Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters
Page 53
to Mary Doyle HOTEL ROYAL DANIELI, VENICE, OCTOBER 9, 1907
We have had a fine time and our plans open out as they go.
I have this Crusader book before my eyes and am anxious to see Byzantium & possibly a wee bit of Asia Minor. As we have abandoned our winter trip I thought it better to push on now, since we are half way. It will be a great adventure. So far as I can see my dates, today being Wednesday, we leave on Friday, spend till Monday in Rome getting passports &c, reach Naples (Parkers Hotel) that evening, and leave by Austrian boat the next Monday 21st reaching Constantinople the 26th & touching at Athens and Smyrna on the way. How long I stay there will depend on my material. Then home by direct rail as swiftly as possible.
Goodbye, my dearest Mammie. We rejoice over Innes and have also had good news over Edalji. A fresh link has been found. Jean is delighted and delightful.
to Mary Doyle DEUTSCHE MITTELMEER-LEVANTE LINIE
We near the end of our very pleasant voyage and we now come in to Smyrna. The island of Lesbos on one side, Chios on the other, where Sappho lived and poetry first rose. They look as bare & rocky as the Hebrides. All Greece is bare, barren & rocky. The Isle of Wight is worth all its beauties, but of course its history must clothe it with verdure. It is hard to believe it would have always been like this, for there is no natural wealth—it is as dry as South Africa.
Jean is in great form & enjoys every hour of it. We spend some hours at Smyrna and then on to Constantinople. From all I hear we shall not want to stay there long. I may make for Jerusalem & see the other end of the Crusade. All our plans are very unsettled.
to Mary Doyle PÉRA PALACE, CONSTANTINOPLE, NOVEMBER 2, 1907
Yesterday we went to see the Sultan drive to his Prayers—a fine sight. When he returned I was sent for. He could not see me as it was Ramadan, the Holy month, but I saw his Chief Secretary and his Master of Ceremonies. They said the Sultan read all my stuff and wanted me to send him a complete Edition. He then went to the Sultan, returned, & said that His Majesty wanted to give me the Order of the Medjidie and Jean the order of the Saverhat (or some such name). He handed me my very gorgeous, diamondy insignia at once. Jean is to have hers sent in a day or so. We were both very pleased.
to Mary Doyle HOTEL REGINA, PLACE RIVOLI, PARIS, NOVEMBER 10, 1907
We have had a wonderful time together—quite the most complete and restful holiday of my life. It has all been like a wonderful peaceful dream. We drifted through Europe and hardly knew it. I am so full of impressions that it will certainly take me months to get them sorted out—if I ever do.
Dear Jean is in excellent form. I cannot tell you what a dear comrade she is, so full of pretty ways, and with so good a brain behind all the delicacies of her soul. I get more in love than ever.
Thursday next will see us in old London once more. Hotel Metropole our address. Then Saturday will bring us to Windlesham, where I shall live and die, I expect. No better place.
I am full of latent work now & very anxious to get at it. I must drive the lazy well fed beast along.
to Mary Doyle HOTEL REGINA, PARIS, NOVEMBER 1907
On Thursday we come back out of Fairyland into the world. Hotel Metropole finds us Friday when we have lots to do, Jean servant hunting, I Edaljiing at the Home Office, and both of us getting in touch with our people. Saturday we reach Windlesham—home.
Dearie, you make me sad when you speak of feeling old. Your mind & soul are so young that it seems absurd that the mere machine should be old. You can never really be old, dear. As I grow older myself I appreciate you more & more.
Tell me anything & everything that I can do to make you happier.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, CROWBOROUGH, SUSSEX, DECEMBER 1907
May every Xmas blessing come on your dear & honoured head. Let me know anything I can do for your happiness. I send a Xmas £5 with all love.
I have been very busy but will ease up for Xmas. I go to join them today at 121 Marine Parade, Worthing, where we shall be for a week. Kingsley comes for the run and then joins Willie in the evening. Everything will fit in very well.
