Kitabı oku: «Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. IX.—February, 1851.—Vol. II.», sayfa 2

DEATH OF HOWARD THE PHILANTHROPIST. ¹

On the 5th of July, 1789, Howard quitted England to return no more. Arriving at Amsterdam on the 7th, he proceeded by slow stages through Germany and Prussia into the empire of the Czar, which he entered at Riga. He was destined never more to quit the soil of Russia. The tremendous destruction of human life to which the military system of that country gives rise, had not then, as it has since, become a recognized fact in Western Europe; and the unconceived and inconceivable miseries to which Howard found recruits and soldiers exposed in Moscow, induced him to devote his attention to them and to their cause. In these investigations horrors turned up of which he had never dreamed, and impressed him still more profoundly with a sense of the hollowness of the Russian pretense of civilization. In the forced marches of recruits to the armies over horrid roads, being ill-clothed and worse fed, he found that thousands fell sick by the way, dropped at the roadside, and were either left there to die of starvation, or transferred to miserable hospitals, where fever soon finished what fatigue had begun. This waste of life was quite systematic. An hospital for the reception of the poor wretches had recently been erected at Krementschuk, a town on the Dnieper, which contained at that time 400 patients in its unwholesome wards. Thither Howard repaired to prosecute his new inquiries. The rooms he found much too full; many of the soldiers were dreadfully ill of the scurvy, yet they were all dieted alike, on sour bread and still sourer quas, alternated with a sort of water-gruel, which, if not eaten one day, was served up again the next. From this place, Howard went down the Dnieper to Cherson, where he examined all the prisons and hospitals, and made various excursions in the neighborhood for the same purpose. The hospitals were worthy of the evil which they were designed to alleviate. Our countryman thus sums up his observations upon them: "The primary objects in all hospitals seem here neglected – namely, cleanliness, air, diet, separation, and attention. These are such essentials, that humanity and good policy equally demand that no expense should be spared to procure them. Care in this respect, I am persuaded, would save many more lives than the parade of medicines in the adjoining apothecary's shop."

While at Cherson, Howard had the profound gratification of reading in the public prints of the capture and fall of the Bastille; and he talked with delight of visiting its ruins and moralizing upon its site, should he be again spared to return to the West. But, however moved by that great event, so important for all Europe, he did not allow it to divert him from his own more especial work; the sufferings of poor Russian soldiers in the hospitals of Cherson, Witowka, and St. Nicholas, had higher claim upon his notice at that moment, than even the great Revolution making in the Faubourg St. Antoine at Paris.

The reader will recall to mind, that, at the time of Howard's residence at Cherson, a desperate war was raging between the Sultan and the Autocrat. The strong fortress of Bender had just fallen into the power of Russia, but as the winter was already too far advanced to allow the army to push forward until spring, the commander of the imperial forces gave permission to such of his officers as chose to go and spend the Christmas with their friends in Cherson. That city was consequently crowded with rank and fashion. All the city was in high spirits. The victories of the imperial troops produced a general state of jubilation. Rejoicing was the order of the day, and dancing and revelry the business of the night. But in the midst of these festivities, a virulent and infectious fever broke out – brought, as Howard believed, by the military from the camp. One of the sufferers from this disorder was a young lady who resided about twenty-four miles from Cherson, but who had been a constant attendant at the recent balls and routs. Her fever very soon assumed an alarming form; and as a last resource her friends waited upon Howard – whose reputation as a leech was still on the increase – and implored him to ride over and see her. At first he refused, on the ground that he was only a physician to the poor; but their importunities increasing, and reports arriving that she was getting worse and worse, he at length acceded to their wish – being also pressed thereto by his intimate friend, Admiral Mordvinoff, chief admiral of the Black Sea fleet – and went with them. He prescribed for the lady's case; and then, leaving word that if she improved they must send to him again, but if she did not, it would be useless, went to make some visits to the sick of an hospital in the neighborhood. The lady gradually improved under the change of treatment, and in a day or two a letter was written to Howard to acquaint him with the circumstance, and requesting him to come again without delay. Very unfortunately this letter miscarried, and was not delivered for eight days – when it was brought to him at Mordvinoff's house. When he noticed the date, Howard was greatly alarmed – for he had become interested in the case of his fair patient, and thought himself in a manner responsible for any mishap which might have befallen her. Although, when the note came to hand, it was a cold, wintry, tempestuous night, with the rain falling in torrents, he did not hesitate for a moment about setting off for her residence. Unfortunately, again, no post-horses could be had at the time; and he was compelled to mount a dray-horse used in the admiral's family for carrying water, whose slow pace protracted the journey until he was saturated with wet and benumbed with cold. He arrived, too, to find his patient dying; yet, not willing to see her expire without a struggle to save her, he administered some medicines to excite perspiration, and remained for some hours at her side to watch the first signs of the effect produced. After a time, he thought the dose was beginning to operate, and, wishing to avoid exposing her to the chance of a fresh cold by uncovering her arms, placed his hand under the coverlet to feel her pulse. On raising it up a little, a most offensive smell escaped from beneath the clothes, and Howard always thought the infection was then communicated to him. Next day she died.

