Memoir of John Murray
Isaac D’Israeli to John Murray, 31 May 1806
Saturday, May 31, 1806.
King’s Road.
My dear Friend,
It is my wish to see you for five minutes this day, but as you
must be much engaged, and I am likely to be prevented reaching you this
morning, I shall only trouble you with a line.
Most warmly I must impress on your mind the necessity of
taking the advice of a physician. Who? You know many. We have heard
extraordinary accounts of Dr. Baillie,
and that (what is more extraordinary) he is not ![]()
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mercenary.
I should imagine that one or two visits will be sufficient to receive some
definite notion of your complaint. It will be a very great point if a medical
man can ascertain this. Do not suppose that it is mere rheumatism which
afflicts you, and bends your whole frame. The expense of a physician is
moderate, if the patient is shrewd and sensible. Five or ten pounds this way
would be a good deal. You also know Dr. Elaine, even
intimately.
I have written this to impress on your mind this point. Seeing
you as we see you, and your friend at a fault, how to decide, and you without
some relative or domestic friend about you, gives Mrs. D’I. and myself very serious concerns—for you
know we do take the warmest interest in your welfare—and your talents and
industry want nothing but health to make you yet, what it has always been one
of my most gratifying hopes to conceive of you.
Yours very affectionately,
Matthew Baillie (1761-1823)
Physician and brother of Joanna Baillie; as successor to the anatomist William Hunter he
treated the pedal deformities of both Walter Scott and Lord Byron.
Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848)
English essayist and literary biographer; author of
Curiosities of
Literature (1791). Father of the prime minister.
Maria D'Israeli [née Basevi] (1775-1847)
Of an Italian-Jewish family, married Isaac D'Israeli in 1802; she was the mother of the
Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli
