RECOLLECTIONS OF A STUDENT
Edinburgh University--A Sad Disappointment--Original of Professor
Challenger--Of Sherlock Holmes--Deductions--Sheffield--Ruyton--
Birmingham--Literary Aspirations--First Accepted Story--My Father’s
Death--Mental Position--Spiritual Yearnings--An Awkward Business.
When I returned to Edinburgh, with little to show, either mental or
spiritual, for my pleasant school year in Germany, I found that the
family affairs were still as straitened as ever. No promotion had come
to my father, and two younger children, Innes, my only brother, and
Ida, had arrived to add to the calls upon my mother. Another sister,
Julia, followed shortly afterwards. But Annette, the eldest sister, had
already gone out to Portugal to earn and send home a fair salary, while
Lottie and Connie were about to do the same. My mother had adopted the
device of sharing a large house, which may have eased her in some ways,
but was disastrous in others.
Perhaps it was good for me that the times were hard, for I was wild,
full-blooded, and a trifle reckless, but the situation called for
energy and application, so that one was bound to try to meet it.
My mother had been so splendid that we could not fail her. It had
been determined that I should be a doctor, chiefly, I think, because
Edinburgh was so famous a centre for medical learning. It meant another
long effort for my mother, but she was very brave and ambitious where
her children were concerned, and I was not only to have a medical
education, but to take the University degree, which was a larger matter
than a mere licence to practise. When I returned from Germany I found
that there was a long list of bursaries and scholarships open for
competition. I had a month in which to brush up my classics and then I
went in for these, and was informed a week later that I had won the
Grierson bursary of £40 for two years. Great were the rejoicings and
all shadows seemed to be lifting. But on calling to get the money I was
informed that there had been a clerical error, and that this particular
bursary was only open to arts students. As there was a long list of
prizes I naturally supposed that I would get the next highest, which
was available for medicals. The official pulled a long face and said:
“Unfortunately the candidate to whom it was allotted has already drawn
the money.” It was manifest robbery, and yet I, who had won the prize
and needed it so badly, never received it, and was eventually put off
with a solatium of £7, which had accumulated from some fund. It was
a bitter disappointment and, of course, I had a legal case, but what
can a penniless student do, and what sort of college career would he
have if he began it by suing his University for money? I was advised
to accept the situation, and there seemed no prospect of accepting
anything else.
So now behold me, a tall strongly-framed but half-formed young man,
fairly entered upon my five years’ course of medical study. It can be
done with diligence in four years, but there came, as I shall show, a
glorious interruption which held me back for one year. I entered as a
student in October 1876, and I emerged as a Bachelor of Medicine in
August 1881. Between these two points lies one long weary grind at
botany, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, and a whole list of compulsory
subjects, many of which have a very indirect bearing upon the art of
curing. The whole system of teaching, as I look back upon it, seems
far too oblique and not nearly practical enough for the purpose in
view. And yet Edinburgh is, I believe, more practical than most other
colleges. It is practical, too, in its preparation for life, since
there is none of the atmosphere of an enlarged public school, as is the
case in English Universities, but the student lives a free man in his
own rooms with no restrictions of any sort. It ruins some and makes
strong men of many. In my own case, of course, this did not apply,
since my family lived in the town, and I worked from my own home.
There was no attempt at friendship, or even acquaintance, between
professors and students at Edinburgh. It was a strictly business
arrangement by which you paid, for example, four guineas for Anatomy
lectures and received the winter course in exchange, never seeing
your professor save behind his desk and never under any circumstances
exchanging a word with him. They were remarkable men, however, some
of these professors, and we managed to know them pretty well without
any personal acquaintance. There was kindly Crum Brown, the chemist,
who sheltered himself carefully before exploding some mixture, which
usually failed to ignite, so that the loud “Boom!” uttered by the class
was the only resulting sound. Brown would emerge from his retreat with
a “Really, gentlemen!” of remonstrance, and go on without allusion to
the abortive experiment. There was Wyville Thomson, the zoologist,
fresh from his _Challenger_ expedition, and Balfour, with the face and
manner of John Knox, a hard rugged old man, who harried the students in
their exams, and was in consequence harried by them for the rest of the
year. There was Turner, a fine anatomist, but a self-educated man, as
was betrayed when he used to “take and put this structure on the handle
of this scalpel.” The most human trait that I can recall of Turner was
that upon one occasion the sacred quadrangle was invaded by snowballing
roughs. His class, of whom I was one, heard the sounds of battle
and fidgeted in their seats, on which the Professor said: “I think,
gentlemen, your presence may be more useful outside than here,” on
which we flocked out with a whoop, and soon had the quadrangle clear.
