Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters

by Неизвестный

  Conan Doyle had also retained his interest in military affairs since returning from Egypt. For one thing, Innes was an Army officer. For another, Kitchener’s campaign in the Sudan was not only underway, but nearing its climax. And for a third, Conan Doyle had got to know Major Arthur Griffiths, a military correspondent of The Times, and in August accompanied him to the Army’s summer manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain to see at first hand the thinking of its commanders about warfare in modern conditions.

  Ever since the Jameson Raid in South Africa, Britain seemed to drift toward war with the two Boer republics there, the Transvaal Republic and Orange Free State. British imperial ambitions represented by Sir Alfred Milner, governor of Britain’s Cape Colony, and Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary at home, combined with the interests of empire-builder Cecil Rhodes and certain mining syndicate owners nicknamed ‘the goldbugs’ in favour of annexing the Boer republics, over the excuse of refusing to extend the franchise to British settlers. The Orange Free State and Transvaal presidents, Martinus Steyn and Paul Kruger, showed scant interest in compromises that might avoid war.

  to Mary Doyle THE COTTAGE, TEFFONT EVIAS, ‘NR SALISBURY’, AUGUST 1898

  Here we are very snug & comfortable with the Griffiths. Innes is with us, having ridden over from Camp. Griffiths is acting for the Times so he must be in the van and I am attaching myself to his fortunes for the campaign. We go to Blandford on Tuesday (he & I) and move north with the army. The ladies stay here.

  to Mary Doyle THE COTTAGE, TEFFONT EVIAS, AUGUST 1898

  Got home last night after four hard days with the army. Tomorrow we have four more, but we shall have home for our base so it will be easy. It is most pleasant to be back after all the dust heat & crowding. Lord Wolseley dined with us last night & we with him tonight—we are becoming quite intimate. We hear the men cheering in camp today because Khartoum has fallen. How I wish I had been there to see the ending of that great historic incident. Gordon’s blood is avenged.*

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW

  No, I fear I have failed to draw the Nationalists properly. If I could get them properly on my track it would be a great help to me. I gave Davitt rather a basting in a double interchange of letters some time ago—all done very quickly but crushingly—& that is the cause of any outcry. But they have not made as much noise as I had hoped. In the meantime please don’t mind or mix in it. I am playing my own game & know what I want. There is a third party rising in Ireland, and I might be the head of it.

  Working right well at my book. Two more chapters in two days. It is really a singular book. I dont know what to make of it. But it should be a success, unless I am very much mistaken.

  I reland, always in the back of Conan Doyle’s mind, sometimes rose to the surface, as in his talks the year before on Irish literature and on the brigade of Irish exiles in France’s army in the eighteenth century. Michael Davitt was a politician aligned with the Fenians, and as a Liberal Unionist Conan Doyle had written to the press as early as 1886 in opposition to Davitt’s views. Just what was in his mind in this letter to his mother, though, with its talk of a third party rising in Ireland of which he might be the head, is unknown, and intriguing.

  In 1898, Reginald Ratcliff Hoare died after an illness of some duration. He had played an important role in Conan Doyle’s life since his first assistantship with Hoare in 1878, and he continued to feel a responsibility toward Amy Hoare for years to come.

  to Mary Doyle [in French] UNDERSHAW, NOVEMBER OR DECEMBER, 1898

  I’m surprised you gave advice to Amy Hoare on money affairs. If she loses the money we’ll have to replace it. As if you knew anything about money matters! Leave such things, I implore you, to her family lawyer. It’s very serious if the advice goes bad, and you know very well that that’s always possible. Never, never advise a friend about money. A parent is different, because their money is your money and you have common interests.

  Our costume ball at Xmas will be a very grand affair. We think that 160 will be coming. I’ll send you the invitation. I am as always very busy. Innes is coming to the ball, Archie also, Mr Williams also—we will have 8 young men in the house. Lottie is very impatient. She goes as Marguerite. I’m going as a Viking. Touie’s thinking it over.

