CONAN DOYLE SAYS SHERLOCK HOLIES “DID FOR HIM”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 608, 9 March 1929, Page 18

CONAN DOYLE SAYS SHERLOCK HOLIES “DID FOR HIM”

Great Story Writer Regrets Detective ? s Creation . . . Public Opinion Denies His Right to Faith in Spirit World! „ . . For= tune Spent on Research . „ «

u. IR ARTHUR CONAN 1 DOYLE is the greatest J puzzle and enigma in j } the literary circles of , mo( jem England. He ] created the most widely j lead and known character of modern ( times and made an enviable name and . fortune for himself, then suddenly ] espoused a belief and career that has 1 made of him a latter-day Don Quixote madly battling the windmills of contrary public opinion, losing friends and fortune. Has Conan Doyle failed dismally ns a large part of the English-speaking world will have it? Well, that all depends upon what you call success. After Sir Arthur and I had spent a day together, beginning in the bosom of his family in Buckingham Palace Mansions and concluding with our visit to his own Spirit Bookshop and the Chamber of Horrors in the basement beneath it, I came to the conclusion that he was the most gloriously successful man I had met in many a day, writes Mr. Henry Albert Philips. What if he did derive his happiness from ghosts? • Poor old Doylet He’s done for! i his confreres said when I mentioned his name. So I went around to see him, feeling sorry for him and ready to weep. I left him having learned a splendid lesson In life and how to laugh In a new way. Buckingham Palace Mansions! What an address to conjure with—in America. But I had learned to become suspicious of ‘‘mansions’’ ill London. It meant usually endless vows of "walk-up flats” at worst, or an oldfashioned dingy “elevator apartment” at best. Buckingham palace Mansions, the London dwelling place of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, proved to be one of the latter. 1 could read character all about the place the moment l was admitted to a tiny foyer hail and left standing there by the maid. Everything was > topsy-turvy; not untidy, mind you, for that implies indolence and inactivity, i whereas this pile of trunks and bags ! partially unpacked, that coat hanging ! by one sleeve on the rack, yonder j sticks and umbrellas trying in vain ] to stand up in the corner —they all i spelled violent industry and action, I suddenly interrupted by ever-new and more urgent calls. I had come all keyed up to meet a Sir Knight in his mansion, but this was more like a family man’s home. Presently someone burst into the other and of the long hall going at top speed—a big powerful man. X suspected at once that this was the driving engine responsible for the topsy-turviness scattered about. He bore down on me with extended hand. “Good-morning, sir. Sorry to keep you waiting. Come right along with me to the dining room. We'll be off in two ticks!” Each statement in rapidfire succession. He was on his way toward the dining room, 1 following with a feeling of being quite at home. All the while I sat there he was a picture of ceaseless energy, dashing from one thing to another—usually doing several things at a time, constantly springing up and seeking data Xn connection with the lantern slides he was tinkering with, going into the next room several times and hurriedly returning In a sort of ponderous way that he has. He was not light on his feet, but for such a big man he was sure and quick of foot. ‘‘Sherlock Holmes!” I said to myself. The most popular character creation in the English language in our day. The product of pure ratiocination, the most reasonable character and performer of plausible exploits, deduced from irrefutable facts and substantial clues. No; I simply couldn’t believe that this substantial reasoner-out of such a giant scheme of convincing deduction had gone spiritualistic, becoming one of the world leaders in psychic phenomena, supporting them In their weirdest assertions and demonstrations. I plunged right into the heart of the matter. "They’ve tried —I mean the Press in particular —to shake my faith, to show me up,” he came back with a belligerent twinkle in his eye. ‘‘l’ve been accused of chicanery and roguery and

blighted with lunacy, so intent is public opinion in denying me the right to have opinions and a faith of my own and to live my own mental and spiritual life in my own way. The public has been very kind to me in the past, but it is very near to being most unkind to me now. It is absurdly supine to say simply, that 1 am a spiritualist without offering evidences for my belief and proofs of my faith in my belief. Wood Gnome Found “Look here!” Sir Arthur turned with the air of a man about to reveal a trump card, opening a desk drawer and fumbling among many photographs and finally producing two enlargements. “Here are two photographs that X am showing for almost the first time. They were made by a couple of itinerant cyclists. Just a woodland scene, you see. Now look closely in tbis first picture and what do you see? There, standing against the tree! A wood gnome, he is! Curious little fellow, isn’t he?” He spoke fondly of a tiny creature, resembling in dress and appearance one of the little men familiar from\the pictures of those tiny fellows who waked Rip Van Winkle from his long sleep by playing at bowls. “Take note of his little legs, ho-.v like wood they are. I’ve learned that they’ve a great deal of wood in them, as a matter of fact, j and that you will nearly always find j them standing against or near a tree | this way. They have; such affinity | with wood, you know.” j No, I didn't know; nor did I believe a word of It, which only emphasised the point of it all—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, did believe it! Such keen zest and pleasure over it all. His character shone through it transparently. I could see that it was his whole attitude toward

