Memories and Adventures Chapter 10 - The Great Break

**Arthur Conan Doyle** (0:00)
Chapter 10 of Memories and Adventures by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org. Recording by A Fine Voice Memories and Adventures by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Chapter 10 The Great Break Viena A specialist in Wimpole Street The Great Decision Norwood The Refugees Reported Death of Homes We set forth upon a bitter winter day at the close of 1890, with every chance of being snowed up on our long trek. We got through all right, however, and found ourselves in Vienna, arriving on a deadly cold night with deep snow underfoot and a cutting blizzard in the air. As we looked from the station, the electric light threw out the shining silver drift of snowflakes against the absolute darkness of the sky. It was a gloomy, ominous reception, but half an hour afterwards, when we were in the warm, cosy, crowded, tobacco-laden restaurant attached to our hotel, we took a more cheerful view of our surroundings. We found a modest pension, which was within our means, and we put in a very pleasant four months, during which I attended I lectures at the Crankenhaus, but could certainly have learned far more in London, for even if one has a fair knowledge of conversational German, it is very different from following accurately a rapid lecture filled with technical terms. No doubt, has studied in Vienna sounds well in a specialist's record, but it is usually taken for granted that he has exhausted his own country before going abroad, which was by no means the case with me.
Therefore, so far as I work goes, my winter was wasted, nor can I trace any particular spiritual or intellectual advance. On the other hand, I saw a little of gay Viennese society. I received kind and welcome hospitality from Brinsley Richards, the Times correspondent, and his wife, and I had some excellent skating. I also wrote one short book, The Doings of Raffles Hoare, not a very notable achievement by which I was able to pay my current expenses, without encroaching on the very few hundred pounds, which were absolutely all that I had in the world. This money was invested on the advice of a friend, and as it was almost all lost, like so much more than I have earned, it is just as well that I was never driven back upon it. With the spring, my work at Vienna had finished. If it can be said to have ever begun, and we returned via Paris, putting in a few days there with Landolt, who was the most famous French oculist of his time. It was great to find ourselves back in London once more, with the feeling that we were now on the real field of battle, where we must conquer or perish, for our boats were burned behind us. It is easy now to look back and think that the issue was clear, but it was by no means so at the time, for I had earned little, though my reputation was growing. It was only my own inward conviction of the permanent merits of the white company, still appearing month by month in Cornhill, which sustained my confidence. I had come through so much in the early days at Southsea that nothing could alarm me personally, but I had a wife and child now, and the stern simplicity of life which was possible and even pleasant in early days was now no longer to be thought of. We took rooms in Montague Place, and I went forth to search for some place where I could put up my plate as an oculist. I was aware that many of the big men do not find time to work out refractions, which in some cases of astigmatism take a long time to adjust when done by retinoscopy. I was capable in this work and liked it, so I hoped that some of it might drift my way. But to get it, it was clearly unnecessary that I should live among the big men, so that the patient could be easily referred to me. I searched the doctor's quarters and at last found suitable accommodation at 2 Devonshire Place, which is at the top of Wimpole Street and close to the classical Harley Street. There, for £120 a year, I got the use of a front room, with part use of a waiting room. I was soon to find that they were both waiting rooms, and now I know that it was better so. Every morning I walked from the lodgings at Montague Place, reached my consulting room at ten, and sat there until three or four, with never a ring to disturb my serenity. Could better conditions for reflection and work be found? It was ideal. And so long as I was thoroughly unsuccessful in my professional venture, there was every chance of improvement in my literary prospects. Therefore, when I returned to the lodgings at teatime, I bore my little sheaves with me, the first fruits of a considerable harvest. A number of monthly magazines were coming out at that time, notable among which was The Strand, then as now under the editorship of Greenhoff Smith. Considering these various journals with their disconnected stories, it had struck me that a single character running through a series, if it only engaged the attention of the reader, would bind that reader to that particular magazine.