when processions were made . . . to perambulate the parishes with the Holy Cross and Litanies, to mark their boundaries, and invoke the blessing of God on the crops." {100b} Bishop Kennet says that the girls made garlands of milk-wort and used them "in those solemn processions." As far as dates are concerned the name is fairly appropriate, for Rogation Sunday is 27th April, _i.e._ 10th May, old style, and, according to Blomefield, {100c} from eight years' observation, the milk-wort flowers on 15th May. The milk-wort is a small plant, and the labour of making garlands from it must have been considerable. There must have been a reason for using a blue flower, and I gather from a friend learned in such matters that blue is associated with the Virgin Mary, to whom the month of May is dedicated.
In this case we can perhaps understand why the name should have all but died out with the disappearance of these old ceremonies. But why should the name _milk-wort_ have survived? Its scientific name, Polygala, is derived from Greek and means "much milk," and the plant was supposed to encourage lactation. It is an instance of names being more long-lived than the beliefs which they chronicle.
There are, of course, many plants called after saints. Thus the pig-nut (_Bunium_) is called St Anthony's nut, because, as quoted by Prior, "The wretched Antonius" was "forced to mind the filthy herds of swine." The buttercup (_R. bulbosus_) was called St Anthony's turnip from its tubers being said to be eaten by pigs.
St Catherine's flower (_Nigella_) (generally known as love-in-a-mist or devil-in-a-bush) is called after the martyr from the arrangement of its styles, which recall the spokes of St Catherine's wheel. I do not mean the well-known fireworks but the instrument of torture on which the saint died. St James' wort is the yellow daisy-like flower _Senecio Jacobaea_, known as rag-wort. It is said to have been used as a cure for the diseases of horses, of which he was the patron.
In the old herbals the cowslip is called St Peter's wort from the resemblance of the flowers to a bunch of keys--no doubt the keys of heaven, of which Peter is custodian.
A number of plants were called after the Virgin Mary: these were doubtless known as Our Lady's flowers, but their names have been corrupted in Protestant days by the omission of the pronoun.
Lady's fingers (_Anthyllis vulneraria_) is a common enough plant bearing a head or tuft of yellow flowers. Each has a pale swollen calyx, and these are, I suppose, the fingers on which the name is founded, though I find it said that it originates in the leaflets surrounding the flower head.
Butcher's broom is known in Wales as Mary's holly, the latter half of the name referring to its red berries and prickly leaves. It was used to clean butcher's blocks.
Lady's slipper is so named from the strikingly shoe-like form of the flower. It is excessively rare in England, but in Southern France one may see great bunches gathered for sale, over which, by the way, I have often mourned.
Lady's tresses (the orchid _Spiranthes_) is so named from the curious twisted or braided arrangement of the flowers.
Lady's smock (_Cardamine pratensis_) bears a name immortalised in Shakespeare's song:--
"When daisies pied and violets blue, And lady's smocks all silver white, And cuckow-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight."
I suspect that the poet called them _silver white_ to rhyme with _delight_, for they are distinctly lilac in colour. Nor are they especially smock-like--many other flowers suggest a woman's skirt equally well--but this is a carping criticism.
Lady's bedstraw seems to have been so called from the yellow colour of one or more kinds of Galium.
Lady's bower is _Clematis vitalba_, now known as traveller's joy. Anyone exploring Seven Leases Lane, which runs along the edge of the Cotswolds, will travel in continuous joy, for the lady's bower converts many hundred yards of hedge into continuous beauty.
_Pulmonaria_ has been called the Virgin Mary's tears, from the pale circular marks on its leaves. The blue flowers have been supposed to typify the beautiful eyes of the Virgin, while the red buds are the same eyes disfigured with weeping.
Many plants are named after the devil; there is, for instance, a species of _Scabiosa_ called devil's bit, because that eminent personage bit the root short off, and so it remains to this day. His object seems to have been to destroy the medicinal properties the plant was supposed to possess.
We now pass on to plants flowering on certain dates, such as Saints' days or other church festivals. The snowdrop has been called the Fair Maid of February, because it was supposed to flower on Candlemas Day, 2nd February, which would be 15th February according to the modern calendar.
The name St John's wort, which we habitually apply to several species of _Hypericum_, is correctly used only for _H. perforatum_. Its English name is said to have been given from its flowering on St John's Day, 24th June. This would be 7th July, new style, and I find that Blomefield's average of eight annual observations is 4th July.
I had been wondering why there seemed to be no name for St John's wort suggested by the glands, which show as pellucid dots when the leaf is held up to the light. And in Britten and Holland's _Dictionary of English Plant Names_, 1886, I found that _H. perforatum_ was called Balm of Warrior's Wound, which must refer to the innumerable stabs it exhibits, though they are more numerous than most warriors can endure. A closely related plant is _Hypericum androsaemum_, known as Tutsan, said to mean _toute saine_, as curing all hurts. In Wales, as I well remember forty years ago, the leaves were kept in bibles. They are, as I learn from a Welsh scholar, known as Blessed One's leaves.
The common yellow wayside plant _Geum urbanum_ is known as Herb Benet, because, like St Benet, it had the power of counteracting the effect of poison.
The sweet-william is said by Forster to be so named from flowering on St William's Day, 25th June. But Blomefield's date is 17th June, which would be 4th June, old style. A much more probable explanation is that William is a corruption of the French name _oeillet_, a word derived from the Latin _ocellus_, a little eye. So that the ancestry of the name runs thus:--_Ocellus_--oeillet--Willy--William.
Oxalis, the wood-sorrel, was known as hallelujah, not only in England but in several parts of the Continent, from its blossoming between Easter and Whitsuntide, when psalms were sung ending in the word hallelujah.
Historical.
Some plant-names take us back to historical personages. The Carline thistle is named after Karl the Great, better known as Charlemagne. There was a pestilence in his army, and in answer to his prayer an angel appeared and shot, from a crossbow, a bolt, which fell on the Carline thistle with which the Emperor proceeded to conquer the pestilence.
Another magical arrow-shot is described in well-known lines in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ (Act ii., scene I). Oberon speaks of Cupid loosing his "love shaft smartly from the bow" at "a fair vestal throned in the west." Cupid missed his mark, and the poet continues:--
"Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, And maidens call it Love-in-idleness."
The name Love-in-idleness should be Love-in-idle if the metre could have allowed it. This means love-in-vain: witness the Anglo-Saxon bible, where occurs the phrase to take God's name "in idle." The flower referred to by Shakespeare is doubtless the pansy.
Some names recall the work of more modern people. Thus the wild chamomile was known in the Eastern counties as _Mawther_; and this, as all lovers of Dickens will remember, means not a mother but a girl; and the name is in fact a translation of the Greek Parthenion into the Suffolk dialect.
The elder used to be known as the _bour-tree_. I fear that the name is extinct in England, but a Scotch friend tells me that he was familiar with it in his youth. I love this name because it is associated in my mind with the words of Meg Merrilees {106} in _Guy Mannering_, the first English classic in which I took pleasure.
"Aye, on this very spot the man fell from his horse--I was behind the bour-tree bush at the very moment. Sair, sair he strove, and sair he cried for mercy; but he was in the hands of them that never kenn'd the word!"
The actual origin of the name is, however, not romantic; it is said to mean _bore_, and to refer to the fact that tubes were made from it by boring out the pith. It seems possible that such tubes were, in primitive times, used to blow the fire, and this would explain the name elder, which seems to mean _kindler_.
The dwarf elder, a distinct species, though not connected with an individual, commemorates a race, being known as Dane's blood. It grows on the Bartlow Hills, near Cambridge, where tradition says that Danes were killed in battle.
I add a few names as being picturesque, though without any literary associations.
There is an old name for the shepherd's purse, viz., clapperde-pouch, which is said to allude to the leper who stood at the cross-ways announcing his presence with a bell and clapper, and begged for pennies to put in his pouch, which is typified by the seed capsule. Another name for the plant is mother's heart, {107} and is no doubt referable to the shape of the seed pod. Children in England, also in Germany and Switzerland, used to play at the simple game of asking a companion to gather a pod, and then jeering at him for having plucked out his mother's heart.
