THE BOOKMAN [APRIL, 1902. tTbe IReaber. ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE. WENTY-FIVE years ago a young Scotch-born Irish­ Now, how did I know that, gentlemen ? He came into the T man, studying at a small German University, founded room without taking his hat off, as he would go into an and edited a newspaper for the benefit of his fellow students. orderly room. He was a soldier. A slight, authoritative air, combined with his age, shows he was a non-commissioned officer. A slight rash on the forehead tells me he was in Bermuda, and subject to a certain rash known only there." And to-day the eagle eyes of Sherlock Holmes, the " literary embodiment " of Dr. Conan Doyle's memoiry of the Edinburgh professor, glare down from every hoarding, l^^sk ^^^ searching the heart and life of the man in the street, while i men even forsake their discussions of " clean slates," " taber­ nacles," and " lonely furrows " in order to offer their solu­ tion of the latest Sherlock Holmes mystery—" The Hound of the Baskervilles." Sherlock Holmes has indeed entered into the nation's gallery of types ; his exploits are familiar as household words. Everyone knows that he keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe-end of his Persian slipper, and his letters pinned to the wooden mantelpiece with a jack-knife. It is given to few authors to see one of the children of their imaginings take his seat among the immortals ; of fewer still can it be said that they helped to make history. Whatever may be Dr. Conan Doyle's personal estimate of the great detective, however he may minimise his achievement—and it is said that at times he has expressed a wish that Dr. Wat­ son had never met Sherlock Holmes—it is not a small thing From fhoto by\ [Elliott and Fry. to create a character who will live in the nation's language. DR. CONAN DOYLE. And whatever may be said ot thought of Dr. Conan Doyle's During its short and somewhat chequered existence, the attitude on the burning questions of the war, it must be paper fully lived up to the editor's motto, " Fear not, and put admitted by all, independent of party or politics or personal it in print." antipathies, that Dr. Conan Doyle has done more than any The paper came to an untimely end; the motto has been living man to justify the conduct of this country in the eyes the guiding star of the career of Arthur Conani, Doyle. He of the world and before the bar of an impartial posterity. has followed it into many strange places. It has led him As the 'historian of the war he has helped to make during these last months to spend himself—his time, his history. money, his strength—in the furtherance of what he considers Arthur Conan Doyle was born at Edinburgh on the 22nd the cause of truth and justice. " Fear not, and put it in of IMay, 1859. He comes of an artistic family. His grand­ print," might stand at the head of everything that Dr. Conan father, John Doyle, was the political caricaturist, recognised Doyle has written upon the Boer War. It is certainly the as Gilray's rightful successor, whose pictorial skits appeared reason of the existence of his pamphlet—" The War in South for more than thirty years under the initials " H. B." without Africa, its Cause and Conduct," of which over 300,000 the disclosure of his identity. John Doyle's four sons were copies have been sold of the English edition alooe. likewise artists, the author's father, Charles Doyle, holding Twenty years agO' a medical student was mustering the also an appointment in the Civil Service. The first note­ patients in the consulting room of Professor Joseph Bell. worthy event in the life of Conan Doyle was a literary The doctor—a man with sharp, piercing, grey eyes, eagle achievement at the early age of six, a story of adventure, of nose, and striking features—sat in his chair with fingers terrible adventure, written in a bold hand on foolscap paper, together, and "just worked at the men or women before four words to the line, and accompanied by original pen him," diagnosing not merely their maladies but their lives. and ink illustrations. " There was a man in it, and there was a tiger," he writes of this youthful production. " I " Gentlemen," he would say to the students standing round, forget which was the hero, but it didn't matter much, for " I am not quite sure whether tliis man is a cork-cutter or a they became blended into one about the time when the slater. I observe a slight callus, or hardening, on one side tiger met the man. I was a realist in the age of the of his forefinger, and a little thickening on the outside of his Romanticists. I described at some length, both verbally thumb, and that is a sure sign he is either one or the other," and pictorially, the untimely end of that wayfarer. But His great faculty of deduction was at times highly dramatic. when the tiger had absorbed him, I found myself slightly " Ah 1" he would say to another man, " yoax are a soldier, a embarrassed as to how my story was to go on. ' It is very non-commissioned officer, and you have served in Bermuda, PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED APRIL, 1902.] THE BOOKMAN easy to get people into the whaler Hope, then scrapes, and very hard under the command of to get them out again,' Captain John Gray. f> I remarked, and I have The inducement was often had cause to repeat " two pounds ten a the precocious aphorism month and three shil­ of my childhood. On lings a ton oil money," this occasion the situation inclusive of an Arctic was beyond me, and my kit. "One of the book, like my man, was charms of the work," engulfed in my tiger." writes Conan Doyle of In his tenth year whaling, " is the gamb­ Dr. Conan Doyle was ling element inherent sent to Stonyhurst, in in dt. Every mian Lancashire, where he shares in the profits, developed remarkable and woe betide the har- powers as a raconteur, pooner or the boat- ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE AT steerer who by any THE AGE OF FOUR. a gift he turned to (Reproduced by kind permission of profitable account among clumsiness has missed a Messrs. George Newnes, Ltd.) his schoolfellows. Ele­ fish! He has taken a vated on a desk, before an audience of small com­ five-pound note out of ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE AT THE AGE OF FOURTEEN. the pocket of every rades, he grew grievously hoarse with much descrip­ (Reproduced by kind permission of tion of blood-curdling adventure. He has humorously meanest hand upon the Messrs. George Newnes, Ltd.) remarked that he stipulated for " Tarts down and strict ship. Black is his welcome when he returns to his business," and paused suddenly at the most thrilling fellows." " It is brutal work," he adds, speaking of crisis solely that apples or more pastry should be offered sealing, " though not miore brutal than that which goes on as an inducement to continue. This, too, was the scene to supply every dinner-table in the country. And yet those of early editorial effort, in which, as has already been told, glaring crimson pools upon the dazzling white of the ice­ he persevered when he left Stonyhurst for Feldkirch, in fields, under the peaceful silence of a blue Arctic sky, Germany. At the age of seventeen. Dr. Doyle entered did seem a horrible intrusion." There was no great Edinburgh University as a medical student, and obtained demand for surgery aboard the Hope, and Doyle's his diploma five years later. But an intense longing to chief occupations were keeping the captain in cut devote his time to literature remained always with him, and tobacco, working in the boats after fish, and teaching the the account of his early struggles towards the desired goal crew to box. Four whales and four thousand seals were is of real interest. In 1878, two years after the com­ the fruits of the voyage, and the Hope reached nearly mencement of his medical the 8ist degree of North Lati­ studies, his first accepted work tude. From the unexpected was published in Chambers's occurrence of suddenly shooting Journal, a periodical for which off a thin sheet of ice and he has always retained a kindly vanishing into the sea between feeling. He received three the two ice-blocks, Conan guineas for this story, which Doyle earned from the genial was entitled " The Mystery of Captain the nickname of " The Sasassa Valley," and was Great Northern Diver." Some based on an old Kaffir super­ trace of his varied Arctic stition concerning a " gloomy, experiences may be seen in his boulder-studded passage," noto­ story, "The Captain of the riously haunted by a demon Polestar." Originally written " with gloiwing eyes under the for Temple Bar, it was pub­ shadow of the cliff." In the lished later, together with a development, the glowing eyes number of other short stories, are found to consist of dia­ and passed through some four monds embedded in rock-salts, editions. and the youthful searchers after demons are rewarded finally by It was on his return to Edin­ a capture of far greater intrinsic burgh that he became ac­ value. quainted with Dr. Joseph Bell, and then commenced the final In 1880 Dr.