Memories and Adventures

go. Had I been a well-known doctor or a specialist in consump­tion it would have been more intelligible, but I had, as a matter of fact, no great interest in the more recent developments of my own profession, and a very strong belief that much of the so-called progress was illusory. However, at a few hours’ no­tice I packed up a bag and started off alone upon this curious adventure. I had had an interchange of letters with Mr. W. T. Stead over some matter and I called upon him at the “Review of Reviews” offi ce as I passed through London to ask him if he could give me an introduction to Koch or to Dr. Bergmann, who was to give the demonstration. Mr. Stead was very amiable to this big unknown provincial doctor, and he gave me a letter for the British Ambassador – Sir Edward Malet, if I remember right – and for Mr. Lowe, “The Times” correspondent. He also asked me to do a character sketch of Koch for him, adding that he would have Count MatteI as a feature of his magazine this month and Koch the next. I said, “Then you will have the great­est man of science and the greatest quack in Europe following each other.” Stead glared at me angrily, for it seems that the MatteI treatment with its blue electricity and the rest of it was at that moment his particular fad. However, we parted amiably and all through his life we kept in distant touch, though we came into sharp collision at the time of the Boer war. He was a brave and honest man, and if he was impulsive at times it was only the sudden outfl ame of that fi re which made him the great force for good that he was. In psychic knowledge he was a generation before his time, though his mode of expressing it may sometimes have been injudicious.

Next day I went down to the great building where the ad­dress was to be given and managed by bribing the porter to get into the outer Hall. The huge audience was assembling in a room beyond. I tried further bribing that I might be slipped

in, but the offi cial became abusive. People streamed past me, but I was always the waiter at the gate. Finally every one had gone in and then a group of men came bustling across, Berg­mann, bearded and formidable, in the van, with a tail of house surgeons and satellites behind him. I threw myself across his path. “I have come a thousand miles,” said I. “May I not come in?” He halted and glared at me through his spectacles. “Per­haps you would like to take my place,” he roared, working himself up into that strange folly of excitement which seems so strange in the heavy German nature. “That is the only place left. Yes, yes, take my place by all. means. My classes are fi lled with Englishmen already.” He fairly spat out the word “Eng­lishmen” and I learned afterwards that some recent Quarrel with Morel MacKenzie over the illness of the Emperor Fred­erick had greatly incensed him. I am glad to say that I kept my temper and my polite manner, which is always the best shield when one is met by brutal rudeness. “Not at all,” I said. “I would not intrude, if there was really no room.” He glared at me again, all beard and spectacles, and rushed on with his court all grinning at the snub which the presumptuous Englishman had received. One of them lingered, however – a kindly Amer­ican. “That was bad behaviour,” said he. “See here! If you meet me at four this afternoon I will show you my full notes of the lecture, and I know the cases he is about to show, so we can see them together to-morrow.” Then he followed on.

114

Two days later I was back in Southsea, but I came back a changed man. I had spread my wings and had felt something of the powers within me. Especially I had been infl uenced by a long talk with Malcolm Morris, in which he assured me that I was wasting my life in the provinces and had too small a fi eld for my activities. He insisted that I should leave general prac­tice and go to London. I answered that I was by no means sure of my literary success as yet, and that I could not so easily aban­don the medical career which had cost my mother such sacri­fi ces and myself so many years of study. He asked me if there was any special branch of the profession on which I could con­centrate so as to get away from general practice. I said that of late years I had been interested in eye work and had amused myself by correcting refractions and ordering glasses in the Portsmouth Eye Hospital under Mr. Vernon Ford. “Well,” said Morris, “why not specialize upon the eye? Go to Vienna, put in six months’ work, come back and start in London. Thus you will have a nice clean life with plenty of leisure for your litera­ture.” I came home with this great suggestion buzzing in my head and as my wife was quite willing and Mary, my little girl, was old enough now to be left with her grandmother, there

seemed to be no obstacle in the way. There were no diffi cul­ties about disposing of the practice, for it was so small and so purely personal that it could not be sold to another and simply had to dissolve.

116

My political work also caused me to learn to speak. I was what was called a Liberal-Unionist, that is, a man whose gen­eral position was Liberal, but who could not see his way to support Gladstone’s Irish Policy. Perhaps we were wrong. However, that was my view at the time. I had a dreadful fi rst experience of platform speaking on a large scale, for at a huge meeting at the Amphitheatre the candidate, Sir William Cross-man, was delayed, and to prevent a fi asco I was pushed on at a moment’s notice to face an audience of 3,000 people. It was one of the tight corners of my life. I hardly knew my­self what I said, but the Irish part of me came to my aid and supplied me with a torrent of more or less incoherent words and similes which roused the audience greatly, though it read to me afterwards more like a comic stump speech than a se­rious political effort. But it was what they wanted and they were mostly on their feet before I fi nished. I was amazed when I read it next day, and especially the last crowning sen­tence, which was: “England and Ireland are wedded together with the sapphire wedding ring of the sea, and what God has placed together let no man pluck asunder.” It was not very good logic, but whether it was eloquence or rhodomontade I could not even now determine.

What with the Literary Society and the politicians I left a gap behind me in Portsmouth and so did my wife, who was universally popular for her amiable and generous character. It was a wrench to us to leave so many good friends. However, to­wards the end of 1890 the die was cast, and we closed the door of Bush Villa behind us for the last time. I had days of priva­tion there, and days of growing success during the eight long years that I had spent in Portsmouth. Now it was with a sense of wonderful freedom and exhilarating adventure that we set forth upon the next phase of our lives.