The name columbine comes from the flower's obvious resemblance to a group of doves, and its Latin name _aquilegia_, meaning a collection of eagles, is a nobler form of the same idea.
Dead-man's fingers is a fine uncanny name for the innocent _Orchis maculata_, and refers to its branching white tuber.
Garlick is a very ancient name, being derived from the Anglo-Saxon _gar_, a spear, and _leac_, a plant; in the name house-leek the word still bears its original meaning of a plant.
_Tragopogon_, the goat's beard, which closes its flowers about mid-day, was once known as go-to-bed-at-noon.
The pansy has been called Herb trinity from the triple colouring of its petals. In Welsh, and also in German, the pansy is called stepmother. The lower petal is the most decorative, and this is the stepmother herself. On examining the back of the flower it will be seen that she is supported by two green leaflets, known as the _sepals_. These are called her two chairs. Then come her two daughters, less smart, and having only a chair apiece. Lastly, the two step-daughters, still more plainly dressed and with but one chair between them.
Polemonium, from its numerous leaflets arranged in pairs, has received the picturesque name of Jacob's ladder. I remember the pleasure with which I first saw it growing wild in the hayfields of the Engadine.
Polygonatum, _i.e._ Solomon's seal, has been christened _Scala coeli_, the ladder to heaven, on the same principle. The name Solomon's seal is not obviously appropriate till we dig up the plant, when the underground stem is found marked with curious scars, which, however, should be pentagonal if they are to represent Solomon's pentacle.
Herb twopence (_Lysimchia nummularia_) is so named after the round leaflets arranged in pairs along its creeping stalk. I do not know why _Inula conyza_ is called ploughman's spikenard, but it is a picturesque name.
Everyone knows the garden plant touch-me-not, so called from the curious irritability of its pods, which writhe in an uncanny way when we gather them. This quality is expressed twice over in the Latin name _Impatiens noli-me-tangere_. But there is a forgotten old English name which pleases me more, viz., quick-in-the-hand, that is to say alive-in-the-hand. This use of the word survives in the familiar phrase "the quick and the dead."
The English name of _Echium vulgare_ is viper's bugloss--this I had always imagined referred to the forked tongue (the style) which projects from the flower. But it is said to be so named from the seeds resembling a viper's head. This is certainly the case, and what can be the function of the little knobs on the seed, which represent eyes, I cannot imagine. The name bugloss is derived from the Greek and means ox-tongue--no doubt in reference to the plant's rough leaves.
_Corruptions_.--Another and greater class of names comprises those which are corruptions of classical names or of those unfamiliar in other ways.
A well-known example is daffodil, which was originally affodyl, a corruption of asphodel, a name of unknown meaning, originally given to the iris, and transferred to narcissus. A very obvious corruption is aaron, which has been applied to Lords and Ladies, whose scientific name is Arum. An incomprehensibly foolish instance is bullrush for pool-rush, _i.e._ water rush. This name has at least the merit of supplying material for that riddle of our childhood in which occur the words "when the bull rushes out."
Carraway is another obvious corruption of its Latin name _Carum carui_. In the ancient _Schola Salernitana_, as I learn from Sir Norman Moore, is a punning Latin line, "Dum carui carwey non sine febre fui" ("When I was out of carraway I was never free from fever").
Dogwood (_Cornus sanguinea_) was originally dagwood, so called because it was used to make _dags_ or skewers: doubtless the same word as dagger. According to a Welsh tradition dogwood was the tree on which the devil hung his mother. I cannot resist the pleasure of quoting this fact, although it does not bear on anything in particular.
Eglantine, a name used for the wild rose, is with much probability derived from the Latin _aculentus_, prickly, which became in French _aiglent_. Hence came the French names of the plant _eglantier_ and our _eglantine_.
Gooseberry is believed not to have anything to do with a goose, but to come from the Flemish _Kroes_, meaning a cross, a comparison said to be suggested by the triple thorns, though of course a fourth thorn is needed to make this simile accurate. It is hard to see why a plant which grows wild in England, and seems by some botanists to be considered indigenous, should have a Flemish name. Prior, our chief authority, asserts that the early herbalists constantly took names from continental writers, and I think his judgment may be trusted. The problem of the derivation of the word gooseberry may at least serve to illustrate the difficulty of the subject.
The name _Hemlock_, which nowadays has a wicked poisonous sound, has in truth a very innocent origin. It is compounded of _hem_, _i.e._ haulm, a stalk, and _lock_, or leac, a plant, thus signifying merely a plant with a stem. Jack of the Buttery, a name applied to _Sedum acre_, is said to be a corruption from _bot_, _i.e._ an internal parasite, and _theriac_, by which was meant a cure for that evil. The last-named word has turned into "Jack," and _bot_ has grown into "buttery."
Lamb's tongue is said to be a name for _Plantago media_; but this must, I think, be a corruption of land tongue, which is highly appropriate to the tongue-like leaves lying so closely appressed to the soil that no blade of grass grows under them, as though they were determined to spite any one who should root them up by disfiguring his lawn with naked patches. But still better evidence is forthcoming in the fact that my old Cambridgeshire gardener always called them land tongues. Why the Anglo-Saxons used the name _way bread_ for the plantain I do not see: the fact is vouched for by Cockayne in his book entitled _Leechdoms_.
In Gloucestershire the plantain is called the _fire-leaf_, a name which records the belief that plantains are a danger in the way of heating hay-stacks.
The word madder, _i.e._ the name of the plant which supplies the red dye for the trousers of our French allies, has a curious history. Madder is derived from _mad_, a worm, and should therefore be applied to cochineal, the red colouring matter produced by the minute creature called a coccus. But still more confusion meets us: the word vermilion which is now used for a red colour of mineral origin, is derived from _vermis_, a worm, and should therefore also be applied to cochineal. The word pink, one of the most familiar of plant-names, has a curious origin, being simply the German _Pfingst_, a corruption of Pentecost, _i.e._ the fiftieth day after Easter.
The tendency to make some kind of sense, or at least something familiar, from the unfamiliar, comes out in name service-tree (_Pyrus torminalis_). It has nothing to do with _service_, being simply a corruption of _cerevisia_, a fermented liquor. The fruit was used for brewing what Evelyn in his _Sylva_, chap. xv., declares it to be, an incomparable drink. Prior says that the French name of the tree, _cormier_, is derived from an ancient Gaulish word _courmi_, which seems to suggest the modern Welsh _cwrw_, beer.
Tansy (_Tanacetum_) is believed to be simply a corruption of _athansia_, immortality. I gather that we got the name through the French _athanasie_, in which, of course, the _th_ is sounded as a _t_. In all probability it was originally applied to some plant more deserving of being credited with immortality.
A few miscellaneous names may here be given. _Thorough wax_ is a name for _Chlora perfoliata_, also known as _yellow wort_. Its leaves are perfoliate, _i.e._ opposite and united by their bases so that the stem seems to have grown through a single leaf.
_Kemps_, _i.e._ warriors, was a name of the common plantain, with which children used to fight one against the other. I remember this as being an unsatisfactory game because one so constantly killed one's own kemp instead of the enemy.
_Herb Paris_ is simply the plant with a pair of leaves; it should, however, have been described as having four leaves. Thus the name has nothing to do with Paris, the capital of France. But some plants have names of geographical origin; the currants or minute grapes used for making cakes are so called because they come from Corinth. So that we are quite wrong in applying this same name to the familiar companion of the gooseberry in our gardens. In the same way damsons are so called because they are said to have come originally from Damascus.
The name Canterbury bell has a very interesting origin, namely, that bells were the recognised badge of pilgrims to the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury. One of these bells was found in the bed of the Thames when old London Bridge was pulled down. It is said to be "about the size of an ordinary handbell, with a flat top, on which is an open handle, through which a strap could easily be passed to attach it to a horse's collar." This bell is known to have been associated with Canterbury by the inscription _Campana Thome_ on the outer edge. The pilgrims seem to have journeyed cheerfully. It is written that some "pilgrims will have with them bag-pipes; so that in everie towne they come through, what with the noise of their piping, and the jangling of their _Canterburie bells_, etc., they make more noise than if the king came there away."
