Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters

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  As a boy Conan Doyle had known Vaughan at Stonyhurst: ‘a young novice, with whom I hardly came in contact, but whose handsome and spiritual appearance I well remember,’ he said in his memoirs. And his reply in the February 15th Daily Chronicle (‘Spiritualism and Insanity’) was not the first time that they had crossed swords over Spiritualism. In a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette in 1917 he had advised that ‘Father Vaughan should learn by the history of his own order, which has been unjustly attacked, to be more moderate in his censures upon others…I can assure Father Vaughan that the people who believe [in Spiritualism] are as good and earnest as he is himself, and very much more open-minded and charitable.’*

  Conan Doyle took a more serious view of Joseph McCabe (spelled ‘MacCabe’ in his letters), a former Catholic priest who represented a group called the Rationalist Press Organization. In an address entitled ‘Sir A. Conan Doyle’s Ghosts’, McCabe accused him of using his influence to extend false hope to the families of the dead. He would like nothing better, McCabe declared, than to meet the author in an open debate.

  Conan Doyle accepted immediately, and it was arranged for March 11th at London’s Queen’s Hall. Many believed the confrontation would mark a defining moment for the Spiritualist movement. In preparation Conan Doyle tuned up with an increasingly rigorous schedule of lectures, adding to the Mam’s fears for his health.

  to Mary Doyle GROSVENOR HOTEL, LONDON, FEBRUARY OR EARLY MARCH 1920

  A wonderful meeting last night—2700 of the flower of Non-Conformity in the City Temple with an Anglican clergyman presiding. It was a truly wonderful scene. I spoke for 1 1/2 hours & am rather exhausted today.

  I will certainly rest. I have no lecture now till Reading on March 9. Then on March 11 is the big MacCabe debate at the Queens Hall. All tickets were sold a month in advance; it will be a very sporting event. Then again I will have a rest. But so long as I feel that this message is urgent for the world and that I am the one man who can carry it I can’t think much of rest. I feel the less time I have left the more need of haste. However we are very very happy & that surely is the great thing.

  to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, MARCH 1920

  We are off to London today. I lecture at Reading on Tuesday and then the debate is on Thursday. This will in a way be the most important night of my life so I pray you to think of me. It is rather touching to think that in little villages in the hills of Wales and elsewhere meetings will be held that night to send me spiritual help. I hear of such from all parts. On the other hand MacCabe takes the floor as the champion of all the atheists, agnostics and materialists of England, which is a large body. They are good men—the thinking ones—but their creed is negative & hopeless. Well, I go into battle in good heart. Fifty chosen spiritualists sit at my right and fifty rationalists on his left. They could have sold the house out three times over & as I think I told you titled people have been crammed into the gallery. Well, we’ll see.

  So glad you had a pleasant change & are back in the old hutch. I have reread Willie’s poems. They are about the best the war has produced, I think. The war was so real that everything high falutin’ became absurd & one tells true from false very easily.

  to Mary Doyle CROWBOROUGH BEACON GOLF CLUB, MARCH 20, 1920

  Don’t trouble about my health or happiness, dear. Both are at their best. God never gives you work to do without giving you the strength to do it. And this is truly God’s work, putting fresh conviction and force into the stale old religions so overgrown with moss and all their original simple beauty hidden by mans folly. If I knew it meant death I would go on—but far from that it means life. However I will bear your words in mind whenever I get a space. I have one now & am playing golf. It is likely that in the autumn I will carry the work to Australia. In that case I would take all my colony with me. I say, we only need a camel or two to make a patriarchal exit. The call from there is very insistent.

  My immediate engagements though fairly numerous are really not very heavy. I speak in West London on March 30, 31. In East London April 7, 8. Then West of England for a week from April 20 onwards. These with a lecture at St Dunstan’s Blind home & one other cover my immediate programme.

