Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters
Page 61
from Kingsley Conan Doyle IN FRANCE, OCTOBER 6, 1917
Still going strong and this great battle on which we stake so much goes on.
I think this will prove if the weather holds the greatest push of the war. All goes well but we are pretty tired but very cheerie. The general is in great form and there is plenty of kick in us all yet. The casualties have not been too heavy.
I wonder how Denis is—really here we are in comparative comfort—we are only tired but in half a moment I am off to bed and happy thoughts of home.
from Kingsley Conan Doyle IN FRANCE, OCTOBER 7, 1917
I know you will be glad to hear that we are back in rest for a while. I suppose these last few days have been one of the greatest experiences I have ever had. My work is extraordinarily interesting and the little German I know is invaluable and I find talking to the Boche brings it back quite a lot, though some talk in dialects which are v hard to understand. Flint and the Colonel are well—I saw them this morning.
The conditions on the battlefield for evacuating wounded are very bad, at least I think so, and I think they ought to have some better organization. I was out this morning on an area where if you shouted you could hear a sad wail of poor fellows in many a shell hole and yet I hear the stretcher bearers report that they could find no more last night. I fear they are not quite enterprising enough in approaching the front line. And yet you know these fellows after four days exposure—a frost last night—even then they could crack a joke with me this morning—one fellow I found who could walk but would not leave another two friends who could not. All three in a large shell hole. Where could one find better men than these.
Our front line is most extraordinary now—they just dig a narrow little trench about 15’ long and here a group of three live together the next group might be 100 to 150 yards away over the undulating sea of upturned earth.
On October 25, 1917, Conan Doyle crossed a Rubicon by giving a widely reported address to the London Spiritualist Alliance that marked a new phase of his commitment to that cause.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, OCTOBER 24, 1917
Tomorrow I go to London to give my address upon ‘The New Revelation’ which may, I think, be an acorn from which a tree will grow in days to come. So far as I know it is the first attempt to show what the real meaning is of the modern spiritual movement, and it puts into the hands of the clergy such a weapon against Materialism, which is their real enemy, as they have never had. I get plenty of abuse for it but some of them will see the point and they will leaven the lump. Anyhow I am doing what I feel to be my plain duty, tho’ not always an easy or pleasant one. It will be an interesting occasion & I shall have a picked audience if the night is decently immune from raids.
Appearing alongside Sir Oliver Lodge, whose book Raymond had drawn a great deal of scorn, Conan Doyle threw his support entirely and publicly over to what he called the ‘New Revelation’. ‘The subject of psychical research,’ he told his audience,
is one upon which I have thought more, and been slower to form my opinion about, than upon any other subject whatever. Every now and then as one jogs along through life some small incident occurs to one which very forcibly brings home the fact that time passes and that first one’s youth and then one’s middle age is slipping away. Such an incident occurred to me the other day.
There is a column in that excellent little paper, Light, which is devoted to what occurred on the corresponding date a generation—that is, thirty years—ago. As I read over this column recently I had quite a start as I saw my own name, and read the reprint of a letter which I had written in 1887, detailing some interesting spiritual experience which had occurred to me in a séance. This will confirm my statement that my interest in the subject is one of some standing, and I may fairly claim since it is only within the last year or so that I have finally announced that I was satisfied with the evidence, that I have not been hasty in forming my opinion.
That opinion, he wrote the following week in Light, the journal of the London Spiritualistic Alliance, held the promise of great consolation to those whose lives had been touched by the war; for death, he said,
makes no abrupt change in the process of development, nor does it make an impassable chasm between those who are on either side of it. No trait of the form and no peculiarity of the mind are changed by death but all are continued in that spiritual body which is the counterpart of the earthly one at its best, and still contains within it that core of spirit which is the very essence of the man.
The die was now cast, he told Innes a few days later:
to Innes Doyle WINDLESHAM, OCTOBER 28, 1917
I have a rather contentious life as I have two big subjects on which I seem, with no deliberate intention of my own to have become a leader, that of devil-made marriages, and that of the bearings of modern psychical research upon Christianity. The latter is of course far the wider & more permanently important. I lectured upon it Thursday and had a really wonderful audience, who seemed sympathetic. I felt it all pretty deeply myself and that, I suppose, helps to pass it on. The attention the subject is arousing is extraordinary.
