Arthur Conan Doyle and His Views on Mormonism
Arthur Conan Doyle and His Views on Mormonism: From A Study in Scarlet to The Edge of the Unknown is an article written by Michael W. Homer published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 2, No. 1) in spring 1991.
This article traces Arthur Conan Doyle's evolving views on Mormonism, from his hostile portrayal of polygamy and the Danites in A Study in Scarlet to a more nuanced and comparative assessment after his 1923 visit to Utah. It argues that his early depiction relied heavily on anti-Mormon sources, while later reflections reveal a reassessment shaped by personal experience and his commitment to Spiritualism.
Arthur Conan Doyle and His Views on Mormonism
From A Study in Scarlet to The Edge of the Unknown.
Although he was raised in a very strict Roman Catholic family, Conan Doyle started to doubt the religion of his parents at the age of eight, when he began to attend Jesuit schools. By the time he entered the University of Edinburgh at 17 he was, by his own account, a nonbeliever and, during his university years, he came under the influence of materialists who taught the process of deductive reasoning through the observation of material phenomena. As a result of this training, Conan Doyle became convinced that every mystery of life could be solved through observation and deductive reasoning.
His university training also influenced his attitude toward organised religions. In The Stark Munro Letters, (1) one of Conan Doyle's several autobiographical novels, the main character, Stark Munro (who is Conan Doyle), says that:
- "[I]t is really to me the most astonishing thing that I have seen in my short earthly pilgrimage, that so many able men, deep philosophers, astute lawyers, and even the clear-headed men of the world should accept such an explanation of the facts of life..." (2)
Stark Munro also states that:
- "I see so clearly that faith is not a vinue, but a vice. It is a goat which has been herded with the sheep." (3)
Because of his scepticism, Conan Doyle refused to accept any religion which required blind faith. Instead, he insisted in his autobiography Memories and Adventures that:
- "I must have a definite demonstration, for if it were to be a matter of faith, then I might as well go back to the faith of my fathers. Never will I accept anything which cannot be proved to me. The evils of religion have all come from accepting things which cannot be proved." (4)
Nevertheless, following his graduation from medical school in the late 1870s, Conan Doyle began to investigate religions because he felt a void in his life without a religious foundation. His character Stark Munro recalled that:
- "When first I came out of the faith in which I had been reared, I certainly did feel for a time as if my life-belt had burst." (5)
And Stark Munro also reveals that:
- "I assure you that I have at the present moment the very vaguest idea as to where I have come from, whither I am going or what I am here for. It is not for want of inquiry, or from indifference. I have mastered the principles of several religions." (6)
From 1859 to 1880, Mormonism had enjoyed considerable success in Great Britain. By the 1880s, Mormon missionaries had been proselytising in the United Kingdom for more than forty years, and English converts accounted for more than 50% of the Church's membership in the United States. The movement had attracted significant attention from politicians, ministers, newspapers and journalists, some of whom travelled to Utah to observe the sect firsthand. Given Conan Doyle's "search for truth" in the 1880s and the high profile of Mormonism during the same period, it is not surprising that he investigated the Mormon Church, and it is likely that his initial interest commenced, not just as an intellectual exercise, but that it was spiritually motivated as well. The Mormons' belief that God had restored His Church to its primitive condition and continued to reveal truths through prophets would certainly have appealed to Doyle, since such doctrines were similar to the claims of spiritualism, which he investigated during the same period and eventually embraced. In addition, Mormonism claimed many "tangible proofs" that life continued after death; the appearance of extra-terrestrial beings to Smith; the existence of gold plates; and the existence of witnesses, besides Smith, who saw it all.
Richard Lancelyn Green points out in his introduction to The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes that, when Conan Doyle set up medical practice in Southsea, he joined the Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society. On April 2 1885. James Charlton presented a paper to that Society entitled Incidents of a Journey from Chicago to Vancouver in British Columbia which "included a full description of Salt Lake City and its Mormon inhabitants." (7) Although it is certain that Conan Doyle consulted many sources before writing A Study in Scarlet, this speech may have provided the initial impetus for his use of the Mormons as a subject for his first Sherlock Holmes story. The source materials on Mormonism available to Conan Doyle in the early 1880s were legion. (8) When Richard Francis Burton published his account of his visit to Utah, The City of the Saints, (9) in 1861, he included in it a bibliography of books and pamphlets which were available concerning the religion at that time. Many of the works were published in Great Britain, and most of them were available there. He divided the selection into three categories: gentile, anti-Mormon, and Mormon.
In the first category — Gentile works — the most prominent books were by men such as Burton who had travelled extensively and visited Utah: these books were generally even-handed and well written. The most prominent of these were Williams Chandless' A visit to Salt Lake, (10) Jules Remy's A Journey to Great-Salt-Lake City, (11) and Solomon Carvalho's Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West. (12) Each of these authors examined the belief system of the Mormons, as they observed it, and reviewed Mormon history and practices.
In the anti-Mormon category, 59 books were listed and they were, for the most part, sensationalist in nature and emphasised the aspects of Mormonism which were sure to shock the conscience of most English Victorians — the activities of Danites or "Avenging Angels" and the doctrine of polygamy or plural marriage. These included works by various Protestant ministers and by ex-Mormons, such as John Hyde (13) and Mary Ettie V. Smith. (14) Hyde's book, Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs, would have had a special appeal for Conan Doyle since the author became a follower of Swedenborg, an eighteenth century psychic, who apostatised from the Mormon Church.
