Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. Daniel Stashower

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СКАЧАТЬ coming home on the 25^th—it was Elliot’s proposal, not mine. However if his man disappoints him I will stay a few days, though I do not want to be plunged from one course of work into another without a breathing space. We must try and cut down the Winter Classes as much as possible. I really don’t see that I need take anatomy again. It is merely the fashion to take it twice, and costs 3 guineas.

      I am glad you approved of the paternal correspondence. Indeed I am rather proud of it myself, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

      I struck a deeper stratum of thought than usual the other day, and after sifting it in my mental washing pan, I found something left, either silver or only mica. I enclose it, whatever it is, and want your opinion, Mrs D.

      By the way I had a small triumph over you the other day. Elliot told me that the reason he preferred me to the other candidates, was not in account of my testimonials, they all had those, but on account of my clean legible fist. (Not this one, you know, but your aversion, the characterless one.)

      But his final letter to his mother from Ruyton, complaining bitterly about an assistant’s lot, reveals his loneliness at the time.

      to Mary Doyle RUYTON-XI-TOWNS, OCTOBER 19, 1878

      This may be the last letter you receive from R, so make the most of it. There would be a nice train for me leaving Shrewsbury at 10 and getting in at 6, but alas there is no train from Baschurch to meet it. If Elliot was an obliging fellow I would ask a loan of one of his 3 horses and gigs, but he isn’t, so I must content myself with the 11:30 train, which gets in at 8.

      The fare won’t be as much as I thought, but I have had to pay 4/ for having my [illegible] mended, and I owe my washer woman 5p.

      By the way I boldly asked E last night whether he didn’t intend to allow me my fare back, but he didn’t seem to see it. According to him the law stands thus, that if an assistant has a salary he is then a recognized person, and can claim his expenses, but if he has no salary, he becomes as it were a gentleman travelling for his own improvement, and he gets nothing. A decidedly unfair regulation, I say, which pays the way of the man who has money already, and leaves the penniless one to shift for himself. However of course there is no redress except grumbling. I vow and declare (as the janitor says in the song) that the medical assistant is the most ill used, underpaid, hard worked fellow in the world. He does as a rule the work of a footman, for the wages of a cook, (that is the best of them do), and tho’ not acknowledged as gentlemen, or treated as one, he must keep up the appearance of one under pain of instant dismissal. Many men, you must remember, remain assistants all their lives. Good Heavens! What a life! I am very glad that I got this post, but the life is very different to what you or I expected. I have half a mind to write a letter to the Lancet to ‘disillusion’ young fellows who may have formed such notions of it as I did. I am not a hothouse plant, nor do I mind answering rings, or opening doors, but its the loneliness that I have felt most. You must know that the assistant is not supposed to consort at all or see the family except at meals. I didn’t know this at first, and since I was lonely I used to go into the drawing room, and chat to Mrs E or the baby, but I was informed that this was not the custom, the assistant must keep himself to himself. So now I sit in my room working and answering rings & concocting drugs all day, and haven’t had a talk with anyone for 3 months, except after supper sometimes, when I am permitted to come in & have my smoke.

      There is a fine long grumble—but I don’t mind airing my grievances now, as they will soon be over.

      The essay on intemperance expressed a long-lasting concern of his, perhaps sparked by father’s weakness for drink, that would surface repeatedly in his private correspondence and his fiction.

      His third assistantship, with Dr Reginald Ratcliff Hoare of Clifton House, Aston Road, Birmingham, commenced in June 1879. It was ‘a five-horse city practice,’ said Conan Doyle, which ‘meant going from morning to night.’ His duties took him often into Birmingham’s slums, where he ‘saw a great deal, for better or worse, of very low life’. (Experience that served the author well later on.)

      Dr Hoare paid him too, £2 a month, ‘a great boon and a good progress since last year,’ Conan Doyle’s sister Annette observed. (He had little free time to spend it, he noted in Memories and Adventures, ‘and it was as well, for every shilling was needed at home.’)

      His 1910 Romance of Medicine talk did not mourn ‘the days of the unqualified assistant—a person who has now been legislated out of existence, with I have no doubt an excellent result upon the death rate.’ But his objections to the life evaporated with Reg and Amy Hoare, for his position ‘was soon rather that of a son than of an assistant’.

      Family responsibilities still weighed on his mind, but his outlook blossomed in Birmingham. ‘The general aspiration towards literature was tremendously strong’ now, and he often went without lunch in order to spend the money on books. He also began to write as well as read, not only for medical journals, but for literary magazines as well. ‘Some friend remarked that my letters were very vivid and surely I could write some things to sell’, which surprised him.

      I sat down, however, and wrote a little adventure story which I called ‘The Mystery of Sasassa Valley’. To my great joy and surprise it was accepted by Chambers’ Journal, and I received three guineas. It mattered not that other attempts failed. I had done it once and I cheered myself by the thought that I could do it again.

      He also attended a lecture (mentioned in his January 1880 letter following) that marked the beginning of a journey concluding, forty years later, in his role as the world’s best-known spokesman for Spiritualism.

      to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, JUNE 3, 1879

      Arrived all safe and well yesterday passing the scene of a railway smash on the way. Aston Road seems to be a pretty thriving place judging from the hustle and rattle going on in it. Clifton House is an unpretending red brick house pretty comfortable inside. Dr and Mrs Hoare are both nice, and so is Bourchier, I think. He is an Irish Licentiate, as far as I can make out. I will write soon and give you a full account.

       I got out, and was standing beside my trunk and my hat-box, waiting for a porter, when up came a cheery-looking fellow and asked me whether I was Dr Stark Munro. ‘I’m Horton,’ said he; and shook hands cordially.

       In that melancholy place the sight of him was like a fire on a frosty night. He was gaily dressed in the first place, check trousers, white waistcoat, a flower in his button hole. But the look of the man was very much to my heart. He was ruddy cheeked and black eyed, with a jolly stout figure and an honest genial smile. I felt as we clinched hands in the foggy grimy station that I had met a man and a friend.

      —The Stark Munro Letters

      to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, JUNE 1879

      I am sure you are eager to have a full and detailed account from your own correspondent of Clifton House and its inhabitants. I was shockingly disappointed at the street, as disappointed as Mark Twain was when first he saw a grisette in Paris. I had pictured to myself a semirural quiet suburban road, instead of which this is a busy shop-lined, tramway railed thoroughfare. Moral—don’t picture things to yourself. I am reconciled to the bustle now; in fact I like it.

I am just beginning to feel a little at home. I’m afraid I don’t domesticate easily. Reginald Ratcliff is a fine little fellow, stout, jolly, black haired. Reginald has plenty of spondulick* СКАЧАТЬ