The Court of Cacus Part 2

The Regular Staff.

It is, we think, laid down in that strange book of Robert Forsyth's on morals, that the gratification of the desire of knowledge is, at least on this earth of ours, the true end of man; and, no doubt, were we to judge of the strength of this desire in forcing man down into the bowels of the earth, and up into the heavens, across unknown seas, and over equally unknown continents, we would not be slow to confess its great power. And yet how many there are who a.s.sign the same place to the power of mammon, while others stand up for love and the social affections! We will not presume to decide where the range goes from the things of earth to those of heaven; but it appears pretty certain that there have been a good many Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpes, who have lauded, while in health, the practice of leaving the body to the doctors, and who yet have shrunk from the personal example when the shadow of the dark angel was over them.

There have been also, we suspect, fewer Jeremy Benthams, who actually have left their carrion to the vultures of science, than of Merryleeses, who have robbed churchyards, and sold the stolen article for money.[4] Nor, in estimating the motives of the few scientific testators, can we say that we have much belief in their professions, if it is not more true that they are only seekers of notoriety, sometimes, as in the case of the author of the Fallacies, so weak as to be bribed by the offer of having their skins tanned and distributed in slips--the skin being, in such instances, the most valuable part of their corporations.

In pursuance of these notions, we may safely infer that if the wants of the halls had been left to be supplied by the scientific zeal of the amateurs, the state of anatomy would have been less perfect than we find it under the auspices of such men as Schwann, or Bell, or Hall, in our day. And we say this without being much satisfied that all the boasted discoveries have led to much more than the conviction that we get deeper and deeper into the dark, while--admitting many ameliorations--the people recover from operations, or die of diseases, very much as they used to do.

What are called the high cases might very well be left alone, so that we might be still bound to admit that Nature's purpose, in imposing the sacred feeling for the dead, is consistent with her determination, that if in this defeated by man, he shall earn nothing by trying to get at her secrets. But there was no necessity that the matter of purveyance should be left to the students. There have always been body-thieves; but the time had come in Scotland, when not only their number behoved to be increased, but their energies also, by the multiplied demands of the halls.

How far this increase might have progressed, but for the great drama of "The Scotch Court of Cacus," it is impossible to say; but for a time the staff of Knox's artists were rather put upon their wits and exertions, than increased by dangerous bunglers. The trade was perilous, and required attributes not very often found united,--a total bluntness of feeling, a certain amount of low courage, much ingenuity of device, clever personal handling, and total disregard of public opinion--the love of money being the governing stimulant. Few cla.s.ses of men could have afforded a better study in the lower and grosser parts of human nature. There was one called Merrylees, or more often Merry-Andrew, a great favourite with the students. Of gigantic height, he was thin and gaunt, even to ridiculousness, with a long pale face, and the jaws of an ogre. His shabby clothes, no doubt made for some tall person of proportionate girth, hung upon his sharp joints, more as if they had been placed there to dry than to clothe and keep warm. Nor less grotesque were the motions and gestures of this strange being. It seemed as if he went upon springs, and even the muscles of his face, as they pa.s.sed from the grin of idiot pleasure to the scowl of anger, seemed to obey a similar power. Every movement was a spasm, as if the long lank muscles, unable to effect a contraction through such a length, accomplished their object by the concentrated energy of violent s.n.a.t.c.hes. So, too, with the moral part: the normal but grotesque gravity was only to be disturbed by some sudden access of pa.s.sion, which made him toss his arms and gesticulate. So completely was he the cause of fun in others, that often on the street some larking student would cry out, "Merry-Andrew," for no other purpose than to see him wheel about, clench his hands, and throw his face into all manner of furious contortions. All this only conspired to make him a b.u.t.t, and the loud laugh which always came when there was nothing to laugh at, or rather something which would have produced gravity in another, helped the consummation.

