Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters

My luggage was delayed some time at the Red Lion, but it came at last. My valise, of course, I brought with me; the jam arrived in a capital state of preservation likewise the pickles, which are very enjoyable.

I am studying very hard—harder than ever I studied before, and I like it very much. The English Language I find rather hard, it is not the same as English Literature, but is more like a very intricate and minute English grammar. We have to be most awfully exact in the English History too. The subjects for Matric are English Language, English History, French Latin and Greek grammar, a book of Homer, Sallust’s Cataline, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, any French author, Algebra, arithmetic and Euclid. If you are plucked in anything, you are plucked in everything, so, you see, the work is not very easy.

Mr Colley told me to write and get a book called ‘The Civil Service Examination History of England’. He says it will be a great help for me. A second hand one will do, but let it be as clean as possible.

to Mary Doyle STONYHURST

I am progressing in my work very well. I have a bad memory, which is a great drawback, and I am sure you would laugh to see the expedients I adopt in order to remember things. I find that dodge of Pa’s, of putting things into verse, very profitable. Thus in the English Language we have lists of words to learn, which are of Scandinavian form. I remember some of them by these lines

Boil the pudding, flatten the sky

Lubbers Lurk, and kids are sly

In learning the liquids, mutes, etc, I cannot remember the letters, they get so confused in my head. So I have made these lines.

Liquids = rats like many nuts

Labial mutes = pigs furnish beautiful veal

Dental mutes = toads think during death

Gutterals = Kaffirs cheat green ghosts.

The mere oddity of these lines helps me to remember them. Without them I could not say two letters right, and with them I can classify all the Letters in a moment.

to Mary Doyle STONYHURST

The expected letter from Aunt Annette has come at last, and I answered it as quickly as I could. I am sorry not to be able to see you all, but I have no doubt I will enjoy myself very much in London; I told Uncle Dick that I expected him to take me to see the sights, and among others to see his Hippopotamus, if it is still alive.

I have to get my travelling expenses for Xmas; am I to get them from home or from London? If from London do you mind informing Aunt Annette? I do not know what the fare to London is, I think it is a little less than to Edinburgh, the cab is only 6

as they put four fellows in each cab.

The ‘expected letter’ from his aunt invited him to spend his Christmas holidays with her and his uncles. It was an exciting opportunity to see the sights of London—not least the hippopotamus once sketched by Uncle Dick for Punch. Fearing his relatives would not recognize him at the train station, Conan Doyle sent a careful description: ‘I am 5 feet 9 inches high, pretty stout, clad in dark garments, and, above all, with a flaring red muffler round my neck.’ Aunt Annette carried him off to the home she shared with Richard Doyle, though he stayed some of the time with his Uncle James and Aunt Jane in Clifton Gardens, Maida Vale. And in the course of three weeks he saw sights and absorbed experiences that resonated in his writings the rest of his life.

Richard Doyle

to Mary Doyle 7 FINBOROUGH ROAD, LONDON

A Merry Xmas and a happy new year to you, and many of them. I have as you have learned from Aunt Annette’s note, arrived safely at the end of my journey, in spite of three accidents which happened on Lancashire railways. I managed to keep myself warm on the journey, thanks to the red muffler, and the rugs of some of my companions. Aunt Annette found me easily, when I arrived at London, and we got a porter to carry the box to the nearest underground station and there we took a train, and then a cab, which brought us safely to our destination. Uncle Dick was not in when we arrived, so we had to begin tea without him, he came in however soon, and we had a jolly tea together. I went to bed at half past nine, and got up at nine this morning, and after breakfast proceeded at once to write to you.

I like Aunt and Uncle very much, they are very kind to me, and I think we will get on very well together.

Uncle Dick is going to take me out on a walk in a little, so I must bring my letter to conclusion, so now adieu, and many kisses from your loving son.

to Mary Doyle 7 FINBOROUGH ROAD, LONDON

I have been so much taken up by amusements that I have but little time for writing. I have been to the Theatre twice with Uncle James, being presented with private boxes by Mr Tom Taylor a play-writer and friend of Uncle Dick. The first time was to the Lyceum where we saw Hamlet. Hamlet was acted by Henry Irving who is supposed to be the best tragic actor in England. The play has continued three months, yet every night the house is crammed to suffocation by people wishing to see Irving act. I enjoyed it very much indeed. Irving is very young and slim, with black piercing eyes, and acted magnificently. The rest of the Lyceum company seemed to me very poor.

Last Thursday we went to Haymarket and saw Sothern again. Though I had seen him before I enjoyed it just as much. Buckstone acted as Ana Trenchard but I do not think him half as good an actor as our Edinborough Pillars [sic].