Dutch mice is a name for _Lathyrus tuberosus_. Gerard says that the plant is so named from the "similitude or likeness of Domesticall Mise, which the blacke, rounde, and long nuts, with a peece of the slender string hanging out behind do represent." From this description one would expect to see mouse-like pods, but it is the tubers which give the name to the plant. This is clearly visible in Bentham's illustration; {114} I hope the artist was unaware of the name when he made the drawing--but I have my doubts. The specimen from Cambridgeshire (which I owe to the kindness of Mr Shrubbs of the University Herbarium) are not especially mouse-like.
The names shepherd's needle and Venus' comb have been given to an umbelliferous plant, _Scandix Pecten_. The teeth of the comb are represented by what are practically seeds. These are elongated stick-like objects covered with minute prickles all pointing upwards. I do not know how the seeds germinate under ordinary conditions, but I learn from Mr Shrubbs that they are dragged into the holes of earthworms, as my father describes in the case of sticks and leaf-stalks. Unfortunately for the worms, the prickles on Venus' needles do not allow the creatures to free themselves, and they actually die in considerable numbers with the needles fixed in their gullets.
SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER {115a}
"Few, if indeed any, have ever known plants as he did."
--BOWER.
Joseph Dalton Hooker was born in 1817 and died in 1911; and of these ninety-four years eighty-one included botanical work, for at thirteen "Joseph" was "becoming a zealous botanist"; and Mr L. Huxley records (ii., 480) that he kept at work till a little before his death on 10th December 1911, and that although his physical strength began to fail in August, yet "till the end he was keenly interested in current topics and the latest contribution to natural science." So far as actual research is concerned, it is remarkable that he should have continued to work at the Balsams--a very difficult class of plants--at least till 1910. Mr Huxley has wisely determined to make his book of a reasonable size, and the task of compressing his gigantic mass of material into two volumes must have been a difficult one. He has been thoroughly successful, {115b} and no aspect of Sir Joseph's life is neglected, the whole being admirably arranged and annotated, and treated throughout with conspicuous judgment and skill.
In an "autobiographical fragment" (i., p. 3) Sir Joseph records that he was born at Halesworth in Suffolk, "being the second child of William Jackson Hooker and Maria Turner." He was not only the son of an eminent botanist, but fate went so far as to give him a botanical godfather in the person of Rev. J. Dalton, "a student of carices and mosses and discoverer of _Scheuchzeria_ in England." It was after Mr Dalton that Hooker was named, his first name, Joseph, commemorating his grandfather Hooker. In 1821 the family moved to Glasgow, where Sir William Hooker was appointed Professor of Botany. It was here that Sir Joseph, at the age of five or six, showed his innate love of plants, for he records {116}:--
"When I was still in petticoats, I was found grubbing in a wall in the dirty suburbs of the dirty city of Glasgow, and . . . when asked what I was about, I cried out that I had found _Bryum argenteum_ (which it was not), a very pretty little moss which I had seen in my father's collection, and to which I had taken a great fancy."
While still a child his father used to take him on excursions in the Highlands, and on one occasion, on returning home, Joseph built up a heap of stones to represent a mountain and "stuck upon it specimens of the mosses I had collected on it, at heights relative to those at which I had gathered them. This was the dawn of my love for geographical botany."
Sir Joseph records that his father gave him a scrap of a moss gathered by Mungo Park when almost at the point of death. It excited in him a desire of entering Africa by Morocco, and crossing the greater Atlas. That childish dream, he says, "I never lost; I nursed it till, half a century afterwards, . . . I did (with my friend Mr Ball, who is here by me, and another friend Mr G. Maw) ascend to the summit of the previously unconquered Atlas."
In 1820 William Hooker was appointed to the newly founded Professorship of Botany at Glasgow. Of this his son Joseph writes, "It was a bold venture for my father to undertake so responsible an office, for he had never lectured, or even attended a course of lectures." With wonderful energy he "published in time for use in his second course, the _Flora Scotica_ in two volumes." Sir Joseph's mother was Maria, daughter of Dawson Turner, banker, botanist and archaeologist, so that science was provided on both sides of the pedigree.
It would seem that Sir Joseph's mother was somewhat of a martinet. When Joseph came in from school he had to present himself to her, and "was not allowed to sit down in her presence without permission."
In 1832, Joseph, then fifteen years of age, entered Glasgow University, being already, in the words of his father, "a fair British botanist" with "a tolerable herbarium very much of his own collecting"; he adds, "Had he time for it, he would already be more useful to me than Mr Klotzsch" [his assistant].
It was in 1838 that Hooker got his opportunity, for it chanced that James Clerk Ross, the Arctic explorer, was in 1838 visiting at the Smiths of Jordan Hill. In order that Joseph might meet Ross, both he and his father were invited to breakfast. The meeting ended in Ross promising to take him as surgeon and naturalist. There seems to have been a little innocent jobbery with folks in high places, and it fortunately turned out that the expedition was delayed so that Joseph had the opportunity of spending some time at Haslar Hospital.
The expedition seems to have been fitted out with astonishing poverty. Seventy years later he wrote, "Except some drying paper for plants, I had not a single instrument or book supplied to me as a naturalist--all were given to me by my father. I had, however, the use of Ross's library, and you may hardly credit it, but it is fact that not a single glass bottle was supplied for collecting purposes; empty pickle bottles were all we had, and rum as a preservative from the ship's stores."
It is interesting to find Ross, in his preliminary talk with Hooker, saying that he wanted a trained naturalist, "such a person as Mr Darwin"--to which Hooker aptly retorted by asking what Mr Darwin was before he went out.
I imagine that Hooker was lucky in being taken on Ross's voyage _as a naturalist_, since the primary object of the expedition was to fill up "the wide blanks in the knowledge of terrestrial magnetism in the southern hemisphere."
It seems like a forecast of what was to be the chief friendship of his life, that Darwin's _Naturalist's Voyage_ should have been one of the books that inspired him to join in the voyage of the _Erebus_ and _Terror_. Hooker "slept with the proofs under his pillow, and devoured them eagerly the moment he woke in the morning." Much earlier he had been stirred by Cook's voyages, and, like Darwin, was fired by Humboldt's _Personal Narrative_. While at sea his work was largely zoological, and the tow-net was kept busy. But on 24th August 1841, he writes to his father of his great wish to devote himself "to collecting plants and studying them . . . but we are comparatively seldom off the sea, and then in the most unpropitious seasons for travelling or collecting." He speaks, too, of his wish to see the end of the voyage, in order that he might devote himself to botany.
The voyage had its dangers: in March 1842, during a storm, the _Terror_ collided with the _Erebus_, and for nearly ten minutes the interlocked ships drifted towards a huge berg: the _Erebus_ remained rolling and striking her masts against the berg, but managed by the "desperate expedient" of "sailing stern first down wind" to escape destruction.
Hooker writes to his father, 25th November 1842: "The Barrier, the bergs several hundred feet high and 1-6 miles long, and the Mts. of the great Antarctic continent, are too grand to be imagined, and almost too stupendous to be carried in the memory."
In a letter to his mother he describes seeing at Cape Horn "a little cairn of stones raised by the officers of the _Beagle_." And again he writes, "Clouds and fogs, rain and snow justified all Darwin's accurate descriptions of a dreary Fuegian summer." He speaks of Darwin's _Naturalist's Voyage_ as "not only indispensable but a delightful companion and guide." There is plenty of interesting matter in the account of Hooker's voyage, but the above fragments of detail must here suffice. The _Erebus_ and _Terror_ reached Woolwich on 7th September 1843.
Having safely returned to England, the next problem was what was to be Hooker's permanent occupation. Nothing, however, was fixed on, and in the meantime he fulfilled "his intention of seeing the chief Continental botanists, and comparing their gardens and collections with those of Kew."
