Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters

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  I expect however to lose friends over it and over ‘The Stark Munro Letters’ also. The latter has worked out as, I think, far my best book—my most vital and original. There is controversial matter in it however. It begins in the ‘Idler’ in July. But why should I bother you about my little books. You with your great flock move along so quickly and I with my two sheep and a lamb make such a fuss over it. I am still reading Napoleon hard, and find material for a library therein. I should like to know his times as I know my carpet slippers before I set pen to paper—but there are so many sides to it!

  Sometimes, in contrast to the strong romantic impulse in him, Conan Doyle felt a need for realism in his writing, and had started indulging it in medical stories, most of all in one called ‘The Curse of Eve’, which he had read to the Authors Club the previous year. It was not what was expected from him by then, and one man that night left this account:

  He was telling the story of a mother’s death at childbirth and the father’s waiting anxieties—a gloomy, harassing, unhappy tragedy of real life such as most physicians must experience more than once in the practice of their calling. There was nothing in the story or its recital to give it the slightest claim to posterity, and I think the verdict of the audience, unanimously, was ‘Thumbs Down’. Conan Doyle certainly gained no laurels that night.…He had sensed his failure of the evening and was correspondingly depressed.*

  But the club’s secretary, Douglas Sladen, had thought differently: ‘Your story has made a most profound impression,’ he reported to Conan Doyle: ‘Two or three men have told me that they couldn’t sleep after it. I can’t personally recall anything in fiction more lifelike than the husband. He was a masterpiece.’

  As his work took a bold, sometimes controversial new direction, Conan Doyle pursued an equally vigorous outdoor life. On his earlier trip to Norway he had enjoyed cross-country skiing; now he imported Norwegian skis (which he often called ‘snow-shoes’) and set out on the Swiss slopes—one of the first to do so, in collaboration with a pair of local men, brothers named Branger.

  to Mary Doyle BELVEDERE HOTEL, DAVOS, MARCH 24, 1894

  Yesterday I performed a small feat by crossing a chain of mountains on snow-shoes (Norwegian Ski) and coming down to Arosa. Two Swiss accompanied me. I am the first Englishman who has ever crossed an Alpine pass in winter on snow shoes—at least I think so. We left this at 4 in the morning and were in Arosa at 11.30. It has created quite a little excitement. I shall write an account of it for ‘The Speaker’. On Tuesday I shall (if the weather holds) ascend the mountain overlooking Davos—also on snow-shoes.

  So glad to get your two cheery letters. You must have misread Touie’s about coming home. Huggard (who knows, I think, as much about the chest as any man in Europe) thinks we may safely go home if we adopt a few obvious precautions. If she should go back at all it is only a matter of two days before she is in Davos or the Engadine once more. We hope all to be in Norwood by the third week in April. When we leave here Touie & Lottie will stay a week or so in some half way house (Seewis probably) to acclimatise, & I may take a little run into Italy, rejoining them at Zurich. We did talk of coming out to Maloja in August, but that won’t come off if Touie does pretty well. She & Co[nnie] will come out when I go to America—end of September. We hope to secure the same rooms.

  It would I think be dangerous to take Touie to America. Half my time there will be spent in draughty stations in the bleakest time of the year. I cant quite make up my mind about Innes. On the one hand is the pleasure of his company—on the other it would cost £150, and I have many friends over in Philadelphia & New York who would keep an eye on me—one has already promised to meet me in the Tender. I have already been invited to a public dinner by the leading club (Lotos Club) in New York. By the way I don’t find the lecturing tires me as much as I had expected. I shall only give 30 in the States.

  Conan Doyle was proud of his contribution to skiing as a sport, giving it three pages in Memories and Adventures, and recalling that after he and the Brangers made their daring expedition to Arosa, ‘when we signed the hotel register Tobias Branger filled up the space after my name, in which the new arrival had to describe his profession, by the word Sportesmann.’ In his Strand Magazine account that December, ‘An Alpine Pass on Ski’, he laughed about adverse experiences familiar to every novice:

  There is nothing peculiarly malignant in the appearance of a pair of ‘ski’…No one to look at them would guess at the possibilities which lurk in them. But you put them on and you turn with a smile to see whether your friends are looking at you, and then the next moment you are boring your head madly into a snowbank, and kicking frantically with both feet, and half rising only to butt viciously into that snowbank again, and your friends are getting more entertainment than they had ever thought you capable of giving.

  And about unintentionally descending a mountainside by the seat of his pants, he remarked: ‘My tailor tells me that Harris tweed cannot wear out. This is a mere theory and will not stand a thorough scientific test.’ But he predicted accurately that

  ‘skiing’ opens up a field of sport which is, I think, unique.…I am convinced that the time will come when hundreds of Englishmen will come to Switzerland for the ‘skiing’ season in March and April.

