Did anyone read it?
Some nice photos.
And yes it has been read.
Showing posts with label Doyle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doyle. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Did anyone read It!
Did anyone read it?
Some nice photos.
And yes it has been read.
Monday, October 23, 2017
Under, "I did not know this!"
A.A. Milne played for the amateur English cricket team the Allahakbarries alongside authors J. M. Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle.
Allahakbarries.
Allahakbarries.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Doyle and WW1
Prose & Poetry - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
When World War One broke out in 1914 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried to enlist in the military stating, "I am fifty-five but I am very strong and hardy, and can make my voice audible at great distances, which is useful at drill."
His offer was refused but that didn't stop Sir Arthur from contributing to the war effort in every way possible. In fact, he was active in defence of his country even before war broke out.
The Prince Henry Tour
Conan Doyle had a strong feeling that conflict was coming after a 1911 automobile event. That year he took part in the International Road Competition organized by Prince Henry of Prussia. Known as the Prince Henry Tour, this contest was designed to pit the quality of British automobiles against German automobiles. The route took the participants from Hamburg, Germany to London.
Conan Doyle and his wife, Jean, were one of the British driving teams. Each of the ninety cars involved in the contest carried a military observer from the opposite team. Conan Doyle was surprised at the hostile attitudes of many of the German observers. He also heard much talk about the inevitability of war.
The British won the competition, but most of the participants came away with the conviction that war was near.
Danger!
Alarmed by what he'd seen in the Prince Henry Tour Conan Doyle began to study German war literature. He saw that the submarine and the airplane were going to be important factors in the next war. He was particularly concerned about the threat of submarines blockading food shipments to Britain.
Conan Doyle endorsed the Channel Tunnel proposal as a way of safeguarding Britain from this threat. The tunnel would run between France and England. Conan Doyle argued that the tunnel would ensure that Britain couldn't be cut off from the rest of Europe during wartime and would provide increased tourism revenues during peacetime.
Convinced that this was a vital precaution Conan Doyle eventually took his idea to the public in the form of a story. Danger! Being the Log of Captain John Sirius appeared in the July 1914 edition of the Strand Magazine. The story dealt with a conflict between Britain and a fictional country called Norland. In the story, Norland is able to bring Britain to its knees by the use of a small submarine fleet.
Sadly Conan Doyle's warnings were ignored, at least by the British. German officials were later quoted as saying that the idea of the submarine blockade came to them after hearing Conan Doyle's warnings against such an event. How much of that statement was truth and how much was propaganda designed to cause conflict within Britain is not known.
Private Conan Doyle
When war finally did break out in 1914 Conan Doyle was fifty-five years old. His age didn't stop him from trying to enlist in the military.
In a letter to the war office he stated, "I think I may say that my name is well known to the younger men of this country and that if I were to take a commission at my age it would set an example which might be of help." He went on to list some of his qualifications, "I am fifty-five but I am very strong and hardy, and can make my voice audible at great distances, which is useful at drill."
Despite his generous offer and his loud voice Conan Doyle's application was denied. However he was determined to help the war effort in any way possible. He next set about to organize defence units comprised of civilian volunteers. The War Office ordered those units to be disbanded and replaced them with units that were centrally administered through their office.
Conan Doyle's unit became the Crowborough Company of the Sixth Royal Sussex Volunteer Regiment. He was offered the command position in the new battalion, but Conan Doyle refused. He wanted to show his countrymen that all were equal in the defence of Britain. He entered the group as Private Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Power of the Press
In the first few weeks of the war three British cruisers were lost. The 1,400 men aboard the cruisers were lost as well. Conan Doyle thought the loss of life was preventable. He wrote to the War Office urging that each sailor be given an "inflatable rubber belt" to assist the sailors in case their ships went down.
Sir Arthur was never reluctant to use his personal popularity when fighting for a just cause. Therefore he also sent letters to the press proposing these very same ideas. He knew that while the War Office might ignore the voice of one man, it couldn't ignore the voice of public opinion.