His first visit was to Humboldt, at Paris, who turned out "a punchy little German," whereas he had expected "a fine fellow 6 feet without his boots." Of the great man he says, "He certainly is still a most wonderful man, with a sagacity and memory and capability for generalising that are quite marvellous. I gave him my book [_Flora Antarctica_], which delighted him much; he read through the first three numbers, and I suppose noted down thirty or forty things which he asked me particulars about." Humboldt was then seventy-six years of age. Hooker's impression of the Paris botanists was not favourable; he speaks of their habit of telling him of the magnitude of their own researches, "while of those of their neighbours they seem to know very little indeed." Of Decaisne, however, he speaks with warm appreciation. He would have been surprised if a prophet had told him that he was to be instrumental in bringing out an English version of Decaisne's well-known book.
In 1845 Hooker acted as a deputy for Graham, the Professor of Botany at Edinburgh. In May he wrote to his father, "I am lecturing away like a house on fire. I was not in the funk I expected, though I had every reason to be in a far greater one." Finally, when Graham died, Balfour, the father of the present holder of the office, was elected professor, and Hooker was fortunately freed from a post that would have been a fatal tie to his career.
But happier events followed; he became engaged to Frances, daughter of Professor Henslow. Sir William spoke of the affair with a certain pomposity: "I believe Miss Henslow to be an amiable and well-educated person of most respectable though not high connections, and from all that I have seen of her, well suited to Joseph's habits and pursuits." Their engagement was a long one, and their marriage could not take place till after his Indian journey, which was the next event of importance in his career.
On the voyage out, he was fortunate in becoming known to Lord Dalhousie, and the friendship built up in the course of the journey and afterwards in India "showed itself in unstinted support of Hooker." It was, however, "a personal appreciation of the man rather than of the scientific investigator." Indeed, Lord Dalhousie, "a perfect specimen of the miserable system of education pursued at Oxford," had a "lamentably low opinion" of science.
At Darjiling began Hooker's "lifelong friendship with a very remarkable character, Brian Hodgson," {122a} administrator and scholar, who had "won equal fame as Resident at the court of Nepal and as a student of Oriental lore." Mr L. Huxley points out that "if the friendship with Lord Dalhousie provided the key that opened official barriers and made Hooker's journeyings possible, the friendship with Hodgson more than anything else made them a practical success."
I shall not attempt to follow Hooker through his wanderings--only a few scattered references to them are possible. It is pleasant to read that when Mr Elwes visited Sikkim twenty-two years after Hooker, he found that the Lepchas almost worshipped him, and he was remembered as a learned Hakim, an incarnation of wisdom and strength.
The most exciting adventure of Hooker and his fellow-traveller was their imprisonment in Sikkim, where their lives were clearly in danger, and they were only released when "troops were hurried up to Darjiling" and "an ultimatum dispatched to the Rajah." {122b}
For the rest of his botanical journeyings he had the companionship of Thomson, who had been his fellow-student, and, like himself, was the son of a Glasgow professor. A letter to his father (undated) gives an idea of the wonderful success of his Indian travels: "It is easy to talk of a _Flora Indica_, and Thomson and I do talk of it, to imbecility! But suppose that we even adopted the size, quality of paper, brevity of description, etc., which characterise De Candolle's _Prodromus_, and we should, even under these conditions, fill twelve such volumes at least."
The usual shabbiness {123} of governments towards science is well illustrated (p. 344) in the case of Hooker:--"His total expenditure was 2200 pounds; the official allowances were 1200 pounds: the remainder was contributed from his own and his father's purse."
In 1855 Joseph began his official life at Kew on being appointed assistant to his father. And ten years later, on Sir William's death, he succeeded as a matter of course to the Directorship.
Shortly before this, _i.e._ in 1854, he was the recipient of an honour greatly coveted by men of science, namely the award of the Royal Medal. He is characteristically pleased for the sake of the science of Botany rather than for himself, and refers to the neglect that botany has generally experienced at the hands of the Society in comparison with zoological subjects. His own success characteristically reminds him of what he considered a slight to his father, viz., that he had not received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. This, the highest honour which men of science can aspire to, is open not merely to Britons but to all the world, and I should doubt whether Sir William had ever been high in the list of possible recipients.
We are now approaching the great change wrought in the scientific outlook of the world by the _Origin of Species_. In November 1856, after reading Darwin's MS. on geographical distribution, Hooker wrote that though "never very stubborn about unalterability of specific type, I never felt so shaky about species before." It must be remembered that throughout the companionship of Hooker and Darwin the latter was a convinced evolutionist. He writes in his autobiography that in 1838, after reading Malthus on Population, he was convinced of the origin of new species by means of natural selection. Throughout the close intercourse which subsisted for so many years between Hooker and Darwin, in which the views afterwards put forth in the _Origin of Species_ were discussed, Hooker seems not to have been a convinced evolutionist. His conversion dates apparently from 1858, when the papers by Darwin and Wallace were read at the Linnean Society. This has always appeared to me remarkable, and T. H. Huxley {124} has said with regard to his own position:--"My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the 'Origin' was, 'How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!'"
After the publication of the _Origin of Species_ Hooker wrote to Darwin, {125} "I have not yet got half through the book, not from want of will, but of time--for it is the very hardest book to read, to full profit, that I ever tried--it is so cram-full of matter and reasoning. . . . Somehow it reads very different from the MS., and I often fancy that I must have been very stupid not to have more fully followed it in MS."
Whatever Hooker may have been he was not stupid, and though nowadays it is easy to feel surprise that his long-continued familiarity with Darwin's work had not earlier convinced him of the doctrine of evolution by means of natural selection, we must ascribe it rather to his early education in the sacrosanct meaning of the word _species_.
I think it must have been roughly about the time of the publication of the _Origin of Species_ that my earliest memories of Sir Joseph Hooker refer. I clearly remember his eating gooseberries with us as children, in the kitchen garden at Down. The love of gooseberries was a bond between us which had no existence in the case of our uncles, who either ate no gooseberries or preferred to do so in solitude. By a process of evolutionary change the word gooseberry took on a new meaning at Down. Hooker used to send Darwin some especially fine bananas grown in the Kew hothouses, and these were called Kew gooseberries. It was characteristic of my father to feel doubts as to whether he ought to receive Royal bananas from a Royal garden. I wish I could remember Hooker romping with us as children, of which he somewhere speaks.
It was about this time that Darwin had a fancy to make out the names of the English grasses, and Hooker wrote, "How on earth you have made out 30 grasses rightly is a mystery to me. You must have a marvellous tact for appreciating diagnosis." It was at this time that one of Darwin's boys remarked in regard to a grass he had found:--"I are an extraordinary grass-finder, and must have it particularly by me all dinner." Strange to say he did not grow into a botanist.
Hooker's letters at this time impress me with the difficulty he met with in adapting his systematic work to the doctrines of evolution. He gives the impression of working at species in a puzzled or discontented frame of mind. Thus on 1st January 1859, he writes to a fellow-botanist:--"What I shall try to do is, to harmonise the facts with the newest doctrines, not because they are the truest, but because they do give you room to reason and reflect at present, and hopes for the future, whereas the old stick-in-the-mud doctrines of absolute creations, multiple creations, and dispersion by actual causes under existing circumstances, are all used up, they are so many stops to further enquiry."
A few days later he continues to the same correspondent: "If the course of migration does not agree with that of birds, winds, currents, etc., so much the worse for the facts of migration!" On the whole it seems to me a remarkable fact that Hooker's conversion to evolution was such a slow affair. As Mr Huxley points out, "The partial light thrown on the question in fragmentary discussions was not enough, and until 1858-59, after the consolidation of Darwin's arguments in the famous Abstract [_The Origin of Species_], Hooker . . . worked avowedly on the accepted lines of the fixity of species, for which he had so far found no convincing substitute."
It is pleasant to read Darwin's warm-hearted words: {127a} "You may say what you like, but you will never convince me that I do not owe you ten times as much as you can owe me" (30th Dec. 1858).
Hooker's importance in the world was ever on the increase, and this had also its usual concomitant drawbacks. Huxley wrote to him {127b} on 19th December 1860: "It is no use having any false modesty about the matter. You and I, if we last ten years longer--and you by a long while first--will be representatives of our respective lines in the country. In that capacity we shall have certain duties to perform, to ourselves, to the outside world, and to Science. We shall have to swallow praise, which is no great pleasure, and to stand multitudinous bastings and irritations." And this was doubtless a true prophecy for both the friends.
