Part 1 (2/2)
Bathgate lies between the Firth of Forth and the Pentland Hills, in a geologically varied district, with a varied and abundant flora and fauna--more so in those days when Bathgate was a small village of hand-loom weavers than latterly, when it was a thriving little town, the centre of a coal, shale, and ironstone mining industry. The archaeological features of the neighbourhood were full of interest.
There was the famous ”Catstane,” of Kirkliston, which had puzzled antiquarians even before the establishment of the Scots Society in 1780, and at Kipps was one of the few remaining cromlechs--and that a ruined one--in Scotland; whilst the line of the Roman wall between the Firth of Forth and the Clyde was not far distant. There were traces of a Cistercian monastery founded by David I., and various hills and fields and caves were a.s.sociated with the names of Sir William Wallace, Robert Bruce, and King Edward I.
Simpson thoroughly familiarised himself in boyhood with the natural features, as well as with the antiquarian objects in the district.
He continued to investigate them during his vacations when a student at Edinburgh University, and rendered the neighbourhood famous archaeologically by masterly monographs written when he was at the height of his fame. Amongst the village hand-loom weavers, a race of peculiarly observant and intelligent men, there were some who studied both the antiquarian objects and the natural history of Linlithgows.h.i.+re. Simpson used to speak of one man, a daily labourer at the loom, who was able to write, in correct Latin, an accurate description of any plant or animal brought before him, although his earnings at the loom never amounted to fifty pounds a year.
These men thoroughly enjoyed the evident interest of the ”young philosopher” in their discussions and demonstrations, at the same time kindly directing his mind towards the simple, painstaking, true methods of observing and reflecting upon nature. There was no lack of change in his environment for him; his interest in natural phenomena was roused and kept alive during his drives round the countryside delivering bread to the farmers and cottagers, or in occasional visits to his parents' relations. He daily took his turn behind the shop counter, reading, writing, or drawing in the interval of waiting for customers. He trained himself to read or do his school lessons as readily in a roomful of romping children as in the quiet of the bedroom. It has been said that he never knew an idle moment from the day of his birth onwards, and his was such an indomitable and persevering energy that the remark is no exaggeration. But the pathway to greatness was made specially smooth for James Simpson. He was set upon it, and protected in his childhood, and guided in his youth, with the one definite object always in view. The Simpson family as well as the whole Bathgate community, took it for granted that eminence was to be his in whatever walk of life he entered seriously upon. His sister Mary and his brother Alexander looked upon him as a special care; the former watched over him as a mother, and the latter helped him in the ups and downs of boyhood, just as he constantly stood by him throughout the difficult days of his later career. It had always been a custom in Scots families of humble rank that one child, either from the exhibition of a natural apt.i.tude, or through the ambition of the parents, was singled out to receive the advantages of a fuller education such as is within the reach of every able lad in Scotland.
Honour and glory would thus be brought to the family, greatest of all if from the pulpit, while the less favoured members of the family would plod on in the same sphere of life as their parents. The world owes a great deal to the Simpsons, and particularly to Alexander, who cheerfully seconded their father's efforts to help forward their young brother, without a suspicion of jealousy. They knew he would be great some day, and therein they looked for their reward.
Happily there were ample means for all their requirements derived from the now prosperous bakery. The money was kept in one drawer, the till where the shop earnings were placed. All the household were free to draw thence supplies for their ordinary wants, James without stint; and he alone was exempted from the condition that he who profited must also contribute by the sweat of his brow. The boy took very full advantage of his fortunate circ.u.mstances and drank deeply of all the knowledge that came near and ever hunted for more. With each succeeding year the craving to know, and to know thoroughly, became more and more his ruling pa.s.sion; by the time his schooldays were over it had gained complete mastery over him; happily for the human race Providence had so endowed him that when knowledge had come wisdom did not linger.
He was never in any way led away by the temptations that no doubt beset every boy in a village of hard-drinkers such as Bathgate was in his youth. Alexander took pains to warn him--”Others may do this, Jamie, but it would break all our hearts and blast all your prospects were you to do it,” he said. It was not necessary to make appeals to James to work and fulfil the family predictions; he was as firmly determined to be great as they were sure he would be: He never forgot how much he owed to the loving help of his family, and to the fact that he was the youngest son growing up at a time when the family struggles were fairly over; when instead of its being an effort for the parents to provide the necessary funds for his education, the shop-till was well filled and the elder brothers and the loving sister were at hand eagerly willing to help. In student days when struggles came and the path seemed dark and beset with dangers, the knowledge of the firm faith in his powers of the family at home and of the scarcely smaller faith of the weavers, was a powerful incentive in the moments when he required any other than that of the spirit within him.
