USA > New York > Old New York : or, Reminiscences of the past sixty years > Part 4
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ever received so many complimentary dedications ; not to speak of those bestowed by his medical brethren, from the homely days of Farmer's poetry to those of the elegant Annuals, his name was associated with the muse and the chronicles of his country ; the "Republican Court," a beautiful national souvenir, and the Life of Bishop Lat- imer,* a religious biography, were inscribed to him for reasons equally appropriate. One of his most cherished young literary friends, William A. Jones, the present librarian of Columbia College, wrote an interesting sketch of him, and dedicated one of his own pleasant volumes of literary essayst-" to the skilful Physician, the constant Friend, the genial Humorist, and the lover of Literature." "Perhaps nowhere throughout these United States," re- ₺ marks this writer, " is there to be found one who unites so many various characters as Dr. Francis ; whether we look upon him in the light of a highly scientific and skilful physician ; a general polite scholar; a lover of the whole family of the arts ; an acute inquirer into every branch of science ; an accurate and philosophical antiquary, yet fresh and lively in his sympathies with the world as it moves ; an humane, kindly, generous philanthropist ; a converser full of spirit and resources, and the general friend of authors and scholars."# The venerable Daponte, on his death-bed, wrote an ode to him in Italian ; he figures among the celebrities of Gotham in Halleck's "Fanny," and in more than one novel and local sketch ; he is quoted as an authority in many of the political, scientific, and anec- dotical memoirs of his day; among his latest labors of
* By George L. Duyckinck, who thus inscribes the volume: " To the Dear and Honored Memory of John W. Francis, M. D., LL. D., who was called to his rest in the fulness of Years and the Ripeness of well-won Public Regard, as the last page of this little book passed from the Printer's Hands."
t Authors and Books.
# Characters and Criticisms, by W. Alfred Jones, A. M.
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love were to note for an author his recollections of Gouver- neur Morris, and send word to a biographer where to find important facts essential to his work, and suggest to a Cyclopædia editor a forgotten subject. He kept an eye on the purveyors of the literary world within reach of his assistance, with a generous vigilance ; and held out patiently and permanently the right hand of fellowship to all worthy laborers in the field of literature, and sometimes to those who ill-repaid his friendship ; for in nothing was he more distinguished than charity for the weakness and patience with the ingratitude of the author-tribe, regarding their vocation as, in a measure, compensating for foibles and failures, and as elaiming sympathy for the very reason that so few vouelisafed it. Some of his experiences with the unfortunate votaries of pencraft would afford subjeets for Dickens and D'Israeli; he remembered Weems ped- dling his "Life of Washington," carried food to Selleek Osborne in jail, relieved Freneau's indigence and Poe's mania ; heard Tom Paine rave against faetion and famine ; cheered Knapp's prolific but ill-paid labors; and suffered every species of vesation from literary impostors, bores, and beggars. Perhaps the brighter phases of authorship, the more satisfactory associations with men of letters, atoned for whatever he endured in purse or patience from the unworthy ; for rarely has one enjoyed greater oppor- tunities of interesting intercourse with this class of eminent men, or been favored with more charming retrospections. Dr. Francis, as we have seen, went to school with Wash- ington Irving, and heard him declaim, " My voice is still for war;" he dined with a literary elub in Edinburgh when Sir Walter Seott let out the secret of his Waverley author- ship ; he gossipped with the widow of Burns while her memory of Robert was fresh and full ; he passed a memo- rable day with Southey ; welcomed Jeffrey when he landed at the Battery ; heard Tom Moore sing at New York
