MY START AT SOUTHSEA
A Strange Life--Arrival of my Brother--I Buy up a Shop--Cheap
Servants--Queer Patients--Dangers of Medical Practice--Income Tax
Joke--My Marriage--Tragedy in my House--A New Phase.
What with cleaning up, answering the bell, doing my modest shopping,
which was measured in pennies rather than shillings, and perfecting
my simple household arrangements, the time did not hang heavily upon
my hands. It is a wonderful thing to have a house of your own for the
first time, however humble it may be. I lavished all my care upon
the front room to make it possible for patients. The back room was
furnished with my trunk and a stool. Inside the trunk was my larder,
and the top of it was my dining-room table. There was gas laid on, and
I rigged a projection from the wall by which I could sling a pan over
the gas jet. In this way I cooked bacon with great ease, and became
expert in getting a wonderful lot of slices from a pound. Bread, bacon
and tea, with an occasional saveloy--what could man ask for more? It is
(or was) perfectly easy to live well upon a shilling a day.
I had obtained a fair consignment of drugs on tick from a wholesale
house and these also were ranged round the sides of the back room. From
the very beginning a few stray patients of the poorest class, some of
them desirous of novelty, some disgruntled with their own doctors,
the greater part owing bills and ashamed to face their creditor, came
to consult me and consume a bottle of my medicine. I could pay for
my food by the drugs I sold. It was as well, for I had no other way
of paying for it, and I had sworn not to touch the ten golden pieces
which represented my rent. There have been times when I could not buy a
postage stamp and my letters have had to wait, but the ten golden coins
still remained intact.
It was a busy thoroughfare, with a church on one side of my house and
an hotel on the other. The days passed pleasantly enough, for it was
a lovely warm autumn, and I sat in the window of my consulting-room
screened by the rather dingy curtain which I had put up, and watched
the passing crowd or read my book, for I had spent part of my
scanty funds on making myself a member of a circulating library.
In spite of my sparse food, or more probably on account of it, I
was extraordinarily fit and well, so that at night when all hope of
patients was gone for that day I would lock up my house and walk many
miles to work off my energy. With its imperial associations it is a
glorious place and even now if I had to live in a town outside London
it is surely to Southsea, the residential quarter of Portsmouth, that
I would turn. The history of the past carries on into the history of
to-day, the new torpedo-boat flies past the old _Victory_ with the same
white ensign flying from each, and the old Elizabethan culverins and
sakers can still be seen in the same walk which brings you to the huge
artillery of the forts. There is a great glamour there to any one with
the historic sense--a sense which I drank in with my mother’s milk.
It had never entered my head yet that literature might give me a
career, or anything beyond a little casual pocket money, but already
it was a deciding factor in my life, for I could not have held on, and
must have either starved or given in but for the few pounds which Mr.
Hogg sent me, for they enabled all other smaller sums to be spent in
nourishment. I have wondered sometimes as I look back that I did not
contract scurvy, for most of my food was potted, and I had no means of
cooking vegetables. However, I felt no grievance at the time nor any
particular perception that my mode of life was unusual, nor indeed any
particular anxiety about the future. At that age everything seems an
adventure--and there was always the novel pleasure of the house.
Once I had a moment of weakness during which I answered an
advertisement which asked for a doctor to attend coolies in the tea
gardens of the Terai. I spent a few unsettled days waiting for an
answer, but none came and I settled down once more to my waiting and
hoping. I had one avenue of success open of which I could not avail
myself. My Catholic relatives had sent me introductions to the Bishop
and I was assured that there was no Catholic doctor in the town. My
mind, however, was so perfectly clear and I had so entirely broken away
from the old faith that I could not possibly use it for material ends.
I therefore burned the letter of introduction.
As the weeks passed and I had no one with whom to talk I began to think
wistfully of the home circle at Edinburgh, and to wonder why, with my
eight-roomed house, one or more of them should not come to keep me
company. The girls were already governessing or preparing to do so, but
there was my little brother Innes. It would relieve my mother and yet
help me if he could join me. So it was arranged, and one happy evening
the little knicker-bockered fellow, just ten years old, joined me as
my comrade. No man could have had a merrier and brighter one. In a few
weeks we had settled down to a routine life, I having found a good
day-school for him. The soldiers of Portsmouth were already a great joy
to him, and his future career was marked out by his natural tastes, for
he was a born leader and administrator. Little did I foresee that he
would win distinction in the greatest of all wars, and die in the prime
of his manhood--but not before he knew that complete victory had been
attained. Even then our thoughts were very military, and I remember how
we waited together outside the office of the local paper that we might
learn the result of the bombardment of Alexandria.
