Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters

by Неизвестный

  I had a wire from Hare in New York to send the new play over at once—so I sent it. He seems keen enough. We have been collecting my ballads to make a little book.

  Touie has had a cold lately, but she is shaking it off, and will soon be all right, I think.

  This was putting Conan Doyle’s interest in the military situation mildly. The Times assigned a correspondent of its own, but Conan Doyle secured a connection with the Westminster Gazette, and filed a series of eight reports between April 1st and May 11th, with two or three weeks between dispatch and appearance in print. At first he did what war correspondents do today: he hung out at the bar of the Turf Club and collected gossip and impressions (including of a rising British officer named Kitchener). But his dispatches were as professional as any then or now, reporting preparations for a campaign to be conducted by the British-officered Egyptian Army. He was eager to move to the front, in the company of Julian Corbett—the Pall Mall Gazette correspondent, who later became Britain’s foremost naval strategist.

  After an aggravating wait for permission they and several others proceeded south to Assouan, where they were held another frustrating week. The river was falling, the logistics of a desert campaign with little infrastructure to support a modern army were demanding, and increasingly there seemed a possibility that the Dervishes would seize the initiative. Finally they were allowed to proceed again, this time on their own, and by camel. Conan Doyle admired the skill of one of his companions at camelbargaining:

  But it is only when you have bought your camel that your troubles begin. It is the strangest and most deceptive creature in the world. 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 but 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. When once the veil is dropped, anything

  more demoniacal than the face of a camel cannot be conceived.

  No kindness and no length of ownership seems to make them friendly.*

  They hoped to reach Wady Halfa by April 11th; Conan Doyle wrote to James Payn that he was ‘trying to get to the front in the hope of seeing a battle’ before he and Touie had to depart Egypt before the summer’s intense heat. He made it as far as Sarras, ‘a warlike little place’ at the head of the Nile’s second cataract, ‘with its fort, its wire entanglements, its sandbag battery, and its long lines of picketed horses’.†

  ‘It was wonderful to look south and see distant peaks,’ he recalled in Memories and Adventures, ‘with nothing but savagery and murder lying between’, but there, Conan Doyle’s adventures as a war correspondent ended. ‘I had the assurance of Kitchener himself that there was no use my waiting and that nothing could possibly happen until the camels were collected—many thousands of them.’ He was disappointed but not sorry that he had made the attempt. ‘I think that war like love and adversity and a few other primitive experiences is a thing that one should go through in order to complete the education of life,’ he wrote to James Payn from Wady Halfa on April 17th. ‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘it seems absurd for a man to write a good deal about soldiering and not to take a chance of seeing it when he can.’

  He and Corbett took a boat back down the Nile. ‘We had been on the edge of war but not in it.’ A week after they reached Cairo, he and Touie were back in London, and he was not sorry to be back after more than six months in sun-baked Egypt. ‘I begin to long,’ he had told James Payn, ‘for a good old slimy London pavement once more.’

  * * *

  *The 1893 Edinburgh trial of A. J. Monson, charged with the murder of Cecil Hambrough. Both Bell and Dr Patrick Heron Watson appeared as forensic experts for the prosecution, but the trial had ended with the unique Scottish verdict of ‘not proven’.

  *Ralph Blumenfeld, the editor of the Daily Express, in RDB’s Procession (London: Nicholas & Watson, 1935).

  *The Royal Academy of Art, where two generations of Doyles had made their mark.

  *But publisher Grant Richards’ memoir Author Hunting by an Old Literary Sportsman (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1934), said that Besant, despite press reports that the Society of Authors might take legal action, ‘was non-committal, saying that he had not read the book’, and made it clear that literary opinion was divided on the issue. (In any event, said Richards, ‘it is unlikely that W. H. Smith and Son would have been intimidated even if action had been taken. They were not like that!’)

