England and Other Stories

HAEMATOLOGY

Roehampton, Surrey

House of Eliab Harvey

7^th February, 1649

Colonel Edward Francis

The Council of Officers

Westminster

My dear cousin,

Well, Ned (if I may still so call you and if you will deign to hear from me), we have lived through extraordinary times. Were there ever such times as these? And now I must cede to you that you are of the winning party and may lord it over me who was the close attendant of kings, nay of our late — of our very late — king. Or would you have me name him, if I have it right, ‘tyrant, traitor, murderer’? Would you daub me with the same charges, for having been so privy to His Majesty — but must I not call him that? — for having ministered to his agues, fevers and coughs? Would you have me place my own head upon the block for having been such a bodily accomplice to tyranny? Then it would be seen, would it not, if my argument of the blood’s motion held true? Physician, prove thyself!

But was it not proven when that royal blood — may we even call it that? — spurted forth but a week ago at Whitehall? And is it not proven when any man’s head or limb is severed from his body, as has been the lot of many men — nay, of women and children — in these late times? A king is but a man like any other. Has it needed seven years of war and a trial by Parliament to determine the matter, when any such as I might have attested to it? Anatomy is no respecter. I have dissected criminals and examined kings. Does it need any special statute to claim the one might be the other?

That, Ned, was my grounding and my ground, long before those of your party set out to curb the King’s powers, then overthrow him. There are tyrannies and tyrannies, and treacheries and treacheries. There are some even now of my party — I mean among the party of physicians — who would not blench or lament to see my old head removed from my body, to see me cut down for having raised my standard against King Galen. There are many kinds of majesty and rebellion. We were but boys, Ned, when the Armada closed upon our shores, but would we not have rallied round our monarch? Rally, I say! We were more than half the age we have now when Ralegh’s head was severed from his body. Did we not then both feel not a little of the sharpness of the axe that smote him? There were many of your party for whom that day, I dare say, marked a severance. It was their beginning, their pretext. So it was with you. It was the beginning, I dare say, of our own severance.

Yet did we not feel also, if we are truthful, that there is a motion, a fluctuation — may not I use such terms? — in the fortunes of men, an ebb and flow, a rise and fall, beyond all issue of government or justice; and that it is into these unrestrained tides — we knew it by then — we enter as we enter the world? We set our little skiffs upon them, as Ralegh set many a fine vessel upon the waters of his ambition. Should I have stepped in, Ned, to bid my former master James withhold his warrant upon so worthy a head? I was but his physician, not his counsellor, and had been hardly a year in his service. And Ralegh went to his death bravely and nobly, as did, but these seven days past, my other late master Charles.

Is that what we must call him now, only Charles? Is that the ordinance? As you and I may still call each other — or so I trust — but Ned and Will, boys who once played at knucklebones and did battle with the wooden swords of our rulers at Canterbury. And quaked in our shoes, no doubt, at the wrath of our masters, or spoke impudence about them, behind our hands, when their gowned backs were turned. They were only our schoolmasters, but it was all our world. Such tyranny, such subjection. Such fledgling revolt. Such nursing of our destinies. And it was the King’s School, mark you. Though it was still the reign, long to continue, of, as we would call her, even in our prayers, Our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth.

What times, Ned, what times. ‘That one might read the book of fate and see the revolution of the times’—do I have it correctly? Is it not King Henry IV, deposer himself of kings? But it was you who attended the playhouses and, if I know you as I knew you in your youth, no doubt other houses as well, while I attended my lectures at Padua. You who are now of God’s militia, while I, to pass the hours, read more of the poets than I read of the Bible. Is that to speak treason?

That, surely, was our first parting, though we would write much to each other. You were for the law, I was for physic. You were for the Middle Temple, I was for Padua. Was it not indeed the seed of all our future differences and of future offices we would hold as then undiscovered to us? Yet that common seed, that common stirring of the blood — quite so! — was ambition. Should we deny it? I was for anatomy, you, with your lawyer’s trenchancy, were for the bones of human contention. It was always in you, Ned, though it was your profession then to fight but with words. You had the mark of a swordsman. One day you might draw a true sword. I had only a scalpel. Even with your wooden ruler you were more often than not, as I recall, the victor. Now I must own again that you, and those of your kind, are my victor. Nay, my ruler! Truly I live now under your rule.