Turning over some old papers after these pages were written I came upon
a letter written in straggling schoolboy script by my little brother
to his mother at home which may throw an independent light upon those
curious days. It is dated August 16, 1882. He says:
“The patients are crowding in. We have made three bob this week. We
have vaxenated a baby and got hold of a man with consumtion, and to-day
a gipsy’s cart came up to the door selling baskets and chairs so we
determined not to let the man ring as long as he liked. After he had
rong two or three times Arthur yelled out at the pitch of his voice, Go
a way but the man rang again so I went down to the door and pulled open
the letter box and cried out go a way. The man began to swere at me and
say that he wanted to see Arthur. All this time Arthur thought that the
door was open and was yelling Shut that door. Then I came upstairs and
told Arthur what the man had said so Arthur went down and opened the
door and found out that the gipsy’s child had measles.... After all we
got sixpence out of them and that is all ways something.”
I remember the incident well, and certainly my sudden change of tone
from the indignant householder, who is worried by a tramp, to my best
bedside manner in the hopes of a fee, must have been very amusing. My
recollection is, however, that it was the Gipsy who got sixpence out of
us.
For some time Innes and I lived entirely alone, doing the household
tasks between us, and going long walks in the evening to keep ourselves
fit. Then I had a brain-wave and I put an advertisement in the evening
paper that a groundfloor was to let in exchange for services. I had
numerous applicants in reply, and out of them I chose two elderly women
who claimed to be sisters--a claim which they afterwards failed to
make good. When once they were installed we became quite a civilized
household and things began to look better. There were complex quarrels,
however, and one of the women left. The other soon afterwards followed
suit. As the first woman had seemed to me to be the most efficient, I
followed her up and found that she had started a small shop. Her rent
was weekly, so that was easily settled, but she talked gloomily about
her stock. “I will buy everything in your shop,” I said in a large way.
It cost me exactly seventeen and sixpence, and I was loaded up for many
months with matches, cakes of blacking and other merchandise. From then
onwards our meals were cooked for us, and we became in all ways normal.
Month followed month and I picked up a patient here and a patient there
until the nucleus of a little practice had been formed. Sometimes it
was an accident, sometimes an emergency case, sometimes a newcomer
to the town or one who had quarrelled with his doctor. I mixed with
people so far as I could, for I learned that a brass plate alone will
never attract, and people must see the human being who lies in wait
behind it. Some of my tradespeople gave me their custom in return for
mine, and mine was so small that I was likely to have the best of the
bargain. There was a grocer who developed epileptic fits, which meant
butter and tea to us. Poor fellow, he could never have realized the
mixed feelings with which I received the news of a fresh outbreak.
Then there was a very tall, horse-faced old lady with an extraordinary
dignity of bearing. She would sit framed in the window of her little
house, like the picture of a _grande dame_ of the old régime. But
every now and again she went on a wild burst, in the course of which
she would skim plates out of the window at the passers-by. I was the
only one who had influence over her at such times, for she was a
haughty, autocratic old person. Once she showed an inclination to skim
a plate at me also, but I quelled her by assuming a gloomy dignity as
portentous as her own. She had some art treasures which she heaped upon
me when she was what we will politely call “ill,” but claimed back
again the moment she was well. Once when she had been particularly
troublesome I retained a fine lava jug, in spite of her protests, and I
have got it yet.
It is well that medical practice has its humorous side, for it has much
to depress one. Most men never use their reasoning power at all on the
religious side, but if they did they would find it difficult sometimes
to reconcile the sights which a physician sees with the idea of a
merciful providence. If one loses the explanation that this life is a
spiritual chastening for another, and thinks that death ends all, and
that this is our one experience, then it is impossible to sustain the
goodness or the omnipotence of God. So I felt at the time, and it made
me a Materialist, but now I know well that I was judging a story on the
strength of one chapter.
Let me give an example. I was called in by a poor woman to see her
daughter. As I entered the humble sitting-room there was a small cot
at one side, and by the gesture of the mother I understood that the
sufferer was there. I picked up a candle and walking over I stooped
over the little bed, expecting to see a child. What I really saw was
a pair of brown sullen eyes, full of loathing and pain, which looked
up in resentment to mine. I could not tell how old the creature was.