The third category, books by Mormons, contained by far the largest selection and included the standard works and various missionary tracts and pamphlets published by the Church.
Subsequent to the publication of City of Saints, there was a virtual explosion in the publication of books concerning Mormonism. There were many travellers who followed Burton to Utah to write their own accounts, including Charles Farrar Browne's Artemus Ward (His Travels) Among the Mormons, (15) and Mark Twain's Roughing It. (16) Even though both of these books had a humorous tone, they examined the religious beliefs of Mormonism more closely than most of the anti-Mormon authors. Another gentile work, William Hepworth Dixon's New America, (17) published in 1865, was very likely read by Conan Doyle since it contained a chapter on spiritualism. Subsequent anti-Mormon works of which one can see evidence in Doyle's account of the Mormons, include works by ex-Mormons such as Ann Eliza Young, (18) Fanny Stenhouse, (19) John Beadle, (20) William Jarman, (21) and Bill Hickman. (22) Jarman's book, U.S.A., Uncle Sam's Abscess or Hell Upon Earth for U.S. Uncle Sam, was published two years before Conan Doyle began writing A Study in Scarlet and quoted liberally from various anti-Mormon books which were published during the previous twenty-five years. (23) In Hickman's book, Brigham's Destroying Angel, the editor, J. H. Beadle, wrote that:
- "...it was not for stealing or any other crime... [that]... these men were killed, but for apostasy and spiritualism! This may sound ridiculous, but it is a singular fact that there is no other form of apostasy the Mormon Priesthood so fear, hate and curse, and no kind of mysticism to which apostate Mormons are so prone, as spiritualism. The whole body of the Church seems only to be kept therefrom by constantly hearing from the Priesthood that it is the "doings of the devil," and nothing seems to interest a young and sceptical Mormon so quick as "circles, seances, visions, shadowy hands, and conjurations with boxes. pendulum oracles, planchette, and every other kind of forbidden and diabolical nonsense." (24)
Another book was written by C.P. Lyford, a Methodist Episcopal Minister who lived in Utah for four years. It was published in the same year Conan Doyle wrote A Study in Scarlet. He quotes liberally from Beadle, Fanny Stenhouse and T.B.H. Stenhouse and other former residents of Utah. His book also includes an appendix with various account of Danite activities. (25)
Inasmuch as Conan Doyle did not visit Utah before writing A Study in Scarlet, (26) he relied on these accounts which were available in Great Britain. It is apparent that, by the time he wrote A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle had no serious religious interest in Mormonism. In fact he was a serious student of spiritualism and utilised A Study in Scarlet to expose Mormonism to other investigators and to purge it from his own mind. Even though the objective accounts of Burton, Remy, Chandless and other visitors to Utah were available to, and were probably consulted by Conan Doyle, he relied on anti-Mormon works authored by former Mormons because he believed these accounts to be factual. The publisher's preface to the 1888 edition accurately reflects Conan Doyle's view that "the description of the deadly Mormon association of tyranny and vengeance, is as true in its features as it is enthralling in interest." (27) In A Study in Scarlet, his distaste for what he considered the defects of Mormonism (and the probable reason for his rejection of it) i.e. polygamy, autocratic leadership and the activities of Avenging Angels, are clearly emphasised. Nevertheless, the story also demonstrates a certain, perhaps begrudging, admiration for the Mormons' pioneer spirit and industry demonstrated in early Utah Territory.
The Mormon episode of A Study in Scarlet concerns a man named John Ferrier and a young girl named Lucy who are stranded in the western American desert and have abandoned all hopes of survival when they are found by Brigham Young and others on their way to Utah. Although Conan Doyle was probably indebted to various writers for their detailed descriptions of the Mormon trek, particularly Charles MacKay (28) and Beadle, he undoubtedly relied heavily on Robert Louis Stevenson for the idea of a story about a man and a young girl who encountered the Mormons while enroute to Utah. In 1885, Stevenson published a collection of stories called The Dynamiter, (29) which included a tale about the Mormons entitled Story of the Destroying Angel; a story which was very similar to A Study in Scarlet. Conan Doyle later discussed Stevenson's influence and he noted:
- "How are we to forget the lonely fire in the valley, the white figure which dances and screams among the snow, or the horrid ravine in which the caravan is starved." (30)
Conan Doyle's story follows Ferrier and Lucy to Utah where they both join the Mormon Church and become very prosperous. Ferrier accepts all the religious tenets of Mormonism except polygamy:
