You write reproachfully, my dear Bertie, and you say that absence must
have weakened our close friendship, since I have not sent you a line
during this long seven months. The real truth of the matter is that
I had not the heart to write to you until I could tell you something
cheery; and something cheery has been terribly long in coming. At
present I can only claim that the cloud has perhaps thinned a little at
the edges.
You see by the address of this letter that I still hold my ground, but
between ourselves it has been a terrible fight, and there have been
times when that last plank of which old Whitehall wrote seemed to be
slipping out of my clutch. I have ebbed and flowed, sometimes with a
little money, sometimes without. At my best I was living hard, at my
worst I was very close upon starvation. I have lived for a whole day
upon the crust of a loaf, when I had ten pounds in silver in the drawer
of my table. But those ten pounds had been most painfully scraped
together for my quarter’s rent, and I would have tried twenty-four hours
with a tight leather belt before I would have broken in upon it. For two
days I could not raise a stamp to send a letter. I have smiled when I
have read in my evening paper of the privations of our fellows in Egypt.
Their broken victuals would have been a banquet to me. However, what
odds how you take your carbon and nitrogen and oxygen, as long as you DO
get it? The garrison of Oakley Villa has passed the worst, and there is
no talk of surrender.
It was not that I have had no patients. They have come in as well as
could be expected. Some, like the little old maid, who was the first,
never returned. I fancy that a doctor who opened his own door forfeited
their confidence. Others have become warm partisans. But they have
nearly all been very poor people; and when you consider how many one and
sixpences are necessary in order to make up the fifteen pounds which
I must find every quarter for rent, taxes, gas and water, you will
understand that even with some success, I have still found it a hard
matter to keep anything in the portmanteau which serves me as larder.
However, my boy, two quarters are paid up, and I enter upon a third one
with my courage unabated. I have lost about a stone, but not my heart.
I have rather a vague recollection of when it was exactly that my last
was written. I fancy that it must have been a fortnight after my start,
immediately after my breach with Cullingworth. It’s rather hard to know
where to begin when one has so many events to narrate, disconnected from
each other, and trivial in themselves, yet which have each loomed large
as I came upon them, though they look small enough now that they are so
far astern. As I have mentioned Cullingworth, I may as well say first
the little that is to be said about him. I answered his letter in the
way which I have, I think, already described. I hardly expected to hear
from him again; but my note had evidently stung him, and I had a
brusque message in which he said that if I wished him to believe in my
“bona-fides” (whatever he may have meant by that), I would return the
money which I had had during the time that I was with him at Bradfield.
To this I replied that the sum was about twelve pounds; that I still
retained the message in which he had guaranteed me three hundred pounds
if I came to Bradfield, that the balance in my favour was two hundred
and eighty-eight pounds; and that unless I had a cheque by return, I
should put the matter into the hands of my solicitor. This put a final
end to our correspondence.
There was one other incident, however. One day after I had been in
practice about two months, I observed a bearded commonplace-looking
person lounging about on the other side of the road. In the afternoon he
was again visible from my consulting-room window. When I saw him there
once more next morning, my suspicions were aroused, and they became
certainties when, a day or so afterwards, I came out of a patient’s
house in a poor street, and saw the same fellow looking into a
greengrocer’s shop upon the other side. I walked to the end of the
street, waited round the corner, and met him as he came hurrying after.
“You can go back to Dr. Cullingworth, and tell him that I have as much
to do as I care for,” said I. “If you spy upon me after this it will be
at your own risk.”
He shuffled and coloured, but I walked on and saw him no more. There was
no one on earth who could have had a motive for wanting to know exactly
what I was doing except Cullingworth; and the man’s silence was
enough in itself to prove that I was right. I have heard nothing of
Cullingworth since.
I had a letter from my uncle in the Artillery, Sir Alexander Munro,
shortly after my start, telling me that he had heard of my proceedings
from my mother, and that he hoped to learn of my success. He is, as I
think you know, an ardent Wesleyan, like all my father’s people, and he
told me that the chief Wesleyan minister in the town was an old friend
of his own, that he had learned from him that there was no Wesleyan
doctor, and that, being of a Wesleyan stock myself, if I would present
the enclosed letter of introduction to the minister, I should certainly
find it very much to my advantage. I thought it over, Bertie, and
it seemed to me that it would be playing it rather low down to use a
religious organisation to my own advantage, when I condemned them in the
abstract. It was a sore temptation, but I destroyed the letter.
