Conan Doyle and The Strand Magazine
Conan Doyle and The Strand Magazine is an article written by Christopher Roden published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 2, No. 1) in spring 1991.
This article examines the symbiotic relationship between Arthur Conan Doyle and The Strand Magazine, tracing how the magazine's rise coincided with the creation and success of Sherlock Holmes and other major works. Drawing on correspondence and publication history, it shows how both author and periodical mutually shaped and sustained each other's fame for nearly forty years.
Conan Doyle and The Strand Magazine
1891 has to be regarded as a memorable year. In mid-December of the previous year, Arthur Conan Doyle, by then a moderately successful medical practitioner, had decided to abandon his practice at 1 Bush Villas, Elm Grove, Southsea and, with his wife Louise, to journey to Vienna to study Eye medicine.
The Doyles arrived in Vienna on January 5 1891 and, during his stay, Arthur attended lectures at the Krankenhaus. His own opinion of his time spent there was that he could certainly have learned far more in London:
- 'for even if one has a fair knowledge of conversational German, it is very different from following accurately a rapid lecture filled with technical terms.'
Doyle, therefore, traced very little spiritual or intellectual advance to his time spent in the Austrian capital but, as he records in Memories and Adventures, he did see a little of gay Viennese society, during which time he managed to get in some excellent skating — yet another of his sporting pursuits.
One of his lesser regarded novels, The Doings of Raffles Haw also dates from his stay in the city. Generally ignored today, Raffles Haw is interesting for its siting in the Midlands of England, an area with which Doyle had become well acquainted during his time as a medical assistant with Doctor Hoare. It is also interesting for the suggestion it makes that Doyle may either have joined, or been well acquainted with the beliefs of the Rosicrucians. Raffles Haw, the hero of the piece, had built his own mansion in which he practised alchemy, thereby turning base metals into gold. Such practices were a common feature of early Rosicrucianism and Doyle's use of alchemy as a plot device, coupled with a similar usage in the much earlier story of The Silver Hatchet (1883) bolster my belief that Doyle either joined the Rosicrucians, or studied their practices, during his time in Southsea. Raffles Haw suffers from incomplete plotting and was a hastily written story but, nevertheless, is good reading to this day. Doyle, on the other hand, felt that it was:
- 'not a very notable achievement by which I was able to pay my current expenses without encroaching on the very few hundred pounds which were absolutely all that I had in the world.'
It is interesting to note that the hero's surname was later adopted by Doyle's brother-in-law, E. W. Hornung, for his highly successful series of adventures featuring the amateur cracksman.
ACD returned to London in the March of 1891 and began the search for suitable premises where he could erect his oculist's plate. Eventually he settled on 2 Devonshire Place where, for £120 a year he had the use of a front room with part use of a waiting room. He relates:
- 'I was soon to find that they were both waiting rooms, and now I know that it was better so.'
During the early months of 1891, another quite different event took place in London. In January of that year, George Newnes had founded The Strand Magazine from the profits of his highly successful weekly paper Tit-Bits. The first issue contained the following modest preface:
- The Strand Magazine will be issued regularly in the early part of each month. It will contain stories and articles by the best British writers, and special translations from the first foreign authors. These will be illustrated by eminent artists.
- Special new features which have not hitherto found place in Magazine Literature will be introduced from time to time.
- It may be said that with the immense number of existing monthlies there is no necessity for another. It is believed, however, that The Strand Magazine will soon occupy a position which will justify its existence.
- The past efforts of the Editor in supplying cheap, healthful literature have met with such generous favour from the public, that he ventures to hope that this new enterprise will prove a popular one.
The rest, of course, is history. The Strand continued an unbroken run of publication until March 1950, and its association with Conan Doyle ran from the third issue in March 1891 until his final story The Last Resource was published posthumously in December 1930.
But we progress too quickly. Our Doctor was settled in his new rooms waiting for his patients to arrive. Perhaps we should regard it as fortunate for the readers of The Strand and their succeeding generations that Doyle was not to find success as an oculist. Having considerable time on his hands, he was able to settle down to writing.
His first appearance in The Strand was in the March 1891 issue and his story, an innocuous little piece entitled 'The Voice of Science', had been submitted to A. P. Watt who had just been appointed his literary agent, probably before his departure to Vienna. Somewhat surprisingly, and possibly because of the haste with which the magazine was prepared, the story appeared anonymously although Doyle was credited with the story in the magazine's index. For this contribution, Doyle received £4 per thousand words — considerably less than he was to demand in later years.
