Saints and Sinners: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Saints and Sinners: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is an article written by The Candid Friend published in John Bull on 18 february 1922.
Saints and Sinners
Pen Portraits of Prominent People
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
More years ago than I care to remember, I was taken by a well-known sportsman to a famous cricket match at Lords. The match was not in progress when we reached the ground, and I was hustled to the nets to see the famous players at practice. Now I wanted to see all the great guns of the county cricket world. But my host insisted on standing by the nets and watching the batsman, of the name of Doyle — a name which was quite unfamiliar to me in the world of cricket. I think I got restive. Here was a very fine batsman, but I had come to Lords to feast my eyes on Jackson, Fry, MacLaren, Hayward, and the rest.
At last, when the great unknown tossed the ball back to the bowler, and sauntered back to the pavilion, my host turned round to me and whispered in accents of adoring worship: "Don't you know who you have been watching? That man is Conan Doyle — the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the great detective."
I was never more astonished in my life. So this was Sherlock Holmes? You all know what Sherlock Holmes is like in print — a thin frail man with a dark and haggard face, smoking interminable pipes, living in a dressing-gown, and occasionally having resource to drugs. And here was Sherlock Holmmes' creator. A typically robust specimen of British manhood, bronzed with travel, and slowing with the health of an athletic life!
Yet in very truth this was Arthur Conan Doyle, suit as he surprised me then by the contrast between this weird and wonderful work and his own healthy, essentially common-sense, masculine personality, so he has astounded me since — when he became the High Priest of England in a new "religion" familiarity known to us to-day Spiritualism.
Let us just glance at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's record. His early days are an admirable tale of sanity and industry. The son of an artist, he was born in Edinburgh in 1859. He was educated at Stonyhurst — and so since his spiritualistic revelations" has become an apostate Catholic. He was also senior Physician to the Langman Field Hospital in South Africa. He has practised as a doctor at Southsea, and giving full vent to his robust and hardy nature, has travelled widely in such vastly different regions as the Arctic and the West Coast of Africa. During all this time he was busy writing novels — the extraordinary Sherlock Holmes series, and fine vigorous romances of heroism like the "White Company" or that splendid tale of the old English prize ring, "Rodney Stone." AS if this was not enough, he actually appeared twice in the arena of politics.
Had he been successful in Hawick Burghs as a Tariff Reformer, it is possible that the world would have heard less of the modern cult of Spiritualism than it is doing at the present time.
The next and most remarkable phase in the career of this man of many contrasts was his sudden and passionate avowal of a Spiritualistic creed. To the amazement of all who had regarded him as the very emblem of British sanity and common-sense, Sir Arthur came forth and trumpeted to the world the announcement that he was in constant touch with the dead and was associated with persons of such transcendent gifts that they were even more familiar with their dead relatives and sweethearts than you or I are with our next door neighbour.
Like everything else that he put his hand to, this stolid Scot tackled his new theology with all his customary thoroughness. He engaged in a vast correspondence on the subject. He attended innumerable séances at which "inspired" mediums — some of them of an entirely illiterate character — produced many astonishing manifestations from the other world. Not only did "spirit writing" toys bought at popular toy-shops deliver astounding messages from the "other side," but tambourines shook and danced round Sir Arthur — who finally tells us that he actually saw and held converse with the spirits.
With his reputation for level-headed sobriety, such sensational pronouncements from him at a time when nearly every family in the country was mourning the recent loss of some dear one in the Great War, created a profound stir of human anxiety and hope. Then came his lectures on the subject, and his books. As the result of his efforts, and those of Sir Oliver Lodge, the spiritualistic fever spread amongst the wives and widows of England with the rapidity of a prairie fire. Now, during the war JOHN BULL repeatedly comforted its bereaved readers. No word was uttered in these columns which could shake the faith or shadow the hopes of any wife, mother, sweetheart or orphan. But I say most earnestly to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to-day that I cannot accept the curious manifestations in his creed messages of comfort. Like Sir Arthur, JOHN BULL ask for manifestation. But we don't want manifestations of dancing tambourines, turning tables, thundering megaphones, supposed to be in direct communication with Heaven, or spirit voices that sing comic songs or cackle gibberish which is hardly distinguishable from the language of a chimpanzee.
JOHN BULL asks for but one manifestation of a new religion. It requires proof that the religion in question has made its adherents live cleaner, better and nobler lives. One act of self-sacrifice is worth more to us than all the tambourines which ever danced of their own accord in this world. When Sir Arthur can bring us proof that Spiritualism has started to perform the miracle which is known as a change of heart, JOHN BULL, will discuss the subject again in all seriousness. In the meantime, I cannot but regard Sir Arthur as a man with a double character. On one side is the sane sport-loving healthy Britisher. On the other side is the mysticism of the muddle-headed medium sitting in dark parlours. And I cannot but ask myself, is there not only method but also madness in such a mysticism ?