Conan Doyle Deduces
Conan Doyle Deduces is an article published in the The Washington Post on 6 november 1894.
Report of the lecture "Readings and Reminiscences" given by Arthur Conan Doyle on 5 november 1894 at the Metzerott Music Hall (Washington, USA).
Report
CONAN DOYLE DEDUCES
The Famous Novelist Tells of His Early Struggles.
SHERLOCK HOLMES DEAD FOR GOOD
Some of the Great Mythical Detective's Exploits "Deduced" by the Doctor at Metzerott Hall — His Early Struggles in Fiction Writing and the Unkind Things Said and Done to Him — Aspirations for a Higher Field Already Gratified.
If any of the people who think of the originator of Sherlock Holmes as a ferret-faced detective with a taste for literature and the word "deduction" written all over him in large letters, they would have been very much disappointed on seeing him as he appeared at Metzerott Hall last night in the person of Dr. Conan Doyle. The doctor is a big, good-natured, and not quite typical Englishman, but with the supposedly British characteristics of a broad accent, slight diffidence, and deliberateness of speech ; the sort of a man who is good and substantial to look at, and whom one would not mind knowing better.
Dr. Doyle read a little from his own stories, though he said he would rather read the stories of some one else, and told of his early literary struggles, which was probably refreshing news to those of the audience with literary aspirations. For the successful author, like Conan Doyle, who springs rapidly into popularity, is generally looked upon as a favored being who was born on the "sunny side of Easy street." His early struggles are not generally known, unless, like the doctor, he tells of them himself.
Conan Was Insulted.
"I wrote short stories for ten years,"
said he, "without advancing a step, and I might have kept on at that work the rest of my life but for comparative chance. My first story was a tale written when a young practicing physician, in 1878. I sent it off with deep misgivings to the publisher of a very small provincial magazine, confidently expecting to get it back, and my only disappointment was that the publisher did not fulfill my expectations. But the start counted for nothing. There is a custom in England, which I find does not obtain here to the same extent, of keeping anonymous all but a few of the articles in the leading magazines, so that an author does not become known to his public. To be sure he escapes some of the lashings of critics, but not always even that, for one of my friends ran after me on the street one day, with a copy of a morning paper, and shouted, ‘Oh, I say, Doyle, have you seen what the Times has about you this morning?' I looked at it. It was, "The Cornhill has a story this number that would make Thackeray turn over in his grave.' Now, as Thackeray was the first literary man of my acquaintance, having danced me on his knee when I was a baby, and I had a great admiration for him, this seemed like a pointed, personal insult.
And the Stuff Came Back.
"Finally I determined to branch out, and wrote a book to which I had my name. It was an ultra sensational novel, and it went the rounds of many publishing houses. The publishers all sent it back with the assurance that they could see nothing in it, an opinion that I was grieved to share most fully. Finally it was published, and I must say now in looking back at it my conscience would rest much easier had it never seen the light of day."
In speaking of his later and more enduring work, Dr. Doyle told how "Micah Clark" had been returned to him from numberless publishing houses, but was finally accepted through the recommendation of Andrew Lang. The publishers' adverse criticisms on that successful volume before it came out were very amusing, the complaint of one publisher in declining the proffered work being that he was sure people did not talk that way in the eighteenth century. The success of "Micah Clark," the speaker said, was the key that opened to him the door to literature, and the only thing that remained was for him to create something worthy of being carried through.
In connection with this historical novel, Dr. Doyle said he had some ideas of his own concerning that class of work before he commenced writing. It was impossible, he said, to invest a love story 200 years old with the flavor of close reality ; in Ivanhoe no one cared two straws whether the hero married Rebecca or Rowena, or whether he married either of them. The interest lay in the tourney, the outlaws of Sherwood, Friar Tuck and the lion-hearted Richard. So in his own first historical novel there appeared scarcely a petticoat, and in his opinion no one missed it.
It Was Time for Sherlock to Die.
Of the most popular of his own creations Dr. Doyle spoke rather slightingly. "It is perhaps true,"
he said, "that one pleasant gentleman, who has been a very good friend to me, has been treated rather scurvily. In fact, if I had killed a real man I could have called down scarcely more popular indignation than when I killed Sherlock Holmes. The letters that rained in on me ranged from the funny to the pathetic, and were bitter and vindictive, as though I had broken some of the criminal statutes. People went so far as to write, asking for photographs of Mr. Holmes at various ages, locks of his hair, and the like. But it was justifiable homicide, and when a man has been the hero of twenty-six stories it is about time for him to get out before he outstays his welcome."
Dr. Doyle said that his model for Sherlock Holmes was an old professor in the University of Edinburg, where he studied medicine. The old gentleman followed the same process of reasoning that made the mythical Holmes famous, and with equal success. The lecturer read some extracts from the Sherlock Holmes stories, the ingenious piece of reasoning in the "Sign of the Four," by which Holmes reads the history of a man's life from the watch he has worn, and another from the "Memoirs," where Holmes and his brother sit in the club window and read the character and calling of the passers by from their outward appearance.
A Case in Point.
The extracts were each received with a friendly round of applause, and when the Doctor finished he said, "Of course, when it is all explained in this way it is very plain and simple, but lest you should think even more lightly of it than it deserves I will mention one case that occurred between Holmes and his friend Watson that has not found its way into print. It was when they were out on the track of a mysterious murder and Watson picked up a charred wad of tobacco from the ground. 'It has been smoked in a pipe,' said Watson. 'Yes, in a merschaum pipe, said Holmes. Now I will leave you to deduce that for yourselves."
The lecturer acknowledged his indebtedness to M. Daupin, of the Rue Morgue, for some of his inspiration in the analytical line, but while Poe was the first and greatest detective writer, for himself the speaker could not feel satisfied with that line of work. "I am much like a young painter,"
said he, "who has a love for oils and large classic canvases, but who finds somewhat to his chagrin that his small caricatures for the comic papers pay much better and are more popular with the public. Still I insist that I will practise with my oils and do as much of the higher class work as I can."
In alluding to that most fascinating novel, "The White Company," the speaker said that he had read 115 books in its preparation before putting pen to paper. It was very much as Charles Reade had said of "The Cloister and the Hearth." "I milked 300 cows into my pall, but the butter was my own for all that."
It will interest many to know that Dr. Doyle thinks "The Cloister and the Hearth" "the greatest novel of this cenury."
The lecture abounded in other interesting features, stories of the lecturers' early childhood and his premier attempt at novel writing at the mature age of six, of his mother's serial stories, told to him in chapters night after night by the fire, of his own adventures in Arctic ice and in the African tropics, none of which, he said, approached in vividness or enjoyment his first adventures of the same sort in company with Capt. Maryatt and Mayne Reed.
Dr. Doyle remains in Washington to-day, and then goes to Newark and Philadelphia.
