Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters
Page 21
Goodbye, dear, all good luck betide you. If you see a chance of insurance grab at it. Why should not Dr Waller become one of our medical examiners. He would make a few guineas in the course of the year, I doubt not. Do you know that I have brought over 6000 pounds into the office.
The Portsmouth Literary & Scientific Society became one of the main features of Southsea life for Conan Doyle—a place where the young man made himself known to the town’s intelligentsia and became acquainted with them in return, leading to wider intellectual horizons, more patients for his practice, new friends from many walks of life, and fateful new interests. ‘I have many pleasant and some comic reminiscences of this Society,’ he said in Memories and Adventures.
We kept the sacred flame burning in the old city with our weekly papers and discussions during the long winters. It was there I learned to face an audience, which proved to be of the first importance for my life’s work. I was naturally of a very nervous, backward, self-distrustful disposition in such things and I have been told that the signal that I was about to join in the discussion was that the whole long bench on which I sat, with everyone on it, used to shake with my emotion. But once up I learned to speak out, to conceal my trepidations, and to choose my phrases. I gave three papers, one on the Arctic seas, one on Carlyle and one on Gibbon. The former gave me a quite unmerited reputation as a sportsman, for I borrowed from a local taxidermist every bird and beast he possessed which could conceivably find its way into the Arctic Circle. These I piled upon the lecture table, and the audience, concluding that I had shot them all, looked upon me with great respect. Next morning they were back with the taxidermist once more.
His Arctic Seas talk, based upon his six months on the Hope, was a success. One friend he made through the Society was a retired major general, Alfred Drayson—an amateur astronomer of note, and also an investigator of psychic phenomena, with whom, for his first time, Conan Doyle attended a séance.*
to Charlotte Drummond SOUTHSEA, NOVEMBER 1883
Many thanks to Jessie and you for the information about the M.D. It is all plain sailing now. I am 16 inches round the neck. The enclosed bit of silk is the girth of my wrist. What a lot of trouble we do give you. You see you will have me up there in March for my preliminary. Doesn’t it seem funny to go back to that.
I deliver a lecture on the 4th of December at the Literary and Scientific Institute on ‘The Arctic Seas’. It is to be quite a swell affair. I wish you were here to hear me. By the way I have not begun to prepare it yet.
to Charlotte Drummond SOUTHSEA, NOVEMBER 1883
Very many thanks for the parcel which came duly on Saturday night. Everything in it is splendid. You have made a most wonderful job both of the shirts and of the necktie. I think it is an excellent idea having the other to fasten behind. I always make such a woeful mess of a front before I get my studs in. Could it be down by the 4th. That is my lecture night and it would come in very nicely as I have to appear in full dress.
I am up to my eyes in work. There are my own people to be looked after. Then a neighbouring medico has gone away for a month and I take the Parish for him. Then there is the lecture to be written and many maps to be drawn. The Photographic Journal are simply howling for an article for their almanac—and I am going in for the seven roomed house which is offered by Tit Bits for the best Xmas story.
to Charlotte Drummond SOUTHSEA, DECEMBER 1883
What a villain I am not to write by return and tell you how pleased I was with the shirt—but you know I am always an erratic correspondent and indeed I have been over ears in work for the last week or so. The collar too is a masterpiece. I have a crutch stick of ebony and silver which I won as a prize and with the collar I am more than a masher—I am a dude—which is an Americanism for the masherest of mortals.
The lecture is ready now. Besides all my own specimens I have engaged about 30 birds from a local stuffer so I will have a brave show and no doubt the audience will give me credit for having bagged the lot—like the bad sportsman who brought home some birds to his wife who remarked ‘I think, Tom, it was about time someone shot these birds for they are getting dreadfully high.’ I do hope it will pass off well. It will do me a lot of good in the way of getting my name known among nice people. I have a sturdy phalanx of bachelor friends, strong armed and heavy sticked who may be relied upon for applause.
