Doyle Tells of Doyle
Doyle Tells of Doyle is an article published in The World, New York on 11 october 1894.
Doyle Tells of Doyle
The Creator of Sherlock Holmes Gives a Lecture on Himself.
MAKES HIS FIRST BOW IN AMERICA.
His Great Detective Is Built on Semi-Scientific Principles, and Guesses at Nothing
TALES, TOO, OF HISTORICAL ROMANCE.
His Boyhood — His First Book — But, Road On — Here Are the Best Things He Said, and Just How He Said Them.
If Sherlock Holmes had been in the Calvary Baptist Church, in West Fifty-seventh street last night he would have seen enter a tall, broad-shouldered man,
[###] himself behind a reading
in front of the pulpit. The tall man
[###] course, evening dress, for the
[###] is full of polite women and
[###] entertain whom he had some-
[###] of color about this blond-
[###] man were his red cheeks, his
[###], a blood-red silk handkerchief
[###] in his vest. If Sherlock
[###] wished to deduce the man's
[###] would have studied him; a
[###] growing broader because
[###] above it is growing thinner;
large ears, narrow slits of eyes, a tilted nose, a yellow mustache of vigorous growth and a weak, receding chin. The moment the man spoke Sherlock Holmes would have said he was a "good fellow," a generous man, for he spoke in a melodious, hearty, welcoming voice; a modest man, too, for he sometimes spoke almost depreciatingly of himself; modest, too, because of jewelry he showed only [###] stud and the bar that held in place his watch chain. He used none of the tricks of elocutionists, few, very few gestures, nor had no any stage tricks, except every now and then, involuntarily, he made a motion that fitted the mood of a character of which he spoke or read. So much more it would have puzzled [###] Sherlock Holmes to tell of this human. He might have been a doctor, a lawyer, a writer, anything but an actor.
A DOCTOR AND WRITER, TOO.
The big man was A. Conan Doyle, who is a doctor and the writer who created Sherlock Holmes. Last night he made his first public appearance in America, delivered his first lecture. The lecture was about himself and his writings and how he came to write them, and he said, very candidly, that he had chosen the subject because the only reason that such a fine audience came to hear him was that they had read some things he had happened to write. Then again, if he "read his own works badly,"
he said, "the crime brings its own punishment."
It must be smiled that more than once during the evening the Doctor brought to mind the flagellant who devotedly punishes himself.
Dr. Doyle recalled that Thackeray, "who looked a giant to two foot nothing,"
was the first literary man he could remember. Thackeray's nose fascinated him by its "wonderful distortion."
"To my mother"
— and he fondly lingered on, the word — "I owe the delight to be found in well-told story. I started writing a bank at the somewhat immature age of six. I wrote it in a fine, bold hand — four words to the line."
GREW QUITE AT HOME.
It may be observed here that this huge man, who describes murders and mysteries, their doing and unravelling, writes a fine, delicate, beautiful hand, like copper-plate.
"In this first book of mine,"
he said, "there were a man and a tiger. They began separately, but they were blended when the man and the tiger met. The book was illustrated by the author. The tiger looked like a many-hooped barrel with a tall to it."
The doctor then went on to deliver his literary autobiography. As he continued he became more and more at ease because he saw he was welcome. His ears grew white, from which Sherlock Holmes would at once have deduced — "dejuiced"
Dr. Doyle calls it — that his heart, stimulated by his first excitement, had regained its normal action.
He became an omnivorous reader until the circulating library he patronized passed a rule that no subscriber could take out more than three books in a day.
HARD WORK AT FIRST.
As a boy he "knew the Rockies better than his own garden,"
and in imagination slew countless Indian warriors, to be nursed back to health from the wounds received in these encounters by beautiful squaws. Passing on, Dr. Doyle let fail a piece of history cheering to young men who think they can write and who perhaps can.