I had one or two pieces of luck in the way of accidental cases. One
(which was of immense importance to me) was that of a grocer named
Haywood, who fell down in a fit outside the floor of his shop. I was
passing on my way to see a poor labourer with typhoid. You may believe
that I saw my chance, bustled in, treated the man, conciliated the wife,
tickled the child, and gained over the whole household. He had these
attacks periodically, and made an arrangement with me by which I was to
deal with him, and we were to balance bills against each other. It was
a ghoulish compact, by which a fit to him meant butter and bacon to
me, while a spell of health for Haywood sent me back to dry bread and
saveloys. However, it enabled me to put by for the rent many a shilling
which must otherwise have gone in food. At last, however, the poor
fellow died, and there was our final settlement.
Two small accidents occurred near my door (it was a busy crossing),
and though I got little enough from either of them, I ran down to the
newspaper office on each occasion, and had the gratification of
seeing in the evening edition that “the driver, though much shaken,
is pronounced by Dr. Stark Munro, of Oakley Villa, to have suffered no
serious injury.” As Cullingworth used to say, it is hard enough for the
young doctor to push his name into any publicity, and he must take what
little chances he has. Perhaps the fathers of the profession would shake
their heads over such a proceeding in a little provincial journal; but
I was never able to see that any of them were very averse from seeing
their own names appended to the bulletin of some sick statesman in The
Times.
And then there came another and a more serious accident. This would be
about two months after the beginning, though already I find it hard to
put things in their due order. A lawyer in the town named Dickson was
riding past my windows when the horse reared up and fell upon him. I was
eating saveloys in the back room at the time, but I heard the noise and
rushed to the door in time to meet the crowd who were carrying him in.
They flooded into my house, thronged my hall, dirtied my consulting
room, and even pushed their way into my back room, which they found
elegantly furnished with a portmanteau, a lump of bread, and a cold
sausage.
However, I had no thought for any one but my patient, who was groaning
most dreadfully. I saw that his ribs were right, tested his joints,
ran my hand down his limbs, and concluded that there was no break or
dislocation. He had strained himself in such a way, however, that it
was very painful to him to sit or to walk. I sent for an open carriage,
therefore, and conveyed him to his home, I sitting with my most
professional air, and he standing straight up between my hands. The
carriage went at a walk, and the crowd trailed behind, with all the folk
looking out of the windows, so that a more glorious advertisement could
not be conceived. It looked like the advance guard of a circus. Once at
his house, however, professional etiquette demanded that I should hand
the case over to the family attendant, which I did with as good a grace
as possible--not without some lingering hope that the old established
practitioner might say, “You have taken such very good care of my
patient, Dr. Munro, that I should not dream of removing him from your
hands.” On the contrary, he snatched it away from me with avidity, and I
retired with some credit, an excellent advertisement, and a guinea.
These are one or two of the points of interest which show above the dead
monotony of my life--small enough, as you see, but even a sandhill looms
large in Holland. In the main, it is a dreary sordid record of shillings
gained and shillings spent--of scraping for this and scraping for that,
with ever some fresh slip of blue paper fluttering down upon me, left
so jauntily by the tax-collector, and meaning such a dead-weight pull to
me. The irony of my paying a poor-rate used to amuse me. I should have
been collecting it. Thrice at a crisis I pawned my watch, and thrice I
rallied and rescued it. But how am I to interest you in the details of
such a career? Now, if a fair countess had been so good as to slip on
a piece of orange peel before my door, or if the chief merchant in the
town had been saved by some tour-de-force upon my part, or if I had
been summoned out at midnight to attend some nameless person in a lonely
house with a princely fee for silence--then I should have something
worthy of your attention. But the long months and months during which
I listened to the throb of the charwoman’s heart and the rustle of the
greengrocer’s lungs, present little which is not dull and dreary. No
good angels came my way.