Hooker's work--both his botanical research and duties of a more public character--was ever on the increase.
In the first category comes the _Genera Plantarum_, a gigantic piece of work begun with the co-operation of Bentham in the '60's, and continued until 1883. The aim of this celebrated publication was no less than to give a revised definition of every genus of flowering plants. If this had been the only publication by the two friends, it had been enough to found a high and permanent place in the botanical world. But as far as Hooker was concerned, it may almost be said to have been carried out in his spare moments. It should be remembered that for part of this period he was aided in the management of the Gardens by Sir William Thiselton-Dyer, who began as Hooker's Private Secretary and was then made Assistant Director. {128a}
The Presidency of the Royal Society, which Hooker held 1873-78, was clearly a great strain, but he carried out the work (which is in fact that of a ministry of science) with conspicuous success.
In January 1873 he wrote to Darwin:--"I quite agree as to the awful honour of P. R. S. . . . but, my dear fellow, I don't want to be crowned head of science. I dread it--'Uneasy is the head, etc.'--and my beloved Gen. Plant. will be grievously impeded." It gives some idea of the strain of his work as a whole when we find him writing {128b} to Darwin (Jan. 14, 1875): "I have 15 Committees of the R[oyal] S[ociety] to attend to. I cannot tell you what a relief they are to me--matters are so ably and quietly conducted by Stokes, Huxley, and Spottiswoode that to me they are of the same sort of relaxation that metaphysics are to Huxley."
He speaks, {128c} too (1874), of the annual conversazione as "a tremendous affair. . . . How I did pity the President of the United States." I am reminded of an American caricature of the President of the United States with red, swollen fingers, inscribed:--"The hand we have shaken so often." With regard to other honours, he declined at once the K.C.M.G.; he then began to dread a K.C.B.; finally he was trapped into the K.C.S.I., an honour which most men would desire quite as much as Hooker longed to decline it.
In 1873 Hooker made a series of experiments on the digestion and absorption of food by certain insectivorous plants, notably Nepenthes, with the object of helping Darwin in his work on that subject.
We must return a year or two to deal with a matter which, as Mr L. Huxley remarks, "ravaged and embittered" the period 1870-72--namely, his conflict with Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works in Gladstone's Government. Mr L. Huxley, like a clever musician, gives a touch of Ayrton's tone in the opening phrases of his composition. At a grand festivity in honour of the Shah of Persia this sovereign was unaccountably anxious to meet the Commissioner of Works. Ayrton was at supper, and bluntly responded, with his mouth full of chicken, "I'll see the old nigger in Jericho first!"
He began to show his quality by sending an "official reprimand to the Director of Kew." This, the first received in twenty-nine years' service, was based "on a misapprehension." Ayrton's aim seems to have been to compel Hooker to resign and convert Kew Gardens into a public park.
In 1871 Hooker casually discovered from a subordinate "that he himself had been superseded . . . in one of his most important duties--namely, the heating of the plant-houses." It would take too long to enumerate the endless acts of insolence and folly which marked Ayrton's treatment of Hooker. A full statement of the case was drawn up and signed by a small body of the most distinguished scientific men of the day, and after a debate in the House of Commons, Mr Ayrton was kicked upstairs "from the Board of Works to the resuscitated office of Judge Advocate General." I remember an anecdote which illustrates Ayrton's stupendous ignorance of the great department over which he was called to rule. Hooker was taking Ayrton round the Gardens when they met Mr Bentham, who happened to remark that he had come from the Herbarium. "Oh," said Ayrton, "did you get your feet wet?" For the official ruler of Kew there was no difference between a Herbarium and an Aquarium.
This period has pleasanter memories, for it was in 1873 that Huxley, much out of health and "heavily mulcted" by having to pay the costs of an unsuccessful action brought against him by a man of straw, was persuaded to accept from a group of personal friends a sum of 3000 pounds to clear his financial position, Hooker wrote to Darwin, "I am charmed by Huxley's noble-minded letter."
In 1874 Mrs Hooker died, leaving six children, of whom three still required care. Hooker wrote later to Darwin from Nuneham (ii., p. 191): "I am here on two days' visit to a place I had not seen since I was here with Fanny Henslow [Mrs Hooker] in 1847. I cannot tell you how depressed I feel at times. She, you, and Oxford are burnt into my memory." Here occurs, in a letter from Mrs Bewicke, some account of Hooker's method of dealing with his family. She gives the impression (though clearly not intentionally) that Hooker rather worried his children. She speaks of the many questions he asked them at meals and the pleasure he took in their success in answering. She adds, "When we drove into London with him, he would tell us the names of the big houses and their owners, and then expect us to know them as we drove back." This confirms my impression that Hooker was not quite judicious in his manner of educating or enlightening his children. I have a general impression of having sympathised with them in their difficulties.
In 1876, Hooker was happily married to Hyacinth, widow of Sir William Jardine; and about the same time Sir William Thiselton-Dyer married Sir Joseph's daughter.
The _Index Kewensis_, which unites the names of two friends, was carried out at Kew, with funds supplied by Darwin. It was in fact a completion of Steudel's _Nomenclator_, and was published in four quarto volumes in 1892-95. The MS. is said to have weighed more than a ton and comprised about 375,000 entries. Hooker, with wonderful energy and devotion, read and criticised it in detail. {131}
In 1885, Hooker resigned his position as Director at Kew, and henceforward lived at the Camp, Sunningdale, his "Tusculum" among the pine-woods as Mr Huxley puts it, where he remained, ever hard at work, for twenty-six years.
He was still astonishingly vigorous; at eighty-two he was "younger than ever," though at ninety-three he confessed to being lazy in his old age.
In 1885 and subsequent years he was, as I gratefully remember, employed in helping me in the _Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_. I could not have had a kinder or wiser collaborator.
Hooker's unaffected modesty came out again about this period. In 1887 he was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society, an honour which is the pinnacle of scientific ambition, and is open to foreigners as well as British subjects. He wrote in regard to the award, "I never once thought of myself as within the pale of it." And in a letter to W. E. Darwin, "The success of my after-dinner homily at the R. S. is to me far more wonderful than getting the Copley. You . . . can guess my condition of two days' nausea before the dinner, and 2 days of illness after it. I am not speaking figuratively."
We find Hooker here and there slashing at contemporary methods of education. For instance, in regard to the mass of public school boys: "Not one of them can now translate a simple paper in Latin or Greek, or will look into a classical author, or listen to the talk about one." Mathematicians fared no better. He wrote in 1893:--"What you say of A, B, and C does not surprise me. They are _ne plus ultra_ mathematicians, and have not a conception of biological science, and in fact are only _half-intellects_ (I suppose I deserve to be burned)."
It is pleasant to find that Hooker allowed himself time to indulge his love of art. He was especially fond of old Wedgwood ware, and corresponded with William Darwin--a fellow amateur. In 1895, he allowed the same friend to become the owner of some old Wedgwood ware; and when the sale was completed Hooker speaks of its being a relief "to feel that the crockery is going back where it should have gone by rights." {133} Elsewhere (ii., p. 360) Hooker discourses pleasantly on the perfect adaption to its end of the old Wedgwood ware. An old teapot, for instance, avoids all the faults of the modern article, in lifting which "you scald your knuckles against the body of the pot"; then the lid shoots off and you scald your other hand in trying to save it; the tea shoots out and splashes over the teacup; lastly the "spout dribbles when you set the pot down." All these sins are provided against in the old Wedgwood teapot.
The _Flora of British India_ having been finished, he was asked to complete the handbook to the Flora of Ceylon, interrupted by the death of Trimen, and this occupied him for three years. He was then led to what was to be his final piece of work, namely, a study of the difficult group of the Balsams (_Impatiens_), and he certainly was not coloured by what he worked in, for the whole stock of his admirable patience was needed for this difficult research. His perseverance was a by-product of his noble enthusiasm. In 1906, when he was eighty-nine years of age, he writes enthusiastically to a friend in the East expressing his longing for more Balsams, and concluding, "I do love Indian Botany." And in 1909 he hears that the Paris Herbarium had overlooked forty sheets of Indo-Chinese specimens--and writes, "This is like a stroke of paralysis to a man approaching his ninety-third year, but it is no use grumbling, my eyes are as good as ever, and my fingers are as agile as ever, and I am indeed thankful."