His plan worked. The government soon ordered inflatable rubber collars, the forerunner of today's lifejackets, for the country's sailors.
Conan Doyle would use this same tactic later when advocating that lifeboats be carried on military vessels. He also urged that body armour be issued to frontline soldiers.
The British Campaign in France and Flanders
While World War One still raged on Conan Doyle began work on The British Campaign in France and Flanders. It was an extremely detailed history of the war. Conan Doyle was very proud of it and went to great pains to make it as accurate as possible.
He gathered material for the book from any sources including the British military. However the book wasn't as balanced as it could be. Conan Doyle totally trusted the material he received from some of his sources. The bias of these sources made its way into the book.
The British Campaign in France and Flanders was initially published in six volumes. The first volumes didn't sell well because they were published when the war was still being fought. The public wanted to hear about the day's battles rather that read a history of the early days of the war. After the war ended the public, possibly wanting a break from death and destruction, had little interest in reading about the conflict. Conan Doyle said the book was, "an undeserved literary disappointment".
From One War to the Next
Sir Arthur's suggestions on warfare were thought of as intrusive by some members of the British government. However he had some supporters as well. One of those, the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, would play an important role in World War Two. The man's name was Winston Churchill.
Article contributed by Marsha Perry at The Chronicles of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Click here to read Conan Doyle's account of fighting at Antwerp in 1914; click here to read his summary of the November 1917 Battle of Cambrai.
Source
A pdf copy of his book can be found Here
A pdf copy of his book can be found Here
Arthur Conan Doyle's eerie vision of the future of war
Thursday, June 16, 2016
I am awaiting Doyleokian's comments on this one.
Doyle's daddy issues were front and center onHoudini & Doyle this week
Houdini & Doyle just hinted at major family drama for Doyle — but did it happen in real life?
If you haven't been tuning into Fox's new series, Houdini & Doyle, well, you should be. But if you have and you're anything like me, you've likely been enjoying trying to decipher just how much of the historical crime drama is based on the real life narrative of the show's heroes.
If you're a history buff, this may be a simple task for you. For the rest of us, though, the truth can seem inextricable from the art — Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle both lived lives so extraordinary and peculiar that it isn't that far-fetched to thinkall of their arcs could have happened.
Thus far, we've already seen reference on numerous occasions to Houdini's deep and abiding love for his mother. Since this was a relatively well-known fact about the illusionist, that one wasn't too difficult to slide into the historical truth column.
But when this week's gripping episode delved into Doyle's obvious daddy issues, the reality of the relationship wasn't readily apparent. This was at least partially due to the fact that Doyle was in turn drinking heavily or hallucinating every time his father popped into the picture.
So, naturally, I decided to do a little digging.
In this episode, Doyle begins to come a bit unhinged when he gets notice that someone has submitted an offer to buy his childhood home. In a moment seemingly uncharacteristic for the gentlemanly character we've come to know on the show, he began binge-drinking to deal with his emotions. He even snapped at his beloved children, Mary and Kingsley.
As he, Houdini and Constable Adelaide Stratton investigate a string of cases tied to the local insane asylum, pieces of Doyle's past start to fall into place. His own father was institutionalized for apparent delusions, aggression and perceived mental instability.
On the show, Doyle stumbles across what he believes to be a conspiracy of abuse at the asylum — the same one that housed his father. When he confronts his father's doctor, he is subdued with drugs and constraints. They were about to give him a lobotomy when Houdini and Adelaide intervene.
Unfortunately, Doyle had already been poisoned (we later find out it was by a doctor he originally believed to be an ally). Due to this, he is suffering from hallucinations and, what's worse, his body is beginning to shut down.
Thus enters the main arc about his dad. Realizing he is dying, the rational side of Doyle's psyche knows he must shock his system to counteract the poison if he wants to survive. To do so, he must induce a state of extreme euphoria.