  Conan Doyle found time for other interests as well, including the spirit world. He had joined the Society for Psychical Research the previous November, one month after his father’s death. A fellow member was Oliver Lodge, a physicist instrumental in the theories leading to wireless telegraphy. Lodge had been enthralled by demonstrations given by a medium, Leonora Piper, who communicated with departed souls through a disembodied spirit called Phinuit. The work of Mrs Piper, whose supporters included other intellectual powerhouses such as William James, was reported in Transactions, one of many S.P.R. publications, a copy of which Lodge sent to Conan Doyle at Davos. It contained Lodge’s assessment of the veracity of the information Phinuit was sending through Mrs Piper, and Conan Doyle’s response showed that his interest in psychic matters was keen.

  to Oliver Lodge DAVOS

  You must think me a miserable fellow for not acknowledging your kindness sooner in sending me the Transactions. I have as you know been going up and down the earth…and then, after I reached this haven of rest, I wanted to read it all first. It is a charming piece of narrative.

  My only possible criticism was that you seemed to speak too guardedly and not to give weight enough to the idea that since this entity was so correct about other matters it might also be correct in its account of its own genesis and individuality. I can only marvel that such evidence could have been three years before the public without exciting more widespread comment. After all it is, if established (and what more can be demanded to establish it), infinitely the most important thing in the history of the world.

  In the spring he and Touie came home, and he embroiled himself in the first of several public literary controversies in which he took the lead. It involved W. H. Smith the bookseller, with his monopoly at railway stations, refusing to carry a novel (Esther Waters, by George Moore) because of its realist treatment of a housemaid made pregnant and then abandoned by her lover. It was a censorship Conan Doyle opposed in several letters to the London press. ‘If a book errs in morality let the law of England be called in,’ he insisted. ‘But we object to an unauthorized judge, who condemns without trial, and punishes the author more heavily than any court could do… It is not frankness of expression, but the palliation of vice which makes a dangerous book.’

  to Mary Doyle REFORM CLUB, LONDON, MAY 2, 1894

  Just a line to show that I am all right. I dont know whether you are following the Smith-Esther Waters-Conan Doyle controversy. I am proud to have the chance of championing British literature in so clear a case. The fact is that the papers dare not take it up, and individuals are also afraid to, for they are all at Smith’s mercy. My letter today knocks the bottom out of their defence completely.

  Very busy t
his week. Tomorrow I dine with the P.M. Magazine staff. Willie will be there. Friday is the Academy private view & the Independent Theatre. Saturday is the Academy dinner.* So hard that Touie can’t get about. She is still at Reigate and is doing very well, but we have not had one genial day since our return & she has not been out.

  I am busy over my Medical book. I shall also modify at least one of those strong stories to make them less painful. I shall make the woman recover in ‘The Curse of Eve’. Now let us have some Medical titles. I thought ‘Bypaths of Life’ very good but not medical enough for this. ‘Crimson Lights’ occurred to me, but is not all I could wish. I think the book will be good, though nothing to Stark Munro.

  Cousin Foley is a caution! The thing that struck me most in the incident is the obvious fact that during a residence of many years in Brisbane he has not succeeded in making one respectable friend. That looks bad. Why on earth not shoulder his pick and try his luck at the new mines.

  Saw Connie & Willie the other day. They are in good form. I wrote a fine story ‘The Lord of Chateau Noir’ a real clinker. I sold it to an American for £150. It will appear in the Strand. Also on article on Ski which is adorned with photos of my own taking.

  to Mary Doyle REFORM CLUB, MAY 1894

  I agree very largely with what you say. If a book leaves a thoroughly unpleasant taste in the mouth then there must be something faulty in it, but this one does not, nor does ‘The African Farm’. I don’t remember ever reading an English book that did, except perhaps the one you mention. Zola and Maupassant and Gautier get beyond me. But it is not too much that English authors should demand as much liberty as Tolstoi in ‘Anna Karenina’ or Hawthorne in ‘The Scarlet Letter’ or Flaubert in ‘Madame Bovary’. That is a very moderate demand and though none of these are books which you could read aloud before young ladies that cannot be made the final test.

  But the question in this matter is not whether a book is good or ill, but whether a Monopolist like Smith, acting on the private judgment of a single man, has the power to affix a grave stigma & loss upon an author. That is the fight which has got to be fought & we can’t fight it on a better book than this. There are at least two passages in the book which I would see omitted, but they are atoned tenfold by the humanity & tenderness of the general story. In this struggle you will find the best men fighting in the van, dear, and that’s where I mean to be. I shall protest as loudly when freedom degenerates into license. As far as I can learn authors are unanimous about it—I had a letter from Besant yesterday expressing his delight.*

  Frankness of expression was also a question for his collection of medical stories, which he finally titled Round the Red Lamp after the symbol of a general practitioner. (‘Its crimson glare, scarcely noticed by the hale,’ he wrote to a correspondent, ‘becomes the centre of the thoughts and the hopes of the unfortunate.’)

  He did soften ‘The Curse of Eve’. Though Jerome had accepted it for The Idler, he had also told Conan Doyle: ‘Let us have the others a little less sad. I dread the effect upon the sensitive reader.’ Conan Doyle did not soften it enough for everyone, though—Harper’s calling the stories ‘sometimes trying to the eyes and the nerves’.