  *For the trip’s details, see Christopher Redmond’s Welcome to America, Mr Sherlock Holmes (Toronto: Simon & Pierre, 1987). Afterwards, American humourist John Kendrick Bangs, at whose home in Yonkers, New York, Conan Doyle stayed at one point, joked that the itinerary ‘kept poor Doyle running up and down the Hudson River until he came to believe that the United States consisted of that silvery stream, a few lecture platforms, and the Pullman cars in which he travelled.’

  *On October 26th in Chicago, Conan Doyle spoke to the public at the Central Music Hall, but his fee for that performance was only fifty dollars—barely more than £10 at the time—according to Redmond.

  *William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, had been visiting Washington, D.C.

  *John Elderkin, A Brief History of the Lotos Club (New York: Club House, 1895).

  *Conan Doyle and Innes spent Thanksgiving with Kipling and his American wife at home in Brattlesboro, Vermont. On Thanksgiving Day, in a nearby field, he and Kipling played golf, an unfamiliar game there at the time, and they had Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Mrs Kipling’s brother, who had insisted, ‘No one would want to keep Thanksgiving in an Englishman’s house.’

  *Ada was apparently a nurse for the children, but it is not clear whether this was Ada Bishop who later served as maid to Touie’s mother, Emily Hawkins.

  †‘How the Brigadier Won His Medal’ in the December 1894 Strand was the first of what would be two splendid series of stories about one of Napoleon’s soldiers, the valiant if none too bright Etienne Gerard.

  ‡S. S. McClure, a publisher and leading journalist of the muckraking school, did sufficiently well over the years that followed to justify Conan Doyle’s investment—which at the time saved McClure from bankruptcy—but it also meant that Conan Doyle ‘returned to Davos with all my American earnings locked up, and with no actual visible result of my venture.’

  *Ida, now nineteen, was engaged to her widowed cousin Nelson Foley, a naval engineer in Naples, who was in his early forties at the time.

  †The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes had led to a host of imitations in other magazines, sampled in Hugh Greene’s 1970 anthology The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and three subsequent volumes.

  *Presumably the famous contemporary cricket player of that name, Captain E. G. Wynyard.

  *‘It is easy to imagine the feelings of the ordinary devourer of fiction when he finds that this book is not an exciting historical romance, nor an ingenious detective story, nor even thrilling episodes in a physician’s life,’ said The Atlantic in America, ‘but the plain, unvarnished tale of the struggles of a young doctor, without money or influence, to build up a very modestly remunerative practice.’ But the reviewer conceded that ‘it is certainly realistic in a good sense, and will, we think, interest a not inconsiderable number of readers.’

  *His sister Connie’s son Arthur Oscar Hornung was born March 24th.

  *‘Jacobites’ supported the restoration of the Stuart dynasty to the British throne during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, with ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ (Charles Edward Stuart) the pretender to the throne in the 1780s. Sir Walter Scott’s 1814 novel Waverley, considered the first British historical novel, dealt with the
Jacobite uprising of 1745.

  *The first English edition of The Stark Munro Letters was published by Longman, Green and Co., while the first American edition was published by D. Appleton and Co.

  *Referring to Ida’s approaching wedding to Nelson Foley. Conan Doyle’s idea of how to have a quiet wedding seems based on Edgar Allan Poe’s story ‘The Man of the Crowd’.

  *Ida’s wedding to Nelson Foley on December 17.

  *Conan Doyle’s letter, ‘England and America’, was a lengthy plea for Britons to understand the American point of view, and he called for an Anglo-American Society to promote understanding and friendship between the two nations.

  †On December 29th, one Leander Starr Jameson had led a raid out of Britain’s Cape Colony in South Africa into the gold-rich Transvaal Republic ruled by its Dutch founders, called the Boers, in hope of sparking an uprising by Britons working there. In a few days Jameson was a prisoner of the Boers, who now were convinced that Britain was scheming to take over all of South Africa.

  *John Hare was a leading British actor who specialized in elderly roles.

  *‘Correspondents and Camels’, Westminster Gazette, April 20, 1896.

  †‘The Outlook from Sarras’, Westminster Gazette, May 11, 1896.

