Annals of the Royal College of Sturgeons of England (I975) vol 57

The

Hunters

and

the Arts

Sir Rodney Smith KBE Hon.LlD MS FRCS President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Englanid; Surgeon to St George's Hospital, London

Introduction One weekend a few years ago I was listening to the radio programme 'Any Questions' and after some hotly debated political argument came, as the light relief, a question put in roughly the following terms: 'If you could go back through the centuries and spend a whole day with some world-famous historical figure, whom would you choose?' Well, there were various suggestions, some of the panellists giving two or three answers. Shakespeare had a vote and so dicd Bc-ethoven (conversation might have proved a little difficult!). One of the ladies opted somewhat obscurely for Henry VIII and someone, for reasons that eluded me at the time and still do, wanted to spend the day with Genghis Khan. There were no votes for Galileo, for Newton, William Harvey, Darwin, or John (let alone William) Hunter. The discussion was lighthearted and amusing, but later my thoughts returned to the actual question asked and to a thought I have often had about the great men and women of the past. How much do we really know about them as people? It is not too difficult to find out what a man has done, at any rate in regard to his major achievements, but does this always tell us what he was like, whether he was generous or mean, cruel or kindly, sincere or devious, whether he was wise or merely astuite, did he appreciate beauty or truth?

Depending, as often we must, uipon what others have written, we must surely reflect upon the fallibility of human observation and, of course, upon the more treacherous influences of vested interest. If Richard III had won the battle of Bosworth how would he have appeared in the eyes of a Shakespeare writing under a Plantagenet rather than a Tudor monarch? If we could indeed go back, let us say, to the i 8th century and visit and talk with members of the Hunter family, what kind of experience would this have been? Obviously it is difficult to tell. Even as regards John Hunter's scientific work there is more than one recorded opinion, and it is difficult to believe that William Clift, born 200 years ago today, and Jesse Foot can have been writing about the same man. We may perhaps accept today that on this subject Clift was right and Foot was wrong, if only from the fact that John's pupils were to provide pretty well the entire next generation of surgeons at all the more important hospitals. But this is related more to what he did than to what he was; what do we really know of John himself as a person and of William and others of the Hunter family? We know, of course, the view often expressed of John and William Hunter that their origins were modest, in a family circle of no great affluence, in Scotland, presumably somewhat primitive in comparison with the London

Hunterian Oration delivered on i4th February 1975

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Sir Rodney Smith

of the day; that William was from the start both diligent and studious so that there should be no surprise that he became a successful physician, though this did not mean that he should be regarded as a man of letters; that John, on the other hand, was almost illiterate as a boy through truancy from school and made his way through sheer native genius; that he appreciated nature in all its forms but that apart from this was uncultured, indeed at times almost uncouth; that the rest of the family were of no great interest. Now is this right? Is that what the Hunters were like? If so there are one or two things that need explaining. Consider, for one momnent, England as it was in the middle of the i8th century and in particular London, to which the Hunter brothers came from Lanarkshire, William in I74I, John in I748.

This has sometimes been called Johnson's England. It was an age of giants; in literature, of Fielding, Smollett, John Wilkes, Burke, and Gibbon; in painting, of Gainsborough, Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, Romney, Stubbs, Rowlandson, Zoffany, and Pine. Handel wrote the 'Messiah'. The operas of Arne were performed at Covent Garden and David Garrick played at Drury Lane. Chippendale designed furniture in the new mahogany and the Adam brothers built spacious, lovely houses. Did the Hunter brothers perhaps meet none of these or were they indifferent to them? Did they see no pictures, read no books, hear no music ? Were they perhaps blind or deaf ? Is it possible-it certainly does not seem probable-that they were totally unaffected by the great figures in literature and the Arts abroad in London? As to art itself, in recalling Bacon's aphorism that 'art is man added to nature', one may not only reflect that no one more interested in man and nature than John Hunter ever lived but also that the catalogue of John's books, sold

by auction after his death, included the works of Bacon. Can we find out whether or not the Hunters did develop any genuine taste for the Arts? Not easy to find out, but we can try.