  Dr Doyle, in his Preface, expresses his belief that ‘a tale which may startle the reader out of his usual grooves of thought, and shocks him into seriousness, plays the part of the alterative and tonic in medicine, bitter to the taste, but bracing in the result.’ The bitterness to the taste is evident; and, with all due respect to the doctor, the patient will get more lasting benefit out of the prescriptions called ‘Sweethearts’ and ‘The Straggler of ‘15’ [two nonrealist stories in the volume], which act as sedatives, than out of all the bitter tonics contained in ‘The Third Generation’ or ‘The Curse of Eve’, which shock us into a state of seriousness far less bracing than bitter.

  While Conan Doyle prepared for his American lecture tour, Touie took in the coast’s sea air. From South Norwood, seeing to conditions there, Lottie wrote to the Mam:

  We have had to get Touie’s old room papered (she has taken the front room for the summer) the other had such a smell of carbolic and medicines about it that it was no good. I hope the smell will go now. Touie is still at Reigate. I think she is much better there, the house is smaller and warmer & I really think the damp is not so bad there. Arthur is very busy—almost always in town. He starts off after breakfast, and as he has a great many big dinners on he does not get back until late. Tonight it is the Pall Mall Magazine dinner—tomorrow Private View of Academy & at night the Independent theatre when he takes me—and Saturday is the big Academy dinner. He is wonderfully run after.

  Conan Doyle decided to take Innes to America with him, writing to him on August 14th to say: ‘All right then… We’re going to have fun in America.’ Touie returned to Davos to await his return, and he sent his mother a last letter before sailing:

  to Mary Doyle SEPTEMBER 14, 1894

  The cheque goes without saying. I enclose Ida’s quarter as I don’t know a bank whereon the wild Ida grows. I don’t wish you to economise, dear—not at the expense of your comfort. I had far rather pay more and feel that you had all that your heart could wish. It is one of the few ways in which I get direct pleasure out of money.

  We have all ready now for our departure. All reports from Davos are most favourable. Touie has gained in weight during the summer & has not gone back at all. She has now 7 clear months before her. The children already look quite rosy—as changed as possible, Touie says.

  I am very busy on a 4 Act play which I mean for Irving & Ellen Terry. If the Straggler succeeds I shall have no difficulty in placing it. It will be a big thing. I have taken Willie into partnership over it, he to have a third of the plunder, & £50 down now, so as to recompense him for pausing in his present work for a month or two. I shall have it finished by Xmas, I am roughing the acts out & Willie filling in detail. I am getting a lot of my Regency business (which I shall afterward use in the novel) into it. Irving as a buck will be great. The first act is nearly finished and promises greatly. You see I have 3 books coming out, so I may well try a change of work—especially while I am lecturing.

  Another plan of mine is to try to see Colorado Springs (the American Davos) when I am over there. Then if the lectures take, and I like the work, I might use it as a centre next winter & then go round the world in the spring. It might complete Touie’s cure.

  Henry Irving premiered A Story of Waterloo in Bristol on the eve of Conan Doyle’s departure for America, forcing the author to miss it. At a dinner in Chicago a short time later, the editor of the Chicago Times Herald, who had been in the audience in Bristol immediately before taking a boat home, startled Conan Doyle by saying, ‘I am delighted to tell you that your play in Bristol was an enormous success!’ and giving him a full account of the performance and audience’s acclaim.

  Conan Doyle arrived in New York with Innes at his side on October 2, 1894, and over the next two months crisscrossed northeastern America as far south as Washington D.C. and as far west as Chicago.* It was the culmination of years of dreams for the writer who had dedicated The White Company ‘To the hope of the future, the reunion of the English-speaking races’, and had made Sherlock Holmes exclaim, in an early story (‘The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor’), ‘It is always a joy to meet an American, for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.’ En route to Toledo after his second stop in Chicago, he wrote home:

  to Mary Doyle ‘ON THE CARS’, OCTOBER 19, 1894

  I don’t often write to you, but I am sure that you can realise the sort of life that we are leading—on the rush from morning to night, & with numbers of friends & files of letters to see to at every stopping place.

  So far we have done very well. Nothing could have gone better than our l
ecture, but we have not listed it yet in a really public lecture in a large town—hitherto I have principally addressed Societies. [Illegible] at Chicago on the 26th will be our first real experience of that.* The financial success of the trip will depend on that, for ordinary societies never pay more than from £30 to £40 a lecture, but if the other comes off we may scoop in £150 or so each time.

  I propose to give three matinee readings at a theatre in New York, and they ought to do some good. One will be from the Refugees, and one from Sherlock Holmes, and one from miscellaneous stories. As I shall lecture on the same evenings as well I dont expect to have much voice when I return.

  We have had a run down to Indianapolis & Cincinnati, & back to Chicago. Indianapolis is a very charming city, clean & bright & cosy. If I had to live in a provincial city I had far rather live in an American than a British one. But British country is more attractive than American, except in such very special places as the Adirondacks. Now we are on our way to Toledo (fetch out the Atlas) where I lecture tonight. Next day we go to Detroit and we shall have 3 or 4 days there. The Barrs are there so we shall have a real good time. Then back to Milwaukee on the 25th & Chicago on the 26th. After that back to New York.