- "He had always determined, deep down in his resolute heart, that nothing would ever induce him to allow his daughter to wed a Mormon. Such a marriage he regarded as no marriage at all, but as a shame and a disgrace. Whatever he might think of the Mormon doctrines, upon that one point he was inflexible." (31)
Because Ferrier rejected that doctrine, Brigham Young visited his farm and gave him an ultimatum that his adopted daughter must marry, within thirty days, either Enoch Drebber or Joseph Stangerson, who were both practising polygamists and sons of two members of the Council of the Sacred Four (a fictitious organisation). Accordingly, Young tells Ferrier:
- "Upon this one point your whole faith shall be tested — so it has been decided in the Sacred Council of Four. The girl is young, and we would not have her wed grey hairs, neither would we deprive her of all choice. We Elders have many heifers, but our children must also be provided." (32)
This part of Conan Doyle's story could have been inspired by any number of the anti-Mormon or the gentile works. Even Carvalho, Burton and Remy were not particularly complimentary in their descriptions of polygamy. Still, the story is strikingly similar to an account by Fanny Stenhouse who claims that Brigham Young "counselled" her and her husband to permit one of their daughters to enter into a polygamous marriage with one of Brigham's sons. (33) It is also reminiscent of a story in Hyde's book in which a Mr. Eldredge, who had a "handsome, intelligent and amiable" daughter, spoke to Brigham Young and was told "that he had to marry the girl to Joseph W. [the same son who would marry Clara Stenhouse], that it was his "counsel" and that every man must be the master of his household." (34) Brigham Young's reference to his wives as heifers is taken directly from Artemus Ward's lecture given in England concerning the Mormons. (35) Ward noted in his lecture that Heber C. Kimball referred to his wives by the "endearing epithet" of heifers. Conan Doyle used these exact words in A Study in Scarlet. Ann Eliza Young in her book about marriage to Brigham, (36) also claims that Heber C. Kimball referred to his wives in that manner. Mark Twain also had several characters in Roughing It refer to women as heifers (37) and, in the Bible, Sampson referred to his wife the same way (Judges 14:18). In Hickman, wives are referred to as "stock." (38)
Ferrier does not immediately respond to Young's request. Instead, he contacts Jefferson Hope, who is not a Mormon and who labours in mining camps in Nevada. Hope had previously fallen in love with Lucy and the two were planning to marry before the visit by Brigham Young. Ferrier is apprehensive because of a "vague and terrible power... exercised only upon the recalcitrants who, having embraced the Mormon faith, wished afterwards to pervert or abandon it." This "terrible power", known as "Danites" or "Avenging Angels", was employed to supply women for the elect:
- "Strange rumours began to be bandied about rumours of murdered immigrants and rifled camps in regions where Indians had never been seen. Fresh women appeared in the harems of the Elders women who pined and wept, and bore upon their faces the traces of an unextinguishable horror." (39)
The activities of the Danites were a favourite topic of the anti-Mormon writers. Jarman claims that missionaries in Great Britain were given money by potential husbands "to pay the passage out of a nice young girl. The missionary comes into the factory towns of England and other places, procures the girls, pays the passage, ships them off, and sends the bill of lading to the old lechers, who await their arrival in Utah." (40)
Recognising their desperate situation, Hope, who is called the Washoe Hunter because of his residence in Nevada, attempts to help Lucy and her father escape from Utah to Nevada, but they are pursued by Avenging Angels. The Danites' pursuit of Lucy and her father, for failure to obey the prophet and marry "in the faith", may very well have been inspired by Jarman, who quotes Mary Ettie V. Smith's account of John Taylor's reaction when one of his daughters was married to a gentile soldier. According to Smith:
- "He wrote [from New York] that he should always feel dissatisfied because the blood of his daughter had not been shed to atone for the sin of marrying out of the church." (41)
While Hope is hunting for food, the Avenging Angels abduct Ferrier and kill him. Lucy dies several days later of a broken heart, but only after she is forced to marry Drebber. This reference to Lucy's death from "a broken heart" is interesting in light of Jarman's quotation from "one of Brigham Young's daughters":
- "My father, prophet, though you call him, broke many a woman's heart. If it required of me to break as many hearts and ruin as many women as my father did, I should go to perdition before I would go back into the church. A religion which breaks women's hearts and ruins them is of the devil. That's what Mormonism does." (42)
Before Lucy is buried, Hope bids adieu to Lucy in her casket, takes her wedding ring from her finger and pledges vengeance upon the murderers, Drebber and Stangerson. Twenty years later, he tracks them down in London, after they have apostatised from Mormonism, and kills them. Sherlock Holmes, in his first assignment, is called upon to solve the mystery.
