Medicine -- Anecdotes; Physicians -- Great Britain
Seven days after the _Tatler_ resumed the attack, but with less happy
effect. In this picture, the justice of which was not questioned, even
by the Doctor's admirers, the avarice of the veteran is not less
insisted on as the basis of his character, than his amorousness is
displayed as a ludicrous freak of vanity. Indeed, love of money was
the master-defect of Radcliffe's disposition. Without a child, or a
prospect of offspring, he screwed and scraped in every direction. Even
his debaucheries had an alloy of discomfort that does not customarily
mingle in the dissipations of the rich. The flavour of the money each
bottle cost gave ungrateful smack to his wine. He had numerous poor
relations, of whom he took, during his life, little or no notice. Even
his sisters he kept at arm's distance, lest they should show their
affection for him by dipping their hands in his pockets. It is true,
he provided liberally for them at his death--leaving to the one (a
married lady--Mrs. Hannah Redshaw) a thousand a year for life, and to
the other (a spinster lady) an income of half that amount as long as
she lived. But that he treated them with unbrotherly neglect there is
no doubt.
After his decease, a letter was found in his closet, directed to his
unmarried sister, Millicent Radcliffe, in which, with contrition, and
much pathos, he bids her farewell. "You will find," says he, in that
epistle, "by my will that I have taken better care of you than
perhaps you might expect from my former treatment of you; for which,
with my dying breath, I most heartily ask pardon. I had indeed acted
the brother's part much better, in making a handsome settlement on you
while living, than after my decease; and can plead nothing in excuse,
but that the love of money, which I have emphatically known to be the
root of all evil, was too predominant over me. Though, I hope, I have
made some amends for that odious sin of covetousness, in my last
dispositions of those worldly goods which it pleased the great
Dispenser of Providence to bless me with."
What made this meanness of disposition in money matters the more
remarkable was, that he was capable of occasional munificence, on a
scale almost beyond his wealth, and also of a stoical fortitude under
any reverse of fortune that chanced to deprive him of some of his
beloved guineas.
In the year 1704, at a general collection for propagating the Gospel
in foreign parts, he settled on the Society established for that
purpose £50 per annum for ever. And this noble gift he unostentatiously
made under an assumed name. In the same year he presented £520 to the
Bishop of Norwich, to be distributed among the poor non-juring clergy;
and this donation he also desired should be kept a secret from the
world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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