Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. Daniel Stashower
£1 in all for last weeks food and next weeks lodging; I never knew such polite nice people as the real Arran aborigines. For example we took a boat the other day, and got for 6d an hour not only the boat but also the use of two deep sea fishing lines. While out we managed to lose the hooks and weights from each of the lines, but the owner would not hear of taking any recompense, and only laughed at our disaster.
Miss Fullerton rejoices in the use of nervous energetic English; she was in here this morning to confide to us some ill deeds of her servant girl. Her oration began ‘Och, that gal, that gal, the divil tak’ her skin!’ The Arran dialect is more akin to the Irish than Scotch. She informed us yesterday that her lodger, in the front, who is a beastly cad, got as ‘fre’ as the Baltic’.
I hope this may reach you in good time before Cony starts. I think after all we need a little butter, as the non-appearance of the store jam made us rather heavy on it. Also I think you could not do better than send a dozen or so of saveloys. They would be grand for excursions. Also some coffee. We need something in the meat line. We make a tin last us two days, which is, I think, a very moderate allowance. We have a tin of Australian and a tin of corned beef left.
[P.S.] Though the house is very clean the sandy beach is a desperate place for fleas. We have occasion to sing with Watts of pious memory
How doth the little busy flea, / Improve each shining hour.*
While his mother stayed home with the youngest children, Conan Doyle cheerfully took on the care of not only Lottie but the even younger Connie, during his stay on Arran. It was a pattern of looking out for his younger siblings that would continue his entire life.
to Charles Doyle ARRAN, SEPTEMBER 1877
Dear Papa
We have just returned from the ascent of Goatfell (3000 feet), and are, as you may imagine a little stiff and sore in consequence, so I am devoting the day to letter writing.
Jimmy Ryan goes on Thursday morning, so if the spirit moves you to pay us a visit we can put you up nicely. You really should, it would do you a world of good. It is a most lovely place, multa in parvo, sea, mountain and moorland all tumbled up together.
Then our landlady too is a curious character. She is ‘full of strange oaths and bearded like a Pard’ like Shakespeare’s soldier, and can be quite as truculent as that worthy when she likes.
You have capital streams for trout all round, and may indulge in deep sea fishing in the bay with scarcely any expense. In fact there is no limit to the means of killing time.
I saw, for the first time, yesterday, the real red deer in a state of freedom. How disappointing the calf-like original is, after you have admired Landseer’s leviathans.
to Mary Doyle ARRAN, SEPTEMBER 18, 1877
I suppose papa is with you by this time; I think his short sojourn in the country did him good, but he was in a fright about his ticket, which some stupid official said would not do for the return unless he went soon. Of course I advised him to have the ticket sent to you, and wait here while you inquired at headquarters about its validity, but he would not hear of it. So he departed yesterday. I had no warning or I would have written to tell you he was going.
Lottie and Conny have performed such a feat! They are the talk of all Brodick. They set out with me on Monday for Loch Ranza, which by the guidebook is 14, but by the united testimony of all the aborigines more than 15 miles away. We started at 9 o’clock, got there about 2, and were in Brodick again by 8. So that the youngsters did between 28 and 30 miles. An amusing adventure befell us on the way; Conny was slightly tired on the way there once; just about this time we passed a peat cutting wherein lay an old wheelbarrow, and as I knew that the owner must come from Loch Ranza, I did not scruple to clap the young woman in, and wheel her along for about quarter of a mile. Then we left the vehicle on a conspicuous place near the road. When returning I entered into conversation with a countryman, and as we passed the cutting I told him as a joke what we had done, and said ‘That’s the barrow, which that old woman has over there.’ To my horror he answered with a broad grin ‘Oh aye, th’ auld wuman is just my wife, and the barry’s my barry.’ He was very good natured and laughed at the way I had insulted his wife & his ‘barry’.
I am not sure if I told you that I am bringing an interesting family of 10 young vipers home with me. A pretty plaything for old Duff. I need, I think, scarcely bring my old football boots home. They are a sight for ‘men to wonder at, not to see’. The soles are off, the uppers broken, and all in rags.
I met no less a person than Dr Joseph Bell in Brodick yesterday.* I wonder what he is doing here.
[P.S.] We all went out fishing last night in the brook, with a very original & primitive apparatus. However I managed to catch two fine trout, which we ate for supper. I suppose if we leave on Saturday it will be soon enough. I have paid her for our rent for this week, up to Thursday; the grub is the only thing I need to pay for, then 4s for the two extra nights. However one more pound will pay all that and take us home into the bargain. Did you notice in the ‘Scotsman’ that the sea serpent had been seen close to Brodick here, off the Sannox rock?*
In the spring of 1878, Arthur undertook his first assistantship, with a Dr Charles Sidney Richardson of Nelson Terrace, 80 Spital Hill, Sheffield. ‘When I first set forth to do this,’ Conan Doyle said in Memories and Adventures, ‘my services were so obviously worth nothing that I had to put that valuation upon them.’ This policy he would come to regret, though he also allowed, ‘Even then it might have been a hard bargain for the doctor, for I might have proved like the youth in Pickwick who had a rooted idea that oxalic acid was Epsom salts. However, I had horse sense enough to save myself and my employer from any absolute catastrophe.’
His first outing as an assistant ended unhappily nonetheless. He was young and had too few medical or apothecary skills to be a good assistant to Dr Richardson. ‘I did my best, and I dare say he was patient,’ Conan Doyle acknowledged, ‘but at the end of three weeks we parted by mutual consent.’
He then went to London, staying with his aunts and uncles. ‘I fear that I was too Bohemian for them and they too conventional for me. However, they were kind to me, and I roamed about London for some time with pockets so empty that there was little chance of idleness breeding its usual mischief.’ This visit included a glimpse of a British war hero, later Field Marshal Wolseley, in whose honour a banquet would be chaired one day by the famous author A. Conan Doyle; another play with Henry Irving; a concert by a brilliant violinist; and a report to Lottie and Connie that could have been written by Dr Seuss.
to Mary Doyle FINBOROUGH ROAD, LONDON, MAY 26, 1878
I was surprised at not getting a letter on my birthday, however that is all right now. I am enjoying myself very well, working in the mornings and walking out after dinner. Both uncle [Richard] and aunt [Annette] are very kind. I arrived on the Saturday evening and dined at Clifton Gardens on the Sunday. Uncle [James] looks very weary with his work and grey. Aunt Jane looks uncommonly well, ‘Time writes no wrinkles on her azure brow.’* I fancy I made a favourable impression there.
Since then I have seen a good deal of London. On my birthday I went to see Irving in his latest success ‘Louis XI’. A most ghastly sight it was, and has made quite an impression on me. Louis may have been a very bad man, but this I fancy must be an exaggeration of history. The death scene is an awful bit of dramatic art, no vulgar horror about it, but the general effect none the less thrilling for that. Yesterday during the Queen’s birthday I went to see the guards parade. There was a very distinguished staff, including the crown prince of Germany, Sir Garnet Wolseley, the