  The Christmas costume party was held in a nearby hotel on December 23rd:

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW, DECEMBER 1898

  Our dance went immensely—far the most brilliant thing they have ever had in this part of the country. There were 160 guests & they did enjoy themselves. You could hardly get the girls away at the end. The costumes were splendid. Captain Trevor went as me. He was covered with my books, and had my name on his tie, and went about welcoming people. Wasn’t it good? It really was a very gorgeous scene. And now it is over and we will settle down to work again.

  We sat down to dinner, I, Touie, Lottie, Kingsley, Mary, Connie, Oscar, Mother, Nem, Capt Trevor, Innes, Wood, Fellgate—pretty good Xmas party.

  We are all very fit & pleased with our social success, which is enough to last us well for 3 years or so. Every possible Xmas wish to you. I send 2 guineas that you & Dodo may divide to buy some trifle each.

  Philip Trevor, a keen cricketer who stayed over at Undershaw, provided an anecdote in The Lighter Side of Cricket (London: Methuen, 1901). Someone, he said, had posed a word game: ‘Why did the owl ‘owl? Because the woodpecker would peck her,’ and that after several others of that sort Conan Doyle had derailed the flow of conversation the rest of the evening with ‘Why did Albert Trott?’* Others, said Trevor, kept coming back to it constantly: ‘Why did Albert Trott?’ Conan Doyle himself could come up with no good response to his challenge. But finally, late that night, as Trevor was climbing into bed, Conan Doyle burst into the room in a dressing-gown with another famous cricket player on his mind: ‘I’ve got him! I’ve got him, my boy! Because he saw Jesse Hide!’

  Another item from the Christmas party that has survived is a note from Lottie Doyle to a young woman she had met that night. ‘I hope that next time we meet you will remember that all my friends call me Lottie and that I hate being Miss Doyle to anyone I like,’ wrote Lottie on December 28th; ‘I wanted to say this the other day but felt shy.’

  The note was written to a stunning twenty-four-year-old from Blackheath, Jean Leckie. Conan Doyle had met Miss Leckie the previous spring—and the two of them had fallen in love with each other instantly.

  * * *

  *The Norwegian explorer of the Arctic, Fridtjof Nansen, who lectured on a recent epic voyage at the Royal Albert Hall on February 8th.

  *It is impossible to say what prompted these remarks, but at this time Conan Doyle often expressed opinions—both publicly and privately—on matters unsettling to the Mam. These included controversial issues such as religion, and his dislike for established churches, and political issues, like Home Rule, which he continued to oppose.

  *Sherard, ‘Hall Caine: the Story of His Life and Work, Derived from Conversations’, McClure’s, December 1895.

  *‘Personal Memories of Sherlock Holmes’, London Quarterly, October 1934.

  †‘I can’t stand “A Message from A. Conan Doyle”,’ he told Greenhough Smith over twenty years later, about a proposed advertisement for his history of the World War: ‘Kings and Premiers send messages but not humble individuals.’

  *‘I was once one of sixteen guests of honor at a large dinner of the New Vagabonds Club, over which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle presided,’ said the American Constance Harrison, in Recollections Grave and Gay (New York: Scribner’s, 1911), and ‘and a seat at the High Table with the other lions of the menagerie frightened me dreadfully. How much more so when, at the end of a very graceful little speech by Conan Doyle, during which I was wondering who the subject of these charming words could be, I heard mention of The Anglomaniacs, then my own name. A sepulchral voice behind me whispered, “You are expected to say a few words in answer.” “But I can’t,” I whispered back in agony.’

  *‘Novels Without
a Purpose’, North American Review, August 1896.

  †‘“Tendencies” in Fiction’, North American Review, August 1895.

  *Herbert Beerbohm Tree, one of the stage’s greatest actors at the time, and manager of both the Haymarket Theatre and Her Majesty’s Theatre in the West End.

