Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. Daniel Stashower

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СКАЧАТЬ glorious victory. They got 111 runs and we got 276, of which I contributed 51. When I reside at Edinburgh, I would like to enter some cricket club there. It is a jolly game, and does more to make a fellow strong and healthy than all the doctor’s prescription in the world. I think I could take a place in the eleven of any club in Edinburgh, for next year I will be in the Stonyhurst eleven, and it is stronger than any of Edinburgh.

      What a wonderful swimmer Tottie is, I expect to find her some sort of a mermaid, when I come home. I wonder why it is that my progress is so much slower than hers, it is not for the want of a will, I am sure, for one of my greatest ambitions is to be a good swimmer.

      I am getting very rich now, what with Papa’s and uncle’s liberality. You must thank them both from me. Perhaps since I have such abundance you will send me 2/, before June the 18^th. For on that day we go to Preston to see a great cricket match played there, and we will have to find our own dinners I fear.

      I don’t know whether I told you last letter about my success in schools, but I got second in schools this term, and did better in every respect than last term.

      Conan Doyle may not have been the poorest boy at Stonyhurst, but he was surely in the bottom drawers, even if welcome little gifts of cash from his father and one of his uncles raised him temporarily from the ranks of the truly poverty-stricken. Lack of funds would haunt him for many more years, until success as a writer finally changed not only his own circumstances, but the rest of the family’s.

      Returning to Stonyhurst for his final year, Conan Doyle, now fifteen years old, knew it was time to begin thinking of the future. Although his academic performance had been impressive the previous year, some of his teachers still regarded him as a willful and not especially promising prospect. ‘One master,’ he recalled, ‘when I told him that I thought of being a civil engineer, remarked, ‘Well, Doyle, you may be an engineer, but I don’t think you will ever be a civil one.’ Another assured me that I would never do any good in the world, and perhaps from his point of view his prophecy has been justified.’

      to Mary Doyle STONYHURST

      We had a very pleasant journey and very pleasant companions. We saw Melrose Abbey very well indeed. It is a high massive building, and stands out prominantly among the little houses with which it is surrounded.

      We arrived at Preston about five o’clock. We went to the Red Lion, and there we got a big waggonette. The old coach proprietor is dead, and the new one made us pay 3/6 a head. There were 34 of us so he must have made a lot of money.

      We have a new master, a jolly fellow much better than Mr Splaine. His name is Reginald Colley, and I think he will teach us very well.

      to Mary Doyle STONYHURST, SEPTEMBER 1874

      My luggage was delayed some time at the Red Lion, but it came at last. My valise, of course, I brought with me; the jam arrived in a capital state of preservation likewise the pickles, which are very enjoyable.

      I am studying very hard—harder than ever I studied before, and I like it very much. The English Language I find rather hard, it is not the same as English Literature, but is more like a very intricate and minute English grammar. We have to be most awfully exact in the English History too. The subjects for Matric are English Language, English History, French Latin and Greek grammar, a book of Homer, Sallust’s Cataline, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, any French author, Algebra, arithmetic and Euclid. If you are plucked in anything, you are plucked in everything, so, you see, the work is not very easy.

      Mr Colley told me to write and get a book called ‘The Civil Service Examination History of England’. He says it will be a great help for me. A second hand one will do, but let it be as clean as possible.

      to Mary Doyle STONYHURST

      I am progressing in my work very well. I have a bad memory, which is a great drawback, and I am sure you would laugh to see the expedients I adopt in order to remember things. I find that dodge of Pa’s, of putting things into verse, very profitable. Thus in the English Language we have lists of words to learn, which are of Scandinavian form. I remember some of them by these lines

       Boil the pudding, flatten the sky

       Lubbers Lurk, and kids are sly

      In learning the liquids, mutes, etc, I cannot remember the letters, they get so confused in my head. So I have made these lines.

      Liquids = rats like many nuts

      Labial mutes = pigs furnish beautiful veal

      Dental mutes = toads think during death

      Gutterals = Kaffirs cheat green ghosts.

      The mere oddity of these lines helps me to remember them. Without them I could not say two letters right, and with them I can classify all the Letters in a moment.

      to Mary Doyle STONYHURST

      The expected letter from Aunt Annette has come at last, and I answered it as quickly as I could. I am sorry not to be able to see you all, but I have no doubt I will enjoy myself very much in London; I told Uncle Dick that I expected him to take me to see the sights, and among others to see his Hippopotamus, if it is still alive.

      I have to get my travelling expenses for Xmas; am I to get them from home or from London? If from London do you mind informing Aunt Annette? I do not know what the fare to London is, I think it is a little less than to Edinburgh, the cab is only 6^s as they put four fellows in each cab.

      The ‘expected letter’ from his aunt invited him to spend his Christmas holidays with her and his uncles. It was an exciting opportunity to see the sights of London—not least the hippopotamus once sketched by Uncle Dick for Punch. Fearing his relatives would not recognize him at the train station, Conan Doyle sent a careful description: ‘I am 5 feet 9 inches high, pretty stout, clad in dark garments, and, above all, with a flaring red muffler round my neck.’ Aunt Annette carried him off to the home she shared with Richard Doyle, though he stayed some of the time with his Uncle James and Aunt Jane in Clifton Gardens, Maida Vale. And in the course of three weeks he saw sights and absorbed experiences that resonated in his writings the rest of his life.

       Richard Doyle

      to Mary Doyle 7 FINBOROUGH ROAD, LONDON

      A Merry Xmas and a happy new year to you, and many of them. I have as you have learned from Aunt Annette’s note, arrived safely at the end of my journey, in spite of three accidents which happened on Lancashire railways. I managed to keep myself warm on the journey, thanks to the red muffler, and the rugs of some of my companions. Aunt Annette found me easily, when I arrived at London, and we got a porter to carry the box to the nearest underground station and there we took a train, and then a cab, which brought us safely to our destination. Uncle Dick was not in when we arrived, so we had to begin tea without him, he came in however soon, and we had a jolly tea together. I went to bed at half past nine, and got up at nine this morning, and after breakfast proceeded at once to write to you.

      I like Aunt and Uncle very much, they are very kind to me, and I think we will get on very СКАЧАТЬ