Sussex and the Stories of Conan Doyle
Sussex and the Stories of Conan Doyle is an article written by Gilbert Pass published in The Sussex County Magazine in may 1936.
Sussex and the Stories of Conan Doyle
Over sixty volumes stand to the credit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but of these only six have a Sussex interest. They are Rodney Stone (1896), nearly the whole action of which takes place in Sussex; Sir Nigel (1906), which contains some scenes in the county; The Poison Belt (1913), the main action of which is at Rotherfield; The Valley of Fear (1915), in which part of the action occurs at the Manor House of Birlstone, Sussex; His Last Bow (1918), a collection of short stories about Sherlock Holmes, in which the action of the tale which gives the title to the book occurs in Sussex, and one story from The Maracot Deep, in which the scene is laid at Hengist Down, in Sussex. This is an interesting and nearly representative group from the works of a most capable writer who has given an immense amount of pleasure to his readers.
Born in Edinburgh on May 22nd, 1859, Arthur Conan Doyle was the son of an artist, and nephew of the well-known Richard Doyle, who was for many years a contributor of drawings to Punch. Educated at Stonyhurst and Edinburgh University, he was trained as a doctor, and took his M.D. degree. He practised at Southsea from 1882-90, and there he began to write. His first book, A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887, introduced Sherlock Holmes to the public, and two years later The Sign of Four appeared. It was, however, the exceptional success of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which came out serially in the Strand Magazine in 1891, that made Conan Doyle abandon medicine for the time being and devote all his energies to literature. He had already written, in 1890, The White Company, in which he showed his skill in a very difficult literary form that he afterwards exploited with varying degrees of success in The Refugees, The Great Shadow, Rodney Stone, Uncle Bernac, Sir Nigel, and the three volumes of excellent short stories dealing with Brigadier Gerard — a group of historical romances of considerable interest and merit. As a short story writer he also showed great skill and versatility. In the ordinary domestic novel which he attempted in A Duet with an Occasional Chorus his success was more limited. He published one or two books of verse containing much competent — if not inspired — work. An excellent short story, A Straggler of '15, was made into a one-act play called "Waterloo," and performed with great success by Sir Henry Irving. Later in his literary career he was to create Professor Challenger who, in The Lost World, The Poison Belt, and other tales, was to give pleasure to many readers by the fierceness of his character and his withering contempt for most of the rest of humanity. With the coming of the great Boer War, Conan Doyle returned to medicine and went out to South Africa as senior physician to the Langman Field Hospital. He also became the historian of the War, and the government apologist for it. No doubt it will be recalled that this war aroused much unfavourable criticism on the Continent. Conan Doyle wrote a booklet which was translated into twelve languages. It was entitled Causes and Conduct of the War: an Attempt to Place the True Facts before the Peoples of Europe. Of this, 100,000 copies were distributed in an early attempt at international propaganda on a large scale. For his services Conan Doyle received the honour of knighthood, and was also created a Knight of St. John of Jerusalem. He was interested in politics, and twice unsuccessfully attempted to become a member of Parliament. Edinburgh University conferred upon him an honorary LL.D. for his services to literature.
After first writing A Visit to Three Fronts, he again became an historian in the Great War, and wrote in six volumes The History of the British Campaign in France and Flanders. Towards the end of the war he was much attracted by Spiritualism, and this subject, for the rest of his life, became his absorbing interest, and the main call on his time, energy and fortune. Outside this, the most important work of his later years was his autobiographical Memoirs and Adventures, published in 1924.
It is interesting to note that Conan Doyle was able to apply the methods of Sherlock Holmes to cases in which he was convinced that injustice had been done. Thus it was due to his efforts that Edalji, the Indian lawyer, was released after he had been sent to prison for the extraordinary crime of cattle maiming. Conan Doyle wrote a book called The Case of Oscar Slater, and it was owing to his insistence and assistance that Slater was retried by the Court of Criminal Appeal (which did not exist at the time of his condemnation), and found "Not Guilty" after he had served part of a life sentence, for which, however, the Government granted him some measure of financial compensation.
Conan Doyle lived for some years at Crowborough, and died on 7th July, 1930.
Rodney Stone, of which the sixth impression appeared in 1914, and which has been reprinted since then some dozen times, is a capital historical romance. The time of action is placed in the last years of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth. The scene is mainly at Friar's Oak, Cliffe Royal, and along the Brighton road.
