Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters

by Неизвестный

  Innes will be interested to hear I have written to the Sat Review this week over the Cavalry-Erskine Childers discussion. Only a note. I have also written to the new Home Secretary about Edalji. I’ll win that fight yet.

  Conan Doyle had announced his conversion to Home Rule in a September 22nd letter to the Belfast Evening Telegraph. Conditions there were no longer inimical, he felt, and he was also encouraged by the ‘apparently complete success’ of home rule in South Africa, ten years after the Boer War. While he knew that Home Rule would be accepted only with reluctance by the Protestants of Ulster, he thought that

  a solid loyal Ireland is the one thing which the Empire needs to make it impregnable, and I believe that the men of the North will have a patriotism so broad and enlightened that they will understand this, and will sacrifice for the moment their racial and religious feelings in the conviction that by so doing they are truly serving the Empire, and that under any form of rule their character and energy will give them a large share in the government of the nation.

  ‘We ran the risk in Canada, and we ran the risk in Africa, so surely we need not fear after two successes to try it once again,’ he concluded, with more optimism than called for.*

  Imperial defence motivated him, as reflected in his continuing calls for military reform. His ‘Cavalry-Erskine Childers’ letter appeared in the Saturday Review of November 4th, defending the similar views of his fellow Boer War veteran. He wrote again December 2nd, to point out that ‘it was not as a novelist that he—nor I may add that I—was in South Africa. The same motives which took us there are influencing us now in our desire that the lesson of the war which cost us so much should not be lightly forgotten.’ Erskine Childers was the author of The Riddle of the Sands, a 1903 bestseller forecasting war with Germany (a novel which Winston Churchill, by now the First Lord of the Admiralty, said later had influenced the expansion of Britain’s naval base structure).*

  to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, DECEMBER 3, 1911

  I am better now and quite enjoying life. My book is done and I am very busy superintending the making of some pictures which will purport to be photos of this lost world which the discoverers have found.

  Yes indeed it is sad about accidents rising from such trivial causes. I cant write about it just now for I have written to the Morning Post yesterday upon the necessity of finishing Khartoum Cathedral. I have also a spirited correspondence upon Cavalry Equipment going on in the Saturday Review. So I must not start another.

  We much look forward to Clara and Innes. We have a fine flagstaff before the house and I have got a huge Danish flag to mount upon it. She will be pleased.

  Jean and the children are splendid. We may take a run to the East late in the winter so as to make a complete holiday. But it is hard to leave home and babes.

  In April 1912, the Titanic, on its maiden voyage from England to New York, struck an iceberg and sank with great loss of life. The disaster brought great sorrow, including to Conan Doyle, who lost at least one acquaintance, the journalist W. T. Stead.

  to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, APRIL 1912

  We rejoice to think that you will soon be here. You have not yet given us a definite date. Our engagements are

  April 30th Titanic performance at Hippodrome. I have written a special poem ‘Ragtime’ for the programme.

  May 1st Dramatists meeting 1.15

  Congo meeting 3.30

  Could take you down any day after that. The trains are still in chaos but there is one from London Bridge about 4.50. I’ll meet you there & take you down any day you name, but give me 48 hours notice. May 7th I have a Tuck meeting but could get away in time.

  Conan Doyle was impressed by the courage of many aboard the Titanic, including the ship’s band, which continued playing to keep passengers calm even as the ship sank beneath them, and his poem ‘Ragtime’ included the verses:

  Ragtime! Ragtime! Keep it going still! Let them hear the ragtime! Play it with a will! Women in the lifeboats, men upon the wreck, Take heart to hear the ragtime lilting down the deck.

  There’s glowing hell beneath us where the shattered boilers roar, The ship is listing and awash, the boats will hold no more! There’s nothing more that you can do, and nothing you can mend, Only keep the ragtime playing to the end.

  Shut off, shut off the ragtime! The lights are falling low! The deck is buckling under us! She’s sinking by the bow! One hymn of hope from dying hands on dying ears to fall—Gently the music fades away—and so, God rest us all!