There were many sources available to Conan Doyle upon which he could have based his characterisation of the Danites. Melodramatic accounts of Danites are contained in the works of Stenhouse, (43) Hyde, (44) Beadle, (45) Smith (47) and Hickman. (48) Doyle was probably most impressed by the accounts. of former Mormons which all claimed that the Danites existed and acted under orders from the Prophet. Smith's book, for example, details her many attempts to leave Utah. She claims that, during her years in Utah, Brigham Young told her that it would be impossible to escape since: "We have too many Danites on the watch, and always engaged... All the passes in the country are guarded." She also claims that Young and other church leaders. prevented her from marrying non-Mormons, for if she did "you will commit adultery in the sight of God; and your children, if you have any, will be illegitimate, and you shall be damned." (49) Hickman's book purports to be an account written by a former "avenging angel," and contains accounts of his alleged activities as a Danite. Included in the book are references to a John Watson who was murdered in Utah, and an account of Jesse Hartley, a gentile who was killed by Avenging Angels while attempting to leave Utah with his wife who is described as broken hearted after his death. (50) But it wasn't just from these melodramatic shilling shockers that Conan Doyle drew his inspiration. Even Mark Twain's Roughing It may have inspired him. In his book, Twain quotes Brigham Young as saying:
- "Once a gentleman gave one of my children a tin whistle a veritable invention of Satan, sir, and one which I have an unspeakable horror of, and so would you if you had eighty or ninety children in your house. But the deed was done the man escaped. I knew what the result was going to be, and I thirsted for vengeance. I ordered out a flock of Destroying Angels, and they hunted the man far into the fortresses of the Nevada mountains. But they never caught him." (51)
Conan Doyle's Avenging Angels also pursued a man who had offended Brigham into the Nevada mountains, which Doyle, like Twain and Artemus Ward before him, refers to as "Washoe". (52)
When Drebber is found murdered, he has a pocket edition of Boccacio's Decameron, (53) which contains many stories of sexual debauchery; and lying on the floor is the wedding ring of Lucy. Rosenberg claims that in A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle began what would be a common theme in many of his stories that of linking sexual deviation with death and murder. (54) Boccacio's book is an obvious allusion to Drebber's, and Mormonism's other polygamists' seemingly insatiable appetite for illicit sexual gratification. When Ferrier and Lucy are found in the desert, Brigham Young is reading a "brown backed volume", which could as easily have been The Decameron or The Book of Mormon. Lucy's ring symbolises the Mormon attempt to legitimise sexual depravity, but the ring is meaningless next to the dead body of Drebber. His death is his reward for his activities and practices which Conan Doyle found so distasteful.
In A Study in Scarlet, the real villains are not Drebber, Stangerson, or even Brigham Young. The real villain is Mormonism itself. Not only did it condone and foster the immoral practice of polygamy and illegal activities of the Danites, it was a counterfeit form of spiritualism. It has been observed that, in many of his works, Conan Doyle gave "sinister characters names beginning with Mor- in order to emphasise their nearness to death..." (55) Examples of this phenomenon are Professor Moriarty, (56) Colonel Moran, (57) Mordaunt Heatherstone, (58) "Killer" Evans, alias Morecroft (59) and a poisoner named Morgan. (60) If this is the case, Conan Doyle must have been particularly pleased that the nickname of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints begins with the same letters. Dr. Massimo Introvigne has advanced the hypothesis in his book Il Cappello del Mago (61) that the most famous Mor- villain, Professor Moriarty, was patterned after a person of the same name, who was a well-known occultist and a contemporary of Conan Doyle. (62) Occultists such as Moriarty dismissed spiritualism as a lower and childish form of occultism, and spiritualists such as Conan Doyle regarded all occultists as black magicians in contact with evil spirits. (63) Thus, Conan Doyle's vilification of both Moriarty and the Mormons may have had a religious meaning.
Subsequent to writing A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle wrote a play based on the same theme and which originally bore the same title but was changed to Angels of Darkness. A Drama in Three Acts. The setting of the play is among the Mormons in Utah in the first two acts, and in San Francisco in the third act. There are two versions of Act 3, one finished and one unfinished. Although there is no Sherlock Holmes in the play, and John Watson, M.D. is a San Francisco practitioner who falls in love with Lucy and saves the life of Jefferson Hope, the theme is essentially the same. In fact, several of the themes developed in A Study in Scarlet (Danites, polygamy) are further refined in Angels of Darkness and give one a better idea of Conan Doyle's source material. To the best of this author's knowledge, Angels of Darkness has never been published, but was mentioned by both John Dickson Carr (64) and Pierre Nordon (65) in their biographies of Conan Doyle. It has also been described by Richard Lancelyn Green in his introduction to The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes. (66)
Doyle's harsh judgement of Mormonism would guide his views concerning it for the next thirty-five years, or until he finally visited Utah himself. Until then, he wrote of the Mormons in connection with polygamy, Danites, or their pioneer spirit, rather than their doctrines of continuing revelation and restoration of primitive Christianity which had most likely piqued his curiosity before he embraced spiritualism.
For example, in a novel published in 1899 entitled A Duet with an Occasional Chorus, (67) Conan Doyle makes reference to the Mormon practice of polygamy even though it had, by then, been officially abandoned. In the book, a husband and wife are discussing former loves, and the wife finds an opportunity to poke fun at the husband at the expense of Mormonism:
- "Tell me, Frank, did you ever love anyone before me?"
- "Well, in a word, Maude, I was always in love with someone."
- Her face clouded over...
- "Well!" said she at last.
- "Must I go on?"
- "Yes, I may as well hear it."
- "You'll only be cross.
