Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters

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  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW

  I and my plans must certainly keep you jumpy. This comes of having a man-child as the Bible remarks.

  This is P.S. to the letter of last night. A new light was thrown thereon by the good Cyril, who on my asking something about Kendal said ‘Oh do go there. My father will be able to call.’ This seems to me to finally knock out Kendal.

  I now incline altogether to Dunbar. We could go there at any time, I could run up from there to fulfill my Burns engagement and come back there again. J says she could always get away if you sent a wee note to say that you were going to have a change and would be glad of her company. Will you do that now? We could arrange the date later.

  I have had two nights insomnia again, when I thought I was cured. Such a bore!

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW

  Welcome South, dearest Mammie—when you are let loose on those shops you will be glad you came. Now do yourself well and be comfy, please.

  The little Victoria cards are very nice but there is such a dreadful misprint ‘respiration’ for ‘inspiration’. Would you alter on all you send out. It was in the paper but I corrected it in pencil. Also add at the bottom ‘from New York World’ which explains its ‘raison d’etre’.

  So glad you are coming on Saturday. I will do as you say and work on until you come. I want to finish De Wet before I go.* But of course I will take my papers with me. I shall enjoy my holiday. Was in London yesterday and could have met you had you wired your plans. None of our family have yet learned the use of the electric telegraph, or the comparative value of news and sixpence.

  to Mary Doyle ROYAL LINKS HOTEL, CROMER, NORFOLK, MARCH 1901

  A line to you, dear old Mammie, to say that I have had much good out of my 2 days here, where I have slept soundly at last. All goes well in every way. On Tuesday I give a dinner at the Athenaeum Club. My guests are the Langmans, Major Griffiths, Sir Francis Jeune, Winston Churchill, Barrie, Anthony Hope, Norman Hapgood, Cranston (of Edinburgh), Gosse the Critic, & Buckle (Editor of the Times)—rather a good team, I think.

  Adieu, my dear—Excuse this short scribble. Fletcher Robinson came here with me and we are going to do a small book together ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’—a real Creeper.

  [P.S.] Fancy the Official Gazette said that ‘The Langman Hospital under the capable command of Mr O’Callaghan had done &c.&c.’ It will end by his being Knighted!

  It was a very ‘good team’. Many of them have been mentioned previously, and some are well-known names today. Norman Hapgood was an American journalist Conan Doyle met in Chicago in 1894: ‘When Conan Doyle came to town I committed my first breach of journalistic etiquette, but by no means my last,’ Hapgood wrote in his memoir, The Changing Years (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1930):

  I knew something of Doyle’s work, and had no intention of waiting around until he was settled in his hotel with a lot of reporters asking how he liked Chicago. I met his train, introduced myself, found him fond of walking, and carried his bag as we strolled through the streets, so he invited me to his room and answered questions through the transom while he took his bath. I was in the office writing my story before the others had begun their questions. Such conduct is not looked upon in newspaper circles as sporting; my own opinions on the subject are vague.

  Hapgood would be quick off the mark again when he became editor of Collier’s Weekly in 1903, making an enormous offer for Conan Doyle to bring Sherlock Holmes back to life in a new series of short stories.

  But he was already at work on what would become the most famous Sherlock Holmes tale of all, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Bertram Fletcher Robinson was a Daily Express correspondent whom he had met on the voyage home from South Africa, and who had later intrigued him with the supernatural folklore of his native Devon, with its eerie dangerous Dartmoor, and England’s grimmest prison there.