How does it go, Ned? ‘If this were seen, the happiest youth, viewing his progress through, what perils past, what crosses to ensue.’ I am an old man. I read by a winter fire. But I freely admit I was ambitious too. My cause was the advancement of learning, but it was also the advancement of myself. Did I marry my late wife because I wished her to be my wife or because I wished to be the husband of the daughter of the late Queen’s physician? It opened more doors than my laurels from Padua. Yet how I miss her, my dear Liz. My late Liz. Late! It is the only word now for us, now we have passed our three score and ten. All is late. Though you may think, if God (and your physician) grant you health, that you are now but in your earliness, your newness. Do we not have a new world? Is this not the seventh day of its creation?

Ambition, Ned, it was our common spurring in our separate courses. Shall we confess it? And shall we confess that for a while, for a good long while, my ambition outrode and was better stabled than yours? Now shall we see where the ambition of your master Cromwell — but I must call him master too — will take him and how it may serve and accommodate yours.

What times, what times. It is now I who must sit aside, withdraw and retire, taking shelter as I do in my brother’s house. It is I who must content myself with my books and studies, I who once accompanied kings. Yet I want no more. You will perhaps smirk to know that my studies remain upon the reproduction of our kind and of the animals at large. What food for mirth and raillery have I given my enemies and detractors — who are still many and persistent — that I, an old man both wifeless and childless, should dwell upon such stuff. How they must snigger at me as we once sniggered behind the backs of our schoolmasters.

Yet I would know, Ned, perhaps before I die, how we are born, how we are shaped for the world. Leave that, some will still cry, to the doctors of divinity, tread not upon that holy ground. So are we not alike there? Do you not discern it from your present elevation? We both came moulded with the rebellious, some might say heretical, disposition to trespass upon sacred soil. In the interests, to be sure, of truth and justice. And of ambition?

I was no prostrate worshipper in the church of kingship, no more than you, but my interests, or shall I say the interests of learning, made me seek their best protection. Is it not at least food for thought for you that our late king, tyrant, traitor and murderer, who clung so much to his own divine prerogative, was yet the patron of so much that assailed the sacrosanct? And is it not also food for thought for you that those of your party who once so boldly and blasphemously rose up against him are now entrenched in their own sanctimonies? Do I blaspheme now? Will you arraign me?

The bones of human contention! Why did I hold back for some dozen years the publication of my findings, my De Motu Cordis? Because I lacked courage, I confess it, because — I should say this! — I was weak of heart. Because I knew it would bring down upon me the learned heavens, if not other powers-that-be. It would bring me enemies. And lose me valued practice. And so it did, and still does. There is heresy and heresy, there is dogma and dogma.

How well I remember, Ned, when we last spoke together. It was some eight years past. It was at your table. There were the bonds of our kinship and of our friendship and of host and guest, yet I felt a broil simmering. There was the whiff of smoke. You said there was a time approaching when every man would have to make his stand. Of whose party was he? I said may not a man make a stand, and a stout one, of being of no party? You said that was no stand at all. Or rather, as I recall, you said it was not the stand of a man but of a tree. Would I be a tree and not a man?

It was late August and your windows were flung open upon the view of your orchard, a whole regiment of trees, hung with blushing apples. ‘No, Ned,’ I said, ‘I am not a tree, but let trees still decide the matter. I too have an orchard. Let us not quarrel over whose apples are the sweeter, though over lesser things men have sometimes come to blows, but here is the true quarrel: if you or any man or any man’s party were to invade my orchard, cut down my trees and trample my land, why then I would be of the opposing party. There would be my allegiance.’

