Doyle's Lecture
Doyle's Lecture is an article published in The Boston Post on 1 november 1894.
Doyle's Lecture
How the Creator of Sherlock Holmes Appears.
The death of few men, particularly imaginary men, has been more widely mourned than that of Sherlock Holmes, who was so ruthlessly slain not so very long since by the hand and the brain that created him.
Were it not that his sleep is of the eternal variety he might have attended a very interesting function in this city last night and heard a history of his conception, his wonderful "deductions" and his peculiarities in general applauded to the echo by an audience as large as it was enthusiastic.
Had Sherlock Holmes been in the Y.M.C.A. Hall last night he might have seen and heard a man just exactly as clever as himself, a man whose perceptive faculties and imaginative powers are even more acute, because more diversified than his own, in fact the man from whose brain he sprung — Dr. A. Conan Doyle.
It was this eminent author's first visit here, despite the fact that one of his best characters at least was to Massachusetts' manor born, and, as is always the case with a man of renown, there was much manifest curiosity on the part of the large audience that was there as to Dr. Doyle's personality.
Not but what word pictures and pictures of almost every other variety of him are often seen; but any picture is a poor thing at best as compared with the original, and so literary Boston — all of it that could get into the Y.M.C.A. Hall — went to see and hear Dr. Doyle last night.
Doubtless the ideas of what he would be like judged in the flesh and not from his books and the sometimes strange, sometimes wonderful and always interesting people that live in their pages, were as densified and as numerous as the audience itself. Yet everyone appeared quite the contrary of disappointed in Dr. Doyle, in his manner, as in what he said during the hour and more that he talked.
In appearance Dr. Doyle is very like any other well-bred, well-read doctor.
In other words he has no particularly distinguishing mark, either of voice, manner or dress, that are sometimes natural to, and at other times affected by, men of fame. He said he was absent-minded, but he doesn't look as if he were, and it seems hard to believe of the man who was the creator of Sherlock Holmes.
A large man, is Dr. Doyle, large and broad-shouldered, with a well-fed, well-kept, clear-conscience-sort-of-an-air that adds, indefinably, perhaps, but adds to the unmistakable geniality of his face. His cheeks have the ruddy glow so characteristic of the sons of merrie England, and a heavy blonde mustache shades a mouth. that is large and expressive.
His hair is brown, too, of course a shade darker, though, than his mustache, and combed well back from a high, wide forehead, that seems as if it must still conceal very many interesting thoughts.
Dr. Doyle's hands are brawny and sinewy, and the man, as a whole, looks as though he could fulfil a mighty contract with the sword as well as with the pen.
When he came upon the rostrum at a little after 8 o'clock last night he had a red silk handkerchief tucked jauntily in the apex' of the waistcoat to his evening dress. On the broad expanse of white shirt front that seemed all the more immaculate from the contrast reposed a solitary dark stud. A broad, turn-down collar and white bow tie completed his otherwise unconventional attire.
Of course the people looked hard at this man whom they knew so well, but had never seen, as they applauded his appearance, and of course, too, this inspection of himself very quickly gave way to that of the thoughts that he expressed, which was only natural in the case of a man who could write "The White Company." Mr. Doyle is not an orator, and among the other smart things that he does he doesn't attempt to be.
In fact, he speaks entirely without oratorical effect, save as to inflection of voice when he reads his own works. Hence his auditors have to give no attention to himself as he talks, but what he says is put in such a way that it is understood and appreciated and enjoyed with nothing else to engage the attention of the listener.
Perhaps Dr. Doyle is an orator after all.
Much of the time as he talks his hands are clasped in each other behind his back, one or the other stealing around occasionally to turn the leaves of his book or manuscript, or to take the red silk handkerchief from its place and stroke the blonde mustache into order.
Again, as some witticism is expressed, Dr. Doyle's right hand steals to his forehead quite slowly, and as the applause lasts a symmetrical forefinger gives two or three caressing little rubs to his forehead or his temple, or perhaps his nose. Then the hand goes back to grasp its mate, and the story goes on.
It is only in America, perhaps, that the par value of English wit or the ability of Englishmen to say or appreciate funny things is considered a minus quantity. Dr. Doyle's address last night proved this impression, be it American or otherwise, a decided libel, so far as he is concerned, anyway. The funny things that he said, and quoted other people as having done and said, were so numerous as to give a flavor of laugh to his entire address, and many of them were loudly applauded. He began by telling of his birth in Edinburgh, and how one of the few remembrances of those days was having been held upon the knee of a big, noisy man, who was William Makepeace Thackeray.
The lasting charm of the stories that his mother used to tell him as a little child, and later of the ferocious red men that he slew and the seas that he sailed through the medium of the stories of Captain Mayne Reid and J. Fenimore Cooper, was noted with touching vividness. And then he told how his parents had presented him with a complete set of the Waverley Novels with money that he had saved for other things, including a cricket bat, and how, in consequence, he for a long time held Walter Scott in the same category of regard that he did his English grammar and cod liver oil.
Then there was that famous first book of Dr. Doyle's about "The Man and the Tiger," and his recital of his uncertainty as to how to finish the story after the man and the tiger had met and the only two characters thus been merged into one aroused shouts of laughter.
He said he believed in good books for boys. They will read them at first because they can't get any others, and afterwards because they don't care for the others.
For the first ten years of his literary career Dr. Doyle wrote short stories for different papers and did not, he said, realize $250 a year from his work. Then he got a story in Cornhill, a magazine of considerable prominence at the time. It astonished him some when a critic said of this story that "it would make Thackeray turn over in his grave," but he persevered.
And then after this came Sherlock Holmes, and Dr. Doyle's career was assured. His history of this famous character was quite extensive and highly interesting even to the ludicrous inquiries that came about him from all over the world. Same people wanted locks of Holmes's hair, others wanted his photograph, and so on.
Dr. Doyle read from this work, and also from several others, stating briefly an outline of the work, and oftentimes the motive or inspiration that prompted it.
It will gratify many who were prevented from being present last evening to know that Manager Pond has been able to arrange for a return visit of Dr. Doyle on Tuesday, Nov. 20, when he will appear afternoon and evening in new programmes.