Yet withal this same idiot was the king of Knox's artists. Nothing dared him, and nothing shamed him, if he was not even proud of a profession which was patronised by gentlemen and men of science, and paid at a rate which might have put industrious and honest tradesmen to the blush. Like many other half simpletons, too, he had a fertility of device in attaining his object, which insured success, when others apparently more intelligent despaired. So he was a leader upon whom often depended the hopes of the students, when their material was scarce or awanting. When not engaged in his rural exploits, he was always hanging about the Infirmary, where, no doubt, he was in secret communication with the _eleves_ of that inst.i.tution connected with Knox's rooms. From these he got intelligence of likely deaths, where there was a chance of the persons not being soon claimed by their relatives. Now was the opportunity of this genius. He kept a brown black suit for the occasion of a mourner, repaired to the Infirmary, and acted the part of the relative to such perfection, that the nurses at least--for the medical men could wink--were deceived. Nay, he looked at all times so much the afflicted, that the personation even to something like tears was as easy to him as to the weeper in the House of Commons, who cried "like a crocodile with his hands in his breeches'

pockets." The moment the body was got outside in the white coffin, the bearers actually _ran_ with it to the hall, under the inspiration of the, to such glandered hacks in the shape of men, so enormous a reward.

Another of the leaders, though far inferior to Merrylees, was the "Spune,"

a name given to a man whose real one was scarcely known in the rooms, and which was supposed to indicate some superior genius in lifting out the contents of a coffin. He was a littleish man, with a clean-shaved face, surmounting a dirty black suit, worn down to the cotton, which time had glazed. One would have taken him not certainly for a remunerated Methodist preacher, but one who would have given a great amount of doctrine for as much as would have got him a dinner. Yet he was in reality a mute, being one of those dumb wors.h.i.+ppers of philosophy whose thoughts, going down into the earth, if not up to heaven, are too deep and sacred for human speech. Nay, so grave, precise, and wise did he look, that you would have said he bore all the honours of the science to the advancement of which he contributed so much; nor is it certain that he did not really feel--so necessary if not indispensable they considered themselves to be to the professors--that he was engaged in the holy cause of the advancement of mankind and the amelioration of their natural ills,--a conviction this, on the part of the "Spune," not modified by the reception of his fee, which he considered to be the wages of virtue; for while Merry-Andrew clutched his reward with a spasm and a spring, his compeer took his with the dignity and nonchalance of one who laboured for the benefit of his species. However ludicrous all this, one could scarcely say that it was out of place, for without the "Spune" the indagators in the hall would have had small chance of extracting anything from that deep well where it is said truth can alone be found.

Another was a man whose real name was Mowatt, but who was christened by the professional appellation of "Moudewart," (_moldewarp_,) sufficiently indicative of his calling in burrowing into the bowels of the earth. An old plasterer, too lazy to work, he had betaken himself to this trade from a mere love of the money, so that he behoved to rank in a much lower grade than the "Spune." Then, so essentially insensible was he to the honour of contributing to science, that he did not take on a particle of dignity, even from the sympathy of his fellow-labourers. It might be in vain that the "Spune" tried to impress him with the importance of his calling,--he was a man of merely so many pounds for what is in the bag, and no more.

Without that principle of receptivity which enables a congenial soul to take on the reflection of the beauty or honour of an act, he was equally dead to the sublime inspiration of knowledge. Even Merry-Andrew had collected some scientific terms--such as _caput_, or _cranium_, sometimes even attempting _occiput_--all parts of the body with which alone he had anything to do in the process of abstraction; and as for the "Spune," he could even discourse of _tibias_ and _fibulas_, if he did not stagger under _os coccygis_, in a manner which might have made his companion p.r.i.c.k up his ear at the wonder that any such head could carry such terms. But what can be done with a man who has no symptoms of a human soul but that which shews itself when the eye counts with something like pleasure the price of a human body? Yet, strange enough, and perhaps unjustly enough, the two others were not more prized by their patrons than this degraded son of science, who served their purpose equally well--a fact which would have brought down the learned dignity of his co-labourers if they had had sense enough to notice it.

The others of the staff (the names of some of whom we could give) were not to be compared to these leaders--not even to the "Moudiewart," who, however stupid in respect to the science, was really sufficiently up to "the thing" to ent.i.tle him to rank as a successful if not respectable merchant. They were so utterly insensate, that they could not even commit the great mistake of supposing that their occupation degraded them, for the good reason that they were unconscious of degradation. Not that they were unhappy in consequence of not liking the work, for they were even fond of it as a means of getting them drink and tobacco, without the hope of which they might have been dull or sad, but not unhappy, a term which implies something like intelligence, if not sentiment. Fitted only for the humblest parts of the calling--the carrying, the watching, the calling out when intruders loomed in the distance--they had no envy towards the higher orders, and being thus free from all care, they could sing or whistle beneath the burden of a poet without thinking that they desecrated the profession of the Muses. We might thus liken them to those interlusive gentry who play the punning parts of a terribly deep tragedy, and who, not knowing where the pathos lies, as when Hamlet discourses on the skull, are contented with the duty of shovelling out either soil or song.