  *His youngest sister, ‘Dodo’, now twenty, was engaged to Cyril Angell, a young clergyman. The wedding took place on April 11, 1899.

  *The Mam was sixty years old at this time. ‘Williams’ was Conan Doyle’s solicitor, A. Redshawe Williams, but the cause of her, and apparently Connie’s, dissatisfaction with him is unknown.

  *Conan Doyle had apparently overlooked his mother’s family arms in planning the windows.

  *Kitchener’s vastly lopsided victory at the Battle of Omdurman, and the fall of Khartoum, brought Mahdist control of the Sudan to an end thirteen years after General George ‘Chinese’ Gordon had been killed during the Mahdi’s capture of the capital.

  *The famous cricket player whom Conan Doyle had called the best bowler in England.

  *An Australian playing on English teams, Trott was Wisden Cricketer magazine’s Cricketer of the Year in 1899.

  8

  War in South Africa

  (1899-1900)

  Napoleon and all his veterans never treated us so roughly as these hard-bitter

  farmers with their ancient theology and their inconveniently modern rifles.

  —A. CONAN DOYLE, THE GREAT BOER WAR

  The year 1899, which would end in war, opened for Conan Doyle very differently, with a sense of exhilaration over his new novel about the marriage of a young couple of the middle class. In A Duet (With an Occasional Chorus), he once again believed that he was creating something new in literature. But, warned The Living Age in April, this was ‘rather hazardous ground, and there will be curiosity to see how Dr Doyle succeeds.’ In fact he was disappointed again by the critical reception, and the novel’s young publisher, Grant Richards, found himself perhaps the only one of his trade who ever lost money on A. Conan Doyle.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW, JANUARY 1899

  Just a line to enclose the carriage cheque. You shall have the other in February just as you want it. I asked Lottie to send you a Sunlight Yearbook, with rather a good yarn of mine therein. It’s entirely a question of money what I write for. I try to make my stuff as good as I can. Whether what it appears in is good is nothing to me if they make it worth my while. For example these Sunlight People asked my price for a story which Cornhill would have given £20 for. ‘Three hundred pounds’ said I ‘Why so much?’ they asked. ‘Moral and intellectual damage’ said I, a la President Kruger. So I got it & that’s why I write for such things. Long may they flourish!

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW, JANUARY 20, 1899

  I have just finished my book. Is that not good? I only began it at the beginning of October. It has been conceived and done in 3 months. It is longer than the Korosko—about 75000 words. It is so absolutely fresh and new that I cannot conceive how it will do, but I could imagine either extreme—Nous verrons.

  Grant Richards is just married so it seemed a graceful thing to let him have this book about a new married couple.* I excused him from paying any advance—I can see no advantage in getting the money a little earlier or later, but I charge him 2/ on the 6/ copy—against the 1/6 which Smith Elder give, and I bind him to spend £100 on advertisements. I think the young firms concentrate more energy on their single book, than the big firms can on a dozen, and so I am rather expecting to do better in mere number, apart from the quarter increase of the royalty. America of course is separate. I have offered the book to McClure there but I ask for very high terms. I own one twentieth part of the McClure Company and there are indications that it is going to be a very valuable property. It has not paid dividends but the profits have all gone to new machines, larger buildings &c but it may have a great future. Watt thinks so.

  You and the Nationalists amuse me much. It always reminds me of Micah & his mother. You remember how she told him to go lustily into the fight, but not to expose himself at all. The politics of the next ten years will certainly centre round Ireland, as the last ten have, and I must—if I am to do anything in politics—be perfectly clear & energetic in my views. So I am—but the time is not yet. As to the Nationalists they are so many quackers on a duck pond for what I care. I am with them on some points, against them on others, according to my own reason & conscience. What they think of it does not even interest me.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW, JANUARY 1899

  All right about Ireland, dear. All politics are rather far away to me just how for I am still very busy over ‘A Duet’. It is a singular book but to me at least it appears beautiful. I propose to bring it out as a book without any serial publication so it may be in your hands in print in a very few weeks. Think of that. I shall bring out a collected volume of stories in the autumn and that will be my output for 1899. I hope that two plays of mine will see the light during the year. Their success or failure will determine my political action so that the new century should see the question settled one way or the other. I hope of course to write another book this year—but not to publish it.