If either George Newnes, the Strand's proprietor, or Greenhough Smith, the magazine's editor, had any doubts of the new publication's success, Doyle was on hand to dispel their fears. He quickly recognised the potential for a series of short stories, the medium in which he was to gain most recognition in future years. In ACD's own words:
- 'A number of monthly magazines were coming out at that time, notable among which was The Strand, then as now under the editorship of Greenhough Smith. Considering these various journals with their disconnected stories it had struck me that a single character running through a series, if it only engaged the attention of the reader, would bind that reader to that particular magazine. On the other hand, it had long seemed to me that the ordinary serial might be an impediment rather than a help to a magazine, since, sooner or later, one missed one number and afterwards it had lost all interest. Clearly the ideal compromise was a character which carried through, and yet instalments which were each complete in themselves, so that the purchaser was always sure that he could relish the whole contents of the magazine. I believe that I was the first to realize this and The Strand Magazine the first to put it into practice.'
When the first of the Sherlock Holmes stories landed on Greenhough Smith's desk, the editor could hardly believe his eyes:
- 'It was in 1891,' he wrote in his obituary of Conan Doyle which appeared in The Strand for September 1930, that as Editor of The Strand Magazine, I received the first of these stories which were destined to become famous over all the world as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I have cause to remember the occasion well. The Strand Magazine was in its infancy in those days; good story writers were scarce, and here to an editor, jaded with wading through reams of impossible stuff, comes a gift from heaven, a godsend in the shape of a story that brought happiness into the despairing life of this weary editor. Here was a new and gifted story-writer, there was no mistaking the ingenuity of plot, the limpid clearness of style, the perfect art of telling a story. I saw the great possibilities of a fine series, and said so to Sir Arthur, who has generously written in his memoirs how encouraged he was to go ahead.'
Greenhough Smith recognised his find as 'the greatest short story writer since Edgar Allan Poe', and wasted no time in rushing to Newnes' office to share the discovery.
Thus was formed the relationship between Conan Doyle and The Strand which was to extend well into the 20th Century.
The first of the Holmes stories, A Scandal in Bohemia, appeared in July 1891, and was illustrated by Sidney Paget. Paget's brother Walter had originally been intended as the illustrator, but W. J. K. Boot, The Strand's Art Editor, had mistakenly sent the commission to Sidney who continued to illustrate the Holmes stories until his untimely death. Walter Paget did, eventually, illustrate one Holmes story, The Adventure of the Dying Detective, which appeared in December 1913, and Owen Dudley Edwards has presented an interesting speculation on the content of his illustrations in his afterword to the new facsimile production of Conan Doyle's manuscript for this story.
The illustrations which accompany Conan Doyle's contributions to The Strand are probably as well-known as the stories themselves, but the author did not always agree with the way in which his stories were illustrated.
Regarding Black Peter, ACD wrote to Greenhough Smith:
- 'What a pity the pictures are not better chosen. There is none there to induce anyone to read the story. The story would be better without them.'
and, after sending in his manuscript for The Lost Special, Doyle was to comment, quite specifically:
- '... if the artist draws a picture — as he will be tempted to do of the train jumping down the shaft he simply gives the whole thing away. It would be a shame. Let his drawing be mysterious like the story so that the reader cannot quite understand it until he has read it.'
It is not on record how Conan Doyle reacted to The Final Problem's being prefaced with a full page illustration of the struggle which took place between Holmes and Moriarty.
The account of how Conan Doyle tired of Holmes and finally disposed of him in The Final Problem is well enough known and does not warrant repetition here. The effect on The Strand's readership was devastating. It is said that City gents wore mourning; and ACD himself received several uncomplimentary letters from Holmes' admirers. With Holmes gone, circulation of The Strand fell back, causing Newnes to tell his shareholders that the death of Sherlock Holmes had been
- 'a dreadful event.'
(and, by now, Conan Doyle numbered amongst those shareholders).
Conan Doyle followed his Napoleon of Crime with Napoleon himself although he did not attempt a series of adventures using Napoleon as a central character. (He was, I think, wise to recognise that Napoleon's exploits would be too well known for such a venture). Instead, his second great character creation for the Strand, Brigadier Etienne Gerard, made his first appearance in December 1894, and a series of Exploits were published between then and December 1895.
The illustration of one of the Gerard stories presented Doyle, once more, with a reason to complain to his editor:
- '... take the last of the Brigadier also. My whole object is to give the reader a stunning shock by Napoleon lying dead at the crisis of the adventure. But the story is prefaced by a large picture of Napoleon lying dead, which simply knocks the bottom out of the whole thing from the storyteller's point of view.'
