Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters
Page 63
But for Conan Doyle, as for so many others scarred by the war, life would never be the same. Writing to a German correspondent afterward, Conan Doyle tried to strike a note of reconciliation, but the losses weighed greatly. ‘I have no ill feeling against you, but we have suffered so heavily,’ he said: ‘We all have a horror of Germany. My son was badly wounded on the Somme and died afterwards of pneumonia. My wife’s brother, a doctor, died at Mons, my sister’s husband, my wife’s nephew, my sister’s son, all dead.’
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, NOVEMBER 13, 1918
Connie wrote about K yesterday to the effect that she did not know why his career was not in the Times. His death was in the advertisement, but the other column is, I understand, reserved for those who die in action. I will certainly draw up some account of his life for our family record.
I have finished Vol V of my history and have two volumes ready to come out, up to July 1 of this year. That leaves one volume to complete my task. I shall not know myself when it is finished. It will be as long as Napier’s Peninsular War—a big book, and, I think, an accurate one. The public has not realised yet that it really contains all the facts.
‘Although my work did not take me into constant danger I had many narrow squeaks,’ Innes Doyle wrote to his elder brother on November 19th. The war’s end had not brought relief from its stress, though. ‘I have not felt any physical relief yet, rather the other way,’ Innes added ten days later: ‘I had five days in bed with a cold and feel muzzy generally.’ But he was more concerned for his brother, now fifty-nine, and his niece after Kingsley’s death. ‘It is terrible for you and Mary,’ Innes said: ‘It will leave a tremendous void for her as she was completely wrapped up in him.’
Conan Doyle did not stop grieving, but found consolation in Spiritualism.
to Innes Doyle
Yes, I have had a bad time but the cloud lifted after the burial and now I feel more soothed in spirit. I have every hope of speedily being in touch again, tho’ I shall be very critical of evidence. He has the great advantage of knowing what is possible.
And eventually, in September 1919, he received what he believed was a communication from his dead son, describing the experience in a letter to Sir Oliver Lodge:
We had strong phenomena from the start, and the medium was always groaning, muttering, or talking, so that there was never a doubt where he was. Suddenly I heard a voice.
‘Jean, it is I.’
My wife cried, ‘It is Kingsley.’
I said, ‘Is that you, boy?’
He said in a very intense whisper and a tone all his own, ‘Father!’ and then after a pause, ‘Forgive me!’
I said, ‘There was never anything to forgive. You were the best son a man ever had.’ A strong hand descended on my head which was slowly pressed forward, and I felt a kiss just above my brow.
‘Are you happy?’ I cried.
There was a pause and then very gently, ‘I am so happy.’
Conan Doyle would repeat this description many times in the coming years. ‘I have had several communications since,’ he wrote years later, ‘but none which moved me so much as this first one.’
The first year of the peace saw the nation slow to recover. For Conan Doyle, three things mattered most of all: his family’s surviving members, completing his history of the war, and spreading the gospel of Spiritualism. The last demanded a great deal of his time and energy, and brought no remuneration, but it helped console him at a time of great loss; and despite the disbelief, and also the ridicule which his efforts often met, it gave him a cause that he believed to be of unsurpassed importance.
to Mary Doyle
I pause between two battles to send you a line to say how grieved I am about poor Lizzie both for her own sake and for yours. I pray you to spare no money which can help either her cure or her comfort, and to let me know all other ways in which I can be of help. I am so absorbed from morning to night in my unending work that I may well need reminding as to what I could or should do.
All going well here. I am very anxious to get on with my history, and as I take the road for a month’s lecturing on religion in February I have to push along now. I visit Edinburgh, Glasgow, B’ham &c. Of course I take no fee, but the work pleases me & curiously enough I never feel tired when I am on it.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, JANUARY 30, 1919
I have indeed been a bad correspondent but my work has been incessant. My letters alone are enough to keep a man busy but on the top I have my spiritual lectures, my history (correcting Volume V while I am writing Volume VI, the whole now exceeding half a million words), a little religious book called ‘The Vital Message’ which I am running serially in both England & America, a small book of war poems, & other ventures. So you will make allowance.
My lectures at Hastings, Birmingham and Walsall were all very successful. Some one has called me ‘The Saint Paul of the New Dispensation’. Where are we getting to!! I start in a fortnight for Cardiff, Merthyr, Cheltenham and Swansea. Then March is quiet and my big effort comes in April. I shall speak in every town of any size in Great Britain before I finish. Meanwhile I see the end of my history, tho’ it is yet some distance off. It will be wonderful when it is done. I get plenty of good material now.
The children are under the weather but return to school tomorrow. Jean is weary but she comes to Wales with me, and the change will do good.