Inheritance, opportunities, and motivation Now to develop any particular talent, artistic or otherwise, I suppose that one needs the right genes, the right opportunities, and the right motivation. Let us look at our problem in this light. First, then, the right genes? Do they matter? Surely that artistic ability can be inherited and may run in families is beyond doubt. Johann Sebastian Bach had more than ioo direct descendants who composed music. Now is it likely or unlikely that the Hunters could have inherited some of the right genes? Let us look briefly at the origins of John senior and Agnes Hunter in Long Calderwood, Lanarkshire. It is not true that either of them came from humble stock. John could trace his origins back to the younger branch of the Hunters of Hunterston in Ayrshire, an ancient lineage which had received its estate from Robert II, founder of the Stewart line of kings. John senior was himself a grain merchant who retired to farm with capital sufficient to build Long Calderwood and was referred to locally as 'the laird'. His portrait, painted by his son James, who was born in I7I5 the fifth of the io childr-en and was to die an untimely death at the age of 30, hangs now in the Hunterian Museum in this College. Agnes Hunter had been Agnes Paul, daughter of a magistrate who had also been Honorary Treasurer of the City of Glasgow. I think we may accept therefore that the background of both John and Agnes was one of reasonable culture, though if either had any personal artistic ability one can hardly imagine that there

Dorothea Hunter (Mrs James Baillie) by Robert Edge Pine

Tobias Smollett. Artist unknown

illumination from Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae, 1385, by an artist of the school of Giotto

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Malay Girl by Robert Home

William Hunter by Allan Ramsay

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The Hunters and the Arts could have been much opportunity to exercise it. One may perhaps say this particularly of Agnes, who between I708 and I728 bore i o children and was to see three of these die in infancy and four more in early adult life. Only William and John of the boys lived on, both to die at 65, and of the girls Dorothea (p. I I9) lived to be 85. Note, then that James painted, while Dorothea's daughter, Joanna Baillie, was a dramatist and a poetess of some merit, for she wrote a series of plays on the passions and three volumes of dramas. Her play 'De Montfort' was produced by Kemble and Mrs Siddons. She was apparently a lively, unconventional lady with a wide circle of friends, including in particular Sir Walter Scott, who was affectionately disposed and gave her a valuable brooch. It seems probable, then, that the right genes were, at least, around. What of opportunity and motivation? There is little evidence that either William or John engaged in activities related in any way to the Arts before they came to London. It is perhaps a simplification to say that William had the opportunities but lacked the motivation and that John had the motivation but lackedperhaps neglected would be a better wordthe opportunities. Nevertheless, we do know that William was a serious, diligent boy, a scholar who understood Latin and Greek and who studied humanity, Greek, logic, and natural philosophy for four years at Glasgow College and then, forsaking an earlier intent to enter the church, for three years with William Cullen in Hamilton and one year with Monro in Edinburgh in order to become a surgeon. The four years at Glasgow College must at least have presented him with some opportunities, but there is a major difference between scholarship and art and there is no evidence that, at the time, William crossed the dividing line between the two. John, now,

I23

as we know, could have followed in William's footsteps but didn't. As a boy 'serious' and 'diligent' are perhaps the last two adjectives

that could be applied to him. He was the tenth and last child and was spoilt, wayward, and, as regards schooling, a truant. He was, however, not idle in the sense that he had an idle mind. Even in those early years he was a passionate observer of nature, seeking to understand the riddles of life itself as he lay in the fields with the flowers, the trees, the birds, the creatures of the woods as his companions. What has this to do with art? Well, Mencken said: 'The true function of art is to criticize, embellish, and edit nature. The artist is a sort of inmpassioned proofreader, blue-pencilling the "bad spelling of God'. Over-dramatic if you like and John, of course, never read these words, but in some respects he might well have approved of them. Certainly he was to do a fair amount of his own blue-pencilling before he ended his days, but all this was in the future. As a boy John had, perhaps, motivation allied to indiscipline but, I would suggest, a mind more attuned to the sensitivities of an artist than was the somewhat arid scholarship of brother William.