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suppers ; ehatted over Cooper's early novels at the Bread and Cheese Club with their author; discussed Horticulture with Colden, Mitehell, Bartram, and Michaux ; the brain, with Cuvier; Polities, with Livingston, Clinton, Clay, Webster, Gallatin, and Cobbett ; Poetry, with the Aikens and Halleek ; Ireland, with Emmet; famous people, with Gouverneur Morris ; Journalism, with Walsh ; Amer- iean colonial days, with Mrs. Grant, of Laggan; His- tory, with Sparks; and Art, with Trumbull, Greenough, Dunlap, Jarvis, Leslie, and Crawford; and few of the loeal associations of his foreign travel were reverted to with more pleasure than the hour he passed in Cowper's pew and Boerhaave's garden. His eastles in the air were not based on any outward miraeles of fortune, but on an imagined metempsychosis that would endow eonseiousness with the inspiration and the glory of lettered genius. " How would you like to be Byron ?" he would ask ; or, " Don't you wish you were Lord Baeon ?" or, " Which would you prefer, the reputation of Seott or the author of the Seasons ? to have lived like dear old Cowley, or to have written Robinson Crusoe?" Any talk that illustrated a character or an event which could be regarded as his- torieal, beeame part of his verbal memory, as the following personal aneedote, one of many equally preeise in terms, exemplifies :--
" A singular coineidenee," writes thie Doetor, "led me to pay a visit to Cobbett, at his country-seat, within a couple of miles of the eity, on the island, on the very day that he had exhumed the bones of Paine, and shipped them for England. I will here repeat the words I used on a late oeeasion, and whieh Cobbett gave utteranee to at the friendly interview our party had with him. 'I have just performed a duty, gentlemen, which has been too long delayed : you have neglected too long the remains of Thomas Paine. I have done myself the honor to disinter
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his bones, I have removed them from New Rochelle. I have dug them up ; they are now on their way to England. When I myself return, I shall cause them to speak the common sense of the great man; I shall gather together the people of Liverpool and Manchester in one assembly with those of London, and those bones will effect the reformation of England in Church and state.'"*
One evening an author-friend called to inform the Doctor that he had an opportunity of going abroad, and should embark in a day or two. "Shall you be down in town to-morrow ?" he asked. "Then meet me in Wall street." At the appointed hour the Doctor appeared, and drawing his young friend into a doorway, procecded to empty his own pockets of a miscellaneous collection-including keys, coin, lancets, pills, and scraps of paper ; from the latter he drew a check, carefully folded ; and, in an embarrassed manner, said : " My friend, you are a proud man, but listen to me: one of these days I shall want you to do some literary work ; take this in advance; you will want to buy some books in Europe ; no being on earth knows any thing about this money ; it is an unexpected and long abandoned payment-and does not appear on the books; take it, and God bless you." So saying, the Doctor thrust the check into his friend's hand, and rushed away. On another occasion, at midsummer, he noticed the pale and worn looks of a young writer, to whom he was attached, and who he knew could not conveniently leave the city. The Doctor called at liis office, and, after chatting a while, laid a roll of bills on the desk, and said : "You need change of air ; go to Newport for a fortnight;" and, before the astonished invalid could utter his thanks, hastened away. These instances are cited to give an idea of the delicacy with which he befriended the poor and gifted. Another
* Old New York.
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.
highly-accomplished man, and comparatively a stranger, accidentally passed an hour in the Doctor's company, the day before sailing for Europe, with a view to improve the condition of his eyes. To the astonishment of the gentle- man, Dr. Francis appeared the next morning amid the crowd assembled to say farewell at the dock. Hc was drawn thither by one of those sympathetic and conscien- tious impulses that often led him to turn aside from strin- gent duties and interests, to befriend those who had no personal claim upon his time or thoughits. "I would not interfere," he said to the stranger, " with your medical treatment; but, honoring your genius, I have thought over what you told me of yourself, and noticed you carefully during our brief interview. I am convinced that the trou- ble in your eyes is a symptom, not organic ; your disease is cerebral, and unless you take immediate and wise pre- cautions the brain will suffer;" and he gave him a remedy to use during the voyage. Subsequent events amply just- ified the Doctor's friendly warning.
