Or better still, get pen, ink and paper, and grind out something of your own. It has been said that every human being has within him the possibility of producing one good book. It is obviously untrue but all the same there may be some “mute inglorious Miltons”8 about, who might have blossomed into poets or novelists had they been planted in proper soils.’

‘Depend upon it,’ said I, sententiously, ‘if man has a talent it will find its way out of him. The frost of poverty will never nip it entirely.’9

The Doctor let go of the handle and took a step back into the room, for he was a dogmatic little fellow, and as a natural consequence very intolerant of the dogmatism of others.

‘No, but that of wealth will,’ said he. ‘The want of money is the sun which shines on the needy genius and warms his latent powers into life. I consider the possession of a competence to be one of the greatest curses which can befall a young man of talent.’ He was so carried away by his subject that he took another step forward and plumped down into my easy chair. ‘How many a promising lad I have known in my student days, who had it in him to rise to the highest honours of his profession. Yet the possession of a miserable hundred or two hundred a year has removed the chief incentive to work and caused him to dawdle along in an ignoble dolce far niente, while penniless youths with half his brains, driven by the sharp spur of necessity, passed over his head and soon bade fair to have a yearly income which equalled his capital. If it applies to medicine it does so even more to all that I know of literature. The best and most successful writers seem to find the undertaking of a new work to be a painful effort. Carlyle talks of returning to his writing “not like a warrior going to the battlefield, but like a slave lashed back to his task.” If that is the feeling of an eminently successful man, how heavy and weary is the drudgery of the tyro who has no memories of former triumphs to bear him up. I tell you if a man is not forced to do it, he won’t do it, unless indeed he is some lusus naturae like Macaulay,10 who played with pens when he was in the nursery and preferred an ink pot to a Noah’s ark. A man with brains and a competence may fail, but a man with brains and poverty must succeed.’

‘So they said to Lord Southampton apropos of his son,’ I observed. ‘Do you remember his Lordship’s reply? “If Providence,” he said, “will find him the brains, I’ll answer for the poverty.”’11

Dr Turner had a good hearty laugh which was as invigorating as his most tonic prescription. ‘He should have had the brains too with so witty a father,’ he remarked. ‘But I must positively hurry on. Look at this!’ He showed a long column of names. ‘They have all to be seen before I get home. Goodbye! Hope to find you better tomorrow. A little Irish whisky or a dry hock if you must have stimulants.’ He closed the door behind him and was gone.

Now there’s a man, thought I, as I listened to the dying rumble of his carriage wheels, who does an infinite amount of good in the world. Let me reduce it to figures. Supposing him to see forty patients a day – which is a moderate computation enough for a man in good practice – that would come to 14,600 a year.12 And supposing him to be in active practice for thirty-five years, which again is a fair average, the total number of his visits and consultations would come to 511,000. Of these half million people the great majority, we will charitably suppose, have received benefits from his advice and prescriptions. What a colossal amount of good then will this one cheery unassuming mortal achieve before he finishes his career. Will his Grace of Canterbury do as much – or his Highness in the Vatican? ’Pon my word that square-edged professional hat should excite as much reverence as mitre or tiara, could we but look past the forms of things, and get at the things themselves.

There is the true function of the seer which St Thomas of Chelsea13 preached so long and so earnestly. Blessings on his rugged shade, say I, wherever he may be! If ever a man realised the grand old type by walking straight and speaking fearlessly and practising himself what he preached to others it was surely the son of the stone mason of Ecclefechan. Of all sad literary episodes the attacks upon the great man’s memory when the earth was still brown upon his grave were to my mind the most distressing. The jackals were silent enough while the old lion lived, but when he lay powerless and speechless there was none too small to have a snap or a pinch at him.

Oh these blow-flies of literature! What innate love of carrion is it which causes them ever to swarm upon the least healthy aspect of a great mind! Let a man have fifty of the noblest virtues and a single petty vice, straightaway the blow-fly critic comes along and settles upon that one failing and breeds such a spawn of pamphlets and articles that the casual reader can see no aspect of the man’s character save the one least favourable one. Addison was a tenderhearted estimable man – ‘but a drunkard’ buzzes the blow-fly. Burns was generous and noble-minded – ‘but a profligate!’ buzzes the blow-fly.