Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle

by Daniel Stashower

  As always, Conan Doyle kept to a steady work schedule, though he found the desert heat enervating. He brought research materials along to finish up the first set of Brigadier Gerard stories, and also found time to adapt a play from a novel by his friend James Payn, the editor of Cornhill Magazine. His researches into the Napoleonic era set him off on another historical novel, Uncle Bernac, which had been commissioned by the editor of Queen magazine. When his creative energy flagged, he took local forms of exercise. He climbed the Great Pyramid of Giza, which he considered an “uncomfortable and useless feat,” and made use of a golf course near the hotel. Here, he later remarked, “if you sliced your ball, you might find it bunkered in the grave of some Rameses or Thothmes of old.” This marked an improvement over his golf outings in Davos. There his efforts to set up a course were foiled by inquisitive cows, which had a “curious trick” of knocking down the flags and eating them.

  Conan Doyle also hoped to practice his horsemanship in Egypt, availing himself of an assortment of “weird steeds” available at a nearby livery. “As a rule they erred on the side of dullness,” he wrote, “but I have a very vivid recollection of one which restored the average. If my right eyelid drops somewhat over my eye it is not the result of philosophic brooding, but it is the doing of a black devil of a horse with a varminty head, slab-sided ribs, and restless ears.” Apparently there was ill feeling on both sides; the horse not only dragged Conan Doyle on a mad dash across the desert, but also pitched him to the ground and kicked him in the forehead. The wound required five stitches, and the sagging eyelid can be seen in every subsequent photograph.

  Conan Doyle celebrated the New Year of 1896 with his wife and sister in Cairo. Two days later, the three of them set off on a Nile cruise organized by the Thomas Cook travel agency. They sailed aboard a paddle-wheel steamer called Nitocris, which carried a crew of sixteen and had berths for eight passengers. The journey covered some eight hundred miles, reaching as far south as the Sudanese border, with frequent stops to explore ancient tombs and temples. Conan Doyle marveled at the “majestic continuity” of Egyptian history: “There is nothing like this in the world. The Roman and the British Empires are mushrooms in comparison.” Even so, with his growing interest in spiritualism, Conan Doyle could not reconcile himself to the Egyptian preoccupation with the preservation of the earthly body. “What a degraded intelligence does it not show!” he exclaimed. “The idea that the body, the old outworn greatcoat which was once wrapped round the soul, should at any cost be preserved is the last word in materialism.”

  As the tour moved south, it entered potentially dangerous territory. With the new Conservative government in Britain making noise about a reconquest of the Sudan, bands of restless Sudanese natives were making their feelings known by lobbing warning shots at passing English vessels. As reports of further hostilities circulated aboard the Nitocris, Conan Doyle concluded that the tour managers were taking unnecessary risks. “If I were a Dervish General,” he noted, “I would undertake to carry off a Cook’s excursion party with the greatest ease.” Happily, the Nitocris returned its passengers to Cairo unharmed, but Conan Doyle continued to meditate on the idea of a tour party “plunged into frightful disaster.” In time, he produced a new novel called The Tragedy of the Korosko, which appeared in America as A Desert Drama, in which a party of tourists falls prey to desert bandits. The book would appear in February 1898, after a well-received serialization in The Strand.

  Returning from the Nile cruise safely, Conan Doyle left Louisa and Lottie in the comfort of the hotel while he rode fifty miles into the desert to visit the famous Coptic monastery at the Natron Lakes. When he got back to Cairo several days later, he learned that “great historical events” had transpired in his absence. The tensions in the region, escalated by disagreements over the deployment of British forces along the Nile, had now erupted into open warfare. The British-controlled Egyptian army, under the command of Lord Kitchener, was marching on the Sudanese dervishes loyal to the Khalifa Abdullah el Taashi. “Egypt had suddenly become the storm centre of the world,” he wrote, “and chance had placed me there at that moment.”

  Conan Doyle, who had chronicled so many great military campaigns of the past in his novels, longed to see the modern British fighting man in action. As a civilian, he knew, he could not hope to get up to the front lines. Not to be denied, he wired to the Westminster Gazette in London and wrangled an appointment as an honorary war correspondent. With these credentials in hand, he kitted himself out with a khaki coat and riding breeches, and purchased an Italian revolver and cartridges. Leaving Louisa and Lottie in the safety of the hotel, he set off for the Sudanese border.

  Traveling by train, boat, and camel, Conan Doyle headed south to Aswan, well short of the actual combat zone, where the men of the press had gathered. Impatient as he was to see action, he could not fail to be impressed by the unruffled demeanor of the British officers. He came to know four young men, all suffering from fever, who insisted on remaining at their posts. Every morning each of the four would toss a half crown into a hat, then take their temperatures. The man with the highest fever took the pot. Only once, when a telegram had been posted at headquarters, did Conan Doyle see signs of agitation among the troops. The notice, he assumed, brought news of advancing forces. “I pushed my way in, and thrust my head among all the bobbing sun helmets,” he reported. “It was the account of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race.”

