CONAN DOYLE By ARTHUR S. MAC NALTY, M.A., M.D. (OXON.), F.R.C.P. (LOND.)

LONDON, ENG. nniHE late eighties and the early Vere Stackpoole, H. H. Bashford, I nineties of the last century Francis Brett Young and Austin Free- I produced a high level of liter- man. These are the names that come JL- ary output which for varied to one’s mind but there are many excellence is almost unique in our liter- more. ary history. Robert Louis Stevenson Even more closely than the Minister was still writing and new authors (play- of Religion the doctor is brought into wrights and novelists) who have now contact with the lives of his fellow achieved their meed of recognition mortals and, given the gifts of imag- were coming to the fore: Rudyard ination and composition, his material Kipling, Bernard Shaw, J. M. Barrie, for a work of fiction is ready to hand. H. A. Jones, A. W. Pinero, H. G. Like Sir , his literary Wells, Stanley Weyman, Anthony ancestor, was Hope, Hall Caine, Rider Haggard born in . The date was and many others. May 22, 1859. He came of an old In comparison, the plays and fiction Anglo-Norman family who had settled of the present day furnish a shadowy in Ireland for many generations. There contrast to this wealth of imaginative was a strong artistic strain in his literature. blood, his grandfather being the great Into this field of high endeavor caricaturist, John Doyle, who signed stepped the burly form of Conan Doyle his cartoons “H. B.,” while one of his to take by right of his imaginative uncles was Richard Doyle, the designer genius a leading place. His name will of the cover of Punch. Charles Doyle, endure if only because he was the crea- the novelist’s father, was a Civil tor of “,” albeit, as Servant in the Government Office of this article will attempt to show, he has Works in Edinburgh and eked out his many other claims upon the gratitude meager salary of £240 per annum by of posterity. painting pictures and illustrating First of all he was a doctor, no bad books. He married Mary Foley, an training for a life of letters. There have Irishwoman, in 1855. They had six been many literary physicians from children, four girls and two boys, of St. Luke, “the beloved physician,” whom Arthur was the elder. It was a down to modern times: Sir Thomas hard struggle for the Doyles to bring Browne in the seventeenth century; up this family on so little. Conan Tobias Smollett and Oliver Gold- Doyle’s sympathy and appreciation smith in the eighteenth century; John of the fact that his mother bore the Brown, and Samuel burden of the strain were aroused at Lover in the nineteenth century; an early age. Often he said to her, Robert Bridges, the late Poet Laure- “When you are old, Mammie, you ate; Oliver Wendell Holmes and S. shall have a velvet dress and gold Weir Mitchell in the United States; glasses and sit in comfort by the fire.” and today Somerset Maugham, H. de In later life he proudly added: “Thank God, it so came to pass.” It is the medical practitioners in the vacations. mothers of Great Britain who have He was very poor in those days but the helped their sons to achieve greatness. bent to literature was already with Arthur described his boyhood as Spar- him and, as he tells us in “Through tan at home and more Spartan still at the Magic Door,” not infrequently the Edinburgh Day-school, which he the few coppers allowed for his lunch attended from the age of seven to went in the purchase of some second- nine, where a one-eyed tawse-brand- hand book such as Gordon’s Tacitus, ishing schoolmaster who might have Pope’s Homer or Addison’s Spectator. stepped out of the pages of Dickens As the student daily passed by the made their young lives a misery. twopenny tub filled with tattered Occasionally, distinguished books “a combat ever raged betwixt friends of his artist grandfather came the hunger of a youthful body and to Edinburgh and visited the Doyles. that of an inquiring and omnivorous Conan Doyle was always pleased to mind.” But when the lunch was for- recall that he once sat on Thackeray’s gone the volume was treasured all the knee. more for the sacrifice. At school, young Doyle became a It was in these days that he wrote fighter: “Oh, Arthur what a dreadful his first short story: “The Mystery of eye you have got!” cried his mother the Sassassa Valley,” for which, to his one day; “You just go across and look great joy, he received three guineas at Eddie Tulloch’s,” retorted the from Chambers’ Journal. young victor. Before Conan Doyle qualified, he The Doyles were Roman Catholics paid a seven months visit to the Arctic and, after two years at Hodder, the Seas on a Whaler, the Hope, in the preparatory school, Arthur entered year 1880. He was rated as ship’s Stonyhurst where he remained until surgeon. The voyage enlarged