Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters
Page 18
I have not the very least conception where Aboyne is, but on the supposition that it is in Scotland I put my trust in providence, and let this epistle take it’s chance of reaching you. How I wish I could have accepted your invitation and run up to see you—I declare the mere writing about it fills me with a wild impulse to pull on my ‘grand old boots’, pack my valise, and be off by the next train. It would not do though. I must be self denying and all that sort of thing if I am to do as well as you wish me to. I must not snap the tiny little tendrils which I am beginning to throw out, which I hope will become strong roots in time.
Why, why did you raise me to a pinnacle of bliss by the suggestion of coming down here, only to plunge me back into my original state of mind by showing me that it could not be. It is such a jolly place—Innes is delighted with it. Surely you will come some time. Perhaps I shall prove to be the pioneer of a regular Edinburgh Colony.
It was awfully good of you to send the provisions and things. They were very welcome and unexpected. Patients are still rather coy. They swarm in at the rate of about two a week, but I am writing merrily—‘London Society’ owes me ten guineas ‘All the Year Round’ four, and I have several other articles fluttering round the country looking for homes.
I am so glad you liked ‘The Actor’s Duel’. I myself I—I—I—I (as Waller would say) consider it the most powerful thing I have written, but I can get no publisher to share my views. Is it not extraordinary. Every friend who has read it likes it, and yet they won’t accept it. I have sent it to the ‘Boys Own Paper’ in disgust but I am quite prepared to see it come back.
Now Goodbye, Mam. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for your kind interest in me. I should feel lonely indeed if it was not for the consciousness of having such friends.
The Boy’s Own Paper, created to instill Christian values in younger readers, was a last resort for Conan Doyle. Even it passed on this one, and the story floated for two more years before seeing print. Most of his writings during this period underwent similar fates: ‘Fifty little cylinders of manuscript did I send out during eight years’ (he said, referring to the mailing tubes in which he posted his submissions), but most of them ‘described irregular orbits among publishers, and usually came back like paper boomerangs.’
‘Most of it was pretty poor stuff,’ he admitted in 1907, ‘but it was apprentice work, and I always hoped that with practice I might learn to use my tools. Every writer is imitative at first,’ he continued: ‘My work was a sort of debased composite photograph in which five or six different styles were contending for mastery. Stevenson was a strong influence; so was Bret Harte; so was Dickens; so were several others…For ten years I wrote short stories; roughly, from 1877 to 1887. During that time I do not think that I ever earned £50 in any year by my pen, though I worked incessantly.’
‘Once I had a moment of weakness,’ Conan Doyle said in Memories and Adventures, ‘during which I answered an advertisement which asked for a doctor to attend coolies in the tea gardens of the Terai. I spent a few unsettled days waiting for an answer, but none came and I settled down once more to my waiting and hoping.’ The Terai is in Nepal, but the letter below mentions Silhet, in present-day Bangladesh. It appears there was a reply, in fact, but the situation turned out to be unappealing. He remained in Southsea, and hatched fresh plans to make ends meet. He advertised for a female lodger in exchange for housekeeping services, and matters seemed to look up a bit also when patients found themselves quite literally hurled upon his doorstep.
to Mary Doyle SOUTHSEA
I cannot help thinking there must be a mistake somewhere. It is true that Watson mentioned Silhet in his letter, but in a vague way and not specifically as our destination.* How can I be wanted, as Dr Taylor said in his original letter, to look after tea coolies in a tea plantation when tea is not one of the exports of the country, nor could it possibly grow in the marshy basin you describe. Besides what trading firm could have such interests in a Godforsaken hole like that to warrant them in paying £400 a year to a surgeon. Butter & hides are not such lucrative branches of trade. I still cling to the idea that high lands must be my destination.
It would be a great blow to E if I went without her. When we hear from Watson and from Jimmy Ryan who is going to interview him we shall be better able to judge. The main factors are of course the healthiness of the place, and the amount which the sale has realised. I have written to her asking her to ask Cherry for a clear account of what she may depend on when all expenses have been deducted.
Elmo, poor dear, is enthusiastic at the idea of going. She is a real tropical plant—loves warmth and has a cousin with weak lungs who married and went to India where she came round in a marvellous way. I got a letter from her yesterday in which she says that the Doctor at Solliat examined her most thoroughly; and pronounced that she had never had consumption. Now of course that is nonsense, but it at least shows that the symptoms are pretty masked now.
I have stories enough now (counting one in my head) to make a book, which would I think be a success. I have finished a photographic article which should bring in 30/ on the first of next month. At present this stamp is the last of my possessions, but you need not worry about that for I expect money from several sources and having always paid ‘ready’, I have great latent powers in the way of credit.
to Mary Doyle SOUTHSEA, OCTOBER 1882
You are too good. I send you back £2. I only keep one because the boot question is such a pressing one, and I have paid away Hogg’s fiver—all in good purposes and as I said in my letter. Now listen to me. On Sunday I booked 5/6 (got 2/ of it). Monday 3/6. Tuesday 7/6! (got 4/) Wednesday 3/6. Thursday I thought I would not do more than 3/ at the most—I was sitting writing when I saw a crowd before the door—a peal at the bell—and a gentleman was carried in, just thrown from his horse. I doctored him—took him home in an open carriage (think of the advertisement!)—saw his wife—was thanked & complimented by all—and handed him over to the family doctor who bowed to my diagnosis. Ha! Ha! Wasn’t that good! I have sent Innes off to get it into the evening papers. They are rich people and my guinea is quite safe, though I thought it best not to clamour for it at once. You could not imagine a finer advertisement, or a better case. I reckon I shall make £1.4.6 today but the notoriety is far better than the money—isn’t it.
Adieu, darling. Everything looks brighter—Elmo is better, and the practise shows signs of vitality. I have bills for over £2 in October and I think we will double this easily in November. Let us hope so. The woman comes today.
to Mary Doyle SOUTHSEA
Our woman is here—a very decent soul tho’ we have small skirmishes about waste of gas &c. She has a lot of furniture with which she has beautified the basement storey—she has made the plate & door knob beautiful & cleaned the whole place—that is as far as I would let her for she has been given to understand that if she comes through the door of the bedroom, she leaves through the window. Luckily she has no friends about here, but still I would sooner she had no chance of telling anyone the secrets of our prison house.
I took 10/6 last week & made supposing they all cash up close on to £3. What do you think of that. Of course the accident helped—I charged him 1.3.6 which can be relied upon. This week I have taken four shillings in the last two days. En revanche the new plate (a very fine one) cost 1.4.0—I have paid 10/. We are going to gather for the rent now. I have 15/ in the bank & we will soon accumulate a lot. If we can live on what we take there is 1.10.0 photography, 3 or 4 pounds from All Year Round, and 1.3.6 from the horseman to be relied on. The other bills I cannot send in in time for Dec. 25. But that will make a start & with Aunt Conan’s mite, & windfalls literary or otherwise we will do it—never fear. I suppose I must postpone the lamp though my soul hankers after it mightily and I will get it when I can for it will bring in money.
Elmo is better—Gott sei dank! No news & no letters. Want to hear from Amy. Do nothing but read medicine & wait for patients like a spider for a fly.
> to Dr Reginald Ratcliff Hoare SOUTHSEA
I have been silent a long time not from any want of the will to write, but because I have been exactly in the position in which you left me, and have therefore had nothing to record. I now take up my pen (and a shocking bad one it is) to tell you that things look rather brighter. A man had the good taste to fall off his horse the other day just in front of the window, and the intelligent animal rolled on him. I stuck him together again, and it got into all the papers and got my name known a little. A dentist over the road named Kirton too has proved himself a great trump and sends me on anything he can. I have inherited a club too from a drunken doctor who has left. I am not very sure of the rules yet (you know my business habits) but as far as I can make out every member pays something like half a penny a week (!) for which they are entitled to wallow in as much medicine as they can stow away, and to be seen at their homes as well. I suppose, like the Irishman, though I lose on each member I make my profit on the quantity. However it gets your name known, and I am quite content to begin at the bottom of the ladder, as many a better man has done before me. My affairs would seem desperate to men who had not gone through what I have done in the last five months—but to me they seem promising. My free plate came down immediately after your visit and I have another fine one up (1.2.6 it cost)—a red lamp comes in a few days. I have acted on your advice & got a decent woman on the basement floor who makes the place look smarter. I wish I could see you down here again.