If we were inclined to moralise a little on the condition of such men as these, if men they can be called, we would hesitate to subscribe to the old Johnsonian notion that happiness has any relation to the number of ideas that pa.s.s through the mind, if we would not go to the other extreme, that for aught we know, there may be as much of that kind of thing between the sh.e.l.ls of an oyster as between the ribs of a human being--at least the question must remain unsettled until we come again in the round of changes to the doctrine of transmigration of souls. The world is full of the examples of the meeting of extremes; and if you want one more, just take that afforded by the fact that these men we have been describing could carry on their shoulders in a canvas bag a Rothschild or a Byron, and never think that they were to any degree honoured by the burden. All one to them--the beautiful young creature who died of a scorned affection, the shrivelled miser who expired in a clutch of his gold, or the old gaberlunzie whose puckered lungs could no longer inflate themselves or the bagpipes which once received so joyfully the superabundant wind. But seriously, although these things have been, are we ent.i.tled to go with the fatalist, who says that what is, is as it ought to be? Though the wily fox contrived to get his neighbours to cut off their tails to make them like himself in his misfortune of being excaudated, is that any reason why nature should repeal her law and produce therefore tailless foxes? We hope not. And so also, because science run mad decreed that she should be served by such men and such acts, in opposition to the first and last throbbings of the love of kindred, is that any reason why nature should renounce her right of forming man in the image of G.o.d, and with affections which are to endure through all eternity? But we have even now, when it is whispered that subjects are again becoming scarce, men of the Christian faith who speak lightly of the dead human frame as nothing when deprived of the spirit. This may do for the logic of physics, but we have been led to believe that the religion we profess is not that of Merry-Andrew or the "Spune," but a divine intimation that the temple of the soul is not limited to the time of the earth--yea, that it is something which, _only changed_, shall rise again and endure for ever. Even this is not adverse to the claims of science; but as a shade distinguishes homicide and murder, so does a shade distinguish between science in reverence to G.o.d, and science in desecration of His first and most universal laws.

Sympathising s.e.xtons, Doctors, and Relatives.

All forces are measured by opposition, as, indeed, all the phenomena of nature are known to us by comparison, and so, in all fairness, we must estimate the turpitude of the professors and students the more lightly, in proportion to their freedom from all endearing feelings of recognition or friends.h.i.+p towards those whose remains came within their studies. The same metre is due to the cla.s.s of purveyors, and Heaven knows how much, after all this abatement, remained at their debit, cognisant as they behoved to be of the certainty that they were sowing the bitter seeds of misery throughout the land. But what are we to say of others--doctors in the country who were privy to the remunerated exhumation of their patients--s.e.xtons who gave the pregnant hint, and then went to sleep in the expectation of a fee in the morning--nay, of those, and such at that time were counted among human beings, who bartered their friends and relatives for a smile of mammon?

Out of these materials how easy could it be to add so much, and so many more darker shades to the picture. We have no great wish to lay them on either thick or thin--the mind will paint for itself, as rises the contemplation: the family doctor hanging over his patient with professional sympathy, and perhaps something finer, dreaming the while of a _post-obit_ fee, in addition to that paid for his skill to cure--the s.e.xton clapping down the sod over a companion who had often set the table in a roar, in which the grave official had joined, and meditating a resurrection through his means in the morning--the relative who had even got the length of tears, dropping them on the pale face of an old friend, all the while that he meditated a sale of the body. But it is true that the annals of the period justified all these grim pictures. Many will still recollect the young Irish doctor who went in the Square under the name of the "Captain"--a man of such infinite spirits, always in a flow of his country's humour, that you could not suppose that there was time or room in his mind for a little smooth pool to reflect a pa.s.sing cloud of sadness. In his native town he drove a great trade for the Edinburgh halls--his largest contribution being laid on the graveyard of his native town. And surely, in his case, we would have thought the Chinese system of paying a doctor, only in the case of recovery, would have been an example of Irish prudence. Nay, so many were the barrels, with a peculiar species of _contenu_, he sent by Leith, that it was difficult to avoid the suspicion that the rollicking son of Erin had a faith in his medicines stronger than the hope which illumined the faces of his patients. These barrels of the "Captain" were quite well known, not only to the skippers, but the porters about the pier, ay, even the carters who made the final transport; and here, again, mammon was the seducing spirit. It was only when he came over for his large acc.u.mulated payments that he was seen in the hall, where his jokes and immeasurable laughter might have made those quiet heads on the tables rise to get a look of their once sympathising surgeon. Nor, in the consideration of the students, was his laughter unjustified by his jokes; as once where, pointing to a certain table, he apostrophised the burden it carried--"Ah, Misthress O'Neil! did I spare the whisky on you, which you loved so well,--and didn't you lave me a purty little sum to keep the resurrectionists away from you,--and didn't I take care of you myself? and by J----s you are there, and don't thank me for coming over to see you;" or when, in the same brogue, he told them that, not long before his coming over, he had, for lack of "the thing" in his own town, taken a car and rode to a neighbouring village, where he got precisely what he wanted; that, on returning at a rapid rate with his charge, he met the mother of it with the words in her mouth--

