Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 383, September 1847

The Countess! Such was the title given in derision to precisely the poorest and most miserable old woman in the house. She had been at one period of her life in the service of a noble family as femme-de-chambre; and as a woman who had seen something of the great world, she held unqualified strangers at a certain distance, and, to use a common phrase, kept herself to herself. This had procured her the ill-will and ill-opinion of several other old crones inhabiting the same house, who made her the subject of their perpetual scandal. Without doubt, she had poisoned her last master, and could not look a Christian in the face; or at very least she had robbed him. Did you ask for proofs? She had a treasure stitched into a mattress. But she was nearly dying with hunger? Yes – the niggard! She starved herself, she could not spend her treasure.

Monstrous inventions! The poverty of the Countess, as they called her in mockery, was complete. Niggard she was, and had good reason to be so, in order to subsist on the little annuity she had contrived, in the days of her service, to scrape together. For the rest, as we have no wish to disguise the truth, the Countess was by no means an amiable person – bitter and selfish, hostile to all the world, as venomous as her detractors, and without pity for others, as those so often are who have suffered much themselves.

She was now stretched motionless on her bed. The old crones had come about her less from humanity than to discover the secrets of her den, the access to which she had hitherto strictly defended. She held in her left hand a small packet wrapped up in half a pocket-handkerchief, which she clutched convulsively. It was the treasure, they all exclaimed.

Her case was a grave one – a congestion of the brain. The doctor bled her, and then wrote his prescription – his first! The bleeding brought the Countess to herself. When she heard him tell one of the bystanders to go to the chemist and get the potion, —

"Potion!" she exclaimed, laying hold of the paper, "I want no potion – I am not ill. Do you think I have money to pay for your drugs? Go away! – all of you – go!"

She crumpled the prescription in her hand, and was about to throw it on the floor, when something in the paper apparently arrested her. She read the prescription, and, turning to the doctor with a manner quite changed and subdued, asked how much it would cost? She then opened the little packet she had held till then so jealously in her hand. All the old crones stretched forward. A few franc-pieces and some great sous were all the treasure it contained.

That first client, so long looked for, was come at last. Our doctor had his patient – that first patient whom one pets and caresses, to whom one is nurse as well as physician. No uncertain diagnostics there– no retarded visits, no hasty prescriptions. If this one die, it is verily his fault. He devoted himself, body and soul, to the old woman. Certainly the fees would not be very brilliant, nor would the cure spread his reputation very widely. He thought not of this – but save her he must! He absolutely loved this unamiable Countess. He assembled the ban et arrière-ban of science, and armed himself cap-à-pie in knowledge for her defence.

The object of all this solicitude received his attentions, however, with an increasing ill-humour, for each fresh medicine made a fresh demand upon her purse. "How long will this last?" she said one day; "I must go out – I have no more money – I must go out this very day."

"Do not disturb yourself," began the Doctor.

"Not disturb myself!" she interrupted; "easy to say! Instead of giving me these drinks and draughts, give me something that will put a little strength into me – for I must go out."

"Listen to me! remain tranquil a few days" – She turned round from him with impatience.

"To leave your chamber now would be to expose your life. Give me but four days; and if you have no more money, I will charge myself with the medicines."

"You!" cried the Countess, looking up with astonishment.

"And why not me?" said the young Doctor. "You shall return it to me some time – when you will."

"You! who have not often a dinner for yourself!"

"Who says that?" asked the Doctor, blushing involuntarily.

"All the house says it."

"Miserable stuff!" he replied; "will you accept what I offer? If I promise, you may be sure I can perform."

The old woman looked at him with surprise, and at length consented to accept his offer and take his remedies.

The young Doctor hastened to his chamber, shut fast the door, and looked round him, with his arms folded – "What is there here," said he, "that I can sell?"

What he found to sell I do not know. Enough that he supplied the Countess with a sum sufficient to procure her the necessary medicines, and to relieve her from care as to the wants of life for some short time. The case proceeded favourably.