For a day or two, Howard remained unconscious of his danger; feeling only a slight indisposition, easily accounted for by his recent exertions; which he nevertheless so far humored as to keep within doors; until, finding himself one day rather better than usual, he went out to dine with Admiral Mordvinoff. There was a large animated party present, and he staid later than was usual with him. On reaching his lodgings he felt unwell, and fancied he was about to have an attack of gout. Taking a dose of sal volatile in a little tea, he went to bed. About four in the morning he awoke, and feeling no better, took another dose. During the day he grew worse, and found himself unable to take his customary exercise; toward night a violent fever seized him, and he had recourse to a favorite medicine of that period, called "James's Powders." On the 12th of January, he fell down suddenly in a fit – his face was flushed and black, his breathing difficult, his eyes closed firmly, and he remained quite insensible for half an hour. From that day he became weaker and weaker; though few even then suspected that his end was near. Acting as his own physician, he continued at intervals to take his favorite powders; notwithstanding which his friends at Cherson – for he was universally loved and respected in that city, though his residence had been so short – soon surrounded him with the highest medical skill which the province supplied. As soon as his illness became known, Prince Potemkin, the princely and unprincipled favorite of Catherine, then resident in Cherson, sent his own physician to attend him; and no effort was spared to preserve a life so valuable to the world. Still he went worse and worse.

On the 17th, that alarming fit recurred; and although, as on the former occasion, the state of complete insensibility lasted only a short time, it evidently affected his brain – and from that moment the gravity of his peril was understood by himself, if not by those about him. On the 8th, he went worse rapidly. A violent hiccuping came on, attended with considerable pain, which continued until the middle of the following day, when it was allayed by means of copious musk drafts.

Early on the morning of the 20th, came to see him his most intimate friend, Admiral Priestman – a Russianized Englishman in the service of the empress. During his sojourn at Cherson, Howard had been in the habit of almost daily intercourse with his gallant ex-countryman. When taken ill, not himself considering it at first serious, no notice of it had been sent out; but not seeing his friend for several days, Priestman began to feel uneasy, and went off to his lodgings to learn the cause. He found Howard sitting at a small stove in his bedroom – the winter was excessively severe – and very weak and low. The admiral thought him merely laboring under a temporary depression of spirits, and by lively, rattling conversation endeavored to rouse him from his torpidity. But Howard was fully conscious that death was nigh. He knew now that he was not to die in Egypt; and, in spite of his friend's cheerfulness, his mind still reverted to the solemn thought of his approaching end. Priestman told him not to give way to such gloomy fancies, and they would soon leave him. "Priestman," said Howard, in his mild and serious voice, "you style this a dull conversation, and endeavor to divert my mind from dwelling on the thought of death; but I entertain very different sentiments. Death has no terrors for me; it is an event I always look to with cheerfulness, if not with pleasure; and be assured, the subject is more grateful to me than any other." And then he went on to say – "I am well aware that I have but a short time to live; my mode of life has rendered it impossible that I should get rid of this fever. If I had lived as you do, eating heartily of animal food and drinking wine, I might, perhaps, by altering my diet, have been able to subdue it. But how can such a man as I am lower his diet, who has been accustomed for years to live upon vegetables and water, a little bread and a little tea? I have no method of lowering my nourishment – and therefore I must die;" and then turning to his friend, added, smiling – "It is only such jolly fellows as you, Priestman, who get over these fevers." This melancholy pleasantry was more than the gallant sailor could bear; he turned away to conceal his emotion; his heart was full, and he remained silent, while Howard, with no despondency in his tone, but with a calm and settled serenity of manner, as if the death-pangs were already past, went on to speak of his end, and of his wishes as to his funeral. "There is a spot," said he, "near the village of Dauphiney – this would suit me nicely; you know it well, for I have often said that I should like to be buried there; and let me beg of you, as you value your old friend, not to suffer any pomp to be used at my funeral; nor let any monument nor monumental inscription whatsoever be made to mark where I am laid; but lay me quietly in the earth, place a sun-dial over my grave, and let me be forgotten."