Rodney Stone relates the story, but the real hero is Boy Jim Harrison, the apparent nephew of Champion Harrison, the blacksmith and ex-pugilist. It is with Jim's fortunes and adventures that the book mainly deals. A minor theme is the introduction of Rodney Stone to the great world of fashion into which he is brought by his uncle, Sir Charles Tregellis, the Corinthian and buck, who is later to be displaced as the final arbiter on matters of dress by Beau Brummel. Sir Charles Tregellis was
- ... a type and leader of a strange breed of men which has vanished away from England—the full-blooded, virile buck, exquisite in his dress, narrow in his thoughts, coarse in his amusements, and eccentric in his habits. They walk across the bright stage of English history with their finicky step, their preposterous cravats, their high collars, their dangling seals, and they vanish into those dark wings from which there is no return. The world has outgrown them, and there is no place now for their strange fashions, their practical jokes, and their carefully cultivated eccentricities. And yet behind this outer veiling of folly, with which they so carefully draped themselves, they were often men of strong character and robust personality. The languid loungers of St. James's were also the yachtsmen of the Solent, the fine riders of the shires, and the hardy fighters in many a wayside battle and many a morning frolic. Wellington picked his best officers from amongst them...
Interesting historical characters appear, among them the Prince Regent in his deplorable palace at Brighton, a permanent blot upon the landscape; Nelson and some of his more famous captains, and Lady Hamilton in her most theatrical mood. The historical atmosphere is well sustained. The characterisation is excellent : Boy Jim, Sir Charles Tregellis, Ambrose the valet, Champion Harrison, Miss Hinton, Sir Lothian Hume, to mention only some, are creatures of flesh and blood in whose fortunes the reader is compelled to take a live interest. There is a good plot and some most thrilling scenes. The two boxing contests are wonderfully described (Conan Doyle was to score a similar triumph in his fine short story "The Croxley Master"), and the race on the Brighton road between the coach of Sir Charles Tregellis and that of Sir John Lade is full of thrills. Altogether an excellent tale of full-blooded adventure, Rodney Stone is to be warmly commended to all who enjoy this type of story.
Sir Nigel is also a fine historical romance but deals with a much earlier period. By a strange literary chance, The White Company, which is the sequel, was written sixteen years earlier. The time of the story is from 1348 to the battle of Poictiers, at which Nigel gains his knighthood, eight years later. The book opens with a passage containing some of the best atmospheric prose that Conan Doyle ever wrote. It describes the coming of the Black Death. Unfortunately, space will not permit quotation of more than the first paragraph:
- In the month of July of the year 1348, between the feasts of St. Benedict and of St. Swithin, a strange thing came upon England, for out of the east there drifted a monstrous cloud, purple and piled, heavy with evil, climbing slowly up the hushed heaven. In the shadow of that strange cloud the leaves drooped in the trees, the birds ceased their calling, and the cattle and the sheep gathered cowering under the hedges. A gloom fell upon all the land, and men stood with their eyes upon the strange cloud and a heaviness in their hearts. They crept into the churches, where the trembling people were blessed and shriven by the trembling priests. Outside no bird flew, and there came no rustling from the woods, nor any of the homely sounds of Nature. All was still, and nothing moved, save only the great cloud which rolled up and onward, with fold on fold from the black horizon. To the west was the light summer sky, to the east this brooding cloud-bank, creeping ever slowly across, until the last thin blue gleam faded away and the whole vast sweep of the heavens was one great leaden arch...
Sussex comes but little into this book, the main action occurring in France, but mention is made of Winchelsea, Shoreham, Hastings, and Rye, and that fine character, Samkin Aylward, comes from Easebourne, near Midhurst. The atmosphere of Sir Nigel is well sustained, and the picture of the times when knights-errant still rode forth in search of adventure, "worshipfully to win worship" is skilfully drawn throughout. Sir Nigel's love story is charmingly related, and the brutality as well as the gallantry of the times is emphasised. Of many exciting scenes, the fight with the Spaniards at sea, the taking of the castle of La Brohiniere, the battle of the thirty at Ploermal, and the battle of Poictiers are outstanding.
The Poison Belt is hardly more than a long and thrilling short story. It describes how, owing to the foresight of Professor Challenger, he, his wife, Professor Summerlee, Lord John Ruxton, and Malone the journalist (who tells the story), were able to make observations from a room in the Professor's house at Rotherfield, and watch while the world passed through a belt of poison. The house looked down on a wide view:
- The road in its extensive curves had really brought us to a considerable elevation — seven hundred feet, as we afterwards discovered. Challenger's house was on the very edge of the hill, and from its southern face, in which was the study window, one looked across the vast stretch of the weald to where the gentle curves of the South Downs formed an undulating horizon. In a cleft in the hills a haze of smoke marked the position of Lewes. Immediately at our feet there lay a rolling plain of heather, with the long, vivid stretches of the Crowborough golf course, all dotted with players. A little to the south, through an opening in the woods, we could see a section of the main line from London to Brighton.
