A Duet with an Occasional Chorus (ACD Journal vol. 3)
A Duet with an Occasional Chorus [Vol. 3] is an article written by Barbara Roden published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 3, 1992).
This closing editorial argues that Arthur Conan Doyle's travels offer rich ground for research, especially when studied through local archives and regional knowledge. It calls for more place-based work on the many locations linked to Conan Doyle so that these "tiny corners" can build a fuller portrait of his life.
Article
Closing Editorial
Arthur Conan Doyle is known first and foremost as an author. Certainly the man in the street, upon being asked with what he associated Conan Doyle, would reply either writing in general or Sherlock Holmes in particular. Which is all very well and proper, so far as it goes so far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. As this issue of ACD once again illustrates, there is far more to Conan Doyle than at first meets the eye.
That he was a complex man is proven by the number of people who have attempted to explore his life in detail. There have already been more than a dozen biographies of Conan Doyle to date, and an additional one is currently being written. That there are not more can be directly attributed to the inaccessibility of relevant private papers, the lack of which has discouraged several people from attempting an in-depth biography.
The lack of these papers is not necessarily an insurmountable barrier, however. Chris Redmond's Welcome to America, Mr Sherlock Holmes is a fine look at Conan Doyle's trip to North America in 1894, and was written without access to much relevant archival material. Three more examples can be found in this issue of ACD, where Ronald White, J. Victor Hamilton, and Alvin E. Rodin and Jack D. Key have produced comprehensive looks at more of Conan Doyle's travels.
We see ACD in Belfast, North America, and specifically the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. and Canada. These close looks at Conan Doyle and his travels do much to flesh out our picture of him, providing in-depth information which is not readily available elsewhere. They also help to involve people who live far from England, with its wealth of Doylean associations. Connections with ACD in North America become thinner the farther west one travels, and it is therefore pleasing for people along the West Coast to be able to read of Conan Doyle's visit in 1923.
These articles, however, can only be written by people who live at or near the locations he visited. People on the spot are the ones best placed to look up old timetables and scour local newspaper archives to find articles such as the one from Victoria which talks of Sir Arthur and his three sons. It would be interesting to see what members in other far-flung cities that Conan Doyle visited could tell us about the great man's travels.
But it is not simply members abroad who can tell us more about ACD. There are countless places in England that have connections with Conan Doyle: places in which he lived, worked, or stayed for a time. One such place is the Shropshire village of Ruyton-XI-Towns, where he worked as a medical student in the summer of 1878. The village, and ACD's time there, gets scant mention in Memories and Adventures, and is only fleetingly referred to in a handful of biographies. Christopher Roden and Alvin E. Rodin repaired this omission in an article in Vol. 2, No. 1 of ACD, throwing light on a tiny corner of Conan Doyle's life. It is a trifle, but there is nothing as important as trifles, as Conan Doyle once wrote. If enough light were shed on enough tiny corners of ACD's life, we would emerge with a much fuller and rounder portrait of the man who fascinates us all.
Barbara Roden
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
