Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 59

we have been having desperately hot weather lately. Even our french boy finds it hot, he keeps saying ‘it is tres chaud, very chaud, chauder than dans France.’

I had a talk with the rector yesterday. he said he was extremely pleased at the report he had to send home about me, and especially that I had overcome all sulkiness or ill temper I used to have. he also said there was scarcely a boy in the house who had done better!

The Anglican Alphabit seems to be a great favourite. I saw another thing in some paper about Papa, it said ‘Great men’s footsteps, a pleasing story, with 4 capital engravings by C. A. DOYLE.

I have read all Tottie’s letters, they are very nice. I am glad she is going to be ‘a child of Mary’. I hope she will be at home before I return, and will stay at home the whole vacation.

Though Charles Doyle tended to drink the payment he received for extra-curricular work as an artist, he was still busy in these days with commissions from magazines and publishers, and his work as an illustrator was still well regarded. The Anglican Alphabet was new—and he a surprising choice as its illustrator, for he like the other Doyles was an ardent Roman Catholic. Brave Men’s Footsteps (its title recalled incorrectly in Arthur’s letter), subtitled A Book of Anecdote and Example in Practical Life, had been published the year before. Its editor was James Hogg, who presumably remembered Charles Doyle’s work when his son started submitting stories to him.

Conan Doyle’s sister Annette was apparently considering joining the religious order to which her London aunt belonged, the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary. It was devoted to good works, did not require adherents to wear habits, and allowed them to live in homes of their own.* His aunt Annette Doyle shared one with her bachelor brother, illustrator Richard Doyle, famous for ending his association with Punch in 1850 over its anti-Catholic views.

Conan Doyle learned that another sibling had arrived, his only brother in a family that included three sisters, with more to come. Perhaps to please his mother, he wrote in French this time to inquire about the baby.