I did a new short story ‘The Pot of Caviare’ very gloomy but of my best. ‘The Fires of Fate’ is to be produced almost at once by Vedrenne but I am not sure of the theatre. The Boxing Play has also been taken.* One or other should do some good.
I am having the dining room mantel changed in Jean’s absence so we are in some confusion. I hope she will like it.
Goodbye, dearest Mam. I had three dinners (banquets) at two of which I was guest and the other I was chairman, so I feel rather flabby.
* * *
*Eventually published nonetheless, in 1908.
*In the end, The Return of Sherlock Holmes contained not even twelve, but thirteen stories.
*‘The Leather Funnel’ was a horror story in June’s Strand Magazine. Conan Doyle was constantly concerned about illustrations giving away the endings of his stories.
*In ‘Some Personalia About Mr Sherlock Holmes’, in December 1917’s Strand. (But it was not Holmes who had fallen into the Reichenbach Falls, the public learned in The Empty House, only Professor Moriarty.)
†Reginald Pound, The Strand Magazine, 1891-1950 (London: Heinemann, 1966). What’s more, he said, ‘the return of Sherlock Holmes in 1903 produced a flood of letters for him “care of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”. Those that were not addressed “Sir Sherlock Holmes” used the polite form of “Sherlock Holmes, Esq”. Most were requests for his autograph, some for signed photographs. There were appeals for copies of his family tree and coat-of-arms. More embarrassing to Conan Doyle were the gifts of tobacco, pipe cleaners, violin strings, intended to be passed on to his detective. Conan Doyle himself was continually being asked to help in tracing missing relatives, wills, and the perpetrators of minor crimes. Vexing Holmes problems were debated in the newspapers. Was Dr Watson twice married? Just what had Holmes been doing, after the disposal of Moriarty at the Falls, in that baffling interregnum known to the elect as The Hiatus?’
*An investment of Conan Doyle’s, for producing sculptures for architectural purposes.
†‘Billy’ was a nickname for his early automobile, which he had taught himself to drive, though not without mishap (at one point overturning it, with himself and Innes pinned beneath).
‡Jean Leckie’s birthday was March 14, 1874. This letter indicates that they met on March 15, 1897, the day after her 23rd birthday, but the circumstances are unknown.
*Lottie and her husband, Captain Leslie Oldham, came home from India in the fifth year of their marriage.
*‘Conan Doyle’s Hard Luck as a Playwright’, New York Times. He added, though, ‘One must listen, of course, to what editors have to say.’
†Sir Gilbert Parker was a successful Canadian romantic novelist who had settled in England with a wealthy American wife and won election to Parliament. Though a Conservative, he shared Conan Doyle’s concern for tariff reform and Imperial preference.
*Serial rights in America alone, in the Sunday magazines of newspapers, brought $25,000.
*The ‘bad luck’ was a speeding ticket he received in Folkestone. He was indignant at the time: ‘The magistrate who took my money remarked with heavy jocularity that unless I were mulct I would no doubt kill several people—I, who have never hurt nor frightened a soul in three years’ constant driving.’
*‘Conan Doyle’s Hard Luck as a Playwright’, New York Times, op. cit.
†‘An Incursion into Diplomacy’, in the June issue, was written in gratitude to Reg Smith, who had published The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct. It detailed how leftover funds raised for its publication were being spent on national defence causes, including the naval gunnery prize mentioned in a letter above.
*Claire Foley’s.
*Quoted in Georgina Doyle’s Out of the Shadows, page 140.
*Ibid, pp. 138-39.
†Claire Oldham, born the day before, Mary Doyle’s fifth grandchild. Besides Conan Doyle’s own children, there w
as Connie’s son, Oscar, now eleven, and Dodo’s son, Branford, six.
*The Edalji case was the basis for Julian Barnes’s novel Arthur and George, published in 2005.
*Crowborough, Sussex (near Jean’s family), where later in the year Conan Doyle bought a house for them called Windlesham.