The only way to do so is to give himself the one thing that would heal the fractured heart that plagued him from a young age: peace over his father.
A visage of his father appears. At first, they bicker just like old times. Ultimately, though, Doyle's dad admits that he was jealous and foolish. He asks Doyle if he can do the one thing he did not have the courage to do when he was alive. With that, he leans in and embraces his now weeping son.
Shortly after, Doyle awakens in the hospital room surrounded by his kids and his crime-fighting partners. He immediately calls his children to his side and directly addresses them, saying, "I was never cross with you. I was cross with myself."
The sins of the father, as they say! But how much of that backstory is based in fact? As it turns out, a good deal of it.
Doyle's father, Charles, was born in 1832. In addition to one sister, he had three brothers who all grew to be splendid successes: a revered historian, a Punch cartoonist and an art-critic-slash-painter.
Charles, on the other hand, was not nearly as successful. Although he did bear some artistic inclination, he could never make a living from his paintings. He moved to Scotland at 17, got a clerk job as an architectural draftsman and married his landlord's daughter. They had 10 children, including Doyle, seven of whom actually survived infancy.
Like the Charles portrayed in this week's episode, the real Charles was a bitter and complicated man. He was an angry alcoholic (he also had epilepsy) who quit working in his 40s, after which time he largely drifted from institution to institution. And, like his onscreen counterpart, the real Charles did die in an asylum in 1893.
Also mirroring Doyle's real-life history? His alleged mercurial moods around his children. It is posited that the strain of caring for his ailing wife, Louise, sometimescaused him to be curt or sharp with Kingsley and Mary (although, by most accounts, he was still a loving and lovable father).
So, in a word, yes — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the esteemed author, did have daddy issues in real life. Kudos once more to Houdini & Doyle's brilliant writers for spinning history into an immensely enjoyable arc tinged with both truth and fiction.
Monday, May 9, 2016
Houdini and Doyle, what can we expect. . . . .
This weekend I watched the first episode of Houdini and Doyle not knowing what to expect.
The episode, and I am guessing the rest of the series will be like it, centers on a murder case that seems to center around spirits and ghosts.
With Houdini trying to prove it wasn't a supernatural killer and Doyle, of course, trying to prove it was. In between is a sensible female constable trying to prove herself in a mans world.
Doyle is of course irritated that the public is still crying for more Holmes while he is trying to prove he is capable of more than that.
Lots of Doyle connections are made throughout the show. Two of Doyles children are present in the household, as is Doyles first wife.
The most fun about the new show is the Victorian settings and costumes and the young female police constable played by Rebecca Liddiard. While women were still not present on the police force at this time, her character balances Doyle and Houdini. (Nor had Doyle and Houdini actually when this show is set.)(And the context of how much Doyle was involved with spiritualism at this period of time is a little off also.)
I think this will be a fun show, and much like Sherlock and Elementary it could become a game of catching as many Doyle and Sherlock Holmes references as one can.
I will let Doyleokian tell us how much is fact and how much is accurate.
With Houdini trying to prove it wasn't a supernatural killer and Doyle, of course, trying to prove it was. In between is a sensible female constable trying to prove herself in a mans world.
Doyle is of course irritated that the public is still crying for more Holmes while he is trying to prove he is capable of more than that.
Lots of Doyle connections are made throughout the show. Two of Doyles children are present in the household, as is Doyles first wife.
The most fun about the new show is the Victorian settings and costumes and the young female police constable played by Rebecca Liddiard. While women were still not present on the police force at this time, her character balances Doyle and Houdini. (Nor had Doyle and Houdini actually when this show is set.)(And the context of how much Doyle was involved with spiritualism at this period of time is a little off also.)
I think this will be a fun show, and much like Sherlock and Elementary it could become a game of catching as many Doyle and Sherlock Holmes references as one can.
I will let Doyleokian tell us how much is fact and how much is accurate.
Monday, March 21, 2016
Just another side of the story. . . .