his he was sixteen, winding up a successful knowledge of mankind and brought in public school career by taking honors fifty pounds to the family exchequer. in the London Matriculation Examina- At the end of 1881 he took his degree tion. Bernard Partridge of Punch and as Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Father Bernard Vaughan were among Surgery at Edinburgh. He now had a his school-fellows. profession which for the next ten years After a year at Feldkirch, which is a of his life he sedulously practiced and Jesuit school in the Vorarlberg prov- was eventually to abandon except for ince of Austria, to learn German, in a brief return during the South African October 1876 he entered the Univer- War. For the moment, some reference sity of Edinburgh as a medical student. must be made to his professional In a strenuous four year course (as it career. There seems little doubt that if was then) Conan Doyle worked and opportunity had served, Conan Doyle played hard. He passed his examina- might have been a great physician or tions creditably, he played as a surgeon. He had a sound knowledge forward in the Edinburgh University of his profession; he was endowed with Rugby team and he became a first- sympathy and imagination; but the class amateur boxer. At the same time narrow circumstances of home-life he earned money for his medical fees prevented him from taking those by acting as an unqualified assistant to unpaid hospital appointments which are the stepping-stones to the higher But Conan Doyle’s real ambition walks of medicine. His father’s health was to be an historical novelist. In had failed and it was incumbent 1889 “,” a story of the upon him to earn money as the sole Monmouth Rebellion, was published mainstay of the family. So first of all by Longmans on the favorable report he went as ship’s surgeon on a voyage of their reader . It was to West Africa and then, unfortu- followed by “The Sign of Four,” nately, joined in practice at Plymouth another Sherlock Holmes story, and in 1882 an eccentric fellow-student this in turn by “The White Com- whom he calls “Cullingworth.” The pany,” a study of Edward ill’s whole story of this man’s extraordi- reign. nary methods of practice and of his In 1890 Doyle was at the parting of heartless betrayal of Conan Doyle the ways. His literary success was can be read in Doyle’s book “The growing; his medical practice was Stark Munro Letters.” The associa- stationary. On returning from a visit tion culminated in Doyle leaving to Berlin where he had been to see Plymouth and in putting up his Koch’s work on tuberculin, he met plate as a medical practitioner in Sir Malcolm Morris, the dermatologist, Portsmouth. who urged him to seek a wider field In the intervals of waiting for for his activities. After some months patients Dr. Doyle wrote some fifty of study at Paris and (in the or sixty stories for many of the best latter city he wrote “The Doings of magazines. He did not contribute Raffles Haw”) he left Portsmouth and much to medical literature, but he set up in Wimpole Street as an eye- took his m.d . degree at Edinburgh and specialist. Three months sufficed for he wrote a paper on “The Gouty this experiment for at the end of that Diathesis.” He married Miss Hawkins time the memorable “Adventures of in 1885. His first novel, “The Firm of Sherlock Holmes” were appearing in Girdlestone,” a sensational romance, . The first came was already written and after wander- out in July, 1891; the last in 1927. ing from publisher to publisher lay The fifty-six stories in broken series neglected in a drawer. covered a period of thirty-six years Now came the beginnings of suc- and, as the author wrote, “those who cess, at first unrecognizable. When a first read of Sherlock Holmes as student, Conan Doyle had been greatly young men have lived to see their struck by the gifts of Joseph Bell, grown-up children following the same Surgeon to the Edinburgh Infirmary, adventures in the same magazine.” not only for diagnosis but also for Although, as I have hinted, the char- detecting occupation and character. acter of Sherlock Holmes has some Mr. Bell inspired the creation of hereditary features, in his presentation Sherlock Holmes aided not a little by by Conan Doyle he was original and M. Dupin, Edgar Allen Poe’s scientific unique. He has become a classic more detective. Sherlock Holmes made his real to us than many a living acquaint- bow to the world in “A Study in ance and this verisimilitude is shared Scarlet.” Refused by several pub- by his brother-in-arms, Dr. Watson, lishers it was eventually sold outright whom we love for his very obtuseness. for £25. In proof of this there is the story of the char-a-banc full of French school- forty-four and first-class cricket, boys who