Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters

—‘The Captain of the Polestar’

Less than a week later, he saw for the first time a patient of his (an elderly seaman named Andrew Milne) die—‘died in my arms literally’, his diary noted: ‘Poor old man. They were kind to him forwards during his illness, and certainly I did my best for him.’

The Hope returned to Scotland on August 10th. ‘The green grass on shore looks very cool and refreshing to me after nearly 6 months never seeing it,’ his diary admitted, ‘but the houses look revolting. I hate the vulgar hum of men and would like to be back at the floes again.’ He returned to Dr Hoare’s, and began the division between medicine and writing that would characterize his life for the next dozen years.

to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, NOVEMBER 16, 1880

On receipt of your letter I pulled on a decent pair of trousers, sprang into a surtout, rushed up to Broad Street and fell upon Gamgee’s neck, saying ‘Behold your long lost visitor’—at least I would have, only he was out and so was his better half, so I performed a Can-Can of delight on the doorstep and left my cards to the astonished slavey. Its his turn now, thank the Lord. Why don’t you write? You have no excuse. I have no news to give & thats my reason. We are working away night and day in our usual humdrum style, and as happy and cheerful as sandboys. I am grinding too as well as the work will permit; I think I will run down to Budd’s somewhere about March and have a good read there before I come home. He has a lot of notes and things which I can get nowhere else.

No word from London Society yet. I suppose a magazine of that calibre is above bilking one. I am much pleased by what you say of Blackwood. I always thought that was a good story.* (#ulink_b4e988f3-dbbc-5118-bc1e-ce8c7802ac10) I am going to write a case for the British Medical. I will tell you when it appears.

You are right about the suit. I can pull along nicely without but why don’t you send the collars and skates. My gloves are worn out but I can hardly afford another pair just now. I have only £3/6 in the bank. My trip to Herefordshire cost me money & I have had other expenses.

The Doctor and I are teatotal up to the 28

of this month. I don’t sleep quite so well but I am fresher in the mornings. He is as good a fellow as ever & Mrs Hoare is charming. Hoare is the only man I ever met who has no fault in his character—a plain straightforward jolly fellow without pride, affectation or anything else. A difficult man to abuse as Johnson said of Reynolds.

Yes, Horton is a real right-down good fellow. His heart is broad and kind and generous. There is nothing petty in the man. He loves to see those around him happy; and the sight of his sturdy figure and jolly red face goes far to make them so. Nature meant him to be a healer; for he brightens up a sick room as he did the Merton station when first I set eyes upon him.

—The Stark Munro Letters

to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, NOVEMBER 1880

You are as bad as me for not answering questions. I want Letty’s address, also Annette’s, also Lottie’s permanent one. You never told me if James was thro’ though you once remarked that you were pleased about him, from which I infer he is. By all means keep the clothes until Easter, but send the skates as soon as you like. I am going to teach Mrs H. We will see what can be done for Xmas, my dear, I hope you may spend your old age in a house where there shall be money and to spare. We are to have fireworks tonight in Aspinal’s house out of town, and I am to be master of the revels, an office which always seems to fall to my lot, so I have to spend my leisure time punching eyes in a turnip instead of improving my mind. No word from London Society. I have another yarn on the stocks. I am going to write to Leigh Smith of the Eira today and ask him for a photo of my noble self. I was taken you know with a distinguished group on the quarterdeck.* (#ulink_5f380be2-0881-533c-9433-29a6f65c9759)

