Doctor in Clover by Richard Gordon Page A

should have agreed with him. Though a good many other doctors seem to have had the same idea – Oliver Goldsmith, Smollett, Rabelais, Conan Doyle, Somerset Maugham, and so on. The thought had come to me in the uncle’s study at Long Wotton, where I’d been browsing to keep up with Lord Nutbeam’s conversation. Half-way through The World’s Ten Great Novels it struck me that a chap who could write the obituaries for the Medical Observer ought to be pretty good at producing convincing fiction.
    The only snag was paying the rent while writing it, and I suppose the same problem worried Goldsmith and Smollett as well. But now I had the uncle’s cheque I could afford to take a small houseboat in Chelsea, if I managed to live largely on baked beans and benzedrine.
    The next afternoon I’d an appointment with some publishers called Carboy and Plover in Bloomsbury, a district with high-class literary associations but now consisting of small hotels for drunk Scotsmen missing the night trains from King’s Cross.
    ‘A hospital story, eh? They’re generally sellers, at any rate,’ said Mr Carboy.
    He was a fat chap in a tweed suit, whom I’d found sitting among photographs of his best-selling authors and prize-winning cattle reading the Farmer and Stockbreeder . But he was very civil, and gave me a cup of tea.
    ‘The drama of the operating theatre,’ murmured Plover, a thin, pale fellow on whom nothing seemed to grow very well – hair, moustache, bow-tie, all drooped like a sensitive plant after a thunderstorm,
    ‘I’ll have a go, then,’ I said. I felt the interview was more encouraging than the one you got on entering St Swithin’s, when they just told you the number of chaps they chucked out for slacking.
    ‘Have a go by all means, Doctor,’ agreed Carboy. ‘Just send us the manuscript when it’s finished. Can’t promise anything definite, of course. But we’ll certainly read it.’
    ‘Er – one small point–’
    I didn’t want to raise sordid questions among such literary gents, but I went on, ‘I met an author chap once, who said publishers often made a small advance–’
    ‘We should be delighted, Doctor,’ said Carboy. ‘Absolutely delighted,’ agreed Plover. ‘Nothing gives a publisher greater pleasure than encouraging the young artist. Eh, Plover? But alas! The state of the book trade,’
    ‘Simply terrible just now,’ affirmed Plover, drooping further.
    ‘Quite indescribable.’
    ‘Bankruptcies weekly.’
    ‘Poor Hargreaves. Shot himself only yesterday.’
    ‘I’m not at all certain,’ ended Plover, ‘that I didn’t hear the crack of a pistol shot on my way to lunch.’
    I left, wondering whether I should offer to pay for the tea.
    In the absence of patronage from Carboy and Plover, I put one cigarette case up the spout, bought a second-hand typewriter and Roget’s Thesaurus , and settled down to work.
    Being a medical student is jolly good training for becoming an author. In both occupations you have to sit at a desk for hours on end when you’d rather be out in the pubs, and to live on practically nothing. Though I must admit it was only late in the course that I developed this knack for the studious life. The old uncle had become even stickier with the money after a surprise visit to my new digs one evening, when the landlady answered his question, ‘Is this where Mr Grimsdyke lives?’ with, ‘That’s right, sir, bring ’im in and mind ’is poor ’ead on the doorstep.’
    I also found that writing a book, like taking out an appendix, looks rather easier from the appearance of the finished product than it is. The snag in writing a book about hospitals is that everyone imagines the atmosphere inside resembles the closing stages of a six-day bicycle race, while the operating theatre is really a relaxed and friendly place, like a well-run garage. Also, the public thinks all surgeons are high-principled and handsome, though most of them are little fat men with old pyjamas under