Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle

Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle

by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

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Title: Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle
Author: Joseph Sheridan LeFanu
Release Date: March 19, 2004 [EBook #11635]
Language: English
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GREEN TEA

1871

MR. JUSTICE HARBOTTLE
1872

By
Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

GREEN TEA

PROLOGUE
Martin Hesselius, the German Physician
Though carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have never
practised either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interest
me profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from
the honourable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very
trifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me the
loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss of
my health, for I have never been quite well since, and have seldom
been twelve months together in the same place.
In my wanderings I became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, a
wanderer like myself, like me a physician, and like me an enthusiast in
his profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were voluntary,
and he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, at
least in what our forefathers used to term "easy circumstances." He was
an old man when I first saw him; nearly five-and-thirty years my
senior.

In Dr. Martin Hesselius, I found my master. His knowledge was
immense, his grasp of a case was an intuition. He was the very man to
inspire a young enthusiast, like me, with awe and delight. My
admiration has stood the test of time and survived the separation of
death. I am sure it was well-founded.
For nearly twenty years I acted as his medical secretary. His immense
collection of papers he has left in my care, to be arranged, indexed and
bound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He writes in
two distinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as an
intelligent layman might, and when in this style of narrative he had
seen the patient either through his own hall-door, to the light of day, or
through the gates of darkness to the caverns of the dead, he returns
upon the narrative, and in the terms of his art and with all the force and
originality of genius, proceeds to the work of analysis, diagnosis and
illustration.
Here and there a case strikes me as of a kind to amuse or horrify a lay
reader with an interest quite different from the peculiar one which it
may possess for an expert. With slight modifications, chiefly of
language, and of course a change of names, I copy the following. The
narrator is Dr. Martin Hesselius. I find it among the voluminous notes
of cases which he made during a tour in England about sixty-four years
ago.
It is related in series of letters to his friend Professor Van Loo of
Leyden. The professor was not a physician, but a chemist, and a man
who read history and metaphysics and medicine, and had, in his day,
written a play.
The narrative is therefore, if somewhat less valuable as a medical
record, necessarily written in a manner more likely to interest an
unlearned reader.
These letters, from a memorandum attached, appear to have been
returned on the death of the professor, in 1819, to Dr. Hesselius. They
are written, some in English, some in French, but the greater part in
German. I am a faithful, though I am conscious, by no means a graceful

translator, and although here and there I omit some passages, and
shorten others, and disguise names, I have interpolated nothing.
CHAPTER I
Dr. Hesselius Relates How He Met the Rev. Mr. Jennings
The Rev. Mr. Jennings is tall and thin. He is middle-aged, and dresses
with a natty, old-fashioned, high-church precision. He is naturally a
little stately, but not at all stiff. His features, without being handsome,
are well formed, and their expression extremely kind, but also shy.
I met him one evening at Lady Mary Heyduke's. The modesty and
benevolence of his countenance are extremely prepossessing.
We were but a small party, and he joined agreeably enough in the
conversation, He seems to enjoy listening very much more than
contributing to the talk; but what he says is always