‘but my throat no better’
Left Paris
by 11.50 from Gare du Nord. Nice warm day, but my throat
no better. arr: home 7.30. Found the house fresh & clean and
delightful as usual after an absence. Bend: waiting for me at
Victoria. didn’t go out again.
It’s 1900. Today Sullivan is returning home to London from a month’s stay in Thusis (in modern-day Switzerland). In the past few years, Thusis has become one of Sullivan’s favorite small, quiet towns, with few distractions for him. In the previous year he wrote most of The Rose of Persia there.
He arrived in Thusis, ready to work, on 22 August. The next day he noted, “Wrote to [Basil] Hood (asking for more words)”. Hood had Sullivan freshly supplied one week later. They are working on their second collaboration, The Emerald Isle, hoping to build on the success of Rose of Persia—Sullivan’s first big success since his break-up with Gilbert. He works well for a few days, but on 26 August comes a warning sign, “felt very seedy – bile I suppose.” Seedy is a word Sullivan often uses to express a general bad feeling. The bile, I believe, was more ominous. But Sullivan shook it off, and worked and walked well into September.
On 7 September, more problems arise. “Working at composition, but head very bad – couldn’t do anything.” By “head very bad” Sullivan meant he was having intense head pains. He writes to Helen Carte:
My dear Helen,
I have been here [Thusis] over a fortnight working hard and fairly successfully. The first act is done (barring a few details which I must settle with Hood before giving to Baird) and I should have had it all framed and dispatched to England before now if I hadn’t been stopped these last few days by something which I think you especially can sympathize with, and that is violent neuralgia.
I have never had it before, and wish I had not had it at all. It takes the form of violent headache with deadening pain all down the side of my face, and renders me incapable of even writing a letter when it comes on, which happens five or six times a day. It has almost entirely stopped my work for five days, for it invariably comes on when I begin to write.
In a weird occurrence which I am not yet able to explain, Sullivan also records that a Warren de la Rue arrived en route for England. The weird part is that Mr. de la Rue is carrying a “Neurophone” which he gives to Sullivan. “Capital little electric machine – does wonders in allaying the pain. I have had this neuralgia since Monday [3 September] – it is very worrying & prevents my working.” Who is Warren de la Rue and how does he happen to be carrying an electric pain relief device on that very day? There’s a story here, somewhere.
Sullivan’s head pains subside after a few days, and he gets back to work. But on 16 September, he leaves Thusis for Paris. He doesn’t record the reason for this return in his diary. He spends only two days in Paris, and doesn’t write anything about them. Then on this day, 19 September, 1900, Arthur Sullivan leaves his beloved Paris for the last time.
He seems happy to be back home; his secretary and friend Wilfred Bendall meets him at Victoria Station. But he also notes “my throat no better”. This is his first mention of a sore throat that will never heal. He also mentions it in a letter to Helen Carte from around this time. Helen asked Sullivan if he could appear at the opening night of the first Patience revival in November. Sullivan declines, and tells Helen “I am regularly bowled over – kidneys and throat [emphasis mine]”.
By 30 September, Sullivan’s throat is so inflamed, “I could not speak at least so as to be heard”.
Arthur Sullivan died in the early morning of 22 November, 1900, aged 58. Dr. Buckston Browne, his physician for many years, signed the death certificate, noting the cause of death as ‘bronchitis, 21 days; cardiac failure’. Sullivan could hardly have chosen a better doctor in his day, as Sir Buckston Browne (known as “BB” in the diaries) is today considered an important pioneer of modern urology.
However, Browne practiced in a world before the germ theory of disease. Today we know that severe neuralgia, confusion, and acid reflux (GERD) are symptoms of end-stage renal failure.