"If I have made any development"
— this without the slightest affectation — "it has been a slow and painful matter. In 1878 a manuscript of mine was accepted. The small check I received for it was the bounty that enrolled me in the great army of literature. For ten years or so I wrote short stories, yet I did not earn $250 during any one year from my writing."
And this is encouraging to writers who would see their names at the bottom of what they write.
"The same bad system prevails in England,"
said Dr. Doyle, "that, I am told, exists to a less extent here. The magazines keep contributions anonymous. A critic's abuse may set somebody to read an author's works, but a critic's silence never will. Yet, even then I had my share of criticism. Of my first story to appear in the Cornhill Magazine it was said that it would make Thackeray turn in his grave."
The police women and men in the audience laughed, as if to say, "Of course they couldn't say anything of that sort now," and Dr. Doyle laughed with them quite heartily and cheerfully.
"SEMI-SCIENTIFIC DETECTION."
"About that time a gentleman appeared who has been a very great friend to me — Sherlock Holmes. The detective story is a primitive form of literature, but, I think, a good setting for a dramatic idea. I resented the fashion in which authors make detectives arrive at results by chance and tried to set up a semi-scientific system of detection. I derived the formation of the idea from an old professor of mine in Edinburgh, who in a few minutes, simply by observing a man, could not only diagnose his disease, but learn his age tils place of birth, his training and his personal habits."
Then Dr. Doyle read from one of the books how Sherlock Holmes "dejuiced" facts from an inanimate object. Watson finds the great detective a watch. Sherlock Holmes examines it through a magnifying glass and learns these facts rightly:
That it is his elder brother's watch — from the initials.
That he inherited it from his father — from the date when the watch was made.
That his brother sometimes had money and sometimes was in need — from the numbers that four pawnbrokers had scratched with a pin within the watch-сasе.
That his brother was a drunkard — from the many scratches around the keyhole.
EASY WHEN YOU KNOW HOW.
Dr. Doyle paused and smiled pleasantly upon the women and men who listened to him. They felt the least little creeping of the flesh, for they did not think that it was exactly by such close observation of trifles that clever men have made fools of the ignorant ever since the world was born. The doctor, feeling entirely at home, stuck his left hand in his trousers pocket and went on to describe how Sherlock Holmes and his brother, greater even than he, learned all about a small dark man, with his hat on the back of his head and some packages under his arm, simply by looking at him. They learned that the small, dark man was a soldier, an artilleryman, a non-commissioned officer, just returned from India; a widower with children.
And they learned these things from such patent facts that the audience laughed gleefully and Dr. Doyle laughed with them and said, in a childlike way:
"It's all superficial enough, but it's not quite so superficial as the critics say. It's easy enough to see a thing after the way has been pointed to you. Here's a all unpublished — Sherlock Holmes picks up a plug of tobacco — 'This,' he says, 'is from a meerschaum pipe.' Now, dejuice that for yourselves."
The Doctor paused and laughed outright at, or rather with, the puzzled people.
STRANGER THINGS IN REAL LIFE.
"After these stories appeared,"
he said, "then I was deluged with letters from people making me to solve all sorts of mysteries. But really, now, more extraordinary things than I ever wrote really happen and are solved. There was Carvalho, the expert in handwriting, who discovered who stole the money missing from a package sent from New York to New Orleans. That seemed offer a most extraordinary problem."
Whenever Dr. Doyle uses a superlative he lifts his eyebrows as if he were very much astonished indeed.
Well he said, almost regretfully, "Mr. Holmes came to grief at last. Perhaps it was just as well. He had been imposed long enough upon by the public. Twenty-six stories about one man were enough.
"He was so real to some people that I received letters asking for a lock of his hair, and one letter asked for his photographs at different ages."
HIS ROMANCES.
The speaker then turned to the historical romances he has written. He had great difficulty in finding a publisher. One told him that his first romance lacked only one thing and that was — interest.
"In 1888 the manuscript fell into the hands of Andrew Lang and was taken to the Longmans. From that time the door of literature has been open to me, if I had anything worthy with which to enter it."