Do you still feel as bitter against me as you did that evening? The affection which I have for you has been growing & increasing from the time I first knew you, without hindrance or stop until the present moment. What have I to gain from you that I should say so if it were not true? If you saw my mind the charge of saying a disloyal thing against you would seem ludicrous to you, as it does to me, and must do to any impartial friend. There is no other man in the world to whom I would humble myself by repeating a thing which has once been disbelieved—but whoever has made mischief between us has lied.
Goodbye—pray remember me kindly to Mick, and to Currie and Shnoodle. Elmo has had typhoid fever, poor lass, but is now getting better. I hope we may marry in the spring.
What caused the temporary coolness between Conan Doyle and Dr Hoare is unknown, but they soon resumed their close friendship. Conan Doyle turned to preparations for a visit by his mother, who was coming—weighted with goods and furnishings—not only to inspect the premises, but also to chart the progress of his romance with Elmore Weldon.
to Mary Doyle SOUTHSEA, DECEMBER 1882
So glad to get your letter. I hope now to be able to manage the rent without any help. In the last week I have paid £3 in taxes, but now I have no more to pay till after the new year, I think. Both Innes and I have bank books at the Post Office. He has 15/ in his. I have £5 in mine and will add another tomorrow. I have also paid a pound towards the lamp, which will only cost two in its present state (second hand) with pedestal gas piping and all. I will have only to have the red glass put in. I am sure it will pay us to have it up. You see as there are 2 or 3 of us here all young men pushing to the front, I wish to guide myself not so much by what they do do, as by what they do not do. One of us must take the lead and I intend that it shall be me.
The secret of this flush of money is that Aunt Susan actually sent £4 yesterday. Was not that good for the old lady! I only expected one. I’ll write today and thank her. On the other hand ‘All the Year Round’ after waiting month after month, sent me 2.5.0 where I expected 4 at the least. Never in my life have I had such poor remuneration. The cheque too was postdated 4 days which the bank people here said was illegal & a sign of weak credit. Altogether an unsatisfactory business. Bow Bells sent me £3.3 for ‘The Winning Shot’—well done the penny paper! Surely it was better to turn it into money than have it lying useless. Let me see what I did with all this money £9.8.0. I paid £1.5.0 poor rate. 8/ water. 6/9 for the tin box. 8/ the grocer. £1 towards the lamp—banked £6. Not much wasted there, was there? The practise keeps us in food now & necessaries. Week before last 10/6 in ready money. Last week 10/8. Monday (yesterday) I made 8/4—which looks well. I am going to take meat out of my butcher in exchange for my bill—at least I think I had better for his credit is not very good and where I may not get the money I am sure of the meat.
So delighted that you are coming! About what I want I will mention some things and if you have them well & good, if not I shall get them here when I can. (1) Glass for gas globes—I want three of those. The lamp would be useful for the Waiting Room (still unfurnished) in which is no gas—we have gas in kitchen—hall—Consulting Room and our bed room. (2) a fender for the Consulting Room and a coal scuttle with good fire irons. (3) the sofa (4) we have 3 or 4 pair of sheets and 2 of blankets—they are all dirty just now. We have enough to keep us going. (4) The Waiting Room is 17 ft square. Anything in the way of carpet would be acceptable. (5) Two or three chairs and a table for the W.R. (6) Books or anything in the way of knick knacks or ornaments always acceptable. (7) Mats ditto. Of course I only jot down a list like this that you have room to pick & choose which to bring. Above all don’t buy anything for I shall soon be better able to do that than you.
Dearest you are making E a bugbear. I am confident that when you see her you will love her as much as I do. She never shows to advantage in her letters and has an impulsive sudden way of expressing herself which sounds like petulance—but anybody less petulant you could hardly conceive. You may be sure there is something nice in her when Kate & the Owens champion her so warmly against all comers, even against me when I give her a small blowing up. You would be her warmest champion yourself if you knew her. She is a different style from our circle, but just as sterling.
Apparently things went otherwise. Just what finally ended the romance is unknown, but it seems the Mam was never taken with Elmore.
Nevertheless, Conan Doyle was in buoyant spirits as 1882 drew to a close, aided by a colossal ten-guinea payment by Temple Bar magazine for ‘The Captain of the Pole-Star’, a story drawing upon his Arctic adventures aboard the Hope.
to Charlotte Drummond SOUTHSEA, DECEMBER 1882 OR JANUARY 1883
Every possible good luck and happiness for you in ‘83 and may your Xmas have been a jolly one. May you be as happy as you deserve to be, or as your decimal point wishes you to be—I can’t say more than that.
We have had such a funny quiet sort of Xmas. A very different one to what we should have had at home with our own dear old set in good working order. However we have cast in our lot with ‘new men, strange faces, other ways’ (not very sure of the quotation)—so we must expect to feel a little lonely at first.*
It is just six months today since I walked into this house with a small portmanteau and an ulster—I was in it six days before I had any bedding—Indeed you would think me romancing if I told you all my experiences within these walls. Now I have as nicely furnished a little consulting room as a man need wish to have. I am getting the waiting room rapidly into order. I can put the mother up comfortably upstairs, and have a spare bed for myself. I have a fine brass plate, and a big red lamp. I have paid £26 rent and taxes—and all without borrowing a penny, and I don’t owe as much as I am owed now. So I think that is a very satisfactory result.
The practise is going up though it is nothing very wonderful yet. I generally earn about a couple of pounds a week in bills &c. and take about 15/ to 25/ in ready money. Last week I earned over £5 and took 31/ but that was exceptional. I am inflicting all these statistics on you that you may know just exactly how we progress.
Literature has been good to me too of late. I should like your opinion & Jessie’s on ‘The Captain of the Polestar’ in January ‘Temple Bar’—a ghost story. They sent me ten guineas & a copy, so I think they liked it. I have a fearful political pamphlet scourging everybody which Routledge is reading now. It will make a sensation if it comes out, (anonymous of course) but I fear they will not have pluck enough to publish it.
>
Tell Jessie that the best laugh I have had this Xmas was from an idea of hers which the mother told me of this morning—‘Drink, puppy, drink’ on a certain moustache cup. I never heard anything better.†
Innes and the mother are looking splendid. They both think this is a jolly place. The boy is to go to school here after the new year. He is still infatuated with the soldiers & sailors, and I never come near him that I don’t get one over the head with a cutlass in his character of ‘The leader of the boarding party’ or else a prod from a bayonet in his never-sufficiently-to-be-execrated part of the ‘first man in the trenches’.
After the holidays, the Mam returned to Edinburgh, and the correspondence resumed.
to Mary Doyle SOUTHSEA
Let me talk about business first before I forget it. Dodo’s photographs have come, 6 of them. Also a long screed from Mrs Burton for you. Also receipt from Miss Forbes—oh so polite and even affectionate! Also proofs of ‘The fishes of the blood’ appears in March so I hope the money may be in time to help the rent.*
Have been writing an article on Rheumatism to the Lancet all this time. Don’t know whether they will take it. Literary stagnation followed upon your departure. Have paid Night bell—also a pound on linoleum—also another 10/ on the sofa at Paffords. No more money expected till Feb 15th when about £4/10 comes in from the Gresham. Gas bill £1/18 and a few other taxes look threatening, and behind them all looms the rent. Insurance premium 2.17.6 also due on Feb 15th. By the way I think if you do not hope to make much of that picture at Dott’s, it wd be a good thing to have it sent down and present it to Mrs Palmer. It would be a good investment. They have been so kind to me. Have me to dinner every Sunday. What do you think about it?†