Most vividly of all, however, there stands out in my memory the squat
figure of Professor Rutherford with his Assyrian beard, his prodigious
voice, his enormous chest and his singular manner. He fascinated and
awed us. I have endeavoured to reproduce some of his peculiarities in
the fictitious character of Professor Challenger. He would sometimes
start his lecture before he reached the classroom, so that we would
hear a booming voice saying: “There are valves in the veins,” or some
other information, when the desk was still empty. He was, I fear, a
rather ruthless vivisector, and though I have always recognized that a
minimum of painless vivisection is necessary, and far more justifiable
than the eating of meat as a food, I am glad that the law was made more
stringent so as to restrain such men as he. “Ach, these Jarman Frags!”
he would exclaim in his curious accent, as he tore some poor amphibian
to pieces. I wrote a students’ song which is still sung, I understand,
in which a curious article is picked up on the Portobello beach and
each Professor in turn claims it for his department. Rutherford’s verse
ran:
Said Rutherford with a smile,
“It’s a mass of solid bile,
And I myself obtained it, what is more,
By a stringent cholagogue
From a vivisected dog,
And I lost it on the Portobello Shore.”
If the song is indeed still sung it may be of interest to the present
generation to know that I was the author.
But the most notable of the characters whom I met was one Joseph Bell,
surgeon at the Edinburgh Infirmary. Bell was a very remarkable man in
body and mind. He was thin, wiry, dark, with a high-nosed acute face,
penetrating grey eyes, angular shoulders, and a jerky way of walking.
His voice was high and discordant. He was a very skilful surgeon, but
his strong point was diagnosis, not only of disease, but of occupation
and character. For some reason which I have never understood he
singled me out from the drove of students who frequented his wards and
made me his out-patient clerk, which meant that I had to array his
out-patients, make simple notes of their cases, and then show them in,
one by one, to the large room in which Bell sat in state surrounded
by his dressers and students. Then I had ample chance of studying his
methods and of noticing that he often learned more of the patient by
a few quick glances than I had done by my questions. Occasionally the
results were very dramatic, though there were times when he blundered.
In one of his best cases he said to a civilian patient: “Well, my man,
you’ve served in the army.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Not long discharged?”
“No, sir.”
“A Highland regiment?”
“Aye, sir.”
“A non-com. officer.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Stationed at Barbados?”
“Aye, sir.”
“You see, gentlemen,” he would explain, “the man was a respectful man
but did not remove his hat. They do not in the army, but he would
have learned civilian ways had he been long discharged. He has an
air of authority and he is obviously Scottish. As to Barbados, his
complaint is elephantiasis, which is West Indian and not British.” To
his audience of Watsons it all seemed very miraculous until it was
explained, and then it became simple enough. It is no wonder that after
the study of such a character I used and amplified his methods when in
later life I tried to build up a scientific detective who solved cases
on his own merits and not through the folly of the criminal. Bell took
a keen interest in these detective tales and even made suggestions
which were not, I am bound to say, very practical. I kept in touch with
him for many years and he used to come upon my platform to support me
when I contested Edinburgh in 1901.
When I took over his out-patient work he warned me that a knowledge
of Scottish idioms was necessary and I, with the confidence of youth,
declared that I had got it. The sequel was amusing. On one of the
first days an old man came who, in response to my question, declared
that he had a “bealin’ in his oxter.” This fairly beat me, much to
Bell’s amusement. It seems that the words really mean an abscess in the
arm-pit.
