Kitabı oku: «Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters», sayfa 5
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST
last thursday was the rectors day the following was the order of the day We got up at 6 and had washing till 1/2 past 6 then mass till 7 then studies till 8 & breakfast of bread & milk till 1/2 past 8 then we took our skates and went to a recevoir [sic] near, and skated till 12 we then had some tarts & other refreshments & went out skating till 5 o’clock we then went home & had dinner of pork & apple sauce & potatoes & then tarts & oranges till 1/2 past 5 we then went to the playroom & played games till 7 we then said night prayers and had supper of bread & milk we then again took our skates & went to the pond and there we found it all illuminated with Chinese lanterns & torches & blue & red lights so that it was as light as day & there was a band on the side of the pond playing Rule britania and other popular songs we then began skating after being all provided with cigars & matches we had scarcely begun to skate when the masters on the sides began throwing jumping crackers & squibs among us & letting off rockets & Roman Candles & so we enjoyed ourselves till 11 o’clock & then we all got a tumbler of punch to drink the Rector’s health with & then we took off our skates & went to bed.
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST
many thanks to Papa for his funny note and to lottie and cony for the cake I wish I could get some little gift for them here.
my cricket costume is not quite finished, a coat is dispensable as we always take off our coats in the cricket field.
I hope you are all well. the vacations are coming rolling towards us again. I am trying to keep up my French reading in order to be able to read the ‘Du Monde’ to you during the holidays.
P.S. I am cocksure of a prize.
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST, MAY 1872
I enjoyed your last letter very much, thank you for the leave. I have already been measured and I will appear in them in the course of a week. this is my cricketing costume, a small peaked white flannel cap (provided by the College for all), a bulging out light yellow flannel shirt, loose trousers of the same description, & white shoes with long sharp spikes sticking out of the soles, to prevent me from slipping when bowling. The sight of 250 boys all dressed like this, and all laughing and running about, is a very imposing one.
The Rector came into the studyplace yesterday and gave us a lecture which he finished by saying that last year several parents had been annoyed at his sending their boys back in their usual dress, and had said that they had expected him to get their boys vacation suits, so he told each boy to write home & ask whether they are to get clothes or not. of course I don’t care whether I get them or not.
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST
This is my last letter this year. I will be at Edinburgh on Wednesday at quarter past five. I will take care of everything. I will get my trunk and get a cab and drive to you. don’t let Lottie and Cony go to bed till I come, please!
I have arranged everything about my clothes I am to take two suits home with me the suit I got some time ago and my old grey clothes. my brown ones are completely worn out. I will, I think have to get some more clothes for next year. All the schoolbooks are taken up now I’m as happy as a lark. I hope I will find you all well and comfortable when I return I also hope that Papa will get some vacation and then we will go walks together. won’t I pitch into Walter Scott’s novels.
Conan Doyle’s liking for Sir Walter Scott had been growing for months, fanned by early exposure to Ivanhoe and Rob Roy. Over the summer, as he ‘pitched into’ the rest of Scott, Conan Doyle felt a powerful stirring of the imagination. ‘They were the first books I ever owned,’ he said, ‘long before I could appreciate or even understand them. But at last I realized what a treasure they were.’ Just as future generations of schoolboys would read Sherlock Holmes by the glow of flashlights, Conan Doyle found himself huddling up among the ‘glorious brotherhood’ of the Waverley novels: ‘I read them by surreptitious candle-ends in the dead of the night, when the sense of crime added a new zest to the story.’
When he returned to Stonyhurst in the autumn he had a new respect and passion for history. There was little sign of this new studiousness on the return journey, however, as he and Jimmy Ryan set off firecrackers in the train carriage.
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST, AUGUST 1872
I have not told you the events which happened on my journey yet. So I will tell you them now.
Ryan and I let off crackers and romped till we came to Carstairs. There we waited 45 minutes for the perth train.
we then went on a long, long way without anything happening, when suddenly a man said Oh Look at the Chinaman. there sure enough was one of the Burmese puffing and blowing like a steam engine, they had a splendidly filled out saloon at the end of the train, but they left us near Carlisle. we then bowled on quickly till we came to Preston so I and Ryan ran and looked in all the vans for our luggage, but no luggage appeared, I was quite frightened. I asked several guards but none of them knew anything about it. at last an old fellow suggested that it might be in the next train. so I sat & waited and in 1/4 of an hour up came the train, the very first thing taken out was my trunk. I then drove to the Red Lion, here I met one of the fathers the first thing he said to me was, I dispense you from eating fish today (an ember day) so I got some meat soup I found the stockport bus, and drive here. the driver killed a hedgehog running across the road.