- "We've gone to far to stop. And I'm not cross, Frank. Only pained a little. But I do appreciate your frankness. I had no idea you were such a such a Mormon." She began to laugh. (68)
Conan Doyle alluded to the Danites in The Vital Message, (69) published in 1919, when he compared the "Early Mormons of Utah" with Francis on St. Bartholomew's Night, Alva in the Lowlands, Tilly at Magdeburg, Cromwell at Drogheda, The Covenantors at Phillipsburgh and The Anabaptists of Munster, suggesting that all of these groups had their "murderous impulses fortified" by reliance upon the "unholy source" of the Old Testament. (In A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle had compared the Danites in Utah with the Inquisition of Seville, the German Vehmgericht and the Secret Societies of Italy.) (70) This reference may even have been enough to prompt Joseph West's review of Conan Doyle's spiritualist ideas in the official periodical of the Mormon Church The Improvement Era (71) in 1921. Although no specific mention was made in the article about Conan Doyle's reference to "early Mormons," he reiterated a statement made by a church apostle two decades earlier (that spiritualism was "Satan's counterfeit of God's eternal power)" (72) and went even further in asserting that "it is hard to get away from the conviction that Mr. Doyle found much of the truthful portion of his statements and descriptions of the spirit world in the doctrines of the Mormon Church." (73)
In a later article, Conan Doyle discussed the use of psychic phenomena in solving crimes and chose an example from Utah which, he claimed, was "absolutely authentic" and which showed that there were similarities in outlook between Mormons and spiritualists i.e. that Mormons ascribe in their own way to psychic phenomena. The example was also said to reveal a modern example of "murder in Utah." (74) The story involved a Mormon villain with a Mor- name — Mortenson who owed a considerable sum of money to a company operated by Mr. Hay. Mortenson claimed to have paid Hay, but Hay disappeared after visiting Mortenson's home. Hay's father-in-law, described by Doyle as an "aged Mormon named Sharp", went to Mortenson's home the next morning. Sharp told Mortenson that he knew his son-in-law had been killed because he had a vision and that "the proof is that within a mile of the spot where you are standing, his dead body will be dug up from the field." Needless to say, the body was found in that location.
After Conan Doyle visited South Africa as a medic during the Boer War and familiarised himself with the history of the Boers who had trekked hundreds of miles after the British emancipation of slaves, he made an allusion to the Mormons' pioneer spirit in The War in South Africa — Its Cause and Conduct published in 1902. Referring to this exodus of Britain's enemy during the war, Conan Doyle noted:
- It was a strange exodus, only comparable in modern times to the sallying forth of the Mormons from Nauvoo upon their search for the promised land of Utah. (75)
When Conan Doyle finally visited Utah in May 1923, almost forty years after the publication of A Study in Scarlet and his several references to Mormon polygamy and the Danites' "murderous impulses" in the years thereafter, he was understandably apprehensive. In fact, he found himself in a situation very similar to Charles Farrar Browne, alias Artemus Ward, when he visited the Mormons in 1864. Ward had previously referred to the Mormons in a book published two years before he went to Utah as a "theavin' & On principled set of retchis as ever drew Breath in eny spot on the Globe." (76) Ward claims to have discussed his apprehension with T. B. H. Stenhouse after arriving in Utah, but before meeting Brigham Young. Stenhouse, who would later have some unkind things to say about the Mormons himself, (77) relieved Ward of "any anxiety I had felt in regard to having my swan-like throat cut by the Danites," but also told Ward that he thought his "wholesale denunciation of a people he had never seen was rather hasty." (78)
Like Artemus Ward, Conan Doyle was also relieved after addressing a near-capacity crowd in the Salt Lake Tabernacle concerning his own psychic experiences and those of others recorded on "spirit photographs." He praised the Mormons for their "breadth of view" and their forebears for their "pioneer pluck." (79) Recalling his experiences in South Africa during the Boer War, the Mormon pioneers reminded him of the Boers: "rugged, hard-faced men, the brave and earnest women who look as if they had known much suffering and hardship." (80)
However, Conan Doyle was also reminded of his previous uncomplimentary characterisation of Mormons by a non-Mormon doctor, G. Hodgson Higgins, who wrote to him that his first impressions of Mormonism had been tainted by Conan Doyle's work and that "the book gave one the impression that murder was a common practice among them." Higgins requested Conan Doyle to "express his regret at having propagated falsehoods about the Mormon Church and people." (81) Conan Doyle reassured Higgins that in his future memoirs he would write of the Mormons as he found them on his visit, but that "all I said about the Danite band and the murders is historical, so I cannot withdraw that, tho' it is likely that in a work of fiction it is stated more luridly than in a work of history. It is best to let the matter rest." (82)
Although Conan Doyle was apparently not criticised, either formally or informally, by the LDS Church during his visit to Salt Lake City, he was "rapped" by the Presiding Bishop of the LDS Church upon his arrival in San Francisco.
On June 5 1923, there appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle two letters entitled Bishop Nibley Raps Sir Arthur. Conan Doyle asks Apology.
In 1923, Charles W. Nibley was the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and within two years would be sustained as second counsellor to the Church President, Heber J. Grant. Nevertheless, he was apparently not writing in his official capacity since an Apostle, John A. Widstoe, had attended a luncheon given in Conan Doyle's honour at the Alta Club in Salt Lake City.
The headline preceding the letters proclaimed: Another Critic of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has arisen in San Francisco. He is Presiding Bishop Charles W. Nibley of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, Salt Lake City, who is staying at the Palace Hotel. Bishop Nibley speaks caustically of Sir Arthur's recent lecture in the Mormon City. The criticism and the answer of Conan Doyle are given below.
The complete text of Bishop Nibley's letter is as follows:
- The elders of the Mormon Church considered seriously before allowing Conan Doyle to speak in the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. Rather than be called narrow and intolerant, we permitted his lecture, and Sir Arthur left Salt Lake City several thousand dollars richer. I think he had a lot of gall to take Mormon money when he attacked us so bitterly in his book "A Study in Scarlet" which was published early in his life.
- To Sir Arthur and his ectoplasm, the product of dimly-lighted seances, I answer that the only light that he has discovered was born in darkness and is not light to me.
