Sir James Y. Simpson / by Eve Blantyre Simpson.

  • Simpson, E. Blantyre (Evelyn Blantyre), 1856-1920.
Date:
[1896]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sir James Y. Simpson / by Eve Blantyre Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    had permitted [he was but a week there], a public reception would have been given him.' That Roman trip was his last real holiday. Even his Continental scampers were matters of a fortnight's duration. Occasionally he was lured in August over to the Isle of Man, where his hostages to fortune had preceded him. Its prescribed space held him at bay. It was in these days a secluded spot, before it became the lungs of Liverpool, into which convenience and cheapness of communication have transformed it. His antiquarian fancy found scope there, and he much enjoyed un- earthing an ancient canoe, tracing Roman remains, and digging where he thought the Danes and other sea- kings had made a camp or buried their dead. His old coachman was asked if he and his nags were going. * Me going there?' replied the Jehu contemptuously, looking across to Inchkeith, lying like a bright spot in the Firth, and imagining Mona's kingdom its mate in size. *What would I do there? Drive round and round, and never get my horses exercised ?' His master drove round and over the island, before a rail- way ran on it, and to be out of hearing of an engine's whistle was no small boon to him. Once the Professor went to Belgium for two weeks to visit Scotch friends, and purposely left no address with assistants or servants. His wife knew it, but various strange rumours about his * disappearance' began to get afloat, while he quietly enjoyed the foreign watering- place, with its gay lightheartedness. But alas! he seldom could so completely disappear. Ireland, though he mightily disliked the crossing, he also scampered to. In one of his letters he mentions