Apparently the occupants of the room were the sole survivors, but the poison did not kill; it threw its victims into a cataleptic trance from which they recovered in little more than a day. The Poison Belt is a most exciting story which can best be read at one sitting.
The Valley of Fear is a full length Sherlock Holmes story which opens with a mysterious crime at Birlstone Manor House.
- The village of Birlstone is a small and very ancient cluster of half-timbered cottages on the northern border of the county of Sussex. For centuries it had remained unchanged, but within the last few years its picturesque appearance and situation have attracted a number of well-to-do residents, whose villas peep out from the woods around. These woods are locally supposed to be the extreme fringe of the great Weald forest, which thins away until it reaches the northern chalk downs. A number of small shops have come into being to meet the wants of the increased population, so that there seems some prospect that Birlstone may soon grow from an ancient village into a modern town. It is the centre for a considerable area of country, since Tunbridge Wells, the nearest place of importance, is ten or twelve miles to the eastward, over the borders of Kent.
The tale is a good one, and the investigation at Birlstone recalls the more convincing Sherlock Holmes of the earlier vintage, of 221b Baker Street, and not the resurrected Holmes who had apparently gone to eternity over the mountain side in the embrace of the sinister Professor Moriarty. One cannot escape the feeling that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in yielding to the pressure of readers and editors and reviving' his famous detective, committed an artistic error which went far to destroy that illusion of reality which is so essential in work of this type. It would have been better, one cannot help thinking, if no attempt had been made to bring Holmes into modern surroundings. He seems so clearly to belong to the era of gas lamps, horse omnibuses, and hansom cabs. The way out of the difficulty might have been found more artistically if the long suffering Dr. Watson — surely one of the most forgiving of friends, and one of the least intelligent of medical men — had discovered among his papers notes of more cases, all of which dated before the Alpine encounter.
Little fault, however, can be found with The Valley of Fear, either with the detective's handling of the case in Sussex, or in the grim and tense atmosphere which is well maintained when the action of the story shifts to the Valley of Vermissa in America, which is thus described:
- It was not a cheering prospect. Through the growing gloom there pulsed the red glow of the furnaces on the sides of the hills. Great heaps of slag and dumps of cinders loomed up on each side with the high shafts of the collieries towering above them. Huddled groups of mean wooden houses, the windows of which were beginning to outline themselves in light, were scattered here and there along the line, and the frequent halting-places were crowded with their swarthy inhabitants. The iron and coal valleys of the Vermissa district were no resorts for the leisured or the cultured. Everywhere there were signs of the crudest battle of life, the rude work to be done, and the rude strong workers who did it.
In these forbidding surroundings there flourished the Scowrers, a gang of ruffians who did not stop at murder in their work of terrorising the whole neighbourhood and blackmailing the employers. The thrilling and courageous manner in which a Pinkerton detective, Birdy Edwards, hunted down these infamous scoundrels and brought them to justice, and the connection between his work and the crime at Birlstone, are admirably described. Those who like a first rate thriller will keenly enjoy this book which has been made into a film, though as so often occurs, the story has not been followed in detail.
In His Last Bow we are introduced to Sherlock Holmes at his more mature stage, after he has passed his sixtieth year. In the preface to this book Dr. John H. Watson writes:
- The friends of Mr. Sherlock Holmes will be glad to learn that he is still alive and well, though somewhat crippled by occasional attacks of rheumatism. He has, for many years, lived in a small farm upon the Downs five miles from Eastbourne, where his time is divided between philosophy and agriculture. During this period of rest he has refused the most princely offers to take up various cases, having determined that his retirement was a permanent one. The approach of the German war caused him, however, to lay his remarkable combination of intellectual and practical activity at the disposal of the Government, with historical results which are recounted in His Last Bow.
This, then, is the story of how Sherlock Holmes , working for two years in the Government service, was able, on August 2nd, 1914, to circumvent and capture in the spy's own house on the Downs, von Bork, the most important officer of the German Secret Service. This tale does not exhibit the great detective at his subtlest, but allowance must be made for advancing years. Possibly, too, his bucolic interests and the energy that he had put into his researches when writing his standard book on apiculture : Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen, may have robbed him of some of his finesse. At any rate, disguised as an American, with language and beard according to tradition, he accomplishes his patriotic purpose, and there we may fittingly bid him farewell.
"When the World Screamed" is a short story from the collection called The Maracot Deep. In it is described at some length the remarkable experiment carried out by Professor Challenger, at Hengist Down in Sussex, in order to prove his theory that "the world upon which we live is itself a living organism, endowed... with a circulation, a respiration, and a nervous system of its own."
In these books Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has made a worthy and varied addition to Sussex literature.
