Part 86 (2/2)
What possible use can a man have for _ten million s.h.i.+rts_?
The Earl of Surrey, afterwards eleventh Duke of Norfolk, who was a notorious gormand and hard drinker, and a leading member of the Beefsteak Club, was so far from cleanly in his person that his servants used to avail themselves of his fits of drunkenness--which were pretty frequent, by the way, for the purpose of was.h.i.+ng him. On these occasions they stripped him as they would a corpse, and performed the needful ablutions.
He was equally notorious for his horror of clean linen. One day, on his complaining to his physician that he had become a perfect martyr to rheumatism, and had tried every possible remedy without success, the latter wittily replied, ”Pray, my lord, did you ever try a clean s.h.i.+rt?”
Dr. Davy's remarkable oddity of dress did not end here. He took to fis.h.i.+ng: we have noticed his writing on angling elsewhere. He was often seen on the river's banks, in season and out of season, ”in a costume that must have been a source of no common amus.e.m.e.nt to the river nymphs. His coat and breeches were of a bright green cloth. His hat was what Dr. Paris describes as 'having been intended for a coal-heaver, but as having been dyed green, in its raw state, by some sort of pigment.' In this attire Davy flattered himself that he closely resembled vegetable life”--which was not intended to scare away the fishes.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW POOR TOMMY WAS LOST.]
This reminds me of Mrs. Pettigrew's little boy ”Tommy.” Never heard of it?
”Well,” says Mrs. Pettigrew, ”I never again will dress a child in green.
You see,”--very affectedly,--”I used to put a jacket and hood on little Tommy all of beautiful green color, till one day he was playing out on the gra.s.s, looking so green and innocent, when along came a cow, and eat poor little Tommy all up, mistaking him for a cabbage.”
Mrs. H. Davy was as curious in dress as the doctor. ”One day”--it is told for the truth--”the lady accompanied her husband to Paris, and walking in the Tuileries, wearing the fas.h.i.+onable London bonnet of the period,--shaped like a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l,--and the doctor dressed in his green, they were mistaken for _masqueraders_, and a great crowd of astonished Parisians began staring at the couple.
”Their discomfiture had hardly commenced when the garden inspector informed the lady that nothing of the kind could be permitted on the grounds, and requested a withdrawal.
”The rabble increased, and it became necessary to order a guard of infantry to remove '_la belle Anglaise_' safely, surrounded by French bayonets.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: BRIDGET'S METHOD OF MENDING STOCKINGS.]
A Portland paper tells how a servant girl there mended her stockings.
”When a hole appeared in the toe, Bridget tied a string around the stocking below the aperture and cut off the projecting portion. This operation was repeated as often as necessary, each time pulling the stocking down a little, until at last it was nearly all cut away, when Bridget sewed on new legs, and thus kept her stockings always in repair.”
DOCTORS' WIGS.
For the s.p.a.ce of about three centuries the physician's wig was his most prominent insignia of office. Who invented it, or why it was invented, I am unable to learn. The name _wig_ is Anglo-Saxon. Hogarth, in his ”Undertaker's Arms,” has given us some correct samples of doctors' wigs.
Of the fifteen heads the only unwigged one is that of a woman--Mrs. Mapp, the bone-setter. The one at her left is Taylor, the ”quack oculist;” the other at her right is Ward, who got rich on a pill. Mrs. Mapp is sketched in our chapter on Female Doctors. Isn't she lovely? And how Taylor and Ward lean towards her!
YE ANCIENT DOCTOR.
”Each son of Sol, to make him look more big, Wore an enormous, grave, three-tailed wig; His clothes full trimmed, with b.u.t.ton-holes behind; Stiff were the skirts, with buckram stoutly lined; The cloth-cut velvet, or more reverend black, Full made and powdered half way down his back; Large muslin cuffs, which near the ground did reach, With half a dozen b.u.t.tons fixed to each.
Grave were their faces--fixed in solemn state; These men struck awe; their children carried weight.
In reverend wigs old heads young shoulders bore; And twenty-five or thirty seemed threescore.”
HARVEY'S HABITS.
I think Harvey should have been represented in a wig. They were worn by doctors in his day, though John Aubrey makes no mention of Dr. Harvey's wearing one. He (Aubrey) says, ”Harvey was not tall, but of a lowly stature; round faced, olive complexion, little eyes, round, black, and very full of spirit. His hair was black as a raven, but quite white twenty years before he died. I remember he was wont to drink coffee with his brother Eliab before coffee-houses were in fas.h.i.+on in London.
”He, with all his brothers, was very choleric, and in younger days wore a dagger, as the fas.h.i.+on then was; but this doctor would be apt to draw out his dagger upon very slight occasions.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE UNDERTAKER'S ARMS.]
”He rode _on horseback, with a foot-cloth, to visit his patients, his footman following, which was then a very decent fas.h.i.+on, now quite discontinued_.”
It was not unusual to see a doctor cantering along at a high rate of speed, and his footman running hard at his side, with whom the doctor was keeping up a _lively_ conversation.
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