At night, as he was returning from one of those solitary walks in which he was accustomed to exhale his sadness, and also to gather fresh resolution for the struggle he had undertaken with destiny, and was slowly mounting the long, dark, dilapidated staircase that led up to that fifth floor on which he resided, he stumbled over some obstacle, and, on looking closer, found it was the body of a woman lying outstretched upon the stairs. It was the Countess. In spite of solicitations and her own promise, she had gone out; but her strength had failed her. She had fallen, and now lay insensible.

Our young Doctor, braving all malicious interpretations, carried her to his own room, which was the nearest place of refuge, and there, by the aid of some cordials he administered, restored her to her senses. She opened her eyes, looked around her, and understanding in whose room she was, she said, with a scrutinising air, "You are miserably lodged here." It was the only observation his amiable patient made, and she repeated it several times – "You must be miserably off." Even when she had returned to her own room, and he had left her for the night, she still said nothing but – "You are miserably lodged!"

The next morning, when the Doctor visited his patient – and you may be sure his visit was an early one – to his surprise, she was on foot, with sleeves tucked up, sweeping, dusting, and putting to rights her little abode. He was astonished. The shock which she had received the day before, instead of injuring her, had apparently aided in her restoration. She was quite gay.

"You are resolved to kill yourself, then?" said the Doctor.

"I was never better in my life," she answered.

"Do not be too confident," was his reply. "You must keep your room two or three days; and this time," he added, with a smile, "I shall keep guard over you myself."

The Countess consented with a most childlike docility. She would do what he pleased; only yesterday she was obliged to go out – it was absolutely necessary. There was so much gentleness in her altered manner, that the Doctor was disposed to regard this as an alarming symptom in her case.

However, it, was not so. Her health, day by day, improved, and the relation between the patient and her medical attendant became more amicable. She proposed, by way of some return, to assist him in his bachelor housekeeping. It would give her no trouble. An hour in the morning, when he was at his lectures, some of which he still followed; and then she could cook, and she could mend. These offers the young Doctor declined with a sort of alarm. Who but himself could readjust those habiliments, whose strong and whose weak points he so very well knew? What needle could, on this ground, be half so skilful as his own? And cooking! Cooking with him! Cook what? On what? In what? It was in vain that the Countess insisted; he would hear of no such thing. He kept his poverty veiled – it was his sacred territory.

Some few days after the Countess's health might be said to be quite re-established, our young Doctor, on entering his room, was surprised to see a letter lying on his table. Correspondence, for the mere sake of letter-writing, he had quite foregone as a pure waste of time; and he had no relatives who interested themselves in his fate, or who could have any thing to communicate. Nevertheless, there the letter was, addressed duly to himself. He looked at it with an uncomfortable foreboding, assured that it must bring him some new care, or report some strange disaster.

He sat down, and tore open the envelope. He bounded from his seat again with surprise – the letter enclosed fifteen notes of the Bank of France! It is no fairy tale, but simple history; fifteen good notes of one thousand francs each.

Inside the envelope was written: – "This treasure belongs to you as your property. Use it without scruple. The hand that transmits it does but accomplish a legitimate restitution. May the gifts of Fortune conduct you to the Temple of Happiness!" There was no signature.

"Why, it is a dream, a hallucination. Am I growing light-headed?" said the Doctor. But no – it was no dream; there they were – before him – on the little table – those, fifteen miraculous pieces of paper. He turned his head away from them; but when he looked again, there they were – in the same place – in the same order – motionless. I leave you to guess his agitation and his many mingled emotions. From whom could this godsend have come? He read and reread, and turned the letter in every direction. He racked his brain to no purpose to discover his anonymous benefactor. He knew, and was known to, scarcely any one. He strode about his chamber – as well as he could stride in it – inventing the wildest suppositions, which were rejected as soon as made. Suddenly he stopped – struck his forehead as a new thought occurred to him – "Bah!" he cried; "absurd! – impossible! – and yet – "

In a moment he was at the door of the Countess. He paused a moment before he knocked. There was from the landing-place a window at right angles to that of the old woman's apartment and if her window-curtain happened to be drawn aside, which, however, was rarely the case, it was easy to see from it into her room. On the present occasion, not only was the curtain drawn aside, but her window was open, and the Doctor could see this fairy, accused of lavishing banknotes of a thousand francs, kneeling before a wretched stove, striving with her feeble breath to rekindle a few bits of charcoal, on which there stood some indescribable culinary vessel, containing an odious sort of porridge, at once her dinner and her breakfast!