London friends The two brothers, probably for differing reasons, took little account, then, of the Arts before they came to London, though of course William was still only 2 2 when he moved south and John two years younger. One should, perhaps, add a single rider to this observation in respect of William. The letters of introduction which he brought to London were addressed to medical men, but one of them, rather curiously, was written by Robert Foulis, one of two Scottish brothers who founded the famous press of that name in Glasgow. How did William come to meet him? We don't know. Did this foreshadow

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Sir Rodney Smith

William's latcr interest in books and writers? It is possible. Let us consider now the years I 74I to 1748, when William was in London but had not yet been joined by brother John. Who were his friends and how did he spend his leisure moments? William came to London by sea in I74I, having cmbarked at the port of Leith. The voyage took Io days, the last of them through a violent storm. He lodged briefly at the King's Arms tavern in the Strand, near Charing Cross, but then almost immediately moved into the household in Pall Mall of Dr William Smellie, then later the same year into James Douglas's house in Red Lion Square. Douglas died only the following spring, but William stayed on in the Douglas house and, after his year in Paris from 1743 to I744, returned to the Douglas family, now in Hatton Garden. A year later William took a large house in Great Piazza, Covent Garden, designed by Inigo Jones, and this was the house to which John came in I748. The nmedical men with whom William Hunter worked or studied included Smellie, Frank Nicholls the anatomist, Desaguliers, Douglas, and Wilkie in London, and in Paris Antoine Ferrein, who taught at the Royal Academy of Science and the Royal College of France. Of these, probably only Douglas played a significant part in William's wider education, but he was a man of considerable intellect and had a fine library, including an extensive collection of the works of Horace. It was, in fact, to Douglas that Robert Foulis's letter of introduction had been addressed. Whatever the stimulus, William soon sought and was accepted into an interesting literary circle. Alexander Carlyle, in his autobiography1, wrote of the club in London 'where Robertson and I never failed to attend, as we were adopted members while we stayed

in Town', and he included William Hunter among the London members. The Robertson here was William Robertson, author of the History of Scotland, and the club had many other members distinguished in the literary field as well as some who would have liked to have been, such as the Dr Armstrong of whom William Wadd wrote, 'in the practice of physic he was never eminent, and as a writer he entirely failed'. Just around the corner from the house in Covent Garden was the famous Bedford Coffee House and it is tempting to assume, though it would be an assumption, that both William and, later, John would have frequented this. If so they would have found there Pope, Sheridan, and Horace Walpole. William, then, by the time John arrived in London, was well established in a literary circle but had found no interest as yet in, for instance, paintings, the theatre, or music. He and John were to share the same house until I756, when William moved to the more fashionable Jermyn Street, leaving John in Covent Garden. Their paths were to diverge increasingly from then onwards. During the eight years that they lived together there is little doubt that William took his position as an elder brother very seriously. Apart from teaching John himself, he introduced him as a pupil to William Cheselden, the best-known surgeon in London, himself a man of artistic and literary tastes, an architect as well as a surgeon, who designed the old Putney Bridge and the original Surgeons' Hall at the Old Bailey. William also had John accepted as a student at St George's Hospital and had ambitions to improve his scholarship by sending him to Oxford. As is well known, John's stay at St Mary's Hall in I755 was brief. Commenting much later to a pupil, Sir Anthony Carlisle, he observed, 'they wanted to make an old woman of me; or that I should stuff Latin and Greek', add-

The Hunters and the Arts ing 'but these schemes I cracked like so many vermin as they came before me'. In London William naturally introduced John to his literary friends, who now included a number of very interesting people, such as Edward Gibbon and Tobias Smollett (p. ii 9). William and Smollett became acquainted in the early 174os, and Smollett's biographer Anderson says their relationship was a cordial one. When, arotund the middle 1750s, Percivall Pott and Alexander Munro attacked William in print Smollett in his 'critical review' rushed to William's aid. Then again, Smollett wrote a number of penetrating satires on the need for improvement in medical and surgical education. The source of his information must certainly, in part at least, have come from William and John too, for he became a friend of both and was later, unsuccessfully, to write to William on John's behalf when the brothers had become estranged. Though William's friend initially, it was in fact to John that Smollett wrote just before his death a rather pathetic letter, signing himself 'your old friend'. John, then, arriving in London to join William, made friends with William's friends but did not, at any rate at that time, develop the same interest in books and writers that William did. However, there is also little doubt that John made a much wider use of the varied opportunities for enjoyment that London offered. For a young man newly arrived in London, seeking entertainment and living in Covent Garden, what a dilemma was posed in 1748! Handel had begun his season at Covent Garden in 1747 and David Garrick had acquired Drury Lane Theatre the same year. What a choice! There is some evidence that John appreciated music, as we shall see later, and though he may or may not have attended Handel's Covent Garden season, it would not, one thinks, have been out of character had he dashed off to the grand fireworks