In this strain of true Christian philosophy did Howard speak of his exit from a world in which he felt that he had done his work. The ground in which he had selected to fix his everlasting rest, situated about two miles from Cherson, on the edge of the great highway to St. Nicholas, belonged to a French gentleman who had treated him with distinguished attention and kindness during his stay in the vicinity; and, having made his choice, he was very anxious to know whether permission could be obtained for the purpose, and begged his gallant friend to set off immediately and ascertain that for him. Priestman was not very willing to leave his friend at such a time and on such a gloomy errand; he fancied people would think him crazy in asking permission to make a grave for a man still alive, and whom few as yet knew to be ill; but the earnestness of the dying martyr at length overcame his reluctance, and he set forth.

Scarcely had he departed on his strange mission, when a letter arrived from England, written by a gentleman who had just been down to Leicester to see young Howard, giving a highly favorable account of the progress of his recovery, and expressing a belief that, when the philanthropist returned to his native land, he would find his son greatly improved. This intelligence came to the deathbed of the pious Christian like a ray of light from heaven. His eye brightened; a heavy load seemed lifted from his heart; and he spoke of his child with the tenderness and affection of a mother. He called Thomasson to his bedside, and bade him tell his son, when he went home, how long and how fervently he had prayed for his recovery, and especially during this last illness.

Toward evening, Admiral Priestman returned from a successful application; with this result Howard appeared highly gratified, and soon after his arrival retired to rest. Priestman, conscious now of the imminency of the danger, would leave him alone no more, but resolutely remained, and sat at the bedside. Although still sensible, Howard had now become too weak to converse. After a long silence, during which he seemed lost in profound meditation, he recovered for a moment his presence of mind, and taking the letter which had just before come to hand – evidently the subject of his thoughts – out of his bosom, he gave it to the admiral to read; and when the latter had glanced it through, said tenderly: "Is not this comfort for a dying father?" These were almost the last words he uttered. Soon after, he fell into a state of unconsciousness, the calm of sleep, of an unbroken rest – but even then the insensibility was more apparent than real, for on Admiral Mordvinoff, who arrived just in time to see the last of his illustrious friend, asking permission to send for a certain doctor, in whom he had great faith, the patient gave a sign which implied consent; but before this person could arrive he had fallen off. Howard was dead!

This mournful event took place about eight o'clock on the morning of the 20th of January, 1790 – 1500 miles from his native land, with only strangers round about his bed; strangers, not to his heart, though their acquaintance with his virtues had been brief – but to his race, his language, and his creed. He, however, who was the friend of all – the citizen of the world, in its highest sense – found friends in all. Never perhaps had mortal man such funeral honors. Never before, perhaps, had a human being existed in whose demise so universal an interest could be felt. His death fell on the mind of Europe like an ominous shadow; the melancholy wail of grief which arose on the Dnieper, was echoed from the Thames, and soon re-echoed from the Tagus, and the Neva, and the Dardanelles. Every where Howard had friends – more than could be thought till death cut off restraint, and threw the flood-gates of sympathy wide open. Then the affluent tide rolled in like the dawn of a summer day. Cherson went into deep mourning for the illustrious stranger; and there was hardly a person in the province who was not greatly affected on learning that he had chosen to fix his final resting-place on the Russian soil. In defiance of his own wishes on the subject, the enthusiasm of the people improvised a public funeral. The Prince of Moldavia, Admirals Priestman and Mordvinoff, all the generals and staff officers of the garrison, the whole body of the magistrates and merchants of the province, and a large party of cavalry, accompanied by an immense cavalcade of private persons, formed the funeral procession. Nor was the grief by any means confined to the higher orders. In the wake of the more stately band of mourners, followed on foot a concourse of at least three thousand persons – slaves, prisoners, sailors, soldiers, peasants – men whose best and most devoted friend the hero of these martial honors had ever been; and from this after, humbler train of followers, arose the truest, tenderest expression of respect and sorrow for the dead. When the funeral pomp was over, the remains of their benefactor lowered into the earth, and the proud procession of the great had moved away, then would these simple children of the soil steal noiselessly to the edge of the deep grave, and, with their hearts full of grief, whisper in low voices to each other of all that they had seen and known of the good stranger's acts of charity and kindness. Good indeed he had been to them. Little used to acts or words of love from their own lords, they had felt the power of his mild manner, his tender devotion to them, only the more deeply from its novelty. To them, how irreparable the loss! The higher ranks had lost the grace of a benignant presence in their high circle; but they – the poor, the friendless – had lost in him their friend – almost their father. Nature is ever true; they felt how much that grave had robbed them of. Not a dry eye was seen among them; and looking sadly down into the hole where all that now remained of their physician lay, they marveled much why he, a stranger to them, had left his home, and his friends, and country, to become the unpaid servant of the poor in a land so far away; and not knowing how, in their simple hearts, to account for this, they silently dropped their tears into his grave, and slowly moved away – wondering at all that they had seen and known of him who was now dead, and thinking sadly of the long, long time ere they might find another friend like him.

