What Killed Jane Austen?: And Other Medical Mysteries (20 page)

The death in 1994 of a British politician who was found dressed in women’s stockings, and who had suffocated while allegedly engaging in some sort of solitary sexual burlesque brought attention to such goings on, especially when they involved prominent people. Such activities are almost certainly not as uncommon as we may think.

Percy Grainger was born in Melbourne in 1882, and showed exceptional musical talent from early childhood. He became one of the foremost pianists of this century and probably Australia’s most highly regarded composer (‘Handel in the Strand’, ‘Country Gardens’, etc.). On top of this he at once led an eccentric private existence and extroverted public life.

Grainger’s father, John, was an architect, but also an alcoholic and syphilitic. Percy himself did not have the disease, but his mother, Rose, did. Although she doted on the talented boy, Rose feared he would follow his father’s decline, so she horsewhipped him when he showed signs of straying from his piano practice.

Out of this there developed a most unusual relationship of mutual dependency between mother and son. She managed both his professional and private life, and though an incestuous relationship has been speculated upon, the many letters each left seem to exclude this. Suffering from neurosyphilis, Mrs Grainger committed suicide in 1922.

The harsh discipline and perverse ambience of his childhood, buoyed by a fancy for literature associated with cruelty, had directed Percy’s sexual urges along an abnormal path: sadomasochism. From the age of 16, ‘wildness, recklessness and unbridled savagery were the keynotes of his existence … guilt and shame had little place in his life’ as his biographer John Bird puts it.

So diligent was he in beating himself—or getting others to do so—that blood usually flowed, and he laundered his own shirts to conceal the evidence. Girlfriends were drawn into these activities, and pleasure heightened by recording the excesses on film. As mute testimony, he would hold up to the camera a notice with details of the kind of whip used, number of lashes as well as type of film and exposure on which it had been recorded!

In 1928 Grainger married Ella Strom, a Swedish artist and poet, the ceremony taking place at the Hollywood Bowl. Ella was under the impression that this was a kind of secluded glade and was astounded to find herself taking the vows in front of 28,000 people to the accompaniment of a 126-strong choir and orchestra performing her husband’s new piece, ‘To A Nordic Princess’. That’s style for you.

The beatings continued, and shared sessions with his wife became so violent the musician felt it prudent to deposit a letter indicating that should death in either follow a bout of flogging, that, in fact, to him flagellation was the highest manifestation of love.

Both survived the onslaught, however, and Percy died of carcinoma of the prostate at the age of 78.

Quite apart from all this self-inflicted brutality, Percy Grainger showed a remarkable lack of proportion, an exaggerated emotionalism and a flamboyant eccentricity. He bequeathed his skeleton to the Percy Grainger Museum ‘for preservation and possible display’. Some of his whips are also in the museum’s collection.

Such characteristics were quite unlike those displayed by our second flagellating VIP. Indeed, this second man was looked upon as the very model of Victorian virtue, piety and rectitude.

He was William Ewart Gladstone, four times British prime minister, over 60 years in Parliament, unexcelled at verbal reticulation and master of the subordinate clause.

In 1839, at the age of 29, Gladstone married Catherine Glynne. She was to bear him eight children and provide him with a secure home base. It was said she was a woman of wit, charm and complete discretion, which is just as well for all his life Gladstone kept a diary in which he wrote about ‘wounds from his secret conflict’.

In 1843, at the age of 34, he speculated in his diary as to ‘how far satisfaction … delighting in pain may be a true phenomena of the human mind’. And then on 13 January 1849 he confided, ‘having been much tempted … I made a slight application of a new form of discipline … how thankful ought I to be if I should find it to so continue’.

Regrettably for him, gratification declined and he confessed it was becoming a convenient cover for ‘unabated impurity’. He tentatively recommended to himself, via the diary, that rescue work among prostitutes may lift the effect.

So Gladstone became a member of an Anglo-Catholic group which did a variety of ‘good works’ among the underprivileged; the saving of ‘fallen women’ he saw as his contribution.