Wait a bit, though! One did. I was awakened at six in the morning one
day by a ringing at my bell, and creeping to the angle of the stair
I saw through the glass a stout gentleman in a top-hat outside. Much
excited, with a thousand guesses capping one another in my head, I ran
back, pulled on some clothes, rushed down, opened the door, and found
myself in the grey morning light face to face with Horton. The good
fellow had come down from Merton in an excursion train, and had been
travelling all night. He had an umbrella under his arm, and two great
straw baskets in each hand, which contained, when unpacked, a cold leg
of mutton, half-a-dozen of beer, a bottle of port, and all sorts of
pasties and luxuries. We had a great day together, and when he rejoined
his excursion in the evening he left a very much cheerier man than he
had found.
Talking of cheeriness, you misunderstand me, Bertie, if you think (as
you seem to imply) that I take a dark view of things. It is true that I
discard some consolations which you possess, because I cannot convince
myself that they are genuine; but in this world, at least, I see immense
reason for hope, and as to the next I am confident that all will be for
the best. From annihilation to beatification I am ready to adapt myself
to whatever the great Designer’s secret plan my be.
But there is much in the prospects of this world to set a man’s heart
singing. Good is rising and evil sinking like oil and water in a bottle.
The race is improving. There are far fewer criminal convictions. There
is far more education. People sin less and think more. When I meet a
brutal looking fellow I often think that he and his type may soon be
as extinct as the great auk. I am not sure that in the interest of the
‘ologies we ought not to pickle a few specimens of Bill Sykes, to show
our children’s children what sort of a person he was.
And then the more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance
not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound
interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been
accumulated since the dawning of time. Some eighty thousand years are
supposed to have existed between paleolithic and neolithic man. Yet
in all that time he only learned to grind his flint stones instead of
chipping them. But within our father’s lives what changes have there not
been? The railway and the telegraph, chloroform and applied electricity.
Ten years now go further than a thousand then, not so much on account
of our finer intellects as because the light we have shows us the way to
more. Primeval man stumbled along with peering eyes, and slow, uncertain
footsteps. Now we walk briskly towards our unknown goal.
And I wonder what that goal is to be! I mean, of course, as far as this
world is concerned. Ever since man first scratched hieroglyphics upon an
ostracon, or scribbled with sepia upon papyrus, he must have wondered,
as we wonder to-day. I suppose that we DO know a little more than they.
We have an arc of about three thousand years given us, from which to
calculate out the course to be described by our descendants; but that
arc is so tiny when compared to the vast ages which Providence uses in
working out its designs that our deductions from it must, I think, be
uncertain. Will civilisation be swamped by barbarism? It happened once
before, because the civilised were tiny specks of light in the midst of
darkness. But what, for example, could break down the great country in
which you dwell? No, our civilisation will endure and grow more complex.
Man will live in the air and below the water. Preventive medicine will
develop until old age shall become the sole cause of death. Education
and a more socialistic scheme of society will do away with crime. The
English-speaking races will unite, with their centre in the United
States. Gradually the European States will follow their example. War
will become rare, but more terrible. The forms of religion will be
abandoned, but the essence will be maintained; so that one universal
creed will embrace the whole civilised earth, which will preach trust
in that central power, which will be as unknown then as now. That’s my
horoscope, and after that the solar system may be ripe for picking. But
Bertie Swanborough and Stark Munro will be blowing about on the west
wind, and dirtying the panes of careful housewives long before the half
of it has come to pass.
And then man himself will change, of course. The teeth are going
rapidly. You’ve only to count the dentists’ brass plates in Birchespool
to be sure of that. And the hair also. And the sight. Instinctively,
when we think of the more advanced type of young man, we picture him as
bald, and with double eye-glasses. I am an absolute animal myself, and
my only sign of advance is that two of my back teeth are going. On the
other hand, there is some evidence in favour of the development of a
sixth sense-that of perception. If I had it now I should know that you
are heartily weary of all my generalisations and dogmatism.
And certainly there must be a spice of dogmatism in it when we begin
laying down laws about the future; for how do we know that there are not
phases of nature coming upon us of which we have formed no conception?
