SHERLOCK HOLMES

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 130, 28 November 1931, Page 21

SHERLOCK HOLMES

AND PYSCHIC PHENOMENA

In writing his memoir of C'onan Doyle —("Arthur Conan Doyle: A Memoir," John Murray)—the Rev. John Lauion<J has allowed his boundless admiration for Conan Doyle to lead him to extravagant eulogy, whilst at the same time his enthusiasm for spiritualistic beliefs has made him. obscure his hero in his desire to vindicate those beliefs. Those who are primarily interested in Sir Arthur Conan Poylc as Itic romantic novelist, the vivid descriptive writer, the user of clean, strong prose, and above all the infinitely ingenious creator of Sherlock Holmes, will be disappointed in this book. But those who are mainly attracted to him as the indefatigable apostle of Spiritualism will find that his life has provided an admirable text for a readable and generally reasonable discourse. Although Conan Doyle preferred his historical novels, such as "The White Company," to his Sherlock Holmes stories, yet it was Sherlock Holmes who made his fortune. Conan Doyle knew perfectly well the limits of his literary powers, and within those limits he excelled. It was as a writer primarily, and not as a Spiritualist, that Conan Doyle was known to the world, so it is rather a pity that Dr. Lamond should, in this memoir, be so much concerned with spiritualistic propaganda. He is careful to explain that in Doyle's case, as in Sir Oliver Lodge's, it was not merely the shock of losing dear relations in the war which turned him to Spiritualism. Though that, for him, was the turning point, he had for many yoars of his life been a painstaking student of psychical research and a frequent attendant of spirit seances. But after the war he threw the whole of his energies into a struggle against what seemed to him the materialistic torpor of the age, and he concluded that this could only be successful "through the interposition of supernormal forces. ' Dr. Lamond suggests that, amongst other things, tho recent Hawkes Bay earthquake was a manifestation of these supernormal forces.