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All news from Mary is very good. She is very happy there [at school], and makes good progress.
Goodbye, dearest Mam. I have a good deal of work before me but I am in most excellent physical condition to meet it.
[P.S.] I enclose Roosevelt’s letter, which please return.
‘Istill had the theatre upon my hands,’ he recalled in Memories and Adventures. ‘I might sublet it, or I might not. If I did not, the expense was simply ruinous.’
‘It was under these circumstances that I wrote and rehearsed The Speckled Band in record time, and so saved the situation,’ he continued. He apparently decided that his Stonor Case script would not do, for he produced a new one in great haste.
It was not perfect, he felt: for ‘in trying to give Holmes a worthy antagonist I overdid it and produced a more interesting personality in the villain.’ But ‘it was a considerable success and saved a difficult—almost a desperate—situation.’
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, MAY 1910
I am very busy but it is all good work and I am sure that I have never been in better health. I have done three short stories, one of them ‘The Marriage of the Brigadier’ in my lighter more humourous vein.
I told Wood (who is in B’ham) to send you three ‘Mails’ with my Royal burial article. I wondered if you would care to send it to the Queen Mother. I suppose Buckingham Palace would find her. If you send a marked copy with a line of your own, it might, who knows, give pleasure. Every woman likes to be praised.
Temperley closed at the Adelphi Theatre on May 28th; after Conan Doyle’s frantic work and the cast’s rushed rehearsals, The Speckled Band opened on June 4th.
to Mary Doyle HOTEL METROPOLE, LONDON, JUNE 5, 1910
We produced ‘The Speckled Band’ last night. It went wonderfully well. I dont think I have ever seen a play go so well as that. I have it all in my own hands, so I really do think we should reap a big harvest.
Temperley was off when your letter came, but I could send Ella tickets for this.
[P.S.] All thanks for the dear Queen’s message.
‘The play was genius, awfully good the whole way through, it doesn’t hang in the very least at any point,’ wrote Kingsley, down from Eton to see it, to Innes. ‘I am so very glad it is going well, as its so nice to see Daddy looking free from care, before he really looked quite done up. I don’t think I ever remember seeing him look so well as he is now.’
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, JUNE OR JULY 1910
You may be very happy about the play. It goes well & the prospects are bright. If it goes equally in America (it will be produced in Oct or Nov) it will mean much.
The babe is well. I have just left him tumbling & laughing on the bed.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, JULY 1910
I am so sorry about the birthday. I am the worst in the world at dates but that date should be sacred. Buy yourself something nice with the enclosed fiver.
The play goes tremendously. The Queen was there last night. The King goes next week. It is really a very great success.
to Mary Doyle THE BEACH HOTEL, LITTLEHAMPTON, SUSSEX, AUGUST 4, 1910
We all needed a rest badly, so here we are. Already I think we are less jaded and in a fortnight shall be as fresh as ever.
It is only four months since we returned from Mullion. During that short time I have had all the anxiety of the collapse of Temperley, due largely to the King’s death, with a loss one way & the other of nearly £5000, I have written the whole of ‘The Speckled Band’ and by its aid won the £5000 back again, I have written ‘The Marriage of the Brigadier’ ‘The Terror of Blue John Gap’ ‘The Blighting of Starkey’ and a new S.H. story 10,000 words long.* I have got up a National Testimonial for the Morels which already amounts to over £1100 and will reach 2 or 3000, and I have done hosts of smaller things. That is a pretty good record, is it not? No wonder my nerves need a complete rest. This is a regular cotton wool atmosphere. We drive over today to see Arundal Castle. Poor old Dennis [sic] still suffers from teeth. He begins to get about in a sitting attitude with great swiftness.
We opened the provincial company of ‘The Speckled Band’ at Blackpool with success (about £150 on the week) and this week we are at Liverpool. It goes till nearly Xmas. ‘Temperley’ goes forth on Aug 15th, and a second Speckled Band [company] in which I have only authors fees & no responsibility. Then in November America begins, and the London production still pays its way, so we shall have a good many irons in the fire.
It is to this hotel that I came to see Jean and her mother in 1904. We are very differently situated now. How strange it all seems.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, SEPTEMBER 1910
I am glad to think that you are safe & sound in your cottage but I eagerly look forward to seeing you down here in January or when you can.
Did I explain about the children not coming north? Kingsley goes to Lausanne on Oct 4th and Mary renews her studies (in London now) on Oct 5th. I should like Mary to have a couple of weeks with you later if it could be arranged.
My medical address will, I think, be published pretty fully in the Lancet, and I will send copies. It is pretty good, I think.
I am resting after a sharp spell of work. But I will soon be off once more.
Goodbye, dear. All is well with us. Next month will be fairly busy. Medical address is 3d. On 6th I will speak at the lunch given to Dr Booker Washington, the negro. On Oct 20th I speak about Morel at the City Temple Church. 29th I speak about Shakespeare.
When Kingsley returned from Switzerland he began to study medicine at St Mary’s Hospital, one of London’s great teaching hospitals. Conan Doyle gave the annual opening day address there on October 3, 1910, speaking to faculty and students about ‘The Romance of Medicine’.
