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WITH HEALTH A CONSTANT CONCERN to the inhabitants of Highbury, it is not surprising that Highbury's healer, the apothecary Mr. Perry, has an important role in Emma.
"Oh! good Mr. Perry." "My friend Mr. Perry!" (101, 479)
"What are they saying about Mr. Perry?" (479)
"Mr. Perry is extremely concerned." (251)
She . . . had been within half a minute of sending for Mr. Perry. (479)
All this talk of Mr. Perry-but what do we really know of him? We are told, "Mr. Perry was an intelligent, gentlemanlike man, whose frequent visits were one of the comforts of Mr. Woodhouse's life" (19). I will examine the part that Mr. Perry plays in the plot of the novel and discuss a prominent physician whom Austen may have had in mind when she created her village apothecary. Her choice casts an ironic light on Mr. Perry's revered status in Highbury.
Mr. Perry is not only the purveyor of tidings and news, but his "opinion" is shared on all subjects, from the unwholesomeness of wedding cake to the dubious value of sea bathing. He seems to be consulted on all matters of life in Highbury and is even applied to by Mr. Woodhouse to help collect riddles. He becomes a point of comparison in various matters: Mr. Elton is pronounced to be "'precisely the height of Mr. Perry,'" and it is speculated, "'there never was a happier or a better couple than Mr. and Mrs. Perry'" (175).
Mr. Perry is everywhere and nowhere, constantly on the move, walking hastily or riding on horseback-no, Frank, not in a carriage-unless he is parked next to Mr. Woodhouse's hearth. Little wonder that he is bilious, or so says Mr. Woodhouse: "'he has not time to take care of himself-which is very sad-but he is always wanted all round the country'" (101). Mrs. Perry's wish that her husband buy a carriage, "'out of care for his health'" (345), indicates that his practice is profitable enough to justify the expense. One of his frequent stops is to see Jane Fairfax, about whom he is quite uneasy: "He thought she had undertaken more than she was equal to, and that she felt it so herself, though she would not own it" (389). Perhaps...