Speaking generally of my University career I may say that though I
took my fences in my stride and balked at none of them, still I won
no distinction in the race. I was always one of the ruck, neither
lingering nor gaining--a 60 per cent man at examinations. There were,
however, some reasons for this which I will now state.
It was clearly very needful that I should help financially as quickly
as possible, even if my help only took the humble form of providing
for my own keep. Therefore I endeavoured almost from the first to
compress the classes for a year into half a year, and so to have some
months in which to earn a little money as a medical assistant, who
would dispense and do odd jobs for a doctor. When I first set forth to
do this my services were so obviously worth nothing that I had to put
that valuation upon them. Even then it might have been a hard bargain
for the doctor, for I might have proved like the youth in “Pickwick”
who had a rooted idea that oxalic acid was Epsom salts. However, I had
horse sense enough to save myself and my employer from any absolute
catastrophe. My first venture, in the early summer of ’78, was with a
Dr. Richardson, running a low-class practice in the poorer quarters of
Sheffield. I did my best, and I dare say he was patient, but at the
end of three weeks we parted by mutual consent. I went on to London,
where I renewed my advertisements in the medical papers, and found a
refuge for some weeks with my Doyle relatives, then living at Clifton
Gardens, Maida Vale. I fear that I was too Bohemian for them and they
too conventional for me. However, they were kind to me, and I roamed
about London for some time with pockets so empty that there was little
chance of idleness breeding its usual mischief. I remember that there
were signs of trouble in the East and that the recruiting sergeants,
who were very busy in Trafalgar Square, took my measure in a moment and
were very insistent that I should take the shilling. There was a time
when I was quite disposed to do so, but my mother’s plans held me back.
I may say that late in the same year I did volunteer as a dresser for
the English ambulances sent to Turkey for the Russian War, and was on
the Red Cross list, but the collapse of the Turks prevented my going
out.
Soon, however, there came an answer to my advertisement: “Third
year’s student, desiring experience rather than remuneration,
offers his services, &c., &c.” It was from a Dr. Elliot living in a
townlet in Shropshire which rejoiced in the extraordinary name of
“Ruyton-of-the-eleven-towns.” It was not big enough to make one town,
far less eleven. There for four months I helped in a country practice.
It was a very quiet existence and I had a good deal of time to myself
under very pleasant circumstances, so that I really trace some little
mental progress to that period, for I read and thought without
interruption. My medical duties were of a routine nature save on a few
occasions. One of them still stands out in my memory, for it was the
first time in my life that I ever had to test my own nerve in a great
sudden emergency. The doctor was out when there came a half-crazed
messenger to say that in some rejoicings at a neighbouring great house
they had exploded an old cannon which had promptly burst and grievously
injured one of the bystanders. No doctor was available, so I was the
last resource. On arriving there I found a man in bed with a lump of
iron sticking out of the side of his head. I tried not to show the
alarm which I felt, and I did the obvious thing by pulling out the
iron. I could see the clean white bone, so I could assure them that the
brain had not been injured. I then pulled the gash together, staunched
the bleeding, and finally bound it up, so that when the doctor did at
last arrive he had little to add. This incident gave me confidence and,
what is more important still, gave others confidence. On the whole I
had a happy time at Ruyton, and have a pleasing memory of Dr. Elliot
and his wife.
After a winter’s work at the University my next assistantship was a
real money-making proposition to the extent of some two pounds a month.
This was with Dr. Hoare, a well-known Birmingham doctor, who had a
five-horse City practice, and every working doctor, before the days of
motors, would realize that this meant going from morning to night. He
earned some three thousand a year, which takes some doing, when it is
collected from 3_s._ 6_d._ visits and 1_s._ 6_d._ bottles of medicine,
among the very poorest classes of Aston. Hoare was a fine fellow,
stout, square, red-faced, bushy-whiskered and dark-eyed. His wife was
also a very kindly and gifted woman, and my position in the house was
soon rather that of a son than of an assistant. The work, however,
was hard and incessant, and the pay very small. 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. I
had my own visiting list, also, the poorest or the most convalescent,
and I saw a great deal, for better or worse, of very low life. Twice
I returned to this Birmingham practice and always my relations with
the family became closer. At my second visit my knowledge had greatly
extended and I did midwifery cases, and the more severe cases in
general practice as well as all the dispensing. I had no time to spend
any money and it was as well, for every shilling was needed at home.
