Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. Daniel Stashower

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СКАЧАТЬ for them. I think he is an honest man, he certainly is a very learned one. My best way would be to get the ticket from him when I get my money, and rescue the watch, and then stand my chance of his paying the money back to me.

      Why don’t you write oftener & longer Eh?

      to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM

      I have quite a number of small sums which are always eluding my poverty stricken grasp. However I am not doing so badly; it may interest you to see my exact financial position at present. It might be headed Great Expectations.

      Moneys in hand July 15^th £2/5/0

      Due from Boss on Deaclyon plaster purchased 5d

      Mrs Thompson. Arthur Sr. 10/6

      Salary for next 4 months £8

      Promised by patient with herpes zoster if I can cure him in a given time, viz one calendar month 10/

      From Chambers (?)

      For ‘The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe’ (?)

      Extra screw from the Governor for zeal and attention in bookkeeping…something sometime.

      Besides that I can always allow 5/ a month winnings at vingt-et-une. And old Gleiwitz owes me 15/ which I intend to have or I’ll make Birmingham too hot to hold him, so hurrah for the man of money!

      I have had a deep grief this morning, my young heart is bruised and bleeding. I always smoke clay pipes now, and I had such a beauty, black as coal all through my own smoking, and this morning it fell out of my pocket and smashed. I am going up to town to buy a good Dublin one, so you may deduct the penny from my list. It was such a nice pipe! ‘Oh, the pity of it, Iago!’

      Hoare’s children are boy and girl, 6 and 10. Very nice children, if they weren’t spoiled. I spend half my spare time cutting out big English Guardsmen and little French Zouaves, and making them stand and fight for them, also teaching Mick to box.

       (Corporal Brewster tries to fill his clay pipe, but drops it. It breaks, and he bursts into tears with the long helpless sobs of a child.)

       Corporal: I’ve broke my pipe! my pipe!

       Norah (running to him and soothing him): Don’t, Uncle, oh, don’t!

       We can easy get another.

      —A Story of Waterloo

      to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, JANUARY 30, 1880

      I know I am behaving very badly as a correspondent, but if you knew how little time I have, and how thoroughly fagged out I am before that little comes, you would excuse my delinquencies. How I am going to pass this exam I don’t know, but I suppose I’ll manage to scramble through somehow. Baird, my fellow assistant, is leaving on March 15^th and I must stay a few days to put the newcomer through his facings. Don’t you talk so glibly about Ireland & July & being capped. We must not crow until we are out of the wood.

      I am sorry to hear Jimmy has been ill—but I am thoroughly disgusted with the whole gang of them. Two letters and a Xmas card all unanswered and unnoticed. It’s enough to make a fellow cynical.

      Tell Conny her letter was charming as her letters always are. She must not think I was ungrateful for the pretty necktie—The fact is my gratitude was too deep for words. I thought I would break down if I attempted to express it. I shall write to her next.

      So Currie goes in the Hope. I shouldn’t think Currie will care much about sleeping with the mates—I should strongly object. I must write to him before he goes. He is a good fellow.

      I wonder if Tottie really has influence enough to get me this appointment in the Iberia. You would think that something might be made in fees out of these wealthy old dons. What screw does the surgeon get aboard? You have to pay for your uniform I suppose.

      I shall have to buy a pair of dancing boots this week as I am going to a ball on Friday. I have only £2/5 in the bank so I am not coining money. I feel down on my luck. Herbert Keyworth my particular chum is going out to squat in Australia on Tuesday—I’d go and squat beside him for two pence.

My only amusement lately has been a couple of lectures. One was on Dale and Enracht—a soft affair. The other was capital ‘Does Death end all?’ by Cooke the Boston ‘Monday lecturer’. A very clever thing indeed. Though not convincing to me.*

      Conan Doyle’s sisters were constantly on his mind. Annette (‘Tottie’), two years older than him, was working as a governess in Portugal now, and sending her pay home to help with her younger sisters’ schooling—it being understood that they would follow in that genteel if humble line of work themselves once they were old enough. From his sisters Conan Doyle learned about the nature and also the occasional perils of their work, and made one of Sherlock Holmes’s most endearing clients a governess, Violet Hunter in ‘The Adventure of the Copper Beeches’. ‘I confess,’ Holmes tells Miss Hunter after hearing about the new position she has been offered, ‘that it is not the situation which I should like to see a sister of mine apply for.’

      To economize Conan Doyle had striven to compress five years of study into four, but when his classmate C. A. Currie was unable to go as the ship’s surgeon on the Hope, an Arctic whaler, he leapt at the chance, despite the postponement it meant for graduating on his original schedule.

      He spent some six months at sea, from the end of February to midAugust 1880, in the first ‘glorious’ adventure of his life, one that he recorded not only in two letters home, but in a handwritten illustrated diary as well. He turned twenty-one years old during the arduous voyage under Captain John Gray of Peterhead, Scotland, coming of age (as he wrote later) ‘at 80 degrees north latitude’. The voyage gave him real responsibility, and in addition to doctoring the crew, he also took an active part in the sealing and whaling on which the Hope’s success, and the crew’s pay, depended. He worked harder than ever before, experiencing intense loneliness and comradeship alike in what seemed like another world. ‘I went on board a big, straggling youth,’ he said in Memories and Adventures, but ‘I came off it a powerful, well-grown man.’

      to Mary Doyle LERWICK, SCOTLAND, FEBRUARY 1880

      Here goes by the aid of a quill pen and a pot of ink to let you know all the news from the North: The mail steamer came in yesterday with your letter and a very kind one from that dear girl Letty, who seems to have a vague idea that I am going to Greenland to pass an examination or face some medical board, judging from her wishes for my success and talk about coming back quite a finished doctor. What a jolly little soul she is though! The Scotsman came too as also did the forceps. Now as to your inquiries I’ll answer them as best I can.

      1^st I got your letters, parcels, etc.

      2^nd I have not got my ms but want it.

      3^rd I was not sick

      4^th I have answered Mrs Hoare’s letter

      5^th I went and saw the Rodgers СКАЧАТЬ