You would not take this for an answer (nor in all honesty did I think it quite sufficient). You said, ‘Well there you have spoken wisely, Will, since the King already cuts and tramples through the orchard that is his kingdom, claiming it as his right to do so and that it is no man’s land but his own. Is not then your allegiance decided?’ There was a smile upon your lips, but there was a smouldering in your eyes. You poured another cup of ale. You said, ‘There will come a time, Will, there will come a time.’ I should perhaps have said nothing, but I said, ‘Then let us hope that time does not come tomorrow, or the day after. And let us hope that when it comes we do not fall out upon our cousinship, no matter which party we choose.’ I said, ‘I am a doctor, Ned, I must minister to all parties.’

But you would not take that for an answer either, or your eyes would not. I had not seen them burn so before. You plainly deemed, but did not say, that for certain causes even a doctor must throw aside his phials, as a lawyer must throw aside his books of law, and buckle on armour. How little I or you knew, Ned, that one day soldiers of your party would enter my chamber and ransack its contents, casting hither and thither my precious notes, papers and experiments. There was my orchard for you, there was my party confirmed.

But, not to skirt about the nub of the matter, how could I say that my party was already chosen for me? As you knew it was. How could I, who was physician to the King, who knew the King’s very body as no other man knew it, be of any party but the King’s? It was scarcely a case of cause or principle. But how, equally, could I have said that I noted that fire in your eyes? I noted it as a physician notes symptoms. It was the fire of your cause, I grant you, but it was the fire also of envy. It was the fire of an ambition not yet rewarded, and overtaken by another’s eminence. And such was the fire — I can say this, now you enjoy your own eminence — that lit the eyes of many of your ranks, cause or no cause.

Orchards! Kingdoms! How could I have said, without seeming to speak like my master the King in his worst haughtiness, that my party was of bigger things? It is a small entity, the heart, it is a small allowance, the blood of any creature, yet to every creature it is the All of life. I was born, you know this, Ned, in Folkestone, which looks across to the Continent. How could I have said that I was of the Continent’s party, I was of the world’s party? England is but a small country, albeit my own. Why did I journey to Padua? How could I have said that I was of Fabricius’s party, nay of Galileo’s, whose noble hand I have clasped? Knowledge is vaster than kingdoms and, while kingdoms come and go, is the only true arbiter of the times. How could I have said this to you, a lawyer and counsellor to members of Parliament (did you not have, even then, your modicum of eminence?), without adding fuel to that fire? I can scarcely claim the licence of old age to speak it now.

I care not for kings. I cared for the King. I knew him well. I was charged with the King’s body, not with the body politick. It was a small and slight body, for all its loftiness of position and mien. It was stunted by rickets. It was a body indeed that was sniggered at. How many of your party knew so well your enemy, knew his fleshly infirmities as well as his kingly towerings, knew his private graces? When I attended his hunts he would set aside for me so much of his quarry, his stags, hinds and hares, as I might want as fresh matter for my dissections. He did not trample on the advancement of learning, nor even on the defying of Galen. When he took up his headquarters in Oxford he ensured I should have place and time for my studies. It was his fortress of war, but still a seat of learning. True, Ned, I was a Caius man, before Cambridge was Parliament’s school, who found sanctuary in Oxford. Did I choose my party? I was made, by the King’s wish, Warden of Merton. You were made Colonel of Horse. We find our places, Ned, we find our colours.

Either way now, the orchard, the kingdom — the commonwealth, the republic, what are we to call it? — lies bleeding and cut down. A commonwealth? Look at its poverty. A republic? A headless body.

When I was at Edge Hill, in attendance, before my days in Oxford, I observed the pallor in my master’s brow. It was but a man’s pallor, the pallor of any man on hearing the opening shots of cannon, but it was a king’s pallor. No other man could have worn that pallor. It was the first battle. Pray God, he must have thought, it would be the only one. It was the first occasion of his leading an army in battle, and certainly the first against his own people.

What times, Ned, what times. We who played at knucklebones. Truly that battle, if such disorderliness could be called a battle, was well named, since was it not a great edge of things, a great precipice overstepped? It was not for me, dissector of corpses and philosopher of the blood, to be affrighted at the carnage and slaughter. In truth I spent much of the time behind a hedge endeavouring to read a book. Yet I was affrighted at the look I saw on almost every man’s face, be he for King or Parliament (and you could not often well tell the difference), the look that said, as it were: It is a true thing now, and it is of this sanguinary substance, this thing that was but hours ago still a thing of speech and protestation. It is a thing now of experiment, and such is the experiment.

Had they chosen their party, those green recruits who had not known a fight before? Had they chosen their party, those who turned and ran or galloped for their lives before the charge of Prince Rupert? And had they chosen their party, those of Prince Rupert’s command, who knew, it seemed, no command, but charged ever on beyond the field, as if the battle were not a battle but a great chase, a great hunting of men? It almost cost the King the day. It certainly cost his winning it.

Would that he had won it. Do I speak treachery? It would have settled the matter. There would have been a battle only and no war. I believe it was in that pallor that I noted. That he knew he could win. He had the ridge, indeed the edge, and all the advantages. He held the London road. He might prevail, as a king should all at once prevail. Yet it was that day that led to his placing his neck upon the block.

But did you see it, Ned, that look upon the common face? I know you were there. That is, it came to my later knowledge that you had been among Sir William Balfour’s horse, who led the counter-charge, against an army naked of its own horse, and very nearly seized a victory. It was the beginning of your late-won eminence, not as man of law or even of Parliament, but of arms.

But did you know, even then, that I was there? Did you know how close your cuirassiers came to the King and to those in his attendance? Did we look upon each other, Ned? This I would know. Your face would have been hidden by a helmet, but not my own. Did you see my face? Yet did you see, in any case, or were you blinded by your purposes, that look upon the general face that said all England is a butcher’s yard now, a very shambles? All England is a hunting ground and every man a quarry.

I would know it, Ned. I did not fight. I carried no weapon. I carried a book, thinking I might be idle. I attended the King and I tended the wounded, of both parties. It was an October day, bitter cold, and darkness, blessedly, came early, ending the matter in no party’s favour but not stopping the flow from wounds. Did we look upon each other? It is seven years past and we were both even then men with grey hairs. I was never a man of arms, but I am haunted by the dream, Ned, that we face each other on a field of battle. I have no potion to drive away the stubborn vision. We both have swords drawn. They are not wooden rulers. It is not apples and orchards. It has come to this. Did you see my face, and should I be thankful I did not see yours?

It is bitter cold this night also. I write by firelight and candlelight. Either way, the land lies ravaged. Soon, they say, Parliament’s victory will be further visited upon the people of Ireland. You are surely too old now to command there a regiment. Yet, physician as I am, I know not the mettle of your ageing body. The army is a toughening and late schooling, no doubt; and the heat of battle, so it would seem, is a heater of the soul, even a forger of zeal for the Lord. We are all of God’s party now, but some more so. Is it not the case? There were all along in this affair but two parties, the army and the people, that too is now more so, and either the army would be our church or the church our army. Is it not so? We have no civility but a confusion of godliness and war. Such our new world.

Well, Ned, I am of the people’s party now, I am only of the people. Though I have served kings, I am, as physician, only of the party and of the care of Every Body. I believe, and indeed can demonstrate, that every man’s organs obey the same internal government. I still hold faith in the advancement of learning, if I believe less that by learning we advance.

Yet tell me, did we see each other? And tell me, might we yet, in the time remaining to us, see each other again? We are kinsmen and, whatever the divisions between us, we are now old men. I would have been your physician, Ned, most happily and truly, if you had asked me. And would be so still. Old men require physicians. Unless your Cromwell takes a crown, neither of us, I dare say, will know another king. We are as one there. We have only our allotted years. You would be welcome here at my brother’s house. You may view, for your amusement, my experiments. It is not a long journey from Westminster, and but a short way from Putney where you would have held your late debates. Were they not upon ‘An Agreement of the People’? There is good ale. There is an orchard, be it bare. We should sit and be at peace, Ned, and talk, as old men are given to talk. And remember. What times we have seen.

Your humble servant and cousin

Will

William Harvey, Doctor of Physic