Doyle and the Fairies
Doyle and the Fairies is an article written by Doug Elliott published in Canadian Holmes (Vol. 7 No. 3, Spring 1984).
The article recounts Conan Doyle's credulous support for the Cottingley fairy photographs, from his enthusiastic 1920 Strand article and 1922 book The Coming of the Fairies to the later criticism, technical doubts, and eventual 1983 confession by Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright that the pictures were a hoax. The article concludes by contrasting Conan Doyle's passionate belief in the paranormal with the rational genius of Holmes and Watson, joking through Martin Gardner that perhaps they "invented" Conan Doyle rather than the reverse.
Doyle and the Fairies
Doug Elliott reports on recent developments about one of the oddest episodes in Arthur Conan Doyle's life.
One of the most puzzling aspects of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character was his limitless gullibility when it came to the paranormal. He embraced spiritualism wholeheartedly during much of his life, lecturing, writing volumes, and generally giving a sympathetic ear to mediums and psychics of all types. This year has brought one of Conan Doyle's most notorious cases out of a long and fitful dormancy.
In 1917, two young girls, Frances Griffiths, aged 10, and her cousin Elsie Wright, aged 16, took a remarkable photograph in the garden of the Wright home in Cottingley Dell, Yorkshire. The photo showed Frances lounging in the grass, gazing dreamily into the lens, while four tiny women wearing diaphanous dresses and large butterfly wings danced around her. Two years later the fairy photo came to the attention of Edward L. Gardner, a well-known theosophist and author who managed to acquire the negative, which he sent to several experts for analysis.
As soon as Conan Doyle was informed of the photos-by this time the girls had taken a second one-he wrote to Gardner and offered his support. Unable to travel to Yorkshire personally due to a planned trip to Australia, he sent Gardner to meet the girls and see the site. The visit convinced Gardner that the photos were genuine, and in an article in the Christmas 1920 issue of the Strand magazine, Conan Doyle broke the news enthusiastically about mankind's newfound friends.
By the end of the following year, there were five photographs in all, showing various fairies and one gnome. All were reprinted in Conan Doyle's book The Coming of the Fairies (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1922), which told the story of the two girls and the subsequent investigation. There was not a hint of skepticism.
The book recounted other reports of fairy sightings from around the world, including a photograph submitted by "a young lady in Canada, daughter of one of the leading citizens of Montreal, and personally known to me". The picture was taken in Waterville, New Hampshire, by the 11-year-old daughter of friends of the writer's family. The child is described as "frail and imaginative, but sweet and incapable of deceit".
The photograph shows a clump of mushrooms (1) surrounded by grass and bushes. The depth of focus is extremely narrow, so that only a small strip in the centre of the picture is in focus. In the background appears the blurry figure of a small woman in a large hat and Jong dress. Parts of the face and body are obscured by leaves, and the figure appears to be solid, since a dark stump behind it is not visible through the lighter-toned body.
The child's mother is reported to have been present at the time, and claims that the figure was not visible. This notwithstanding, the picture could easily be that of a doll; the details are simply too indistinct to make a judgement either way.
The Coming of the Fairies and its author were lambasted cruelly on both sides of the Atlantic-he had allowed his friend Houdini to take the photos to the U. S. for publication, and the book was published in New York by George H. Doran. One American expert declared that the fairies were actually dolls. A technician at Eastman Kodak thought it odd that the fairies were dressed in the latest 1917 fashions. One critic, novelist Maurice Hewlett, said in effect that Conan Doyle, like the fairies, had two legs, one of which was being pulled.
The storm of publicity proved too much for Elsie, and in the late l 920's she moved to Canada, where she remained for some forty years. (2) Conan Doyle himself was unperturbed by the controversy. Writing in 1923, again in the Strand, he insisted that his mind had remained open to all explanations. "The only theory which I would not discuss was the honesty of the children, for that I considered to be well attested." The obvious explanation, that he was the victim of an imaginative adolescent prank, was unthinkable. "In fact," he wrote, "there are a good many apologies due to the children for criticism which could only mean that they were dishonest little wretches. That line of comment must now be definitely abandoned by every fair-minded critic, but what other one is open?"