The _Life_ of Hooker is enriched by a striking essay from the pen of Professor Bower. He points out (ii., p. 412) that "few, if indeed any, have ever known plants as he did. Such knowledge comes only from growing up with them from earliest childhood." Professor Bower adds that Hooker "shared with Darwin that wider outlook upon the field of Science that gave a special value to the writings of both"; and he adds, "The _Himalayan Journals_ ranks with Darwin's _Voyage of the_ '_Beagle_'."
When _More Letters of Charles Darwin_ was in preparation, Hooker was appealed to for assistance, and wrote a characteristically kind letter (1st Feb. 1899) to one of the editors:--
"I will gladly help you all I can; so have no scruples. . . . You are right to make the book uncompromisingly scientific. It will be greatly valued. I am getting so old and oblivious that I fear I may not be of much use."
And a few weeks later (24th Feb. 1899):--
"I had no idea that your father had kept my letters. Your account of 742 pp. of them is a revelation. I do enjoy re-reading your father's; as to my own, I regard it as a punishment for my various sins of blindness, perversity, and inattention to his thousand and one facts and hints that I did not profit by as much as I should have, all as revealed by my letters."
In 1907 he received the Order of Merit, the Insignia being conveyed to him by Colonel Douglas Dawson from the King. I had the honour of being the only person present on the occasion, though why Sir Joseph allowed me this pleasure I cannot guess. I remember Colonel Dawson in vain trying to persuade Sir Joseph not to see him to his carriage at the door. I have, too, a picture of Sir Joseph fidgeting round the room afterwards, unwillingly wearing the collar to please his family.
In 1908 he took the chief part in the fiftieth anniversary of the Darwin-Wallace papers of 1858. He characteristically begged the Darwins to tell him if they entertained "the _smallest_ doubt of the expediency or propriety of telling the public the part" which he took on that historic occasion!
He was also the chief guest at the 1909 celebration at Cambridge of the centenary of Darwin's birth. I recollect him wandering about at the evening reception, quite unconsciously the object of all eyes. Unfortunately, Hooker was not present at the banquet, where, as Mr L. Huxley says, "Mr Balfour's historic speech was only eclipsed by the sense of personal charm in Mr W. E. Darwin's reminiscences of his father" (ii., p. 467).
It is delightful to find Hooker in 1911 vigorously corresponding with Dr Bruce, a "brother Antarctic." He writes to Bruce, 20th February 1911, "I return herewith the proof-sheets, which I have perused with extraordinary interest and an amount of instruction and information that I never expected to receive at my age" (_Life_, ii., p. 478). It is touching that in extreme old age the first work that occupied his youth should still find so clear an echo in his vigorous old age.
Mr Huxley records (ii., p. 480) that though Sir Joseph "kept at work till but a little before the end," his physical strength began to fail in the late summer; but his mental powers were undimmed. He died in his sleep on 10th December 1911, and was buried (as he had desired) near his father's grave at Kew.
A GREAT HOSPITAL {137a}
Dr Moore writes in his preface: "The History is a gift from me to St Bartholomew's, and I hope that the labour of investigating historical events, of meditating upon them, and of finally writing the book in such hours as my profession allowed during more than thirty years, may be taken as a proof of the gratitude I feel to the noble hospital with which my whole professional life has been connected."
The book seems to me eminently worthy of its subject and of its learned author. {137b} As a record of the 800 years during which the Hospital has existed it naturally contains an enormous mass of detail, and this means that the book is physically very big. The first volume is of 614 quarto pages, and the second of 992 pages. The index contains at least 20,000 entries.
The Hospital and the Priory of St Bartholomew were the first buildings erected on the open space of Smithfield. The foundation took place in 1123, and Rahere, the founder, was the first Prior. He is said to have been of lowly race, and to have made himself popular in the houses of nobles and princes "by witcisms and flattering talk." Then he repented of such a mode of life and made a pilgrimage to Rome to obtain forgiveness. On his way back he had a vision of St Bartholomew, by whom he was directed to found a church in Smithfield.
It seems that "no part of the hospital as built by Rahere is now standing, but within the present building, which covers the original site, there still remains one thing which was there in his time. It is a legal document which his eyes beheld, and which was sealed in his presence. This charter is written on vellum in the clear hand-writing of the first half of the twelfth century." The seal shows a "turreted building, which is probably the Priory of St Bartholomew's as it looked in the first twenty years of its existence."
The two parts of an indented chirograph have been preserved in the hospital, which give (i., p. 239) a view of the state of agriculture in Essex in the reign of King John. Mention is made of fields of wheat, rye, barley, oats and beans; of oxen, horses, of brew-house and barn. Rent was paid in kind and sent by water to the hospital quay, which may have been on the River Fleet and therefore nearer to the hospital than a landing-place on the Thames. The Fleet river, as Dr Moore happily points out (i., p. 246), is now shut up in a tubular dungeon, "as if to remind it of all the unhappiness it had passed by in the Gaola de Flete from the time" when the prisoners watched "the ships passing up it with corn for St Bartholomew's Hospital . . . to the days when the body of Samuel Pickwick was confided to the custody of the tipstaff, to be by him taken to the Warden of the Fleet Prison, and there detained until the amount of the damages and costs in the action of Bardell against Pickwick was fully paid and satisfied."
The author never fails to make interesting use of the driest of charters. Thus in the reign of King John a person with the pleasant name of Adam Pepercorn grants to the hospital ten shillings quit-rent for some land in Grub Street, a region full of unhappy memories. Dr Moore quotes passages from Johnson, Swift, and Goldsmith to show that the name Grub Street should have been protected by such associations from any change; but nothing is sacred, and Grub Street is now known as Milton Street.
The author (i., p. 279) asks whether the brethren of St Bartholomew's made any medical studies, and points out they may well have read parts of the _Liber Etymologiarum_ by St Isidore of Seville, who flourished A.D. 601. The book is a general summary of knowledge in Isidore's day, and few religious houses in England were without a copy.
I like the facts in the region of domestic economy which are given. For instance, that in 1229 Richard of Muntfichet was ordered by Henry III. to give "six leafless oaks for the hospital fire." We want to know whether they were the King's oaks, or was Muntfichet forced to supply the wood? If Dr R. W. Darwin (father of Charles Darwin) had then been King of England he would have ordered apple-trees, for these he considered much superior to all other fuel. The reader is constantly meeting interesting stories. Thus Bishop Roger Niger was, in the year 1230, celebrating mass in St Paul's when a great thunderstorm burst over the church and the congregation fled in terror. But Roger and one deacon were not to be frightened, and went on with the Mass.
In the 13th Century John of Marsham (i., p. 390) made oath that he would carry through the affairs of Alan of Culing at the Court of Rome. Did John die on his journey, or did he fail in his suit? He never claimed the charter which he left at the hospital, where it may still be seen.
A charter recording a grant by the Master of St Bartholomew's to the Bishop of Bath is preserved in St Paul's; Sir Norman Moore says (i., p. 392), "It was pleasant to find this original document in the charter room of the cathedral, where mine was probably the first hand from St Bartholomew's Hospital which had touched it since it received the seal of William the master and the brethren, six hundred and seventy years ago."
I cannot resist quoting (i., p. 412) one more of the many touching and interesting episodes with which the history of St Bartholomew's abounds:--
Cecilia, a widow, devoted herself to the altar of St Edmund and received a wedding ring. When she was dying (1251), a Dominican father, giving her the last sacrament, noticed the ring and said, "Take off that ring, lest she die so decked out." Cecilia roused herself and said she would offer the ring "before the judgement seat of God my betrothed."