A Study in Spiritualism: What happened when the creator of Sherlock Holmes visited Tacoma
Whenever you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author and physician, 1859-1930
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Public domain Public domain
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known as the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
But what many Sherlock fans might not know is that the man who created the world’s most famous fictional detective — a character who epitomizes the rational and the scientific — also championed a mystical practice called spiritualism.
Spiritualism posits, among other things, that the living can communicate with the dead. Conan Doyle wrote several books on the subject, attended seances and traveled the world proselytizing for the cause.
And, in June 1923, the famous author stopped in Tacoma as part of a North American spiritualism speaking tour.
This week, as Holmes comes to life once again in a new BBC special airing on American public television, it’s a good moment to learn more about the time Conan Doyle visited the City of Destiny to talk about the afterlife, ghostly ectoplasm and a grisly Tacoma murder.
I HAVE HELD THE ECTOPLASM BETWEEN MY FINGERS, AND IT SEEMS TO BE ALIVE, VITALIZED
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Spiritualism gained popularity in the early 20th century, thanks in part to famous disciples such as Conan Doyle.
Back in 1923, The Tacoma Daily Ledger treated his visit as a celebrity event. It was front page news. The Ledger offered an advance story — a fanciful account of a supposed encounter on a train between the great author and a Ledger reporter. The surprise ending reveals all, and it turns out to be a case of mistaken identity on the part of the reporter.
But when the real Conan Doyle came to town, The Ledger was ready.
The newspaper covered his lecture, delivered at what then was called the Scottish Rite Cathedral, a type of Masonic lodge. Today, the building next to Wright Park is the home of the Tacoma Bible Presbyterian Church and Western Reformed Seminary.
The Ledger reported on the author’s visit in its June 11 edition under the headline, “Religion futile, says lecturer; mysteries of ectoplasm are explained by English author and scientist.”
The Ledger offered Conan Doyle’s description of ectoplasm: “a plastic substance, not yet fully understood, which comes from the body of the medium” (a person with psychic power who can communicate with the dead).
“I have held the ectoplasm between my fingers, and it seems to be alive, vitalized,” Conan Doyle continued. “It must not be confused with the spirits, for they are only using it.”
Conan Doyle described his views on the afterlife, which he likened to a beautiful park or a bucolic countryside.
He told Tacomans why he believed spiritualism was on the rise: “Old religions have lost their power and the new revelations have come to give man something tangible to comfort him … what we have got to find now is a religion that will be compelling — and that is exactly what we get in these new revelations.”
READ THE WORD ‘PROPHET’ AS ‘MEDIUM,’ AND ‘ANGEL’ AS ‘HIGH PRIEST.’
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Perhaps the most interesting Ledger article was one in which Conan Doyle speculated on the outcome of an unsolved Tacoma murder.
More than a year before the writer came to Tacoma, a husband and wife had disappeared from their home. Circumstances, The Ledger revealed, led police to believe the wife had been murdered and cremated in the heating stove of their house. The husband had not been found, The Ledger reported.
As Conan Doyle and the reporter strolled through the rear garden of the Tacoma Hotel, The Ledger asked whether a medium might help crack the case.
“Many mysterious cases have been solved with the aid of mediums, when all other means have failed,” Conan Doyle said.
He recommended a medium named Van Berg, who then was in Portland and reportedly coming to Tacoma soon. Van Berg had found a missing banker’s body in London by “surrounding himself with the dead man’s effects and concentrating on a crystal ball,” Conan Doyle related.
“Could you solve the case?” The Ledger asked.
“No,” Sir Arthur admitted. “I could not. I do not posses mediumistic powers myself.”
Conan Doyle then went on to discuss several other phenomena. He said Ouija boards, in the hands of the right mediums, could be used by the spirit world to send messages to us.
