TCDE-Team: Created page with "''Dr. Conan Doyle'' is an article published in Western Evening Herald on 22 april 1898. == Article == [[Western Evening Herald (22 april 1898, p. 6)]] '''THE CREATOR OF SHERLOCK HOLMES''' '''A Sketch.''' It is an interesting personality, that of Dr. Conan Doyle, the author of the story which appears in another part of this issue. He is known to the world-and..."

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Created page with "''Dr. Conan Doyle'' is an article published in Western Evening Herald on 22 april 1898. == Article == thumb|250px|right|[[Western Evening Herald (22 april 1898, p. 6)]] '''THE CREATOR OF SHERLOCK HOLMES''' '''A Sketch.''' It is an interesting personality, that of Dr. Conan Doyle, the author of the story which appears in another part of this issue. He is known to the world-and..."

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''Dr. Conan Doyle'' is an article published in [[Western Evening Herald]] on 22 april 1898.

== Article ==
[[File:western-evening-herald-1898-04-22-p6-dr-conan-doyle.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[Western Evening Herald]] (22 april 1898, p. 6)]]

'''THE CREATOR OF SHERLOCK HOLMES'''

'''A Sketch.'''

It is an interesting personality, that of [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Dr. Conan Doyle]], the author of the story which appears in another part of this issue. He is known to the world-and that is the literal truth of it-as the creator of [[Sherlock Holmes]]. But [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Dr. Doyle]] has done much more than create [[Sherlock Holmes]]; he has written novels which will outlive [[Sherlock Holmes]]'s fame, to say no thing of that of the host of imitators of his fascinating amateur detective.

[[Arthur Conan Doyle|Dr. Conan Doyle]] strikes the observer at once as a fine specimen of a manly man, and he comes of a manly stock. Very few men can say that five of their family fought on the field of Water. known to boast of our author. As an known to boast of our our author. As an author, he retains for literature this same manliness. He does not believe in the puff preliminary, or in the puff of any sort. If a book is good, says he, in the long run, it will be successful, and not all the puffing in the world will give fame to a bad book.

Perhaps we may let the budding novelist into the secret of success, as it is known to [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Dr. Doyle]]. He once said that the lack of incident in a book under discussion the first six chapters of which were very thin, was fatal:

: "The first object of a novelist is to tell a tale. If he has no story to tell, what is he there for? Possibly, he has something to say which is worth saying, but he should say it in another form."

There is no doubt that whenever [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] puts pen to paper he may be depended upon to have a story to tell.

Of the truth of this there is no better test than the rapturous eagerness and delight with which schoolboys read him. As he himself says, "there is no finer judge of the merits of a story, as a story, than the British schoolboy." And, no one doubts, the soaring British boy is quite able to descriminate between a sermon and a "ripping jolly fine tale, you know." The narrative must move to please him, and that is just what [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Dr. Conan Doyle]] can make it do.

As to style, our author is not a "stylist" as we understand the word when we refer to Robert Louis Stevenson. But he writes easily and gracefully, with a command of a fine phrase now and then, and with effective ascents to the heights of passion. As a student of character, he has his limitations, but for the characterisation of men of action his superior is far to seek. It seems as if everybody in his work must always be doing something, One recalls the phrase he used about the novelist just above: if he has not a story to tell, why is he there? [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Dr. Conan Doyle]] puts a similar question to his characters: if they have nothing to do, why are they there?

In his workmanship, [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Dr. Conan Doyle]] is very sincere and honest. He has written several excellent historical novels. One remembers "[[Micah Clarke]]" for the excellence and truth of the picture it gives of Puritan days in the West, and the "Great Shadow" for its account of Waterloo. But an author does not feel his way into a period without diligent and painful study. This is the heavy task of all who write historical novels. But it may be lit by gleams of humour now and then, as when [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Dr. Doyle]] asked a veteran of Waterloo for a description of the fight. All he knew about it was that when the French came on against the British square for the second time, the cry of the British infantry was:

: "Why, here come those blessed fools again!" It is quaintly characteristic of the spirit that wins battles, and that is a spirit which [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Dr. Conan Doyle]] admires.

His opinion of America and the Americans is interesting and, of course, it has been contrasted with that of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. The latter has not omitted to say what he thinks in criticism of our cousins across the herring-pond.

"But I love them," Mr. Kipling has said, and it is because I love them that I point out their faults.

[[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] replies: "Love should be patient of faults. A nation is not born in a day. It has to learn many things, and to unlearn more. Give it time and it will grow, but it will not help its true growth to be perpetually irritating a nation with a caustic satire."

I have not said much about [[Sherlock Holmes]], but hasten now to pay a tribute to his character, and to lament his sudden and untimely death. As a detective he was simply unparalleled in literature, and his adventures were the most ingenious stories that had been written since the time when Edgar Allan Poe gave the world his ''Tales of Mystery and the Imagination''. [[Sherlock Holmes]] enjoyed absolutely the widest kind of popularity. He was thoroughly believed in in the palace and the cottage alike, and ap pealed as a real and tangible personage to millions of admirers. It is said that [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] got tired of [[Sherlock Holmes]]; but there was nothing in him of which a writer might not be proud. He is the standard of cleverness, the ideal detective; and that is an achievement.

In "[[The Confession]]," the story which appears in this issue, [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Dr. Conan Doyle]] gives us a glimpse into the life of the convent, quiet and sublime, and then bursts in upon it a flood of human passion. It is tragic, but the tragedy does not burn the pathos out of it. The sorrow of Pedro and Julia is a "soul-killing sorrow," but the impression left upon the mind after the last words of the holy father is not wholly one of pain.

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Dr. Conan Doyle (article 22 april 1898) - Revision history