Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters

by Неизвестный

  Goodbye, my dear Mammie. I am reading a French book which would interest you ‘Memoires d’une Inconnue.’ If it does not [seem] too scandalous I shall send it to you when I finish it.

  The year 1905 opened with new honours more congenial to him than his knighthood.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW, JANUARY 1905

  Just had a big pasteboard from Edin Univ. offering me the L.L.D. (Doctor of Laws), so I must roll up on Ap. 7th and be capped once more (!).

  [P.S.] Grand Hotel till Thursday. Touie leaves tomorrow. I address Cambridge University Wednesday.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW

  I think you are rather on the wrong tack over this Foley business. If I were sending a young fellow to carve his fortune in any part of the Empire I would send him to Rhodesia. The malaria is of a mild type, and as to blackwater fever (which I have myself had) it is a risk to be faced, as risks are everywhere, but it is not common nor fatal if a man is steady. A good man will get on in Rhodesia. You should think many times before you take steps to shift him on the strength of second-hand information. Let the man win his own spurs—he will be the better for it.

  ‘As to you, sir, I trust that a bright future awaits you in Rhodesia. For once you have fallen low. Let us see, in the future, how high you can rise.’

  —‘The Adventure of the Three Students’

  The final tale in The Return of Sherlock Holmes had appeared in December, and Conan Doyle’s mind was now far from his detective again. He was at work instead upon Sir Nigel, the prequel to The White Company that he had long wanted to write. This return to the historical fiction he valued so greatly would complete a sweeping view of a crucial time in what he called ‘the greatest epoch in English History’.

  ‘I settled down,’ he said in Memories and Adventures, ‘to attempt some literary work upon a larger and more ambitious scale than the Sherlock Holmes or Brigadier Gerard stories.’ He was even blunter in a New York Times interview late in 1905: ‘Why am I going back in this way? Because I am tired of Sherlock Holmes. I want to do some more solid work again. Sherlock and Gerard are all right in their way, but after all, one gets very little satisfaction from such work afterward. Nor do I think I shall write any more short stories for some time to come.’*

  Politics could not be avoided, though. Fighting the next election in the Border Burghs required him to visit the district repeatedly; ‘the trouble in dealing with a three-town constituency, each town very jealous of the others, is that whatever you do has to be done thrice or you give offence. I was therefore heartily sick of the preparation and only too pleased when the actual election came off’, in January 1906.

  That Conan Doyle retained his sense of humour through the strain of these years, however, is demonstrated by the speech mentioned in his postscript below: ‘the most successful of my life’, he called it. It occurred on May 22, 1905 (a Monday, not a Tuesday, as he says below), at London’s Hotel Cecil, on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary dinner of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London. One speaker proposed a toast to ‘Literature and Science’, and Conan Doyle replied for Literature. The talk, unknown to past biographers and bibliographers, but saved in the Transactions of the Society, appears following the postscript.

  to Mary Doyle ROYAL PIER HOTEL, SOUTHSEA, MAY 1905

  All thanks for your dear birthday letter and all that was therein. I want no gift from you, dear, save your continued love, but it is dear of you all the same.

  The travellers return on Tuesday.

  I am down here playing cricket—did very well & am pleased.

  Of course if I can do anything for young Foley I will but what to do or how to begin I have no idea at all. You must not in your kindness write direct, using my name, to Gilbert Parker or anyone. But I am sure you would not.†

  [P.S.] My speech last Tuesday before the Prince of Wales & 400 medicos was the most successful of my life.

  MR CHAIRMAN, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN,—The fact that I should be chosen to respond to the toast of ‘Literature’ is an illustration of the very familiar rule observed in this country, that it is the understudy who has to do the hard work. I very much wish that Mr John Morley had taken this task upon himself. I understand, however, that your kindness in coupling my name with the toast is due to the fact that I have the honour to be a medical man. It is true, as some unkind critic has remarked, that in spite of that fact no living patient of mine has ever yet been seen.

  Gentlemen, without desiring to expand upon the whole field of literature, there is perhaps one little corner upon which I might be permitted to say a word. Some authority has lately been treating the writers of fiction from a legal point of view and examining their law, and has come to the conclusion that the law of the novelist is even, if possible, more strange and more uncertain than that law with which we are familiar. I remember one aphorism, that if a man dies intestate his property goes to the nearest villain.

  But if the law of the novelist is strange, I think you will admit that his medicine is equally so. We only recognise in my calling, the writing of fiction, certain diseases; the others are of no use to us. It is a remarkable fact that these diseases are of the upper part of the body. The novelist never hits below the belt. We have not a lengthy list of ailments, and our treatment is strangely simple. There is, of course, phthisis. I do not know how we should get on with our heroines without it. We sometimes call it a decline, sometimes we call it a wilting away. This is most useful to us, and it ends usually in a complete cure in the second last chapter. The treatment, of course, consists in the bringing back of that great and good man who has been so cruelly misunderstood in Chapter IV. The symptoms of this disease are acute but variable. The most prominent one is extreme wasting, coupled with an almost ethereal beauty.