The ancient maxim, vita sine literis mors est, was illus- trated by Dr. Francis, not in exclusive devotion to study or the mania of the bibliopole, both of which forms of literary enthusiasm may coexist without vital intellectual life, but by habitual and ardent recognition of literature as a grace and guerdon amid the pressure of outward toil and professional self-devotion. Prohibited by the claims of al- most hourly duties from continuous or methodical reading, unable to keep up with the prolific press, and so interested in the events of the hour as to ponder its diurnal record to the exclusion of more standard reading-he yet consulted, examined, compared, and luxuriated over books as the most available solace and the most valuable resource ; by them he was alone tempted to extravagance, and therein found an antidote for the bane of care, and a stimulus to the noblest ambition. The modern expedients for the diffusion
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of knowledge, from the Penny Magazine to the Popular Cyclopædia, enlisted his warmest recognition ; but the standard writers of his youth were never long forgotten, and the changes in literary taste were among the problems he most earnestly discussed. Indeed, if we consider the limited number and the peculiar kind of books in vogue sixty years ago, and compare them with the successive triumphs of authorship since, it is easy to realize what a mental experience a man of keen intellectual appetite must have passed through between the two epochs. At the beginning of the century, Moore's "Zeluco" was a favorite novel; Kotzebue's Plays were in vogue ; Cowper repre- sented the English muse ; "Rasselas," the Spectator, and Gibbon, were high models of composition. The French Revolution ushered in a kind of literature of which intensity was the characteristic ; Byron, Scott, the Lake Pocts, and the world of knowledge born of modern science, intervened between thesc extreme phases of literary development and that represented by Macaulay, Dickens, Carlyle, and Ten- nyson ; so that a sympathetic and eager mind, that has known each of these transitions, may well accept literature as the adjunct and interpreter of life, and the conservative oracle that tests its scope and quality, and embalms its best triumphs. Dr. Francis scanned and commented on books more than he profoundly studied or exclusively re- lied on them ; but he was remarkably susceptible to their historical significance and their characteristic influence. He was rather a purveyor of Knowledge, a ranger over her fields, a lover of her votaries, than a master of her special domains. It was a grief to him that he could but offer a passing devotion, cull here and there a flower, take a gen- eral survey ; but this casual allegiance was so sincere, that few men, devoted to an active profession, ever gleaned after the reapers more full and variegated sheaves.
Whatever incident or observation associated a character
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with literature and science, or implied intellectual recog- nition, made a lasting impression upon the Doctor's mind, and was cited as an economist would bring forward a statis- tical argument, or a lawyer some judicial precedent ; the desire to connect literature with life, and to demonstrate their mutual relation, was permanent. We remember how an intelligent visitor, who had lived many years in Naples, was struck with the Doctor's first inquiry ; it was not in regard to Vesuvius, Pompeii, or Bomba-but about the grave of Sannazarius : his most vivid recollection of Gouv- erneur Morris's last illness was a conversation about Gray's Elegy ; he recalled the circumstances of Lord Jeffrey's arrival, and the table-talk when Tom Moore was enter- tained in New York, as if they occurred recently ; he de- scribed the very look and tone with which Abernethy received from his hand the first edition of his writings that had appeared in this country-saying, with a gratified smile : "Egad, this from America!" he was jubilant in pointing out, upon a new Arctic chart, " Cape Francis," so named in his honor by Dr. Kane ; and every detail of a visit he paid William Bartram, at Kensington, fifty years ago-when that worthy, in yarn socks, thick brogans, and leather breeches, paused in his garden-work to discourse piously of Nature and lovingly of flowers-was cherished in his memory as a delectable experience ; and no obser- vations were better remembered than what Linnæus wrote to Colden, Talleyrand said of Hamilton, and John Neal of Jeremy Bentham.
Indeed, the ideal of life to Dr. Francis was literary ; that is, taste for and devotion to intellectual pursuits, from love thereof, and sequestered from care, fashion, and conventional machinery. He believed in simple habits, in domestic re- tirement, and in making the mind a kingdom, and always gloried in rural retreats like those of Slienstone and Cow- per, and conversational breakfasts such as endeared Rogers,
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DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS.
