Yorkshire Echoes (report 4 december 1893)
Yorkshire Echoes is an article published in The Yorkshire Evening Post on 4 december 1893.
Report of lecture "Facts about Fiction" given by Arthur Conan Doyle on 3 december 1893 at the Coliseum Theatre (Leeds, UK).
Report
Dr. Conan Doyle made a great impression by his lecture upon "Facts about Fiction" before the Leeds Sunday Society last night. The audience was large and enthusiastic ; and, it was evident, well read. They showed a ready appreciation of the authors passed in review, reserving the heartiest applause, as must be expected of any Yorkshire audience, for Charlotte Bronté. The point is of some general interest, as showing that the Leeds Sunday Society caters for intellectual classes, who are glad enough to enrich themselves by hearing such lecturers as the author of "The White Company."
In a chat with the novelist-lecturer, I learned that he is getting very worn and tired by the incessant travelling involved by his lecture tour. "I don't think I shall do it again,"
he said, "unless I go to America. At the same time, the experience has been a very valuable one, and has taught me a good deal about the mental calibre of the different towns and counties. I would not have missed the experience for anything."
Mr. Conan Doyle travelled the weary journey from Inverness to Glasgow on Friday, and the next day, as he was suffering from neuralgia, had a tooth extracted, under gas. "It was a delicious sensation,"
he said, "like wandering about in other worlds, and living a rapturous life for aeons and aeons. I suppose it must be something like the effect of opium, though I never could get any effect from opium myself."