desired to see first of all in chielly for the M.C.C., up to the age of London the Baker Street rooms of fifty. His skill at billiards was great Sherlock Holmes. and he got into the third round of the Sherlock Holmes was a great amateur championship. Golf, tennis, achievement, a landmark in literature, cycling and motoring also shared his yet strange to say it was belittled to affections and he introduced skiing me in a conversation I once had with into Switzerland. He was a fair shot his creator. He said he felt that detec- and an early advocate of miniature tive fiction was on a lower literary rille-ranges. He used his knowledge of plane and that these stories had over- boxing to good effect in “Rodney shadowed much of his better work as a Stone.” military historian and as an historical Conan Doyle not only wrote about novelist. It may be so, but the fact adventures, but whenever possible he remains that in the detective story sought for them. In 1896, he was a war Conan Doyle stands supreme in spite correspondent in Egypt and saw some- of a countless host of imitators. At thing of Kitchener’s early frontier intervals Doyle strove to escape from warfare in the desert. He utilized his his Frankenstein. He killed Sherlock Egyptian experiences in “The Trag- Holmes at the falls of Reichenbach edy of the Korosko,” which relates the and the public never ceased to clamor adventures of a party of tourists until he came to life again. So in the captured by the dervishes. end Doyle compromised. He wrote At the age of forty, foiled in his novels that pleased him, like “The hopes of securing a commission in the Refugees,” a story of the epoch of Imperial Yeomanry, he went out to Louis xiv, and of the French in the South African War as Senior , and “,” in which the Physician of the Langman Field Hos- characters of “” pital and fought enteric fever with the reappear, and from time to time re- same zest with which he faced the warded his less instructed readers with bowling on a tricky wicket. His book, an adventure of Sherlock Holmes. As “The Great Boer War,” is the most one who must be numbered with them, readable history of that long drawn- I well remember with what eagerness out campaign and ran into some six- we rushed to purchase the new number teen editions. On his return to of The Strand Magazine in which the he wrote a pamphlet entitled “The promised story was to appear. There Cause and Conduct of the War in can have been nothing like it since South Africa” which did much to “Pickwick” came out in monthly stem the tide of vilification of Great parts. Later on came the book in which Britain on the Continent. This had an Sherlock Holmes appears at his su- enormous sale both in this country preme height, “The Hound of the and abroad. Baskervilles.” Conan Doyle twice stood for Parlia- With literary success established ment. In 1900 he contested Central and a sound financial position, Conan Edinburgh as a Liberal Unionist and Doyle once more distinguished him- in 1905 Hawick Burghs as a Tariff self in the world of sport. He played reformer. Both scats were Radical Association football up to the age of strongholds and, in spite of a gallant fight in which Doyle won on each described it. From the outset, Lady occasion the respect of both friends Doyle identified herself with her hus- and opponents, he was unsuccessful. band’s work and was a true helpmeet In the end he realized that he could do in his manifold activities. more useful public work out of Parlia- Crowborough, Sussex, was Sir ment, unfettered by allegiance to a Arthur’s address, but despite con- political party. tinued literary activities he was fre- The work that he did in this direc- quently away from home generously tion was enormous. Not only his pen fulfilling the many claims which were but his money and personal energies made upon his time. In 1914 he visited were always at the service of noble the United States and Canada. causes. He was the great knight-errant The Great War came and added to of modern times, his lance ever in rest the burden of his work. In his village against injustice and wilful ignorance. in Sussex he formed the first Volunteer But for his unceasing advocacy the Force and served in the ranks as a wrong done in the conviction of a private. He surveyed the French and harmless solicitor named Edalji would Italian Fronts at the invitation of the never have been righted and Oscar Government and his interesting re- Slater would still be stigmatized as a ports on these visits and on different murderer for a crime which he never aspects of the war did much to hearten committed. the public in those difficult anxious Doyle’s great short story, “Dan- days. Conan Doyle also wrote a ger,” together with an article in The history of the war in several