Dr Conan Doyle as a Lecturer (report 1 december 1893)
Dr Conan Doyle as a Lecturer is an article published in The Inverness Courier on 1 december 1893.
Report of a lecture "Facts about Fiction" given by Arthur Conan Doyle on 29 november 1893 at the Inverness Music Hall (Inverness, UK).
Report
Dr Conan Doyle as a Lecturer. — On Wednesday evening the Inverness Music Hall was crowded with an audience assembled to hear Dr Conan Doyle, the well-known novelist, deliver a lecture which he had entitled "Facts about Fiction." Mr Charles Innes, who presided, happily introduced the lecturer as the creator of the inimitable "Sherlock Holmes." Dr Conan Doyle, a tall, pleasant-looking man, speaks in a full, clear voice, with coolness and deliberation, and now and then with a faint trace of a Scottish accent. His lecture treated of the younger generation of writers rather than of those who have achieved the full measure of their reputation. It was difficult, be admitted, to estimate how far the works of the present would rank with their great predecessors. It was particularly difficult in the case of the younger men, because so much was promise rather than performance ; but it was possible at least to perceive the qualities of their work, and so to discriminate their characteristics. He acknowledged that there were no writers of fiction of the present day who had the ear of the world like Thackeray and Charles Dickens. But while this was the case, the writing of fiction as an art was now better understood ; and he claimed that the average quality of that art was never higher than at the present day. The field, too, was widening, writers were coming in from their Colonies, and Anglo Celtic voices were calling to each other from the ends of the earth. We had, for instance, Rudyard Kipling giving in his intense and volcanic style some reminiscences of the East ; from another far off corner of the globe Miss Olive Schreiner reflected in her pages something of that sadness which hangs over the South African belt ; Stevenson, exiled away in the South Seas, had given us books which were full of the crash of the breakers and the rustle of the palm leaves ; Rider Haggard had shown us something of the romance which hangs upon the border line of civilisation ; and in Australia we had a young school of writers springing up to maintain the reputation of British fiction. Coming to details Dr Doyle began with Robert Louis Stevenson, and went on to discuss Olive Schreiner, J. M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, and others, winding up with an amusing passage from Jerome, who had not, he thought, received justice at the hands of critics. His lecture was interspersed with short quotations, setting forth the literary felicity of Stevenson, the humour and realism of Barrie, and the happy touch of "Q." It was interesting to hear Dr Doyle, one of the younger generation of novelists, appraising with so much cordiality and acumen, the genius of so many of his contemporaries. His analysis of their works was alike friendly and just, without extravagance and without detraction. His lecture was listened to by the large audience with close attention, and at the close, on the motion of Mr E. H. Macmillan, he received a cordial vote of thanks.