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display in Green Park ordered by the King to celebrate the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, at which Handel's 'Fireworks Music' had its first performance, the main stand for spectators caught fire, and general pandemonium resulted. That John attended the theatre is known, and Ottley2 says 'he would mingle with the gods in the shilling gallery'. A shilling to see Garrick act! John certainly knew Garrick later in his life and there is no doubt that we should include hiin among the great figures in the Arts to whom we give thought today. How great? Who can tell? A musician such as Handel leaves behind the means to judge his greatness, but an actor-he is a sculptor who carves in snow.

A dividing line As we move from the 1750s into the 6os it is a good moment to pause and take stock, with William and John Hunter each reaching a dividing line in his carecr, John leaving London for three years with the Army on the Belle Isle expedition, William taking the momentous decision to give up surgery for midwifery, paying a fine of 40 guineas to the Company of Surgeons for the privilege. Materially this was to prove a profitable exchange of careers. Indirectly it led to acceptance in the houses of Pitt (later Lord Chatham), Lord North, and Horace Walpole. George III's Queen, Charlotte, bore seven princes and four princesses and William was in attendance at the birth of all of them. Now moving into middle age he has become a scholar of note, has developed a major interest in literature, and has begun his collection of books. He has shown, too, that he is not indifferent to the pleasures of being well regarded by those of position and influence in high society. As to John, what has happened to thq 'lazy' boy, the tniant of Long Calderwood? Can he really have become this man of unquench-

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Sir Rodney Smith

able dynamic energy? To motivation has now been added opportunity and the result is about to become a one-man revolution altering the whole face of surgery and foreshadowing a new science, surgical physiology. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that John's enormous energies were absorbed in the study of human and comparative biology to such a degree that he had no time left for people and the products of the human mind and spirit. With William now in his 40s and John in his 30s it is reasonable to ask what was, in each case, the star that was to guide their destiny through the remainder of their lives, for surely each one of us has some identifiable driving force which governs what we do and allows others later to guess, however inadequately, at what we are. William's star was compounded of a remarkable mixture of scholarship, shrewdness, industry, and ambition; John's of imagination, boundless energy, and ambition. Ambition, a common factor ?-perhaps, but ambition is in some degree so- much a part of man's very nature that it is largely a meaningless term unless the direction in which ambition lies is also known. Here surely William differed materially from John in that in his case some element of personal vanity and concern for personal acceptance in the houses of the great was attached to it. In John's case, his whole life suggests that he was totally indifferent to the opinions of others as to his personal qualities but immensely ambitious to have his-at that timerevolutionary ideas vindicated and accepted as the truth.

William and the Arts In William's case his scholarship and early acceptance into a literary circle in London are all part of a nature from the start deeply appreciative not only of the written word but

of the beauty of books, including, as Illingworth3 has put it, an admiration for 'the set of the type, the clearness of the lettering, the beauty of the illuminations, the smoothness of the vellum'. William was, before he died, to accumulate an astounding library of more than 12 000 volumes with, according to Paget, 'specimens of almost every press since the introduction of printing; almost every work in classic and foreign literature known to exist previous to the i6th century'. It may well be that it was William's appreciation of beauty in books that led him to appreciate the beauty of coins. Certainly books came first and he did not begin his collection of coins until I770. In the succeeding 1 2 years he spent over £22 000 upon them, amassing a collection of some 30 ooo pieces, many of them unique examples from ancient Greece and Rome. William's interest in pictures was Art probably stimulated from three 'directions.

There was an obvious link with his love of books. Who, looking at the two illuminated pages reproduced on p. i i9, both from William Hunter's collection, would be satisfied with illustrations in books alone. Then again, William was very particular about the accuracy of the illustrations of his writings, and in supervising the preparation of these showed clearly his developing interest in both painting and engraving. For the illustrations in his great work on The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, Exhibited in Figures, begun in I75I but not printed until 1774, he depended upon that rather shadowy figure Jan van Rymsdyck, and the plates were engraved in the main by, or through the good offices of Robert Strange, some in London some in Paris. Thirdly, William, as has already been suggested, could not unreasonably have the label 'a social climber' attached to him and it is well in keeping with his other

The Hunters and the Arts ambitions that he should seek the society of the leading painters of the day. He wrote to Cullen in I768: 'I am pretty much acquainted with most of our best artists here, and live in friendship with them'. William did indeed, through his life, know many artists well. Allan Ramsay the younger, portrait painter to the King, was a friend and painted a portrait of him (p. I 20). He knew both Gainsborough and Reynolds, and his library had in it a copy of Reynolds's Discourses inscribed 'To Dr Hunter from the Author'. He knew Hogarth and in Nichols's Biographical Anecdotes of Hogarth the 'list of gentlemen, artists, etc., who furnished incidental intelligence to the author of this work' includes 'Dr Hunter-dead'. He knew Pine, who painted two portraits of him. William's collection of paintings started in 1754 when he bought at the sale of Dr Mead's pictures two paintings by Sir Godfrey Kneller, one for 40 guineas and the other, for eight guineas, Kneller's portrait of Sir Isaac Newton. He was outbid by a Dr Taylor for a portrait of William Harvey by Wilhelm van Bemmel, but acquired this later. Modest beginnings, but as the years went by his collection grew bigger and at his death included works by Titian, Rembrandt, Murillo, Rubens, Reynolds, Pine, Ramsay, Zoffany, and many others. In his purchases William bought selectively and well. His interest in paintings and painters coincided with a milestone in the history of art in this country, the foundation of the Royal Academy. This had been no easy matter, for artists have always been individualists, tending to go their own ways, and in the mid- i8th century the centre of attraction for artists was the cities of northern Italy rather than London. To persuade them to join together to form a society in London had not been easy but, growing from a small group originally centred on Hogarth nearly 30 years earlier, a society grew up vith new

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rooms in Pall Mall and strict rules of con-

duct, such as that no person under 20 should draw a female model unless he was married and that no one who was not a student or member (the Royal Family excepted) should be admitted when a female model was sitting. It was from this society that, in I769, the Royal Academy evolved. Its first President was Sir Joshua Reynolds, and William Hunter was appointed Professor of Anatomy, giving, the following year, his inaugural lecture in which, using as an analogy the positions of Shakespeare, Milton, and Wren in prose, poetry, and architecture, he urged that genius in painting and sculpture was not confined to the latitudes of Athens and Rome, no doubt a not unpopular expression of opinion. Literature It is interesting to observe that two other appointments were made by the Royal Academy around this time, Samuel Johnson as Professor of Ancient History and Oliver Goldsmith as Historian. It seems probable that William got to know Johnson quite well. Allan Ramsay, writing to William in I778, passes on a message from Johnson with a request that he call upon a young artist friend who had fallen ill, and a letter from Johnson to William in 1774 thanks him for being willing to present to the King a book he had written, adding 'I had not the courage to offer it myself'. With the letter was a copy of the book as a present to William, Johnson adding 'I beg that it may be admitted to stand in your library, however little it may add to its elegance or dignity'. It was Johnson, too, whose advice was partly responsible for William's decision to leave his collection to Glasgow. William probably knew Goldsmith less well, but it is interesting that Goldsmith had at one time surgical ambitions-unfulfilled. Poor Goldsmith, life for him seems to have been a long, bitter and