- I see no organization which Sir Arthur has founded. He merely seems to come and talk of his method of raising devils and then goes on to another city with money of those who paid $2 to hear him and see his pictures of vaporous spirits of evil issuing from the mouths of women. I do believe that he is successful in raking in the shekels.
- I have heard of him claiming to prove religion on a scientific basis without regard to faith. Religion does not need Sir Arthur's support. Faith, which he terms as immoral, is the soul and life of religion. It is the force that made the martyrs courageous.
- There is no religion without faith, for we must believe if we are to be Christians, Mohammedans, or what not. His assertion of his ability to prove religion is absurd. I do not know what his beliefs are, but Sir Arthur does not seem to have any. He never mentions Jesus Christ in his lectures.
- Bringing up evil spirits or devils is not new. It has been practices for centuries. No doubt there are spirits about who will talk to Sir Arthur, or anyone for that matter, but they are figments or the devil.
Nibley's views concerning the spiritualist beliefs of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were similar to those previously expressed by James E. Talmage and Joseph West. Sir Arthur's response to Nibley was surprisingly conciliatory toward the Mormon religion:
- I have great respect for the Mormons, who treated me very liberally in allowing me to use their hall, and, therefore, I am more sorry that one who is a bishop among them should utter such an uncharitable and false statement. He says that I am a medium. I have, unfortunately, no psychic gifts at all, nor have I ever claimed any. I can but give out my experiences with others and the evidence gained from others.
- He says that I left Salt Lake City several thousand dollars richer. I have never in my life taken one cent for any work which I have done on the platform for spiritualism. When I returned from Australia I left all of my profits in Australia for the Australian Church. When I returned from America last year I divided my profits among the spiritual organizations in England, and I published a balance sheet. This year I cannot say if I will have a balance, since travelling is dear and our party large. If I have, it certainly will not go into my pocket.
- I trust, therefore, that Bishop Nibley will apologise for his utterances, which I look upon as a statement of one ill-informed and uncharitable man, and not as representing the friends whom I left behind me in Salt Lake City. (83)
Conan Doyle made no reference to Bishop Nibley's letter in his account of his visit to Utah; he may have overlooked Nibley's statements because of the Mormon Church's warm welcome extended to him and its offer to let him use the Tabernacle to advance his spiritualist ideals. There is also no record of an apology by Bishop Nibley.
However, Conan Doyle did mention his exchange of letters with Higgins and, true to his word, Conan Doyle wrote favourably of his visit to Utah. He also indicated that A Study in Scarlet was "a rather sensational and overcoloured picture of the Danite episodes which formed a passing stain in the early history of Utah." However, he noted that he had refused a public apology because "the facts were true enough, though there were many reasons which might extenuate them." (84)
Neither was Doyle apologetic with respect to the Mormon doctrine of polygamy. Conan Doyle claimed that polygamy "had nothing whatever to do with the original teaching of Smith's revelation, but was entirely a later growth, and is now heartily repudiated. But the memory of it remains to show the danger of so-called inspirational teaching in worldly matters." (85) He also agreed that "one's own conscience and judgement must keep constant guard. For want of this, some of the early spiritualists received counsels as to free love which cast a deserved slur upon the growing movement. So it was with Smith. He had revelations which could have come from no high source." (86) Finally, Conan Doyle wrote that this doctrine "may also serve as a warning against the indiscriminate adoption of supposed revelations, which, in the case of polygamy, have done so much harm to the movement." (87)
Taken as a whole, Conan Doyle's account of his visit to Utah is more comparable to the Gentile works of the nineteenth century which he had read, rather than the anti-Mormon works which pervade Conan Doyle's thinking in A Study in Scarlet. Not only does he compare Spiritualism with Mormonism and posit that Joseph Smith was sincere and an authentic medium, but also that the British press was unfair in its continuing characterisations of Mormons as guilty of "sexual immorality, or murder or other depravity, or of tyrannous control in the fields of religion, commerce, morals, or society." (88)
It is interesting that following his personal adventure in Utah, Conan Doyle's references to Mormonism were more benign and in the context of comparing it with spiritualism rather than discussions of polygamy or the Danites. In 1926, in his History of Spiritualism, (89) he observed that spiritualism and Mormonism were born in the same region in upstate New York, something that he had noted in greater detail in the memoirs of his visit to Utah. Similarly, in The Land of Mist, (90) which was published the same year and whose chief character, Professor Challenger, converts to spiritualism, Conan Doyle, as narrator, congratulates a character, who convinced a sceptical Professor Challenger to visit a friend who is in the process of being healed by psychic methods, for her "absolutely unselfish enthusiasm" since she "would, at a moment's notice, take on anyone from a Mormon elder to an Albanian brigand, loving the culprit and mourning the sin." Finally, in A Strange Prophet, an article about a mystic named Thomas Lake Harris written in 1928, and made part of his last book The Edge of the Unknown, (91) Conan Doyle compares the psychic claims of Harris to Swedenborg's first vision and Smith's revelation of Mormonism and observed, once again, that Spiritualism, Mormonism and Christian Science originated in upstate New York.
