One of the four physicians hoping to carve up Anne Greene was Ralph Bathurst, a man of many parts.
Born in 1620, he was ordained in 1644 but became a physician with an insatiable curiosity about the many unsolved mysteries of medicine and science so prevalent in the 17th century and today. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1663. But there is another strand to his life and that’s what concerns us.
He matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, graduating with a BA in 1638. He returned to Trinity as President (Master in some colleges) in 1664. He was a good choice. As today, new buildings were needed and his friend Christopher Wren obliged. (Also he was Vice-Chancellor of the university 1673 – 1676.)
Sorry, I’m clumsy with words and not doing Ralph Bathurst justice. John Dryden captures him better in his verse panegyric.
Oft has our poet wish’d, this happy seat Might prove his fading Muse’s last retreat: I wonder’d at his wish, but now I find He sought for quiet, and content of mind; Which noiseful towns, and courts can never know, And only in the shades like laurels grow. Youth, ere it sees the world, here studies rest, And age returning thence concludes it best. What wonder if we court that happiness Yearly to share, which hourly you possess; Teaching even you, while the vex’d world we show, Your peace to value more, and better know? ‘Tis all we can return for favours past, Whose holy memory shall ever last; For patronage from him whose care presides O’er every noble art, and every science guides: Bathurst, a name the learn’d with reverence know, And scarcely more to his own Virgil owe; Whose age enjoys but what his youth deserved, To rule those Muses whom before he served. His learning, and untainted manners too, We find, Athenians, are derived to you: Such ancient hospitality there rests In yours, as dwelt in the first Grecian breasts, Whose kindness was religion to their guests. Such modesty did to our sex appear, As, had there been no laws, we need not fear, Since each of you was our protector here. Converse so chaste, and so strict virtue shown, As might Apollo with the Muses own. Till our return, we must despair to find Judges so just, so knowing, and so kind.
His old college does not forget such a munificent benefactor and hold an annual Ralph Bathurst Society dinner to thank today’s philanthropists. I was a guest on Saturday evening. To digress, I’d never been faced with a whole pineapple and only a fruit knife and fork to make an attack; it came with other fruit alongside the petits fours. I was flummoxed but it had been “prepped”. The top came off and the interior had been sliced and returned to the husk. I was mighty impressed, probably after such a catholic selection of wines. Ralph Bathurst would have been curious about the pineapple although he could have seen one. Charles II imported one from Barbados in 1668 and the event is commemorated in this oil by an unknown artist now in the Royal Collection.
Charles II Presented with a Pineapple
I should make it clear, I was a guest, not a philanthropist. But you’d like to see what the Anatole of the Trinity kitchen conjured up and the sommelier selected.