*Misquoting his own Sir Nigel, Chapter 4.
*The House of Temperley: A Melodrama of the Ring.
11
Windlesham to the Outbreak of War
(1907-1914)
This crisis cannot last indefinitely. The cloud will dissolve or burst.
—A. CONAN DOYLE, GREAT BRITAIN AND THE NEXT WAR
Conan Doyle was now forty-eight years old, Jean thirty-three. Marrying her and moving to Crowborough meant returning to a more normal domesticity, albeit on the higher level of British society that he had reached, out of his humble beginnings, during his years with Touie. He continued to write (including, despite his previous disavowals, new Sherlock Holmes stories from time to time), and to dabble in many other interests. Even though he no longer wanted to stand for Parliament as before, he toyed with the idea of representing Edinburgh University.
His sculpture-machine venture, undertaken with Ida’s husband, Nelson Foley, failed, but did not forestall a number of other investment schemes in which he also played management roles—undiscouraged, in spite of often mixed results. His income continued to come principally from his writings, and his success was undeniable there; but the critical recognition he craved continued to elude him. Sir Nigel was a commercial success, but few regarded it as the important literary work he had hoped. Through the Magic Door, in 1907, was evidence of a lifetime devoted to British, American, and Continental literature, but he was still regarded as a popular writer whose best work was precisely what he esteemed least, the Sherlock Holmes stories.
The Edalji case continued to simmer, and other causes came along during the Windlesham years. He still agitated for military reform, for while these were years of peace, with the British Empire at its zenith, they were increasingly troubled. The Great Powers were aligning themselves against each other, Britons were increasingly disturbed by Kaiser Wilhelm II, and intense naval competition threatened the core of Britain’s security. In addition to Dreadnaughts, new weapons alarmed Conan Doyle, especially the submarine, with its potential for neutralizing Britain’s fleet and cutting off Britain’s overseas food supply. His first warning about the submarine came in a Sherlock Holmes story, ‘The Adventure of the BrucePartington Plans’ in December 1908; a sharper one would appear in July 1914, only weeks before war came.
For the moment, these particular concerns were in the background of his new life; but as time passed, they moved more and more into the forefront.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, CROWBOROUGH, SUSSEX, APRIL 11, 1908
Yes, the poor old Sculpture would not go. We fought it to the last. I have had such nice letters from all friends who put money in, appreciating my endeavours. Personally of course it is a blessed relief to have done with it. I was a fool ever to touch it. I have never had so much worry over anything in my life in the way of business. But it was not Nelsons fault.*
‘En revanche’ the Roe Cycle Company promises very well. There seemed a time when it might be a total wreck, but its position has steadily strengthened until now we seem to be on the eve of great success. The Company—c’est moi, so when the success has fairly come it should be a fine thing and enable me to rest in my latter years.
Jean opened a Bazaar at T[unbridge] Wells yesterday, and bore herself most gallantly. All went very well.
I have done a new Holmes Story. I intend to do one other. They wont be so bad as to hurt my reputation & the money will be useful.
Had the enclosed. I have made up my mind not to do so. I told him that if I had two lives I would give them one, but my one was full. I could not live under the strain. I shall have the offer of Ed[inburgh] University if I wait.
The garden begins to blossom & Jean revels in it—so do I.
The first new Holmes story was ‘The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge’, appearing in The Strand Magazine in September:
to H. Greenhough Smith WINDLESHAM, MARCH 4, 1908
I don’t suppose so far as I can see that I should write a new ‘Sherlock Holmes’ series but I see no reason why I should not do an occasional scattered story under some such heading as ‘Reminiscences of Mr Sherlock Holmes’ (Extracted from the Diaries of his friend, Dr James Watson).* I have one pretty clear in my head & this I think really will mature. If you could fix it with Watt it might do for your Midsummer number & perhaps I could dig out another for your Christmas number.