  7

  Country Life

  (1896-1898)

  ‘We shall take a pride in the house and

  furnish it lovingly, and make it our final home.’

  to Mary Doyle LONDON, MAY 2, 1896

  We arrived in London yesterday & quite took the breath out of Willie & Connie by our appearance. The latter & the baby do credit to your Yorkshire air. Touie was in very good form, considering that we had travelled uninterruptedly for six days. On Monday we move into rooms at 44 Norfolk Square, Hyde Park, where if the spirit moves you to run down & see us there is always a room for you—and of course the railway ticket is my concern. Or perhaps you would prefer to wait until we get our country house for which I am already in negotiation. It will be down Haslemere way—so as to try the air before building. We or at least Lottie & I (Touie might go to Reigate) will be on hand here for at least a fortnight, as far as I can see. If you have any London shopping to do now is the time.

  Willie says you wanted me to stay at the front, but that, I fancy, must be because you did not quite understand the circumstances. There will be no advance & the correspondents wont be allowed to the real front for months. I was unpaid & as it was the trip was expensive. If I spent my summer there it would have meant at least 2000 pounds out of my pocket, as I couldn’t have fulfilled a literary contract. So what inducement was there!

  I am sorry to hear that Ida is not coming to England, as we should have made a bigger effort to get to her if we had known that. However it is a pleasure which is merely postponed. On the whole I think we have acted for the best. Lottie & Touie have gone to Connie’s for tea. I have been to see Payn who is much excited at the idea of the play.

  Goodbye, dear, we are rather at sixes & sevens as you can imagine but will be all right when we get into our rooms on Monday. I have some sandflies eggs hatching in my arm which makes a bit of a sore.

  By the time Conan Doyle arrived in London, his final dispatches from Egypt, about the stalled campaign, had yet to appear in the Westminster Gazette. He was behind with his writing, and he accounted for his writer’s block with the jocular remark to James Payn, ‘I understand that some of the old papyri contain romances but I don’t believe they could possibly be good ones.’ Still, he had mounting bills, having decided to go ahead with construction of the new house at Hindhead.

  It would not be ready for some time, and for the remainder of the year they rented a house in the vicinity, settling into a somewhat disordered version of country life.

  to Mary Doyle GREYSWOOD BEECHES, HASLEMERE, SURREY, JULY 9, 1896

  We have settled down here admirably with a splendid lot of servants—the best I ever saw. We have a horse, pigs, rabbits, fowls, dogs, cats, so it is quite a childrens paradise. We hope to have Connie & Oscar down next week. I am labouring heavily over that wretched little Napoleonic book. It has cost me more than any big book. I never seem to be quite in the key & I dont know that waiting will help me. I must slog through it somehow.

  Touie keeps well. Her mother is here.

  to Mary Doyle GREYSWOOD BEECHES, AUGUST 18, 1896

  I have been a very bad correspondent but I have been playing a good deal of cricket & also finishing my little book & the two things have kept me busy. Now my book is finished and the cricket nearly so—so I shall have more leisure. The end of one task is always the beginning of the next, but this book has been uncongenial & now I shall do nothing but short stories for a time. I have a big contract for them.

  I dont know how recent events at Masongill affect you—I daresay you dont know either—but when you wish to move into a South country cottage down in the Surrey Hills I am ready to put you in it without expense to you.

  The house progresses very fast. They have almost got the lower rooms roofed in. It will be very jolly when we are safely settled in it with our things around us once more.

  The uncongenial Napoleonic novel was Uncle Bernac, published in 1897, and never a favourite of the author’s. At Masongill, Dr Waller had married, with the Mam continuing to live in her rented cottage on his estate for quite a few more years.

  to Mary Doyle GREYSWOOD BEECHES

  We have treated you very badly in the matter of letters, I think, but we always have a feeling that you will be with us next week & that we shall have it all out with you then. I sent ‘Rodney Stone’ to the Island where I hope that he arrived all right. The notices of him have been remarkably & almost unanimously good—though I dont myself consider that it is in the same class as ‘The White Company.’ I dont think Smith & Elder will have any occasion to regret their bargain—though it must be confessed that 4000 pounds takes a lot of getting back.