The Doctor shook his head – it could not be the Countess. Yet, completely to satisfy himself, he entered. She gave him her ordinary welcome, neither more nor less – talked, as usual, of her former masters, of the dreadful price of bread, and the wicked scandal of her neighbours. But what most completely set all suspicion at rest was the manner in which she spoke of the debt which she owed him. "I cannot yet repay you what you advanced for my medicines," she said, with all the natural embarrassment of an honest debtor speaking to a creditor. "You will be wanting it, perhaps. Now don't be angry at what I say – one is always in want of one's little money. In a few days I will try and give you at least something on account."

"No," said the Doctor, when he was alone: "I can make nothing of it. Away with all guesses!" He resolved to profit by the good fortune, be the giver whom it might. And he hoped so to manage matters, that if, at a future day, an opportunity for its restoration should occur, he should be able to avail himself of it.

He was soon installed in a more convenient apartment, better furnished, and supplied, above all, with a more abundant library. The young Doctor was radiant with hope. Yet he did not quit his old quarter of the town. It need not be said that he took formal leave of his first patient the Countess.

From this time every thing prospered with him. As it generally happens, the first difficulty conquered, every thing succeeded to his wish. It is the first turn of the wheel which costs so much; once out of the rut, and the carriage rolls. By degrees a little circle of clients was formed, which augmented necessarily every day. His name began to spread. Even from his old residence, where he led so solitary a life, the reputation had followed him of a severe and laborious student, and the cure of the Countess was a known proof of his skill.

Like the generality of the profession, he now divided his day into two portions; the morning he devoted to his visits, the afternoon to the reception of his patients. Returning to his home one day a little before the accustomed hour, he perceived a crowd of persons collected in the street through which he was passing. Perhaps some accident had happened, and his presence might be useful. He made his way, therefore, through the crowd. Yet he nowhere discovered any object which could have collected it. He was merely surrounded on every side by groups engaged in earnest yet subdued conversation. The greater part were women, and both men and women were generally of a mature age, and of that sort of physiognomy which one can only describe as odd– faces ready made for the pencil of the caricaturist. The Doctor, who had no idle time, was about to make his escape, when a general movement took place in the crowd, and he found himself borne along irresistibly with the rest through a large door, which it seemed had just opened, into a spacious hall or amphitheatre. At the upper end was a stage; on the stage a large, strangely-fashioned wheel was placed; and by the side of the wheel stood a little child, dressed in a sky-blue tunic, with a red girdle round its waist, its hair curled and lying upon its shoulders, and a bandage across its eyes. The wheel and the child formed together a sort of mythological representation of Fortune. They were drawing the lottery.

After amusing himself for some time with the novelty of the spectacle, the Doctor began to make serious efforts to extricate himself. As he was threading his way through the crowd, and looking this way and that to detect the easiest mode of egress, he saw, underneath a small gallery at the side of the amphitheatre, in a place which seemed to be reserved for the more favoured or more constant worshippers in that temple of Fortune, a face, the last he should have expected to find there. It was no other than the Countess. She was seated there with all the gravity in the world, inclining with a courteous attention to an old man with gray hairs and smooth brown coat, who was very deferentially addressing her.

Having disengaged himself from the throng, and returned to his own house, this appearance of the Countess recurred very forcibly to his mind. "After all," thought he, "it was the Countess! – it was none but she who sent those notes." The enigma was solved. He had made his fortune in the lottery, and without knowing it. He determined to visit his old patient the next morning.

That very evening, however, he was waited on by the same old gentleman in brown coat and gray hairs, who was seen speaking to her at the lottery. He came with a rueful face, requesting him to visit immediately Madame – , giving the Countess her right name, which it is now too late in our story to introduce. Whatever may have been the case at some previous time, the wheel of Fortune had that day bitterly disappointed her hopes. She had been carried home insensible. The Doctor hastened to her. It was too late. She had been again attacked by a congestion of the brain, which this time had proved fatal.

There appeared no hopes of a complete solution of the enigma.

"Ah!" said the same old gentleman, as he stood moralising by his side, "the same luck never comes twice– she should have tried other numbers."

The Doctor saw immediately that the old gentleman had been in the confidence of the deceased. He questioned him. There was a look of significance, which betrayed plainly that he knew all. He was in fact one of those who earn their subsistence by writing letters for those who are deficient in the skill of penmanship or epistolary composition. He had written the very letter itself; to his pen was owing that sort of copy-book phrase, "May the gifts of Fortune conduct to the Temple of Happiness!" The Doctor had in truth, as he often said when alluding to the subject, made his fortune in the lottery.

We wish we could leave the story here, and let the reader suppose that gratitude alone had induced the old woman to act so generous a part. But the whole truth should be honestly told. There was a mixture of superstition in the case. It was his number that had won the prize, and she considered it, as expressed in the letter which accompanied the notes, in the light of his property. In all countries where a lottery has been long established, the strangest superstitions grow up concerning what are called lucky numbers. In Italy, where this manner of increasing the public revenue is still resorted to, not only is any number which has presented itself under peculiar circumstances sure to be propitious, but there is a well-known book, of acknowledged authority we believe, containing a list of words, with a special number attached to each word, by the aid of which you can convert into a lucky number any extraordinary event which has occurred to you. Let any thing happen of public or private interest – let any thing have been dreamt, or even talked of that was at all surprising, you have only to look in this dictionary for the word which may be supposed to contain the essence of the matter; as, for instance, fire, death, birth – and the number that is opposite that word will assuredly win your fortune. When the Countess first saw the prescription of the young Doctor, she was going to throw it angrily on the floor; but her eye was suddenly riveted by the numbers in it – the numbers of the grains and ozs. in the cabalistic writing – and she felt assured that in these lucky numbers her fortune was made. The first stake she played she played for him; and, singularly enough, she won! But, as the old gentleman in the brown coat observed, the virtue of the prescription was exhausted. She should have sought for numbers from some other quarter; the second trial she made ended in a severe loss, and was the immediate occasion of her death.

COULTER'S CRUISE.[14 - Adventures on the Western Coast of South America, &c. By John Coulter, M.D. London: 1847.]

Another book of adventure in the island-studded Pacific. The vast tract of water that rolls its billows from Australia to America, from Japan to Peru, offers a wide field to the wanderer; and a library might be written, free from repetition and monotony, concerning the lands it washes, and the countless nations dwelling upon its shores. Nevertheless, we should have had more relish for this book had it reached us a few months earlier. Dr Coulter, who returned from ploughing the ocean so far back as 1836, would have done wisely to have published the record of his cruise somewhat sooner than in July 1847. A short half-year would have made all the difference, by giving him the start in point of time of a dangerous competitor, recently and laudatorily noticed in the pages of Maga. After the pungent and admirably written narrative of that accomplished able seaman, Herman Melville, few books of the same class but must appear flat and unprofitable. The order of things should have been reversed. Omoo would have found readers at any time, and although twenty publishers had combined with fifty authors to deluge the public with the Pacific Ocean during the five previous years. We are not quite so sure that Dr Coulter's book will be largely perused, treading thus closely upon the heels of Mr Melville. Not that the ground gone over is the same, or the book without interest. On reading the title-page we were assailed by an idea which we would gladly have seen realised on further perusal. One sometimes – rarely, it is true – meets with characters in works of fiction so skilfully drawn, so true to nature, so impregnated with an odour of reality, as to impress us with the conviction that they have actually lived, moved, and had being, and passed through the adventures set down for them by their creator. It is the case with many of the personages in Scott's novels. We should highly enjoy hearing any one assert, that there never existed such persons as Jeanie Deans and Edie Ochiltree; that Caleb Balderstone was an imaginary servitor, or Dugald Dalgetty the mythical man-at-arms of a poet's fancy. We would pitch the lie into the teeth of the incredulous idiot, and with a single tap on the sconce send him skirling and skeltering down the staircase. And, to pass from great things to small, we avouch that the gaunt and diverting man of medicine of whom frequent and honourable mention is made in the pages of Omoo, did inspire us with a notion of his reality, of which, up to the present time of writing, we have been unable wholly to divest ourselves. When we first took up Dr Coulter's narrative of adventure in America and the Southern Seas, it was with the hope, almost with the expectation, that the original Dr Longghost, encouraged by his former shipmate's example, had temporarily exchanged scalpel for goosequill, and indited an account of the dangers he had run since his affectionate parting with Typee on the pleasant shores of Tahiti. We were disappointed. To say nothing of diversity of dates, and other circumstances, rendering identity improbable, Longghost of the "Julia" would have written, we are well assured, a far quainter and more spicy book than that lately launched by Coulter of the "Stratford." It would have been of fuller flavour, and also more elegant, the result of the goblin mediciner's wild seafaring life, grafted on his old Lucullian reminiscences, on the shadowy souvenir of those happy days when he fed on salmis, and flirted with duchesses, long, long before he dreamed of cruising after whales, and sharing the filthy inconveniences of little Jule's detestable forecastle. It would have been, to the narrative of John Coulter, M.D., as ripe Falernian or racy hock, to ale of some strength but middling flavour, where there is no stint of malt, but which has been somewhat spoiled in the brew. We are quite certain that the tales of Caffrarian lion-hunts, with which Longghost cheered the dull watches of the night, and beguiled the Julia's mariners of their wonder, were of very different kidney to the pig-and-nigger-killing narratives of Mr Coulter. Of this, we repeat, we are morally certain; but as we like, unnecessary though it be, to have our convictions confirmed through the medium of our optics, we now summon Doctor Longghost to commence, the very instant this number of the Magazine reaches his hands – and reach them it assuredly will, though his present abode be in farthest Ind or frozen Greenland – a detailed and bona fide history of his Life and Adventures, from the day he chipped the shell up to that upon which he shall send to press the last sheet of his valuable autobiography. And we pledge ourselves to bestow upon his book what Aaron Bang calls an amber immortalisation, by embalming it in a review; treating him tenderly, as one we dearly cherish.