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Sir Rodney Smith

usually unsuccessful struggle. Foster4 records that it was during that time that he met the incident thus: 'Oliver Goldsmith pre- Robert Home, a fellow serving officer, sented himself in a new suit (not paid for) and, calling upon him later at his home in to be examined as to his qualifications for Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, met his daughter being a surgeon's mate, and in the Minutes Anne and later married her. The Home famof the Court of Examiners thc entry occurs: ily is relevant, for apart from Anne, of whom "James Bernard, mate to an Hospital; Oliver more later, one of her brothers, Robert, became a painter of note and painted two porGoldsmith, found not qualified for ditto" '. of one of which, with his painting There is little evidence that traits John, (p. I20), now hangs in the Music of a Malay girl William had an interest in music, though College. Robert was no insignificant artist. he does refer to the four-volume work upon A sister of Anne married Robert Mylne, an the history of music written by Dr Charles architect of some merit, well known for the Burney, whose wife was a patient of Wil- quarrel he had with Samuel Johnson, who liam's, and also to a rising young musical did not approve of his design for Blackfriars genius of the time, a protege of Dr Burney's, Bridge. about whom William made some observaIt was in 1763 that John returned to Lontions before the Royal Society, published in don and, setting up in surgical practice, took their TransactUons in 1779. I wish I could a house or rooms in Golden Square, where tell you that here was a link with a much he was to live for the next five years, movmore famous infant prodigy who visited Enging to William's house in Jermyn Street in land a little earlier, Mozart, but alas, 1768 when William migrated to Great WindWilliam's infant musician had the rather mill Street, and from Jermyn Street to unattractive name of Ma-ster Crotch. Leicester Square in 1783, the year of William's death. John and the Arts Golden Square was a fashionable quarter. Now let us return to John. We left him at the end of the I 75os, having been with The famous singer Mrs Cibben, for whom brother William for rather more than Io Handel wrote a number of contralto parts in his oratorios, had lived there. The attractyears. At this time little of William's scholarship, his love of literature and books, had ive and talented painter Angelica Kauffman rubbed off on John, but there is nothing to (p. 120) lived there at the same time as John. suggest that on this account John got less Sir Joshua Reynolds was a great admirer of enjoyment out of life. In fact, in all probabil- hers; he painted her portrait in 1766, I769, ity John, much more extrovert than William, and I777 and she painted his in 1769. She lived a fuller life with wider interests. In 1760, was one of the original 36 members of the then, he joined the army as a surgeon, and his Royal Academy and painted the ceiling of commission was probably secured for him by the Council Chamber in Burlington House. Robert Adair (p. I2I), then Inspector-General John surely knew Angelica, for not only did of Hospitals, who knew both the Hunter they live in the same square but also Robert brothers well. He went to Portugal after the Home, Anne Hunter's brother, whom I menBelle Isle expedition, rather a sideshow in the tioned a few moments ago, was her pupil. Seven Years War, and did not return to LonThough the remainder of don until I763. His three years in Portugal Literature John's life was to see a fierce and increasing are not relevant to our story today except

The Hunters and the Arts concentration upon his own original pursuit of knowledge in the field of human and comparative biology, the amassing of his collection, and also an increasingly busy involvement in surgical practice, there is plenty of evidence, if we look for it, that he did not lack outside interests. These were, of course, in some respects very different from William's. Stories abound of John's many derogatory remarks about the general practical uselessness of literature and the classics, though it is not easy to reconcile these with the fine library of books listed in the catalogue of Christie's sale after John's death. Similarly, though John wrote on one occasion disparagingly of the theatre, saying that he 'was an admirer of nature, but never found nature in a playhouse', on another he wrote with great feeling of Mrs Siddons's acting. The truth of the matter probably is that John often indulged in a good deal of deliberate exaggeration and also derived pleasure from being provocative, sometimes saying things deliberately to shock, particularly, perhaps, when addressed to or in the presence of his rather more serious brother. It is unlikely therefore that John did genuinely dislike books and certainly he did not dislike those who wrote them. John's was a personality that made friends, though not perhaps very often among his surgical contemporaries, for tolerance in regard to scientific criticism was not his strong point. Some of William's literary friends became lifelong friends of John too. Tobias Smollett, already referred to, is an example. Another who knew William and became John's friend was James Perry, the first editor of the European AMagazine. Sheridan was a patient. The suggestion of Oppenheimer is an interesting one that one might well with profit study not only the possible influence upon John of literary intellects but the possible influence of John's very individual intellect

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upon the more original writers of his age. Laurence Sterne was one such and another was William Blake (p. I 2 I), certainly himself an eccentric genius, whose feelings about John Hunter were, one would think, ambivalent, for if John was indeed the original of Blake's Jack Tearguts no one could consider this to be entirely complimentary! Before we leave this subject of the written word one further point needs to be made. Additional evidence that John was very far from being illiterate is provided by his papers given before the Royal Society. Whitehead5 once said 'there is a sense in which science and philosophy are merely different aspects of one great enterprise of the human mind' and Gloyne6, one of John Hunter's biographers, perhaps had this in mind when he commented that 'Hunter wrote his Animal Oeconomy in the same spirit of enquiry which Aristotle applied to his De Partibus Animalium'.