We cannot feel otherwise than thankful that up to the age of fourteen, when his schooldays ended, he had access to but a limited stock of literature wherewith to gratify his hunger for knowledge. To satisfy his appet.i.te he was driven into the fields and the forests; every sense was stimulated, and became developed through repeated use. Thus he laid the foundation of his phenomenal faculty of rapid and accurate observation, and of his no less phenomenal memory.
His imagination was fed with the legends of the district and tales of his remote moss-trooper ancestors told to him of an evening by his father. Though happily saved from being a bookworm to the exclusion of sounder means for acquiring knowledge, he devoured and digested every sc.r.a.p of literature which came in his way. Like all Scots children of his cla.s.s he learnt his Bible thoroughly from end to end--a knowledge which served him well in later years. Shakespeare followed the Bible in his own review of his favourite reading as a boy; but a gazetteer or an almanac was quite as acceptable. His taste was for solid fact--fact which he could learn and put to the test; thus the great open book of Nature was the attraction he most readily yielded to. But nothing in book form ever came amiss to him; if between the covers there was useful information to be had, Simpson extracted it and stored it away in his capacious brain.
The unusually large size of his head, a source of admiration in manhood, was in childhood an object of wonder to observers. In manhood he wore his hair in long locks, and this was apparently his habit in boyhood. Once a strange barber cut his hair so close that his brother took upon himself to go and rebuke the man. ”The callant had suck a muckle head,” was the retort, ”I was doin' my best to mak' it look respectable.” A close-cropped head gave altogether a too sportive appearance to the ”young philosopher” in the eyes of the watchful elder brother.
There is no evidence that Simpson displayed in his schooldays any special leaning towards the medical profession; it cannot be reasonably urged that his grandfather's rough skill in the treatment of animals fostered any medical tendency in him, for James was but five years old when the old man died. Even had he been of an age to understand them, the methods employed would have scarcely recommended themselves to a youth of Simpson's nature, sufficiently to raise a spirit of emulation within him. It is also not recorded that the village doctor took any special interest in the boy or brought any influence to bear upon him; although his note-book thus gives the earliest record of the future prince of obstetricians:--
275.--June 7. Simpson, David, baker, Bathgate. Wife, Mary Jarvie.
ae. 40. 8th child, son. _Natus_ 8 o'clock. _Uti veniebam natus._ Paid 10s. 6d.
James displayed his superiority so decidedly in the village school that when he reached the age of fourteen it was decided to send him to Edinburgh University without further waste of time. It was no unusual age for boys to commence their University career in Scotland. There was no secondary education in the Scots provinces, but instruction intermediate between that of the parish school and what is ordinarily known as University education was given within the walls of the University itself. Boys of humble rank who aspired to a profession were sent up, as indeed many still are, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, to attend these junior Arts cla.s.ses in which this instruction was, and still is, imparted. The University was crowded with schoolboys of all ranks of life gathered together from town and country, and consisted of nothing more than a collection of cla.s.s-rooms devoted to the giving of instruction in lecture form. This stepping-stone of junior cla.s.ses threw open the higher education to hundreds of youths whose equals in England had no such advantage at that time. Scots University education besides being thorough was decidedly cheap, so that the church, law, and medicine received many recruits from the cla.s.s out of which Simpson was drawn.
His environment up to the age of fourteen was well calculated to train him for the great work that lay before him. The legends of the district, and the sight of the objects of archaeological interest which he came across in his rambles out of school hours, were powerful stimuli to his sensations; whilst the accurate observation of natural phenomena in field and hedge which the kindly interested weavers helped him to, was also a valuable educative influence. It is probable that his senses received much of the training which was to lead to his ultimately being the greatest physician of his day by these means, rather than from the instruction imparted to him in the village school, or derived by him independently from the books that came in his way. It was undoubtedly a fortunate circ.u.mstance that he was born and bred in an out-of-the-way country district, where he drew his lessons from Nature and the phenomena which lay round him, rather than in a great city where he would have been educated on the stereotyped orthodox system. When we look further back, asking why he saw sermons in stones and books in the running brooks, to which the bulk of his schoolfellows were entirely blind, we are bound to confess that we find no satisfactory answer in his family history, to which it is customary to look for an explanation of such tendencies. Heredity played no great part in making Simpson great; from the paternal side there was imparted to him a vigorous physique; from his mother he received the bright, happy, sympathetic, and alert disposition, which descended through her from his French ancestors. He was provided with a brain of marvellous quality and phenomenal size. But it was the environment which acted upon this brain and brought out the capacities born in him without any apparent hereditary bias, and which might have remained entirely latent under less favourable circ.u.mstances. No small part of the development was due to the people among whom he lived; a race of men accustomed to rely upon their senses which were always with them, rather than upon books which they seldom saw, even if they were able to read them; and to observe not only all that lay around them, but also the characteristics of their fellowmen with whom they were brought into contact--the close contact of different cla.s.ses which obtains in village and rural life. Simpson was taught to study Nature whether in field or fellow-creature first, and the knowledge and opinions of men as expressed in books afterwards.