‘Though I am of the medical profession, I am not in it,’ he said; ‘but I can testify how great a privilege and how valuable a possession it is to be a medical man, and to have had a medical training.’ He roamed over his own life and its many experiences, and concluded with words ‘personal to yourselves’.
What will become of you all? You will find your work ready to your hand. Some will find their way into the great Services, some into the Over-sea Empire, many into private practice. For all of you life will offer hard work. To few of you will it give wealth. But a competence will be ready for all, and with it knowledge which no other profession can give to the same extent, that you are the friends of all, that all are better for your lives, that your ends are noble and humane. That universal goodwill without, and that assurance of good work within, are advantages which cannot be measured by any terms of money. You are the heirs to a profession which has always had higher ideals than the dollar. Those who have gone before you have held its reputation high. Unselfishness, fearlessness, humanity, self-effacement, professional honour—these are the proud qualities which medicine has ever demanded from her sons. They have lived up to them. It is for you youngsters to see that they shall not decline during the generation to come.
Some of his listeners, including Kingsley, would find themselves plunged into the bloodiest war in history before they had finished their training.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, OCTOBER 1910
Jean has been bothered changing nurses &c but she is brave & fine. No one would think what a spirit there is in her dear body.*
I go to London (alone for once) tomorrow. I see part of the Crippen Case.† Then on Thursday I speak about Morel and the Congo at Dr Campbells City Temple. Our National Testimonial amounts already to £2000 but I want more.
It will be fine to have you here, dear old Mammie.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM
I have a quiet week. A Tuck meeting on Wed. Otherwise I shall spend it here, buried in Roman History on which I am working.* I wonder if ‘The Last Galley’ has reached you.
The Speckled Band ends on Sat next. The American production should be due and is our trump card. I do not think it likely that I shall ever again write for the stage—but you never know.
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[P.S.] Jean very well, but the time draws nigh.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, NOVEMBER 1910
The boy was christened yesterday. He is Adrian Malcolm Conan Doyle. We found ‘Arthur’ bred confusion.†
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, NOVEMBER 1910
I was so sorry about Mrs S. It is a grief to you to lose old friends. I shall be glad when you come down & see the little new friend who awaits you here. It will be good to see you.
Jean gets on the sofa but it is weak. Denis & Malcolm (I think that must be his name) are both splendid. Denis kept rummaging among baby’s clothes & saying Tai—Tai—and only gradually did it dawn upon us that he has thought all along that Baby was a lamb (Ba Ba in his speech) and that he wanted to see the tail. Funny, was it not?
[P.S.] The Turkey would be fine!
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, NOVEMBER OR DECEMBER 1910
We dont seem to keep you as well supplied with news as we should, do we? The fact is that I am very busy in many ways. This new book promises well & takes much time and thought.
I will get to the sofa today. The little fellow does well. He is a dear. I am going to have both him and Denis circumcised on Wednesday next. We have not turned Hebrew, but they both will be better for that ancient rite.
I have a good lot of work coming out at present. I hope it all reaches you. Scribner Nov & Dec. London Nov & Dec. Strand Xmas No.
I am not sure yet whether the S. Band caught on in New York or not. Opinions varied. A good deal hangs on it.*
[P.S.] Please return enclosed letter of Hex Prichard. I value it.†
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, DECEMBER 1910
We are delighted with the Bird. A thousand thanks. I enclose a wee Xmas card. I cannot tell you what joy Innes’ engagement has given us all.‡ It makes Xmas seem really Xmas. Hearts’ love from us all.
Surviving letters from 1911 are few, but include accounts of two noteworthy undertakings.
to Mary Doyle ROYAL BATH HOTEL, BOURNEMOUTH
I sent Innes £5 this week to help him to Berlin,* but if he likes to buy a bed with it instead that is his affair. Jean had made her own little plans and the whole essence of a present is that it should be your own individual expression of feeling. I think you had best leave the matter at that—and indeed I am sorry you quoted me, as I had no right to speak of her intentions. All well here, but miserably cold. Do please take care of your dear self for it is dangerous weather.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, MAY 5, 1911
Have you heard that I have gone in for the Prince Henry of Prussia Cup. Fifty British cars drive against fifty German, the owners to drive. It is reliability of car & man, not speed. We start from Homburg on July 4th and our nightly halting places will be July 5 Cologne, 6 Munster, 7 Bremerhaven, 8 on the sea, 9 Southampton, 10 Leamington, 11 Harrogate, 12 Newcastle, 13 Edinburgh, 14 Edinburgh, 15 Windermere, 16 Cheltenham a rest, 17 Cheltenham, 18 London, all ending with great banquet on July 19. The team which drives best & has fewest contretemps wins. I think it will be great fun. I take Jean as a passenger, & a German officer is told off to observe me. Prince Henry personally leads the Germans.
Prince Henry commanded Germany’s navy, and his father was the Kaiser. Each car carried a military officer from the other country as an observer. The Prince Henry Cup comes up in the chapter of Memories and Adventures entitled ‘Some Recollections of Sport’, but mainly to say that ‘this affair is discussed later, when I come to the preludes of war. I came away from it with sinister forebodings’.