  And so he was affronted by a letter from Bernard Shaw in the Daily News denying the heroism of passengers and crew, and he accused Shaw, in his own letter to the editor, of distorting the facts, concluding: ‘[I]t is a pitiful sight to see a man of undoubted genius using his gifts in order to misrepresent and decry his own people, regardless of the fact that his words must add to the grief of those who have already had more than enough to bear.’

  Shaw retorted by accusing Conan Doyle of accusing him of lying. ‘I have been guilty of no such breach of the amenities of discussion,’ Conan Doyle replied May 25th: ‘The worst I think or say of Mr Shaw is that his many brilliant gifts do not include the power of weighing evidence; nor has he that quality—call it good taste, humanity, or what you will—which prevents a man from needlessly hurting the feelings of others.’

  ‘I hope your Strand has reached you,’ he wrote later to the Mam. ‘Do admire the pictures. The photos were all my idea and carrying out.’ The pictures, concocted with the assistance of a professional photographer and an artist (Conan Doyle was an old hand with a camera himself), gave The Lost World added verisimilitude by depicting the South American plateau where his explorers encountered the unknown, and the explorers themselves—with Conan Doyle heavily disguised as Challenger.

  In rather an impish mood I set myself to make the pictures realistic. I and two friends made ourselves up to resemble members of the mythical exploring party, and were photographed at a table spread with globes and instruments… I had an amusing morning touring London in a cab and calling upon one or two friends in the character of their lost uncle from Borneo.

  Greenhough Smith was delighted, calling The Lost World ‘the very best serial (bar special S. Holmes values) that I have ever done, especially when it has the trimmings of faked photos, maps and plans.’ It began running in The Strand in April, with enormous success.

  to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, JULY 1912

  Fancy that I should have passed your birthday. But we have been so rushed. First came the Schwensens, dear souls. Then Barrie & one of his boys came to us here. Then the Comyns Carrs had to be looked after. Now Dodo & Cyril are with us. So we really have some excuse for getting muddled.

  I dont think BCW is ill at all.* Only an enlarged uvula or some tickling at the back of his throat. That is my belief. So dont worry about him.

  I have done another short story and am very busy in many ways.

  to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, AUGUST 1912

  I am so sorry about your loss.† Poor darling! And yet it is really only going into the next room. But it is grievous at the moment.

  I am so busy. I am trying to reconcile various Olympic Authorities so that we may win the games in Berlin in 1916. I think I will succeed. Constant letters in the Times and much private writing and scheming.

  Then comes the Oscar Slater case. It will make a huge uproar. It comes out in a week. I will send copy of proof. It will be a sixpenny pamphlet.

  Then I am preparing my Lost World which will make a fine book.

  So you see I am very busy.

  Conan Doyle had supported the Olympics since their rebirth in 1896. In 1908, he covered the London games for the Daily Mail, including the controversy over an Italian runner named Dorando Pietri who faltered at the end of the marathon, and who was disqualified when some spectators helped him across the finish line. Conan Doyle, moved by the pathos of Dorando’s effort, raised a fund to honour him. (And later was misidentified as one of the spectators who helped Doran
do finish the race.) Now he was leading a campaign calling for an Empire team for 1916’s games in Berlin, irrespective of race or creed, and for bringing to the preparations the organization and training that is commonplace today.

  A grimmer campaign was a different one on behalf of a man named Oscar Slater, who had been convicted in Glasgow in 1908 for the murder of an elderly woman. It was a new Edalji case, with a major difference: While Edalji had been an innocent young man, Slater was an unsavoury character with no discernible virtues. But this was beside the point as far as Conan Doyle was concerned, having perceived injustice in evidence and testimony used against Slater, and in the procedure at his trial.

  to Mary Doyle LORD’S CRICKET GROUND, LONDON

  You may rely upon it that I have made no mistake over the Slater book. He is as innocent as you or I so we must do what we can to get him out of prison. You must refresh your memory about the facts. No connection of any kind was ever proven between him and the old lady & maid. He could never have known of their existence. Your woman’s wit will tell you that the maid would not have eagerly sworn his life away if he had been her lover. Trust my judgment.

