Guest Post: What Happened to Dr. Dickson, First Librarian of Dun's Library?

Dun's Library, Royal College of Physician of Ireland Dr Stephen Dickson (1761-1799), the first librarian of the Trinity Medical School, is known today mostly for losing many of the library's rare and valuable books, after which he "disappeared from Dublin".[i] Already dismissed from his position as King’s Professor in 1797 for neglect of duties[ii], he was then deprived of his Fellowship of the College of Physicians for having ‘been absent from the meetings of the College for two years without leave.”[iii]  It is not surprising that he was unable to attend meetings in Dublin, given that he had emigrated to Quebec in October, 1798.  Dickson's time in Canada was very brief, but he made a contribution to early Canadian literature: a handsomely bound long poem published by John Neilson, entitled The Union of Taste and Science (1799).[iv] The poem appears to be part of Dickson's attempt to repair his fortunes: towards that aim he also produced a small pamphlet, Considerations on the Establishment of a College in Quebec for the Instruction of Youth in Literature and Philosophy (1799), in which he stated: "I can only propose in the infantile and unendowed state of the college of Quebec, the humble but zealous offering of my own exertions... Were I not apprehensive that without this part of my proposal every thing else might end in languid speculation, I should never have risqued [sic] incurring the suspicion of self-sufficiency, (which I deprecate as truly foreign from my feelings).[v] Entry in a catalogue of books of Sir Patrick Dun's Library from 1800, which  notes those books which had been 'lost by Dr Dickson' (RCPI/8/1/2/1/2) In spite of advertising his many qualifications, including former State Physician of Ireland, on the pamphlet’s first page, Dickson experienced only indifference and suspicion from Quebec officials.   The lieutenant-governor of Quebec, Robert Prescott commented, “It does not appear to me that this Country is yet Ripe for such an Establishment.”[vi]  Worse, the very qualifications Dickson boasted about led Prescott and other paranoid British officials to conclude that, “…from Circumstances that have taken place in Ireland…and from the retired manner in which he lives compared with what might be expected of a man in that station of Life—added to the Extraordinary Circumstances of a man in such eligible Situation in his own Country to seek his Fortune among strangers, I am induced to suspect that he may be actuated from motives different from any that he may be expected to avow.”[vii]   Dickson’s position in Quebec was made more precarious by the Quebec Attorney-General William Osgoode’s belief that he was a United Irish Leader, namely “Dr. Dickson, the noted Irish partisan of whom such honorable mention is made in the Report of the Secret Committee of both Houses in Ireland…[who] came here under every Circumstance of Suspicion.”[viii]  Dickson unfortunately shared a surname with Dr. William Steele Dickson, a Presbyterian minister and the adjutant-general of the United Irish rebels in Co. Down.  Even Dickson’s poem, a fulsome encomium to Robert and Lady Prescott and an endorsement of British scientific and military achievements, could not allay Quebec officials’ existing fears of Irish collusion with French and American rebels in North America.  Osgoode noted cynically that “Doctor Dickson…in return for Three Dinners a week at the chateau…wrote a poem called The Union of Science and Taste [sic] and talked of Prescott’s reflecting ‘Lustre on the Throne.’  He took care to be off Scampato! alla fuga! before any intelligence respecting him could be received from home.” Osgoode added that Upper Canada lieutenant-governor Peter Hunter “regretted he had not stayed a little longer.” [ix]   It was well that he hadn’t, since General Hunter’s previous posting had been in Ireland, where he had been known for impaling the heads of executed United Irishmen on gates.[x]  Consequently, Dickson spent a fruitless six months in Quebec under government surveillance. Typescript note on the life of Dr Dickson (Kirkpatrick Index, RCPI) Before departing for the United States, Dickson may have sold off many of his personal effects, including his books, as suggested by a telling and rather poignant document: a “Catalogue of Mr. Dickson’s Books,” described as “a large collection of valuable books, the property of a gentleman gone to England.”[xi]  (This catalogue may refer to another man entirely, since Dickson never returned to the British Isles; however, in his pamphlet Dickson had offered to donate his books to the Quebec college he wished to found).  These books may have been Dickson’s own, since he actively subscribed to many significant publications while in Dublin, or they may have been the missing books with which Dickson is believed to have “absconded”.[xii] Unfortunately no copies of this catalogue, which could have solved a major Irish bibliographical mystery, appear to have survived. Dickson landed in South Carolina, and historical memoirs recall lectures in Chemistry given at the Charleston library “by Dr. Dickson, an Irish gentleman, who was said to be very accomplished.”[xiii]  With a gift for incredibly bad timing, however, Dickson arrived in Charleston at the onset of a yellow fever epidemic.  By the end of September 1799, the South Carolina City Gazette  had reported the deaths of “Dr. Stephen Dickson, Fellow of the College of Physicians of Ireland, formerly State Physician of Ireland,” his ten-year-old son, also named Stephen, and his wife.[xiv]  First page of A Letter from Doctor Dickson to his Medical Brethren Relative to the  School of Physic in this Kingdom (Dublin, 1795), which was published two years  before Dr Dickson's departure from RCPI and Ireland (RCPI Library, KP1834)  Dickson should not be remembered only for his professional incompetence and spectacularly bad luck. His Canadian legacy includes two publications dedicated to cultivating learning, especially "Taste and Science" in a new country, values consistent with his lifelong participation in educational and cultural societies, including the Royal Irish Academy, of which he was a founding member. His obituary holds the kindest and fairest last words on Dr Stephen Dickson: characteristically, he had "been arrested by the fatal messenger while engaged in pursuits calculated to infuse the highest kind of knowledge in the rising generation, in accomplishing which the force of his superior genius and attainments, softened by ease and affability were such as gained him the esteem of all who knew him...In a word, a man of science is snatched from Carolina".[xv]