"Well, docther, is it all right wid the grave ov poor Pat?"

"All right, misthress. Didn't I tell you afore there were no resurrectionists in that quarter?"

"And you are sure you eximined it complately?"

"No doubt in the wide earth."

"Then I may go back, and you'll give me a ride?"

"Surely, and plaisant," said he; "just get up."

"And," continued the Captain to the delighted students, "I dhrove the good lady home agin without breaking a bone of her body, and Pat never said a word."

"But," he went on, "if I were to tell you all my Irish work, I would never get back to my ould country agin."

"Just another adventure, Captain."

"Well, then, didn't a purty young girl--and I have hopes of her yet for myself, for she has money galore--come to me one day in a mighty fit of grief?"

"'My poor mother has been rizzt,' said she, as she burst out in the way of these gentle craturs.

"'And she has not,' said I--(the more by token that I had the ould lady in the house.)

"'I have been at the grave,' said she, 'and I see it has been disturbed.'

"'And it has not,' said I; 'for wasn't I there this morning before ever a soul in all the town was stirring? and didn't I leave it all right with my ould friend?'

"'But I have seen marks,' said she again; for she was so determined.

"'And do you think I don't know you have?' said I; 'and didn't I see them, after I got a spade from the s.e.xton and put on a nate sod or two more to make the grave dacent and respectable?'

"'Oh, I'm so glad,' replied she, all of a content.

"'And you'll be gladder yet, my darling,' said I, as I gave her a kiss.

'Go home and contint yourself, and perhaps, when your mournings are off, you may consent to make a poor docther happy.'

"And so she went away, blus.h.i.+ng as no one ever saw except in a raal rose."

And the laugh again sounded through the hall among the dead.

Whether these stories were true, or merely got up by the extravagant love of fun in the Captain, it would not be easy to say; but certain it is, that their being told and responded to in the manner thus described, from the lips of an ear-witness, shews us the atmosphere of moral feeling that then obtained in places proudly designated as being dedicated to the interests of humanity, and from which, too, we could draw the conclusion that what was gained in the amelioration of physical disease was required to be debited so largely with the deterioration of morals and a wide-spread infliction of pain. But even darker deeds were done in Scotland than those for which the Captain took so gasconading a credit.

From a certain village called S----e, the myrmidons of the Square, and particularly the "Spune," got more material for the Hall than could have been expected without a resident sympathiser and partic.i.p.ator in the profits. That zealous correspondent was not the s.e.xton--no, nor the minister; but he was the minister's brother, and, so far as we can learn, a member of the profession. Need it be remarked how convenient the relation between the messenger of heaven and the benefactor of earth--the physician of souls and the curer of bodies--the man of prayers and the man of pills--the distributor of the great catholicon and the dispenser of the small! We can fancy the G.o.dly man, we believe all unconscious of the intentions of his brother, pouring the holy unction of his prayers over the struggling spirit of the dying Christian, and the doctor counting the pulses as they died away into that stillness which was to be the prelude to the payment--five pounds--for the deserted temple. One recording angel would fly to heaven with a name to be inscribed in the roll of eternal salvation, and the other to Edinburgh to announce that another body was to be inserted in the black list of Surgeon's Square.