  ‘A real Creeper’, though when Conan Doyle decided Holmes should investigate this tale of ancestral revenge and murder, he made it a posthumous case that Dr Watson was narrating. ‘I must do it with my friend Fletcher Robinson, and his name must appear with mine,’ he told Greenhough Smith at The Strand: ‘I can answer for the yarn being all my own

  in my own style without dilution, since your readers like that. But he gave me the central idea and the local colour, and so I feel his name must appear.’ Robinson’s role was duly acknowledged in both the serial debut, and in the subsequent book edition.

  to Mary Doyle ROWE’S DUCHY HOTEL, PRINCETOWN, DARTMOOR, DEVON, APRIL 1901

  Here I am in the highest town in England. Robinson and I are exploring the moor over our Sherlock Holmes book. I think it will work out splendidly—indeed I have already done nearly half of it. Holmes is at his very best, and it is a highly dramatic idea—which I owe to Robinson.*

  We did 14 miles over the moor today and we are now pleasantly weary. It is a great place, very sad & wild, dotted with the dwellings of prehistoric man, strange monoliths and huts and graves. In those old days there was evidently a population of very many thousands here & now you may walk all day and never see one human being.

  to Mary Doyle THE ATHENAEUM, LONDON

  I have nearly finished ‘Sherlock’ and I hope he will live up to his reputation. I dine tonight with Buckle of the Times and am now awaiting him here. I see the Duke of York quoted the ‘Boer War’ largely in addressing the New Zealanders, which pleased me.

  Had a long cheery letter from Innes in Japan—but probably you have had one. Excuse this hurried scrawl. I am working and playing very hard.

  [P.S.] I am a Director in Raphael Tuck & Co the Royal publishers.

  to Mary Doyle JULY 1901

  I made a balloon ascent on Thursday—great fun!—we went up from the Crystal Palace & fell at Sevenoaks, 25 miles. We went 11/2 miles high. It was a most extraordinary sensation & experience. I hope you have not seen any premature reports in the papers to alarm you. I have always wanted to do this & am glad I have done it.*

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW

  We are just off—Touie Tootsie and I—for four days in Southsea—until Saturday. We are rather in the dark about poor little Percy as your bulletins have varied rather. If he is all right we are ready at all times, though I must board him out in the cricket week. If he has whooping cough he had far best stay where he is until he has thrown it off. I am nearly through with the Holmes Story. It is not as good as I should have wished. Then I must turn onto the war with new vigour.

  If The Hound of the Baskervilles did not entirely satisfy its author, it did the public when it started running serially in The Strand in August. (‘Watt tells me there are several eager buyers from America for the serial rights of “The Hound”,’ he advised Greenhough Smith: ‘I daresay you could recoup yourself for most of your outlay if you chose to resell.’)

  The following month, as enormous numbers of Britons were eagerly reading it, William Gillette brought his play Sherlock Holmes to England. Lottie, in India, wrote to her brother: ‘I am longing to know all about the appearance of Sherlock in London. We shall be thinking of you & wish him all success but I want to know if Mr Gillette fulfils your ideal.’† On opening night, following the performance, the two men stepped onto the stage together to thunderous applause. ‘Sherlock is going to be a record, and beat Charley’s Aunt,’ Conan Doyle wrote to Innes in the new year. Gillette’s play continued to run for seven months at London’s Lyceum Theatre.

  Yet Conan Doyle’s mind was not truly on Sherlock Holmes again at this point; and with other projects in mind, had taken a room in London near Charing Cross and the Authors Club at 2 Whitehall Court. His friend

  The Hound of the Baskervilles opens in The Strand Magazine

  Anthony Hope, author of The Prisoner of Zenda, had rooms there, and perhaps gave him the idea.*

  to Mary Doyle 16 BUCKINGHAM STREET WC, LONDON

  I am very busy dramatising the Brigadier, and as I have done an Act and a half, really well, I think, and can see the rest pretty clearly, I
have good hopes. If we can make it go it will be a great thing as I shall have it all to myself this time. I see the chance of a big hit but one can never reckon too much on things theatrical. I wrote half an act here yesterday and will finish the act today, so my little room justifies itself, even from a financial point of view. What could I do without it?