  Another disease which is most useful to us is fits. We do not descend to petty details; whether it is an apoplectic or whether it is an epileptic fit which eventually carries off the heavy and stertorous father is a matter which is between ourselves and our conscience. The symptoms as we describe them may belong to either, or to neither, or to both. But suffice it to say, that he falls down in a fit, usually with a pen in his hand, and in front of an unsigned will. The fit is opportune, and it is exceedingly effective.

  There is then that mysterious malady which is known as brain fever. What should we novelists do without that wonderful fever? What would she nurse him through during that anxious time, and how else could he, after many months of continual delirium, come to himself and proclaim himself a chastened and a better man?

  The novelist must upon these points deprecate your technical criticism. We have only a little, and we beg you to leave us that. We do not fly to extremes in our literary ailments. The only example which I know to the contrary is gout, which in all our pages only occurs in the ball of the big toe. For some reason it is usually treated as a semi-comic disease, which tends to prove that the novelist has not himself suffered from it. The gouty, irascible gourmand is one of our necessary puppets, and I am sure he has every reason to be irascible if contempt is invited for his very serious and painful malady.

  As to small ailments, gentlemen, we do not deal in them at all. No one in our pages is ever known to suffer from mumps, or from a sore throat, or from a nettle-rash. If we hit at all, we hit hard, but we are, on the whole, kindly disposed to the medical profession. Our types vary from the village practitioner, whose usual treatment seems to be a hearty slap on the shoulder and a kindly twinkle through his glasses, to that gloomy member of the upper hierarchy who comes down from town at the crisis of the novel, says nothing, shakes his head, and then, with a large fee in his pocket, returns again to the classical precincts of Cavendish Square.

  Mr Chairman and gentlemen, you will excuse me if I have enlarged upon one little topic connected with literature. I will not venture to treat the subject at large, but I will only say that if one is somewhat disheartened by seeing that the great trees of our profession hav
e one by one during our days fallen, nevertheless, looking around, one sees that if we have no longer these great oaks, at least there is a considerable quantity of undergrowth and brushwood, and there may here and there be a young sapling pushing its way upwards, which in time may attain some dimensions. When I consider the general history of British literature, there have been many times when things have been quiet, when people have bemoaned the past, but it has invariably occurred that a fresh generation has arisen which has come up to the highest mark of its predecessors, and I cannot doubt that that will occur again.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW, JULY 28, 1905

  Sir Nigel goes very well. I have done more than one third of it & it is really the best thing I have done yet—at least I think so.

  I go up to town today to lunch with Reg Smith and Admiral [Percy] Scott over a shooting prize which I desire to present to the navy (heavy guns) from the surplus of my Boer Book. I have £300 and could not devote it to any better national end. Tomorrow I take the chair for the annual Authors Dinner to which ladies are invited. I hope Connie may be there.

  to Mary Doyle

  I think on the whole things are going well. Sir Nigel is nearly half done. I have sold it to great advantage.* It must begin running at Xmas.

  Jean and her mother go to Littlehampton this week. By a strange coincidence which you will appreciate I shall have a cricket match there on Saturday & return Sunday.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW

  All right about the motor—pure bad luck. The other man caught, Sir Alfred Watkins, was the JP who had laid the trap. Funny!*

  I go to Hawick on Thursday & Friday for a few days. All well & jolly.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW

  So very glad to get your note and to know that you are safe in your beloved North Country once more. I am hard at ‘Sir Nigel’. The tally is over 90,000 now. 120,000 sees me through. Excuse this wee scrawl just to carry you my love.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW, NOVEMBER 27, 1905

  Sir Nigel.

  Dei gratia finished 132,000 words

  My absolute top.

  The first installment of the novel appeared in the very next month’s issue of The Strand Magazine, and in America. ‘I have put into it every ounce of research, fancy, fire, and skill I possess,’ Conan Doyle told Greenhough Smith: ‘It rises to the very highest I have ever done or could do at the last.’

  The holidays were barely over when the election took place in January 1906. Innes joined Conan Doyle for the final campaigning, but it had been an uphill battle from the start, and the finish was exhausting. ‘I worked very hard, so hard,’ he said, ‘that on the last night of the election I addressed meetings in each of the three towns, which, as they are separated by many miles of hilly roads, is a feat never done, I understand, before or since.’

  ‘However,’ he continued, ‘it was of no avail and I was beaten.’ His efforts had foundered on opposition charges of (as he put it, writing to a Selkirk correspondent) ‘cheap loaves, Chinese slavery, and other catchvote cries’ having nothing to do with the issues. ‘It is a vile business this electioneering,’ he concluded in his memoirs, ‘though no doubt it is chastening in its effects. They say that mud-baths are healthy and purifying, and I can compare it to nothing else.’

  ‘This applies particularly to Scotland,’ he added, ‘where the art of heckling has been carried to extremes.’ But that experience prepared him for later, different battles.

  to Mary Doyle TOWER HOTEL, HAWICK, JANUARY 18, 1906

  I got the knock but I am not sorry. Now I will touch politics no more. I have done my duty and can turn to my own comfort again.

  It has been a desperate contest and I will feel it for some time.

  Innes made a dear speech to 1200 people last night. It was quite charming & touched me much.