It was in this year that I first learned that shillings might be earned
in other ways than by filling phials. Some friend remarked to me that
my letters were very vivid and surely I could write some things to
sell. I may say that the general aspiration towards literature was
tremendously strong upon me, and that my mind was reaching out in
what seemed an aimless way in all sorts of directions. I used to be
allowed twopence for my lunch, that being the price of a mutton pie,
but near the pie shop was a second-hand book shop with a barrel full
of old books and the legend “Your choice for 2_d._” stuck above it.
Ofter the price of my luncheon used to be spent on some sample out of
this barrel, and I have within reach of my arm as I write these lines,
copies of Gordon’s Tacitus, Temple’s works, Pope’s Homer, Addison’s
Spectator and Swift’s works, which all came out of the twopenny box.
Any one observing my actions and tastes would have said that so strong
a spring would certainly overflow, but for my own part I never dreamed
I could myself produce decent prose, and the remark of my friend, who
was by no means given to flattery, took me greatly by surprise. I
sat down, however, and wrote a little adventure story which I called
“The Mystery of the Sassassa 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. It was years
before I touched “Chambers’” again, but in 1879 I had a story, “The
American’s Tale,” in “London Society,” for which also I got a small
cheque. But the idea of real success was still far from my mind.
During all this time our family affairs had taken no turn for the
better, and had it not been for my excursions and for the work of
my sisters we could hardly have carried on. My father’s health had
utterly broken, he had to retire to that Convalescent Home in which
the last years of his life were spent, and I, aged twenty, found myself
practically the head of a large and struggling family. My father’s life
was full of the tragedy of unfulfilled powers and of undeveloped gifts.
He had his weaknesses, as all of us have ours, but he had also some
very remarkable and outstanding virtues. A tall man, long-bearded, and
elegant, he had a charm of manner and a courtesy of bearing which I
have seldom seen equalled. His wit was quick and playful. He possessed,
also, a remarkable delicacy of mind which would give him moral courage
enough to rise and leave any company which talked in a manner which
was coarse. When he passed away a few years later I am sure that
Charles Doyle had no enemy in the world, and that those who knew him
best sympathized most with the hard fate which had thrown him, a man
of sensitive genius, into an environment which neither his age nor
his nature was fitted to face. He was unworldly and unpractical and
his family suffered for it, but even his faults were in some ways the
result of his developed spirituality. He lived and died a fervent son
of the Roman Catholic faith. My mother, however, who had never been a
very devoted daughter of that great institution, became less so as life
progressed, and finally found her chief consolation in the Anglican
fold.
This brings me to my own spiritual unfolding, if such it may be
called, during those years of constant struggle. I have already in my
account of the Jesuits shown how, even as a boy, all that was sanest
and most generous in my nature rose up against a narrow theology and
an uncharitable outlook upon the other great religions of the world.
In the Catholic Church to doubt anything is to doubt everything, for
since it is a vital axiom that doubt is a mortal sin when once it has,
unbidden and unappeasable, come upon you, everything is loosened and
you look upon the whole wonderful interdependent scheme with other
and more critical eyes. Thus viewed there was much to attract--its
traditions, its unbroken and solemn ritual, the beauty and truth of
many of its observances, its poetical appeal to the emotions, the
sensual charm of music, light and incense, its power as an instrument
of law and order. For the guidance of an unthinking and uneducated
world it could in many ways hardly be surpassed, as has been shown in
Paraguay, and in the former Ireland where, outside agrarian trouble,
crime was hardly known. All this I could clearly see, but if I may
claim any outstanding characteristic in my life, it is that I have
never paltered or compromised with religious matters, that I have
always weighed them very seriously, and that there was something in
me which made it absolutely impossible, even when my most immediate
interests were concerned, to say anything about them save that which
I, in the depth of my being, really believed to be true. Judging it
thus by all the new knowledge which came to me both from my reading
and from my studies, I found that the foundations not only of Roman
Catholicism but of the whole Christian faith, as presented to me in
nineteenth century theology, were so weak that my mind could not build
upon them. It is to be remembered that these were the years when
Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill were our
chief philosophers, and that even the man in the street felt the strong
sweeping current of their thought, while to the young student, eager
and impressionable, it was overwhelming. I know now that their negative
attitude was even more mistaken, and very much more dangerous, than the
positive positions which they attacked with such destructive criticism.
