The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [32]
The hesitancy I felt about that evening’s dinner was not limited to fears of sartorial inadequacy. I would be attending as the Professor’s assistant, my first assignment in that role, and I did not want to bring even the slightest obloquy upon him as a result of my woeful lack of experience in better society. How would I fare at the home of Hiram Benedict, who, in addition to heading the board of trustees of the university, was chairman of the Pennsylvania Merchant Bank? My only knowledge of the manners of the rich had come from books—The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells, or The Europeans by Henry James, Jr….
The Professor’s hansom was a proper affair, crisply lacquered and pulled by an elegant black horse. He looked me up and down as I climbed on board. “Very well turned out,” he said.
I was grateful to the Professor for the sentiment, but I nonetheless continued to feel as though those serving the soup were certain to be more fashionably attired than I. When I noted that I did not feel as if I belonged at a gathering of such eminence, he laughed.
“Eyewash,” he declared. “They are just people, Carroll. You will do wonderfully. Best get used to the rich—this is hardly the last time that you will attend an affair of this sort. Hospitals don’t build themselves, eh? In modern medicine, the ability to chat amiably over dinner is almost as important as recognizing scarlet fever.”
I was relieved to hear that among the guests would be Weir Mitchell and Hayes Agnew, the Professor’s closest friends in Philadelphia. I had met each man previously; perhaps their presence might lend at least a semblance of familiarity to the occasion.
Mitchell, in addition to being one of the world’s leading authorities on nervous diseases, was also a noted novelist and had recently taken to writing poetry, but his manner with patients could be eccentric in the extreme. Once he had been asked to see a woman whose condition was sufficient to convince her attending physician that she was dying. After a cursory examination, Mitchell dismissed everyone from her room, and then walked out himself a few minutes later. Asked whether the patient would live, he replied, “Oh yes, she will be coming out in a moment. I have set her sheets on fire.” When the terrified but obviously robust woman burst out of her room and ran down the hall, Mitchell nodded and said, “There! A clear-cut case of hysteria.”
Agnew, the man who had tried unsuccessfully to oust Burleigh, was an eminent surgeon and esteemed professor of anatomy at the university. Eight years earlier, he had attended James Garfield in a doomed attempt to save the President’s life after the latter had been shot. Just turned seventy, Agnew had recently announced his retirement.
“And then, of course, there will be the women,” the Professor added, mischief playing at the corners of his eyes. “The presence of a couple of bachelors like us will require the balance of two attractive and charming ladies.”
“I’m always happy to share a table with attractive and charming ladies,” I replied without enthusiasm. On Rittenhouse Square, among the millionaires, chatting amiably at dinner might prove daunting. I was certain to be paired with someone who knew less about rural Ohio than I knew about Patagonia.
“As am I,” Dr. Osler agreed, unable to mask his eagerness. “When I arrived in Philadelphia after accepting my chair, everyone seemed quite astonished when I stepped off the train alone. They had somehow gotten the notion that I was a married man. Agnew later told me that he had come to the station more to meet Mrs. Osler than me, because he had been told that she was a Buddhist. I have never quite deduced how that rumor