Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 31

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The Student he lay on his narrow bed he dreamt not of the morrow confused thoughts they filled his head and he dreamt of his home with sorrow

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The Student he lay on his narrow bed all round dark was the night the stars they twinkled above his head and the moon it shone quite bright

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He thought of the birch’s stinging stroke and he thought with fear on the morrow he wriggled and tumbled and nearly awoke and again he sighed with sorrow

His letters do not tell how much Stonyhurst employed corporal punishment to enforce order and discipline. He received more than his share, for he was long deemed an insubordinate, rebellious boy by his schoolmasters, but he seems never to have described punishments in letters home (which may have been read by school authorities before being posted). Only this poem, and a later comment about overcoming the sulkiness and ill temper his masters had charged him with, allude meaningfully to what he described in Memories and Adventures:

Corporal punishment was severe, and I can speak with feeling as I think few, if any, boys of my time endured more of it. It was of a peculiar nature, imported also, I fancy, from Holland. The instrument was a piece of india-rubber of the size and shape of a thick boot sole. This was called a ‘Tolley’—why, no one has explained, unless it is a Latin pun on what we had to bear. One blow of this instrument, delivered with intent, would cause the palm of the hand to swell up and change colour. When I say that the usual punishment of the larger boys was nine on each hand, and that nine on one hand was the absolute minimum, it will be understood that it was a severe ordeal, and that the sufferer could not, as a rule, turn the handle of the door to get out of the room in which he had suffered. To take twice nine upon a cold day was about the extremity of human endurance.

The budding poet soon found uses for his talents. He began to be aware of ‘some literary streak’ setting him apart from others. ‘There was my debut as a storyteller,’ he later told an interviewer: ‘On a wet half-holiday I have been elevated onto a desk, and with an audience of little boys all squatting on the floor, with their chins upon their hands, I have talked myself husky over the misfortunes of my heroes. Week in and week out those unhappy men have battled and striven and groaned for the amusement of that little circle.’ Even at his tender age he expected payment for his efforts. ‘I was bribed with pastry,’ he recalled. ‘Sometimes, too, I would stop dead in the very thrill of a crisis, and could only be set a-going again by apples. When I had got so far as ‘With his left hand in her glossy locks, he was waving the blood-stained knife above her head, when—’I knew that I had my audience in my power.’

As it happened, the young storyteller was introduced about now to Sir Walter Scott, a writer who would inspire even greater flights of fancy.