By 1930, Arthur Conan Doyle's perspective and interest in the Mormons had returned to its religious orientation. In the 1880s his interest had been spurred by his yearning for a religion which taught that the primitive church had been restored, that man had talked to God, and that everyone, no matter what station in life, could know that life continued after death. When he discovered elements in Mormonism which were not "logical" polygamy and the Danites in books having little to do with their theological belief system, he centred his book on the Mormons around those two "practices." His sporadic references to Mormonism for the next thirty-five years or until he visited Utah himself also revolved around these two subjects. After his visit to Utah, however, Conan Doyle was ready to admit that both polygamy and the Danites were part of the history of Mormonism and not the present, and his thinking again returned to the beliefs of the Latter-day Saints which had attracted him to the religion in the first place. He called Joseph Smith a medium, spoke of the similarities between Mormonism and Spiritualism and admired its belief that man could be inspired by, and speak with, spirits. He even suggested that the world would be none the worse by the spread of Mormonism.
Like Artemus Ward, perhaps Conan Doyle's wholesale denunciation of a people he had never seen was rather hasty.
References
1. Arthur Conan Doyle; The Stark Munro Letters; London; Longmans, Green & Co., 1895
2. Ibid. p.17
3. Ibid.
4. Arthur Conan Doyle; Memories and Adventures; London; Hodder & Stoughton, 1924
5. The Stark Munro Letters, p.45
6. Ibid. p.16
7. Arthur Conan Doyle; The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes, compiled by Richard Lancelyn Green; London; Penguin, 1983, p.14
8. For a summary see Jack Tracy; Conan Doyle and the Latter-day Saints; Bloomington: Gaslight Publications, 1979
9. Richard Burton; The City of the Saints; London; Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1861
10. William Chandless; A Visit to Salt Lake; London; Smith, Elder & Co., 1857
11. Jules Remy and Julius Branchley, A Journey to Great Salt Lake City: London; WJeffs, 1861
12. Solomon Carvalho; Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West; New York; Derby & Jackson, 1856
13. John Hyde; Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs; New York; W.P. Fetridge & Co., 1857
14. Nelson Winch Green; Fifteen Years Among the Mormons; New York; Scribner, 1858
15. Charles Farrar Browne; Artemus Ward (His Travels) Among the Mormons; London; John Camden Hotten, 1865
16. Samuel Clemens; Roughing It; Hartford; American Pub lishing Co., 1872. The references to specific pages in Roughing It in the notes that follow are to the pages of the 1872 edition.
17. William Hepworth Dixon, New America; London; Hurst & Blackett, 1867
18. Ann Eliza Young; Wife No. 19; or The Story of a Life in Bondage; Hartford: Dustin, Gillman & Co., 1875
19. Fanny Stenhouse; "Tell it all". The Story of a Life's Experience in Mormonism; Hartford; A.D. Worthington & Co., 1874
20. John Beadle; Life in Utah; or, The Mysteries and Crimes of Mormonism, Philadelphia; National Printing Co., 1870
21. William Jarman; U.S.A., Uncle Sam's Abscess or Hell Upon Earth for U.S. Uncle Sam; Exeter, H. Leduc's Steam Printing Works, 1884
22. Bill Hickman; Brigham's Destroying Angel...; New York; Geo. A. Crofutt, 1872
23. Some of the works quoted by Jarman include Smith, Burton, Stenhouse as well as Benjamin G. Ferris; Utah and the Mormons; New York; Harper & Brothers, 1854. William A. Hickman; Brigham's Destroying Angel; New York: Geo. A. Crofutt, 1872. John D. Lee; Mormonism Unveiled; St. Louis; Bryan, Brand & Co., 1877. Cornelia Paddock; The Fate of Madame La Tour, New York; Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1881.
24. Hickman, p.209
25. C.P. Lyford: The Mormon Problem, An Appeal to the American People; New York; Phillips & Hunt, 1886. For a discussion of the contents of the appendix see Tracy, Conan Doyle and the Latter-day Saints, pp.63-6
26. Arthur Conan Doyle; A Study in Scarlet; London; Ward, Lock & Co., 1888. The references to specific passages in A Study in Scarlet in the notes that follow are to the pages from A Study in Scarlet first published in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887.
27. A. Conan Doyle; A Study in Scarlet; London; Ward, Lock & Co., 1888) p.(v)
28. Charles MacKay. The Mormons, or Latter-day Saints: A Contemporary History, London; Office of the National Illustrated Library, 1951. The edition published nearest to the time Conan Doyle wrote A Study in Scarlet was entitled The Religious, Social, and Political History of the Mormons or Latter-day Saints; New York; Hurst & Co., 1881. Sabin lists these books as authored by Henry Mahew although it is now known that they were edited by MacKay from contemporary newsclippings. Tracy discusses them in Conan Doyle and the Latter-day Saints, pp. 60-2 29. Robert Louis Stevenson; Story of the Destroying Angel in The Dynamiter, London, New York; H. Holt & Co., 1885
30. Arthur Conan Doyle: Mr. Stevenson's methods in Fiction; National Review 14 (January 19 1890), p.648, as quoted in The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes, p.34
31. A Study in Scarlet, p.64
32. Ibid., p.66
33. Stenhouse, p.512
34. Hyde, p.101
35. Charles Farrar Browne; Artemus Ward's Lecture: London; John Camden Hotten, 1869, p.135. Mark Twain also had several characters in Roughing It refer to women as heifers. See Clemens, pp.28, 384