  You will be glad to hear that my general health is much better and that I have I think got to the root of my troubles. I was run down at Ashdown and had a carbuncle on my ankle, so J made me promise to go to a real good man and have my case thoroughly gone into. I went accordingly to Gibbs. He went very deeply into it all and came to the conclusion that all my other evils came from dyspepsia in turn from the unsatisfactory state of my grinding teeth which did not permit me to masticate my food. I am now in the dentist’s hands getting some grinders for my lower jaw. Gibbs has also put me on a severe diet which is certainly doing me good. I have been on it a week & I am very fit and have not had a real bad night so you can think that we are pleased. When I get my molars I will be better still. I want to lose a stone or two without losing any strength and I am in a fair way to do so by means of this diet which cuts out fatty and farinaceous foods and limits the liquids but allows any amount of lean. It stands to reason, I think, that fat makes fat.

  Many thanks, dear, for your letter at Ashdown. We were very happy in spite of my leg. All these physical things are nothing. My lady has gone to have her photo taken—by special desire—so I am clearing up any correspondence & having a chat with my Mammie.

  Dodo seemed better when I saw her. Innes is in great form. Touie & the family returned to Undershaw yesterday after a very pleasant stay in town. Tonight Connie & Innes dine & theatre with us. We return to Undershaw tomorrow—but we will be in town from Monday to Wednesday when the boy leaves—worse luck! He is a great help to me in all ways.

  to Mary Doyle THE REFORM CLUB, LONDON, NOVEMBER 1901

  I hope that your new History has reached you and that it pleased you. We all want the war to stop but we must not stop it in such a way that it may break out again in a few years, as it did after 1881. Believe me we are doing the only possible thing & must continue to do so if it lasts another 2 years. But I think we are getting down onto the lees of it.

  Next week I have an appointment in London every night, and then on Friday I go to Edinburgh where I give the annual Life Boat oration & afterwards the Walter Scott speech for the year. I am becoming a sort of public windbag in my native city. I hope I’ll be able to live up to my reputation, which at present seems to be very high.

  I saw dear J today. She is very well. I took Connie and her to a most festive entertainment, a lecture on typhoid fever, ending by some fireworks from me which woke the solemn assembly up rather. Old Broadbent gazed at me from the Chair like a rather shocked grandmother.

  Goodbye, my dearest Mammie—Touie is in great form & very happy.

  Apparently Connie had now come to accept her brother’s relationship with Jean. The lecture, at the Royal United Services Institution on November 12th, was Dr Leigh Canney’s ‘Typhoid, the Destroyer of Armies, and its Abolition’, which recommended boiling all drinking water for armies in the field, and making it an offence for soldiers to drink unboiled water. According to the Times the following day, when another doctor present recommended treating water with bisulphate of soda instead,

  Dr A. Conan Doyle, as one who had witnessed the horrifying results of the neglect of the most ordinary precautions among the soldiers in South Africa, without the slightest remonstrance from anybody, said he had listened with the greatest interest to the paper, because it seemed a practical and bold method of combating a fell evil. He hoped the paper and discussion would be brought to the notice of the authorities. If it was not stretching red tape too far, why should not Dr Leigh Canney be sent straight out now to South Africa with his apparatus? (Cheers.) Let him be attached to one single column and see whether the results would turn out better than in any other column. And why should not the gentleman who recommended a chemical solution be sent out too, and let them compare the results one with the other? (Cheers.) This was not a time for academic discussion. The house was on fire and it was time they were taking some practical step to put it out. His only fear was that when they got the thirsty private soldier into such a state of discipline that he would look on water without drinking it the whole human race would have been educated past all knowing. The private soldier took a perverse delight in doing what he should not the moment the eye of his superior officer was turned away. He did not quite see how the young regimental officer, with sporting proclivities, could always be on the spot, but allowing that our soldiers could only rise to such heights, the scheme was a most admirable one.

  Sir William Broadbent, the chairman, was a distinguished physician, but before the session ended he was replaced in the chair by Conan Doyle’s sparring partner over military reform, Colonel Lonsdale Hall, who called Dr Canney’s proposal ‘d—d rot’, and episodes such as the Bloemfontein epidemic ‘regrettable incidents’.

