The Anatomist - Bill Hayes [59]
“The offer is very tempting and in most respects very advantageous in its consequences.” Still, there is some fine print to consider. Hewett had let him know that, as a member of the staff, Carter would be expected “to ‘do something’ to advance the reputation of the school,” such as publishing a major scientific paper.
“And here’s the rub: Gray has done very much, [he represents] a difficult precedent.” Carter fears he will never measure up. What’s more, he already imagines that people are insinuating, “‘Carter, look at him,’” meaning, Look at what Gray has accomplished, and by this point, it was quite a list. The twenty-eight-year-old multiple prizewinning published author, distinguished anatomy lecturer, and museum curator had most recently been appointed surgeon to the St. George’s and St. James’s dispensary.
Of course, Carter’s concerns have less to do with Henry Gray, per se, than with how he sees himself. As he confides to his diary during a low moment, “Feel that [I] am not fit to ascend the ladder of distinction—must hold it for others.”
But Professor Hewett sees none of this. For heaven’s sake, take the job! he had urged him, even pointing out that the job offer might itself be a Providence. “He reminded me of this,” Carter writes. “I felt quite abashed and do now. Is this prospect from God?”
Henry Gray is equally encouraging. “A conversation with Gray has relieved some anxiety,” he reports on his third day of wavering. Yet it takes another reassuring visit to Gray before he makes a final decision. “In short, the offer will be accepted, though with anxious feelings.”
After all the hand-wringing, he makes a seamless transition from student to staff member, though the job does get off to a quiet start. He is a demonstrator without students to demonstrate to until winter session begins. When Henry Gray commissions him to do a series of drawings, Carter doesn’t hesitate. The subject: microscopic views of bone tissue.
As always, drawing remains perhaps the only aspect of his life over which Carter does not agonize. He purchases a lamp so that he can work in the evenings with his microscope, and he completes all forty illustrations for Gray in about as many days. “Gray called,” he writes on October 7, “and liked very much [my] microscopic drawings.” So much so, apparently, that several weeks later he approaches Carter with a far bigger project, though its scope doesn’t seem to faze him in the least. “Little to record,” Carter reports nonchalantly on November 25, 1855. “Gray made proposal to assist [him] by drawings and in bringing out a Manual of Anatomy for students: a good idea.” (This “Manual” is the book that would come to be known as Gray’s Anatomy. But that’s jumping far ahead. At this point, Carter hasn’t the foggiest idea of what fate has in store.) “Did not come to any plan,” he adds, noting only that, for this project, he would not simply be the artist. He and Gray would be collaborating on the dissections.
Two weeks go by before Carter brings up the subject again, this time in oddly formal language, even for someone as formal as Carter. It reads as if he were submitting a petition for God’s approval rather than writing a diary entry: “An employment has been offered by one of the Lecturers, a young man whose character as a man of science furnishes all needful example, which will both be profitable for body and mind and enable me to exercise the power of drawing which is perhaps my main and best standing point.” Terms of the arrangement had been discussed. “Mr. Gray has acted fairly,” Carter reports, “and probably £150 might be gained within the next 15 months.”
Still, he has yet to accept the offer, and not because of nerves. Rather, he was praying about it every night, seeking God’s guidance, waiting for a sign. And then, just before Christmas, he realizes that the sign is already before him—the proposal itself.
“Renewed conversation with Gray as to the proposed ‘Manual of Anatomy,’ which am to illustrate,” H. V. Carter records on December 22, 1855. “May end in something. Gray shrewd,