And he spoke of his belief that even the Bible supports spiritualism: “Read the word ‘prophet’ as ‘medium,’ and ‘angel’ as ‘high priest.’ ”
BY THE TIME HE WAS IN HIS LATE TEENS, ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE HAD FALLEN AWAY FROM THE CATHOLIC FAITH OF HIS CHILDHOOD
What drew Conan Doyle to this mysterious practice?
Born into a Catholic family in Edinburgh, Scotland, Conan Doyle was the son of an artist who also suffered from mental illness and alcoholism.
Young Arthur attended a Jesuit school, then studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. That is where he met Joseph Bell, a brilliant diagnostician whose powers of observation, Conan Doyle would later say, inspired the character of Sherlock Holmes.
By the time he was in his late teens, Conan Doyle had fallen away from the faith of his childhood. He declared himself an agnostic, but at the same time he started reading about what were called the “new religions.”
As a young physician, he was fascinated by practices such as hypnotism, mesmerism and other paranormal experiments that coexisted with science in his era.
Conan Doyle attended his first seance in 1880. He would later write: “After weighing the evidence, I could no more doubt the existence of the phenomena than I could doubt the existence of lions in Africa.”
Spiritualists believe the dead continue to evolve as they make their way into an afterlife that is more advanced than human existence. They believe the spirits of the dead can serve as a moral and ethical guide for the living.
Conan Doyle came to fully embrace spiritualism after the death of his son, Kingsley. Wounded at the Battle of the Somme in World War I, Kingsley was recovering from his battlefield injuries when he was struck down by the Spanish influenza epidemic.
Like other relatives of the war dead, Conan Doyle was grief-stricken, and bitter. He declared: “Christianity is dead. How else could 10 million young men have marched out to slaughter?”
Conan Doyle and his wife attended a seance, where the writer was convinced he heard a message so personal that it had to have come from Kingsley.
“It was his voice and he spoke of concerns unknown to the medium,” Conan Doyle said.
MOST OF THE SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHERS WERE EVENTUALLY DISCREDITED
His fascination with the supernatural soon grew to include other phenomena as well.
Spirit photography purported to show the dead appearing to the living in the form of photographs. A portrait of an individual would appear, with a ghostly image of a deceased loved one peering just over the subject’s shoulder.
Conan Doyle wrote a book, “The Case for Spirit Photography,” and he posed for photos, including one that shows him and what he believed to be the spirit of his dead son.
Today, so-called spirit photographs can be recognized for what they are: double exposures. But photography in Conan Doyle’s day was not yet the familiar art it would later become with the invention of smaller, more portable cameras that made photos accessible to everyone.
Most of the spirit photographers were eventually discredited as frauds. But Conan Doyle continued to defend them.
He also took up the cause of two cousins from Cottingley, England. The two young ladies became famous for their appearances in a series of five photographs that seemed to show them frolicking in the woods with miniature fairies.
Conan Doyle wrote about the photos in The Strand magazine, the same publication that had published some of his Sherlock Holmes stories. Although the photos of the Cottingley Fairies, as they came to be known, were widely criticized as fakes, Conan Doyle said they offered more evidence of the existence of the supernatural world.
Again, he fought back with a book, “The Coming of the Fairies.”
Many years later, the two cousins admitted most of the photos had been faked, using cardboard cutouts. But one of the girls still maintained that the fifth photo was real.
IN THE SHERLOCK HOLMES STORY, “THE FINAL PROBLEM,” CONAN DOYLE TRIED TO KILL OFF HIS DETECTIVE
Conan Doyle met Harry Houdini when the magician and escape artist toured Europe. They found they shared a mutual interest in the afterlife and seances, where Houdini sought to contact his beloved deceased mother. The writer and the master of illusion struck up a friendship.
But Houdini’s knowledge of how to pull off a good trick soon led him to believe that mediums were nothing but scam artists who preyed upon the grieving and were trying to profit from the spiritualist movement.
He set out to debunk them. That led to a public feud between Conan Doyle and Houdini that played out in an exchange of letters in The New York Times.