36. Young. p.292
37. Clemens, pp.35, 288
38. Hickman, p.205
39. A Study in Scarlet, pp.64-5
40. Jarman, p.124
41. Green, p.314; Jarman, p.56
42. Jarman, p.105
43. Stenhouse, pp.31023; 580-4
44. Hyde, pp.172-198
45. Beadle, pp.177-95
46. Jarman, pp.131 et seq.
47. Green, pp.308 — 19
48. Hickman, pp.101 — 196
49. Green, pp.203, 245
50. Hickman, pp.2012
51. Clemens, p.123
52. Ibid., p.160, 419; Browne (1865), p.22. In fact, Twain notes that in 1858 "[a]llegiance to Brigham Young and Utah was renounced, and a temporary territorial government for "Washoe" was instituted by the citizens." Clemens, p.186
53. Giovanni Boccacio; The Decameron
54. See, eg. Samuel Rosenberg; Naked is the Best Disguise; New York; Bobbs-Merrill, 1974
55. See, eg Jack Tracy in afterword to Arthur Conan Doyle, The Mystery of Cloomber Bloomington; Gaslight Publications, 1980, p.187
56. Professor James Moriarty (The Napoleon of Crime) appeared in The Final Problem in 1893
57. Colonel Sebastian Moran (Chief of Staff for Professor Moriarty) appeared in The Empty House in 1903
58. Mordaunt Heatherstone appeared in The Mystery of Cloomber in 1888
59. Morecroft appeared in The Adventure of the Three Garridebs in 1925
60. Morgan appeared in The Empty House in 1903
61. Massimo Introvigne; II Cappello del Mago; Milano; SugarCo, 1990, p.26. Dr. Introvigne writes: "Moriarty held spiritualism in contempt, holding it to be an inferior form of, and less noble than spiritualism. Considering the murky reputation of the teacher of Dion Fortune, could it be the case that this is the reason that his contemporary, Conan Doyle, the champion of spiritualism, decided to call the diabolic enemy of his most celebrated detective, Professor Moriarty."
62. See Alan Richardson, ed., Dancers to the Gods; Wellingborough; The Aquarian Press, 1985, pp.22 31: Alan Richardson: Priestess. The Life and Magic of Dion Fortune: Wellingborough; The Aquarian Press, 1987, pp.77 106; Charles Fielding and Carr Collins; The Story of Dion Fortune; York Beach, Maine; Samuel Weiser Inc., n.d., pp.25 30
63. Rosenberg has speculated that Moriarty was modelled after the German philosopher, Nietzsche, since Nietzsche had taken a holiday at Rosenlaui in 1877, which is only a few miles from Reichenbach Falls where Moriarty eventually met his death. See Samuel Rosenberg: Naked is the Best Disguise
64. John Dickson Carr; The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; New York; Harpet and Brothers, 1949, p.286
65. Pierre Nordon; Conan Doyle; New York; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967, p.351
66. The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes, p.47
67. Arthur Conan Doyle; A Duet with an Occasional Chorus; London; Grant Richards, 1899
68. Ibid., pp.133-7
69. Arthur Conan Doyle; The Vital Message; London; Hodder & Stoughton, 1919, p.18
70. J. H. Beadle in his introduction to Hickman's book compared the Mormons to "the bloody fanatics of Zwickan and Munster." Hickman, p.10
71. Joseph A. West; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "New Revelation" and "Vital Message"; Improvement Era 24 (1920): 6-13
72. James E. Talmage; The Articles of Faith; Salt Lake City, Desert News, 1899, p.236
73. West, p.11
74. Arthur Conan Doyle; A New Light on Old Crimes in The Edge of the Unknown; London; John Murray, 1930, pp.1978. (Originally published in The Strand Magazine, January 1920, Volume 59, pp.65-74
75. Arthur Conan Doyle; The War in South Africa Its Cause and Conduct; London; Smith, Elder & Co., 1902, p.13
76. Charles Farrar Browne; Artemus Ward, his book, with many Comic Illustrations; New York; Carleton, 1862, p.103
77. T. B. H. Stenhouse; Rocky Mountain Saints; London; Ward, Lock and Tyler, 1874
78. Browne, 1865, p.42
79. Salt Lake Tribune, May 13 1923
80. Salt Lake Tribune, May 13 1923
81. Higgins to Doyle, May 10 1923, LDS Church Library Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah 82.Doyle to Higgins, May 10 1923, LDS Church Library Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah
83. Bishop Nibley Raps Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Asks Apology, San Francisco Chronicle; June 5 1923, p.5, Section CC
84. Arthur Conan Doyle; Our Second American Adventure; Boston; Little, Brown & Co., 1924, p.87 85.Ibid. pp.97-8
86. Ibid. p.102
87. Ibid. p.104
88. Ibid. p.103-4
89. Arthur Conan Doyle; The History of Spiritualism; 2 vols., London; Cassell & Co., 1926, 1:36
90. Arthur Conan Doyle; The Land of Mist, London; Hutchinson, 1926, p.235
91. Arthur Conan Doyle; A Strange Prophet in The Edge of the Unknown; London: John Murray, 1930, pp.134, 136. (Originally published in Quarterly Transactions of the British College of Psychic Science in April, 1928, Vol.7, pp.5-12
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