CHAPTER II.
STUDENT DAYS. 1825-1830.
Visit to Edinburgh--Sent to the University--Takes the Arts cla.s.ses--Gains a bursary--Influence of MacArthur and Reid--Robert Knox the anatomist--The Burke and Hare murders--Superiority of the extra-mural teachers of the day--Edinburgh an intellectual centre--University life--His mode of living as a student--Apprenticed to a chemist--Studies surgery under Liston--Regularly falls asleep in the obstetric cla.s.s--Influence of his teachers--Verse writing--Description of the medical student of the day--Vacation work--Death of his father--Obtains qualification to practice at the age of eighteen.
Although Edinburgh was only eighteen miles from Bathgate, Simpson visited it only once as a schoolboy; probably he walked all the way, for railroads were as yet unknown and it was not a long walk for a country-bred vigorous youth. He exercised his already formed habit of noting objects of interest during this great event in his boyhood, and in his journal there are copies of old inscriptions from tombs in the famous Greyfriars' Churchyard to which he made his pilgrimage.
The boy's nearest and dearest ambition was to become a student at ”the College,” as Edinburgh University was familiarly termed. It received encouragement in the periodical return to the village of elder boys who had gone up before him. He was specially struck, and afterwards stimulated, by the appearance of one John Reid, his senior by two years, and his former companion in many a country ramble, who came back for the vacations smartened up both physically and mentally by the new life.
Although the collegiate life characteristic of Oxford was unknown in Scots Universities, there was social intercourse amongst the boys very different from that of the village. The ancient Edinburgh University attracted students from all parts of the world, mostly for the medical curriculum, but many preceded the professional course with a year or two's attendance on the Arts cla.s.ses; and it was usual for young Englishmen of good family to spend a session at Edinburgh before going to Oxford or Cambridge. Probably before he entered the medical cla.s.ses, Simpson rubbed shoulders with lads of all ranks from home and abroad. Pillans was at this time the Professor of Humanity, Wallace held the chair of Mathematics, John Wilson--better known as Christopher North--that of Moral Philosophy, and Dunbar was Professor of Greek. Wallace had begun life as a bookbinder's apprentice, and Dunbar had risen from being a gardener; the example of these men under whose influence he was brought encouraged the baker's son to go and do likewise.
The family had sent him off to the College with the mission to be famous, and he was beginning only in an orthodox fas.h.i.+on when he entered himself for the curriculum in Arts. It had been easy for him, with his magnificent brain power, to stand _dux_ of the village school over the ordinary village youth; but here, in Edinburgh, he was brought into compet.i.tion with the picked boys from other country schools, and intellectually eager youths from town schools where the course of instruction was such as more easily to lead to early University success than that of the Bathgate parish school. At first he found difficulty and desponded. The keen observer with senses all alert was dashed to find so much of the College life to which he had so eagerly looked forward only a magnified repet.i.tion of the dull school routine. But he was too intent on ultimate success to be repulsed by his initial disappointment, and soon brought his mind into adjustment with the circ.u.mstances he found himself in, reserving leisure time and vacations for the exercise of his faculties as he most loved to exercise them. He did not persevere in the Arts course after he found his tastes led him to other studies; he did not trouble to obtain the Master of Arts degree, which was then conferred in a very lax manner; probably he saw its worthlessness, for it was not until the pa.s.sing of the Scots Universities Act in 1858 that this degree became really valuable. He recognised, however, the value of laying a good foundation of general knowledge; without straining after any distinction he acquitted himself creditably in all his cla.s.ses. In the second year of the curriculum he won one of the numerous small bursaries of the value of 10 a year, for which logic was one of the chief subjects of examination; but as candidates were restricted to those who possessed either the name of the founder, Stewart, or that of his wife, Simpson, the compet.i.tion was not particularly severe. His individuality and natural straightforwardness attracted the attention of some of his professors. The boldness of his original essays provided them with food for comment in a manner dear to the professorial heart.
The Arts curriculum served him usefully in helping to develop a literary style and in teaching him how best to express his vigorous thoughts, as well as in strengthening his knowledge of Latin and Greek. According to the record preserved on his cla.s.s certificates he worked attentively and diligently; but the mere fact that he did not excel is sufficient proof that he did not make an attempt.
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