his life and his work; one of good feeling, zest and high spirits, as though the 21-hour day were not long enough to allow him to give vent to all his overflowing energy and enthusiasm. “You may or may not have read a book I once wrote called "The Coming of the Fairies.’ It is a rdally amazing story of how I discovered—and proved to my complete satisfacton —the existence of living fairies. The weight of my evidence rested in the main on the photographs made by two little girls named Elsie and Frances, in rural England. “I’ve investigated these children, their surroundings and their families thoroughly. Most honest and reliable people they are. Simple folk with no tricks about them. The father was quite incensed because of all the fuss we made, asking so many questions. Since that book was published, an entirely new fairy photograph has turned up in South Africa from the same source. A girl there has produced a postcard photo from these girls, Elsie and Frances, on which is a perfect fairy picture! On it they wrote: ‘Oh, yes: there are a number of the little creatures about and we used to play ! with them.’ i “Of course, when my first article ap--1 peared in the newspapers, there was j a great deal of jeering about it, as usual.” To all of this I said quite the wrong

thing, but it was running so strongly in my mind that I could not resist it; besides, I couldn't bear to listen to any more fairy tales. “But have you really abandoned Sherlock Holmes for ever?” almost adding, “ —for these?” Holmes “Did Fo-r Him” I fancied that Sir Arthur sighed; at any rate, he gave me an almost hurt look. "You, too, hang on to Holmes, don’t you? Well, I shall be frank with you about that gentleman. I firmly believe that if I had never touched Sherlock Holmes —who has always tended to obscure my higher work — my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one! Once I had put Holmes before the reading public, however, I was done for. I tried for years after to write other and better things, but it was always for Sherlock Holmes they clamoured, and this demand I tried from time to time to supply, f regarded these stories —-and still do —as a lower stratum of literature. After doing two series of them X saw that I was in danger of losing all other literary identity. There seemed only one way out. I determined to cut short and end the life and rather remarkable career of our hero.

“During a holiday in Switzerland I saw the wonderful Falls of Reichebach. Here it was that Sherlock Holmes met his premature end! “Your concern about Holmes recalls that expressed by tne reading public over his death. It seemed genuine. My only feeling was one of relief, with my opportunity now unimpeded to pen up new fields of literary endeavour. Notwithstanding my best resolves in this direction, my hand was forced later to resurrect him and his exploits.” "Had you no prototype for Sherlock Holmes?” I persisted, fancying that a certain unction of accent as he discussed his well-beloved character came into his voice, despite his destructive words. A slight cloud passed over his sunny features. “There’s little left to tell, I fear. I really must take you back Into tbe mid-eighties to answer your question, when I was simply Dr. A. C. Doyle, rich in debts and poor in patients. “I had more time than patients on my hands and employed It often in scrio tiling down ideas. Holmes was one of them. I simply applied the principles of medical research to the construction of fiction, f reduced my—or Holmes’s, if you prefer—methods and theories to a science.

folly of the criminal.” “And will you write no more Sherlock Holmes tales?” X itressed. The Detective's Future He paused a moment. “Perhaps—l have been offered absurd sums to do it —and as 1 would have you know, I am giving all that I possess to our cause (by which he meant spiritualism and psychic research), my time and labour, my heart and soul, and, if need be, my fortune. Yes; Sherlock Holmes may have to help us out yet.” He laughed and rose to go. Butthere was a great to-do before Sir Arthur got off. I followed his rapid gait back to the foyer hall filled with tumbling trunks. He went round knocking at doors, inquiring: “Dear? Are you there, dear?” Lady Doyle’s voice finally responded and he went in. The atmosphere was redolent with happy domesticity. I was seeing the real that solved all doubts about such petty questions concerning success or failure. He came out and circled about like a retriever, looking for his coat; grabbed the small boy’s overcoat on the rack, tried to get it on, had difficulty getting it off and began to hippety-hop about again, when a small hoy’s voice piped: “Here it is, daddy!” Everybody bad to be kissed over again and we were off. We drove to the Psychic Bookshop that is directly across Broad Sanctuary from Westminster Abbey. It is a sizable bookshop and differs from others in that nothing 'but psychic and spiritualistic books are sold there. The really striking feature about the place is an exhibit of psychic phenomena and evidence in the basement of the shop. A shilling admission is charged, which is applied to a fund for the support of spiritualism throughout the world.

One cannot help but admire Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, not so much for what he is doing as because of what he has dared to do. It is as though a great conductor or composer of classic-'"” n-nuiar music had suddenly been seized with the x'eligious notion of joining the Salvation Army and saw fit, for the benefit of the cause, to employ his musical talent in beating the bass drum before jeering crowds on cold street corners. We have all been among such crowds on the curb and have superciliously dubbed these savers of souls as “failures”!

But the world does not get tbe idea. It never does in such cases. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Is made of the stuff of Savonarola and all the other working and fighting martyrs of religious conviction and intolerance. “I am devoting my life and fortune to psychical research.,” he told me repeatedly and triumphantly. "To me it is every-thing—-it is my life! I suppose X should be writing more of other things—if only for the money It brings. I may be forced into it yet. But life was never before filled with such promise of the imminence of wonderful things—and happiness!” A failure?

“Had I a prototype for Holmes? Well, I should hardly call it that.' However, there was a fellow, a surgeon at the Edinburgh Infirmary, who first set my mind working on the possibility of a future character. He had many out-patients and it so hapx>ened that it was my job to show them in and make simple botes on their cases. 1 soon learned that he always knew more of the patients by giving them a few rapid glances than X actually came to know through many questions. His method was one of deduction, like Holmes’s. To his audiences of young Watsons, it all seemed very miraculous until it was explained, when it became simple enough. And so It was that I began my own experiments In creating the sort of detective who could solve cases through his own ingenuity rather than because of the

I wish you could see the man! In his home, at work, facing his new job! If you want to see real success in life, then you should just gaze into tne face and eyes and behold the manner, the faith and the enthusiasm of Sir Arthur Conan xjoyle!