This mornings post brings letters from Budd and from Mrs Gray. Mrs Budd’s cousin is going to marry the brother of the Marquis of Lorne and there is going to be a great revel. Budd grumbles muchly over the price he’ll have to pay for a present. Mrs Hoare made me solemnly promise the evening I came that I wouldn’t make advances to the Governess who is rather a pretty girl, so I am very good. I am also good in the matter of the other more unsavoury subject. ; (#ulink_fd7ac3ad-7da0-5ef1-9efa-1b725d7f2ad0) I got a telegram a few days ago from Porter to say that he was dying. I took a train and got down to Herefordshire by 9 in the evening, sat up all night by him poulticing his chest and filling him with drugs, and after seeing him turn the corner I was back in Birmingham in time to do a hard day’s work. That wasn’t bad. I enclose a letter I got from him yesterday to show how much better he is. ; (#ulink_a4bd64f6-b592-5c9b-ad39-080005f29d6b)

to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, DECEMBER 1880

A hearty Merry Xmas to you and to Conny and the young ones and to all friends. I am very busy & can hardly find time to write this scrawl. I can only lay my hands on £4/10 at the present moment but send them with all my heart in lieu of a Xmas card. I only wish it were double the amount. I shall sift the Budd evidence very carefully before deciding either way. Goodbye, my darling, and all the compliments of the season to you. These hearty Aston people get sick at all times and places so we are very hard worked.

to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, JANUARY 1881

The reason that I have not written has been that I have been worked right off my legs since Xmas. I have hardly opened a medical book or sat down save when I have been so fagged as to be unable to do anything. We have had a most confounded hard time of it—I have been at 3 confinements in one day, with a long list of patients to see, and 60 bottles of Physic to make—and then been up all night after it.

I see the force of what you say about holding on here as long as possible, and I like the work, but anything like systematic reading is simply ludicrous. I have made good use of my time, so far, when I had any, but now there is simply none. Find out exactly when the final begins and when the certificate must be in. If I stay here until about the third week of March I will be running it very close. It is risky to go up for such an exam on six weeks real reading—We must manage to save up the fees by hook or by crook.

Whatever you may say against the Budds there is one thing I can aver and that is that of all my family & relatives & friends & the whole gang of them, I only got two letters on New Years Day, one was from Budd and the other was from a servant girl and I value them both. I sent 9 letters off myself but got no return from any of them.

Aboard the Eira, with Conan Doyle between the ship’s master, Leigh Smith (left with top hat) and Captain Gray of the Hope (right of Conan Doyle)

Crabbe took his degree a year before I did, and went down to a large port in England with the intention of setting up there. A brilliant career seemed to lie before him, for besides his deep knowledge of medicine, acquired in the most practical school in the world, he had that indescribable manner which gains a patient’s confidence at once. I was acting as assistant to a medical man in Manchester, and heard little from my former friend, save that he had set up in considerable style, and was making a bid for a high-class practice at once.

—‘Crabbe’s Practice’

to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, JANUARY OR FEBRUARY 1881

Just a line to let you know that I am still in the fore. I read both the articles with much interest and profit to myself. My work is going on better, though nothing to what I could do if I were free. I’ll know my theoretical work well enough, I fancy, but they will spin me in their clinical forms and scientific case taking and that sort of thing.

The new assistant is to come about the middle of March and I will have to see him duly installed and instructed before I leave. I hope however it won’t be much more than a month before we see each other. I wish I had my qual and was away on blue water in the Iberia.

Your last letter was very kind, dear, and very sensible. You are not a fool like most mothers. I have not got into any amatory trouble which I can’t see my way out of, and that had nothing to do with my recent blues.

to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, FEBRUARY 27, 1881

I am more delighted than I can tell you at the prospect of seeing you so soon. How you will enjoy yourself, I don’t know, but you will make me very happy by coming. The Boss says I ‘beamed all over’ when I heard of it. We are anxiously awaiting your note to know if you can come by the 7

. You will find us a very disorderly but very jolly household, with a dear couple at our head, and 2 very spoilt children, who however are in a great state about Dodo’s squirrel. They are nice children enough if they were only licked a little more. The bustle and life of a doctor’s house in a busy thoroughfare in Birmingham will be a queer change to you after your own dear little home. You will be able to appreciate my difficulties in working when you see our work.

You will like Mrs Hoare awfully, I think, and the Boss too. Write soon & tell us when to expect you. The sooner the better. Excuse this vile scrawl as I write it by the fire on my knee.

