Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 8

Conan Doyle was part of a very large family, and it is no simple matter to keep all of its members straight as the reader moves through his letters.* His grandfather John Doyle, the London political cartoonist known as ‘H.B.’, was born in April 1797, and died on January 2, 1868, when Conan Doyle was eight years old. He had some memory of his grandfather, but not of his paternal grandmother, Marianne Conan, who had died at the end of 1839. Her brother, Michael Conan, a journalist who lived in Paris much of his life, was godfather to Arthur and his older sister Annette, with his surname being added to theirs at the baptismal font to form the compound name Conan Doyle. This name was not held by their parents’ subsequent children.

John Doyle himself had seven children of whom five survived past adolescence. James Doyle (1822-92), Richard Doyle (1824-83), and Henry Doyle (1827-92) have been mentioned previously, along with Arthur’s father, Charles Altamont Doyle, who was born on March 25, 1832, and died on October 10, 1893. In addition, there was a daughter, Ann Martha Doyle (1821-99), called Annette, who played an important part in her nephew’s life. With the exceptions of Arthur’s father, who went to Edinburgh when young, and his uncle Henry, who spent many years in Dublin, the family’s life centred in London.

On his mother’s side, Arthur Conan Doyle’s other grandfather was William Foley (1807-40) of Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland. He married Catherine Pack in 1835. She died in 1862, and seeing her lifeless body was Arthur’s earliest memory. William and Catherine Foley had two daughters: Conan Doyle’s aunt Kate, Catherine Foley, born in 1839 (but who emigrated when he was young, and the date of her death is unknown); and Conan Doyle’s mother, Mary Josephine Elizabeth Foley, who was born in Lismore on July 8, 1837, and died at her home ‘Bowshott Cottage’ in West Grinstead, Surrey, on December 30, 1920.

Charles Doyle and Mary Foley married on July 31, 1855, and lost little time in starting their large family. Two daughters died young: Catherine Amelia Angela, who lived only six months in 1858, and Mary Helena Monica Harriet, who was born in 1861 but died after two years. Five other daughters and two sons survived to adulthood, with names frequently drawn from relatives or friends, with the occasional saint’s name for good measure:

ANNE MARY FRANCES CONAN DOYLE, born on July 22, 1856, and known as Annette (‘Tottie’ when young) after her aunt and namesake. Called ‘the prop of the family’ by Arthur for her hard work helping to raise and educate her younger brothers and sisters, she never married, and she died from influenza at the age of thirty-three, on January 13, 1890.

ARTHUR IGNATIUS CONAN DOYLE, born on May 22, 1859, and died on July 7, 1930, at age seventy-one. His first marriage, in 1885, to Louisa Hawkins (nicknamed ‘Touie’), produced two children, Mary and Kingsley; his second marriage, in 1907 to Jean Elizabeth Leckie, produced three children, Denis, Adrian (often called Malcolm in his youth), and Jean.

CAROLINE MARY BURTON DOYLE, called ‘Lottie’, was Arthur’s favourite sister. Six years younger than Arthur, she was born February 22, 1866. Lottie married Leslie Oldham in 1900, and they had one daughter, Claire. Lottie survived Arthur, dying on May 3, 1941.

CONSTANCE AMELIA MONICA DOYLE, the beauty of the family, called ‘Connie’, was born March 4, 1868, making her eight years younger than Arthur. She married the writer E. W. Hornung in 1893, and they had one child, Arthur Oscar. She died on June 24, 1924.

JOHN FRANCIS INNES HAY DOYLE, called Innes (or Frank, Geoff, then ‘Duff’, when young), was born March 31, 1873. Arthur took an active role bringing up his fourteen years’ younger brother. Innes married Clara Schwensen in 1911, and they had two sons, John and Francis, before his death on February 19, 1919.

JANE ADELAIDE ROSE DOYLE, called ‘Ida’, was born March 16, 1875, and died on July 1, 1937. In 1895 she married a widowed cousin, Nelson Foley, and they had two sons of their own, Percy and Innes.

BRYAN MARY JULIA JOSEPHINE DOYLE, called ‘Dodo’, was born March 2, 1877, and died on February 8, 1927, predeceasing her considerably older brother Arthur. She married the Reverend Cyril Angell in 1899, and they had one son, Branford.