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST
there is tremendous bustle going on here. all who are not going home at Xmas, being mostly foreigners are writing to the rector for Xmas boxes, and those who are going are eager to know all the arrangements there are about 50 of the Lower Line stopping here, but only 6 or 7 of the higher line, which is very jolly, as we can all be taken out fishing or anything.
I must tell you about my box now. as it is twice as long vacation, I will require a rather larger box to keep me in good. well in the way of meat you may send what you think will do me, the usual thing is a turkey or goose, a piece of ham a German sausage, a piece of tongue or a chicken, and then one or two boxes of sardines for fast days. please don’t send any of that potted lobster, it is very nice, but very little of it gives me Diarhoea. then there is a cake (a small one will do) & piece of shortbread, then a box of figs, and a few buns or small cakes.
1 doz apples. 2 doz oranges and 1/2 a dozen pears. then 1/2 lb of London mixture, a packet of Butter Scotch and a packet of Furgusson’s Edinburgh rock then a Bottle of Clarat (don’t put water in for it will be diluted here) and some raspberry Vinegar, and anything you find expedient…
After making it safely through the holiday without the ill effects of potted lobster, Conan Doyle looked forward to the Easter break, though preparations were complicated by the fact that he was rapidly outgrowing his clothes, at not quite fourteen years old.
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST, MARCH 1873
I would be very glad if you sent me a necktie for Easter. Before the end of the year I daresay, I shall have to write for more clothes, both those trousers of Papa’s are rather worn out, and my last year’s suit has grown rather short, and will soon be well-nigh useless. that heather-suit you got me wears splendidly, there isn’t a single scratch in it, and it doesn’t show dirt a bit. it serves me now, but when summer comes, I’m afraid it will be rather too heavy & hot. Excuse my writing, I hurt my thumb at hockey, and cannot bend it properly.
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST, APRIL 1873
we have been having desperately hot weather lately. Even our french boy finds it hot, he keeps saying ‘it is tres chaud, very chaud, chauder than dans France.’
I had a talk with the rector yesterday. he said he was extremely pleased at the report he had to send home about me, and especially that I had overcome all sulkiness or ill temper I used to have. he also said there was scarcely a boy in the house who had done better!
The Anglican Alphabit seems to be a great favourite. I saw another thing in some paper about Papa, it said ‘Great men’s footsteps, a pleasing story, with 4 capital engravings by C. A. DOYLE.
I have read all Tottie’s letters, they are very nice. I am glad she is going to be ‘a child of Mary’. I hope she will be at home before I return, and will stay at home the whole vacation.
Though Charles Doyle tended to drink the payment he received for extra-curricular work as an artist, he was still busy in these days with commissions from magazines and publishers, and his work as an illustrator was still well regarded. The Anglican Alphabet was new—and he a surprising choice as its illustrator, for he like the other Doyles was an ardent Roman Catholic. Brave Men’s Footsteps (its title recalled incorrectly in Arthur’s letter), subtitled A Book of Anecdote and Example in Practical Life, had been published the year before. Its editor was James Hogg, who presumably remembered Charles Doyle’s work when his son started submitting stories to him.
Conan Doyle’s sister Annette was apparently considering joining the religious order to which her London aunt belonged, the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary. It was devoted to good works, did not require adherents to wear habits, and allowed them to live in homes of their own.* His aunt Annette Doyle shared one with her bachelor brother, illustrator Richard Doyle, famous for ending his association with Punch in 1850 over its anti-Catholic views.
Conan Doyle learned that another sibling had arrived, his only brother in a family that included three sisters, with more to come. Perhaps to please his mother, he wrote in French this time to inquire about the baby.
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST, APRIL 1873
I’ve been quite busy recently with my lessons, and haven’t had the time to write to you as I would have liked to do. I am very happy to know that I have a little brother, that is charming, write me quickly and tell me what his name is and what he looks like. love to everyone, I am very tired from writing this little letter.
The boy’s name, he soon learned, was John Francis Innes Hay Doyle, although it would be some time before the family decided what to call him on a daily basis. After ‘Frank’ at first, they eventually settled on Innes, but Arthur first called him Geoff, and then Duff.
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST
After dinner it was growing rain, however we determined in spite of the weather to set out at once for Clitheroe the usual place visited on the Academy walk, so we all donned water-proofs and sou’westers. we set off, smoking to keep off the cold. I bought a nice little pipe with an amber mouthpiece, which I enjoyed very much. At last we reached Clitheroe and we all ordered what we wished in the way of drink. I got a bottle of lemonade but some, I am ashamed to say, tossed off whole tumblers of raw brandy. We passed through some curious pits where excavations were being made for fossils. I found there a most curious stone, all covered with petrified worms, whose coils I could see distinctly.
After a nice walk we reached home, where we found a jolly feast ready for us, in what is called, in the book I sent you, the do-room. Mr Splaine made a new speech, and we made great havoc among the eatables. we had a very jolly day on the whole. next morning I noticed the brandy-drinkers, however, who did not seem at all the better for their do.
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST, JUNE 1873
I am glad to hear that my report was a good one. I have got my prize now for certain, and it will be a much more honourable one than any other that I have got yet, as Syntax is one of the hardest schools in the house, and certainly not more than eight in the class will get a prize. I am trying to improve in my French and I have read a great many books in that language lately. I will tell you a few of them to see if you have ever seen them. ‘Vingt milles lieus ses les mers’ by Jules Verne, ‘Don Quixote’ ‘cingt semaines dans un balon’ by Jules Verne, ‘Napoleon et le grande armeé’ ‘Voyage dans soudain’ ‘La Roche des Mouettes’ ‘Voyage d’un Enfant a Paris’ ‘Le Fratricide’ ‘Les Russes et les anglais’ ‘Enfants du Capitaine Grant’ ‘a la lune et de retour’ and a lot more, and I am getting to relish them quite as well as English books.
Our master, Mr Splaine, has been up at the Tichbourne Trial, he was appointed as librarian to bring up some old charts of the college. he has now returned and told us all his adventures with great gusto.
I hope you are all well at home, has little Frank got any teeth yet? I suppose he won’t be able to walk by the time I come home.
Like Scott’s novels, Jules Verne’s visionary work would take root in Conan Doyle’s mind, and Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea can be readily felt in Conan Doyle’s 1929 science-fiction novel, The Maracot Deep, in which undersea explorers travel to a kingdom on the ocean floor.
The Tichborne Claimant, one of England’s most famous legal cases, fascinated Stonyhurst, for it dealt with a mysterious figure who claimed to be the long-missing Sir Roger Tichborne, a Stonyhurst graduate and heir to a fortune, who had been presumed lost at sea in 1854. For twelve years Lady Tichborne refused to believe that her son was dead, and she kept a light in the entrance of Tichborne Hall to enable him to find his way home in the dark. In 1866 she received a letter from a butcher in Wagga Wagga, Australia, a man known locally there as Arthur Orton, who declared—amid apologies for his lax correspondence—that he was her long lost son.
When he arrived in England Lady Tichborne welcomed him, but other members of the family denounced him as an impostor, and his claim turned into the longest and most convoluted proceeding in British legal history. It was finally dismissed in 1871, and now, in 1873, Orton was on trial for perjury. Conan Doyle followed avidly ‘a case of identity’ (to cite the title of an early Sherlock Holmes story) that seemed lifted from the pages of Alexandre Dumas—ending in Orton’s eventual conviction and ten years in prison. The trial was still underway when the 1872-73 school year came to an end.*
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST, JULY 1873
I have been to the taylor and I showed him your letter, explaining to him that you wanted something that would wear well, and at the same time look well. he told me that the blue cloth he had was meant especially for coats, but that none of it would suit well as trousers, he showed me a dark sort of cloth, which he said would suit a blue coat better than any other cloth he has, and would wear well as trousers. On his recommendation I took this cloth, I think you will like it, it does not show dirt, and looks very well, it is a sort of black and white very dark cloth. You must write and tell me beforehand if you are going to meet me at the station. I know nothing about the train yet, but I will let you know when I learn. My examen is finished so I have finished all my work for the year, but of course it is kept profoundly secret who has got a prize. I trust I am among the chosen few.