In fact, at the time this new and different form of Anglo-German competition apparently seemed encouraging to him, for after the beginning of the World War, James Ryan quoted back at Conan Doyle a letter of his immediately after the tournament. ‘I spent a week in Berlin and returned feeling easier about England,’ Conan Doyle had written to Ryan then: ‘There is much to admire but little to fear.’
‘On the other hand,’ Conan Doyle did acknowledge at that time, ‘all the British officers on our tour, and there were many and picked ones, were very pessimistic.’* In the chapter ‘The Eve of War’ in his memoirs, he said about the race that ‘there can be no doubt in looking back that a political purpose underlay it.’
The idea was to create a false entente by means of sport, which would react upon the very serious political development in the wind, namely, the occupation of Agadir on the south-west coast of Morocco [by the German gunboat Panther], which occurred on our second day out. As Prince Henry, who organized and took part in the competition, was also head of the German Navy, it is of course obvious that he knew that the Panther was going to Agadir, and that there was a direct connection between the two events, in each of which he was a leading actor. It was a clumsy bit of stage management.
The Agadir crisis brought Britain and France closer together as the opposing European alliances solidified.
Conan Doyle enjoyed the tour. ‘My wife and I had the enforced company for nearly three weeks of Count Carmer, Rittmeister of Breslau Cuirassiers,’ he said, ‘who began by being stiff and inhuman, but speedily thawed and became a very good fellow.’
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, JULY 1911
I had done exactly 2990 miles when I pulled up at my own door yesterday and of this I had driven 2200 with my own hand, so it is no wonder that I am a little slack today. However a great deal of writing has to be done.
Billy (our car) made no mistake and came in with much credit.* We are to have a medal. The British team won handsomely.
Our observer, Count Carmer comes today on a visit. He is a good chap. The Prince will be near here and we may hear from him.
He nonetheless recognized that the arrangement was a chance ‘to spy out the land’. And in the 1917 Sherlock Holmes story ‘His Last Bow’, Conan Doyle put the following words into the mouth of the German spy Von Bork on the eve of the World War, after Von Bork’s accomplice alluded to ‘this sporting pose of yours’:
‘No, no, don’t call it a pose. A pose is an artificial thing. This is quite natural. I am a born sportsman. I enjoy it.’
‘Well, that makes it the more effective’ [his accomplice agreed]: ‘What is the result? Nobody takes you seriously. You are a “good old sport,” “quite a decent fellow for a German,” a hard-drinking, night-club, knock-about-town, devil-may-care young fellow. And all the time this quiet country-house of yours is the centre of half the mischief in England, and the sporting squire—the most astute secret-service man in Europe. Genius, my dear Von Bork—genius!’
None of which prevented Holmes and Watson from bundling a hogtied Von Bork into Holmes’s car at story’s end, to deliver him to Scotland Yard.
‘War was in the air,’ Conan Doyle said in Memories and Adventures, but more on his mind, it seems, was the novel he was writing in 1911. Back in 1889 he had told his mother: ‘I am thinking of trying a Rider Haggardy kind of book called “the Inca’s Eye” dedicated to all the naughty boys of the Empire, by one who sympathizes with them. I think I could write a book of that sort con amore.’
Now he was writing it at last, and definitely con amore. It was inspired in part by local fossil evidences of prehistoric life, and also by sentiments expressed at a May 1910 luncheon in honour of the Arctic explorer Robert Peary: ‘Writers of romance had always a certain amount of grievance against explorers,’ Conan Doyle said at that luncheon.
There had been a time when the world was full of blank spaces, and in which a man of imagination might be able to give free scope to his fancy. But owing to the ill-directed energy of their guest and other gentlemen of similar tendencies these spaces were rapidly being filled up; and the question was where the romance writer was to turn.
For his novel The Lost World, he turned to a barely explored region of the Amazon in South America; for as he said at Peary’s luncheon, ‘romance writers are a class of people who very much dislike being hampered by facts.’ His four explorers, not at all easy with each other, were Professor George Edward Challenger, a roaring iconoclast o
f a scientist based on one of his Edinburgh professors, and perhaps on George Budd too; Professor Summerlee, Challenger’s conventionally minded rival; Lord John Roxton, a tough if idealistic soldier of fortune based on Roger Casement (now Sir Roger); and the narrator, Edward Malone, a young reporter who goes off on an expedition that he realizes might be little more than lunacy in order to impress Gladys, the romantic girl he wants to marry.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, NOVEMBER 2, 1911
I am a wretched correspondent am I not, but I am always either writing myself out or else out. I have little news save that I am still working on ‘The Lost World’, which approaches its end. It will be more a boys book than any I have done.
‘I have wrought my simple plan, If I give an hour of joy
To the boy who’s half a man, Or the man who’s half a boy.’
That’s my foreword.
I am glad you take my view about Ireland. I feared you would not. I see evils every way but on the whole justice that way—and also Imperial strength. No, I wont be led further than I mean to go.