Houdini wasn’t alone in criticizing Conan Doyle. Throughout his lifetime, the author faced opposition from skeptics and scientists. But his fame from writing the Holmes stories — not to mention the wealth the stories generated — meant Conan Doyle could afford to dismiss his critics. And he often did so in print.
But celebrity was a double-edged sword for Conan Doyle. He came to regard the fame that the Holmes stories brought him as something of a curse, and a distraction from more serious writing.
In the story, “The Final Problem,” Conan Doyle tried to kill off his detective. At the end of the story, readers were led to believe that Holmes and his evil arch-rival, Professor Moriarty, had tumbled to their deaths as they fought above a Swiss waterfall.
But Holmes fans wouldn’t allow their beloved Sherlock to die. Public pressure eventually forced Conan Doyle to resurrect Holmes in what many regard as one of the finest Holmes stories, “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”
Shortly after Conan Doyle died on July 7, 1930, a large gathering was held in his honor in the Royal Albert Hall in London. Four years later, more than 500 people turned up at a seance at which a recording was made, allegedly of Conan Doyle speaking from “the other side.”
You can listen to the recording at the website of the British Library, where Conan Doyle delivers a message that says, in part, “Take care of my boys and my good wife, Jean,” and “God help our movement forward.”
Debbie Cafazzo: 253-597-8635, @DebbieCafazzo
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOLYE IN SOUND AND ON FILM
This is supposedly a recording of Arthur Conan Doyle speaking from beyond the grave:bit.ly/1QX3tvy
This is a recording of Conan Doyle speaking about spiritualism: bit.ly/1NSXv93
This is a short film in which Conan Doyle talks about both Sherlock Holmes and spiritualism:bit.ly/1OUSwod
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Happy St. Parrick's day!
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Irish Mystery
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As Sherlock Holmes fans celebrate the 125th anniversary of the novel in which Arthur Conan Doyle introduced his famous sleuth, Tom Deignan investigates the author’s Irish roots.
The two recent Sherlock Holmes movies starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law have earned well over one billion dollars worldwide, so it’s no surprise that screenwriters are currently toiling away at another installment of the lucrative franchise. Current Hollywood buzz has it that filming of the third Sherlock Holmes flick will begin sometime next year, with the movie in theaters possibly by Christmas 2014.
Sherlock Holmes — who celebrates his 125th birthday this year — shows no signs of slowing down. Author Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation, who first appeared in the 1887 murder mystery novel A Study in Scarlet, has had a long life in books and on radio, in television and stage adaptations, and in the movies.
Generations of Sherlock Holmes fans have watched the sleuth, alongside his trusty sidekick Dr. Watson, wield his trademark magnifying glass in order to navigate fog-shrouded British streets, debating theories in plummy accents. The most iconic Holmes, perhaps, is Basil Rathbone, who played the great detective in over a dozen films, and even Robert Downey, Jr. earned raves for his British accent.
Though he never really went out of style, Doyle is currently enjoying a renaissance. In addition to the film franchise, consulting detective Holmes is also the subject of two hit television series that give Doyle’s stories a contemporary spin: In Britain, the BBC mini-series Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and in the U.S., the new CBS show Elementary, featuring Johnny Lee Miller, Lisa Liu, and Aidan Quinn.
Exploring Irish History
Given Sherlock Holmes’ undeniable British pedigree, it may come as a surprise to some that his creator actually comes from a strong Irish Catholic background. Indeed, both the Conan and Doyle families — not to mention the Foleys, on the great writer’s mother’s side — all hail from Dublin. One of Arthur’s uncles, Henry Doyle, was a prominent artist who went on to serve as director of the National Gallery of Ireland.
Given Sherlock Holmes’ undeniable British pedigree, it may come as a surprise to some that his creator actually comes from a strong Irish Catholic background. Indeed, both the Conan and Doyle families — not to mention the Foleys, on the great writer’s mother’s side — all hail from Dublin. One of Arthur’s uncles, Henry Doyle, was a prominent artist who went on to serve as director of the National Gallery of Ireland.
