464
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL JUNE 12, im
Writing to his friend Mr. Arden from
Munich on 15 Sept., 1764, Garrick remarks
(ibid. vol. i. p. 175) :
" By the greatest good luck Turton was our fellow-traveller to this place, and would not stir from me till his great care had made me able to pursue my journey to Augsburgh, which we intend to do to-morrow, when he will turn off for Batisbon and to Vienna."
Turton, as yet only a young man of twenty-eight, had in 1761 obtained a Radcliffe travelling fellowship at University College, Oxford, and begun to study medicine at Leyden. * A warm tribute is paid him by the Rev. Thomas Kennedy, a Catholic priest, in a letter to Garrick, dated from Munich, 26 Aug., 1766 (ibid., vol. i. p. 238) :
" I have heard nothing from our good friend Mr. Turton, since he left us ; I am afraid he will have much ado to bring his bones back to England, his constitution being so broke. I am really sorry for it, for I love him, and he deserves to be beloved as a learned and worthy gentleman ; the only fault I find in him is, that he hath too much faith in physic, and thereby I am afraid he will ruin the remainder of his health by making too much use of it."
On 17 Jan., 1767, John Wilkes writes to Garrick from Paris, sending his letter by 'Turton, then about to start for England {ibid., vol. i. p. 249). The young physician, now making very rapid advance in his profession, is mentioned in a letter of Lord Mansfield's to Garrick on 23 March, 1768 (ibid., vol. i. p. 295) :
" I shall always be extremely glad of the pleasure of seeing you : our friend Dr. Turton has promised me to prevail upon you to do me the favour to dine with me, when you have a little leisure."
On 19 May, 1768, Lord and Lady Mans- field send a formal note to Dr. Turton, desiring him to " engage Mr. and Mrs. Garrick to name some day next week to do them the favour to dine with them at Kenwood " (ibid., vol. i. p. 301).
In August of the same year we find Dr. Turton attending his patient Lord Edward Bentinck ; and also acting as temporary medical adviser to Sir Charles Whitworth during an illness ('Mrs. Delany's Autobio- graphy and Correspondence,' ed. Lady Llano ver, 1862, vol. iv. pp. 152-3). From a letter of Mrs. Delany's to Viscountess Andover on 25 Sept., 1776, it appears that "' Dr. and Mrs. Turton " had recently been
"It is wonderful how little good Radcliffe's
travelling fellowships have done," said Johnson
not many months before his death (Hill's ' Bos
well,' vol. iv. p. 293).
tier guests at Bulstrode. " Dr. Turton's
arescriptions soon abated my fever," remarks
- he same excellent lady in a letter dated
1 March, 1777 (ibid., vol. v. p. 289) ; and in a letter of 20 June, 1777, received by her
- rom the Hon. Mrs. Frances Evelyn Bos-
- awen, Dr. Turton is also mentioned. On
10 Jan., 1778, she speaks to a friend of Dr. Turton having " renounced " her (ibid., vol. v. p. 341) ; and in her will, made a tew weeks later, on 22 Feb., she leaves him ten guineas to buy a ring (ibid., vol. vi. p. 488).
The Rev. John Warner, writing to his friend George Selwyn on 16 Nov., 1779, expresses a hope that he may soon be well mough to be moved to London ; and, dis- satisfied with his treatment by local doctors, says that he " must hear what Turton and a surgeon will say to it" ('George Selwyn and his Contemporaries,' by J. H. Jesse, 1844, vol. iv. p. 301).
Mrs. Thrale writes as follows to Dr. Johnson on 20 Aug., 1780 (' Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D.,' by Hester Lynch Piozzi, 1788, vol. ii. p. 184) :-
" That your two Sultanas are sick is very uncomfortable for you* ; may be Dr. Turton may do them good : I never saw Dr. Turton, but my heart, like Clarissa's, naturally leans towards a physician."
Horace Walpole alludes to Turton in several of his letters, the earliest reference being on 26 Oct., 1781, in a letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory (' Walpole' s Letters,' ed. Mrs. Paget Toynbee, vol. xii. p. 70).-
" I have heard a very indifferent account of poor Mr. Morrice from Lady Margaret Compton, who says Dr. Turton has a bad opinion of him."
Writing three days later to Sir Horace Mann, he repeats this information rather more fully (ibid., vol. xii. p. 76) :
" I have heard lately a melancholy account of poor Mr. Morrice. I do not know that he is worse since he went to Bath, but Dr. Turton his physician, I am told, has a bad opinion of him. Still I do not rely entirely on that opinion."
And on 27 Jan., 1782, he writes to the Rev. William Cole in reference to his gout (ibid., vol. xii. pp. 150-51) :
" Next to the bootikins, I ascribe much credit to a diet-drink of dock-roots, of which Dr. Turton asked me for the receipt, as the best he had ever seen, and which I will send you if you please."
- This refers to the illness of Mrs. Desmoulins
and Anna Williams, which Johnson had mentioned in recent letters to Mrs. Thrale.