A gap had opened between our fathers and ourselves so suddenly and
completely that when a Gladstone wrote to uphold the Gadarene swine, or
the six days of Creation, the youngest student rightly tittered over
his arguments, and it did not need a Huxley to demolish them. I can
see now very clearly how deplorable it is that manifest absurdities
should be allowed to continue without even a footnote to soften them
in the sacred text, because it has the effect that what is indeed
sacred becomes overlaid, and one can easily be persuaded that what is
false in parts can have no solid binding force. There are no worse
enemies of true religion than those who clamour against all revision
or modification of that strange mass of superbly good and questionable
matter which we lump all together into a single volume as if there were
the same value to all of it. It is not solid gold, but gold in clay,
and if this be understood the earnest seeker will not cast it aside
when he comes upon the clay, but will value the gold the more in that
he has himself separated it.
It was, then, all Christianity, and not Roman Catholicism alone, which
had alienated my mind and driven me to an agnosticism, which never for
an instant degenerated into atheism, for I had a very keen perception
of the wonderful poise of the universe and the tremendous power of
conception and sustenance which it implied. I was reverent in all
my doubts and never ceased to think upon the matter, but the more I
thought the more confirmed became my non-conformity. In a broad sense
I was a Unitarian, save that I regarded the Bible with more criticism
than Unitarians usually show. This negative position was so firm that
it seemed to me to be a terminus; whereas it proved only a junction on
the road of life where I was destined to change from the old well-worn
line on to a new one. Every materialist, as I can now clearly see, is
a case of arrested development. He has cleared his ruins, but has not
begun to build that which would shelter him. As to psychic knowledge, I
knew it only by the account of exposures in the police courts and the
usual wild and malicious statements in the public press. Years were
to pass before I understood that in that direction might be found the
positive proofs which I constantly asserted were the only conditions
upon which I could resume any sort of allegiance to the unseen. I must
have definite demonstration, for if it were to be a matter of faith
then I might as well go back to the faith of my fathers. “Never will
I accept anything which cannot be proved to me. The evils of religion
have all come from accepting things which cannot be proved.” So I said
at the time and I have been true to my resolve.
I would not give the impression that my life was gloomy or morbidly
thoughtful because it chanced that I had some extra cares and some
worrying thoughts. I had an eager nature which missed nothing in the
way of fun which could be gathered, and I had a great capacity for
enjoyment. I read much. I played games all I could. I danced, and I
sampled the drama whenever I had a sixpence to carry me to the gallery.
On one occasion I got into a row which might have been serious. I was
waiting on the gallery steps with a great line of people, the shut
door still facing us. There were half a dozen soldiers in the crowd and
one of these squeezed a girl up against the wall in such a way that she
began to scream. As I was near them I asked the man to be more gentle,
on which he dug his elbow with all his force into my ribs. He turned on
me as he did so, and I hit him with both hands in the face. He bored
into me and pushed me up into the angle of the door, but I had a grip
of him and he could not hit me, though he tried to kick me in cowardly
fashion with his knee. Several of his comrades threatened me, and one
hit me on the head with his cane, cracking my hat. At this moment
luckily the door opened and the rush of the crowd carried the soldiers
on, one sympathetic corporal saying, “Take your breath, sir! Take your
breath!” I threw my man through the open door and came home, for it was
clearly asking for trouble if I remained. It was a good escape from an
awkward business.
And now I come to the first real outstanding adventure in my life,
which is worthy of a fresh chapter and of a more elaborate treatment.