As for Arthur Conan Doyle himself, though best known for creating Sherlock Holmes, he also wrote many stories that explore Irish themes and characters. Perhaps most interesting to Irish Americans is the fourth and final Sherlock Homes novel, The Valley of Fear (1915), which may have been inspired by two notable episodes in Irish history — the rise of the Molly Maguires, the secret organization that sought to improve labor conditions in Pennsylvania in the 1870s, and the Phoenix Park murders in Dublin in May of 1882. (Lord Frederick Cavendish, the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Henry Burke, the Permanent Undersecretary, were fatally stabbed by members of the Irish National Invincibles.)
More broadly, Doyle (1859 – 1930) was alive to witness some of the most tumultuous years of Irish political history, from the post-Famine years to the Easter Rising to the Irish Civil War.
Doyle actively followed the so-called “Irish question” and corresponded with prominent Irish nationalists such as Erskine Childers and Roger Casement.
However, from his fiction to his political positions, Doyle was complicated. For example, despite his strong Irish roots, he once defended British policy in Ireland. So it is fitting that the greatest mystery writer of them all has created quite a mystery about his own past: Precisely how did Arthur Conan Doyle’s Irish background influence his writing?
A Dublin Family
John Doyle (Arthur’s grandfather) was born in Dublin in 1797, into a devoutly Catholic family with an artistic bent. John, who was already showcasing his work at 17, married fellow Dubliner Marianne Conan, a daughter of a tailor, in 1820. Two years later they sought a new life in London, where they soon had three children while John was struggling to succeed as a painter.
John Doyle (Arthur’s grandfather) was born in Dublin in 1797, into a devoutly Catholic family with an artistic bent. John, who was already showcasing his work at 17, married fellow Dubliner Marianne Conan, a daughter of a tailor, in 1820. Two years later they sought a new life in London, where they soon had three children while John was struggling to succeed as a painter.
After changing his artistic style, John Doyle eventually found success as a political cartoonist. The children kept on coming, as the family moved to the more affluent neighborhood of Hyde Park. They lived in a home where party guests included Benjamin Disraeli and Charles Dickens.
John and Marianne gave birth to Arthur Conan Doyle’s father, Charles, in 1832.
The great writer’s mother, meanwhile, was born in Dublin. The daughter of a doctor who died young, Mary Foley moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, where her mother established a boardinghouse. Charles also had moved to Scotland as a young man. Mary Foley and Charles Doyle married in 1855 and settled in Edinburgh.
Doyle himself acknowledged his strong Irish roots in his 1924 autobiography Memories and Adventures. “I, an Irishman by extraction, was born in the Scottish capital,” Doyle wrote.
Of his parents, he said: “Two separate lines of Irish wanderers came together under one roof.”
A Visit to Waterford
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859. He was baptized at St. Mary’s Cathedral and received a Jesuit education into his teenage years, before studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh.
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859. He was baptized at St. Mary’s Cathedral and received a Jesuit education into his teenage years, before studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh.
Doyle was only 20 years old when he published his first story in a Scottish journal. As early as 1881, Doyle spent time with family in Ireland, visiting Waterford during a time of agrarian unrest that came to be called “The Land War.” Doyle wrote of his time in Ireland in an essay (with photographs) called “To the Waterford Coast and Along It.”
In 1885, Doyle married Louisa Hawkins, and the couple went to Ireland for their honeymoon. Throughout the 1880s, however, Doyle struggled as both a writer and doctor. Patients were not exactly knocking down the door of his practice, and publishers and journals rejected many of Doyle’s manuscripts. One magazine that finally agreed to publish a new work by Arthur Conan Doyle was Beeton’s Christmas Annual. The November 1887 edition of that magazine contained a story called “A Study in Scarlet.” Critics in The Scotsman and Glasgow Herald newspapers liked the story. Little did they know that the history of literature was about to change.
Sherlock — and Support for Irish Home Rule?