Long thin limbs were twisted and coiled in the tiny couch. The face was
sane but malignant. “What is it?” I asked in dismay when we were out of
hearing. “It’s a girl,” sobbed the mother. “She’s nineteen. Oh! if God
would only take her!” What a life for both! And how hard to face such
facts and accept any of the commonplace explanations of existence!
Medical life is full of dangers and pitfalls, and luck must always play
its part in a man’s career. Many a good man has been ruined by pure
bad luck. On one occasion I was called in to a lady who was suffering
from what appeared to be dyspepsia of a rather severe type. There was
absolutely nothing to indicate anything more serious. I therefore
reassured the family, spoke lightly of the illness, and walked home to
make up a bismuth mixture for her, calling on one or two other cases on
the way. When I got home I found a messenger waiting to say that the
lady was dead. This is the sort of thing which may happen to any man
at any time. It did not hurt me, for I was too lowly to be hurt. You
can’t ruin a practice when there is no practice. The woman really had a
gastric ulcer, for which there is no diagnosis; it was eating its way
into the lining of her stomach, it pierced an artery after I saw her,
and she bled to death. Nothing could have saved her, and I think her
relatives came to understand this.
I made £154 the first year, and £250 the second, rising slowly to £300,
which in eight years I never passed, so far as the medical practice
went. In the first year the Income Tax paper arrived and I filled it
up to show that I was not liable. They returned the paper with “Most
unsatisfactory” scrawled across it. I wrote “I entirely agree” under
the words, and returned it once more. For this little bit of cheek I
was had up before the assessors, and duly appeared with my ledger under
my arm. They could make nothing, however, out of me or my ledger, and
we parted with mutual laughter and compliments.
In the year 1885 my brother left me to go to a public school in
Yorkshire. Shortly afterwards I was married. A lady named Mrs. Hawkins,
a widow of a Gloucestershire family, had come to Southsea with her son
and daughter, the latter a very gentle and amiable girl. I was brought
into contact with them through the illness of the son, which was of
a sudden and violent nature, arising from cerebral meningitis. As
the mother was very awkwardly situated in lodgings, I volunteered to
furnish an extra bedroom in my house and give the poor lad, who was
in the utmost danger, my personal attention. His case was a mortal
one, and in spite of all I could do he passed away a few days later.
Such a death under my own roof naturally involved me in a good deal
of anxiety and trouble--indeed, if I had not had the foresight to ask
a medical friend to see him with me on the day before he passed away,
I should have been in a difficult position. The funeral was from my
house. The family were naturally grieved at the worry to which they
had quite innocently exposed me, and so our relations became intimate
and sympathetic, which ended in the daughter consenting to share my
fortunes. We were married on August 6, 1885, and no man could have had
a more gentle and amiable life’s companion. Our union was marred by
the sad ailment which came after a very few years to cast its shadow
over our lives, but it comforts me to think that during the time when
we were together there was no single occasion when our affection was
disturbed by any serious breach or division, the credit of which lies
entirely with her own quiet philosophy, which enabled her to bear with
smiling patience not only her own sad illness, which lasted so long,
but all those other vicissitudes which life brings with it. I rejoice
to think that though she married a penniless doctor, she was spared
long enough to fully appreciate the pleasure and the material comforts
which worldly success was able to bring us. She had some small income
of her own which enabled me to expand my simple housekeeping in a way
which gave her from the first the decencies, if not the luxuries, of
life.
In many ways my marriage marked a turning-point in my life. A bachelor,
especially one who had been a wanderer like myself, drifts easily into
Bohemian habits, and I was no exception. I cannot look back upon those
years with any spiritual satisfaction, for I was still in the valley of
darkness. I had ceased to butt my head incessantly against what seemed
to be an impenetrable wall, and I had resigned myself to ignorance
upon that which is the most momentous question in life--for a voyage
is bleak indeed if one has no conception to what port one is bound. I
had laid aside the old charts as useless, and had quite despaired of
ever finding a new one which would enable me to steer an intelligible
course, save towards that mist which was all that my pilots, Huxley,
Mill, Spencer and others, could see ahead of us. My mental attitude is
correctly portrayed in “The Stark Munro Letters.” A dim light of dawn
was to come to me soon in an uncertain fitful way which was destined in
time to spread and grow brighter.
Up to now the main interest of my life lay in my medical career. But
with the more regular life and the greater sense of responsibility,
coupled with the natural development of brainpower, the literary
side of me began slowly to spread until it was destined to push the
other entirely aside. Thus a new phase had begun, part medical, part
literary, and part philosophical, which I shall deal with in another
chapter.