Indeed.
For his part, Gardner parlayed the incident into a Jong-running lecture tour. On April 28, 1927, he appeared at the Theosophical Society Hall on Isabella Street in Toronto, his presentation enlivened by lantern slides of the photographs.
The argument has raged on ever since. In 1923, Mr. E. Taylor, a leading light in Vancouver occult circles, declared that there were fairies in many parts of Canada, but that British Columbia seemed to be more thickly inhabited by the sprites than the other provinces. Fairies, he stated, had adopted different colours in different localities; there was, for example, a bright blue tribe living in the Chilliwack Valley near Vancouver. Mr. Tay lor produced no photographs.
In 1971, Elsie, now returned from Canada, and Frances were interviewed on BBC radio and steadfastly maintained their original story. "I've told you they're photographs of figments of our imagination," said Elsie, "and that's what I'm sticking to." Frances, when asked separately whether she had faked the pictures, asked how Elsie had answered that question. When told, she replied that she had nothing to add.
In 1978, author Robert Shaeffer submitted the photographs for computer image analysis of the sort usually reserved for testing photos of UFO's. All five failed, and were declared hoaxes. That same year, an investigator discovered that three of the fairies in the first photograph were exact copies from an illustration for a poem in the children's book Princess Mary's Gift Book. (3)
Looking at the photographs today, one finds it odd that they sparked so much analysis and discussion: they appear to be fairly obvious fakes. Martin Gardner writes:
- The lack of modeling on the fairy figures and their 'sharp outlines indicate that Elsie had simply drawn them on stiff paper, then the girls had cut them out and stuck them in the grass or supported them with invisible wires or threads. The little ladies have hairdos that were fashionable at that time. There is not the slightest blurring of their fluttering wings. In every picture the fairies look as flat as paper dolls. (4)
Then on March 17, 1983, Frances Griffiths, now 76 and living in Kent, con fessed to The Times that it had all been a hoax, that the fairies had been illustrations propped up in the grass with hatpins. (One of the hatpins was mis taken by Conan Doyle for a fairy navel and proof that fairies reproduced in the same manner as humans did.) Her cousin, now 82, confirmed the confession. Both were reluctant to go into detail about the affair, since they are both busy writing autobiographies in which they promise to tell all. Frances did say, however, that there was one photograph that she felt was genuine; this was taken by Elsie, who told The Times, "It was a brilliant idea. Frances was not there at the time, and I just saw a way to take it. I have never told my son and my husband how I did it at all. I swear on the Bible that my father had nothing to do with it" — it was in her father's darkroom that the pictures were developed — "but I will not swear on the Bible that they are real fairies."
It is probable that, had this confession come during Conan Doyle's life time, he would simply have refused to believe it, just as he refused to believe medium Margaret Fox's public confession of fraud. The puzzle remains: how could a man with such a passion to believe, when belief flies in the face of evidence, have invented Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson? The answer, claims Martin Gardner, is obvious: he didn't.
- It was not, I think, Doyle who made this pair immortal. It was the other way around. Holmes and Watson, intent on guarding their privacy, permitted Sir Arthur to take credit for inventing them. In doing so, they conferred upon him that earthly immortality that his authentic but undistinguished writings could never have provided. (5)
Notes
1. The mushrooms were Amanita muscaria, which have been suspected of having hallucinogenic properties. A. muscaria is not known to affect cameras.
2. The writer has been unable to unearth details of where Elsie made her home here. Any information from readers would be most welcome.
3. Hodder and Stoughton, 1915.
4. Martin Gardner, "The Irrelevance of Conan Doyle," Beyond Baker Street, edited by Michael Harrison. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976. Reprinted in Science: Good, Bad and Bogus. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1981.
5. Ibid.
- Article courtesy The Bootmakers of Toronto.
