Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 136

You must think that I have given up writing letters entirely judging from my long silence. I have been working very hard, and that is the reason.

I called on Hogg in London, he was very polite and flattering, said that ‘he and many of his friends looked upon me as one of the coming men in literature’. ; His chief editorial fault is an utter want of sense of humour. In this story which I regard as my chef d’oeuvre, ‘The Actor’s Duel—a legend of the French Stage’, there is a very amusing passage—one which Uncle Dick said was most excellent, and which has amused everyone I have read it to. The situation is a simple old mother living apart from the world reading a slangy sporting letter from her son, and coming to most ridiculous conclusions & making endless blunders over what she regards as ‘modern refinements of speech’. Hogg was utterly ignorant that it was even meant to be funny. It was something entirely beyond his comprehension. He wanted me to change this which I refused to do. He then asked me to write him a story about a fool for next months number—I am sending it off today—46 pages of closely written manuscript. I think it is not bad ‘Bones’ or ‘The April Fool of Harvey’s Sluice’. The first real love story which I have attempted. I am to have another commission to write a story about the Derby.

It is a pleasant place to stay in, this, & I am very comfortable & quiet. Writing all day, and reading with Aspinal after supper. The reading is doing me a good deal of good too. By the way there is a very great demand for photos. You positively must send me down half a dozen of the small—I am getting into disgrace all round about them. What a curious thing that none of those hospitals have answered my application. The more I think of it the more convinced I am that that is the thing for me. It is the only way of aiming high. If I could get an appointment in London I should go in for my FRCS Eng.* I need another year matric—to be 25 years old—and a few more classes, but it wd be very well worth it. You seem to be having high jinks at home—I wish I was with you.

[P.S.] Do write soon. I’m not in love again yet—at least not to any great extent.