In his letters home Conan Doyle never touched upon one of the most important effects of his Jesuit education: his loss of faith in the Roman Catholic Church to which the Doyles were devoted. ‘Nothing can exceed the uncompromising bigotry of the Jesuit theology,’ he said in Memories and Adventures. ‘I remember that when, as a grown lad, I heard Father Murphy, a great fierce Irish priest, declare that there was sure damnation for everyone outside the Church, I looked upon him with horror, and to that moment I trace the first rift which has grown into such a chasm between me and those who were my guides.’
He did not write home about it. His mother might be someone whose advice (as he put it in his 1895 autobiographical novel The Stark Munro Letters) was ‘Wear flannel next your skin, my boy, and never believe in eternal punishment,’ but his father, said Conan Doyle in his memoir, ‘lived and died a fervent son of the Roman Catholic faith.’
Returning home, he found that the family’s circumstances had undergone more change. ‘My mother had adopted the device of sharing a large house,’ he said, ‘which may have eased her in some ways, but was disastrous in others.’ This comment, made nearly half a century later, was probably an oblique reference to one lodger in particular, Dr Bryan Charles Waller, who had already come to assume a powerful influence in the Doyle household. Only six years older than Conan Doyle, Waller would soon take over paying the family’s rent, usurping the role of the increasingly infirm Charles Doyle. Initially, young Conan Doyle warmed to Waller, who not only a notable physician but a published poet. But later his feelings would darken, perhaps over Waller playing a role that Conan Doyle would have liked to play instead. (And yet when he married in 1885, Waller acted as best man. Considerable speculation has been expended on Dr Waller’s relationship with the family, but too little data is available to reach firm conclusions.)
‘Perhaps it was good for me that the times were hard,’ he said. ‘[T]he situation called for energy and application, so that one was bound to try to meet it. My mother had been so splendid that we could not fail her.’ Edinburgh University had one of the best medical schools in the world, and that Dr Waller had trained there, and could help Conan Doyle prepare for the entry examinations, must also have had some bearing on the decision that he should study medicine too.
But Conan Doyle was still young for university at age sixteen. ‘I was dispatched, therefore, to Feldkirch, which is a Jesuit school in the Vorarlberg province of Austria, to which many better-class German boys are sent. Here the conditions were much more humane and I met with far more human kindness than at Stonyhurst, with the immediate result that I ceased to be a resentful young rebel and became a pillar of law and order.’
to Mary Doyle FELDKIRCH, AUSTRIA, SEPTEMBER 1875
You must be astonished at not having heard from me before, but I will begin my adventures from the beginning. I had a very pleasant journey down to Liverpool where I found we did not pass through the Exchange Station, so I got a cab from Lime Street Station and then got a train to Berkdale, which bye the bye is eighteen miles from Liverpool. I arrived at Berkdale and there at the station I saw a hoary headed old chap who proved to be Mr Rockliffe. He was a jolly old man, and took me up to his house where I was introduced to his two daughters and three sons. They were very kind hospitable people, and gave me a jolly dinner and a warm bed. Sunday passed in smoking, hearing mass, reading, walking, and playing billiards, and on Monday we were to set off. But in the middle of the night the greatest hurricane since 1839 arose. Nearly the whole top of the house was carried off like a feather, tiles and chimney pots were flying about and in the midst of the turmoil a messenger arrived from Mr Rockliffes brother, who was to take us, saying that he would not risk our lives by going in such weather. The result was that we stayed at Berkdale until the Wednesday morning when we set off. We went to London, then to Newhaven, Dieppe and Paris. I got into Paris late one night and we started early next morning, so I could not visit Uncle. I was so disappointed. I have only five minutes more time to write in so I must be quick and give you a full account of the journey in my next letter. The Alps are beautiful and the place is jolly I think.
to Mary Doyle FELDKIRCH, JANUARY 1876
I hope you have had a merry Xmas and a happy new year; will it be satisfactory if I write every second letter in French, as I can give you my news better in English?* I am glad the letter pleased you, I meant it to be a little surprise. We keep Xmas very shabbily here having only Xmas and New year’s day free; I am an unlucky wretch and won nothing in the lottery, however it is a consolation that the money went to the pope.
It was extremely kind of Uncle Henry to send me the pound, and I am very grateful to him; I beg that you will keep the money, and buy something for yourself with it. Thanks for the scraps also; the fleet seems unlucky first ‘the Vanguard’ going down, and then ‘The Iron Duke’ having such an escape. What a whopping lie about the sea serpent that twisted two coils round a whale!
I am getting along very jollily, and am acquiring a whole lot of skating feats, so that when I come back I will be a respectable skater. What sort of a winter have you had? Here the cold is sometimes seventeen below zero; remember that in Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, when the soldier’s fingers dropped off it was only just above 20° below zero on an average. When we get up at five, our water for washing, though in an artificially heated dormitory, is so thick with ice, that we must pound it with a toothbrush to get at it.
I have had such nice letters from Uncle Conan and Tottie, both of whom by the way are stamp collectors. I send you a bird’s eye view of the town, the whole of that massive building on the left is the college. I am sorry you do not obtain a view of the mountains on each side.
to Mary Doyle FELDKIRCH
As the Father did not send me any pocket money this month, I naturally remonstrated and was informed that there is some regulation, which it appears is on the prospectus, about parents paying quarterly before hand, their son’s pocket money. I hope that you will write about it at once to Father Meyer, the procurator, as I am at present in a state of complete destitution.
Slow indications of the return of spring are beginning to appear, and I fear the skating will not last much beyond the end of this month. I hear wonderful accounts of the heat here in summer, and of the various representatives of insect life which appear; as they may be interesting to that young lady, I will describe them in my letter to Lottie. As I wish to have afterwards some memorials of my year of exile, I send you two more photos. One is the town in another position, showing the river Ill, a tributary of the Rhine, and also giving a good view of the old medieval fortress overhanging the town, and of the cliffs. The other is a very famous pilgrimage about three miles from here, where very many miracles have been wrought. I saw preserved there a solid rock worn about two feet deep by the knees of a saint, who used it for a ‘prie-dieu’.
I saw another very curious thing; it appears that long ago a rich man died about here, leaving his money to the church. His brothers burned the real will, and having forged a new one, were proving their claims to the property before Judges, when the skeleton of the dead man appeared among the assembly and frustrated his treacherous relations by producing the true will. In memory of the event, a picture was painted, I believe by a spectator of the scene, and this I saw hanging in the church. There are many votive offerings too for miraculous escapes, which are highly interesting. Isn’t that a thumping mountain in the background, on the right hand side; take care you don’t mistake it for a cloud.
to Mary Doyle FELDKIRCH, MARCH 1876
What jolly letters Tottie writes, but like her lovely brother she is rather forgetting her orthography. I return the letter of the promising pupil, she seems a very nice little girl, but I think there is a tinge of selfishness about the other; don’t you think so? The first personal pronoun predominates too much in it, though, no doubt, that is natural in one so young.
The German gets on very well; when I speak fast I