  Touie continues to hold her own very well indeed. We shall be turned out again in January, and, as far as I can see at present, we shall go up Hindhead to the boarding establishment. I dont feel justified in moving Touie as long as she is doing so well. A cold caught on a journey might undo all that has been done. We are exercised in our minds over many questions connected with the new house—especially the electric light. You will advise us when you come. I shall have a very fine hall window and I want some coats of arms & crests to put on it. We may put up ‘Allied by Marriage’ arms, I suppose. That should give you a fine opening.

  I am working at some short pirate stories, and have done 3 out of 6. I mean to give myself a good rest soon, for it is a long time since I have had one. If Touie is snug at Hindhead I may run over to Davos for a week or two of snow shoeing about February. I think it’s the most bracing place I could choose.

  The boarding establishment was called Moorlands, and the family spent most of 1897 there while construction continued on the house that Conan Doyle decided to call ‘Undershaw’. (Referring in Anglo-Saxon to a grove of trees, though future disputes with his neighbour George Bernard Shaw gave the name an ironic twist later.)

  to Mary Doyle MOORLANDS, HINDHEAD, JANUARY 31, 1897

  It seems quite a long time since I have written to you but I have certainly had many distractions—but now I have a day’s breathing space although I am off again tomorrow.

  I go down tomorrow to see Innes at Exeter and I shall return on Friday when I am to be present at the Nansen reception in London.* I am really going down west because I thought it well to know the Hamiltons as Innes seemed to have some designs upon Miss Dora. It may all be nothing but it can do no harm that I should be on terms with her people. They give a dance on Tuesday. She is an only child—lots of money—20-16 hands (Beg pardon, just been buying a horse).

  I have been writing to Lady Jeune to get Ida presented and to General Kitchener to get Innes into an Egyptian battery for the coming campaign. I think I shall do Ida all right but the other will probably present difficulties. No harm in
trying. There (in Egypt or on the Indian frontier) lie the roads to honour & success.

  Touie stood the journey well & Hindhead seems to suit her better even than Greyswood. I am very pleased about it. We are quite comfortable here & I hope to be able to write. I did a poem the very night we arrived—a soldier marching song. It will appear in the Speaker & I’ll send it to you.

  You’ll be interested to hear that I’ve got a horse, such a beauty ‘Brigadier’ his name. He is short and strong, Norfolk breed, 15-3, sire is ‘Reality’ a stud book horse, mother a hackney mare, 6 year old, good manners, carry any weight, and beautifully built. 65 guineas I gave. Everyone who sees him says that if I fill him out a little in the stable he will be worth 100 guineas within a year. I did 18 miles on him yesterday.

  Innes was here two days (at Greyswood) and seemed in rare form. I never saw him better. Lottie seems to have quite recovered her health which was giving me uneasiness. I nearly packed her off to Davos. No symptoms but continued depression.

  My ‘Tragedy of the Korosko’ works out unlike anything I have ever read. I dont know what people will think of it. I have sold the serial rights for what I think is a record figure—about 101/2d a word. Innes says I should write an autobiography called ‘From a penny a line to a shilling a word’. I expect what with the house & other things this will not be a very good working year for me, but I have begun well.

  I take the chair on the 13th at the Irish Society’s dinner. I hope I acquit myself well, but I feel a bit at sea. I hope to give a reading for the Indian famine fund on the 15th or 16th.

  ‘Dealing as it does with the Egyptian Question and the Dervishes, it ought to do at present,’ Conan Doyle told the Strand Magazine’s editor, Greenhough Smith, about The Tragedy of the Korosko: ‘I hope it will make the man in the bus realise what a Dervish means, as he never did before.’ The story came as a relief after the difficulties of getting Uncle Bernac onto paper, and it still resonates today. Korosko ‘is a book of sensation,’ he wrote in later years, ‘but it has a philosophical basis, and for this reason is among my favourites.’