Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 34

Please excuse me for not writing till now, and now writing such a beastly scrawl. I am as happy as could be, and I hope you are also. I have been thinking of anything I wanted in particular and I think that a box of those coloured paper colours would be jolly for nobody here has any.

I am so sorry for poor old France which, though I dont hear very much war news, still is I hear getting beaten. the most frightful prophecies are going about, about her I hope they are all lies. today is a half holyday and I think we will have a football match, we have just finished dinner, we have rare weather we have not had snow or ice for about a month. I have just received your letter I think that it would be no use to send me the cloister and the hearth for it might get spoiled and it is rather expensive.* we had a 10 mile walk today and caught a dear little shrew mouse. I am very sorry to say that poor Mr Cassidy has taken a fit of spitting blood but he is getting better. I like Mr Splaine awfully, his father died a few weeks ago

I must now say goodbye for I am trespassing on my study time. I never was better in my life, so dont alarm yourself

Father Cyprian Splaine was the second of three Stonyhurst masters singled out in young Arthur’s letters home. Splaine catered to some of the schoolboy tastes influencing Conan Doyle’s literary directions in adulthood, but his personality—timorous and prone to outbreaks of tears—proved not very empathetic with the vigorous athletic youngster, and in a later letter, Conan Doyle sounds greatly relieved when his next form-master, Father Reginald Colley (then a young man still in his twenties), arrived on the scene.