Notes on Dr. Henry Caldwell
Dr. Henry Caldwell of Bath (c. 1795–1878) was Bradbury Bennet’s closest, and arguably only, true friend. A practical and well-respected physician, Caldwell appears throughout the diaries as a voice of compassionate reason, serving as both an intellectual sounding board and a gentle anchor to the world of human affairs that Bennet so often held at a distance.
A Friendship of Opposites
Their relationship, which seems to have begun during their university years or shortly thereafter, was a classic friendship of complementary opposites. Where Bennet was a detached observer committed to pure, unadulterated evidence, Caldwell was a man of science tempered by a physician’s daily exposure to the complexities of human suffering and hope. Their long, sherry-fuelled conversations, which Bennet frequently records, were a recurring intellectual dance.
Bennet’s journal entry of 16 May 1848 captures this dynamic perfectly:
Caldwell visited this afternoon. We debated the new theories concerning the miasma. I presented the available data on water contamination, which points to a clear, mechanical vector for cholera. He did not disagree with the facts, but added, with a weary sigh, that a frightened populace will sooner trust a comforting falsehood than a terrifying truth. “You seek the cause, Bennet,” he said, “while I must treat the consequence, which is often a case of pure, unadulterated fear.” He is a good man, though I fear his profession forces him to make too many allowances for human irrationality.
The Benevolent Provocateur
Caldwell was one of the few people permitted to gently mock Bennet’s intellectual pursuits without causing offence. He often referred to Bennet’s collection of eccentrics and pseudoscientists as his “menagerie of human oddities” and playfully accused him of studying mankind as if it were a “particularly puzzling species of beetle.”
It was Caldwell’s pragmatic persistence that resulted in the only known likeness of Bennet. Knowing his friend would never willingly sit for a portrait, Caldwell shrewdly framed the 1852 calotype session in Taunton as a “contribution to the scientific record,” an argument he knew Bennet would find difficult, though not impossible, to refute. The resulting photograph, which Caldwell kept, bears his triumphant inscription on the reverse: “A rare specimen, captured at last.”
A Link to the Wider World
While Bennet remained cloistered at The Larches, Dr. Caldwell’s practice in Bath kept him connected to the wider social and intellectual currents of the day. He often served as Bennet’s source for news of new scientific publications, medical debates, and the latest society fads that had migrated west from London. It was likely Caldwell who first brought Dr. Alistair Finch’s mesmerist pamphlets to Bennet’s attention.
Unlike Bennet’s epistolary friends, Mrs. Finch and Mr. Thorne, who shared his sense of intellectual isolation, Dr. Caldwell was a man thoroughly engaged with the world. He represents in the diaries the essential tension between Bennet’s pure, abstract rationalism and the messier, more compassionate realities of lived human experience. He was, in essence, the control in Bennet’s lifelong experiment in observation—the constant, good-humoured reminder of the humanity Bennet sought to catalogue.
Editor’s Note: The affection and respect Bennet held for Dr. Caldwell are evident throughout the journals, even when filtered through his characteristic irony. Caldwell’s letters, of which only a few survive in the archive, are warm and direct, often beginning with a jovial “My Dear Stoic.” Their friendship provides a crucial humanizing element to Bennet’s character. - Dr. E. Reed