CHAPTER X.

DICKENS. The apothecary of romance is almost invariably pale and lean, with head nearly destitute of hirsute covering, and a man of retiring habits and sad demeanour. This is perhaps because he gets little chance to make the wherewithal to make him fat, and has few opportunities to seek enjoyment and recreation. Dickens’ chemist, whom he describes in his pathetic little story _The Haunted Man_, is no exception to this rule. “Who could have seen his hollow cheek, his sunken, brilliant eye; his black-attired figure, indefinably grim, although well knit and well proportioned; his grizzled hair hanging like tangled seaweed about his face,—as if he had been through his whole life a lonely mark for the chafing and beating of the great deep of humanity—but might have said he looked like a haunted man? “Who could have observed his manner—taciturn, thoughtful, gloomy, shadowed by habitual reserve, retiring always and jocund never, with a distraught air of reverting to a bygone place and time, or of listening to some old echoes in his mind—but might have said it was the manner of a haunted man? “Who could have heard his voice—slow-speaking, deep and grave, with a natural fulness and melody in it which he seemed to set himself against and stop—but might have said it was the voice of a haunted man? “Who that had seen him in his inner chamber, part library and part laboratory,—for he was, as the world knew far and wide, a learned man in chemistry, and a teacher on whose lips and hands a crowd of aspiring ears and eyes hung daily,—who that had seen him there, upon a winter night, alone, surrounded by his drugs and instruments and books; the shadow of his shaded lamp, a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless among a crowd of spectral shapes raised there by the flickering of the fire upon the quaint objects around him; some of these phantoms (the reflection of glass vessels that held liquids) trembling at heart like things that knew his power to uncombine them, and to give back their component parts to fire and vapour;—who that had seen him then, his work done and he pondering in his chair before the rusted grate and red flame, moving his thin mouth as if in speech, but silent as the dead, would not have said that the man seemed haunted and the chamber too?” In the _Pickwick Papers_ the author describes in one of his happiest veins, the troubles of a chemist who is suddenly called to serve on a common jury—to try indeed the celebrated case of “Bardell _versus_ Pickwick”. “‘Answer to your names, gentlemen, that you may be sworn,’ said the gentleman in black. “‘Richard Upwitch.’ “‘Here,’ said the greengrocer. “‘Thomas Groffin.’ “‘Here,’ said the chemist. “‘Take the book, gentlemen. You shall well and truly try——’ “‘I beg this court’s pardon,’ said the chemist, who was a tall, thin, yellow-visaged man, ‘but I hope this court will excuse my attendance.’ “‘On what grounds, sir?’ said Mr. Justice Stareleigh. “‘I have no assistant, my lord,’ said the chemist. “‘Then you ought to be able to afford it, sir,’ said the judge reddening, for Mr. Justice Stareleigh’s temper bordered on the irritable, and brooked not contradiction. “‘I know I _ought_ to do, if I got on as well as I desired, but I don’t, my lord,’ answered the chemist. “‘Swear the gentlemen,’ said the judge peremptorily. “The officer had got no further than the ‘You shall well and truly try’ when he was again interrupted by the chemist. “‘I am to be sworn, my lord, am I?’ said the chemist. “‘Certainly, sir,’ replied the testy little judge. “‘Very well, my lord,’ replied the chemist in a resigned manner. ‘Then there’ll be murder before this trial’s over: that’s all. Swear me if you please, sir.’ And sworn the chemist was before the judge could find words to utter. “‘I merely wanted to observe, my lord,’ said the chemist, taking his seat with great deliberation, ‘that I’ve left nobody but an errand boy in my shop. He is a very nice boy, my lord, but he is not acquainted with drugs; and I know that the prevailing impression in his mind is, that Epsom salts means oxalic acid, and syrup of senna, laudanum. That’s all, my lord.’ With this, the tall chemist composed himself into a comfortable attitude, and, assuming a pleasant expression of countenance, appeared to have prepared himself for the worst.” This little sketch shows the disabilities the chemist laboured under before he was exempted from jury service, and the intimate knowledge Dickens had of almost every phase of life on which he wrote. In _Oliver Twist_ he gives us an instance of prompt prescribing on the part of the parochial doctor’s assistant and dispenser, related by Bumble. Mr. Bumble betakes himself to the undertaker’s shop to arrange for the funeral. “‘Bayton,’ said the undertaker looking from the scrap of paper to Mr. Bumble; ‘I never heard the name before.’ “Bumble shook his head as he replied, ‘Obstinate people, Mr. Sowerberry—very obstinate. Proud, too, I’m afraid, sir.’ “‘Proud, eh?’ exclaimed Mr. Sowerberry with a sneer. ‘Come, that’s too much.’ “‘Oh, its sickening,’ replied the beadle; ‘antimonial, Mr. Sowerberry!’ “‘So it is,’ acquiesced the undertaker. “‘We only heard of the family the night before last,’ said the beadle; ‘and we shouldn’t have known anything about them then, only a woman who lodges in the same house made an application to the parochial committee for them to send the parochial surgeon to see a woman as was very bad. He had gone out to dinner, but his ’prentice (which is a very clever lad) sent ’em some medicine in a blacking bottle off hand.’ “‘Ah, there’s promptness,’ said the undertaker. “‘Promptness indeed!’ replied the beadle. ‘But what’s the consequence; what’s the ungrateful behaviour of these rebels, sir? Why, the husband sends back word that the medicine won’t suit his wife’s complaint, and so she shan’t take it—says she shan’t take it, sir! Good, strong, wholesome medicine, as was given with great success to two Irish labourers and a coal-heaver only a week before. Sent ’em for nothing, with a blacking bottle in, and he sends back word that she shan’t take it, sir!’” THACKERAY. The great satirist, in _Pendennis_, gives us a brief sketch of the apothecary of the Georgian era in the early life of John Pendennis, who in the city of Bath practised as an apothecary and surgeon, “attending gentlemen in their sickrooms, and ladies at the most interesting periods of their lives, and condescending to sell a brown-paper plaister to a farmer’s wife across the counter, or to vend tooth-brushes, hair-powder, and London perfumery”. How he eventually merged into John Pendennis, Esq., of Fairoaks, Clavering, with a “family pride,” is it not described with the pen of inimitable genius in the pages of the story?