  A group of cavalry officers was preparing to join the main body of troops at Wadi Halfa, and the press contingent was ordered to join them. Instead, Conan Doyle decided to try his luck with the “big pressmen” from London, who determined that they would be happier making the trip on their own. “There was some risk in our lonely journey along the right bank of the river with our left flank quite unprotected,” he wrote, “but on the other hand the dust of a great body of horsemen would be insufferable.” On reflection, breathing a little dust would certainly have been preferable to the very real danger of falling into the hands of marauding dervishes, but Conan Doyle’s taste for adventure overcame his more sober impulses. He and his fellow travelers set off in the darkness mounted on camels, attended by a retinue of servants.

  Camels, Conan Doyle found, were no more congenial than his “varminty” Egyptian horse had been. “It is the strangest and most deceptive animal in the world,” he wrote. “Its appearance is so staid and respectable that you cannot give it credit for the black villainy that lurks within. It approaches you with a mildly interested and superior expression, like a patrician lady in a Sunday school. You feel that a pair of glasses at the end of a fan is the one thing lacking. Then it puts its lips gently forward, with a far-away look in its eyes, and you have just time to say, ‘The pretty dear is going to kiss me,’ when two rows of frightful green teeth clash in front of you, and you give such a backward jump as you could never have hoped at your age to accomplish.”

  Fortunately, Conan Doyle’s camel was the only serious threat he had to face; the party completed its journey to Wadi Halfa without encountering any Sudanese forces. “I am still haunted by that purple velvet sky,” he was to write in his autobiography, “by those enormous and innumerable stars, by the half-moon which moved slowly above us, while our camels with their noiseless tread seemed to bear us without effort through a wonderful dream world.”

  Disappointment awaited the travelers at their destination, as the start of the campaign appeared to be on hold. “There was a whiff of real war in the little fortress,” Conan Doyle found, “but no sign of any actual advance.” Over dinner, Kitchener himself assured a crestfallen Conan Doyle that no fighting could take place until his men and equipment were in position. The other correspondents elected to stay in place. Conan Doyle, as much as he might have wished it otherwise, knew that Louisa could not tolerate the heat of the coming summer. Donating his camel to the cause, he hitched a ride back to Cairo on a passing cargo boat, surviving for the entire journey on a diet of apricots in syrup. “I neve
r wish to see a tinned apricot so long as I live,” he said.

  The Conan Doyle party sailed for England in late April. He brought back many souvenirs, the most prominent being an infestation of chiggers, which had burrowed into his wrists while he slept along the banks of the Nile.

  * * *

  The new home in Hindhead was not yet completed when the Conan Doyles returned. With their children in tow, they moved into a rented property in the nearby town of Haslemere, and later to a hotel in Hindhead where they could supervise the construction of the house. It must be said that Conan Doyle did not seem in any great hurry to renew his acquaintance with his children. He had spent six months in Egypt, but within three weeks of his return to England he set off on a sentimental visit to Southsea, where for several weeks he tailored his work schedule around cricket matches and visits with old friends. While there, it seems that he extended a generous hand to his old colleague Arthur Ford, the ophthalmic surgeon who trained him to perform eye tests. Ford, who had six children, had fallen on hard times. Acting on an apparent impulse, Conan Doyle bought the house Ford had been renting, and presumably offered security and generous terms to his old friend.

  In October 1897, Conan Doyle and his family moved into their new home. The gabled, redbrick mansion made an impressive reflection of the author’s fame and wealth, and also his far-flung interests as a traveler and sportsman. A long, winding drive brought visitors to the western entrance, which opened into a two-story entry hall, warmed by a brick fireplace, where the Doyle family’s coats of arms were set into stained-glass windows. Guest bedrooms and an enormous billiards room held out the promise of entertaining on a lavish scale, as did the stately dining room, which could seat up to thirty people. In the wood-paneled drawing room, a special display shelf ran along the walls near the ceiling, holding an eccentric collection of walrus tusks, antique weapons, stuffed birds, and sporting trophies. The sheltered conditions that made Hindhead so favorable to Louisa’s health also allowed for large, bright windows without the risk of unwelcome drafts. Electric lights, not yet common outside the larger cities, ran off a special generator. Conan Doyle calculated the total value of his new home at £10,000, perhaps half a million dollars in modern terms. He named the house Undershaw—“shaw” being an Anglo-Saxon word to describe a nearby grove of hanging trees. Bram Stoker, who visited in 1907, found the house “cozy and snug to a remarkable degree,” and added that the many curios and artworks created an effect like a “fairy pleasure house.” Stoker’s reaction is not surprising; by that time Conan Doyle had built an electric monorail train on the grounds at the back of the property, which featured a special gyroscopic balancing mechanism. The train was large enough to carry passengers, much to the delight of his daughter and son, who were now eight and five years old.