It is interesting to find that surnames were beginning to be established in the reign of Henry III. Thus a certain Thomas Niger is described as the son of Walter Niger. {141}
There are innumerable facts given in the history of St Bartholomew which illustrate the permanence of the London streets. Thus in a document of 1256 is mentioned a little lane going towards the church of St Mary Staining Lane. The little lane is easily found at this day leading from Wood Street to a small churchyard, on a stone in the wall of which is cut "Before the dreadful fire of 1666, here stood the church of St Mary Staining" (i., p. 441).
A document quoted (i., p. 454) is of interest in regard to the value of money in mediaeval times; the following extract shows what in the reign of Henry II. was considered a serious sum. The hospital owed the butcher eleven pounds, and the master and brethren agreed to pay it in eight years and a quarter by a rent charge on a house.
The reader of Sir Norman Moore's book is continually coming across unexpected facts. For instance, that St James' Palace is on the site of what, in the reign of Henry III., was known as the Hospital of St James.
On 15th June 1253, St Bartholomew's Hospital obtained from Henry III. two important charters, one confirming them in their possessions, the other in their rights and privileges. The gift was made, among other reasons, for the soul "of King Henry my grandfather."
The author succeeds in conveying to his readers the personal interest which he evidently feels in the writers of the deeds of which he makes such good use. Thus (i., p. 477) he quotes Maelbrigte, who made a copy of the later Gospels at Armagh in the time of Rahere, as writing "at the foot of a very small page of vellum in a minute and exquisite hand, 'If it was my wish I could write the whole treatise like this,' thus handing down to succeeding ages a scribe's pride in his art." Again in a charter copied into the hospital cartulary the last witness is "Master Simon, who wrote this charter."
The author (i., p. 485) has occasion to refer to a grant by Stephen of Gosewelle of certain lands. And this reminds him how he heard Dickens read the trial in _Pickwick_. He says, in "almost every part I can recall his emphasis and the tone of his voice.--'Mrs Bardell shrunk from the world and courted the retirement and tranquillity of Goswell Street.' . . . Very few know that this thoroughfare was the street of a hamlet, extra barram de Aldredesgate."
In a charter probably belonging to the earlier half of the reign of Henry III., a witness, Sabrichet, "has a name which survives in Sabrichetestead or Sabstead, the native pronunciation of Sawbridgeworth." In the out-patient room a patient said that he came from Sawbridgeworth. The physician, {142} who had been instructed by Henry Bradshaw, remarked that the patient did not know how to pronounce the name of his own home. On this the patient exclaimed, "Oh, I know it is Sabstead, but I thought the gentleman would not understand."
Names have a fascination for me, and I cannot resist quoting the name of Henry Pikebone, who, I hope, pronounced it Pickbone, and might well have been one of Falstaff's men. We meet (p. 510) with a reference to John of Yvingho, which is said to have suggested Ivanhoe to Walter Scott. I regret to say that John was a fishmonger. Elsewhere we meet another pleasing name, Cecilia Pidekin, but unfortunately she is not known in any other way than as the recipient, by a will of 1281, of a chemise and a little brass pail. There are innumerable points of interest in the matter of names. Thus the author points out that Shoe Lane has nothing to do with shoes nor indeed with lanes; it is a corruption of the _solanda_ or prebend through which it passes.
The author often helps us to realise the appearance of the inhabitants of St Bartholomew's. Thus (p. 551) the Bishop of London in his ordinance of 1316 settled that "those of the brethren who were priests were to wear round cloaks of frieze or other cloth, the lay brethren shorter cloaks; the sisters tunics and over-tunics of grey cloth, these not to be longer than to their ankles." This last regulation is curious. We should have expected the limitation to have been applied to shortness rather than to length.
Walter of Basingbourne {144} was Master of the Hospital during the greatest epidemic of plague which "the Western world had experienced since the time of Justinian." It is generally known as the Black Death, and was the same disease as that which terrified London in 1665, and the epidemic which has destroyed nearly nine millions of people in India since 1894.
Speaking (i., p. 584) of the Charter House, Sir Norman says: "Our hospital . . . saw the noble foundation of Thomas Sutton built, and became familiar with its brethren in their black cloaks and with the gown boys." He quotes appositely enough Thackeray's well-known words on the death of Colonel Newcome:--
"And just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said 'Adsum,' and fell back. It was the word we used at school when names were called, and lo he, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of his Master."
In 1381 Wat Tyler and his mob sacked and burnt the Temple and the Priory of Clerkenwell. A few days later the brethren could see from their walls the blow struck by Walworth the Mayor, the fall of Tyler from his horse, and the courageous behaviour of King Richard. Wat Tyler was carried into the hospital, but the Mayor went in and brought him out and had him beheaded. Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, was beheaded by the rebels. Sir Norman Moore once asked a patient whence she came, and she answered "from Sudbury in Suffolk." Dr Moore told his students the story of Simon's death, and added that his head is said to be "preserved to this day at Sudbury." The woman raised herself in bed and said, "My father keeps it." Simon's tomb at Canterbury has been opened, and was found to contain a headless body.
During the mastership of William Wakering, who died in 1405, and that of Sutton, John Mirfeld flourished in the priory of St Bartholomew and wrote his _Breviarium Bartholomei_, which may "fairly be regarded as the first book on medicine connected with St Bartholomew's Hospital."
The brethren had no watches, and had to measure "the time for heating fluids or making decoctions by reciting certain psalms and prayers." I remember to have heard Sir Norman say how he demonstrated to his pupils the efficacy of the words which our ancestors prescribed for the cure of epilepsy. Their magic depended on the fact that they required some minutes to recite, and this allowed the patient to recover from his fit.
I did not expect to find any evidence in regard to Falstaff, but the following passage (ii., p. 2) shows that he must have been damped (in two senses) on a memorable occasion {145}:--"In the year 1413, on the ninth day of the month of April, which day was Passion Sunday, and a very rainy day, the coronation of Henry V. took place at Westminster, at which coronation I, Brother John Cok, who have recorded that royal coronation for the refreshing of memory, was present and beheld it."
Sir Norman says (ii., p. 40):--"I was present at the coronation of King George V., and watched the splendid assemblage gradually filling Westminster Abbey, . . . and heard the shouts of 'God save King George!' . . . and saw the King in his crown, with the orb in his left hand and the sceptre in his right, walk in solemn procession down the nave. . . . It was a solemn as well as a splendid sight. More than once during the day I thought of John Cok, the brother of St Bartholomew's beholding five centuries ago within the same walls and under the same noble vault, the coronation of the future victor of Agincourt. . . ."
John Cok is a valuable witness as regards the history of the hospital, especially as to the mastership of John Wakeryng, who held office for forty years. Cok became Rentar of the Hospital, and the chief work of his life was the writing of the Cartulary (which he called a Rental), recording rents due to the hospital, deeds of gift, papal bulls, and other documents. Cok's book (dated 1456) is a large volume written in Latin on 636 leaves of vellum and enclosed in an ancient binding of oak boards covered with leather.
In a transaction of 14th June 1423 is the first appearance of the arms at present used by the hospital (ii., p. 16), namely, party per pale argent and sable a chevron counter-changed. It was probably Wakeryng's coat of arms, but ended by being regarded as that of the hospital. The author suggests that the chevron "might symbolise the hospital roof, while the equally divided and counter-changed argent and sable suggested that each patient admitted had an even chance of recovery or of death."
In 1432 arrangements were made for a water-supply to the hospital from Islington (Iseldon); and the "waste of water at the Cisterne" was to be conveyed "to the Gailes of Newgate and Ludgate for the reliefe of the prisoners."
Cock Lane, near the hospital, has, I fear, no connection with brother John Cok (ii., p. 53); it was so called from the shops of the cooks who prepared refreshments for the crowds who came to Smithfield. It was at the end of Cock Lane that the fire of London stopped in 1666, but it is better known as the scene of the Cock Lane ghost.