After all, a few seconds are a longer fraction of a day than an average
life is of the period during which we know that the world has been in
existence. But if a man lived only for a few seconds of daylight, his
son the same, and his son the same, what would their united experiences
after a hundred generations tell them of the phenomenon which we call
night? So all our history and knowledge is no guarantee that our earth
is not destined for experiences of which we can form no conception.
But to drop down from the universe to my own gnat’s buzz of an
existence, I think I have told you everything that might interest you
of the first six months of my venture. Towards the end of that time
my little brother Paul came down--and the best of companions he is!
He shares the discomforts of my little menage in the cheeriest spirit,
takes me out of my blacker humours, goes long walks with me, is
interested in all that interests me (I always talk to him exactly as if
he were of my own age), and is quite ready to turn his hand to anything,
from boot-blacking to medicine-carrying. His one dissipation is cutting
out of paper, or buying in lead (on the rare occasion when we find a
surplus), an army of little soldiers. I have brought a patient into the
consulting room, and found a torrent of cavalry, infantry, and artillery
pouring across the table. I have been myself attacked as I sat silently
writing, and have looked up to find fringes of sharp-shooters pushing
up towards me, columns of infantry in reserve, a troop of cavalry on my
flank, while a battery of pea muzzle-loaders on the ridge of my medical
dictionary has raked my whole position--with the round, smiling face of
the general behind it all. I don’t know how many regiments he has on a
peace footing; but if serious trouble were to break out, I am convinced
that every sheet of paper in the house would spring to arms.
One morning I had a great idea which has had the effect of
revolutionising our domestic economy. It was at the time when the worst
pinch was over, and when we had got back as far as butter and occasional
tobacco, with a milkman calling daily; which gives you a great sense of
swagger when you have not been used to it.
“Paul, my boy,” said I, “I see my way to fitting up this house with a
whole staff of servants for nothing.”
He looked pleased, but not surprised. He had a wholly unwarranted
confidence in my powers; so that if I had suddenly declared that I saw
my way to tilting Queen Victoria from her throne and seating myself upon
it, he would have come without a question to aid and abet.
I took a piece of paper and wrote, “To Let. A basement floor, in
exchange for services. Apply 1 Oakley Villas.”
“There, Paul,” said I, “run down to the Evening News office, and pay a
shilling for three insertions.”
There was no need of three insertions. One would have been ample. Within
half an hour of the appearance of the first edition, I had an applicant
at the end of my bell-wire, and for the remainder of the evening Paul
was ushering them in and I interviewing them with hardly a break. I
should have been prepared at the outset to take anything in a petticoat;
but as we saw the demand increase, our conditions went up and up;
white aprons, proper dress for answering door, doing beds and boots,
cooking,--we became more and more exacting. So at last we made our
selection; a Miss Wotton, who asked leave to bring her sister with her.
She was a hard-faced brusque-mannered person, whose appearance in a
bachelor’s household was not likely to cause a scandal. Her nose was in
itself a certificate of virtue. She was to bring her furniture into
the basement, and I was to give her and her sister one of the two upper
rooms for a bedroom.
They moved in a few days later. I was out at the time, and the first
intimation I had was finding three little dogs in my hall when I
returned. I had her up, and explained that this was a breach of
contract, and that I had no thoughts of running a menagerie. She pleaded
very hard for her little dogs, which it seems are a mother and two
daughters of some rare breed; so I at last gave in on the point.
The other sister appeared to lead a subterranean troglodytic sort of
existence; for, though I caught a glimpse of her whisking round the
corner at times, it was a good month before I could have sworn to her in
a police court.
For a time the arrangement worked well, and then there came
complications. One morning, coming down earlier than usual, I saw a
small bearded man undoing the inside chain of my door. I captured him
before he could get it open. “Well,” said I, “what’s this?”
“If you please, sir,” said he, “I’m Miss Wotton’s husband.”