  For Conan Doyle, who had spent his childhood bouncing from one flat to another in Edinburgh, Undershaw brought a welcome stability. His own children, after the upheavals of the previous four years, now had a beautiful home and four acres of wooded land to explore. A visitor from the Windsor Magazine noted that the “youthful branches of the family are here, there, and everywhere,” and Conan Doyle encouraged their budding interest in croquet, horses, and other outdoor sports. He shared his love of boxing and cricket with Kingsley, and went hiking and riding with Mary. For Louisa, the new house offered the same domestic pleasures she had enjoyed in South Norwood, though she now had a large staff to manage, including a butler, Cleeve, and various cooks and parlor maids. As a further concession to her health, the interior doors of the new home were designed to open at a light touch. Louisa now suffered from arthritis, which made turning knobs difficult. She continued to receive a great deal of help from her mother, who came to live in a neighboring cottage. Conan Doyle’s mother, now fifty-nine, remained in Masongill.

  From his new study, Conan Doyle began producing a number of short stories, many of which were “concerned with the grotesque and with the terrible—such tales as might well be read ‘round the fire’ upon a winter’s night.” These were eventually collected as Round the Fire Stories, and the accumulation of sealed rooms, rotting corpses, and severed hands showed that Conan Doyle’s interest in Edgar Allan Poe had not faded.

  Although The Tragedy of the Korosko appeared soon after the move to Hindhead, Conan Doyle’s novels were no longer appearing at quite so furious a clip. Uncle Bernac, slightly revised from its magazine serialization, had appeared earlier in 1897, and Conan Doyle had complained during the writing that “I never seem to be quite in the key.” Many of the critics agreed with him, especially Max Beerbohm, who gave him another drubbing in The Saturday Review. “In his reconstruction of Napoleon,” Beerbohm wrote, “he has omitted nothing, except Napoleon.” This was not entirely justified; much of the novel’s weakness could be traced to the fact that Napoleon, in an incidental role, seemed so much more vivid than Conan Doyle’s own characters—as even Beerbohm acknowledged. The criticism irritated Conan Doyle, but this time he allowed it to pass unchallenged.

  He was less restrained when his next book, A Duet with an Occasional Chorus, came under attack after its publication in March 1899. Conan Doyle discovered that many of the negative reviews were the work of a single critic, William Robertson Nicoll, who wrote under various pseudonyms for several publications. Conan Doyle was outraged, and wrote a hotly worded letter to the Daily Chronicle to address this “growing scandal.” To the uninitiated, he argued, it would seem that a particular book had drawn a chorus of praise or blame, when in fact the entire battery of reviews might be traced to one person. “If all these strings are pulled simultaneously a prodigious consensus of opinion seems to exist,” he wrote. “And yet there is only one pair of hands to pull them.” Conan Doyle expressed himself with such vehemence, he later admitted, that Nicoll did not know whether to answer “in print or in the law courts.” The matter blew over in time, and Conan Doyle came to consider Nicoll a friend.

  It is understandable that Conan Doyle should have felt protective of A Duet, as the novel came to be known. This “domestic study,” as he called it, traced the fortunes of Frank Crosse and his courtship of Maude Selby, who “had come like an angel of light across the shadowed path of his life.” Conan Doyle gave a warm and affectionate account of their romance and early marriage—“never more to part,” he declared, rather artlessly in the circumstances, “until the coffin-lid closed over one or the other.”

  A Duet, the author contended, was “an attempt at quite a different form of literature—a picture in still life, as it were. It was partly imaginative and partly founded upon early experiences of my own and of friends.” One wishes he had been more specific as to where experience left off and imagination began. In every way, A Duet is both the most revealing and confounding book of his career. Many of its incidents, such as the visits of the young lovers to Samuel Pepys’ grave and the home of Thomas Carlyle, are clearly drawn from his own experiences. Others may well have been. On a tour of Westminster Abbey, “the most august and tremendous monument that ever a nation owned,” Frank gives a passionate tribute to “our kings and our warriors and our thinkers and our poets” that might easily have been spoken by Conan Doyle himself.

  Not all of the book’s episodes are so innocuous. In the preface to a later edition, Conan Doyle wrote that his aim had been “in an age of pessimism, to draw marriage as it may be, and as it often is, beautiful and yet simple, the commonplaces of life being all tinged, and softened, and glorified by the light of love. No startling adventures are here, for they do not come to such people as I have portrayed, nor would I have them sparkling and talking aphorisms, for this also is unusual in suburban villas.”

  Yet, taken on those terms, A Duet does present one very startling adventure, and it was this that drew fire from the multifaceted William Robertson Nicoll. Soon after his marriage, Frank Crosse receives a letter from a woman named Violet Wright, with whom he has enjoyed a “prematrimonial experience.” Threatening a confrontation with his new wife
, Miss Wright summons him to “our old private room” at an establishment called Mariani’s.

  “Mariani’s is a quiet restaurant,” Conan Doyle explained, “famous for its lachryma christi spumante, and situated in the network of sombre streets between Drury Lane and Covent Garden. The fact of its being in a by-street was not unfavourable to its particular class of business. Its customers were very free from the modern vice of self-advertisement, and would even take some trouble to avoid publicity. Nor were they gregarious or luxurious in their tastes. A small, simple apartment was usually more to their taste than a crowded salon, and they were even prepared to pay a higher sum for it.”

  This was heady material for 1899, even though the encounter between Frank and Violet is entirely chaste. Conan Doyle is careful to say that the very thought of infidelity nauseated Frank, and shows him to be steadfast in his resistance to Violet’s charms: