T)' Digitized by the Internet Arcliive in 2015 littps://arcliive.org/details/b21777561 S2^ut.-uo>s . 9 /lU(y/^^^Cu*^^ AMES HaHHEWS JdNCAN, m.d., f.r.s., &o. H Sfeetcb FOR HIS FAMILY. " No good thing will He withhold from him who walks uprightly." " He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." Bailey. .AMES Matthews J|uncan, m.d., f.r.s., &c. GEEAT solemnity, akin to awe, steals over my mind on sitting down quietly to write of my beloved brother James. I would tread softly, as on holy ground, while tracing his path from the cradle to the grave. Many of my memories of the past are too sacredly personal to be shared with any one else. He himself said, " Our holiest and deepest feelings are never properly expressed, or are not expressed at all." So in what follows I shall try, reverently, simply, to give his history as much as possible, either in his own words or in those of friends who knew him well. His family, remembering him in his maturity, may wish to hear specially of his early years and of his surroundings in boyhood, for the child is father of the man. In his life Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, were all links in the same priceless chain. Speaking of himself on a public occasion, my brother James said modestly, " We are certainly the creatures of circumstances to a great degree. In my case the great circumstances have been few. The chief and the first of these is good parents." His des- cription of them showed his consciousness that their influence rested as much on what they were in themselves as on what they inculcated. The following pages will exhibit his resemblance to one or other of them in various points. Certainly the mental and moral atmosphere which my brother James breathed in early life gave a tone of no doubtful pitch to his whole future career. — 4 When he came into tlie world his father, William Duncan, had a commission and shipping business in Aberdeen ; and held, besides, extensive lime quarries in Banffshire, from which a con- siderable part of his income was derived. The lime works and the names of his ships were words very familiar to the ears of his children. He was quite equal to the task of developing intelli- gently and sweetly their various faculties. Like several of his sons after him, he was an A.M. of Marischal College and Univer- sity. His mind had a metaphysical cast, he could reason logically, was deep-questioning and clear-headed, a great reader, a quick mental calculator, very orderly, regular and nice in all his ways, and possessed of marked conversational powers. Generous to a fault, he not only assisted impoverished relatives, and on doing a good stroke of business gave coals to the poor, but became also I fear often unwisely—surety for needy acquaintances, or helped them with money. Some regular pensioners he survived, so they must have been people whose earning days were over. On his daughter Elizabeth getting married to her second cousin, James Matthews, her father said he would give him one piece of advice, " Never become security to a bank on a cash account. I have done so six times, and have had them all to pay." Our mother, Isabella Matthews, was about thirteen years her husband's junior ; she became his girl-wife at the early age of sixteen. A bright, handsome, vivacious woman, she was at the same time full of quiet motherly tenderness, and gifted with what more than one who knew her well called a touch of genius. For anything insincere or mean she had always the utmost scorn. Both father and mother were typical lowland Scotch parents. God- fearing, careful, and, as their son James testified, devoted above all things to the education of their family. James was the fifth of their eleven children. The register of his birth states that he was born at Aberdeen on tlie 29th of April, 5 1826, and baptised by the Rev. Alexander Thomson at a house in the corner of Bon-Accord Square, then quite on the outskirts of the gleaming granite city. His mother was twenty-five at the time, and during convalescence enjoyed reading Sir Walter Scott's newly published story, Woodstock. Her father, a man of saintly character and a steady congregationalist, had brought up his family very strictly ; so when after marriage her husband got to amuse her while he was at business, the later Waverley Novels as they appeared, it was with considerable qualms of conscience that she began to read them, though afterwards no one more thoroughly enjoyed a good story. The necessities of a crowded nursery made her children very early independent. At busy times they would be laid on the floor, and could generally creep to its every corner before venturing to walk. Their mother had a strong desire not to bring up her children effeminately. My earliest remembrance of James is, strange to say, connected with a little incident which occurred before his baby clothes were shortened. He must have been left asleep in his cot in the nursery and had awoke, when his elder brother, three years of age, lifted him and began to carry him downstairs. Some sound had reached my ear in the next room, and I rushed out to see with dismay the infant in its flow- ing white robes in little George's arms. Of course my cries soon brought both mother and nurse to the rescue. When James was about a year old the family home was moved to a house built by our father at Broadford, a northern suburb of Aberdeen, that his wife might be near her parents who lived close by. What a privilege the children esteemed it to spend a day with grandmamma and aunts ! The large flower and vegetable gardens, the greenhouse and vinery, the hay meadow, the factotum, Arthur Eankin, in corduroy knee-breeches and blue woollen hose, the pock-pitted cook, Annie Ironside, who deemed a little foot-mark on her kitchen floor nothing less than 6 a crime, the pony and pliaeton, the great watcli-dogs, all were objects of unfailing interest. James, being a sweet-tempered, tractable child, was often invited to be grandmamma's guest. In after years he had a clear remembrance of sitting by her side and saying his hymns. Our Aunt Pirrie tells a little story of him when he was barely three years old. One day, being with liis grandmother, who was then an invalid—the dear old lady died that same year—to keep him still she gave him a large needle to thread. Presently he left the room, and for some time this excited little notice, but, at length, it was thought well to ascertain where he had disappeared to. All the rooms being searched in vain, it was conjectured that he had slipped uuper- ceived out of the house and gone home. Before inquiring as to this our aunt thought she might go down-stairs to the cellar regions and look there. To her great relief she found him in the wash-house standing below the window, and on asking what he was doing got the simple reply, " Freading my yeedle." The little fellow had been absorbed in this for nearly an hour, which was adduced at the time as an extraordinary instance of childish perseverance. This trifling incident is mentioned simply to show that the perseverance must have been innate, or the outcome of mysterious heredity, for at that tender age he could scarcely have learned it as a duty. Oddly enough too, a little later he chose his future pro- fession. His next older brother William, being of delicate health, often required the care of an uncle by marriage, Dr. Pirrie, afterwards Professor of Surgery in Aberdeen University. Little James, seeing how much this uncle's frequent visits were desired, and the relief he could give the sufferer, thought he would like to follow in his steps, so one day on being asked what he was to be when he became a man—a frequent query to boys—he replied without hesitation, to tlie aniusement of the 7 listeners, though he could only lisp the words, " A dotta." More- over, he stuck to this decision, no doubt encouraged by his parents, with a pertinacity which made it quite understood in the family that this brother's life work was a settled matter. At this time he w^as a slim, small-boned child, witli great deep bluish grey eyes and a capacious forehead. A clergyman, calling on his mother one day, singled him out at once from the others " saying, What wonderful eyes that little boy lias ! There is surely a future before him." About this time too, unfortunately, a certain tinge of super- stition gave a hue to the mind of the impressionabl-e child which tinted it more or less for many years. A young nurse used to frighten him when she put liim to bed by threatening that if he did not keep quiet some one would appear from behind the curtain and carry him off. He would cover his head in terror asking himself who would come, and where would he be taken. When older he could laugh at this mysterious horror, but frankly confessed, even when a young man, to an eerie feeling on finding himself alone in a darkened room. It is not without interest to observe in going on some of the differences between then and now, though little more than a gener- ation has passed.