Neither pleasant recollections of Omoo, nor equally agreeable anticipations of Longghost's lucubrations, shall prevent our doing full justice to Coulter. Mr Melville made a charming book out of most slender materials. What had he to write about? Literally next to nothing. The fag-end of a cruise, and a few weeks' residence on an island, whose aspect, inhabitants, and all pertaining to it, had already been minutely and well described by Kotzebue and other voyagers. But he has found more to say that is worth reading, about what he saw in his very limited sphere of observation, than Dr Coulter has concerning his extensive voyages and travels "on the Western Coast of South America, and the interior of California, including a narrative of incidents at the Kingsmill Islands, New Ireland, New Britain, New Guinea, and other islands in the Pacific Ocean." And with respect to the manner of saying it, the Yankee has it hollow. Dr Coulter's style is careless, often feeble, and defaced by grammatical errors, so glaring that one marvels they escaped correction at the very printers' hands. It says much, therefore, for the fertility of the subject, for the novelty and curiosity of the scenes visited and incidents encountered by the adventurous doctor of medicine, that his book, although devoid of the graces of composition, is upon the whole both instructive and amusing.

To understand the desultory to-and-fro nature of Dr Coulter's cruise, it is necessary to read his preface, where he gives some general information concerning the singular and precarious commerce known as the Pacific Trade. This is carried on between the ports on the western coast of North and South America, the Pacific Islands, and the coasts of China, and is very lucrative, but often dangerous. The articles of trade and barter are exceedingly various. Europe contributes wines, brandy, hardware, and sundry manufactured goods; California sends deals, corn, and furs; the various islands furnish arrow-root, oil, pearls, dye-woods, tortoiseshell, &c. The ships engaged in the traffic, and which are of many sizes and countries, are usually owned, wholly or in part, by the captain or supercargo, and consequently, wholly unfettered in their course, they wander from port to port, according to the caprice of the hour, or the chances of an advantageous market. For protection against pirates, and against the attacks of the fierce and savage tribes with whom they frequently come in collision, they are well armed and manned. The precaution is no idle one, nor could it possibly be dispensed with. "Few of these trading vessels ever return with their cargoes to the coast of the Americas, China, the Sandwich Islands, or Australia, without having frequent fights with the savages, and there are some of them, who have reckless captains and crews on board, that never can end a trading transaction with the natives without a row."