When Doyle revived Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles he moved away from his original idea that each adventure should be complete in itself. But it is hard to imagine that a Holmes-hungry public would have allowed itself to miss one single issue by the time that story was published. With The Hound of the Baskervilles, Doyle's earnings rose to new heights: he never received less than £480 for an instalment, and often the sum rose to as much as £620 depending upon the length. From the mid-1890s onwards, The Strand never paid Doyle less that £100 per thousand words.
Whilst mentioning The Hound, two letters from Conan Doyle to Greenhough Smith throw interesting light on the author's method of writing that story.
We know, of course, that ACD never used a typewriter and this made it difficult to retain copies of his work. From what Doyle had to say, however, it appears that each instalment was sent off as soon as it was written, and this presented him with some problems:
- 'It bothers me rather', he wrote in the first letter, that in writing any instalment I have not got a copy of the preceding one. The matter is complex and it is hard to hold the threads in one's memory.'
In the second letter, he told Greenhough Smith:
- 'I send with this the 4th and 5th instalments, the latter consisting of one long chapter. I write under some difficulty through not having any of the proofs, so I cannot refer back.'
The difficulties posed by not having a copy to hand, no doubt account for many of the anomalies in the Holmes cycle anomalies which Sherlockians seize upon with so much energy. This instance, however, is a further illustration of the remarkable ability which Conan Doyle possessed to write a story almost 'in one sitting.'
In the years which followed, all of Doyle's great fictional creations appeared in The Strand and, of course, many of his novels appeared there in serial form. One exception was A Duet with an Occasional Chorus which ACD never intended for serialisation and which he presented to his friend Grant Richards as a contribution for his new publishing venture. Doyle told Greenhough Smith:
- 'I did not think it would be in your interest to publish this thing and so I forebore to offer it, much to my own financial loss. I could not see it cut into lengths either. The most expensive luxury in life is even as limited an artistic conscience as mine.'
The catalogue is extensive and we could spend many hours outlining Doyle's contributions to the magazine. Space, however, forbids that luxury and we must therefore note how inter-connected Conan Doyle and The Strand Magazine became during the relationship which saw birth in so humble a fashion.
In 1916, The Strand advertised its satisfaction in having acquired the exclusive rights for Conan Doyle's History of the British Campaign in France and Flanders. The exclusive rights profited Doyle by some £5,000 but for that he had to work hard and engage in lengthy battles with the British Censor, as his correspondence with Greenhough Smith illustrates.
His History of the War received a lukewarm reception from military commentators which Doyle described as:
- the greatest and most undeserved literary disappointment of my life. But quite naturally, Conan Doyle's later contributions centered around his all-consuming passion with spiritualism, and it is to Greenhough Smith's credit as a close friend of Doyle's that he continued to publish such articles as 'Fairies Photographed', apparently having little regard for the possible repercussions these might have on the magazine's credibility.
As time went on, Greenhough Smith tried hard to get Conan Doyle to revert to the style of his earlier contributions but, apart from the occasional short story, he had little success in this direction.
The last of fifty-six Sherlock Holmes short stories, The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place, was published in April 1927 and earned Doyle £628.14.0 for the British and Colonial serial rights, and 5/- (five shillings) a word for the American rights.
In conclusion, it can, I think, be said that Conan Doyle and The Strand Magazine deserved each other. They benefitted enormously from each other and ACD himself, particularly in the first thirty years of their association, enhanced his own reputation enormously through the Strand's insatiable demands for his material.
How fitting it is then that, in the year of the centenary of the fictional death of Conan Doyle's fictional detective, we can also celebrate the genesis of the magazine which first brought Sherlock Holmes to the attention of the greater public and which contributed so much, by way of being a learning ground for other up and coming authors of the time.
Our debt is to three persons: George Newnes the founder of The Strand Magazine; Greenhough Smith its Editor; and Arthur Conan Doyle its major contributor for almost forty years.
A version of this paper was presented at the Introduction to Conan Doyle weekend at Barnsley in September 1991, and to The Stormy Petrels of British Columbia, Canada in November 1991. Extracts from the correspondence between ACD and H. Greenhough Smith are reproduced by kind permission of The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection in The Metropolitan Toronto Library, Toronto, Canada, and The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection (#10547-D), Tracy W. McGregor Library, Manuscripts Division, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
