It’s no joke when the doctor of one of these isolated gunboats himself falls ill. You might think it easy for him to prescribe for himself but this fever knocks you down like a club, and you haven’t strength left to brush a mosquito off your face. I had a touch of it at Lagos, and I know what I am telling you.
—‘A Medical Document’
In the dim light of a foggy November day the sick room was a gloomy spot, but it was that gaunt, wasted face staring at me from the bed which sent a chill to my heart. His eyes had the brightness of fever, there was a hectic flush upon either cheek, and dark crusts clung to his lips; the thin hands upon the coverlet twitched incessantly, his voice was croaking and spasmodic. He lay listlessly as I entered the room, but the sight of me brought a gleam of recognition to his eyes. ‘Well, Watson, we seem to have fallen upon evil days, ‘said he in a feeble voice, but with something of his old carelessness of manner.
—‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’
He liked little that he saw in West Africa, and returned home convinced that it was better to be a poor man in England than a rich one there. His letters home went not only to his mother, but also to Amy Hoare and yet another ‘second mother’ of his, Mrs Charlotte Drummond of Edinburgh, with whose daughter Jessie, slightly older than him, and son Tom, slightly younger, he had grown up.
to Mary Doyle LIVERPOOL, OCTOBER 1881
It is very late and I am very lazy tired (amendment of the Doctor’s) so excuse brevity. Have paid debts and ordered £5 to be sent you in a few days, after the ship sails. Mrs H & the Doctor have come down to see me off, like bucks they are, and Mrs Dawe like another buck has put up the lot of us. My hat left very little change out of a pound, but thank heaven I hadn’t to get brass buttons—they are very expensive. Then I had to pay 6/ for cartridges for a splendid little revolving rifle the Doctor has given me. The Captain’s name is Duncan Henderson Wallace so there is not much question about his nationality. The officers seem decent fellows and the ship looks a bit of a tub and very dirty but a good sea-going craft—which is sadly needed in these troublesome times. Goodbye, old lady, take care of yourself—you will hear from me sooner than you think. Publishers owe you something like this
| Bluemansdyke | 5. 5. |
| Actors duel | 4. 4 (or 5. 5) |
| Crabbes Practise | 3. 3 |
| Little Square Box | 3. 3 |
| Photograph Journal | 3. 3 |
This is an approximation but it is under rather than over the mark. So glad you wrote to Elmore.
Goodbye Sweetheart Goodbye. I am not going to catch anything, but will bring my liver back as I took it out.
to Amy Hoare ‘DE PROFUNDIS, OCTOBER THE SOMETHING OR OTHER 1881’
A light blue sky and a dark blue sea—a groundswell from the Sou’west, and Madeira bearing S.S.E. and three hundred miles off. My carcase is in the saloon of the good ship Mayumba and my heart is away over the seas with a little woman in Aston—I am afraid I am very disloyal to Ireland for my first letter and my first thoughts go to your husband and yourself—my best of friends. Ah well—I mustn’t get lugubrious over it, what do you think?
Here goes for an account of all we have done, said and suffered—more particularly the last, though really it all amounts to very little—I could write a large and interesting book about what we have not seen, and done. We have not seen shoals of porpoises or flying fish, which are the proper things to see on such voyages, neither have we seen sea serpents or water-spouts, or drifting wood from wrecks—in fact we have been done out of all our amusements. We started as you know in half a gale of wind—I felt bad enough I assure you in spite of my cigarette, and we steamed away to Holyhead, where as the wind freshened to a whole gale we lay to for the night. Hardly any of those people on the tender came with us, I’ll tell you who we had aboard. There is a parson, his wife and two kids bound for Madeira, Fairfax his name is. He is so thin that he disappears from sight almost when he gets his thin edge towards you, but if you turn him round and hold him up against the light you can make him out distinctly. You never saw such a theological skeleton, his real mission on earth was to be a billiard cue, but he is a very gentlemanly fellow, with ritualistic propensities which I foster for your sake. His mind is a hothouse plant, however, and I think very little frost would change his opinions. His wife is of another stamp however, a bustling plucky little woman, too anxious about her kids to be seasick even. We next come to Miss Fox, a dark girl (brunette I mean, not negro) going out to her father at Sierra Leone, she is very well educated, but of doubtful age, comes from Paris, and is rather good fun. Then there is a frightful horror (Mrs McSomething) going to Madeira for her lungs—straight in the hair, and long in the face—she wouldn’t let me examine her chest—‘young doctors take such liberties, you know, my dear’—so I have washed my hands of her. Then there is Mrs Rowbotham, a pretty lively little English woman going to her husband in Sierra Leone, she is game for any amount of flirtation, and I expect we will have her indignant ‘Charley’ boarding us with a double barreled shotgun at the end of our voyage—of course I am not like these publicans who are also sinners—I stand by, like God at the bar fight (you know that anecdote, don’t you?). Our other passengers are a negro Wills (the Doctor was quite right, he is rolling in money—he is an unmitigated cad though, fancy pressing a lady to take a toothpick after dinner)—and a brute of a negress, bearing the aristocratic old name of Smith, a vile dirty woman. She is to marry a black missionary when she gets out if I don’t poison her first—fancy anyone kissing those thick cracked purple lips—ugh! There you have the lot of us photographed, with a very decent set of jolly young Britons as officers.
Well we started from Holyhead in the morning with one of those delicious sea breezes which seem to dislocate your stomach and disarrange your lights—(to use Sykes’ expression). Everybody, bar myself, was taken grievously ill, and the Stewardess announced that she was going to die, so you may imagine we wobbled. They were a merrie family, they were. There was a pleasant want of pride about them. When they couldn’t get a basin they put up with a bucket. That evening we sighted the Tuskar light on the Waterford coast—ah, the dear old country, excuse a pensive tear,
I have been teatotal, bar one glass of brandy and a cocktail, since I saw you, and have only smoked half a dozen pipes. My love to the Doctor, I shall never forget his kindness in coming to Liverpool—it made a difference to my whole voyage I am sure.