"Sherlock Holmes" (article 24 april 1902)
This is an article published in The Daily Record & Mail on 24 april 1902.
Article
"SHERLOCK HOLMES."
The Early Literary Work of Dr. Doyle.
An interesting article in the current "Bookman" gives an account of the early life of the author of "Sherlock Holmes." The first noteworthy event in the life of Conan Doyle (says the writer) was a literary achievement at the early age of six, a story of adventure, of terrible adventure, written in a bold hand on foolscap paper, four words to the line, and accompanied by original pen and ink illustrations.
"There was a man in it, and there was a tiger,"
he writes of this youthful production. "I forget which was the hero, but it didn't matter much, for they became blended into one about the time when the tiger met the man. I was a realist in the age of the Romanticists. I described at some length, both verbally and pictorially, the untimely end of that way. farer. But when the tiger had absorbed him, I found myself slightly embarrassed as to how the story was to go on. 'It is very easy to get people into scrapes, and very hard to get them out again,' I remarked, and I have often had cause to repeat the precocious aphorism of my childhood. On this occasion the situation was beyond me, and my book, like my man, was engulfed in my tiger."
In his tenth year Dr. Conan Doyle was sent to Stonyhurst, in Lancashire, where he developed remarkable powers as a raconteur, a gift he turned to profitable account among his schoolfellows. Elevated on a desk, before an audience of small comrades, he grew grievously hoarse with much description of blood-curdling adventure. He has humorously remarked that he stipulated for
"Tarts Down and Strict Business,"
and paused suddenly at the most thrilling crisis solely that apples or more pastry should be offered as an inducement to continue. This, too, was the scene of early editorial effort, in which, as has already been told, he persevered whet he left Stonyhurst for Feldkirch, in Germany. At the age of seventeen, Dr. Doyle entered Edinburgh University as a medical student, and obtained his diploma five years later. But an intense longing to devote his time to literature remained always with him, and the account of his early struggles towards the desired goal is of real interest.
In 1878, two years after the commencement of his medical studies, his first accepted work was published in "Chambers's Journal." a periodical for which he has always retained a kindly feeling. He received three guineas for this story, which was entitled "The Mystery of Sassassa Valley," and was based on an old Kaffir superstition concerning a "gloomy, boulder-studded passage," notoriously haunted by a demon "with glowing eyes under the shadow of the cliff." In the development. the glowing eyes are found to consist of diamonds embedded in rock-salts, and the youthful soarchers after demons are rewarded finally by a capture of far greater intrinsic value.
In 1880 Dr. Doyle
Quitted the University,
and paid a seven months' visit to the Arctic Seas in the capacity of unqualified surgeon on board the whaler Hope, then under the command of Captain John Gray. The inducement was "two pounds ten a month and three shillings a ton oil money," inclusive of an Arctic kit. There was no great demand for surgery aboard the Hope, and Doyle's chief occupations were keeping the captain in cut tobacco, working in the boats after fish, and teaching the crew to box. Four whales and four thousand seals were the fruits of the voyage, and the Hope reached nearly the 81st degree of north latitude. From the unexpected occurrence of suddenly shooting off a thin sheet of ice and vanishing into the sea between the two ice-blocks, Conan Doyle earned from the genial Captain the nickname of "The Great Northern Diver."
In 1882, after a four months' voyage to the West Coast of Africa, he established himself as medical practitioner at Southsea, where he remained until 1890. During these years, however — years in which he found literature too slender a prop upon which to lean for a livelihood — he came to regard the calls of the profession he had adopted as interruptions in the real work of his life. There is a world of encouragement for the struggling young author in Dr. Conan Doyle's account of his early experiences.