  All very well and jolly here, full of work in our several ways. I mean this year to be an economical year, and we have done our duty to our friends pretty well so we can afford to be less hospitable. Our mining investments show an inclination to move upwards, but until they do I am going to cut down expences. At the same time our financial position is very good and we are living considerably below our income. I had a great stocktaking at the New Year, and the result was quite cheering. They wired to me from Aylesbury to come & speak for Lord Rothschild last week, but as there was no contest I thought it was uncalled for. I know you would have advised me to go, but I think I was right all the same.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW

  I was very much interested in your letter—to find that you took so strong a view upon it. I am of the opinion that our careers are marked out for us and that a Providence gets the greatest good out of a man at the right time. I am always on the alert to be ready to be such an instrument, but I like to see very clearly first that it really is the main path of my life and not a side track. Your letter however strengthens me in the opinion that this may be a true call.

  I have had two letters inquiring my views, one from the Conservatives & the other from the Liberal Unionist Associations. I have written in a guarded way in reply, and that is the attitude which my instincts lead me to adhere to. What is too easily won is not valued and the pressure should come from them if they want my service, my time, and my money. I said in effect that I had some thoughts of such a career, but that I was still a very busy man & that this was not quite the time which I would have selected. That if I stood for any place I should prefer Portsmouth, because I had rather fight & gain a seat than merely take it over (you understand that the Radicals have Portsmouth at present). Finally that if at a later date they still find &c &c. Also that if any of their officers would care to come up & consult I should be happy to &c &c. So the matter stands. I dont know whether your letter meant that they would pay my expences, or any of them. That is quite out of the question. They would not—and if they would I could not possibly permit it. If I go in it must be on the best and freest terms.

  There are many questions to be weighed, but in the main I feel with you that I possess qualities which have hitherto met with no field, and also that the first duty of a man is to get out all that is in him. That consideration is more important, I think, than that of money &c. I believe that I have enough and to spare to carry me handsomely through. After all one could always withdraw if the burden became excessive—but I dont think I should do so.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW

  Bourchier has accepted ‘Brother Robert’ and Frohman has accepted ‘Sherlock Holmes’.* That is our latest news. The latter promises to be a very big thing. My agent says there are thousands of pounds in it. It will appear in New York wi
th Gillette as Holmes. So we are cheerful. But no chickens have been either hatched or counted. Only a couple of palpable eggs.

  Touie and I spend Friday Saturday in Southsea. The idea of Portsmouth does not grow upon me much. The Dockyard Constituencies are those which make far the most demands on their members—a hundred letters a day the sitting member gets—and why should I go out of my way to take a hard seat when the Managers would gladly give me an easy one. I have not decided yet, but my inclinations run in that way.

  Arthur Bourchier agreeing to do the Payn play was welcome news, especially for Payn’s widow. It opened (as Halves) in Aberdeen in April, and then in London at the Garrick Theatre for some two months that summer. But Frohman and American playwright-actor William Gillette taking on Sherlock Holmes would make theatre history, and there would be many thousands of pounds in it. They would take time to realize, but did allow Conan Doyle to pay off the substantial costs of building and furnishing Undershaw, and made him freer to follow where his interests in national issues beckoned.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW

  I quite agree with all you say about Innes and no one admires him more but that does not alter the fact that he must like other young officers keep within his ample allowance—and if he can not then he must sacrifice some of his pleasures. That is the discipline of life.

  No I never got £7000—nor more than half that sum for the publishing rights of any books of mine. This book would not do for serial purposes so that I sacrifice. America is another matter. The English rights will bring me 2/ a copy instead of 1/6 so if it sells I will make one quarter more, and if it does not sell I dont want to make it. That is all right.