Art Even those who would deny that John had any major interest in or influence upon the literary scene could hardly deny John's intense concern with the pictorial arts. During the 30 years between his return from Portugal and his death his enthusiasm led him, like William, to build up a huge collection of paintings and pictures and to be well acquainted with many of the most famous artists of the day. Probably the most extraordinary of these was Sir Joshua Reynolds (p. 12i). Reynolds was bom in Devonshire in I723 and arrived, via Lisbon, Rome, and Florence, in London in I752, living first in St Martin's Lane, then Great Newport Street. He found a scene dominated by Hogarth and there was little sympathy between these two individualists. Reynolds soon ousted Hogarth and became regarded as the leading figure in London artistic and literary life. He painted Dr Johnson five times; he

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painted Garrick. He loved William's friend Ramsay, but didn't think much of his paintings. He founded the Literary Club 'in order,' he said, 'to give Dr Johnson unlimited opportunity of talking', though the original name given to it, with typical Reynolds aggression, was not 'the Literary Club' but more simply 'the Club'. Joshua Reynolds must have thought very highly of the Hunter brothers, for on the gth December 1768, on a day when we know that he had three separate calls from interested parties with respect to the evening's meeting to discuss the establishment of the Royal Academy and his own acceptance as its first President, he yet found time to go to St George's Hospital at Hyde Park Corner to make sure that John secured the vacant appointment as surgeon. David Garrick went with him. Whether this was mainly through regard for John or for William is uncertain, but as the years went by it was, of course, John whose life was linked with that of Reynolds. There are many stories about the famous Reynolds portrait of John (p. I22) and about the part played by William Sharp, the engraver, in arranging for it to be painted. Certainly, though John refused to accept any fees from artists, Reynolds had no such qualms about accepting his full fee for the portrait from John. His biographers7 have commented: 'The painter was somewhat chary of making presents of his pictures. He used to say he found they were seldom. highly valued unless paid for'. It is perhaps evidence that the relationship of Reynolds and John was a more sympathetic one than that of Reynolds and William that his portrait of John turned out to be a masterpiece but that of William (p. 122) less than that-in fact, less successful than Ramsay's or Pine's portrait of William. Reynolds and John lived in the same square, Leicester Square, for the last few years

of their lives (and so did Hogarth's widow, next door to John). John was called in during Sir Joshua's final illness, assisted at the postmortem examination, and, uncharacteristically, attended his funeral, a grandiose affair costing a thousand pounds. John knew well many other artists. His illustrator for his book The Natural History of the Human Teeth was the same van Rymsdyck so highly regarded by William. He had a great regard for Stubbs, as one might well imagine, and commissioned three paintings, the 'Yak', the 'Baboon and Albino Macaque', and the 'Rhinoceros', all of which hang in this College now. He knew Rowlandson; Gainsborough was a patient. Zoffany (p. I 20), who painted William Hunter lecturing at the Royal Academy (p. I 2 I), lived in or near Covent Garden and frequented Old Slaughter's Coffee House in St Martin's Lane, often used by John. Among the engravers, apart from William Sharp, John knew well Sir Robert Strange, William Ryland, the eccentric who ended up hanged at Tyburn for forgery, and William Woollett, who died, according to John, through falling into the hands of a quack cancer-curer. When John died in I793, like William he left a great collection of works of art, the sale at Christie's in I 794 including engravings by Hogarth, Strange, Sharp, and Woollett and paintings by Reynolds, Zoffany, Zuccarelli, and Stubbs. One could buy, at this, a Stubbs for seven guineas, a Reynolds for £5 I5s 6d, and a Titian for kii os 6d! (Three engravings by Sharp of HRH the Prince of Wales fetched nine shillings!)