The hole was then filled up – and what had once been Howard was seen of man no more. A small pyramid was raised above the spot, instead of the sun-dial which he had himself suggested; and the casual traveler in Prussian Tartary is still attracted to the place as to one of the holiest shrines of which this earth can boast.

Words can not depict the profound sensation which the arrival of this mournful news produced in England. The death-shaft cut the withes which had kept his reputation down. All at once the nation awoke to a full consciousness of his colossal fame and his transcendent virtues. Howard was now – history. Envy and jealousy were past: rivalry had ended on the brink of the grave. Death alone sets a man on fair terms with society. The death of a great man is always a calamity; but it is only when a country loses one of its illustrious children in a distant land, and under peculiar circumstances, that the full measure of the national calamity is felt. They who can recollect the wild and deep sensation of pity and regret which the arrival of the news of Byron's death at Missolonghi produced in England, can alone conceive of any thing like the state of the public mind on the first announcement of the close of a career still more useful and more glorious. Every possible mark of honor – public and private – was paid to the memory of Howard. All orders of men vied with each other in heaping honors upon his name. The court, the press, parliament, the bar, the pulpit, and the stage – each in its different fashion – paid the well-earned tribute of respect. The intelligence of his demise was publicly announced in the official Gazette – a distinction never before accorded to a private individual. The muses sang his virtues with innumerable voices; the churches echoed with his praise; the senate and the judgment-seat resounded with the tribute to his merits; and even at the theatres, his character was exhibited in imaginary scenes, and a monody on his death was delivered from the foot lights.

Nor was a more enduring memorial wanting. The long dormant Committee of the Howardian fund was resuscitated, and the sculptor Bacon was employed to make a full length marble statue of the Philanthropist. At that time it was in contemplation to make St. Paul's serve the double purpose of a cathedral and a Walhalla; and this design was inaugurated by placing there, as the first great worthy of England, the statue of John Howard. It stands immediately on the right hand of the choir-screen; it is a handsome figure, tolerably faithful, and is illustrated by emblems of his noble deeds, and by the following inscription: "This extraordinary man had the fortune to be honored, while living, in the manner which his virtues deserved; he received the thanks of both houses of the British and Irish Parliaments, for his eminent services rendered to his country and to mankind. Our national prisons and hospitals, improved upon the suggestion of his wisdom, bear testimony to the solidity of his judgment, and to the estimation in which he was held. In every part of the civilized world, which he traversed to reduce the sum of human misery – from the throne to the dungeon – his name was mentioned with respect, gratitude, and admiration. His modesty alone defeated various efforts that were made during his life to erect this statue, which the public has now consecrated to his memory. He was born at Hackney, in the county of Middlesex, September 2, 1726. The early part of his life he spent in retirement, residing principally upon his paternal estate at Cardington, in Bedfordshire; for which county he served the office of sheriff in the year 1763. He expired at Cherson, in Russian Tartary, on the 20th of January, 1790, a victim to the perilous and benevolent attempt to ascertain the cause of, and find an efficacious remedy for the plague. He trod an open but unfrequented path to immortality in the ardent but unintermitted exercise of Christian charity: may this tribute to his fame excite an emulation of his truly glorious achievements!"