and valued the pride and the privilege of natural gifts over artificial distinctions, whereby Burns and Bunyan vindi- cated the grace and greatness of humanity, as the true enjoyments and triumphs of human existence. Coincident with his sense of the rational pleasure and self-reliance thus secured, was an exalted estimate of posthumous fame, which he thought most sweetly won and graciously worn by men of letters and of science. Hence his warm advo- cacy of and earnest sympathy with these pursuits, and his ardent desire to be associated therewith in the recollection of those who survived. This idiosyncracy was often a sub- ject of raillery among his intimate friends, who would playfully attribute to him as a weakness, " the last infirm- ity of noble minds." But the truth is, there were two better reasons than mere ambition for his over-estimate, if such it was, of the worth of literary and scientific reputa- tion-his conservative instinct and his strong affections. The vicissitudes of life-the evanescence of the most beau- tiful and benign human influences, deeply impressed his mind ; the neglect and indifference which heartlessly con- signed to oblivion so much that redeems our frail existence from uselessness and materialism, awoke in him a profound sadness ; he loved knowledge and talent, truth and origin- ality, too well not to cherish their memorials ; he felt too intimately that the legacies of thinkers and poets, humani- tarians and saints, had too much enriched his mental being, and made life secm too fraught with tenderness and triumphs, not to be loved and honored ; and it was because he was so drawn towards Jeremy Taylor and Burns, Franklin and Southey, by the sympathies of an eager mind and a respon- sive heart, that he deemed it a great and a blessed thing thus to survive, in perfect individuality and holy brother- hood, in the conscious attachment of posterity. Accord- ingly, he would congratulate whoever achieved a work of standard value and interest with the heartiest enthusiasm,
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as if it were a patent of nobility-exclaiming, "Dear Doctor, you've immortalized yourself ;" that book or stat- ue, that machine or picture-whatever it happened to be, "will carry your name down to posterity." Much of this emphatic recognition of renown was the reaction of a liberal and philosophical mind from the material egotism around him. He daily and hourly beheld so much sense- less luxury-such a sacrifice of enjoyment to appearance, -such absolute devotion to money, and absorption in affairs ;- he was brought, as a physician, into such fre- quent contact with the vanities, the heartlessness, and the unsubstantial resources of society, that when at ease again in his own house, he took up the life of a man of genius, or the record of a man of thought and sentiment, and through them beheld the higher and more genuine aspects of humanity and the nobler possibilities of life, the contrast compelled him to reassert, with vehement conviction, the transcendent worth of those toils and pleasures which " conform the show of things to the desires of the mind." And yet in this feeling there was no special refinement, no fastidious taste ; his sympathies were by no means exclu- sive in literature ; much of its richest modern development he could not appreciate; in poetry, especially, his taste was of the past, and his relish of style was always confined to the humorous and didactic, rather than the picturesque and delicate; he was impatient of the prevalent love of fiction and of the sentimental school of versewrights; he thought that facts of Nature, robust argument, keen wit, genuine humanity, were the permanent elements of litera- ture, and was provoked at what he considered the waste of mind in the superficial delineation of casual subjects, when there was so much vital truth and human significance in experience and in history to be illustrated. Byron's faults he thought were to be tolerated because of the impassioned eloquence in which they are embalmed like flies in amber ;
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Johnson's good sense and integrity made up, in no small degree, to him, for his dogmatism; and Pope's metrical hits, so true and palpable, compensated for the artificial monotony of his verse. In a word, like Allston in art, Dr. Francis was a " wide liker ;" and could echo Charles Lamb's declaration, that " Shaftesbury was not too high for him, nor Tom Jones too low." The unprofessional subjeets upon which his pen was employed best illustrate the seope of his intellectual sympathies. Biography was his favorite theme; and when personal acquaintance with an eminent or original eharaeter vivified the knowledge of outward details, he succeeded to a remarkable degree in delineating a subject. Among his contributions to this interesting department of literature may be noted his sketehes of Chancellor Livingston, Dr. Samuel Mitehill, and Thomas Eddy, the philanthropist ; a series of medical memoirs; an elaborate account of Christopher Colles ; and thic reminiscenees of authors, statesmen, merchants, aetors, editors, politieians, and naturalists, seattered through the Periodicals and Cyelopædias of his time, and forming the chief material of his popular address before the New York Historical Society, subsequently enlarged into that eharm- ing loeal chroniele, so attractive to every true Knieker- bocker and national inquirer, entitled "Old New York." To these may be added his Discourses on Natural History, Phrenology, and Horticulture ; and that wherein may be found combined the characteristics of his mind and the philosophical results of his experience as a physician and a eitizen-the Address before the New York Academy of Medieine. How intimately the pursuit of literature entered into his idea of rational pleasure is indicated by what he said, during his last illness, to a friend : " If it had pleased God, I should have been pleased to live a little longer, and I would have been satisfied to sit in the chimney-eorner and write."
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VII.
