by Неизвестный
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). ; 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 & 1/2 i ts ow nweig HT.
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.*
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. ;
No, Lottie, 14. I’ll explain why in my next letter. ;
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 15th £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 15th 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.
1st I got your letters, parcels, etc.
2nd I have not got my ms but want it.
3rd I was not sick
4th I have answered Mrs Hoare’s letter
5th I went and saw the Rodgers like a good little boy as I am. And the baby too, at least I saw a pair of enormous watery eyes staring at me from a bundle of clothes, a sort of female octopus with four tentacles (Octopus Dumplingiformis). It was far from dumb though ‘Son et oculi et prosterea nihil’, except a slightly mawkish odour. Oh yes Beelzebub is a fine child—I beg its pardon—Christabel.
And now that I have satisfied your perturbed spirit by soothing answers, let me fish about for something to interest you. And first of all you will be glad to hear that I never was more happy in my life. I’ve got a strong Bohemian element in me, I’m afraid, and the life just seems to suit me. Fine honest fellows the men are and such a strapping lot. You’ve no idea how self-educated some of them are. The chief engineer came up from the coal hole last night & engaged me upon Darwinism, in the moonlight on deck. I overthrew him with great slaughter but then he took me on to Colensa’s objections to the Pentateuch and got rather the best of me there. The captain is a well informed man too.
There are nearly 30 sail of whalers in Lerwick Bay now. There are only 2 Peterhead ships, ‘The Windward’ & ‘Hope’; there is a lot of bad blood between the two sets, Gray and Murray being both looked upon as aristocrats. Colin McLean our 1st Mate was at the Queen’s on Saturday when half a dozen Dundee officers began to run down the Hope. Colin is a great red bearded Scotchman of few words, so he got up slowly and said ‘I’m a Hope man mysel’,’ and began to run amuck through the assembly. He floored a doctor & maimed a captain & got away in triumph. He remarked to me in the morning ‘It’s lucky I was sober, Doctor, or there might have been a row.’ I wonder what Colin’s idea of a row may be.
Lerwick is the town of crooked streets, and ugly maidens, and fish. A most dismal hole, with 2 hotels & 1 billiard table. Country round is barren & ugly. No trees in the island. Went to Tait our agent for dinner on Friday, heavy swell feed, champagne & that sort of thing, but rather tiresome. By the way we carry capital champagne & every wine on board, & feed like prize pigs. I haven’t known what it was to eat with an appetite for a long time, I want some more exercise, that’s what I want. I box a little but that is positively all.
We just got in in time to avoid the full fury of that gale the other day. The captain says if we had stayed out we would have lost our boats and bulwarks, possibly our masts. The weather is better now, I fancy we will sail about Thursday.
There, my dear, that’s about my sum total of news. God bless you all while I’m away. You’ll hear from me in little more than a couple of months. There is an Act of Parliament forbidding us to kill a seal before April 2nd, so that is why we are kicking about here.
[P.S.] I’ve got the Captain’s leave to go with a few of the biggest of the petty officers to the Queen’s today to see if we can’t have a row.
to Mary Doyle LATITUDE 73° 10 N. LONGT. 2° E. APRIL 7, 1880
Here I am as well and as strong and as ugly as ever off Jan Mayen’s Island in the Arctic Circle. We started from Shetland on the 10th of March, & had a splendid passage without a cloud in the sky, reaching th
e ice upon the 16th. We went to bed with a great stretch of blue water before us as far as the eye could reach, & when we got on deck in the morning there was the whole sea full of great flat lumps of ice, white above and bluish green below all tossing & heaving on the waves. We pushed through it for a day but saw no seals, but on the second day we saw a young sea elephant upon the ice, and some schools of seals in the water swimming towards N.W. We followed their track and on the 18th saw the smoke of 6 steamers all making in the same direction, in the hope of reaching the main pack. Next morning eleven vessels could be seen from the deck, and a lot of sea elephants or bladdernose seals were lying about. These always hang on the skirts of a pack of true seals so we felt hopeful. You must know that no blood is allowed to be shed in the Arctic Circle before April 3rd.
On the 20th we saw the real pack. They were lying in a solid mass upon the ice, about 15 miles by 8, literally millions of them. On the 22nd we got upon the edge of them and waited. 25 vessels were in sight doing the same thing. On the 29th a gale broke and the pack was sadly scattered, and a couple of Norwegian lubbers came steaming through them, frightening those that had not pupped away. On the 3rd the bloody work began and it has been going on ever since. The mothers are shot and the little ones have their brains knocked out with spiked clubs. They are then skinned where they lie and the skin with blubber attached is dragged by the assassin to the ships side. This is very hard work, as you often have to travel a couple of miles, as I did today, jumping from piece to piece before you find your victim, and then you have a fearful weight to drag back. The crew must think me a man of extraordinary tastes to work hard and with gusto at what they all consider the most tiring task they have, but I think it encourages them. My shoulders are all chafed with the Lourie-tow or dragging rope.