Memoirs of Eighty Years. Thomas Gordon Hake
Like most other county towns Lewes had many mansions. These in olden times were the winter residences of nobles and squires, and, at their death, of their relicts, for the women always survived the men. It was considered in those days that the taste of port wine struck the highest note on the palatal gamut, and that gout, though painful, was a distinction. The best lives seldom exceeded sixty-nine. The vesical and gall compartments at that age, generally, had completed their mineralogical collection, and death was not pleasant.
Many of these mansions had the charms of not having been decorated or repaired for a hundred years, whence they looked much the same as when inhabited by the dowagers of bygone generations. So sensible were some of the later occupants of this, that they preserved them in their pristine state, and sat in them in old armchairs till they imagined themselves to be ancestors; and in an instance or two donned the pigtail to complete the illusion. So honourable was this emblem, that no tradesman, however mean his calling, could wear it without being spoken of as the old gentleman, and he doubtless felt himself to be such, though he might be serving a customer with a jar of spermaceti oil.
As aforesaid, Gideon Mantell was an inhabitant of Lewes, struggling for fame by his researches within the chalk strata, and for a livelihood by his practice as a surgeon and apothecary, in which he had a fair amount of success, no doubt due to his great abilities, but in the estimation of many to the flash of his surroundings. His gig and groom were models as they waited at his door. His coat of arms embraced your vision as it shone in the fan-light and whispered of greatness within. He was tall, graciously graceful, and flexible, a naturalist, realizing his own lordship of the creation.
Mantell had a brother in his business, a man, short and deformed, of a quiet, obliging manner. His name was Joshua. He had a son who also made himself heard in later times from the wilds of New Zealand, as a successful scientific explorer.
Some years later the good Earl of Egremont, lord of Petworth Castle, great in his generosity, presented Mantell with a large sum of money to start him in a spacious mansion at Brighton, where he might set up his fine museum, and pursue his profession in a wider field. Removing to this from Lewes he still pursued his science, but the sort of ground he needed was preoccupied, and, disposing of his collection to the trustees of the British Museum, he migrated finally to a suburb of London, I think it was to Clapham.
Had Government allowed such a man as Mantell a thousand a year for the purposes of science, he would have brought the geology of his day to perfection! How creditably they might have amended the sacrifice by withholding the £70,000 from the British Gallery for the purchase of a sham Raphael, and a preposterous Rembrandt, which the pencils of those artists never touched—an invalid housemaid on a throne as Virgin, and a Charles the King on a cart-horse! Raphael painted only beauty, Rembrandt only grace. But the English are the meanest judges of art in Europe. An Italian picture-dealer would have set them right in a few minutes.
What have the trustees done with those fabulous Correggios, which once made such a figure and were shelved to the entrance passage, when the National Gallery was still in Mr. Angerstein’s mansion in Pall Mall?
“Per arte e l’inganno,
Si vive mezzo l’anno;
Per inganno e l’arte
Si vive l’altro parte.”
There were other worthies in this town of Lewes: Mr. Horsfield, author of the “History and Antiquities of Lewes;” Mr. Lower, a stationer, who wrote on Sussex worthies; and the master of the Grammar School, Dr. Proctor, whose voice crackled emphasis and accent. He was one of the rolling stones that gather no moss; Lewes failed him and he took a mansion towards Kemp town; he was tempted from his school there to Jersey, and became Principal of its College, but this did not fit him for any length of time. My brother, who was his pupil, met him now and then in after days in the streets of London; he was then always on his way to see the bishop.
XXI.
All this time I was a student of medical science under a truly eminent man, Thomas Hodson, the highest authority in his profession within the bounds of Sussex. His career and station gave him every claim to be classed with the worthies of his age. He was the friend and fellow-student of Astley Cooper, and the other aristocrats of surgical art. All acknowledged him as their equals, though his skill and abilities were in a measure hidden from the admiration of the world. He was numbered among the leading lithotomists, having extracted the stone by means of the greatest operation in surgery, somewhere about a hundred times, with unvarying success.
It was in reflecting on the skill of such men that I always regarded surgery as a science far above all that physic can attain to.
Thomas Hodson is a name not to be forgotten. He loved his art passionately, and he would discourse on it with all the fervour it deserved. It is an art; but look at its foundation! The human frame is a transparency to the surgeon’s eyes. He is never in the dark, but sees his way clearly, with a perfect knowledge of what has to be done from first to last. It is otherwise with physic: the physician can fulfil certain indications, with certain remedies; these very few in number. For the rest, how these operate, what work they perform in modifying function he can never fully foresee. Nor will science ever reach such a pitch as to enable him to trace the changes which occur in the system, under the influence of a single dose.
He can swim, but he is mostly out of his depth, and that too often in troubled waters.
On the other hand, physicians generally used to receive a better education than surgeons; such of them as respect their position, make themselves acquainted with every branch of knowledge, whether in literature, science, or art; in social life all doubtful questions, when all others are at a loss, are referred to them; and it is fully expected of them that they will have a ready reply.
Hodson was one of the most amiable men I ever knew, and his manners were sweet and elegant to such a degree as to make it deserving of mention that on being thwarted he became the most passionate of men. The world, then, seemed hardly large enough to hold him. Such a trifle as the loss of a letter, or of a book, would set him off. Smiling, pale with anger, he would exclaim, “Will you look about for me?” Then, rapping on the table with his bent forefinger, forcibly enough to crack the mahogany, he would shout, “I have looked high, I have looked low; I have looked uphill, I have looked downhill, and I have looked on level ground. Help me for my sake; if you won’t do so for my sake, help me for God’s sake; and if you won’t help me for God’s sake, do so for Jesus Christ’s sake; for they say he was a good ⸺!”
Hodson was a man of middle stature, fair, although old; bald, with a finely shaped head, and silvery hair; with classic features, and a most intelligent expression. His manner was courteous and, in its particular fashion, graceful. It is no wonder that such a man, gifted as he was, should have been the delight of the neighbouring gentry, and of the greater men of the town. When summoned to Glynde or Firle, the residences of Lords Hampden and Gage, he was always a desired guest at the table of those nobles; and no more genial and amusing one was anywhere to be found.
Glynde, the inheritance of the late Speaker, Lord Hampden by creation, sad to say at this hour dead, a descendant of the great patriot, is the most charming house, perhaps, of any in the south. A large Elizabethan mansion, a pleasant park, downs covered with the choicest breed of sheep in the known world, was even made more celebrated by the tenant farmer John Ellman, than by the lords of the soil.
In those times there was such a thing as south-down mutton!
John Ellman, of Glynde, was a man known to the whole agricultural world. To those who never saw him, he was known by his full-length portrait, as was Coke of Norfolk, and other celebrities of his day, to be seen in the window of a corner shop, between St. James’s Street and Pall Mall, kept by a gentleman who had the aspect of