Thus in 1851 he got out into the world of the demimonde, where, incredibly, he distributed copies of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
as a suitably uplifting tract. Whether he partook of these women’s professional charms is not certain, and vehemently denied later by his children, but in July he noted he ‘trod the path of danger’.

His thoughts not being always altruistic, he felt shame at their sexual content, a feeling he gratifyingly found best overcome by self-flagellation. Flogging sessions would be indicated in the diary not by a word, but a drawing of a whip.

Gladstone particularly sought the company of a young woman called Elizabeth Collins, and she is written up many times with tantalising vagueness. For instance, on 13 July 1851 he enigmatically wrote of a two-hour ‘strange and humbling scene’. Naturally, it led to the scourge.

To the statesman, Elizabeth was ‘lovely beyond measure’. Indeed, her attractions were enough to make him take early leave of a dinner given by Lord Palmerston in order to spend two hours with her; to be followed, of course, by the chastening whip. I wonder what Palmerston and his guests would have made of it if they had known.

Gladstone was both smitten and unnerved by Miss Collins, and after 17 meetings of mixing ‘impurity’ and ‘rescue’, he wondered if it were not unlawful. It took an unconscionable time for the politician to make up his mind and he confided to his diary that, paradoxically, the beatings were as much an encouragement as a deterrent for impure temptation. For a man in his position the moral conflict must have been considerable. Nevertheless, when dear Miss Collins migrated to Australia the chance to stop was allowed to slip and she was replaced by others.

Twice at least he was recognised. With one, blackmail was threatened. Gladstone, fearing for his public credibility, sued, won, and the blackmailer got 12 months’ hard labour!

The other was even more embarrassing. A well-intentioned but unthinking observer sent a letter to
The Times
, no less, saying he had seen an elderly man annoying two ladies, but as he recognised the gent to be Gladstone, realised he must have been acting with the ‘highest honour’!

If those in the public eye find gratification in behaviour which is liable to outrage middle-class morality, better they keep it under wraps; contemporary attitudes may prove to be less tolerant than was the case with W.E. Gladstone or G.P. Grainger.

(JL)

In January 1995 Lady Elliot of Harewood died in England at the age of 90. Not a stupendous age nowadays, but two facets of her life made her remarkable. First, she was the first woman—apart from a queen—ever to speak in the House of Lords. Second, and more interestingly as a contributor to medical history, her father was born as long-ago as 1823, when Napoleon was only two years dead and Beethoven finally became stone deaf. More than that, her grandfather was born in 1768, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and while Dr Johnson and Mozart were in full flight. So, incredibly, it took 227 years to complete three generations.

The ‘oldest of the old’ are a fascinating group of people; they are vintage models representing the most indestructible members of society. Mind you, in times past, ages were often exaggerated due to lack of records or poor memory or financial gain.

For instance, Thomas Parr was reputed to have been 152 when he died in 1635. Despite any doubts which may have been harboured, in his dotage he was well regarded enough to have his portrait painted and later hung in the then new Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It is still there over 300 years on. William Harvey examined the body but wisely made no comment on the age.

Englishman Thomas Cam was born in 1471 and was said to have lived through 10 complete reigns until he died aged 207. Actually, on careful examination, the figure 2 has been superimposed over 1 on his tombstone.

It was not until the 1830s that the recording of dates of births became compulsory in Western countries and we got some order into things.

According to the
Guinness Book of Records
(1994 edition), the oldest person authentically recorded in Australia was Caroline Maud Mockridge. She was born on 11 December 1874 and died aged 112 years 330 days on 8 November 1987. In 1992 there were about 1,500 centenarians in Australia.

For years it was claimed that the oldest person ever to have survived with provable dates was a man from a remote Japanese island. Born in 1865, he died in 1986 aged 120 years and 237 days. He worked on the farm until he was 105, took up smoking at the age of 70 and attributed his long life to ‘God, Buddha and the Sun’ (not smoking, thank goodness). But even this great age has been superseded by a grand old lady, Jeanne Calment. She lived in Arles, France, and was born in 1875. As a girl she met Vincent Van Gogh, whom she described as ‘scruffy’. She died in 1997 aged 122.

