A Strange Story | Page 4

successor. In fine,
he proposed that I should at once come to L---- as his partner, with the
view of succeeding to his entire practice at the end of two years, when
it was his intention to retire.
The opening into fortune thus afforded to me was one that rarely
presents itself to a young man entering upon an overcrowded
profession; and to an aspirant less allured by the desire of fortune than
the hope of distinction, the fame of the physician who thus generously
offered to me the inestimable benefits of his long experience and his
cordial introduction was in itself an assurance that a metropolitan
practice is not essential to a national renown.
I went, then, to L----, and before the two years of my partnership had
expired, my success justified my kind friend's selection, and far more
than realized my own expectations. I was fortunate in effecting some
notable cures in the earliest cases submitted to me, and it is everything
in the career of a physician when good luck wins betimes for him that
confidence which patients rarely accord except to lengthened
experience. To the rapid facility with which my way was made, some
circumstances apart from professional skill probably contributed. I was
saved from the suspicion of a medical adventurer by the accidents of
birth and fortune. I belonged to an ancient family (a branch of the once
powerful border-clan of the Fenwicks) that had for many generations
held a fair estate in the neighbourhood of Windermere. As an only son I
had succeeded to that estate on attaining my majority, and had sold it to

pay off the debts which had been made by my father, who had the
costly tastes of an antiquary and collector. The residue on the sale
insured me a modest independence apart from the profits of a
profession; and as I had not been legally bound to defray my father's
debts, so I obtained that character for disinterestedness and integrity
which always in England tends to propitiate the public to the successes
achieved by industry or talent. Perhaps, too, any professional ability I
might possess was the more readily conceded, because I had cultivated
with assiduity the sciences and the scholarship which are collaterally
connected with the study of medicine. Thus, in a word, I established a
social position which came in aid of my professional repute, and
silenced much of that envy which usually embitters and sometimes
impedes success.
Dr. Faber retired at the end of the two years agreed upon. He went
abroad; and being, though advanced in years, of a frame still robust,
and habits of mind still inquiring and eager, he commenced a
lengthened course of foreign travel, during which our correspondence,
at first frequent, gradually languished, and finally died away.
I succeeded at once to the larger part of the practice which the labours
of thirty years had secured to my predecessor. My chief rival was a Dr.
Lloyd, a benevolent, fervid man, not without genius, if genius be
present where judgment is absent; not without science, if that may be
science which fails in precision,--one of those clever desultory men
who, in adopting a profession, do not give up to it the whole force and
heat of their minds. Men of that kind habitually accept a mechanical
routine, because in the exercise of their ostensible calling their
imaginative faculties are drawn away to pursuits more alluring.
Therefore, in their proper vocation they are seldom bold or
inventive,--out of it they are sometimes both to excess. And when they
do take up a novelty in their own profession they cherish it with an
obstinate tenacity, and an extravagant passion, unknown to those quiet
philosophers who take up novelties every day, examine them with the
sobriety of practised eyes, to lay down altogether, modify in part, or
accept in whole, according as inductive experiment supports or
destroys conjecture.

Dr. Lloyd had been esteemed a learned naturalist long before he was
admitted to be a tolerable physician. Amidst the privations of his youth
he had contrived to form, and with each succeeding year he had
perseveringly increased, a zoological collection of creatures, not alive,
but, happily for the be holder, stuffed or embalmed. From what I have
said, it will be truly inferred that Dr. Lloyd's early career as a physician
had not been brilliant; but of late years he had gradually rather aged
than worked himself into that professional authority and station which
time confers on a thoroughly respectable man whom no one is disposed
to envy, and all are disposed to like.
Now in L---- there were two distinct social circles,--that of the wealthy
merchants and traders, and that of a few privileged families inhabiting a
part of the town aloof from the marts of commerce,