  As appalling as this was, Conan Doyle was even more concerned about foreign vilification of Britain’s conduct in the Boer War, given currency by some figures at home like W. T. Stead, editor of the Reviews of Reviews. In Memories and Adventures Conan Doyle recalled the day, on a train to London, that he read charges in the Times that he recognized from his own time in South Africa as nonsense:

  In a single column there were accounts of meetings in all parts of Europe—notably one of some hundreds of Rhineland clergymen—protesting against our brutalities to our enemies. There followed a whole column of extracts from foreign papers, with grotesque descriptions of our barbarities. To anyone who knew the easygoing British soldier or the character of his leaders the thing was unspeakably absurd; and yet, as I laid down the paper and thought the matter over, I could not but admit that these Continental people were acting under a generous and unselfish motive which was much to their credit.

  The charges were vicious and untrue, but ‘nowhere could be found a statement which covered the whole ground in a simple statement’.

  ‘Why didn’t some Briton draw it up?’ he wondered, ‘and then like a bullet through my head came the thought, “Why don’t you draw it up yourself?”’ He went to work, got Foreign Office sanction, and arranged with Reg Smith for Smith, Elder & Co. to publish it, and have it translated and distributed in many languages.

  to Mary Doyle THE REFORM CLUB, LONDON

  I dont think you will resent my pamphlet ‘The Cause and Conduct of the War’ for it attacks no one else, but only defends ourselves and our own methods & especially the soldiers who have behaved beautifully and been most cruelly slandered. There is no word too harsh to apply to such a man as Stead who safe at home concocts the most outrageous & false charges against them. I collect all the evidence in one small book which shall be sold at 6d and translated and circulated in every European country. You dear Idealist, living in the quiet backwater, you see things not as they are but as you dream them to be. Would that we could find any compromise with these men. If you gave them their country today tomorrow you would be faced by the Franchise question, the Uitlander question—everything which faced us before and then all the cruel work must sooner or later be done all over again. I have thought of a possible compromise which might be good for both parties and I have written to Chamberlain about it but I may be all wrong in my idea. Anyhow I have tried. We must leave it so that (as far as human foresight goes) this will be the last war between us.

  Willie dines here with me tonight. I expect Colonel Altham, the head of the British Intelligence Department, and shall ask his opinion of the Scheme I thought of.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW, DECEMBER 27, 1901

  My pamphlet will make a great splash I think. The whole British world is longing for such a thing for they are convinced of the justice of their own cause but are very inarticulate over it. I am proud to be their voice and after examining the evidence more closely & more im
partially than most men I am sure that we have done right well from the start, though we were nearly caught napping. The Foreign Office (between ourselves) have guaranteed me £1000 towards the translation money. I shall beat Leyds at his own game.*

  [P.S.] Your goose was shot for and duly won by the one-legged Electrician.†

  to Mary Doyle JANUARY 1902

  I have finished my book. In 11 days I did 60,000 words so you can imagine the white hot indignation which drove me onwards. Publisher reports seven distinct libels, so I must get a blue pencil and delete. It is a good bit of work and a present to my country for I will take nothing, nor will the good Smith. We will sell it—a fat book—at 6d. One firm (or Society rather) has already ordered 50,000.

  You will find that I deal gently with the Boers, although I do not conceal the fact that they have been systematically murdering the poor Kaffirs for some time back—not spies but often children—and that they have lately been treating our wounded most shamefully. But their cause I state quite fairly—also ours. My indignation is excited by the Stead kind of man who traduces our soldiers most foully. Nothing could be too much for such a scoundrel as that. He says for example that the number of women raped by our soldiers is so numerous that it can never be computed. Now no case of rape has actually occurred in the whole campaign. If one did the offender would be instantly shot, as both Boers & British know well. But this infernal lie is copied into every paper abroad as ‘having been admitted by the English’. The behaviour of the soldiers has really been perfectly astonishingly good.