Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 142

Many thanks for your letters. Why are they all in such a dismal & lachrymose strain. Just at the time when I need a little cheering & encouragement taking my first unaided step into the world with no other aim than to carve out a fortune for yourself and me you do nothing but depress & discourage me. I am beginning to positively dread the sight of an Edinburgh postmark. Write something cheery, like a good little woman, and don’t be always in the dolefuls or we shall set you to revise the Hebrew text of the burial service, or some other congenial occupation. You won’t be so much in the blues about me this time twelve months I warrant. If anyone ought to be dismal it is I who have nothing to look forward to but hard fare and loneliness and an empty house for some weeks or months to come—never a man wanted cheering more. I hardly closed an eye last night planning & scheming.

There is something to be said for your locum tenens idea—Still you must remember that Doctors rarely take holidays longer than a fortnight (in my experience). That would mean six guineas to me from which the fare one way is to be deducted. Then the chances are that a fortnight or more would elapse before another situation could be got. Competition as you and I know is pretty brisk, and by that time how much of my little sum would be left. No, I am going to take the plunge and start in Portsmouth if your report which I expect today corresponds with my own idea of the size of the place. Now don’t try to dissuade me any more but rather devote that wonderful head of yours to the question of ways and means. Budd volunteers to pay my passage there, and to find me a pound a week until I earn more than that. This I refused at first, but since reading your letter I shall accept it but only as a loan. I intend to stay for a week in lodgings there during which time I shall pitch upon a house (about £35 a year—central situation not among shops or in too busy a street—corner if possible). I shall then give the Landlord a bundle of references and enter into possession & put the plates up. I have two plates printed—one announcing that the poor may consult me free during certain hours in the week—an excellent dodge. My furnishing will consist of a cheap bed and pair of blankets & crockery set—a table and two chairs for the Consulting room and a bench with a couple more chairs for the waiting room. I shall keep no servant but buy a kettle and an egg pot and have a small dinner at some eatinghouse. I can get long credit for drugs and bottles at the company in London that supplies Budd. If I can only get the right sort of house I’ll make a thousand a year within three years or I’m very much mistaken. I have been other men’s servant too long—I believe it has an injurious effect upon a man’s character and I am tired of it. I want you by hook or crook to raise five pounds & send it down by return. I hope it will be the last money you will ever send me—certainly it will repay you well. By return, mind. I shall reckon upon it.

I have made it up with Elmore (who is very much better, almost well). I wrote asking how she was & got a very penitent letter back. Poor lass, I think she is really fond of me. She would advance me a hundred or so if I would take it—which I won’t. I shall marry her if I succeed in P.

Goodbye, darling, don’t be frightened. I’ll let you have a bulletin every day or so.

Now that he was back in the good graces of Elmore Weldon, Conan Doyle began once again to contemplate marriage; but the course of true love would not run smooth.

Conan Doyle took a steamer to Portsmouth, and rented a house in its Southsea suburb. For a companion he tried to persuade his mother to send his fourteen-year-old sister Connie to him; when his mother dismissed it as no situation for so young a girl, he pleaded for his even younger brother Innes, instead. ‘Yours Cheerfully,’ he signed his first letter home from Southsea.