I have never known a year pass so quickly as the last one, it seems not a month ago since I left you, and I can remember all the minutest articles of furniture in the house, even to the stains on the wall. I suppose I will have to perform for Frank the office I have so often performed for Lottie and Cony, namely, that of rocking her to sleep. I suppose he is out of his long clothes now.
We are going to have bathing during schools this evening, which is a nice prospect. This is the Golden Time of one’s life at Stonyhurst, the end of the year.
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST, SEPTEMBER 1873
My things have been taken out of my box, a little of the jam was spilt but no harm done. Ryan has come, and brought the brush with him. the masters all call him ‘gunpowder’ on account of his accident.*
We have a jolly little school of only 12 fellows, so, with so few, I expect to make great progress. I have taken ‘honours’, that is to say, the ordinary work is considered too short for me, and I have to do an extra hundred lines a day. at the end of the year there is an examination and the best in that gets £5, while any others who do well get prizes. there are seven in our school in honours, while in the next school, 33 in number, there are only four, which shows that we are a clever school. I have quite fallen into the routine of the college, even of being awoken by a policeman’s rattle at 6 o’clock.
My hair is in capital order, that lime cream is very good indeed.
‘He is a man who leads a sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely, is middle-aged, has grizzled hair which he has had cut within the last few days, and which he anoints with lime-cream. These are the more patent facts which are to be deduced from his hat.’
—‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST, OCTOBER 1873
I was a little frightened at not receiving any letter from you for so long. but your note today calmed my fears.
I got a jolly letter from Uncle James the other day, he gave me 3 pages of sermon and one of fun.
do you know how I signalized my entrance into the higher line? why: I have got up a monthly journal, The Stonyhurst Figaro, to come out monthly I and a fellow called Roscell are the joint editors and correspondents, we make up little poems and essays to put in it. we have finished writing the November one, and nearly all the higher line have seen it. here are the contents of vol 1—which filled a large 2 penny themebook.
The Figaro’s Prospects (poem) by Arthur Roskell
Some wicked Jokes by A. Doyle
The students dream (poem) by A. Roskell.
The Abbot By A. Doyle. (poem)
Music of the day & music of the past (essay) by Roskell
Bluestocking court (essay) By Roskell
After the Battle (poem) By A. C. Doyle
‘It was incumbent to write poetry (so called) on any theme given,’ he recalled in Memories and Adventures. ‘This was done as a dreary unnatural task by most boys. Very comical their wooings of the muses used to be. For one saturated as I was with affection for verse, it was a labour of love, and I produced verses which were poor enough in themselves but seemed miracles to those who had no urge in that direction.’
to Mary Doyle STONYHURST, OCTOBER 1873
We have had a great commotion here lately, from the fact that our third prefect has gone stark staring mad. I expected it all along, he always seemed to have the most singular antipathy to me, and I am called among the boys ‘Mr Chrea’s friend’. Ironically, of course. The first signs of madness were at Vespers the other day. I was near him & I saw him, just as the Laudate Dominum began, pull out his handkerchief and begin waving it over his head. Two of the community took him and at once led him out. They say that in his delirium he mentioned my name several times. A story is going about that before entering the society he fell in love with a maiden, but the maiden absconded with an individual named Doyle, and Mr Chrea in his despair entered the society, and the name of Doyle has ever since had an irritating effect on him. I can’t however answer for the truth of this. We are having the most detestable weather possible over here. Rain, rain, rain and nothing but rain. I shall soon at this rate die of ennui, my great comfort however is the thought of seeing you all again at Xmas.
One longs to know Mr Chrea’s fate. The deranged Prefect being led away with Conan Doyle’s name on his lips presents a vivid picture; though seemingly not disconcerting enough to lift the young student out of his ennui. (Perhaps feigned, as he hurried to send his version of the incident home before the school could dispatch its own report.)
Any ennui he felt was soon dispelled when one of England’s famous travelling menageries came to a nearby town:
