Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters

—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* (#ulink_eda17417-0fa1-549c-88c6-253b80ce3fdf) (Vide Dixon’s Johnsonary); he must make the four figures and something over, for he has five horses, and a nice though small house. R is nearer forty than thirty.

Mrs Hoare is very amiable and nice; a well read kind-hearted woman. There are two very spoilt little children, though it seems to me they had so little good to start upon, that there was very little to spoil.

Bourchier is a fool, an inane simpering fool. One of those haw-haw demme my soul idiots. He wants a kicking, which I should be happy to accommodate him with at the shortest notice. He is a great and glorious LKAQCI;* (#ulink_75d12ff7-3811-55c6-a8ca-faa56f32a72f) about 30 years old, affects a languid fashionable air, and lisps about the havoc he has made among the sex. An objectionable fellow.

My duties are not at all arduous, and I think I am going to be very cheerful here. I won’t have time for cricket however. Dr Drummond lives very near us, and I am going along to give him my note. I don’t think I will visit Dr Gam Gee Jeejeebhoy (that’s the name of an interesting Indian Rajah). ; (#ulink_c5d92baf-567a-59ef-bfb9-a34b547dede1) He hangs out a great way off, and I don’t feel much inclined to go.

My poor umbrella is done for, I am afraid. The Phil is the only place I could have left it, and they say they haven’t got it. Never mind buying one, I don’t need it here.

We are all smokers here luckily which is a great thing. Hoare is really an excellent fellow, very kind and considerate. His fees would make the Doctor’s hair curdle.

All kind remembrances to Greenhill Place, and to Mrs Drummond. One never learns how to appreciate friends until one has been thrown on one’s own resources, without even an acquaintance in a big city. Love to all, remember me to Dr

[P.S.] Now, Lottie Ag. o. osewe I ghs 7 Pou N ds &

/

i ts ow nweig HT. (#ulink_5ceeb2e1-cdf4-59c7-94e2-26d6909e8cf7)

Horton dictates his prescriptions, and strides off to bed with his black clay pipe in his mouth. He is the most abandoned smoker I have ever met with, collecting the dottles of his pipes in the evening, and smoking them the next morning before breakfast in the stable yard.

—The Stark Munro Letters

Sherlock Holmes was, as I expected, lounging about his sittingroom in his dressing-gown, reading the agony column of The Times and smoking his before-breakfast pipe, which was composed of all the plugs and dottles left from his smokes of the day before, all carefully dried and collected on the corner of the mantelpiece.

—‘The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb’

to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, JUNE 1879

Dont send me any more postcards, they are most foul inventions for depriving an honest man of his letters. I would sooner wait a little longer and get a decent epistle. I have been very busy lately and hardly had time to write. I assure you I earn my two pounds a month. In the morning I generally go out with RR in his gig and do the rounds till dinner at two. This is an innovation and deprives me of any leisure. From dinner to tea I brew horrible draughts and foul mixtures for the patients (I concocted as many as 42 today). After tea patients begin to drop in and we experiment on them until nine, and then we have supper and comparative peace till twelve when we generally turn in; so you see we have plenty to do, and the life is none the worse for that. I visit a few patients every day too, and get a good deal of experience.

Mrs Hoare is a charming woman, very pretty, very well informed, very fond of RR. She smokes her cigar of an evening as regularly as I do my pipe, and never looks so well as when she has it between her teeth. A jolly little lady.

Hoare has had some aspiring geniuses as assistants in his day. One of them administered Linimentum Aconiti in doses of two tablespoonsful 3 times a day. In spite of his exertions and the medicine the patient died soon afterwards, and a benighted coroner had the bad taste to insist on holding an inquest, which brought in a verdict of homicide, and only that they hushed the matter up he would have picked oakum.

I have been experimenting upon myself with Gelsemium. Mrs H said she would write to you unless I stopped it. I increased my dose until I reached 200 minims, and had some curious physiological results. I drew them up and sent them to the British Medical but I’m afraid they won’t put them in.* (#ulink_3f5519b4-85d6-560e-b11f-fd4a1ba389ca)

There is a pestilent little quack here, or rather a firm, Smith and Hues. The latter is a qualified man but a sleeping partner. Smith is the perfect type of a quack. I have written out a most preposterous case and sent it to the Lancet in Hues’ name. It is told most gravely and scientifically. If the Doctor sees anything about an eel in the Lancet that is the letter. RR is in ecstasies about it. ; (#ulink_ebeb2bde-ccd0-566e-beef-a936d2257ab3)

No, Lottie, 14. I’ll explain why in my next letter. ; (#ulink_f922d98b-d96a-569a-ac82-c4df53cd21f3)

to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM

Rain, Rain. Nothing but rain, splashing in the streets, and gurgling in the gutters, everything sloppy and muddy, that’s my experience of Birmingham. The houses are of a horrid brick colour, the streets are yellow, the sky is leaden. What other grumbles have I to grumble? Nothing else I think, and I have a good deal to say on the other side of the question. The Free Libraries are splendid, the people are pleasant, everything is cheap, Dr Drummond is a regular brick, Hoare is another, and Madam is a female of the same genus; on the whole I am very comfortable indeed. The things are cheap with a vengeance, I never saw anything like it.

Bourchier is got up ‘a la Brum’ regardless of expense, he has a smoking cap, a blue serge suit, neat boots, lavender necktie. Here is the little bill he had to pay for them, and mind they are really nice looking

Smoking Cap 81/2d

Serge Suit 25/

Walking Boots 10/6

Necktie 1/

Not a bad investment on the whole. I got a very pleasant chatty eight pager from Jimmy which I shall duly answer. It quite raised my spirits—not that they were below par originally.

Dr Drummond is a very good fellow, we split a bottle of champagne and had a very pleasant evening. I’ll try and get over to G[amgee] since you wish it, tho’ I dont see how I am to manage it. You see we have breakfast at 9, then until 10.30 I am attending to patients, after that I have nothing much to do until dinner at 2, but those are just the hours when every doctor is out. After dinner I write out all H’s visits, and make up bottles until tea at 6. Then till eight are our consulting hours and after that I am generally free. I work pretty hard for my £2, I think.

I did rather a foolish thing the other day. A little German called Gleiwitz, a doctor and professor, and one of the very first Arabian and Sanskrit scholars in Europe, comes here to give Mrs H German lessons. He is a man of European name, but he has lost money in speculation and came at last to such a pass that Mrs H is the only pupil he has, and on what she pays him he keeps himself, and 3 children. Last time he was here he drew me aside, and told me with tears in his eyes that his children were starving at home, had had no breakfast, and could I help him to keep his head above water for a week or so, when he hoped he would have an opening. I told him I was as poor a man as he, ‘barrin’ the children, that I had only 1/6 in the world, but that I would do what I could; So I gave him my watch and chain and told him to go and pop them, which I am bound to say he was very unwilling to do. However he sailed away with them at last, and I hope got something decent 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

£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.)