Within a month he was engaged for a year to an even grander employer, the 5th Duke of Buccleuch and 7^th Duke of Roseberry, owner of Drumlanrig Castle (pictured), near Thornhill in Dumfriesshire, and thus a man who might prove very useful to John and his family. John was to be their physician for the family’s Grand Tour, principally to attend to the health of their children.

The Duke was aged 32 at this time, married to the former Lady Charlotte Anne Thyme, and their children were William Harry, seven, Henry, aged six, Walter, four, Their mother gave birth to another son, Charles the following year. The children were said to be delicate but not ill. John had dinner with the family in London and on the 30^th of November, 1838, joined the family at Dover to proceed to Naples. When he dined with them there, he met the elderly Lord Home, one of the party, and thought him ‘a good-natured specimen of Scotch nobility.’ Tellingly, John decided at once that he would be more at ease on this trip than he had ever been with Lady Clare, even after seven years of travel with her.

Their departure must have been a brave sight. They travelled in five large carriages, each with four horses, John in the children’s party, which occupied three of the carriages. The brothers corresponded regularly during John’s nine month’s absence. Thomas, despite being busy preparing and delivering his public lectures, wrote John immensely long letters about his ideas and affairs. Letters from John came from Dover, Boulogne, Paris and Marseilles as the party drove south. By January of 1839 they had reached Naples. Thomas thought that John’s situation seemed much happier: ‘a certain air of domesticity breathes out of that household.’ John would enjoy a whisky punch with the old Earl (pictured), while the Duke ‘read his Chapter.’ He joined the party in hare hunting. It was very unlike the formality of Lady Clare. And yet Thomas detected that John was ‘vacant at heart’ in his work, although outwardly well and prosperous. Tom sent him the good news that their brother Alex’s Jenny had given birth to a son, named in honour ‘of a certain doctor in foreign parts.’ This eponymous son would become a carpenter in Canada and die there, aged 85, in 1924. John reported that he had again turned down a fee from a patient, refusing the £20 offered. Thomas agreed: ‘You are there as a House –Physician , and have no claim to be paid twice.’ They both hoped that, because the job was going well, something good might come out of the connection in the future.

In May John reported ‘yellow fevers’ in the household. One child in the retinue died in his care, but he was thanked by the parents for his trouble. Thomas was pleased to hear he was busier, and told him that ‘a Physician, where no sickness exists, is like a taper burning in daylight.’

By June the party had started the long journey home, and John wrote from Florence that he was glad to be out of the Roman heat and heading for the German mountains. His young charges were doing well, but his brother sensed he was unhappy with his position – ‘Money alone, or but little else than money!’ He asked John if he had no notion of marrying now.

Home again: what next?

John arrived back in London at the end of July, 1839, travelling from Rotterdam. Thomas by this time was at Templand in Dumfriesshire. He had to arrange to send him money from John’s Dumfries bank account, and transferred a letter of credit for £1220. John now had sufficient capital to give him a modest independent income. Thomas advised him to travel up to Scotland using the steamer from Liverpool to Annanfoot, but John arrived by way of the coach from Preston. They found him a little greyer but otherwise unchanged. John presented Tom with a horse and gig to enable him to drive Jane or his mother about the country. He thought yet again of rejoining Lady Clare but decided against it, and in October a parting gift arrived at Chelsea from Lady Clare, a bulky parcel containing a portable writing desk of Russian leather. John remained in Scotland with the family, and inactive. There was some talk of another jaunt with the Buccleuchs, this time to Lisbon, but nothing came of it.

He came to London in October, with no firm plans, but saying he was ‘heartily sick of wandering.’ He was as busy rushing about as ever, and within a short time he was off to Brighton with a William Coningham, ‘.. a young, very tall, very lean, dyspeptical, gentle hearted, rich and melancholy man…at present in a pitiable state with his stomach disorders, and the dispiritment they may have brought on.’. His experience with his own brother would have helped him with such a patient! After Brighton they went to the Isle of Wight, and there was talk of him spending the winter with this patient, but the New Year brought a more tempting offer.

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