Goodbye, dear. Now mind business is business and friendship friendship. You must let us know down to the postage & everything else what we owe you. Otherwise I shall never dare to ask you to do anything for me.
to Mary Doyle SOUTHSEA, DECEMBER 1883
The lecture is over—Gott sei dank! and was an unqualified and splendid success, far more so than I had ever dreamed of or dared to hope for. From the first word to the last the audience (which was a very crowded one) followed me most closely and often I could not get on for the cheering. When I finished there was tremendous applause—a vote of thanks was carried unanimously and then speaker after speaker got up to comment on ‘the splendid paper’ ‘the most able paper’ ‘the beautifully written paper’ which they had heard. It was quite an ovation. I got about 20 specimens of Arctic birds from a bird stuffer and all my own curios so I had a brave show—George Palmer & I were half the day labelling & arranging them. But alas alas for the drop of gall! The poor seal and the still poorer bird who has something more succulent than sawdust under his plumage—there have been no signs of them. I have haunted the station and ransacked the parcel room but all in vain. My experience is that luggage train generally takes about 12 days to bring a thing—you could almost walk & carry the thing in the time. If however, you sent it by passenger train then I think we should make a formal complaint to the company. I shall send you papers galore.
I have just been squaring up my books and I think you will be both surprised & pleased at the result. 17 months ago I came here an absolutely penniless man. In my first year I took £156 including medicine, literature, & help from you. In the five months which have passed since July I find that £112 have passed through my hands including Innes’ money and the last remittance which you so kindly sent. This money is divisible in this way
MEDICINE LITERATURE & HOME
July £19.4.0 £34.7.0
August £11.0.0 £8.10.0
Sept. £8.1.0 £5.8.0
October £7.14.10 £1.1.0
Novem. £13.9.2 £2.5.0
And now comes the most cheery fact of all—besides having taken this I am owed more than £60—in which I include some bills not yet delivered and also allow £10 for the Heiress (what they gave me before). Don’t you think all this is very good. Still we find it takes us all our time to live for expences are heavy. Rent—taxes—& Gas come to more than £60. My life is insured for £1050 which costs me over £20 per annum. I am sure we are extravagant in nothing though Mrs Smith insists on our keeping a good table. The great thing is that we are advancing—getting known and quoted and making friends.
to Mary Doyle SOUTHSEA, DECEMBER 1883
No sign of the poor hamper yet. Alas, alas for our Duck! It must be served up with antiseptics and Carbolic Acid sauce. Wherever I go I hear about my lecture. The principal papers come out tomorrow & you shall have them. I send a couple of notes looking at it from different points of view.
I thought your note to Waterstone a little too fierce & unconciliatory. So I extracted it & substituted a little note of my own—firm but polite. I think it will extract an answer.*
to Mary Doyle SOUTHSEA, DECEMBER 1883
The duck was in perfect condition after 8 days travel—in far better trim than the one Innes brought down. I have been working hard at the seven roomed house—offered as a prize by Tit Bits for the best Xmas story. The story which I have sent up is a very good one & may have a good chance if the thing is fairly conducted. The prize is equal to about £300.
There seems some chance of skating. I ought to make a good show down here as even in the practised North I was reckoned a good skater.
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nbsp; Everywhere I hear of the lecture. The seal stands under the hall table now & looks very gorgeous. One of my patients has just gone bankrupt—owes me 5 guineas too. I hope to get it out of the wife who is separated from him.
Goodbye, darling. I am sending you another paper. I will send you a package soon. I have 2 dozen Xmas cards for you also. I think ‘My Poor Wife’ is the best thing I have read yet in Cornhill. Anstey’s tale begins to flag. By the way I last left him very drunk underneath the Adelphi Arches. I think he will remember me.
to Mary Doyle SOUTHSEA, DECEMBER 1883
I have had a letter written to you for some time but was waiting to have a spare 5/ to send the boy—since I owe it to him. No doubt he is with you now and will tell you all about it—including by the way his own remark to Auntie which showed that you had been so irreligious as to prefer a Protestant church to none at all.
Auntie stood me a fiver towards my Xs which was very welcome as I had dipped into the rent. I am rather uncertain about my B’ham holiday now—I cannot leave until (1) I know that my debts are paid, such as they are, though really I can hardly recall one and (2) a few bad cases turn the corner. I hope however I may have a couple of days away. I am wonderfully the better for my 3 days in London—came back in splendid health & spirits. Got Innes’ prize for him—The Lays of Ancient Rome nicely bound. It was funny to see me go up among all the little boys for my prize.
On December 31, 1883, Conan Doyle travelled to Birmingham to ring in the New Year with Dr Hoare and his family. He was joined there by fifteen-year-old Connie, and immediately hatched plans to carry her back to Southsea with him, while Innes was away.
to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, JANUARY 1884
Every good wish for 1884. Came up here on Thursday and hope to be able to get at least a week away. Mrs Smith writes every day & lets me know how things go. Connie is looking wonderfully well & bright. I took her up town yesterday & got her a brooch. I should like if you have no objection to take her down to Southsea with me when I return. Don’t you think a week or two by the sea would do her good and then I could send her back via London. However just as you think right in that matter.
to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, JANUARY 1884
I have made it right with Miss Crawford about C and will run her down to Southsea tomorrow for a week or so, and then negotiate with Auntie about her reception on her return. It will be hardly any extra expense & she seems to have set her heart on it. Besides the production of an aristocratic looking sister will do me a great deal of good down there. I’ll look after it all so don’t you worry your little head. As to extravagance, my dear, I have nothing to be extravagant with. The day before I left Southsea I spent £10 on rent, £2 towards drugs, £1/6/0 to British Medical, £1 to tailor, £1 to butcher—which left me little enough. However Connie must look as well as her neighbours, so I got her a brooch (silver 8/6) and a muff (skins 11/6) and now all she wants is a nice hat to make her look charming.
Habakuk is going to make a sensation. I have had several letters in praise of it. Yesterday came one from James Payn asking me ‘How much foundation there was for my striking story.’ Of course I answered him very politely & today I sent him a poem I wrote on Uncle Dick. Perhaps he will insert it as Uncle drew for Cornhill for many years.
I feel very much the better for my holiday and will work like a nigger when I get back. I have missed nothing during my absence for I get a letter every day from Mrs Smith. Mrs H and the Doctor both send love.
Returning to Southsea with his aristocratic-looking young sister, Conan Doyle settled in for an exceedingly busy year. His story ‘J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement’ appeared in The Cornhill in January, and though it lacked his byline, in the custom of the day, he received an impressive payment of twenty-nine guineas for it, or more than thirty pounds. Inspired by the real-life Marie Celeste, a ‘ghost ship’ found mysteriously abandoned off the coast of Africa, the story was not only widely noticed but received by some as a factual account of the crew’s disappearance.
At the same time, his hopes of winning the seven-room house offered by Tit-Bits for the best Christmas story submitted were dashed when the winning story appeared—and had nothing to do with Christmas.
to Mary Doyle SOUTHSEA, JANUARY 1884
Connie is down here and I am sure you would approve of her abduction if you could see the glow of health & happiness which has already appeared upon her cheeks. The sea air had a magical effect upon her and she is a different girl from the B’ham Connie. Miss Crawford has prolonged her leave of absence at my request & Aunt Annette writes that she will not be able to receive her for a week or two, so that it all fits in very nicely. Connie & I tramp the round together. She is as good as an advertisement. The only dark speck are the bills which I found awaiting me on my study table when I returned—however they are not very formidable after all. Some five pounds to the grocer who owes me about three. Five to the furniture man, two or three to the tailor and so on. The secret of my success here, and also of my chronic impecuniosity is that the moment money comes in I pay it out again before it has time to get frittered away.
