Michael Conan had been impressed with the four-year-old Arthur’s literary precocity, and provided advice for his education that Mary Doyle followed—and some later advice for his young godson as well.
Michael Conan to Mary Doyle PARIS, APRIL 11, 1864
With regard to that philosopher, Master Arthur, whose sympathy with the carnivorous tiger is so ultra comical. I shall look to his development with great interest. The question you ask about his schooling can have scarcely yet arisen. Keep him at your apronstrings for two or three years more, at least. You can teach him much of the initiating and more necessary matters. Win him into multiplication, division and the rule of three and make him practically familiar with geography. I would soon familiarize him with maps. His more serious schooling gives rise to a nice question. I perfectly accord with you, in all your expansive geniality of opinion—in all your unexclusive humanity—remembering your friend Burns’ prophetic record—
‘It’s coming yet, for a that that man to man, the world over shall brothers be, for a that.’
and I do not encourage my old acquaintances, the Jesuits, for their devotion to the per-centa creed—but in matters of education—I mean mere secular education, they are, from experience and their employment therein, of the highest order of mind, unmatched. Therefore the question will assume this form—viz, have you any school at Edinburgh where a boy of gentle birth can be thoroughly well instructed on terms as reasonable as those which you would have to disburse in consigning Master Arthur to the Jesuits—and that gives rise to the further query—have you in Edinburgh, as they have in Dublin, a good Jesuit day school? But this question, as I have said, cannot be ripe for decision for two or three years more. In the meantime, keep your attention awake on the subject and be ready for the final move, when made it must perforce be. As to Arthur’s future development, that, apart from Nature’s endowments, will much depend upon the mother who cherishes him and at once secures his love and respect.
Three years later Michael Conan presented his godson, now eight, with a book about French history, feeding a growing interest in pageantry and ancient codes of honour. Already the boy was fascinated with tales of knights and their deeds, and the sweep and glamour of history—‘which,’ he later wrote, ‘I drank in with my mother’s milk.’
Mary Foley at the of her marriage, by Richard Doyle
Michael Conan to Arthur Conan Doyle PARIS, JULY 7, 1867
My dearest Laddie
I am happy to have an opportunity to send you the accompanying book—from which, I hope you will derive not a little pleasure and that, I know, you will value more, instruction. It is a very sketchy little history of France, with coloured illustrations, giving portraits, in their various costumes, of the Kings and Queens of that country, from the earliest up, even to the present time. You will find gratification in studying these attentively—and, I feel sure that, with the instruction of your dearest Mama who is so well acquainted with the French language, you will, at no distant time, become acquainted with it and thus read the text, by which you will be more especially introduced to their Majesties.
Believe me to be
My Dearest Laddie
Your loving Godfather
That autumn Arthur left Edinburgh for England, and a Jesuit education. It was a big change, but in some ways a welcome one. ‘Of my boyhood I need say little,’ he wrote in Memories and Adventures, ‘save that it was Spartan at home and more Spartan at the Edinburgh school [Newington Academy] where a tawse-brandishing schoolmaster of the old type made our young lives miserable. From the age of seven to nine [sic] I suffered under this pock-marked, one-eyed rascal who might have stepped from the pages of Dickens. In the evenings, home and books were my sole consolation, save for week-end holidays. My comrades were rough boys, and I became a rough boy, too.’
He spent the next two academic years at Hodder House, a preparatory school for Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, and another five at Stonyhurst itself, established in 1593 as one of England’s two foremost Roman Catholic schools for boys.* He was only eight years old when he travelled by train to Preston, Lancashire, the nearest station. ‘It was a long journey for a little boy who had never been away from home before,’ he recalled, ‘and I felt very lonesome and wept bitterly upon the way.’ He put on a brave face nonetheless in frequent letters home to his mother, and occasional ones to his father.
to Mary Doyle HODDER HOUSE, OCTOBER 13, 1867
dear mama I am getting on nicely the only thing i find at all difficult is my Latin Exercise but I will soon be accustomed to it I and 2 other boys had a constaio [sic] and I won 1 of them and was equal to another. I am to get a nice little bible picture for winning—my love to everybody except Mrs Russel*—did lottie get the little picture?
I am ever your own boy.
A Conan Doyle
to Mary Doyle HODDER HOUSE, MARCH 28, 1868
I hope you are quite well I send some little french foot soldiers for cony and lottie please write soon, many thanks for the little whale, we are in the midst of the easter holiday. I hope tot is getting on nicely at school I am having the greatest fun cricket is such a jolly game.
When he entered his second year at Hodder he settled into the rigorous academic routine, but to his delight the ‘rough boy’ from Edinburgh also began to excel in sports. ‘I could hold my own both in brain and in strength with my comrades,’ he later recalled. Cricket became a consuming passion for the rest of his life, and he played many other sports also. Although he felt the separation from his family keenly, he was grateful for the encouragement he received from some of his masters. ‘I was fortunate,’ he recalled, ‘to get under the care of a kindly principal, one Father Cassidy, who was more human than Jesuits usually are.’
As Christmas approached at the end of 1868 he was among the boys who remained at school under the staff’s care. Why is not spelled out, though he was not the only boy to spend Christmas holidays at school, and it was most likely due to the expense of travel. He wrote home eagerly anticipating a package of food that would sustain him through the several holiday weeks. His first communion in May was a landmark.
to Mary Doyle HODDER HOUSE, DECEMBER 13, 1868
I did very well this term I was Distinguished and any boy that gets Distinguished 3 times during the year gets what is called the good-day they can do what they like they fish they hunt they bath they go walks they do what they like for a prize I have got these marks 55 for arithmetic I am not sure what I got for the examen but I think I got about 100 For compositions 359 for this term so that im in a pretty fair way for a prize I send you my compositions just to let you see how Im getting on at christmas we get into company’s of 3 or 5 and each boy gives a little of his christmas box to his neighbour and the neighbour gives him a bit of his I have got three in my company Remember mama to send my box to red Lions inn* on the twenty third I hope tots is getting on nicely and has Coney got her first tooth that tooth seems to be asleep because it never comes however I hope it will come by christmas day
to Mary Doyle HODDER HOUSE, MAY 30, 1869
I