Doctor’s Orders

My aunt sent me this picture from Ireland last week, along with a note saying that it hung for years in the dispensary (doctor’s office) in Louth Village. My grandfather was the village doctor from about 1930 until, literally, the day he died: He dropped dead of a heart attack in 1985, at the age of 85, while on a house call.

Grandpa was the Platonic ideal of a village doctor. He started his practice in the days before there was a test for everything, so he had to be a good listener. He had a hearty, reassuring way about him: “Totally normal,” he used to say to most minor complaints. And because he came from the area, he knew everyone’s family history for generations. This gave him considerable insight not only into his patients’ health but also into human nature. “Life is a struggle between the church and the hormones,” I heard him observe at dinner one day, “and the hormones usually win.”

He even looked the part of the country doctor, strolling through the village in the warm weather in a white suit and straw hat. And although Ireland has national health insurance, his patients still brought strawberries and chickens to the house.

The dispensary was in my grandparents’ house, which was actually owned by the government. Patients came to the front door, and one of my duties when we were visiting was to let them in and settle them on a chair in the front hall. I remember one night the family was rousted out of bed by knocking on the door; a motorcyclist had hit a tree on a curve just beyond my grandparents’ house. Grandpa got dressed and went out, but there was nothing he could do. The man was already dead.

The print is part of my legacy from my Aunt Eleanor, who shared Grandpa’s practice and took it over when he died. The artist is Mabel Lucie Attwell, who specialized in plump children doing cute things. (This is actually less cute than her other work, at least the things I have seen.) My mother’s family were big fans of hers. I remember having a Mabel Lucie Attwell annual when I was growing up, and when I went through my mother’s papers after she died, I found Mabel Lucie Attwell cards that she and her sisters had sent back and forth when they were in their 20s.

The picture is a bit buckled and grimy, reminders that it hung for years in a house that was heated only by coal fires. Most people don’t know what it’s like to live without central heating, even in a fairly temperate climate like Ireland’s. For one thing, nothing ever dries out completely, which means the sheets are always clammy and paper often feels limp. (Perhaps that’s why the cook, Mrs. Finnegan, used to iron the newspapers.) And the coal fires bring soot and smells with them. Coal smoke is my Proustian madeleine. In my grandparents’ house we burned two kinds of coal, bituminous and anthracite, one in the fireplace and one in the stove, and going out to refill the coal scuttle was another of my jobs when I was over there. This could be fairly intimidating at night, when the coal shed was pitch black.

I haven’t figured out where exactly I’m going to hang this picture, but it will have to have pride of place somewhere. The subject matter, the artist, even the grit trapped inside the glass, all are reminders of things too important to forget.