  I valued Chambers’ portrait—the 1864 one. He was a pioneer of Spiritualism, a close friend and adviser of Home. He was a very fine fellow.*

  The debate was great. They say there was never so fine a one, so orderly & on so high a level in London before. Magnificent audience and very attentive & impartial. I don’t dislike McCabe who has had a hard fight. He is an ex Franciscan priest and a very clever man. He seems all brain and wanting perhaps in heart.

  [P.S.] Some close observers thought that MacCabe faltered before the end.

  The debate was an occasion to remember. McCabe lost no time coming to the point as the two men took their places. The Spiritualist movement, he declared, ‘was cradled in fraud. It was nurtured in fraud. It is based today to an alarming extent all over the world on fraudulent performances…but whether Sir Arthur Conan Doyle realizes the extent of that fraud I do not know.’ He went on to attack Conan Doyle’s insistence that dozens of scientists and scholars supported the spirit cause. ‘I courteously challenge him,’ McCabe declared, ‘to give me in his first speech tonight the names, not of fifty, but of ten, university professors of any distinction who have within the last thirty years endorsed or defended Spiritualism.’

  Rising to reply, Conan Doyle began: ‘Mr McCabe has shown that he has no respect for our intellectual position, but I cannot reciprocate. I have a very deep respect for the honest, earnest Materialist, if only because for very many years I was one myself.’

  Turning to McCabe’s challenge, Conan Doyle brandished a notebook. ‘I have,’ he told the assembly, ‘the names of 160 people of high distinction, many of them of great eminence, including over forty professors… I beg you to remember that these 160 whose names I submit to you are people who, to their own great loss, have announced themselves as Spiritualists. It never yet did a man any good to call himself a Spiritualist, I assure you, and we have had many martyrs among our people. These are folk who have taken real pains and care to get to the bottom of the subject.’

  The two men held firm to their positions, with McCabe insisting that the mediums whom Conan Doyle endorsed were simply ‘not found out’ yet, and Conan Doyle arguing that McCabe’s views had no value in the absence of any firsthand experience on his part. Though the proceedings grew heated, the two men parted in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

  Not long afterwards, after learning that the proceeds from the debate had not been sufficient to cover expenses, Conan Doyle sent a conciliatory note:

  to Joseph McCabe

  My impression was that when expenses were paid half the receipts were to go to the L. Spirit Alliance and half to your Rationalist Organization.

  I regret to say that the organizer of the debate proved to be a thoroughly unreliable person, who has now been drummed out of our movement—if indeed he ever was in it. I understand that the LSA never received a penny. I hope your people were more fortunate. I need not say that I got nothing. I never made any stipulation about you getting nothing. I should consider it an impertinence.

  [P.S.] We are both ex-Romans so have much in common. We reached the same junction but you stayed there and I took another train.

  It seemed to Conan Doyle that his mother, too, had taken another train. She had not fought against his breaking away from the Catholic teachings of his boyhood; she had eventually left the church herself, and become an Anglican. Now, however, she found herself unable to fathom his increasing dedication to Spiritualism. He appears to have come to the conclusion that it was pointless to continue arguing it with her, for some of Conan Doyle’s activities of this period go unremarked in the surviving letters, including his meeting Harry Houdini, the American escape artist, who was a guest at Windlesham in April 1920,* and his interest in the ‘Cottingley Fairies’ photographs—an episode in which two Yorkshire girls claimed to have capture
d images of fairies on film—which first came to his notice the following month.† But, from the next letter to her, it appears that it pained her to see her son attacked or ridiculed for his beliefs, and it was hard for her not to try to dissuade him from the course he had chosen.

  to Mary Doyle

  I am sorry you come back to that point so continually. You are asking a thing which it is not in my power to give. The best I could do would be to lie and what good could possibly come out of that. I always hope that I have made you understand this but your letters show me that I always fail. You still speak as if I were refusing you something which I could give you. This has never been so. Such letters disturb me deeply but I cannot see how they can alter that ‘which is’.