" What we are most suffering for," wrote a clerical friend of the Doctor's after his death, " is a union between the two extremes of society : now Dr. Francis was a re- markable link between them-the most remarkable I have ever known or heard of. He sympathized with the work- ing-man and with his employers ; in his heart they could meet, and get the idea that they could, if they would, act as brethren. He had a great respect for the humblest man that used his muscle and brain to benefit mankind. He sympathized with the poor and miserable, and with the learned and unlearned ; they all found a common friend in him, and through him learned to think better of each other. Yet this great man was a child ; with his great knowledge, his many years, his gray hairs, and those crowning his stout body, he was a child."*
This wide range of intercourse had led Dr. Francis to certain definite opinions in regard to the different classes of society-the moral foundation of which he believed to be integrity; and he often declared that his experience proved that the mechanics, as a body, far excelled, in this respect, both the mercantile and the professional class. A curious illustration of the personal regard he inspired among people so widely separated in culture and social position, occurred after the delivery of ono of his most suc- cessful public discourses : upon returning home, he found the materials of an elegant supper sent by a grocer of his acquaintance, " as a slight token of his enjoyment of the Doctor's address ;" while, soon after, he was waited upon by a celebrated poet, who desired to exonerate himself from the suspicion of being the author of a hit at the Doctor, in
* Rev. E. M. P. Wells.
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an epigram written thirty years before, and attributed to him-a charge which the death of the real writer enabled him now honorably to deny ; " for, Doctor," said he, "it pained me to have you suppose me capable of even good- natured satire upon one so imbued with that humanity poets should reverc."
The interest which Dr. Francis felt and exhibited in the dramatic profession was based upon its relation to litera- ture and humanity. He had the dramatic temperament, a keen sense of character, and a professional conception of its dependence upon physical organization. In his youth and manhood the English stage was still associated with the highest triumphs of art, and enlisted the warmest sympathy of cultivated men. He witnessed the rivalry of the classic and romantic styles, was familiar with the traits of Talma and the Siddons school, and intimately appreciated Cooke and Kean. He was the medical ad- viser and the frequent companion of these two remarkable actors during their sojourn in America, and abounded in the most interesting personal anecdotes regarding them,
" Throbbing invades the heart," he writes of Cooke, " when narrating the career of this extraordinary man, of herculean constitution, so abundant in recuperative energies ; of faculties so rare, and so sublime, cut off so early. In consultation with Drs. Maclean and Hosack, I often attended him, and in his last illness passed most of my time with him until the closing scene. He died September, 1812. Serous effusion of the chest and ab- domen were the immediate cause of his death. He was conscious to the last, and resigned to his fate. Cooke at- tracted great notice when, with his dignified mien and stately person, attired as the old English gentleman, he walked Broadway. His funeral was an imposing spec- tacle. The reverend clergy, the physicians, the mem- bers of the bar, officers of the army and navy, the literati
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and men of science, the members of the dramatic corps, and a large concourse of citizens moved in procession."
Circumstances also placed him in familiar intercourse with those favorite New York managers-Price and Simp- son ; he had much to say of Darley, Oldmixon, Cooper, and Conway ; he was a friend of Matthews, and Macready ; buried Mrs. Jordan's suicidal daughter ; enjoyed many a chat with the elder Wallack, and attended Barrett in his last illness. With all his knowledge and enjoyment of the British stage, and his critical appreciation of its most dis- tinguished ornaments, he entered with zest into the Italian opera, and was a great admirer of Garcia, beheld the dawn of Malibran's extraordinary career, and learned from the elder Daponte to realize the culture and endowments requi- site for success in the lyric drama. His first impressions of the Barber of Seville and Don Giovanni were vivid and inspiring long after he had ceased to attend the opera- with the first introduction of which luxury among us lie was familiar in all its details. Upon this subject his fund of curious information was as remarkable as his minute recollection of individual peculiarities in renowned vocal- ists and performers. Kean was to him an exceptional specimen of humanity, with all the attributes of genius ; and he analyzed and observed him with scientific enthusi- asm ; accompanying him to an insane hospital, where lio souglit hints from Nature to perfect his conception of Lear; returning with him from dinner-parties to witness the mar- vellous 'reaction of his mercurial nature from the formal restraints of society ; discussing with him the characters of Shakspearc, enjoying his private histrionic outbursts, listening to his limited but exquisito vocalism, and his most spontaneous talk, his imitation of the war-whoop when accoutred in the costume of the aboriginal tribe, to which he had become affiliated during a visit to tho Northwest, and often winning him from wayward moods
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