LET US GLANCE AT OUR GAZETTEER #3

 

Over the course of this year, I've written four short essays about Arthur Conan Doyle for inclusion in the Sherlock's Spotlight Gazette published by The Beacon Society for young readers. As I finished work on the final essay for 2023, I decided to post the four to this site. Here is the third, a brief glimpse at part of Conan Doyle's life as a medical student.

About Arthur, the Author

Glimpses into the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes

 

The Medical Student Makes His Way

 

Once Arthur Conan Doyle earned his Certificate of Honour from the University of London in 1875, the next step in his education was to enroll in university in Edinburgh upon a five-year course of medical study with the plan to graduate as a Bachelor of Medicine in the end. (He had no way of knowing then he would eventually become a very successful writer instead of a successful doctor.)  Like many university students, he needed to earn money between school terms to help pay his tuition and living expenses. One way he did this was to find himself a position as a doctor’s assistant during the school breaks.

 

Arthur Conan Doyle at 22, graduating from Edinburgh University. 

 

 

              During his university years he served as an assistant in several different medical practices, sometimes in the countryside and sometimes in a city practice. The work required long hours with little to no pay. In the beginning, he worked for only room and board to gain experience. At the time, assistants most often lived in the doctor’s establishment, sleeping in shared quarters and eating with the other members of the practice and the doctor’s family.

              He eventually served three different clerkships with Dr. Reginald Hoare. The time was, as Doyle called it, “before the days of motors;” therefore, Dr. Hoare and his helpers used five horses from early morning until late at night in Birmingham—a large city in the center of the West Midlands region of England. In addition to treating the many patients, in the doctor’s home offices and in the patient’s homes, the medical team had to create their own prescriptions, bottling and boxing them to send out, or deliver to, the many patients.

              In his book Memories and Adventures, Doyle tells us, “I had long lists of prescriptions to make up every day, for we dispensed our own medicine, and one hundred bottles of an evening were not unknown. On the whole I made few mistakes, though I have been known to send out ointment and pill boxes with elaborate directions on the lid and nothing inside.”

              He would draw on these experiences with Dr. Hoare many years later to write the fiction novel, The Stark Munro Letters. The book about a young doctor making his way describes the workday in practice such as the one in Birmingham. The day began with a quick breakfast at 9 in the morning and it ended at 10 at night, with very little time allowed to take a break in between. In addition to the 13-hour regular workday, it was not uncommon for the doctors to be called out in the night to make an emergency house call which “may take us two hours, or may take us ten.” It was a grueling schedule but, as Doyle noted, “I had no time to spend my money.” He was able to send his money home.

              It was during his second year of clerkship that the idea that he might earn some money from writing stories first firmly took root. He took a chance—he penned an adventure story, “The Mystery of Sassassa Valley.” To his “great joy and surprise” it was accepted for publication by the Edinburgh magazine Chambers’s Journal and he received a small payment.

              He was now only three years from finishing his medical education and only a few years from great success as a writer.

 

 

 

Sources:

Doyle, Arthur Conan. Memories and Adventures and The Stark Munro Letters. https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com. Accessed 7 July 2023. 

Stashower, Daniel. Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle. Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1999, pp. 29-30

Photo credits:  https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/A_Life_in_Pictures

LET US GLANCE AT OUR GAZETTEER #2

 

Over the course of this year, I've written four short essays about Arthur Conan Doyle for inclusion in the Sherlock's Spotlight Gazette published by The Beacon Society for young readers. As I finished work on the final essay for 2023, I decided to post the four to this site. Here is the second, where I hoped to show the young readers how one unexpected opportunity can change everything. 

 

About Arthur, the Author

Glimpses into the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes

 

From Experience to Inspiration

Fiction writers often draw on their life experiences to inspire their stories and Arthur Conan Doyle was no exception. He lived a very adventurous life, traveling to most parts of the world, experiencing many different cultures and climates. He dined with kings, worked in military hospitals, spoke to vast audiences, played numerous sports, learned musical instruments, investigated crimes, reported from the front lines of war, and so much more. One of his earliest adventures inspired several of his sea-going stories, including one considered by many people to be one of his very best, “The Captain of the Polestar” and a notable series of exciting tales about a brutal pirate named Captain Sharkey.

 

              In February of 1880, twenty-year-old Arthur Conan Doyle was in his third year of medical school. He needed money to continue his studies, so he signed on as a crew doctor for the whaling ship, Hope. Although Arthur was not a full-fledged doctor yet, he had enough training to join the crew for the expedition. Captain John Gray gave him the job when Arthur’s friend Currie, a fellow medical student, changed his mind about taking the position. The Hope was to spend seven months in the Arctic Ocean.

 

The Arctic Ocean includes the North Pole region of the northern hemisphere. Its borders include the Bering Strait on the Pacific side and the Greenland Scotland Ridge on the Atlantic side. The ocean was covered by sea ice throughout the year and it was very dangerous for ships and the sailors. The Hope sailed from Peterhead, a town in Aberdeen, Scotland. But it immediately ran into foul weather. The captain managed to find a safe place in a harbor in the Shetland Islands just before the full force of a hurricane could cripple the ship. They could not leave for the arctic until March.

