"My eyes swelled beyond my temples, and my mouth beyond my nose, and my ears met at the top of my head; my cheeks - but no power of language can describe them [...] Thus, swollen like a bagpipe, I lay groaning and screaming for many days."Thus spoke Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, a noted Scottish antiquarian, in 1816, when writing to the earl of Leven and explaining his slowness in responding to a letter because of influenza. Much as Sharpe had clearly suffered from his infection, his letter seemed primarily intended to demonstrate his self-deprecating and somewhat crude brand of humour to the earl.
Throughout the long letter Sharpe writes amusingly about his experience, which he blames on overly hot party, and the fact that someone had stolen his coat.
"Lady Campbell of Arkinlass, who has apartments in Holyroodhouse, had the goodness to send me a card for a party ... I went, and after dancing a great deal on a carpet, and in a room hot enough to have baked all the mutton pies in the Cannongate, when I came to make my departure, I found that somebody had made free with my great coat .... I had to walk a good part of the way home in a shower of rain, the consequence of which was such a concatenation of aches in the way of rheumatism as I never before sustained in my life."
The end result was, claims Sharpe, that although "I will make no use of vulgar similitude respecting haggisses or those parts of little children which the wholeseome birch is sometimes wont to visit", his head now resembled that of the Greek goddess Fame (or Pheme), who according to legend had multiple tongues, eyes, ears and feathers.
Despite his lighthearted letter, Sharpe was in fact one of the most learned men of his generation, an editor of volumes for the Bannatyne Club, as well as an artist and connoisseur with a collection that surpassed Walter Scott's in terms of quality: including such famous pieces as Holbein's portrait long thought to be of Margaret Tudor, and eleven of the surviving Lewis Chessmen.
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