The Anatomist - Bill Hayes [43]
Carter’s involvement with the spleen project came in two bursts. He created twenty-three paintings and drawings initially, but it wasn’t until April 1852 that the senior Henry again needed his artistic skills. This time, the focus was the spleen in animals. These drawings were done primarily at the Royal College of Surgeons, a two-mile (three-and-a-quarter-kilometer) walk from St. George’s, where Carter worked from the school’s extensive collection of preserved animals. And, no doubt, his knowledge of comparative anatomy proved useful, especially since Gray, by his own admission, had little experience in this branch of anatomy. But what made these drawings unlike any he had ever produced was that, once the batch was completed near the end of June, he got paid. Better than finding a fourth cusp on an aortic valve, this was H. V. Carter’s “first professional engagement” as a medical artist, and Henry Gray had made it possible.
Actually, make that “Henry Gray, F.R.S.”
Gray had been bestowed those three little letters just a few weeks earlier. On June 3, 1852, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a singular honor for a man of just twenty-five. His candidacy had been supported by a long list of Fellows, yet it was really Gray’s own work that had provided his highest recommendation. On earlier occasions, two of his scientific papers—one detailing original research on the development of the human eye, another on the spleen—had been read before the assembled Fellows, then discussed by the group, an experience that must have been as heady the second time as the first. Both papers were accepted for publication in the society’s prestigious journal, Philosophical Transactions. And shortly after being named a Fellow, Gray received a £100 grant from the Royal Society, to be used toward completing his investigations into the spleen, including, presumably, paying for his artist’s efforts.
Carter had recently acquired an impressive set of initials as well. On May 21, the day before his twenty-first birthday, he became a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, having passed the extensive entrance exams. Now certified to practice surgery, Henry Vandyke Carter, M.R.C.S., still had to obtain an apothecary license in order to become a full-fledged physician. The apothecary exams would be coming up in October.
Carter, who had completed his required apprenticeship with Dr. Sawyer earlier in the year, had also moved out of the Sawyer home and acquired a new address. Joined by Joe Carter, who had come to London to study art and, if H.V.’s rantings are to be believed, to torment his older brother, had moved into an apartment on Upper Ebury Street. Though he now lived much closer to Henry Gray’s home, gone were the idle days of old. The demands on their time had become too numerous, Carter with his studies and exam prep, Gray with his many professional obligations and the looming deadline for the Astley Cooper Prize.
When that day finally came, it received a quiet mention in Carter’s diary. “See Gray,” he notes on October 13, 1852. “He has just finished his subject.” If Carter sounds weary, it is for just cause. Six days earlier, he’d “passed the Hall,” meaning he had earned his apothecary license; all his formal schooling was done. And six days hence, he would be setting his London life aside and leaving the country.
OCT. 1852. “19 Tu. Last day in town. Today got passport & ticket. Back just in time to get things together in 2 carpet bags—one Mrs. Loy’s—leaving many important things, amongst others, my Bible, which much regret—”
Mrs. Loy? That’s his landlady.
Why the hasty departure? And where did he go? Well, again, Carter himself does not explain. As is the diarist’s prerogative, he doesn’t have to. The same rule does not apply to the letter writer, thankfully. Letters demand