  I wipe the mud of these awful towns from my boots. Poor devils, they seem to me to be all in hell already.

  I return today. My life is now much cleared up.

  ‘The fight is over and we have lost, but it was a splendid tussle,’ Innes wrote to their mother the same day. ‘All the decent people, except a very few, were on our side. The enthusiasm was splendid. The two last days were a great experience to me and show what Arthur really has gone through for he has been two years at it. Now, at any rate he is going to take things easy. We are all leaving by the noon train and are all tired.’

  Before the month was out, Conan Doyle was able to send some good news:

  to Mary Doyle GRAND HOTEL, TRAFALGAR SQUARE, LONDON

  Lewis Waller has accepted my ‘Brigadier’ and rehearsals begin on Thursday—first bit of luck I have had for some time. It may prove a big thing.

  Waller, one of England’s most popular actors specializing in romantic and swashbuckling roles, started rehearsing at once for a March 3rd opening at London’s Imperial Theatre. And by the middle of April, Conan Doyle, at work now on a collection of essays about literature, was optimistic about the play’s future.

  to Mary Doyle GRAND HOTEL, TRAFALGAR SQUARE, LONDON, APRIL 19, 1906

  I think you will like these literary essays I am now writing ‘Through the Magic Door’. I did one on Dr Johnson last week which should live. My next is on Gibbon. There will be a dozen—to appear about November next.

  I hope the Brigadier will now justify his existence. He cleared all expences at Easter and I hope now to make some money.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW, MAY 1906

  Cold much better—everything better. Have done half my essay on George Borrow this morning. Hope to do the other half today.

  Couldn’t you stay in town & come with me to the Lyric on Monday night. It is practically a second first night of the Brigadier. Then go straight down on Tuesday to the boat.

  The play moved to the Lyric Theatre in the middle of May, but closed before the end of June, apparently because it was too swashbuckling to be taken seriously by audiences. (‘I have offered it to nearly every London manager, but without success,’ he had told an interviewer the previous year: ‘I am still confident, however, that it is a good play, and they are equally certain that it is not.’ In the end, they proved correct.*)

  But it was barely on his mind by that time, for Touie was dying.

  to Mary Doyle GRAND HOTEL, LONDON, JUNE 8, 1906

  Our letters crossed. I am shocked if I seemed to neglect you at all. It seemed to me that I wrote almost immediately after I knew where you were. I was so grieved to hear that you had been ill. You are most precious to us all.

  I sent Cornhill to all relations. I am very proud at all you say about the article. It was difficult to write.†

  I fear we wont agree about the unearned increment of the Ground Landlords of London. It is a bad monopoly. Since it is the industry of the Community which causes the rise in the value of the land it is clear to me that the Community should have some portion of that rise to alleviate rates. My proposal is that if a ground rent is raised we will say £300 a year in a new lease, then £100 of the increase should go to the Landlord, £100 to the Town to keep down rates and £100 to the Country to keep down taxes. I think that is treating the Landlord very generously since he has done nothing. However I have never in my life known any good done by arguing politics or religion. They must come naturally.

  Touie has lost weight considerably—indeed for two years there has been a steady drop. But Hindhead & good food may turn it.

  It must be very hot with you. Please have a care for the sun may be a very dangerous thing. Tonight I propose the Magistrates at the Surrey County Dinner, Monday the Thurstons at the Authors Dinner, Friday Fielding at Bath. Lots of speeches.

  Touie did not improve; instead, she entered the final stage of her illness, heralded in Conan Doyle’s following letter to his mother, and then in messages to Innes that make sad reading today, and must have been heartbreaking to write at the time.

  to Mary Doyle UNDERSHAW, JUNE 1906

  Poor Touie has occasional brain symptoms which may be a mere pass
ing weakness, or may be a sign that the mischief is invading that part. Don’t say anything of it till after the wedding.* But of course it seems to me very serious. She was delirious for a little yesterday evening. All clear today.

  to Innes Doyle

  You will be grieved to hear that poor Touie is not so well. Last night she was a little delirious. I much fear the tubercle has gone to her brain, the most dangerous of all conditions.

  It may be days or it may possibly be weeks but the end now seems inevitable. There is paralysis down the left side & all evidence of some growth in the brain. She is painless in body & easy in mind, taking it all with her usual sweet & gentle equanimity. Her mind is sluggish but clears at intervals & she was able to follow with interest the letters I read her about Claire’s marriage. Goodbye, dear boy, I am sure I have your sympathy. [POSTMARKED JUNE 30]

  And finally, on July 4th, by telegram: ‘She passed in peace.’

  Touie was forty-nine at the time. ‘The long fight had ended at last in defeat,’ Conan Doyle said, ‘but at least we had held the vital fort for thirteen years after every expert had said it was untenable.’

  Her mother had died the previous December, but Nem was at her sister’s side, along with Arthur, Mary, now seventeen, and Kingsley, fifteen. Both children had been summoned home from school as their mother’s condition worsened. ‘My father sat by the bedside,’ Mary remembered later, ‘the tears coursing down his rugged face, and her small white hand enfolded in his huge grasp.’*