But now a second heavy blow fell, not quite four months after Kingsley’s death. Innes, who had served with distinction through the war, and survived it, fell victim to the postwar influenza epidemic, and died in Belgium on February 19th. Conan Doyle was devastated once more, and sought consolation in the séance room.
‘People ask me, not unnaturally, what is it which makes me so perfectly certain that this thing is true,’ he said in Memories and Adventures.
That I am perfectly certain is surely demonstrated by the mere fact that I have abandoned my congenial and lucrative work, left my home for long periods at a time, and subjected myself to all sorts of inconveniences, losses and even insults, in order to get the facts home to the people.…I may say briefly that there is no physical sense which I possess which has not been separately assured… All fine-drawn theories of the subconscious go to pieces before the plain statement of the intelligence, ‘I am a spirit. I am Innes. I am your brother.’
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM
I am indeed a bad correspondent but I have no secretary now and I write till I am dazed. My correspondence what with history, divorce, spiritualism &c &c is enormous. But the first is the main thing. I have now got a vol & a half waiting, so I am well ahead. I could bring out 1917 tomorrow but want to pass some of it through the Strand first.
I think I told you how charmed we all were with Father Barry-Doyle. I never thought I would have made a friend of a Catholic priest but he is really a fine man as well. No doubt many of them are, but they are often narrow while he is wide and open & very human. He is quite an addition to the family. His generals think the world of him, and he was, I believe, recommended for the D.S.O.* Kingsley, you know, was also recommended for honours which he never got, so we have had no luck. However Innes & dear old Malcolm got their deserts.
Well, I must get off to the village. I look forward to our holiday when it comes. I am near the limit. Clara & John are here. All very well. My love to all. I am not clear who are with you.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, MAY 7, 1919
Your note arrived via Lottie. I was never better in health. I wonder what made you think it was otherwise. If Clara will do all that she thinks right about our dear boy’s grave I will of course be glad to pay for it. Yes, I will surely come to you for the day the moment the weather mends and I can get done with my job. I am nearly clear now.
[P.S.] Dear old Denis sleeps at school tonight—the first time. He is very brave, poor old lad.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, MAY 14, 1919
I feel that I am remiss in not writing more but you would forgive
me if you saw all I had to do. I got good reports from Lottie and Ida of your condition. It was good to see them—and I think their visit did them good.
All is well here and the country & garden at their best. I lecture here tonight but hardly expect much interest in this sleepy hollow. Nous verrons. I leave upon May 25 to do Doncaster, Huddersfield, Manchester, Rochdale & Crewe all in a week. I have taken the Queens Hall in London for three Sundays in June. July I have a few engagements but August & September will be real holiday. I hope.
Mrs Leckie is as weak as ever. I think a few days will see the end—all very sweet & gentle & painless.
to Charlotte Drummond WINDLESHAM, JUNE 12, 1919
You dear little mother—This is only a line to say how delighted I was to get your note. It was indeed like a voice from the past. I am, as you may know, working hard over teaching people the wonderful facts of spirit return. Hence I know that if we don’t meet before I shall meet my dear old friend, and she me, just as we always were, in a few years time. No changes, thank goodness! I don’t want you more of an angel than you are—tho’ that is pretty far advanced—but just the dear true kind little lady that you always were. But I expect you will be on the top sphere and I down below. But one can always come down, I understand. So please don’t forget to explore the lower flats where you will find me and my dear Jean if I can hold her there.
On Sunday I begin my campaign at the Queens Hall in London.* Well, well, I should be terrified if I did not know that I am just a megaphone with someone else’s big voice speaking through me.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, JUNE 1919
My first London lecture was very successful but I hope my second one (tomorrow) will be even more so. Then one other and I am through for the summer save for July 9, 10, 11. Eastbourne, Brighton, Worthing. I think I have earned a rest. I am longing to see you dear, and hope to drive over about next Thursday. I shall have to return in the evening but hope later to be able to stay the night at the Inn as you suggest.
I have been very overworked or would have got over before now. Well, I will keep any gossip until we come.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM
I send you a fine notice about Kingsley drawn up by Colonel Earle, one of his former commanders.* When I can ease up my work a little I will do a little monograph upon Kingsley. He should be an example to all Conan Doyles to the crack of doom, a real family heirloom & standard.
I had a hard time in London, but got back last night and am all fit again—about 60 letters awaited me. I don’t know what I should do without Wood.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, SEPTEMBER 1919
Very good. I shall come over on the morning of Sept 25 and take you back after lunch. I think it would be a good thing if your Lizzie could come also. She knows all your little ways and you would be more comfortable as Jakeman has many calls and with all the will in the world I should find it difficult perhaps to read to you as much as I would.* Certainly you shall have a room upstairs if you prefer it. I will send you back in the motor any time you select before Sat Oct 11th, when we start on our travels. Before that date little Mr Gow is to come down to convalesce. He is a friend, Editor of Light, who has been deadly ill—a very precious life.
