During my lifetime have occurred the Indian Mutiny, the Crimean War, the Civil War in America, the Zulu War, Ashanti, Egyptian, Franco-Prussian, Russo-Turkish, Chinese Opium, two South African, Russo-Japanese, First Great, and Second Great. And in the Political world, abolition of slavery in British territory, flogging in the British Army, abolition of bought commissions in the British army, abolition of religious tests in British Universities, compulsory elementary education (free), abolition of church rates, secret ballots at elections, Irish home rule, payment of MP’s, [154 : V] disestablishment of the State Church (Ireland) and ditto (Wales), Catholic emancipation, admission of Jews to Parliament, franchise granted to farm labourers, and with few exceptions manhood suffrage, womens suffrage, political, educational, medical and legal; County Councils formed to take over instead of Ecclesiastical parishes (in other words Squire and Parson management), also compulsory church rates were abolished, and many other minor improvements enabled.
The major wars which occurred during the first 50 years of my life were the Crimean War, English and French against Russia, in which Florence Nightingale pioneered as an Army nurse; the Franco-German of 1870-1, the South African of 1900-1. The world war of 1914-18, also the Egyptian War, and the Russo-Japanese.
[155 : VI] Notable preachers, during these years, were Canon Liddon at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, and Dean Stanley at Westminster Abbey; and amongst the Methodists Morley Punchion, Peter MacKenzie, Pinsdale T Young, Hugh Price-Hughes. Congregational: Dr Joseph Parker at City Temple; Baptist: Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and Dr MacLaren at Manchester.
Public Men: Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Disraeli, Lord Salisbury and his nephew Balfour, Kipling, Hardy, Barrie, Gilbert & Sullivan, besides doctors and lawyers of mark, too numerous to mention.
Amongst famours trials: Tichborn was the most outstanding. Notorious criminals Charles Peace (footnote 1), Jack the Ripper, the latter never caught. Public executions were also abolished during this period.
And as writers must not forget [156 : VII] Charles Dickens and W M Thackeray, Hall Caine, Arnold Bennett, George Eliot and the Frenchman Jules Verne. A Conan Doyle[1] also, whom I lived near at Southsea (footnote 2), and who was then a medical doctor as he says “waiting for the patients, who never came”; however, he had some practice, as I was on the inquest where he was the medical officer, and before his evidence was taken declared “my name is A Conan Doyle, and I am a duly qualified medical practitioner” – he subsequently retired to London, where most of his writing was done. Sarah Dowdney delighted me with her Irish tales when I was a boy; her father Dr Doudney was a clergyman, and editor of the high Calvinistic Gospel magazine, and some of the family lived in Portsmouth and were soap-makers.
[157 : VIII] Aunt Lissolo, coming home from Italy after her husband’s death, brought some large volumes of Dantes, fully illustrated by Dove, and I had to get a translation, to see what it was all about. Also I read a translation of the Koran, at a study class at the Baptist Church of Ealing with Mr Elt as the leader of the class; he was quite a character. But, how many books I read, borrowed from the Mechanics library at Ealing, I do not know; but amongst other writers was Wilkie Collins, Miss Braddon, Dickens, the Bronte sisters, Sir Walter Scott, Stevenson, also Marie Correlli and many others whose names I forget. I feel I ought to beg their pardons, as they helped to make my boyhood and young manhood much happier with their writings, than I should have been without them.
[158 : IX] I must not forget the entertainment we put on at the Tring school on the breaking-up day for the holidays; concerts and nigger entertainments, in which I took part – but not always with results that were pleasing to myself, but that is like human life;
All human life is full of woes
Man cuts his capers, and off he goes.
Again,
Scepter and crown must tumble down
And in the grave, be level made
With the poor crooked by the spade.
Transcriber’s footnotes:
1. 1879 – he shot his “friend”, a Mr Dyson
2. Dr (later Sir) Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859-1930) had a surgery in Elm Grove, Southsea (the same street as the Baptist Church where the writer was married). He lived at No 1 Bush Villas, later renamed “Doyle House”. While practising at Southsea, he wrote many articles and novels, including “Micah Clarke”, “The White Company”, and the first two Sherlock Holmes novels “A Study in Scarlet” and “The Sign of Four”.
Click here for the title page,
previous section or next section