The Anatomist - Bill Hayes [81]
“I shall post a copy of the chronology to you tomorrow,” he promises.
Till then, Keith had a single question for me, one that brings a smile to my face: “Are you aware of the link between Henry Gray and Henry Vandyke Carter?”
SIX WEEKS AFTER his mother’s death and eight weeks before the anatomy book was due at the publisher’s, H. V. Carter hit a wall. “I have fallen into a languid state, with occasional fits of despondency and ever-active and vagarious thoughts, ’specially of the future,” he reports to his diary, May 31, 1857. As if making a diagnosis, he adds, “This state is probably somewhat morbid—the result of a single constant, solitary occupation—this drawing on paper and wood.”
That he would blame the book is understandable. For sixteen months now, he and Henry Gray had been toiling away at what, at times, must have seemed like an endless project. Simple math says that Carter had to complete two drawings every three days over the eighteen-month period, though, clearly owing to his talent, there is not a single image in the completed book that looks rushed. Tellingly, Carter writes of drawing as if it were his sole, all-consuming job, when, in fact, he had also been serving as demonstrator of anatomy throughout this period and, since the previous June, as demonstrator of histology, not to mention his tutoring for several hours each day. Calling drawing a solitary occupation, though, was no exaggeration. Save for Saturday afternoons, which he spent with Gray, Carter worked by himself at home, and, he acknowledged, the quiet sometimes got to him. I can well imagine that on Sunday, his one day off, he rejoiced in the fellowship, albeit fleeting, he felt at church.
Gray was just as busy as his collaborator, if not more. He had to produce, on average, ten pages of text every week, on top of holding three separate jobs—lecturer on anatomy, curator of the Anatomy Museum, and surgeon to the St. George’s and St. James’s Dispensary—as well as fulfilling his duties as a member of the Pathological Society Council, the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, and the Royal Society.
One glaring difference between the two Henrys, however, was financial. While Gray was making a handsome living at the hospital, H. V. Carter, by contrast, was not being paid for either of his St. George’s jobs. The histology position came with no salary—he had taken it as a favor to Gray—and, shockingly, as demonstrator of anatomy, he had not been paid a pound in eight months (funding had dried up after his mentor Dr. Hewett retired). The disparity in income between them was even more pronounced in their respective contracts for the book. While Gray would be paid £150 for every thousand copies sold (an arrangement that would ultimately benefit four generations of Grays), Carter, who had negotiated his own contract with the publisher, would receive no royalties, only a onetime fee of £150. Why should he have accepted such an inferior arrangement? To him, it wasn’t—£150 was three times larger than the salary for a demonstrator—but finally, his own naïveté also played a role.
As for why Carter soldiered on at St. George’s, this was partly out of loyalty to Gray, I believe, and partly because he was well suited to soldiering. He also felt, at least initially, that his unpaid work might eventually pay off in his forming the right connections and, should Providence allow, a plum job. But now, he was clearly having second thoughts about staying on at St. George’s. A vacancy for curator of the Pathology Museum had opened up in March—a position equivalent to Gray’s at the Anatomy Museum—but, two months later, Carter still had not decided if he would even apply for it.
“I’m constantly imagining myself in another position—as surgeon in a small country village, or the like,” he confides to his diary. However, faced with endless drawing, he