Music What of John and music? Little enough has been written of this. Certainly John broke his tendo achillis dancing, but this proves no major interest in dancing, let alone music. His one surviving direct comment on the power of music I will quote

The Hunters and the Arts in a moment, but first we might look at John and Anne's relationship with Haydn, which is not without interest. Haydn (p. I22) was nearly, but not quite, a patient of John's-he refused to let John remove his nasal polyp-but he knew Anne better. Anne (p. 122), a poetess, wrote verses for six of Haydn's songs, of which the best known 'A Pastoral Song' is better known as 'My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair'. Haydn dedicated these six canzonettas to Anne. Of much more interest is the fact that Anne wrote a libretto for Haydn's 'The Creation', though Haydn never used this, preferring, for the first performance in Vienna, a German adaptation of Lidley's original libretto written for Handel, which Handel never set. The English version of 'The Creation' used for the first London performance, at Covent Garden, was a translation back into English of this German text, and George Thomson8, a friend of Burns, wrote to Anne Hunter, referring to this performance: 'It is not the first time your muse and Haydn's have met, as we see from the beautiful canzonets. Would he had been directed by you about the words for "The Creation". It is lamentable to see such divine music joined with such miserable broken English'. There is some truth in this. The LidleyVienna-Covent Garden translation has Eve sing to Adam:

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'O Thou for whom I live, my hope, my stay, Thy will, shall all my cares employ; To God's commands gladly to obey Shall form my pride, shall be my joy! And John wrote: 'Nothing shows the effects of sound upon the body more than does music. Music is universal; the mind immediately feels its effects, and has recourse to it, as much as the body for food'9. John also wrote: 'Nothing in nature stands alone; every art and science has a relation to some other art or science; and it requires a knowledge of these others, as far as this connection takes place, to enable us to become perfect in that which engages our particular attention" 0.

'O Thou for whom God created me, My shield, protector, my all, Thy will to me is law Thus hath the Lord ordained. To obey is my joy, Happiness and pride.'

Conclusion To the Hunters, then, art and science were one, and if we were indeed faced with the prospect of spending a day in the mid-i8th century with one of these, in neither case would one find a blinkered scientist, insensitive to the outpourings of genius in creative art. With whom then would you walk that day? With ambitious William, the Queen's doctor, welcome in the highest society, the friend of everyone who mattered, erudite, intellectual, brilliant in conversation? Or with John, an imaginative genius, loved by his pupils, disliked by, indeed beyond the comprehension of, his surgical contemporaries. irascible at times, impulsive, friend only o' those he wished to call friend? Which shall it be? The choice is yours. In neither case, I think, would you be bored.

Now these lines are from the Adam and Eve duet and for it Haydn wrote some of the most sublimely beautiful music ever written. Anne Hunter wrote:

The portraits of Dorothea Hunter (p. I 21) and William Hunter (pp. I20 and I22) and the illuminated pages from books in William Hunter's collection (p. iig) are reproduced by permission of the University of Glasgow (Hunterian Collection); the por-

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Sir Rodney Smith

traits of Tobias Smollett (p. i i9), Angelica Kauffman (p. 120), John Zoffany (p. I20), William Blakc (p. 12I), and Sir Joshua Reynolds (p. I2I) by permission of the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery; Zoffany's picture of William Hunter lecturing at the Royal Academy (p. I2i) by permission of the Treasurer of the Royal College of Physicians of London; the portrait of Josef Haydn (p. I22) by permission of the Royal College of Music; and the portrait of Anne Hunter (p. 122) by permission of Mr Patrick Jobson FRCS. Robert Home's picture of the Malay girl (p. I20) and the portraits of Robert Adair (p. I2I) and John Hunter (p. 122) are in the possession of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

2 Ottley, D, quoted by Gloyne (ref 6). 3 Illingworth, C F W (I967) The Story of William Hunter. Edinburgh, Livingstone. 4 Foster, quoted by Oppenheimer, J M (I949) Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 25, I. 5 Whitehead, quoted by Gloyne (ref 6). 6 Gloyne, S R (1950) John Hunter. Edinburgh, Livingstone. 7 Leslie, C R, and Taylor, T (1 865)) Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds. London, Murray. 8 Thomson, G, quoted by Haddon, J C (1923) Life of Haydn. London, Dent. 9 Hunter, J (i86i) Essays and Observations, ed.

References I

Carlyle, A (i 86o) Autobiography. Edinburgh, Blackwood.

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Owen, R. London, Longman. Hunter, J, quoted by Bryant, T (i893) Lancet, I, 342.