“A Study in Scarlet” was the first story to feature a detective named Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson. Doyle eventually achieved widespread popularity, with Holmes starring in three subsequent novels: The Sign of the Four (1890), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) and The Valley of Fear (1915).
“A Study in Scarlet” was the first story to feature a detective named Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson. Doyle eventually achieved widespread popularity, with Holmes starring in three subsequent novels: The Sign of the Four (1890), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) and The Valley of Fear (1915).
But just as he was more or less creating the modern detective novel, Doyle was also exploring Irish themes in stories such as “That Little Square Box,” “The Heiress of Glenmahowley,” “Touch and Go: A Midshipman’s Story,” and “The Green Flag.”
“These stories are testimonies to Doyle’s keen and sympathetic interest in Irish political grievances,” writes Catherine Wynne, author of the scholarly text The Colonial Conan Doyle.
And yet, despite his roots and his visits to Ireland, the now-successful Arthur Conan Doyle opposed Irish Home Rule in the early 1900s.
“I was what was called a Liberal-Unionist, that is, a man whose general position was Liberal, but who could not see his way to support Gladstone’s Irish Policy,” Doyle himself wrote in his memoirs, referring to the British prime minister who supported Home Rule for Ireland.
The famous writer’s attitude changed in the coming decade. In February 1912 he wrote a letter to Roger Casement stating: “Yes, I feel strongly for Ireland and hope I may strike some blow in that cause.”
On the other hand, Doyle felt compelled to add: “I see the British point of view very clearly, also. However, from both points of view, I am convinced that Home Rule is the solution.”
Scholars such as Catherine Wynne believe Doyle never quite resolved the tensions he felt about Ireland. On the one hand he saw himself as an Irishman, visited Ireland and followed the political situation there. But he was also a successful writer who shied away from more radical political ideas. Wynne believes this conflict manifested itself in Doyle’s writing, leading him to follow the tradition of Gothic Irish literature, a genre perhaps best exemplified by the Dublin-born writer Bram Stroker, the author of Dracula.
Doyle and Ireland
Doyle’s “preoccupations with colonialism are demonstrated in recurring obsessions with land, mind, racial identity and sexuality,” Wynne writes. “The Gothic is an important mode within the colonial context because… it gives a voice to those who are without power and are disenfranchised.”
Doyle’s “preoccupations with colonialism are demonstrated in recurring obsessions with land, mind, racial identity and sexuality,” Wynne writes. “The Gothic is an important mode within the colonial context because… it gives a voice to those who are without power and are disenfranchised.”
Doyle’s complex take on Irish matters is perhaps most evident in the final Sherlock Holmes novel, Valley of Fear.
Part of the novel takes place in 1875, and features a meeting on a train during which two passengers (one carrying a gun) identify themselves as members of a secret society most critics believe was based on the Molly Maguires.
Doyle was said to be fascinated by James McParland, the detective who infiltrated the Molly Maguires. He met with William Pinkerton – head of the private detective agency that McParland worked for – and many speculate that hearing the Molly Maguires story from Pinkerton inspired Doyle to write Valley of Fear and to base the detective character on McParland, who was born in Armagh.
One of the key characters in Valley of Fear is lost at sea. However, Sherlock Holmes fears he was in fact executed and thrown overboard. This echoes the death of James Carey, who informed on his fellow comrades in the Irish National Invincibles, the group that perpetrated the murders in Phoenix Park. Carey was shot dead on board a ship by Donegal man Patrick O’Donnell, an Irish revolutionary who likely had relatives who belonged to – you guessed it – the Molly Maguires. O’Donnell may even have visited Pennsylvania as part of his search for the informant who exposed the Phoenix Park assassins.
In the end, Arthur Conan Doyle’s relationship with Ireland may have been complicated, but it was most certainly intimate. In fact, if Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law stay at this long enough, it’s more than likely that they will someday be in a scene featuring an Irish-American coal miner with a gun on a train.
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