I have been visiting a Stonyhurst boy, and great friend of mine. We went to the zoo together yesterday, which I enjoyed very much. We saw the animals being fed and the seals kissing their keeper. We was [sic] at Luncheon also at Clifton Gardens on Saturday, and next Thursday we are going to the theatre together.

I have been living just as much at Clifton Gardens as at Finborough Road lately. I spent nearly all last week there. I like Aunt Jane very much indeed. She has had a very bad cold but is recovering.

I have been also to Madam Tussaud’s, and was delighted with the room of Horrors, and the images of the murderers.

Uncle Henry is coming over to see me ere I depart, and we are going to the Crystal palace together. Uncle Dick has just returned from the country and tomorrow he goes off again. Today he is going to take me to Henglers circus.

Henry Irving, in 1894 the first actor to be knighted, was still rising as the first man of the British theatre—and the one for whom, in the early 1890s, Conan Doyle would write his first theatrical hit, a one-act play about an aged Guards veteran who had fought for the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. Conan Doyle, as he watched Our American Cousin from the box of its author, Tom Taylor, was presumably aware that Abraham Lincoln had been watching the same play the night of his assassination.

In the 1920s, hearing an American physician, Gray Chandler Briggs of St Louis, explain how he had succeeded in identifying Sherlock Holmes’s 221B address in Baker Street from clues in the story The Empty House, Conan Doyle stopped the conversation cold by remarking that he didn’t think he had ever been in Baker Street in his life. But Madame Tussaud’s wax museum was in Baker Street when he visited it in 1874; and it is no surprise that the Chamber of Horrors made the greatest impression upon him. Back at school in January, he was still bubbling over with enthusiasm for his trip to London.

to Mary Doyle STONYHURST

You must excuse me for my negligence in writing to you, but I have had to write two letters to London, one to Aunt Annette and the other to Aunt Jane to wish her goodbye. I have also begun my letter to Uncle Conan. I am hard at work again, and am, I think getting up the subjects I am backward in very successfully.

I enjoyed my 3 weeks in London immensely. I saw everything and went everywhere. In one walk I thoroughly saw St Pauls, Westminster Abbey and bridge, houses of parliament—The Tower—Temple Bar, the Guild Hall and other places of interest.* (#ulink_69633feb-4631-5c98-a99d-6d987a180f73)

I was especially interested in the Tower—where we saw in the armoury 67,000 Henry-Martini rifles, and an enormous number of swords and bayonets. Also thumbscrews and racks and other instruments of torture

I like Aunt Jane very much indeed, she is very kind and considerate. I slept as often at their house as at Finborough Road, and I enjoyed myself very much there. I spent a day with Mrs Robertson and saw Louis. I also saw Mr Williams, and I think he is the jolliest old fellow I ever met.

to Mary Doyle STONYHURST

It was very kind indeed of Tottie to send me the scraps, and McFairsham. I am going to have a good supper in a few days, for doing well at the lessons, and I will sing McFairsham in honour of Scotland. They always want me to sing a Scotch song. And I always have to tell them I don’t know any, so I will satisfy them for once.

You must excuse my brevity, as I wish the letter to go this mail, and I have to write to Uncle Conan, to acknowledge the receipt of a little book he sent me. ‘McCauley’s lays of Rome’.

Macaulay’s work greatly influenced Conan Doyle. ‘It seems entwined into my whole life as I look backwards,’ he wrote decades later. ‘The short, vivid sentences, the broad sweep of allusion, the exact detail, they all throw a glamour round the subject and should make the least studious of readers desire to go further. If Macaulay’s hand cannot lead a man upon those pleasant paths, then, indeed, he may give up all hope of ever finding them.’

to Mary Doyle STONYHURST, MAY 14, 1875

The Examen begins on the 28

of June, and continues for nearly a fortnight. The Trial Examens begin on the 5

, and they are very important for no one who is plucked in them is allowed to go up for the real examination. We will all be very much excited for a fortnight or so before the Examens, for this year they are trying a new system in the Examens, so that we do not know what is in store for us. The most exciting time of all however is on the next Sunday morning when the results are read out. I hope it [will] be a morning of pleasure to us all.

I was astonished to hear of Annette’s departure; when is she going to come back? I was very pleased to hear of her success.

I have suffered much lately from neuralgia, and I have it still, though it is getting much better. I got it from sitting near an open window in the schoolroom, the draught acting upon the nerves of the face.

Can Geoffy speak well? What does dear little Ida look like? I am very curious to hear all about the little ones.

The birth of another sister in March 1875—Jane Adelaide Rose, called Ida—coincided with Annette Conan Doyle’s departure for Portugal to be a governess. The two events combined in his mind to place even greater emphasis on his need to help support the family as his graduation from Stonyhurst approached.

to Mary Doyle STONYHURST