Tit Bits awarded the big prize to a very inferior thing, so I have written to the Editor offering to post £25 if he will do ditto. The two m.s.s. (mine & the winner’s) are then to be submitted to an impartial judge (such as the Editor of Cornhill)—his decision to be final & the stakes to go to the winner, with the exception of an appropriate fee to the Judge. If they do not accede to this I shall publish the correspondence in another paper.
Conan Doyle’s challenge drew no response, but it was not the end of his dealings with the magazine or its publisher, George Newnes, who viewed publishing this way:
There is one kind of journalism which directs the affairs of nations; it makes and unmakes Cabinets; it upsets governments, builds up navies and does many other great things. It is magnificent. There is another kind of journalism which has no such great ambitions. It is content to plod on, year after year, giving wholesome and harmless entertainment to crowds of hard-working people, craving for a little fun and amusement. It is quite humble and unpretentious. That is my journalism.
Conan Doyle would thrive in both kinds eventually, but Newnes’s version would make his fortune, in The Strand Magazine that he founded in 1891.
to Mary Doyle SOUTHSEA, JANUARY 1884
Don’t be too hard upon Connie. Aunt Annette was not ready to receive her & B’ham was getting rather dull. Besides it was my doing entirely for I wanted to trot a female relation about the place. You can never get on socially unless you play your women folk.
The bookcase has arrived. £2.1.0 I paid for carriage which almost cleared me out. Connie & I unpacked it all by ourselves & got the upper part on the lower which was rather a feat, also the books in. The whole looks very fine indeed. I had to put it in the dining room for there is no room at all in the Consulting Room for I must have a couch there, and the window takes all one side—however more people go into the back room now than into the front. Thank you very much, dearest, for such a fine present. The books are oldfashioned but solid. Boswell—Johnson’s works—Pope’s works—The Spectators—Gordon’s Tacitus—Churchill & Prior’s Poems are about the pick of them.
Come through the magic door with me, and sit here on the green settee, where you can see the old oak case with its untidy lines of volumes. Would you care to hear me talk of them? Well, I ask nothing better, for there is no volume there which is not a dear, personal friend, and what can a man talk of more pleasantly than that?
—Through the Magic Door
Have you seen any critiques of Habakuk? Illust London News of Jan 6th says ‘Cornhill begins the new year well with an exceedingly powerful story in which we seem to trace the hand of the author of the New Arabian Nights. J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement is a conception which may well have been inspired by the weird voyage & savage catastrophe of Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym, and only inferior to Poe in the power of compelling belief. We are less absolutely under the spell
and feel more disposed to be critical of Jephson’s mere improbabilities than of the impossibilities of Pym’s Antarctic adventure. But the story is powerfully fascinating never the less.’ The Echo calls it ‘a cock & bull story’, Graphic a ‘nightmare story’, Queen ‘a marvellous story.’
to Mary Doyle SOUTHSEA, JANUARY 1884
Just a line to enclose a letter for you. Have received a letter from Cassells magazine addressed to ‘The author of Habakuk Jephson’ asking me to write for them—which I will do if I can get an idea. Connie & I go to a dance on Wednesday.
to Mary Doyle SOUTHSEA, JANUARY 1884
I wish I could get the case into the front room, my dear, but it is simply impossible. Here is the present furniture—the squares representing chairs—I can’t do with less than 6 of those for whole families come in at times. The case would take the whole side opposite the window, and then where could the chairs go—besides the handsome chiffonier for which I gave £4 would be useless—for I have another one in the back room. The back room I now call the study and I intend to have it much better furnished than the other so that really it has the place of honour.
I went to the Literary & Scientific with Connie 2 nights ago and delivered another speech. Last night we were invited to a dance by one Mr Reynolds who is a wealthy man, and we made many nice friends there. Tonight we go out to some friends also. In searching around for an idea for Cassells I lit on one which I hope will do for Cornhill. I have set to work at it as hard as I can, and wrote 2 or 3 pages today. We have a good lot of money out but none of it seems inclined to come in.