And after congratulating Innes on November 2nd on the birth the day before of a second son, Francis Kingsley Doyle, he continued:
I live in the midst of contention but can no other.* I seem to see a second Reformation coming in this country. The folk await a message, and the message is there. I hope some stronger & more worthy messenger than I may carry it but I should be proud to be a Lieutenant.
to Mary Doyle
Clara and the boy are doing well. I am glad they will not call him Oscar. That name should be sacred now. On the other hand I thought Christian was a bad name. I wrote when you told me about Mrs Shortt and told her what I knew about the facts of death. I was prepared for a rebuff but I think it is ones duty to offer the means of consolation and then it is up to the other person to take it or leave it. To my surprise I had an answer from her meeting me more than half way because she had already had experience of the kind through a friend in similar trouble. I was pleased. She is coming, and bringing three friends to Lady Glenconnor’s where I repeat my remarks upon Dec 5th. Meantime I am approaching Shortt (who may be the next Home Secretary) upon the subject of Divorce Law Reform.† Why is it that when you try to do any helpful thing in this world it is always the so called ‘good’ whom you find in a solid lumpish block against you. I suppose that was just what Christ found with the Pharisees & priests & their followers. His own best followers were a taxgatherer, a prostitute, & several fishermen, yet he won through in the end. A strange world! The next one is better.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, NOVEMBER 14, 1917
I am quite indifferent about this dear boy’s name, save that I think Oscar’s is sacred. When people years hence talk of Oscar there should be no doubt as to whom they mean.
Enclosed letter—sample of very many—came almost with your own. It will show you the kind of thing I am fighting. What I would like you or anyone to explain to me is why the Law of England should be different to that of any Protestant country in the world, and stricter even than such Catholic countries as Belgium or Bavaria. We are really, in essentials, the most reactionary of all countries in this, which is a poor position for the Mother of Freedom.* But it shall not be so long. I am sorry we dont see alike in the matter but I am very sure of my ground. I go to Birmingham to speak on it upon Nov 29. We have a large pledged majority in both houses of Parliament.
I had a note from Kingsley yesterday and there is a good chance that he may be sent back at once to finish his medical education. That would be good but I have mixed feelings about it—and so has he.
The need for trained medical personnel was becoming acute, but Kingsley’s mixed feelings had to do with leaving his comrades at the front:
from Kingsley Conan Doyle IN FRANCE, NOVEMBER 11, 1917
I am possibly to be sent home to finish my medical studies. They issued an order for all 3rd year medical students who could q
ualify in 36 months to be transferred to the reserve or discharged. Now I am a 4th year student who could possibly qualify in 21 months…although I should like to get on with my medical studies it would be v. sad leaving all for which I have worked for so long—all the men I know and who know me—the NCOs. But it is in the hands of the authorities and I hope they will not delay their decision long.
from Kingsley Conan Doyle IN FRANCE, DECEMBER 3, 1917
Douglas Haig sent a splendid message to the troops who are fighting so grandly in the Cambrai front.* I haven’t got it here but he seldom has done it before and I am sure it comes from his hand and also from his heart. I hope the Army will get to know him more because I am sure it would be a good thing. I have some most wonderful contrivances by which I can see the old Boche and he doesn’t know it. A most enthralling occupation. And now I have a telescope about 11/2x long so we can see a lot and it is a bit of Sherlock Holmes work to piece it all together and to say what he is doing and what his future action may be. We are—that is to say I and the observers on a hot scent and it is most interesting watching it develop and seeing various alternative theories drop out.
This year 1918 began in a festive spirit as the family gathered for the baptism of Innes’s new boy.† Kingsley, recalled from France to complete his medical studies, was present as godfather. A few days later Innes travelled to Buckingham Palace to be invested as a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) by the King. That night Conan Doyle and Kingsley led the family in a champagne toast as Innes donned a brigadier’s uniform for the first time, and the following day they saw him off to France and the war again.
Proud as he was of his brother’s distinction, Conan Doyle’s mood remained sombre ‘In the days of universal sorrow and loss,’ he said in Memories and Adventures, ‘when the voice of Rachel was heard throughout the land,* it was borne in upon me that the knowledge which had come to me thus was not for my own consolation alone, but that God had placed me in a very special position for conveying it to that world which needed it so badly.’
Believing himself a harbinger of the New Revelation, he lectured tirelessly across the country, telling his agent that his fees were to be donated to the cause: ‘I do not make money in sacred things.’
The ‘psychic question’, gathering force since his earliest days in South-sea, had emerged as the most important thing in his life, and he was to become its most prominent and eloquent spokesman. ‘It is the thing,’ he would write, ‘for which every preceding phase, my gradual religious development, my books, which gave me an introduction to the public, my modest fortune, which enables me to devote myself to unlucrative work, my platform work, which helps me to convey the message, and my physical strength, which is still sufficient to stand arduous tours and to fill the largest halls for an hour and a half with my voice, have each and all been an unconscious preparation.’
from Kingsley Conan Doyle JANUARY 22, 1918
I just wanted to tell you how lovely it was being home this weekend and above all to see you and Jean looking so much fitter again. I was very interested by the talk on Spiritualism, though I must admit my feelings just grip me in the same old way, but often I feel that you are working on the same thing to a great extent only have come upon these things by a different means. For instance a person is mentioned as having an aura & some a light. Well I wonder why these biblical holy men especially Christ (vide Crowboro’ parish church) are so often represented with some sort of light or something surrounding them—the halo may also have a similar origin. Why should the Bible say ‘Let your light so shine before men’ etc. Don’t you think that that is more than poetical, there does seem to be a certain something in the eyes and presence of some people (depending on their capacity for good deeds) which shines out through their lives and influences everyone around.
