Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 16

I hope you are quite well I send some little french foot soldiers for cony and lottieŸ please write soon, many thanks for the little whale, we are in the midst of the easter holiday. I hope tot is getting on nicely at schoolŸ I am having the greatest fun cricket is such a jolly game.

When he entered his second year at Hodder he settled into the rigorous academic routine, but to his delight the ‘rough boy’ from Edinburgh also began to excel in sports. ‘I could hold my own both in brain and in strength with my comrades,’ he later recalled. Cricket became a consuming passion for the rest of his life, and he played many other sports also. Although he felt the separation from his family keenly, he was grateful for the encouragement he received from some of his masters. ‘I was fortunate,’ he recalled, ‘to get under the care of a kindly principal, one Father Cassidy, who was more human than Jesuits usually are.’

As Christmas approached at the end of 1868 he was among the boys who remained at school under the staff’s care. Why is not spelled out, though he was not the only boy to spend Christmas holidays at school, and it was most likely due to the expense of travel. He wrote home eagerly anticipating a package of food that would sustain him through the several holiday weeks. His first communion in May was a landmark.