Dreadful doubts of my housekeeper flashed across my mind, but I thought
of her nose and was reassured. An examination revealed everything. She
was a married woman. The lines were solemnly produced. Her husband was a
seaman. She had passed as a miss, because she thought I was more likely
to take a housekeeper without encumbrances. Her husband had come home
unexpectedly from a long voyage, and had returned last night. And
then--plot within plot--the other woman was not her sister, but a
friend, whose name was Miss Williams. She thought I was more likely to
take two sisters than two friends. So we all came to know who the other
was; and I, having given Jack permission to remain, assigned the other
top room to Miss Williams. From absolute solitude I seemed to be rapidly
developing into the keeper of a casual ward.
It was a never-failing source of joy to us to see the procession pass on
the way to their rooms at night. First came a dog; then Miss Williams,
with a candle; then Jack; then another dog; and finally, Mrs. Wotton,
with her candle in one hand and another dog under her arm. Jack was with
us for three weeks; and as I made him holystone the whole place down
twice a week until the boards were like a quarter deck, we got something
out of him in return for his lodging.
About this time, finding a few shillings over and no expense imminent,
I laid down a cellar, in the shape of a four and a half gallon cask of
beer, with a firm resolution that it should never be touched save on
high days and holidays, or when guests had to be entertained.
Shortly afterwards Jack went away to sea again; and after his departure
there were several furious quarrels between the women down below, which
filled the whole house with treble reproaches and repartees. At last one
evening Miss Williams--the quiet one--came to me and announced with sobs
that she must go. Mrs. Wotton made her life unbearable, she said. She
was determined to be independent, and had fitted up a small shop in a
poor quarter of the town. She was going now, at once, to take possession
of it.
I was sorry, because I liked Miss Williams, and I said a few words to
that effect. She got as far as the hall door, and then came rustling
back again into the consulting room. “Take a drink of your own beer!”
she cried, and vanished.
It sounded like some sort of slang imprecation. If she had said “Oh,
pull up your socks!” I should have been less surprised. And then
suddenly the words took a dreadful meaning in my mind, and I rushed to
the cellar. The cask was tilted forward on the trestles. I struck it and
it boomed like a drum. I turned the tap, and not one drop appeared. Let
us draw a veil over the painful scene. Suffice it that Mrs. Wotton got
her marching orders then and there--and that next day Paul and I found
ourselves alone in the empty house once more.
But we were demoralised by luxury. We could no longer manage without a
helper--especially now in the winter time, when fires had to be lit--the
most heart-breaking task that a man can undertake. I bethought me of
the quiet Miss Williams, and hunted her up in her shop. She was quite
willing to come, and saw how she could get out of the rent; but the
difficulty lay with her stock. This sounded formidable at first, but
when I came to learn that the whole thing had cost eleven shillings, it
did not appear insurmountable. In half an hour my watch was pawned, and
the affair concluded. I returned with an excellent housekeeper, and
with a larger basketful of inferior Swedish matches, bootlaces, cakes of
black lead, and little figures made of sugar than I should have thought
it possible to get for the money. So now we have settled down, and I
hope that a period of comparative peace lies before us.
Good-bye, old chap, and never think that I forget you. Your letters are
read and re-read with avidity. I think I have every line you ever wrote
me. You simply knock Paley out every time. I am so glad that you got out
of that brewery business all right. For a time I was really afraid that
you must either lose your money or else risk more upon the shares. I can
only thank you for your kind offer of blank cheques.
It is wonderful that you should have slipped back into your American
life so easily after your English hiatus. As you say, however, it is
not a change but only a modification, since the root idea is the same
in each. Is it not strange how the two great brothers are led to
misunderstand each other? A man is punished for private libel (over here
at any rate), although the consequences can only be slight. But a
man may perpetrate international libel, which is a very heinous and
far-reaching offence, and there is no law in the world which can punish
him. Think of the contemptible crew of journalists and satirists who for
ever picture the Englishman as haughty and h-dropping, or the American
as vulgar and expectorating. If some millionaire would give them all a
trip round the world we should have some rest--and if the plug came out
of the boat midway it would be more restful still. And your vote-hunting
politicians with their tail-twisting campaigns, and our editors of the
supercilious weeklies with their inane tone of superiority, if they
were all aboard how much clearer we should be! Once more adieu, and good
luck!