The Anatomist - Bill Hayes [25]
Carter had lived in London for two and a half years by this point, and although he did not consider himself as worldly as other Londoners, he had matured considerably. Just working at St. George’s, its wards crowded with the sick and dying, had been a crash course in growing up. Nevertheless, his father still treats him as if he had never left Scarborough. On their third evening together, for instance, he sits his son down and gives him a “lesson and hints” in art, just as he had throughout H.V.’s childhood. I am sure Mr. Carter felt this was a fine way to spend the time. If his son did not, though, I can’t blame him. After all, he no longer considered himself a “student” of drawing; Dr. Hewett and others at St. George’s certainly did not think so. Further, he was working in a completely different style from his father.
Even from a vantage point of a century and a half, it is easy to see that the two Carters are headed for a blowout. Two days later comes the damage report: “Have acted foolishly, hastily and improperly…. Father much put out. Say hard things.” Next comes the silent treatment: Henry Sr. tells Henry Jr. that he does not wish to see him for a few days. By the end of the week, they have made peace, attending church together, but soon thereafter hackles are raised anew. “He, irritable and annoying,” Carter scribbles on the night of Wednesday, June 5. “Self, irritated and hasty.”
If Henry Barlow Carter had kept a diary, I would bet his entry of the same night would have read something like, “He, sullen and ungrateful. Self, short-tempered and harsh.” These two were following a script that’s been played out since the dawn of civilization: teenager wants to be seen as an adult; parent thinks teenager has a long way to go. In a bittersweet final scene, our two protagonists meet the night before the father leaves London, and they reach an accord. With that, “Bade good bye,” the son writes in his diary.
Whether Carter’s father said all the right things or all the wrong things that last night, one thing is certain: the effect on H.V. was galvanizing. Soon after his father’s departure, he added a new “must” to his running list: “Must depend on self.” Within a forty-eight-hour period, he formed the collaboration with Henry Gray and made two telling moves: He designed an elaborate box to hold his art supplies and ordered “calling cards” for himself. “HENRY VANDYKE CARTER, SAINT GEORGE’S HOSPITAL,” they read. With every letter he paid to have printed, it’s as though he were underscoring his new identity: I Am My Own Man.
No doubt about it, Henry Gray, whom Carter always characterizes in glowing terms—“capital worker,” “nice fellow,” an “example of industry and perseverance!”—is the kind of person he aspired to be. Yet it is also clear that Carter was following his own distinct path. For instance, he was studying for an apothecary license, a credential Gray never pursued. To modern ears, apothecary sounds like a quaint synonym for pharmacist or pharmacy, it being one of those odd nouns that applies equally to both a person and a place. And, in fact, in England and in much of Europe from the early to the late Middle Ages, an apothecary was exactly that: a druggist who sold drugs in a retail shop, an apothecary. By the time Carter was in medical school, however, this definition was already antiquated. Being an apothecary was actually more like being a modern-day general practitioner, a doctor with a broad knowledge of diagnosing and treating diseases. Whereas Henry Gray was well on his way toward a career in clinical surgery and research, H. V. Carter ultimately hoped to be a country doctor.
By the summer of 1850, Carter had successfully completed two years of medical school. While he had excelled at anatomy, chemistry, and botany, winning top class prizes in all three subjects, one of his prouder achievements had occurred