Dr. Conan Doyle Arrives
Dr. Conan Doyle Arrives is an article published in The Sun (New York) on 3 october 1894.
Dr. Conan Doyle Arrives
HE BELIEVES THAT SHERLOCK HOLMES IS DEAD FOR KEEPS.
Takes a Bird's-eye View of the Greater New York — Finds the Air Very Clear and Expects to see as Far West as San Francisco Some Day — He Considers "Pembroke" a Great American Novel.
Dr. A. Conan Doyle, the novelist and inventor of "Sherlock Holmes," arrived early yesterday morning on the steamer Elbe from Southampton. He comes to fill a two months' lecture engagement under the management of Major J. B. Pond. He will give forty lectures in the principal cities and will return to England before Christmas.
Dr. Doyle is putting up at the Aldine Club. Within an hour after his arrival he was off sightseeing. A younger brother, who came over with him, and Major Pond accompanied him about the city. They went to Wall street and passed half an hour in the gallery of the Stock Exchange. Afterward they went up into some of the high buildings to get a bird's- eye view of the Greater New York.
In the afternoon Dr. Doyle was ready to see reporters in Major Pond's office in the Everett House. There were many there to meet him, and each he greeted heartily with a handshake. "So glad to see you," he repeated again and again, and every time with a smile.
The smile is the one strong characteristic of Dr. Doyle's face, which doesn't get into the pictures of him. The pictures show a grave, thoughtful man, too earnest, apparently, to take account of the little pleasantries of life; the real face is instinct with fun and good humor, and there is a suggestion at the corners of the mouth that makes you expect a burst of laughter at any moment. It isn't only in the face, either, for Dr. Doyle's whole appearance promise you that he is a jolly man. He is big and broad-shouldered, and rather inclined to stoutness. His skin is ruddy, his eyes are clear light blue, and show a twinkle. His moustache is several shades lighter than his hair, which is brown.
Dr. Doyle was dressed yesterday in a gray Bult with double-breasted sack coat. His neck scarf was bright scarlet. He wore patent leather shoes. In his hand he carried a soft, black Alpine hat and tan gloves. He was smoking a cigar.
"This is my first visit to your shores," he said in a pleasant voice, "although I hope it will not be my last. I have long wanted to visit America, and I don't know of any way in which one can get so thoroughly in touch with the people as by combining lecturing with pleasuring. In any lecture tours in England I found that I earned more about the people within a few months then I had learned in thirty-five years. I say I hope it will not be my last visit because I have been thinking for some time of seeking among your health resorts some place that might prove beneficial to my wife. She is in poor health, and is now in Switzerland. I have been considering the Adirondacks, and it may be that I shall bring her over to see what benefit the pure pine air of those mountains will do her. It is on my wife's account, too, that I shall return to England just soon as my tour is over. I want to get back surely by Christmas.
"The first thing, and the most forcible, that has impressed me with America is the wonderful clearness of your atmosphere. It is really astonishing how far you can see here, and with what distinctness. It is altogether different in smoky London, don't you know, and even in Paris there is nothing like it. It makes you feel absolutely like another being, of greatly added powers. It is an impression, by the way, that trikes every visitor to your shores."
When asked about his plans for his lectures, Dr. Doyle said:
"I came with three lectures, which are entitled 'Facts About Fiction.' 'The Novels of George Meredith,' and 'Readings and Reminiscences.' I intended to deliver the first two, but Major Pond tells me the people would rather hear the third, which is of course more personal. I tear I shall have to drop the George Meredith lecture altogether here; he does not seem to be appreciated as he is in England. I am to deliver forty lectures, I understand, and, I believe, am to go as far west as San Francisco. That will afford me a good opportunity to see the country, of which I shall be very glad. I shall take my pleasure as I go. I intend to do no writing whatever while here; although you know a literary man can never promise that to himself.
In reply to a question as to how he first came to write, Dr. Doyle said:
"Well, I have always been writing. My first book. A Study in Scarlet, was published in 1887, but before that I had been writing short stories for ten years. I always had the literary bent. I think. I was born in Edinburgh of an English mother and Irish father, and was educated at Stonyhurst and afterward at Edinburgh University. I liked medicine, and still like it, and adopted it as a profession, not because I preferred it to literature, but because it seemed to me more practical. Writers of fiction in England are not taken very seriously by the public, and it is seldom that they are recognized by preferment, although it has occasionally happened in the case of poets. Young literary men do not get consulships in England, as they sometimes do with you.
"After graduation I practised in London as a general practitioner for eight years, and all the while I was occupying every moment of leisure time in writing. I finally thought I might combine the two professions by taking wouldn't medicine: sol became an oculist. But it do. I found that my time was even less my own than before. I was connected with the West- minster Hospital at the time, and a literary life was getting further and further away from me. That was the time of my first success and the Sherlock Holmes stories, and as soon as it be came evident that the success was to be assured I threw over medicine and took up literature.
"By the way, Dr. Doyle, what about Sherlock Holmes?" asked the reporter. "Is he really dead?"
Dr. Doyle laughed. "Well, I fancy he is," he replied. "It's never wise to be too certain, but think he is. I intended him to be dead, and if he comes to life again he will surprise me." "What American writers are now read most in England" he was asked.
"I can't answer that for the reading public, and, I think, that among literary people all your writers, old and young, get a fair share of attention when they do good work. Howells and Cable and Miss Wilkins are largely read, and, I think, Hamlin Garland is being considered to some extent. Personally, I am very fond of Miss Wilkins's work, although I do not think her short stories nearly so good a performance as Pembroke. That book struck me as being the best novel that has come out of America since Hawthorne's time."
Dr. Doyle's first lecture will be delivered in Calvary Baptist Church, Fifty-seventh street, Dear Seventh avenue, on the evening of Oct. 10.