Conan Doyle was clearly itching to be finished with his studies, and to take the qualifying exams for his Bachelor of Medicine & Master of Surgery (MB CM) degree. While it was not a fully—fledged M.D.—that would come later, upon completion of a thesis—it would entitle him to practise medicine at last. His turbulent medical school friend George Budd, whom Conan Doyle was quick to defend against his mother’s clear dislike, had already passed his exams, and was now practising in Bristol with great success, he claimed. Budd’s was a siren call growing stronger as Conan Doyle approached the end of his studies. His MB CM exams finally came in June 1881, and his letter to Dr Hoare expresses his glee, despite the malicious Dr Spence, the one examiner who gave him a hard time:

to Dr Reginald Ratcliff Hoare 15 LONSDALE TERRACE, EDINBURGH, JUNE 1881

The writtens were good fair papers, no choice of questions. Surgery was (1) Surgical anatomy of the lochisrectal fossa (2) Causes & treatment of Stillicidium Lachrymarum (3) Give step by step the operation of excision of the knee, with aftertreatment. Midwifery was decidedly easy (1) Anatomy and functions of placenta (2) Modes of bringing on premature labour—give all the causes which would induce you (3) Describe three forms of Speculum contrasting them—when is their use contraindicated—I smiled all over when I saw that paper. Medicine I took honours in, the paper was hard, but suited my reading. (1) Define hyperpyrexia. Give its pathology and treatment (2) What is the exact anatomical lesion in Bulbar Paralysis. How does it kill? Clinical symptoms? (3) Give as many forms of Dipthitheritic paralysis as you can—what is there peculiar about this paralysis—which forms are fatal—give local & general treatment (4) describe a case of Acute General Peritonitis—its causes—its treatment. The medical Ia was beneath contempt.

In Midwifery I took honours in my oral—he took me on deformities of the pelvis & on face cases. I got a fearful raking over in Medicine, a regular honours exam. He began on the pathology of Osteoarthritis. What exact appearance would I see on section of the bone? What was the joint like? I was drivelling away about this when he let rip at me with ‘What are the differences, sir, between the actions of the voltaic & Faradic currents on normal and diseased muscle.’ I happened to know this so the malignant little scarecrow asked for a more delicate test for albumen than heat or acid. He had me there, clean—I had to confess I was nonplussed. (It seems that some idiot in Crimean Tartary or some other hole has remarked in his unpublished memoir that metaphosphoric acid throws down albumen.) What causes albumen apart from Bright—symptoms of renal calailus. Put up the apparatus for the German yeast test for sugar—How do you explain chemically the action of Fehling—Just here the bell rang so I picked his pocket of some small change and shoved for home.

Surgery oral was a beastly exam. Spence behaved like a pig. He told me to lay out the instruments for lithotomy from a tray—I did it—He came prancing towards me with his hat bashed over his left eye, and a face like three kicks in a mud wall. ‘Wouldn’t I need an artery forceps? Well, why didn’t you put one out—D’ye call that Surgery.’ I remarked ‘I didn’t lay it out, sir, because you forgot to put one in the tray’—I had him there.

‘I was one of the ruck,’ Conan Doyle claimed, ‘a 60 per cent man at examinations,’ but Dr Spence alone (the same surgeon who mocked Lister’s germ theory in the middle of operations) gave him a less than satisfactory grade.

…one of the school which considers such an ordeal in the light of a trial of strength between their pupils and themselves. In his eyes the candidate was endeavouring to pass, and his duty was to endeavour to prevent him, a result which in a large proportion of cases he successfully accomplished.

—The Firm of Girdlestone

It was a period which also included his father’s initial institutionalization for alcoholism. ‘We have packed papa off to a health resort in Aberdeenshire,’ Conan Doyle mentioned in passing in a letter dated April 9, 1881, to Lottie, who despite her youth had now joined Annette in Portugal as a governess. Blairerno, a farm near Drumlithie, Aberdeenshire, was a place for well-bred alcoholics to dry out.* (#ulink_48e3cfe5-4f0d-52ab-87c7-8f31d5beb087) In Charles Doyle’s case it led not to recovery, but to a series of sanitoria in which he spent the remainder of an increasingly forlorn life, until his death in 1893. It left Conan Doyle ‘practically the head of a large struggling family’, at a time when he had little idea of his future.

