SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1610, 7 January 1903, Page 29

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

Speaking at the annual dinner of the London Press Club, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle remarked that it was a trite proverb that every nation got the press it deserved. Trite or not, the proverb lias a great deal cf truth in it, and as much of a sound and permanent working principle. The theme it opens up is a wide and an interesting one; but at the moment our purpose is to givo it a personal application. ' If England’s conduct of the war in South Africa has the champion it deserves, then Englishmen, wherever found, need have no qualms as to its justice and humanity. Difficult as it would be to exaggerate the healthy and helpful influence of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s presentation of the facts of the campaign—a presentation that has made him par excellence a “maker of public opinion”—it would be no easier to over-estimate the breezy influence of his personal character on all that he does and says. He is a man of large views and open nature, and a lover of the open air; hence his habitat amidst the Surrey hills is in keeping with his character. We might without hesitation, describe him as a “typical Englishman,” were we noit aware of the claims of an Irish descent and a Scottish education. These claims apart, and from the standpoint of our critics on the Continent, the description will always hold good. With the build of a King’s Guardsman, merry, laughing eyes, fine charm of manner, love of adventure, and to' adventure given, fondness for sport, faculty for continuous toil, full of the right sorb of patriotism, gifted with - lasting “grit,” and the possessor of a large fund -of genuine humour, he is a living counterpart of his own fictional creation, the Brigadier Gerard. Soldier at heart, and descendant of a soldierly line; a student of science, who has thrown by his conduct as well as by his pen a halo of romance about the career of the humble medical practitioner ; voyager, novelist, dramatist, poet, historian and volunteer, by whom the work of the field hospital, in South Africa, no less than that associated with the Surrey rifle ranges, was taken up for love as well as from a sense of duty, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has in his time - played many parts, and played them all well.

And yet he is a young man. . Born in Edinburgh on May 22, 1859, he spent his boyhood partly at storied Stonyhurst and partly in Germany. At the age of seventeen he returned to the Scottish capital to work as a medical student. It was during . this period that his first essay, in fiction—a story called “The Mystery of the Sassassa Valley”—was written, to be at once accepted by “Chambers’s Journal.” In 1879 he signed articles as a doctor on board an Arctic whaler, and spent his

twenty-first birthday under the Polar star. Then, once more, he made Edinburgh a ’vantage ground; and, after taking his full academic degree, he saw service as surgeon on a West African passenger beat. In 1882, he settled at Soutlisea, as a general practitioner, pursuing more particularly a study of the eye. He remained in Soutlisea till 1890, at which dat-e he found time to write, amongst other stories, it ho brilliant '.novels, “Mr call C.arke” and “The White Company,” and thus prove his right to be classed with Charles Lever and other medical who have been also men ot letters. Wo are nob forgetting the creation of Sherlock Holmes in “A Study in Scarlet” (1887), but with the writer of a brilliant little series of sketches of “Novelists of To-day,” which appeared a short time back in the “Literary World,” we are disposed to place the mudh-disousaod and thrice-resurrected detective in the background as compared with Sir ArDoyle’s serious work. In 1891, when he was practising in. Wimpolo street, as an eye specialist, our author gave us “The Refugees,” than which we know no finer novel of its kind. There is good work also in “The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard,” “The Stark-Munno Letters,’' and “Rodney Stone,” wherein the versatility of th 9 man who is at once a member of the Authors’, the Reform Che stood, by the way, as a Liberal-Unionist candidate for his native city in 1900), the M.C.C., and the National Sporting Clubs, is displayed to special advantage. But to return to our subject as a “maker of public opinion.” The story of his pamphlet on the Boer War has been told frequently. At this moment the reviewers are busy on his splendidly impartial and practical “History” of the campaign in South Africa. Here we are able to append the latest statistics regarding the circulation of both pamphlet and history. Of the pamphlet, which is entitled, “The War in South Africajits Cause and Conduct,” 300,000 copies of the British edition were printed ; this is exclusive of large American, Canadian and “Tauohnitz” editions, the figures of which are not aicjoeissibile. Of the foreign translations, France and Germany each had 20,000 copies. printed, , while Italy, Russia and Holland (including Dutch Belgium) issued editions of 5000 each. For the monoglot Welsh 10,000 oopies were printed, and Spain absorbed the same number. Portugal and Hungary each demanded two editions, making totals of 3500 and 800 G respectively. In Norway, where the special preface addressed to the natives had to he heliographed across country on account of the 'delay in communication owing to snow, 3000 copies were printed. In addition to all these editions, two editions de luxe were prepared, by friends of England in Switzerland, and in France; and a small edition Was prepared for Roumania. Copies were also printed in Tamil and Kanarese characters for the benefit of the natives of India. Lest any should remain unconvinced through physical infirmities, an edition in Braille type was issued for the blind. .The larger and more important work, “The Great Boer War,” was first published in October, 1900;, and has since then gone into eighteen editions.