Sir Richard Owen, who had been a student at St Bartholomew's, told Dr Moore (ii., p. 54) a grim story of Cock Lane. It was there that the hospital authorities hired a house for the reception of the dead bodies of criminals hung at Newgate. "Owen was in a room on the first floor with Sir William Blizard, the President, who was attired in court dress as the proper costume for an official act. They heard the shouts of the crowd and then the noise of an approaching cart, which turned down Cock Lane and stopped at the door. Then came the heavy steps of the executioner tramping up the stairs. He had the body of a man who had been hanged on his back, and entering the room, let it fall on a table. . . . Sir William Blizard with a scalpel made a small cut over the breast-bone, and bowed to the executioner. This was, I suppose, the formal recognition of the purpose for which the body had been delivered. The rumbling of the cart, the contrast between the stiff figure of Sir William Blizard in his court dress and the executioner in coarse clothes, and the thud of each dead body on the table remained in Owen's memory to the end of his days; and his skill in telling the story has made me remember it nearly every time that I have walked down Cock Lane."
On 1st March 1711, a piece of literature destined "to be famous as long as English is read, was published near the end of Duck Lane in Little Britain." This was the first number of the _Spectator_, and "all London read it and enjoyed it, from the motto to the end." The author (ii., p. 63) imagines Mr Addison walking down Duck Lane the Wednesday evening before its appearance, from Mr Buckley's in Little Britain where he had corrected his last revise.
Sir Norman Moore adds: "For me . . . Duke Street, Little Britain, has innumerable memories of twenty-one happy years. I lived there as a student and as house physician, and then as Warden of the College of St Bartholomew's." He adds that his election as Warden was his first professional success, which was followed by a place on the permanent staff of the hospital. It was the home of his early married life, and here his eldest child was born. He need not have apologised (as he does); such details will surely please all sympathetic readers.
There is an interest in even the modern inhabitants of Little Britain. We hear of dealers in gold lace and gold leaf, and also a representative of that rare genus the teapot-handle maker. These handles could not be worked on a lathe, and had to be sawn out of the ivory. Dr Moore learned that in all London there was but one other teapot-handle maker: he felt what a favour it was when the great man mended a fan for Mrs Moore.
It is pleasant to meet with the well-known lines from Wordsworth's poem of "Poor Susan":--
"Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside."
I regret to say that our author quotes only to criticise, since he denies that the mists of Lothbury are visible in Cheapside.
In 1535 the hospital estate was valued at 305 pounds, 6s. 7d. according to one authority, and at 371 pounds, 13s. 2d. by another. St Bartholomew's was then the third hospital in London in order of wealth. Henry VII.'s Hospital in the Savoy and the New Hospital of Our Lady outside Bishopsgate were richer (ii., p. 125).
The Act of Dissolution was passed in 1536, and the property of the hospital was given into the King's hands in 1537. Thus the "old order, which had existed for more than four hundred years, was at an end, and the hospital was in the eye of the law vacant and altogether destitute of a master, and of all fellows or brethren" (ii., p. 126).
"Augustinians, Benedictines, Carthusians, Gilbertines, Franciscans, Dominicans, and more, all were banished from their ancient homes. . . . St Bartholomew's Hospital was one of the few places where the injured tree of charity began to put forth new branches, and soon flourished again" (ii., p. 148).
The King, after five years' delay, granted, on 23rd June 1544, {150} letters patent reconstituting the hospital for its original uses. William Turges, the King's Chaplain, was the first Master, and "the body corporate was to be called 'The Master and Chaplains of the Hospital of St Bartholomew in West Smithfield, near London.'" The grant did little for the poor, but it prevented the destruction of St Bartholomew's and carried on its existence.
The figure of Henry VIII. is above the Smithfield Gate of the hospital. A full-length portrait of him hangs at the end of the Great Hall. He is also represented in a window of the hall handing the letters patent to the Lord Mayor and citizens. "Thus," says the author, "do we commemorate this destroying King, who might have taken away all the estate of St Bartholomew's, but only took a small portion of it" (ii., p. 161).
The constitution under which the hospital is ruled was established in 1547, and confirmed, with an alteration in but one important particular, in 1782. "Most of the offices created by the Deed of Covenant of December 1546, and the letters patent of January 1547, exist at the present day. The treasurer, the almoners, the physician, the surgeon, the rentar, the steward, the matron and sisters, the porter bearing a figure of St Bartholomew on his staff of office, and the beadles with silver badges engraved with the hospital arms, are all parts of the present life of the hospital" (ii., p. 191).
Beside the grave benefactors of the hospital we hear of serio-comic personages who remind us of the curious lunatics recorded by de Morgan in his _Budget of Paradoxes_. Thus in 1774 Mr W. Gardiner offered 2000 pounds to St Bartholomew's "as a sacrifice for God's having put it in his power to overturn Sir Isaac Newton's system" (ii., p. 245).
From 1547 the treasurer was "a very important officer, but the president also took an active part in the affairs of the hospital." But now the treasurer is the responsible head of the administration.
In 1518 the College of Physicians was founded by Henry VIII. (ii., p. 408) on the advice of Dr Thomas Linacre. Its active existence began in his house in Knightrider Street. The most pious and the most learned men of England were Linacre's intimate friends, and the "example of his life, as felt in the College of Physicians, continues a living force to this day" (ii., p. 411).
Dr John Caius (ii., p. 412) was a devoted follower of Linacre; he was born 1510, went to Cambridge in 1529, and in 1533 was elected Fellow of Gonville Hall. In 1539 he went to Padua, where Vesalius, the founder of modern anatomy, was Professor. In 1547 Caius was admitted a Fellow of the College of Physicians, and not long after he came to live within St Bartholomew's Hospital.
Caius wrote on the sweating sickness in 1552, and his work was printed near St Bartholomew's. "Thus were the proofs of the first medical monograph in the English tongue, and, indeed, the first book written by an English physician . . . on a particular disease, corrected in St Bartholomew's" (ii., p. 418).
Caius was in 1555 elected President of the College of Physicians, to which he presented their silver caduceus with four serpents at its head, a book of statutes, and a seal. In 1557-69 he was engaged in the refoundation and building at Cambridge of what was to be known as Gonville and Caius College. On his death his viscera were buried in St Bartholomew's the Less, while the rest of his body was placed in an alabaster tomb in the chapel of his college with the inscription: "Fui Caius."
We meet with many proofs of the consideration shown by the authorities towards the patients. For instance (ii., p. 279):--
13_th March_ 1568.--"This day it is graunted by the courte that Griffen Davye shall departe forthwith into his countrye, and also that he shall have 20s. in his purse to bringe him home in consideracion that he is lame and impotent."
Again (ii., p. 293), "30_th April_ 1597.--Ordered that curtaynes be provided for certain beds of the poor." The author adds that "moveable curtains hang over the beds to this day, and are of great use in providing privacy when patients are washing and dressing."
We meet with some trifling records of great events. Thus on 7th May 1660 it is ordered that "the shield of the States armes being the Redd Cross and Harpe be taken downe in the Court Hall and the King's arms put in the Roome thereof."
But even the King could not impose on the hospital. Thus in 1661 there was a vacancy for a surgeon at the Lock. The King wrote in favour of John Knight, but John Dorrington was elected (ii., p. 316).
In 1666 the great fire of London was only prevented from reaching the hospital by pulling down houses. The consequent loss to the hospital may be set down as 2000 pounds per annum. We are constantly meeting in the history of St Bartholomew's interesting lights on the natural history of the patients. An entry as to the supply of beer (of which, by the way, the patients were allowed three pints daily) pleases me:--"Sir Jonathan Reymond, Knt. and Alderman, is to serve the matron's cellar. Alderman Lt.-col. Freind is to supply small beer" (ii., p. 339). These personages doubtless belonged to the established church, for dissenters were not allowed to serve the hospital with any commodity.
An entry under 26th February 1704 throws a sinister light on the condition of the wards:--"Elizabeth Bond did propose to kill and clear the beds and wards of bugs within this house for 6s. per bed." I hope Elizabeth Bond was more careful in her work than was the writer of the resolution (ii., p. 352).
It is interesting to come across the following:--
21_st July_ 1737.--It was resolved "that the thanks of this Court be given to William Hogarth, Esquire . . . for his generous and free gift of the painting of the great staircase. . . ."
5_th Jan._ 1758.--A committee considered the subject of visiting prisoners in Newgate, but the plan was apparently thrown over because prisoners were found entirely destitute of clothes, bedding, etc.
Even in the history of Mr Pickwick (