To mark his new status (memorialized by his drawing of himself waving his diploma over his head, captioned ‘Licensed to Kill’), he visited the Foleys of Ballygally House on his mother’s side of the family in Ireland—also appraising some eligible young ladies there, including one who would be the first love of his life, Elmore Weldon.

to Amy Hoare BALLYGALLY, LISMORE, CO. WATERFORD, JULY 1881

I take up an execrable pen to tell you all about Ireland and my cousins and the land league ; (#ulink_3f22f1f8-972d-5ffd-86e9-b93957062707) and things in general. I think a quiet chat with you is the best investment I can make of a cloudy morning and a penny. There is a sort of mistaken idea that Paradise was over in Palestine or Armenia or somewhere there, but it is a mistake for I have discovered it in the valley of the Blackwater. How I wish you were with me to enjoy it, and the Doctor too. What rambles we would have by river and wood.

My cousins, male and female are charming—Dick the elder one (32) is a man after my own heart—and after yours too, I think. Six feet—straight as a dart, square in the shoulders with a tawny beard, sunburned face, and fourteen stone of solid muscle. Ned the younger (27) has been mate of a merchantman, is smaller, but splendidly put together and as hard as nails—a very good fellow. They are both what I would call very well off. Dick makes £1000 a year from having the sole right to fish salmon in the Blackwater, and has a very large estate into the bargain—Ned has a lot of land too. Dick stalked into a great league meeting which was held here, with his big sea boots on, and informed the president that he wished the whole league had one neck and he had his foot on it—he was not forcibly ejected. I wish they would try some of their midnight business on us.

I had a bit of an escape last night. I had been dining with another cousin 4 miles off, (I find I am related to half the county) and we sat rather late over our wine. By the time I got back the place was shut up and everybody had gone to bed, thinking I had been put up for the night. I slouched round the building not liking to knock them up, and at last—you know the habits of the beast—I shinnied up a waterpipe, found a window unfastened, and after some fumbling opened it, and tumbled in. I received a rapturous reception from Dick, whose room it was—rather toorapturous for he sprang at me with a double barreled gun in his hand, and would have put a charge of No. 12 through my head in another moment if I hadn’t mildly pointed out the inhospitality of such an action.

By the way there is a chance of my seeing some great fun—these infernal rascals have boycotted the Cork cattle show. We never intended to exhibit (it is next month, I believe), but when Ned heard it was boycotted he swore a priestly oath that he would take down the most mangy cow he had, and exhibit that cow. Dick and I fostered the idea, so the upshot of it is that if they persist in boycotting the show, we intend not to throw ourselves upon police or soldiers for protection, but simply to go down the three of us, armed to the teeth, and dare any man to lay a finger on the cow—I think my cousins will be as good as their word, and I know that I wouldn’t like to miss the fun.

We have a young lady visitor with us—oh, mam, I wish you could be with us to see what the higher education of women leads to—she is 19—a bursar of Trinity College, first of her year in the hardest exam open to women—and such an addle-headed womanly fool, to put it mildly, I never saw, so help me Bob. She knows the dates of all the Egyptian kings but she hasn’t a word to say at the dinner table—she’ll give you chapter and verse for any quotation but she has about as much poetry in her as a cow. She has the theory of music at her finger ends, and she won’t play the accompaniment to a song—Lawn Tennis is too trivial for her—she does not play games of chance—chess she plays. Dancing is childish—you never saw such an educated cabbage in your life. Like St Paul ‘Much learning hath made her mad.’ Who says I don’t read the bible? You see I am not getting limp, as the Doctor used to say, over that girl.

‘Amberley excelled at chess—one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind.’

—‘The Adventure of the Retired Colourman’

From Charles Doyle, October 1884, from Blairerno