Medicine -- Anecdotes; Physicians -- Great Britain
The next morning the merry fellow is in the saddest of all possible
humours. The memory of a few little bills, the holders of which are
holding a parliament on his stair-case in Pump-court; the recollection
that he has not a guinea left--either to pacify those creditors with,
or to use in paying for the wine consumed over night; a depressing
sense that the prominent features of civilized existence are
tax-gatherers and sheriff's officers; a head that seems to be falling
over one side of the pillow, whilst the eyes roll out on the
other;--all these afflict poor Mr. Nutley! A knock at the door, and
the landlady enters. The landlady is the Widow Watts, daughter of the
widow Bowles, also in the same line. As now, so a hundred and fifty
years ago, ladies in licensed victualling circles played tricks with
their husbands' night-caps--killed them with kindness, and reigned in
their stead. The widow Watts has a sneaking fondness for poor Mr.
Nutley, and is much affected when, in answer to her inquiry how "his
honour feels his-self," he begins to sob like a child, narrate the
troubles of his infancy, the errors of his youth, and the sorrows of
his riper age. Mistress Watts is alarmed. Only to think of Mr. Nutley
going on like that, talking of his blessed mother who had been dead
these twenty years, and vowing he'd kill himself, because he is an
outcast, and no better than a disgrace to his family. "To think of it!
and only yesterday he were the top of company, and would have me drink
his own honourable health in a glass of his own wine." Mistress Watts
sends straightway for Squire Nutley's friend, the Doctor. When
Radcliffe makes his appearance, he sees the whole case at a glance,
rallies Billy Nutley about his rascally morals, estimates his
assertion that "it's only his liver a little out of order" exactly at
its worth, and takes his leave shortly, saying to himself, "If poor
Billy could only be freed from the depression caused by his present
pecuniary difficulties, he would escape for this once a return of the
deliri...." At the end of another half hour, a goldsmith's man enters
the bed-room, and puts into Nutley's hand a letter and a bag of gold
containing 200 guineas. The epistle is from Radcliffe, begging his
friend to accept the money, and to allow the donor to send him in a
few days 300 more of the same coins. Such was the physician's
prescription, in dispensing which he condescended to act as his own
apothecary. Bravo, doctor!--who of us shall say which of the good
deeds--thy gift to Billy Nutley or thy princely bequest to Oxford--has
the better right to be regarded as the offspring of sincere
benevolence? Some--and let no "fie!" be cried upon them--will find in
this story more to make them love thy memory than they have ever found
in that noble library whose dome stands up amidst the towers, and
steeples, and sacred walls of beloved Oxford.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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