In 1916, David Gow had encouraged Conan Doyle to announce his commitment to Spiritualism in Light—to which Conan Doyle had first contributed nearly thirty years before—in the personal manifesto entitled ‘The New Revelation’. After Conan Doyle’s death, Gow penned a reminiscence in which he recalled his stay at Windlesham:
I was far from well, for the nervous strain of the time was almost unbearable. Sir Arthur invited me to his residence at Crowborough to stay for a few days and receive his attention as physician. In that daily contact with him I gained a close insight into his mind and character, and of his many-sided personality I had some striking glimpses. I saw in action that extraordinary acuteness of perception which is shewn in his delineation of Sherlock Holmes. He was not only a man of great intellectual capacity and of a wonderful humanity, but he had also a great fund of humour, and in that respect we were especially in harmony.†
In October, Conan Doyle’s lectures brought an angry challenge from Reverend J. A. Magee at a congress of church leaders in Leicester. Conan Doyle and his kind, according to Magee, lowered the moral, mental, and spiritual standard of the country by urging unfit and unsupportable views on the populace. At this time Conan Doyle was still eager to allay the fears of the clergy, and to reconcile apparent contradictions between Spiritualism and conventional religion. In response to Magee’s challenge he travelled to Leicester to offer a rebuttal entitled ‘Our Reply to the Cleric’.
‘We come forward as allies,’ he stated. ‘And anyone who knows our literature—unfortunately these gentlemen at the Church Congress are ignorant of it—know we have proved that life goes on after physical death, carrying with it a reasonable evolution of the human soul. That being so, if these people were not blind they would say to us: “Come in and help us to fight the materialism of the world.”’
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, NOVEMBER 1, 1919
I was bound to answer the Church Congress or let my case go by default. The whole thing has done great good so don’t worry your dear head. We have a strong party inside the Church, and I was their mouthpiece.
Gow was better but is very frail. We are all very busy but very happy & confident of ultimate complete victory.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, DECEMBER 20, 1919
This is your Xmas letter—rather premature but better than too late.
I had a cable from Mary yesterday. All well. She is at Delmonte Hotel, Delmonte, California.
I have sent Cohn a signed copy of my ‘Vital Message’.
I send you five pounds, my dear old Mammie, for your own special comfort. No hoarding, please.
I am weary but have nearly a month yet, so I hope to be fit for my next excursion. The cause for which I stand spreads and grows in a marvellous manner. Hardly a paper can keep clear of it now, and I have many very pleasing letters, as well as some abusive ones.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, JANUARY 1920
I got back very weary but I have had some rest and am now better. I don’t start lecturing again till Jan 19 so I have some rest but many other things press to be done. I have an accumulation of letters &c so you can imagine I am busy. Bishop Welldon has asked me to address the Clergy in his diocese, so don’t worry about the Church.* My only enemies, curiously enough, are the very high and the very low.
to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, FEBRUARY 1920
I have been going over my money affairs and I find that I can very well allow you £250 a year—or £125 every half, so with your little investments you should do well.† By the way these latter have increased since you made your will & I think you would be wise if you now wrote down your desires & had it witnessed by two persons who are not concerned in the will. Then there could be no mistake. I have just been making mine again and making sure that you are not left high & dry if I should move on.
I enclose a little appreciation which will please you. Return it when read. I am off to Durham on Feb 15th. Meanwhile I have a rest. I expect I may go to Australia in the fall. The call is very insistent.
to Mary Doyle GROSVENOR HOTEL, LONDON, FEBRUARY 1920
Just a line on my homeward way. I am presenting the amateur billiard cup to the winner tonight (Jean is with me) and then we get home tomorrow. Laus deo. My visit to the clergy of Durham was very successful. Harrogate enormous. Hawley very good. Altogether a great experience. I sent you my reply to that windbag Father Vaughan, as I thought it stated the case pretty clearly. He sees signs of degeneration in my character since I took up spiritualism. I expect he thinks so more than ever now.
The next big event is my public debate with MacCabe, leader of the atheists, Queens Hall, March 11th. That should convince the religious folk that I am their ally, since they funk taking this man on. All tickets are already sold, which I think must be about a record. It will be
a great occasion.
We go to the theatre this afternoon. Third time since the war broke out, so far as I can remember.
At a conference of the Catholic Young Men’s Society, Father Bernard Vaughan had denounced Spiritualism, and had accused Conan Doyle and Oliver Lodge of having ‘lost their mental poise’, possibly under the sway of a demonic force. ‘I would rather be in prison for the rest of my life,’ Father Vaughan declared, ‘than carry on the work that is being done by these two gentlemen.’