  His conclusions were unwelcome to many. James Ryan wrote that ‘one of the Edinburgh Law Professors gave a temperate criticism of your Slater pamphlet in his opening address,’ but, he continued, ‘so far as I can see all others have been a woeful combination of pigheadedness, bad law and distorted logic, coupled with a vindictive desire to hang somebody for an attack upon undefended property.’

  The effort to clear Slater went on for years, as he spent nearly nineteen years in prison. Conan Doyle charged later in The Spectator that ‘the case will, in my opinion, remain immortal in the classics of crime as the supreme example of official incompetence and obstinacy’. It was 1927 before Slater was released, cleared of the charges, and given £6000 in compensation. To Conan Doyle he sent a note that began ‘Sir Conan Doyle, you breaker of shackels [sic], you lover of truth for justice’s sake, I thank you from the bottom of my heart’—and then refused to reimburse Conan Doyle and others for the costs of waging the campaign to free him.

  to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, NOVEMBER 1912

  It was very sweet to get your letter. You are indeed of invaluable use to all of us, children or grandchildren. May you live to nurse your great grandchildren also. Sour milk is the stuff—not for nursing but for vitality.

  Jean is simply splendid. She is as energetic as ever, gives dinner parties and has become quite the Society Queen here. Everyone admires and loves her. The more I see of her the more wonderful does she seem. Already we have funny little hats & boots stowed away in secret drawers & taken out behind locked doors.*

  I wrote about Kingsley & overwork but have his assurance that he is in fine form. You have heard that he is a volunteer.

  All our affairs seem in good condition—dear old Nelson is the one sorrow. He holds his own but the constant high temperature wears him out. He seems happy & painless.†

  Kingsley, while attending medical school, had volunteered for the Army Medical Corps on November 2nd, and was assigned to be an ambulance driver.

  The Lost World ‘comes out on Oct 15th,’ Conan Doyle had written to Innes from a holiday at Le Touquet in September, adding: ‘I have another Challenger story on the stocks.’ He was encouraged by James Ryan, who assured him that ‘people would like to hear more of Challenger and Lord John Roxton, they have character’, and who gave him a great deal of advice for the end-of-the-world tale Conan Doyle called The Poison Belt.

  from James Ryan EDINBURGH, SEPTEMBER 1912

  Of course you will be accused of poaching on [H. G.] Wells’s manor, but the suspended animation idea is as old as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. The destruction of London you will find of course in Wells’s ‘War of the Worlds’ which you might glance over so as to be able to keep off his grassplot. Even as a scientific tale-writer Wells with his sugared science is only a follower of old Jules Verne, but the former is sure to have some critical jackal who will try to howl you off your own ‘kill’. I don’t know who the first writer was who described a man kissing his best girl, but it seems to have appeared in print a good many times since without anyone being accused of plagiarizing.

  He suggested that the ‘poison belt’ encountered in space be called ‘Daturon’ because ‘your poisonous gas appears to be much like Datura in its action’,* and he gave much more scientific advice, including the appropriate spectroscopy, climatology, etc.†

  Ryan also rued the ending of The Lost World: ‘Poor Gladys!’ he protested: ‘What has she done that she is not Mrs Malone by now, or is Malone doing the Enoch Arden trick, minus the matrimony?’ But what she had done was quite simple: Edward Malone had come home triumphant from the Lost World only to discover that in his absence Gladys the hero worshipper had married a solicitor’s clerk.

  to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, OCTOBER 1912

  I send your half year with my love. You will also get a copy of The Lost World within a few days. It promises to be a great success. I should not be surprised if it is not the best seller of any book I have ever done. Very busy over many things, Olympic Games, Slater &c. All is going well.