The second one was December’s ‘Bruce-Partington Plans’, an espionage case in which the plans for a top-secret submarine are stolen from Woolwich Arsenal. ‘Its importance can hardly be exaggerated,’ Holmes is told by his brother Mycroft (moved in this story far up in importance in the government’s security sphere): ‘You may take it from me that naval warfare becomes impossible within the radius of a Bruce-Partington’s operation.’
It has gone unrecognized how stories on such subjects in these years were written by Conan Doyle not only to entertain, but to educate the public. This was even true of pre-war stories about ancient Rome: ‘I wonder if you saw the two sketches “The Last Galley” and “The Passing of the Legions”,’ he wrote to Greenhough Smith on May 14, 1910: ‘one dealing with the British naval question in parable, the other with the Abandonment of India question in the same way.’
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM
I sincerely trust that Lottie and Claire are pulling up. When are they coming south? We have these two French ladies from May 18 to 30 which will block us but afterwards we are clear till Aug 1 to 10 when we shall be full of cricketers.
K returned safe & well yesterday. He goes to school on Thursday. He is a noble lad. All good news of Mary.
What weather! The poor old garden is astonished but not demoralised.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM
Many thanks for your dear letter. As you say it was nice that the presentation & birthday coincided. The former was a great success. She was beyond all question the most beautiful and graceful woman in the room.* Ida looked quite charming also. There was a great crowd and the general physical standard seemed to me to be very low. There was not the slightest hitch of any kind.
Gillette was down here yesterday & seemed to enjoy himself. Jean and he took to each other.
Our French friends arrive on Thursday and will be here for about 10 days. We have had so little tete a tete life since our wedding that really we must scheme out a little now. You dont under any circumstances interrupt it.
I have had a fairly busy year, considering my long indigestion, which has after all done me no harm. I have done two Duet sketches, one Sherlock Holmes (a long one), ‘The Pot of Caviare’ ‘The Silver Mirror’ and a good deal of tinkering of plays. Aubrey Smith has engaged to produce ‘The Fires of Fate’ before Xmas. He was the man I always wanted. I mean now to turn my energies to cricket and tennis.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, JUNE 30, 1908
Did you see that your poor correspondent, Sir E.B., died since writing to you. I would willingly help his son but dont know what I could do.
Many thanks for the Poe papers. I shall look into them thoroughly.*
Our fondest birthday wishes, my dearest of mothers. I send £5 to buy some small comfort—not for others—for you.
Belle Shortt telephoned yesterday that she was coming to see us. She is at T. Wells. Really we must put up our shutters. It is not an exaggeration to say that we have not had four days on end to ourselves since we came back to England. It wears Jean out, for meeting new people always strains her. Each person thinks ‘Oh, it is only me for a day or two’ but the continued effect is crushing. We have now had right away—and have before us, Ida, Dodo, Cyril with 8 youths, Percy, Innes Junior, Leah, Mr Williams, Layman, the Boulnois (coming), Leslie, Lottie, Claire, nurse, Willie, Connie, Mar
y, Kingsley, ten cricketers and chance day visitors every day or two. Poor dear Jean! She must have a rest. But we both ardently desire to have you for you are a help.
Goodbye, dearest. We go to the Duchess of Sutherlands small at home on Friday.
I have joined the Board of Cranstons London Hotels. It is very flourishing, (the drapers business is not). They give me £300 so it is worthwhile.
All love, dear, from both of us. Jean is happy but tired.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM
All is going splendidly with both the invalids so dont be in the least uneasy.† I shall go up on Tuesday & see them. On Friday I speak in Manchester on the Anglo-French entente, big dinner. London again next morning. Rather a rush.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, JULY 1908
I am deep in a Sherlock so excuse brevity. But this is just another word of love for your day. You grow dearer with every year.
Lottie, Leslie & Claire are here—all very happy. They leave on Thursday which is too short a visit. On Tuesday they are to have the motor all day for a trip of their own.
Mary arrives tonight. Jean is now putting roses in her room.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM
Jean has told you our news. We are very pleased.*