Famous people who have cracked the 100 are Grandma Moses, the ‘Primitive Painter’ from America, who died aged 101, and Irving Berlin, the composer, also 101 at the end. Comedian George Burns at 97 said he could not die—he’s booked. He eventually succumbed in 1996 at the age of 100 years and two months.

The last surviving soldier of the American Civil War died in 1959, 94 years after it had finished. According to the
Weekly Telegraph
of February 1994, the oldest working man in Britain was a 94-year-old motorcycle repair man in Birmingham who planned to ride his bike to see the Queen on his 100th birthday.

The 20th century has seen a dramatic increase in Western average life expectancy, from about 47 in 1900 to about 74.5 in males and 80 in females in the late 1990s. It has been postulated that if the body could retain its teenage physiology we could live for about 700 years. Though there are grounds for believing there is a finite lifespan, it may be longer than currently thought.

Though improving health status and independence are allowing more people to survive into very old age (over 85), there are no signs yet of any extension of the upper limit of human life. Between 1981 and 1991 the number of centenarians in the UK doubled, a trend projected to accelerate. In 1992 there were about 40,000 centenarians recorded worldwide, only 22 per cent of whom were men. It may be women encounter fewer hazards, such as war, work accidents, smoking and heart disease. Further, perinatal and some bacterial-caused mortality is greater in the male; perhaps the immune response is different in each.

Genetic influences, immune response, stress levels and environmental aspects contribute to the prolongation of life. All are factors which could account for the disproportionate number of grand seniors in three unique areas of the world.

Abkhazia, Georgia, in southern Russia between the Black and Caspian seas has always been on the crossroads of history and is well known for its centenarians. By contrast, Hunza, between Kashmir and Afghanistan, and Vilcabamba, Ecuador, in the Andean foothills breed their champions in remote splendour.

Documentation is rare, so years are estimated by major events—marriage, war service, heavy winters and so on. Correlating all factors, researchers have found discrepancies. For instance, a father’s age may have been used to avoid military service and then retained.

Nonetheless, old age is a proved and common characteristic of the areas, and to the accepted theories have been added: pace of life (compare the giant tortoise with an average age of 120), physical activity, diet, and lack of self-abuse with drugs including nicotine, alcohol and the like. What has never been found is a fountain of magical spring water.

The longest living things of all are, of course, trees, the leader being a Bristlecone pine in Nevada at a verified 4,900 years.

Fascinating stories of distant personal contacts occasionally occupy the correspondence columns of
The Times
. Each tries to outdo the others. My only claim is that as a boy I (JL) met a man who had sat through the whole of the first ever Test Match in 1877! Or so he said.

Perhaps author Antonia Fraser has the best story. She recounts how as a child in Oxford in the 1930s she had met people who had known Dr Martin Routh of Magdalen College. He died in 1854 aged 99, and claimed that when young he had known an old lady who as a girl had seen Charles II walking his spaniels. As Charles died in 1685, this time stretch vies with that of Lady Elliot; perhaps akin to the tenuous contact in the song ‘I danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales’.

Can anyone challenge it?

(JL)

It’s not the men in my life that counts—it’s the life in my men (Mae West)

Have you heard of the man whose lifelong ambition was to live to be 90 and then be shot dead by a jealous husband?

Alchemy, body-freezing, virgin’s blood and snake venom are just a few of the devices we have used in our quest for a vigorous long life.

Movie actor George Burns’s formula was optimism: ‘With a little luck, there’s no reason why you can’t live to be 100. Then you’ve got it made, because very few people die over 100.’ And of course, Burns did make 100. Englishwoman Edith Beck would have made a good match for George Burns; on her 103rd birthday, she decided to look after her health and give up smoking. At 117, Leliai Omar Bin Datuk Panglima of Malaysia cycled 43 kilometres to marry his 40-year-old fiancée (his 18th wife)!

Many cultures hold that humans were once immortal. Tithonus, the Trojan, loved Eos, the goddess of dawn. She persuaded Zeus to make Tithonus immortal, but forgot to ask for his eternal youth. In the end, poor old Tithonus could only sit babbling in a locked room, so she changed him into a grasshopper.