  The book came out ten years to the month since his knighthood, and apparently the Mam erupted at the sight of ‘Arthur Conan Doyle’ on the title page. ‘I wish so much you would put your own proper appellation,’ she expostulated: ‘You are not now these ten years A.C.D., but Sir A.C.D., and you would seem to make little of the King’s gift, dearest, when you do not use the Honour which he gave you, and which you earned so well. From Sir W. Raleigh, Sir Walter Scott, onwards, all so entitled use it, and it just makes me wild that you do not. Oh! Yes—wild, really angry! Not to use it, my own dearest, is a breach of etiquette’—and so on, but to no avail.

  to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, EARLY NOVEMBER 1912

  Had such a rush, my dearest Mammie, or would have written sooner. On Monday I gave a speech on Meredith, on Wednesday on the Channel Tunnel,* on Thursday on Athletics—so my interests are varied. All the time I am writing my new story as well. By the way you will be interested to hear that ‘La Maison de Temperley’ is a great success in Paris. I am surprised and pleased.

  to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, NOVEMBER 23, 1912

  I have had a rotten cold but it wears away. It has quite stopped my work. I had 20,000 words of ‘the Poison Belt’, a new Challenger story done. It will not run to more than 30,000, so I am well on. But I must rest. Fiction tries me, I find.

  Things have prospered in many ways of late, though rather in the matter of réclame than of money—nothing to grumble about in the latter either. ‘La Maison de Temperley’ seems to have made a hit in Paris, and ‘The Speckled Band’ has taken a second lease of life in the music halls. I have a short play ‘The Lift’ coming out also, and a one-act Sherlock play, both in the music halls where the money now lies. They are full when the theatres are empty. I see no future for our theatres.*

  Nannie has gone for a holiday & Adrian (never before deserted) roars like a bull day and night. What a voice! Jean keeps well but will do twice too much all the time.

  to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, DECEMBER 23, 1912

  All goes splendidly. She is a dear little girl, the very prettiest child I have ever seen—so firm and formed. How would Lina Jean Noel Conan Doyle do?

  Have Cyril or Dodo a bicycle? Or have they motorcycles. If the former I will give them an autowheel between them. They are splendid things, and are doing well now. I always ride one myself. I fear I cant get one before March.

  All love to you all. May 1913 bring better health to dear old Dodo.

  Their third child, called ‘Billy’ as a girl, but known as Jean in her adult life, was born December 21, 1912, when Conan Doyle was fifty-three years old.

  Many later remembered 1913 as the last halcyon year before the storm. Conan Doyle had a happy life with Jean and their three children, and his letters reflect it. But at the same time, the shadow of war was growing longer. Wh
en German General Friedrich von Bernhardi, in a widely noticed book entitled Germany and the Next War, called for preparations against France and Britain, Conan Doyle said, ‘I studied it carefully, and put my impressions into print in an article called Great Britain and the Next War.’* His conclusions, he said, looking back in his memoirs, were:

  1. That invasion was not a serious danger and that the thought of it should not deflect our plans.

  2. That if invasion becomes impossible then any force like the Territorials unless it is prepared to go abroad becomes useless.

  3. That we should not have conscription save as a very last resource, since it is against the traditions of our people.

  4. That our real danger lay in the submarine and in the airship, which could not be affected by blockade.

  The result was his being called before a former Chief of the Army Staff College and browbeaten in person in order to express, unofficially, the military establishment’s view of such thinking. General Henry Wilson, ‘fierce and explosive in his manner, looked upon me as one of those pestilential laymen who insist upon talking of things they don’t understand,’ said Conan Doyle. ‘As I could give reasons for my beliefs, I refused to be squashed.’

  to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, FEBRUARY 1913

  I finished my ‘Poison Belt’ yesterday. It wants revision but is good. It is not long—only 30,000.

  Next week I compete for the billiard Amateur Championship. I have of course no chance but I may get through a round or so, which would please me.