Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 78

It was very kind indeed of Tottie to send me the scraps, and McFairsham. I am going to have a good supper in a few days, for doing well at the lessons, and I will sing McFairsham in honour of Scotland. They always want me to sing a Scotch song. And I always have to tell them I don’t know any, so I will satisfy them for once.

You must excuse my brevity, as I wish the letter to go this mail, and I have to write to Uncle Conan, to acknowledge the receipt of a little book he sent me. ‘McCauley’s lays of Rome’.

Macaulay’s work greatly influenced Conan Doyle. ‘It seems entwined into my whole life as I look backwards,’ he wrote decades later. ‘The short, vivid sentences, the broad sweep of allusion, the exact detail, they all throw a glamour round the subject and should make the least studious of readers desire to go further. If Macaulay’s hand cannot lead a man upon those pleasant paths, then, indeed, he may give up all hope of ever finding them.’