volumes Fortnightly Review, written eighteen which, I fear, has failed to receive the months before the outbreak of the war, appreciation which it deserves. He, directed public attention to the sub- himself, did not escape unscathed, for marine menace and re-read in the light his eldest son who had been badly of later experience are little less than wounded on the Somme died of prophetic. His book “The Crime of the pneumonia in the hour of victory, as Congo” helped to put an end to the did also his beloved brother, General Congo atrocities. These are striking Innes Doyle, who had been the com- examples out of many others which panion of his early struggles at testify to Conan Doyle’s patriotism Portsmouth. and public spirit. They are facets of By now, Sir Arthur was sixty years his many-sided character which have of age. He could look back on a life been imperfectly appreciated. rich with the fruition of his genius and In 1902 he received the honor of industry, and full of both public and Knighthood and was appointed Dep- private service to mankind. He loved uty Lieutenant of Surrey. The Univer- his home life. None could have blamed sity of Edinburgh gave him the him for withdrawing from the dust and honorary degree of l .l .d . conflict of the public arena. But in Sir Arthur’s first wife had died in the evening of his days the veteran 1906 and towards the end of the year knight-errant felt the call to a new 1907 he married Miss Jean Leckie. Crusade. The Faith in which he had The marriage proved an ideal one, been brought up gave place at first to “an Indian summer deepening to a scientific agnosticism and this in turn golden autumn,” as he poetically to a deeply religious outlook on life after thirty years’ study of psychical with Jules Verne and H. G. Wells on phenomena. Whatever one’s creed or their own ground and not unsuc- prejudices, nobody who heard Sir cessfully. is a Arthur lecture or speak on spiritual vivid personality. “A Duet with an matters could doubt his fervent belief Occasional Chorus” is an amusing in the gospel that he preached. His excursion into the domestic novel and earnest convictions and the faith that he was an inimitable writer of short burned within him led him to travel all stories. He wrote his autobiography, over the world and to endure much which he entitled “Memories and Ad- physical discomfort, mental strain, ventures,” in 1924, and many abuse and controversy. In the end, he books and papers on his psychical gave his life for the work to which he investigations. had felt himself dedicated. He died of Conan Doyle is eminently readable. heart disease on July 7, 1930, at three He has no tricks of style and writes score years and ten, worn out by his in lucid straightforward English. He latter days of endeavor. “The world is wrote quickly, and his work sometimes upheld by the veracity of good men: suffered from the speed. We remain they make the earth wholesome. They puzzled as to whether Watson’s prac- who lived with them found life glad tice was in Kensington or Paddington and nutritious.’’ I never met Conan and as to whether he was wounded in Doyle without realizing the meaning the arm or the leg. These are minor of this saying of Emerson. Life was all inaccuracies and detract little from the better for seeing him. The sterling the vivid presentation of the story. worth of the man appeared in every He wrote one great dramatic sketch word that he spoke and in many an “A Story of Waterloo,” in which unrecorded act of kindness and good- Henry Irving played the star part of will. You can mark the same spirit in Corporal Gregory Brewster. Many of his writings. Each one of them is clean his books were turned into successful and wholesome. plays and films. He was a versatile writer and He was pre-eminently the novelist achieved success in many fields of of romance and adventure and his literature in addition to the Sherlock books are a priceless heritage to a Holmes stories. All his historical novels jaded world. Besides all this, his life are good. A student of the Napoleonic was a great romance. He knew poverty Age, he delighted us with the exploits and affluence, lack of recognition and and adventures of “ ” world-wide fame. He spent his great and with the little cameo of the gifts freely and often over-generously Emperor in “Uncle Bernac.” His for the public weal. He was a prophet, medical stories like those in “Round a preacher, a novelist, a soldier, a the Red Lamp” are the best medical physician and an athlete. But I like stories ever written, for actual experi- best to think of him as one of the most ence as well as genius went to the noble and righteous of men whom it making of them. In “The Lost World” has been my good fortune to meet in and “” he competed this vale of tears.