Even this was not the culmination of the evil. The head of the scorpion--society--was to swallow its tail, so that the virtue and the poison would meet and traverse together the circle. Mammon, through the medium of the leaders of the purveyors of science, extended his charm to the hearts of relations and friends, changing the soft glance of love and pity into the fiery glare of sordid rapacity. Throughout the High Street and Canongate, and down through the squalid wynds and closes, where, though crime and misery shake hands over the bottle of whisky, the death-bed still retains some claims over the affections, and where religion is sometimes able to extort from the demons of pa.s.sion the unwilling tribute of compunction, these strange men prowled in the hope of finding or making a monster. And in this it is certain that they succeeded more often than was then suspected, or is even yet known. Their first inquiry was for death-beds, and the next for evidence of squalid poverty combined with vice. The subject was approached cautiously where the ground had all the appearance of being dangerous. If they were met by deliberation or hesitation, between which and blows there was no s.p.a.ce, their object was secured, as the devil's is, by exposing to the haggard eye of penury the very form and substance of the bribe. In one case, reported by Merrylees himself, the bargain was struck in a whisper by the bed-side of the dying friend. How far the relations.h.i.+p extended in any of these cases we never could ascertain; and it is only fair to a.s.sume, for the sake of human nature, that in the majority of instances the success was only over the keepers of stray lodgers, and mere friends, as distinguished from relatives; but that there were, some where there behoved to be the yearnings of affection, and a consequent struggle between love and mammon, there can be no doubt.

Thus, however difficult or delicate the moral impediments that required to be overcome, the physical parts of the contract were of easy management.

The coffining was made a little ceremony, performed in presence of some of the neighbours. There would be tears, no doubt, if not an Irish howl, and the louder perhaps the greater the bribe; and in the evening a bag of tanners' bark supplied the place of the friend of the many virtues discoursed of at the wake. Nor was there less care taken in carrying this box of bark to the Canongate burying-ground than was displayed by "Merry-Andrew" in conveying the _surrogatum_ to Surgeon's Square; but, of course, there would be a difference in the speed of the respective bearers. Taking all these details into account, we can scarcely deny that these men wrought harder for their money than if they had pursued a regular calling. But, then, they liked it. Even after the bargain for the living invalid was struck, how many anxious watchings at a wynd-end were to exhaust the weary hours before the spirit took wing from the sold body!

The gaunt figure of Merrylees, as he jerked his lank muscles and threw his face into the old contortions, might be seen there, but none would know what this meant.

One night, a student who saw him standing at a close-end, and suspected that his friend was watching his prey, whispered in his ear, "She's dead,"

and, aided by the darkness, escaped. In a moment after, "Merry-Andrew"

shot down the wynd, and, opening the door, pushed his lugubrious face into a house.

"It's a' owre I hear," said he, in a loud whisper; "and when will we come for the body?"

"Whisht, ye mongrel," replied the old harridan who acted as nurse; "she's as lively as a cricket."

A statement which, though whispered in the unction of secresy, and with most evident sincerity, Merrylees doubted, under a suspicion that the woman's conscience had come between her and the love of money; and, jerking himself forward to the bed, he threw the shadow of his revolting countenance over the face of the terrified invalid, enough of itself to have sent the hovering spirit to its destination, whether above or below.

Not a word was spoken by the victim. She had heard enough to rouse terror sufficient to deprive her of speech, if not of breath; and all that the ogre witnessed was the pair of eyes lighted up with the parting rays of the fluttering spirit, and peering mysteriously as if into his very soul.

But then, as it happened, "Merry-Andrew" had only a body, and this look, more like as it was to a phosphoric gleam than the light of the living spirit, fell blank. Enough for him that she was not yet dead; and, taking one of his springing steps, he was out of the room, forcing his way up the wynd, to seek, and, if possible, to wreak a most imprudent vengeance on the larking prig who had put his long muscles to such unfruitful exercise.

Meanwhile, the young rogue had waited for the b.u.t.t, to see some more of his picturesque spasms; nor was he disappointed, for the moment Merrylees cast his eye on him, he tossed up his hands, and, with a shout which might have been taken by one who did not know him, or even by one who did, as an indication either of intense fun or fiery anger, made after him at the rate of his long strides. The student, of course, escaped, and Merrylees, convinced that the invalid was not so near her end as he wished, went growling home to bed.

But this tragedy, with its ephialtic forms reflecting these coruscations of grim comedy, did not end here. The old invalid, no doubt hastened by what she had witnessed, died on the following night; and on that after the next succeeding, when he had reason to expect that she would be conveniently placed in that white fir receptacle that has a shape so peculiarly its own, and not deemed by him so artistic as that of a bag or a box, Merrylees, accompanied by the "Spune," entered the dead room with the sackful of bark. To their astonishment, and what Merrylees even called disgusting to an honourable mind, the old wretch had scruples.