  It was very sweet of you to champion me in New Zealand & a very spirited letter too. But, dear heart, what does it matter what anyone says of me. I have a good hide by this time.

  to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM

  Yes what you say in your letter about not arguing over these things is very wise. There is nothing to be gained. In this life it is either given or it is withheld for Gods own reasons. Even on the other side I am not sure that all get the knowledge. I know that Innes, Kingsley, Oscar, Malcolm, Alec Forbes and Lily have it but I have never heard from Leslie, or Nelson tho’ I have equally desired it. Strange! You cannot as your letter seemed to imply call or summon people. You can only make the conditions possible and then those come who have God’s permission so to do. The initiative lies with them always, tho’ they can do little without our intelligent cooperation. However I’m drifting into a lecture. Of course Jean is my very soul in this matter and is equally convinced since she has seen the same evidence.

  Steffanson the explorer is here with us.* A dear fellow and a hero. He leaves today, but is coming to East Ham with me tomorrow night. Henderson also—my fellow student in Edinburgh—now Sir Robert Henderson, a full General, comes to every lecture of mine that he can.

  Though Conan Doyle remained determined to speak in every city of reasonable size in Britain, by summer he was also resolved to carry the message overseas. When an invitation to lecture in Australia emerged, he found it impossible to resist. ‘I had spent some never-to-be-forgotten days with Australian troops at the very crisis of the war,’ he wrote, and ‘my heart was much with them.’

  If my message could indeed bring consolation to bruised hearts and to bewildered minds—and I had boxes full of letters to show that it did—then to whom should I carry it rather than to those who had fought so splendidly and lost so heavily in the common cause? I was a little weary also after three years of incessant controversy, speaking often five times a week, and continually endeavouring to uphold the cause in the press. The long voyage presented attractions, even if there was hard work at the end of it. There were difficulties in the way. Three children, boys of eleven and nine, with a girl of seven, all devotedly attached to their home and their parents, could not easily be left behind. If they came a maid was also necessary. The pressure upon me of correspondence and interviews would be so great that my old friend and secretary, Major Wood, would be also needed. Seven of us in all therefore, and a cheque of sixteen hundred pounds drawn for our return tickets, apart from outfit, before a penny could be entered on the credit side. However, Mr Carlyle Smythe, the best agent in Australia, had taken the matter up and I felt that we were in good hands. The lectures would be numerous, controversies severe, the weather at its hottest, and my own age over sixty. But there are compensating forces, and I was constantly aware of their presence.

  Following a farewell luncheon of some 290 fellow Spiritualists at the Holborn Restaurant in London, Conan Doyle and his family prepared to sail on August 13th.

  to Mary Doyle WINDLESHAM, AUGUST 10, 1920

  I may be rushed at the end so this is a last line of heartfelt love and a prayer that all may be well with you in my absence, which will soon pass and you will have letters. I think I have left all in order behind me but Summerhays is always there. The luncheon was very wonderful. I doubt if there has been any such occasion in London before, such earnestness & heart, but no doubt Lottie has told you of that. I lectured twice in the West and had a wonderful farewell séance in which I had speech and blessing from both Kingsley and Oscar. Such things hearten me greatly, and no doubt we shall need heart & difficulties will arise, but please God I will not return till all has been well done and I have breathed the breath of living religion into these people, not dating far back but actually present. That’s what the world needs.

  Well, dearest Mam, when I get preaching my pen runs away and I want no change in our spirituality or outlook anyhow. All will be well with you & if you pass first do not fear to come back to me.

  to Mary Doyle S.S. NALDERA, AUGUST 19, 1920

  The voyage has been splendid. We are now running up the Spanish coast near Barcelona, a horrible vista of naked crags and bare plains, with constant watchtowers to which the natives legged it when the pirate sails appeared. Life must have been very difficult for the poor souls.

