Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters

Dr Quin was not a catholic, and as he lived within a stone throw of Richardson’s house, and knows him well, it would not do not to have mentioned my connection with Richardson. Grimesthorpe is the continuation of Spital Hill. ; (#ulink_49f533ff-aa6c-57dd-9082-96b383c96289)

I have taken a great desire, mam, to go into the navy as a surgeon. I do not know whether it arises from seeing the drudgery of a rising medical practise in the case of Richardson, or from hearing of the experience of R’s brother who is in the navy, but so it is. Both Uncle James and Aunt Annette think well of the scheme.

to Mary Doyle LONDON, JUNE 18, 1878

I got the parcel yesterday all right, the trousers are very nice indeed. When I saw the book had no name I imagined you had left its disposal to me, and I wrote in it at once ‘To Aunt Annette for her kindness’ and gave it to her. I think it was a very small return for her hospitality, and they are always complaining of a dearth of books in the visitor’s room. Of course I would not have done it if I had known.

There is, as you say, plenty of time to consider, but at present I feel very much inclined towards the navy. The life is a glorious one, & think of being discharged on half pay at 31 and drawing £150 per annum for the rest of your life. I could, I fancy, in the navy contribute fully £120 a year towards Duff. They are raising the status very much, I hear.

I was over at Hanwell on Saturday and saw the whole set of them, Robinsons and Dickensons. What a fine old lady Mrs Williams is! She said she had seen 3 generations of Doyles. I said she might see a fourth yet, which seemed to tickle her.

I am sadly in need of active exercise, and will grow quite stout if this continues; I must play football in the winter.

I went to one of Halle’s recitals to hear Norman-Neruda play the violin. The Princess of Wales was there and a very distinguished company, and I enjoyed it very much. Went also to hear Major Butler lecture and saw his wife, Miss Thompson, the artist.* (#ulink_a97eae43-eff8-51d4-b670-557084c771f6) Went also to the Royal Academy. Saw the first picture of the son of Browning the poet, who is a rising painter. It seemed to me very good indeed.

‘Why shouldn’t we use a little art jargon. There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it. And now for lunch, and then for Norman-Neruda. Her attack and her bowing are splendid. What’s that little thing of Chopin’s she plays so magnificently: Tra-la-la-lira-lira-lay.’

—A Study in Scarlet

to Connie and Lottie Doyle LONDON, JUNE 1878

Dearest Conny and Lotts

I swear that you are an idle and lazy pair, never to send a note to amuse a brother who’s longing & yearning for news. By the way tell Judy, but don’t let mama know, that ‘the wife’s name’s Baptista, the Duke’s name’s Gonzago’.* (#ulink_71af6216-30dd-505f-b1b1-4082a74aa0d9) Break the news gently, console her, beware, of telling her more than her small heart can bear.

And now I suppose you both are keen, to hear what I’ve done and what I have seen. Well I’ve seen the Prince of Whales, not a fairy one, but one alive in the London Aquarium, and I’ve seen them feed him on codfish and eels, and by Jove, how his highness waltzed into his meals. And I’ve been to museums and been to the ‘Zoo’, and been to the concerts & theatre too, and seen Irving act in a part that is new, and now, my darlings, I’ll wish you adieu. Hoping that soon you’ll be able to see

your affectionate brother

Arthur C. D.

His next assistantship was with a Dr Henry Francis Elliot of Cliffe House, Ruyton-XI-Towns, a Shropshire village off the beaten track from Shrewsbury. It was a country practice that, Arthur joked to Lottie, required some adjustment on his part:

They are such funny people, when I came first I couldn’t understand it. A big farmer would come up to the surgery, and say to me ‘I wants a subscription, Zurr, to take to the seaside with me, the same subscription as t’other doctor gave me,’ and then I would speak to him like a father, lifting up my voice and saying ‘Get away, you hulking ruffian, it doesn’t matter to us what the other doctor gave; why do you go to the seaside if you can’t afford it without a subscription?’ and then it would turn out that the poor man only wanted a prescription after all. ‘I doan’t know wot medicine it were, but it were brown-like, wi’ a nasty taste,’ and then they expect you to make up a few hundred known medicines with nasty tastes, and let them taste away until they expire or hit on the right one.

