The essay on intemperance expressed a long-lasting concern of his, perhaps sparked by father’s weakness for drink, that would surface repeatedly in his private correspondence and his fiction.
His third assistantship, with Dr Reginald Ratcliff Hoare of Clifton House, Aston Road, Birmingham, commenced in June 1879. It was ‘a five-horse city practice,’ said Conan Doyle, which ‘meant going from morning to night.’ His duties took him often into Birmingham’s slums, where he ‘saw a great deal, for better or worse, of very low life’. (Experience that served the author well later on.)
Dr Hoare paid him too, £2 a month, ‘a great boon and a good progress since last year,’ Conan Doyle’s sister Annette observed. (He had little free time to spend it, he noted in Memories and Adventures, ‘and it was as well, for every shilling was needed at home.’)
His 1910 Romance of Medicine talk did not mourn ‘the days of the unqualified assistant—a person who has now been legislated out of existence, with I have no doubt an excellent result upon the death rate.’ But his objections to the life evaporated with Reg and Amy Hoare, for his position ‘was soon rather that of a son than of an assistant’.
Family responsibilities still weighed on his mind, but his outlook blossomed in Birmingham. ‘The general aspiration towards literature was tremendously strong’ now, and he often went without lunch in order to spend the money on books. He also began to write as well as read, not only for medical journals, but for literary magazines as well. ‘Some friend remarked that my letters were very vivid and surely I could write some things to sell’, which surprised him.
I sat down, however, and wrote a little adventure story which I called ‘The Mystery of Sasassa Valley’. To my great joy and surprise it was accepted by Chambers’ Journal, and I received three guineas. It mattered not that other attempts failed. I had done it once and I cheered myself by the thought that I could do it again.
He also attended a lecture (mentioned in his January 1880 letter following) that marked the beginning of a journey concluding, forty years later, in his role as the world’s best-known spokesman for Spiritualism.
to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, JUNE 3, 1879
Arrived all safe and well yesterday passing the scene of a railway smash on the way. Aston Road seems to be a pretty thriving place judging from the hustle and rattle going on in it. Clifton House is an unpretending red brick house pretty comfortable inside. Dr and Mrs Hoare are both nice, and so is Bourchier, I think. He is an Irish Licentiate, as far as I can make out. I will write soon and give you a full account.
I got out, and was standing beside my trunk and my hat-box, waiting for a porter, when up came a cheery-looking fellow and asked me whether I was Dr Stark Munro. ‘I’m Horton,’ said he; and shook hands cordially.
In that melancholy place the sight of him was like a fire on a frosty night. He was gaily dressed in the first place, check trousers, white waistcoat, a flower in his button hole. But the look of the man was very much to my heart. He was ruddy cheeked and black eyed, with a jolly stout figure and an honest genial smile. I felt as we clinched hands in the foggy grimy station that I had met a man and a friend.
—The Stark Munro Letters
to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, JUNE 1879
I am sure you are eager to have a full and detailed account from your own correspondent of Clifton House and its inhabitants. I was shockingly disappointed at the street, as disappointed as Mark Twain was when first he saw a grisette in Paris. I had pictured to myself a semirural quiet suburban road, instead of which this is a busy shop-lined, tramway railed thoroughfare. Moral—don’t picture things to yourself. I am reconciled to the bustle now; in fact I like it.
I am just beginning to feel a little at home. I’m afraid I don’t domesticate easily. Reginald Ratcliff is a fine little fellow, stout, jolly, black haired. Reginald has plenty of spondulick* (Vide Dixon’s Johnsonary); he must make the four figures and something over, for he has five horses, and a nice though small house. R is nearer forty than thirty.
Mrs Hoare is very amiable and nice; a well read kind-hearted woman. There are two very spoilt little children, though it seems to me they had so little good to start upon, that there was very little to spoil.
Bourchier is a fool, an inane simpering fool. One of those haw-haw demme my soul idiots. He wants a kicking, which I should be happy to accommodate him with at the shortest notice. He is a great and glorious LKAQCI;* about 30 years old, affects a languid fashionable air, and lisps about the havoc he has made among the sex. An objectionable fellow.
My duties are not at all arduous, and I think I am going to be very cheerful here. I won’t have time for cricket however. Dr Drummond lives very near us, and I am going along to give him my note. I don’t think I will visit Dr Gam Gee Jeejeebhoy (that’s the name of an interesting Indian Rajah). ; He hangs out a great way off, and I don’t feel much inclined to go.
My poor umbrella is done for, I am afraid. The Phil is the only place I could have left it, and they say they haven’t got it. Never mind buying one, I don’t need it here.
We are all smokers here luckily which is a great thing. Hoare is really an excellent fellow, very kind and considerate. His fees would make the Doctor’s hair curdle.
All kind remembrances to Greenhill Place, and to Mrs Drummond. One never learns how to appreciate friends until one has been thrown on one’s own resources, without even an acquaintance in a big city. Love to all, remember me to Dr
[P.S.] Now, Lottie Ag. o. osewe I ghs 7 Pou N ds & 1/2 i ts ow nweig HT.
Horton dictates his prescriptions, and strides off to bed with his black clay pipe in his mouth. He is the most abandoned smoker I have ever met with, collecting the dottles of his pipes in the evening, and smoking them the next morning before breakfast in the stable yard.
—The Stark Munro Letters
Sherlock Holmes was, as I expected, lounging about his sittingroom in his dressing-gown, reading the agony column of The Times and smoking his before-breakfast pipe, which was composed of all the plugs and dottles left from his smokes of the day before, all carefully dried and collected on the corner of the mantelpiece.
—‘The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb’
to Mary Doyle BIRMINGHAM, JUNE 1879
Dont send me any more postcards, they are most foul inventions for depriving an honest man of his letters. I would sooner wait a little longer and get a decent epistle. I have been very busy lately and hardly had time to write. I assure you I earn my two pounds a month. In the morning I generally go out with RR in his gig and do the rounds till dinner at two. This is an innovation and deprives me of any leisure. From dinner to tea I brew horrible draughts and foul mixtures for the patients (I concocted as many as 42 today). After tea patients begin to drop in and we experiment on them until nine, and then we have supper and comparative peace till twelve when we generally turn in; so you see we have plenty to do, and the life is none the worse for that. I visit a few patients every day too, and get a good deal of experience.
Mrs Hoare is a charming woman, very pretty, very well informed, very fond of RR. She smokes her cigar of an evening as regularly as I do my pipe, and never looks so well as when she has it between her teeth. A jolly little lady.
Hoare has had some aspiring geniuses as assistants in his day. One of them