  The children are very well, but I rather dread the Red Sea with its heat for them. However I hope all will be well. They get lessons every day and are very good.

  One Major Campbell is on board who was Innes’ deputy in the 24th Division. Clara would like to know this. He has an enormous admiration for Innes and it is good to hear him speak of him. ‘The best he ever served under.’

  to Mary Doyle S.S. NALDERA, AUGUST 1920

  We approach Port Said and have had a very hot voyage, but are all well tho’ dear Denis wilts rather. I addressed 250 first class passengers including every sort of Eastern, last night and it was very successful. I have now been asked to repeat it to the Second Class ones in the Red Sea! A fair case of sweated labour. It was strange to speak on such subjects on the very waters where Paul was blown about. We could see the island, south of Crete, where he took refuge. My little squeak of a message is really the same as his, which has been so mutilated by mankind & the years. It is really all a re-statement, and what [missing line] of Saints is exactly what the early church did before the ecclesiastics drove all that is spiritual out of it, & turned it to empty pomp and forms and ceremony. However I won’t lecture you, dear old Mammie, but my mind is very full of these vital things.

  Goodbye, dear, and picture us as surrounded by all good friends, with peace in our hearts & congenial work before us. I don’t know yet where we go & expect a marconi [wireless message] at Port Said from my agent in Australia. I want to avoid Perth & go straight to Melbourne where I can make a base.

  to Mary Doyle S.S. NALDERA, AUGUST 29, 1920

  We are approaching Aden and are at the El something Straits. It has been a record voyage for heat and we all long for clean air. The children have been patient but as we have had tropical weather since Marseilles it has been a long strain and they are now white & fretful. I gave a second lecture in the middle of the Red Sea to the Second Classers and all the ships officers. I hope they got some good out of it. We have two Bishops on board. This is Sunday & I expect one of them will tackle me in his sermon. It is all very goodhumoured, but they have only words and theories to set against my actual facts & experiences, so no wonder it is one-sided. Goodbye, dear. I write with a streaming brow.

  to Mary Doyle S.S. NALDERA, SEPTEMBER 2, 1920

  Here we are with wonderful India just in front of our prow and below the skyline. We reach Bombay about 5 but as we leave next morning we shall not see much. About half the passengers clear out and we shall lose many friends. Already many have said that we have altered their whole view of life so if I did no more my journey would be worth while. I gave a second lecture in the Red Sea. My word it was hot. We had many heat apoplexies & one death. We have also some measles on board which is awkward. The children have stood it well but run rather wild.

  I am covered with prickly heat and feel the stuffiness at night but am quite fit & so is dear Jean, who has made herself beloved on board. Goodbye, dear—There is so little
to tell in our monotonous lives. I am much bored for the Indian Ocean is very dead & yet has roll enough to take the edge off you. We are in the tail of the Monsoon—a wagging tail.

  to Mary Doyle S.S. NALDERA, SEPTEMBER 7, 1920

  I dreamed the other night that a pony had run away with you. It shows how you are in my thoughts. You were not injured but the pony was.

  I see the tip of India lining the whole horizon as I write. Tomorrow Colombo, with memories of poor Jimmy—tho’ I withdraw the ‘poor’ on record though.*

  We are all well but the heat awful & covered with prickly heat. The ship coals tomorrow so Jean and I hope to sleep ashore.

  to Mary Doyle S.S. NALDERA, SEPTEMBER 17, 1920

  Perth lies before us but thank goodness we have so arranged that we go on to Adelaide where I open on the 25th, giving three lectures. It will be interesting to see the effect. Then to Melbourne where I speak from October 7th onwards. All the omens are favourable. We are very weary of the long monotonous voyage—quite fed up. I want work. I have begun a book upon our adventures which will at least be unlike any other book ever written, for no one has written a book of travel from the Spiritual rather than the Material point of view. I am not interested in buildings & parks but in men’s minds and souls.