Also a thing I have always found instinctive is to pray for a person just as really after they have been taken from us as before. I could not believe that the future existence was without effort and striving, whatever else that might be there.
But you must forgive me if I have seemed aloof in these matters but just lately I have sort of felt like a man who has had a vision which faded away and he is now watching the spot where it faded knowing that it will come back again.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, MARCH 7, 1918
The lumbago is all right so don’t worry your dear head. I send the Cornhill & also the Strand of this month. The latter has an article by Harry Lauder which I think is very beautiful.* I wrote to him and may be able to help him. I had a letter of blessing yesterday from a mother whom I had put in touch with her dead boy. She is the 13th within my knowledge. It is indeed a most marvellous thing.
I have my ‘1917’ nearly done. Four volumes already!
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, MAY OR JUNE 1917
I am just off to London for a Tuck meeting so excuse a scrawl. Jean was grateful for ‘Wooden Crosses’. It is a very touching poem.*
Innes must be having a stirring time. It is like a boiling pot, the cauldron of fate, and who can say what will come from it. The future of the world is being settled there. If it were not for ones conviction of the power & justice of God one would be alarmed. But all is well.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM
I am a bad correspondent, am I not—but indeed I am writing all the time. I have another thick volume ready ‘1917’ besides the one you have, and now yet another will have to be done. I wonder sometimes if the book will finish me or I finish the book. I go into camp soon & that will be a rest.
I have had fine letters up to date from Innes. He was in the 5th Army, so you can imagine what a bad time he had. I heard from General Gough who said that Innes was very steady in the battle. I expect that much depended upon his cool nerve and clear brain. It has been a bad business, gloss it as we may, but we shall win back again.
I have been doing my tax papers all morning. They fairly skin me.
[P.S.] My children sketches have made quite a hit, I believe.†
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM
The cottage is let, and with a waiting list, but we could clear everyone out by June if you have quite made up your mind that you would desire it. You must come first.
I would warn you however (1) that it is very primitive & uncomfortable compared to your own cosy nest (2) that the food problem here is very acute and meets us at every turn (3) that the horse & cab problem is even more so, and that you would have to make up your mind before you came not to go to church on Sunday. No doubt you could read the service at home. I put these things before you as I daresay you picture the place as you knew it, whereas it is by no means so.
Innes was promised the cottage in July, but that was, I understand, dependent upon their letting their house.
I hope I make things clear. Innes is as you say, in the 3rd Army Corps, but that was part of Gough’s 5th Army, which had such a terrible week of retreat and is still recovering from the blow. Innes did splendidly, I believe.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, JULY 27, 1918
Cyril asked me to send you the enclosed. He is off to France presently. I hear that Branford joins up on Aug 2nd. I trust he will not reach the fighting line. We have paid enough in this war.
Father Barry-Doyle left us today. He is a really fine fellow. I never thought I could have found a friend in a Roman Catholic priest, but he is one in a million. I found we were in very close accord in religious matters. He is a very noble character & has been recommended for the D.S.O. We have asked him to make this his home whenever he comes to England. He is a notable reciter among other qualities.
Father Richard Barry-Doyle, a cousin of Conan Doyle’s nearly twenty years younger, had been a chaplain in Egypt and Palestine, and served at the front in France and in the Army of the Red Sea before founding the Catholic Near East Welfare Association to assist children in need. He was apparently broad-minded and diplomatic, with the ability to engage Conan Doyle in theological conversations that
both men found rewarding.
It is perhaps not coincidental, as the family’s losses mounted, that Conan Doyle’s interest in his genealogy was aroused anew. In addition to what he learned from Father Barry-Doyle, he sought out information about the family of his maternal grandmother Catherine Pack, ‘whose deathbed—or rather the white waxen thing which lay upon that bed—is the very earliest recollection of my life.’
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, AUGUST 20, 1918
I had a Colonel Packe in to tea yesterday. He is of the Leicester Packes which is the main branch. He knew a lot about the family. Says the original one who went to Ireland, Simon Packe, was a very well known man, and was, I think, son or brother of the Lord Mayor of London who offered Cromwell the crown. It was interesting. He seems a fine soldier, Mons and two wounds, but still going strong.