The young man got on better with Dr Elliot, but not entirely successfully either, and from Conan Doyle’s letters one would not guess Elliot was only in his mid-thirties at the time. In Memories and Adventures, recalling ‘a very quiet existence’ there, he said he could ‘trace some mental progress to that period, for I read and thought without interruption’.

to Mary Doyle RUYTON-XI-TOWNS, JULY 1878

Just a line to tell you that my recent silence has not been caused by an attack of small pox or an unrequited affection, or anything else unpleasant, but simply from laziness. Besides I wrote to Mrs R and Uncle James in the interim. By the way I want a pair of cloth slippers at once, in the early part of the week if possible. I have long wanted them in the abstract, but now I want them at once—I will tell you why afterwards. Send me a card before sending them, as they charge a shilling for bringing things from Baschurch. You might put a few cigars in them.

How is Gerald now? I wrote a long letter to amuse & console them. I think I am a better letter writer than a conversationalist. I suffer from a certain mauvaise honte in talking unless I am really excited, while I am all right with a pen. Elliot is a man whom you would take to be a perfect gentleman by his letters, but he is a very coarse ill-tempered fellow, although good hearted enough. He has not got a single original idea in his head, and if you propose one you can’t conceive the passion he flies into. I said yesterday that I thought capital punishment should be abolished (a trite enough remark), but he went into a fury, said that he wouldn’t have such a thing said in his house; I said I would express my opinions when and where I liked & we had a fine row. All right now.

to Mary Doyle RUYTON-XI-TOWNS, JULY OR AUGUST 1878

I am a very bad essay writer, but it will be an amusement to me to try. I suffer very much from want of facts, and books treating on the subject. Any amount of knowledge of an individual case will not do in an essay which should treat on generalities. When was the Maine liquor law passed and why did it fail. I will suppose liquor was smuggled in from all surrounding states to any extent. Many thanks to the doctor for his masterly epitome. I agree with him in everything except in the effect of climate. I have heard that there are far more European drunkards in India than anywhere in England. Compare also the Red Indians and Equimeaux or Icelanders, New Orleans and Montreal. However that is an unimportant heading. He has given me many useful hints. Played for Ruyton on Saturday, got 7 wickets for 11 runs. Tell J.R. that. Written to Bell.

to Mary Doyle RUYTON-XI-TOWNS, AUGUST 23, 1878

I am very glad you like the essay, I have done my best with it. I think by coupling De Quincy & Co with Burns & Co I have shown that I consider opium eating as a vice analogous to, but worse than drunkenness. I think it is all right, just look it over again and see. Then about the ‘mistress of the seas’ &c, I think my meaning is plain. ‘Love of Excitement’ leads Englishmen to court danger, which is always exciting, and men who court danger for danger’s sake are the stuff that Nelsons & Rodneys are made of. This same love of excitement I have tried to prove makes Englishmen drink. Hence the same curse has made us a great maritime and a very drunken nation. I have written the 1

page over again as it was dirty with travelling. Yes, I want you to sew it up, perhaps some cover could be got for it also. I don’t understand what you mean about writing a note &c. The essay is strictly anonymous, mottos used instead of names. Write my motto outside a sealed envelope and my card inside, that is all. Everything is decided before the envelopes are opened so that there is no necessity for making an impression. That is always the way. Get Papa to write my motto neatly on the back of the envelope, put my address under my name on the card, seal it, and send it in with the essay to the Rev. W. Ritchie D.D. of Dunse.* (#ulink_47208b20-a0ca-58b8-a524-ec04bd583c93) He’ll look me up quick enough, if I’m successful, and decide my eligibility. You will be surprized to get it back so soon, but the fact is that now that the excitement of composing is over, and after all the copying out, I hate the very sight of it. I told Elliot I wouldn’t sell my chance for £5. He said I had the bump of self-esteem very largely developed but that he didn’t like men who hadn’t.

to Mary Doyle RUYTON-XI-TOWNS, OCTOBER 10, 1878

About coming home on the 25

—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.