Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 141

You are no doubt anxious to hear how I am getting on. My plate is up—Dr Conan Doyle—surgeon—and very well it looks. I hope now that I may clear more. The first week [was] eight shillings—the next twenty—the third twenty five. This week I am afraid will be a little less. However on the whole it increases, and it is very good for a beginner. I have the use of Budd’s horse and trap which is an advantage. I am keeping steadily out of debt, at present I only owe for my plate & midwifery cards. You must remember that if anything happened to Budd, (which God forbid) I should come in for a very good thing. In any case I hope before September to be doing well enough to start a house of my own, and to that end will save every penny I can. There is a fine opening here, a great many medical men have died lately and the survivors are awful duffers.

When shall I marry and who? I shall not meet anyone here, that is certain.

Conan Doyle’s ‘professional manners were very unexciting after [Budd’s] flamboyant efforts, which I could not imitate even if I would,’ he said. The Mam was appalled nonetheless; ‘her family pride had been aroused’. But Conan Doyle ‘admired [Budd’s] strong qualities and enjoyed his company and the extraordinary situations which arose from any association with him’—and ‘this resistance upon my part, and my defence of my friend, annoyed my mother the more, and she wrote me several letters of remonstrance which certainly dealt rather faithfully with his character as it appeared to her.’

Then one day, six weeks into their association, the mercurial Dr Budd informed Conan Doyle that he was hurting the practice and must go. It was a considerable shock to the younger man, but Budd offered to send £1 a week until he found his feet somewhere else. If his mother had taken a dim view of the association with Budd, the arrangement’s collapse apparently brought fresh recriminations.