Collections and RecollectionsRussell, George William Erskine
History
Collections and Recollections
Russell, George William Erskine
England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
"Vieille école bonne école, begad!" cried Major Pendennis, and here
would have been a companion for Mrs. Pendennis or a cicerone for Laura
after his own heart. The austere traditions of the Court of George III.
and Queen Charlotte might be expected to survive in the great-niece of
their Lord Chamberlain; and what a tactful concession to the prejudices
of Mrs. Grundy in the statement that, though the accent may be Parisian,
the habits are English! This excellent lady--evidently a near relation
to Mrs. General in _Little Dorrit_--reintroduces us to the genteel
society in which we are most at home; and here I may remark that the
love of aristocracy which is so marked and so amiable a feature of our
national character finds its expression not only in the advertisement
columns, but in the daily notices of deaths and marriages. For example:
"On the 22nd inst., at Lisbon, William Thorold Wood, cousin to the
Bishop of Rochester, to Sir John Thorold of Syston Park, and brother to
the Rector of Widmerpool. He was a man of great mental endowments and
exemplary conduct." I dare say he was, but I fear they would have gone
unrecorded had it not been for the more impressive fact that he was
kinsman to a Bishop and a Baronet.
While we are on the subject of Advertisements a word must be said about
the Medical branch of this fine art; and knowing the enormous fortunes
which have often been made out of a casual prescription for _acne_ or
_alopecia_, I freely place at the disposal of any aspiring young chemist
who reads this paper the following tale of enterprise and success. A few
years ago, according to the information before me, a London doctor had a
lady patient who complained of an incessant neuralgia in her face and
jaw. The doctor could detect nothing amiss, but exhausted his skill, his
patience, and his remedies in trying to comfort the complainant, who,
however, refused to be comforted. At length, being convinced that the
case was one of pure hypochondria, he wrote to the afflicted lady,
saying that he did not feel justified in any longer taking her money for
a case which was evidently beyond his powers, but recommended her to
try change of air, live in the country, and trust to that _edax rerum_
which sooner or later cures all human ills.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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