 

              Only four days later, Arthur awoke to the sound of floating ice pieces bumping into the sides of the boat. It appeared the entire sea was covered with drifting ice. “They were none of them large,” he wrote later, “but they lay so thick that a man might travel far by springing from one to another.”

              The ship’s crew intended to hunt for seals. Arthur hoped to go with the crew out onto the ice but because a strong swell had risen, the floating ice pieces were crashing into one another. The ship’s captain told Arthur he had to stay on the ship as he did not have enough experience to safely walk about on the moving ice and would surely fall into the dangerously cold sea.

 

              A disappointed and angry Arthur obeyed the captain and went to sit on top of the bulwarks of the ship with his legs dangling over the side. He did not realize a sheet of ice had formed on the bulwark and in just a moment, he slid off the ship and vanished into the sea between two ice blocks. Luckily he crawled onto one of the blocks and managed to get back onto the ship. 

 

              As he had already fallen, the captain then allowed him to come out onto the ice with the crew, saying Arthur “was bound to fall into the ocean in any case and might as well be on the ice.”  The captain was right. Arthur tumbled into the dangerous water two more times that day. He had to return to the ship and go to bed while his clothes were thawed and dried out in the engine room.

              He went on to have other dangerous days on the ice.  There were other surprises during the voyage including a chance to see a right whale (baleen) jumping completely out of the water into the air. Arthur was fascinated by the animal life that lived in such a stark and unforgiving atmosphere:

 

The perpetual light, the glare of the white ice, the deep blue of the water, these are the things which one remembers most clearly... the innumerable sea-birds, whose call is for ever ringing in your ears—the gulls, the fulmars, the snow-birds, the burgomasters, the looms, and the rotjes.These fill the air, and below, the waters are for ever giving you a peep of some strange new creature...the mis-shapen hunchback whale, the ghost-like white whale, the narwhal, with his unicorn horn, the queer-looking bottle-nose, the huge, sluggish, Greenland shark, and the terrible killing grampus, the most formidable of all the monsters of the deep,—these are the creatures who own those unsailed seas.

On the ice are the seals, the saddle-backs, the ground seals and the huge bladdernoses, 12 feet from nose to tail, with the power of blowing up a great blood-red football upon their noses when they are angry, which they usually are. Occasionally one sees a white Arctic fox upon the ice, and everywhere are the bears.

              After many months at sea, he finally returned home to Scotland and his medical studies. But his life had changed. The isolation, the danger, and the unusual life on the ship altered his thinking, his health, and his understanding of the world around him. He said the Arctic had awakened “the soul of a born wanderer.”

 

             

             

             

             

 

 

LET US GLANCE AT OUR GAZETTEER

Over the course of this year, I've written three short essays about Arthur Conan Doyle for inclusion in the Sherlock's Spotlight Gazette published by The Beacon Society for young readers. As I begin work on the final essay for this 2023, I decided to post the previous three to this site, beginning with, appropriately, "The Beginnings of a Storyteller."

About Arthur, the Author

Glimpses into the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes

The Beginnings of a Storyteller

Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, first wrote a mystery about them in 1886. He was twenty-seven years old. He authored many stories and created many characters before Holmes and Watson. His storytelling actually began when he was a young boy living in a boarding school.

              At the age of nine, he left his family in Scotland, traveling by train alone, to live in England at a school called Hodder. He lived at Hodder for two years, and then moved to a nearby school for older boys called Stonyhurst, for another five years. During those seven years, he only saw his family during summer break. The school did not have other breaks during the year. Except for the six-week vacation in the summer, the boys never went home.

              He was sometimes lonely, but he discovered that he had what he called “some literary streak” that was not common to the other boys in his school. He created stories about heroes and their adventures, which he shared. The other students were thrilled by Arthur’s storytelling.

              An audience of young boys would sit on the floor, their chins on their hands, and listen as Arthur, standing on a desk before them, would tell stories until his voice grew husky. Remember: the school had no televisions, no computers, no internet, and no telephones. For them, the story time with Arthur was like going to a movie.

              He learned to tell a story in an entertaining way from his mother. Mary Doyle loved to read, and she had a natural gift for telling Arthur and his brother and sisters thrilling tales about the characters in the books she read. “In my early childhood, as far back as I can remember anything at all,” he wrote many years later, “the vivid stories which she would tell me stand out so clearly that they obscure the real facts of my life.”

              During the summer holidays, he would read many books he borrowed from the small library near his home. He read so many so quickly that the librarians had to tell his mother that Arthur was limited to exchanging books only twice a day! When he went back to school, he had many more adventure stories he could share. The reading inspired him to create his own stories for his school friends.

              Arthur’s storytelling gave him an added bonus: treats! His schoolmates enjoyed his stories so much they would at times bribe Arthur to keep talking by giving him pastries or apples. The students ate very plain meals. For breakfast, they had a bit of dry bread and hot watered milk. For lunch (they called it dinner), there was a little beef and fish on Fridays. For a snack in the afternoon, they had dry bread again with an odd brown drink that was called “beer” because of its color, but it was not really beer. For supper, they had hot milk again, bread, butter, and sometimes potatoes. A treat such as a pastry or an apple was rare and special. The boys found his stories to be worth the price.

              Arthur Conan Doyle was on his way to becoming the storyteller who would later entertain millions of people.