Feminists or Femmes fatales?
Feminists or Femmes fatales? is an article written by Laurence Price published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 6, 1995).
This article examines the portrayal of women in Arthur Conan Doyle's fiction, contrasting feminist figures with femmes fatales across novels and short stories. It argues that Conan Doyle's varied female characters reflect narrative purpose and Victorian context rather than misogyny.
Feminists or Femmes fatales?
"What you ask is quite impossible."
"She snuggled up to him, and laid her cheek against his breast."
An alternative view of the rôle of women in Conan Doyle's stories
The article on 'Feminism and the Role of Women in Conan Doyle's Domestic Novels' by R. Dixon Smith in Volume 5 of ACD made thought-provoking and fascinating reading.
Although I consider that Conan Doyle's short story 'The Doctors of Hoyland' might usefully be further examined to support Mr Smith's view, I had previously formed the opinion that there are a number of Conan Doyle's novels and stories that do not portray his leading women characters in a particularly favourable light. Some are scheming or vacuous stereotypes who are generally fickle in their affections, while others are femmes fatales, those 'irresistibly attractive women who bring difficulties or disasters to men' and often to themselves.
My case for this alternative view would be the main female characters in the novels The Doings of Raffles Haw, The Great Shadow, and The Lost World; also those women who take a prominent role in his short stories 'A Physiologist's Wife', 'The Case of Lady Sannox', and 'The Prisoner's Defence'. It is also worth considering his macabre use of two very differing women in two of his darkest tales, 'Uncle Jeremy's Household' and 'The Blighting of Sharkey'. Finally, another woman character of interest, and somewhere between his feminist portrayals and his femme fatales, is the young female protagonist in the recently discovered 'The Blood-Stone Tragedy'. The other matter for consideration is whether his use of such females reflected to any degree Conan Doyle's views of the women of his time.
In 'The Doctors of Hoyland' (1894) we are first introduced to a young and successful surgeon, Doctor James Ripley, who has taken on his late father's practice in Hoyland, Hampshire. Reserved, learned, unmarried, with set, stern features, study is a passion with him. He fails to be distracted by the country mammas' who introduce their young ladies to him. It is a matter of pride to him that he has kept his knowledge as fresh as the moment he stepped out of the examination hall. This approach has served him well for, in the seven years he has been at Hoyland, he has seen off three rival doctors.
Then one morning he sees a virgin brass plate outside a new house in Lower Hoyland. Verrinder Smith, M.D., is printed on it in very neat lettering and he perceives from this that Doctor Smith may prove a more formidable opponent. This is confirmed when he learns that Doctor Smith is the holder of superb degrees, and that he has studied with distinction at Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, and received a gold medal and scholarship. Why has such a brilliant man come to Hoyland?
Burning with curiosity, he decides to dispense with protocol: he, the established practitioner, will visit the newcomer. On arrival at the neat and well-appointed house he is shown into the consulting room, full of elaborate instruments more usually seen in a hospital than in the house of a general practitioner. He is soon joined by a little woman, plain of face, but with shrewd, humorous grey eyes, holding a pince-nez in her left hand and a doctor's card in her right.
- 'How do you do, Doctor Ripley?' said she.
- 'How do you do, madam?' returned the visitor. Your husband is perhaps out?'
- 'I am not married,' said she simply.
- 'Oh, I beg your pardon! I meant the doctor-Dr Verrinder Smith. 'I am Dr Verrinder Smith.'
- Doctor Ripley was so surprised that he dropped his hat and forgot to pick it up again.
- 'What!' he gasped, 'the Lee Hopkins prizeman! You!'
- He had never seen a woman doctor before, and his whole conservative soul rose up in revolt at the idea. He could not recall any Biblical injunction that the man should remain ever the doctor and the woman the nurse, and yet he felt as if a blasphemy had been committed. His face betrayed his feelings only too clearly.
- 'I am sorry to disappoint you,' said the lady drily.
- 'You certainly have surprised me,' he answered, picking up his hat.
- 'You are not among our champions, then?'
- 'I cannot say that the movement has my approval.'
- 'And why?'
- 'I should much prefer not to discuss it.'
- 'But I am sure you will answer a lady's question.'
- 'Ladies are in danger of losing their privileges when they usurp the place of the other sex. They cannot claim both.'
- 'Why should a woman not earn her bread by her brains?' Doctor Ripley felt irritated by the quiet manner in which the lady cross-questioned him.'
- 'I should much prefer not to be led into a discussion, Miss Smith, 'Doctor Smith,' she interrupted.
With this brilliant encounter Conan Doyle once more demonstrates an empathy one quite at odds with the mood of his time-with the rights and intellectual equality of women.
From this point onwards the life of Doctor Ripley becomes a tragi-comedy. The curious call on Doctor Verrinder Smith and soon the previously incurable are cured with the new and innovative methods of the woman doctor. In one month she is known, in two she is famous.
Doctor Ripley's feelings of dislike soon ripen into utter detestation. "That unsexed woman' soon has nearly all of his patients. She operates successfully in cases he had considered impracticable.
Humiliation is heaped upon humiliation when he is unable to refuse the request of the rector's wife to assist as a chloroformist at one of his rival's operations, in which he grudgingly admires her dexterity.
Then one wintry night, racing in his gig to attend to the Squire's daughter before Doctor Smith can get there, he has an accident, and is thrown, breaking his leg. In great pain he passes out. When he regains consciousness it is to see that he is receiving the tender and largely sympathetic ministrations of the lady doctor.
Now under her care, there rapidly develops a dramatic change in the opinion of Doctor James Ripley on Doctor Verrinder Smith — as well as being an assiduous doctor, she is a charming companion during his convalescence, with a sweet and womanly nature. From one formerly so cold and reserved come stumbling words of apology — followed by a proposal to be his wife. A courteous but immediate refusal follows.
- 'I am so sorry,' she said again. If I had known what was passing in your mind I should have told you earlier that I intend to devote my life entirely to science. There are many women with a capacity for marriage, but few with a taste for biology. I will remain true to my own line, then. I came down here while waiting for an opening in the Paris Physiological Laboratory. I have just heard that there is a vacancy for me there, and so you will be troubled no more by my intrusion upon your practice. I have done you an injustice just as you did me one. I thought you narrow and pedantic, with no good quality. I have learned during your illness to appreciate you better, and the recollection of our friendship will always be a very pleasant one.'
- And so it came about that in a very few weeks there was only one doctor in Hoyland. But folks noticed that the one had aged many years in a few months, that a weary sadness lurked always in the depths of his blue eyes, and that he was less concerned than ever with the eligible young ladies whom chance, or their careful country mammas, placed in his way.
This story might be considered a chorus of the duct of his two domestic novels and one that affirms the view of Conan Doyle as a supporter of women's rights—and, more particularly, a woman's right to devote herself to a professional career of her choosing, and on equal terms with her male counterpart.
But what of those stories in which Conan Doyle seems to show his leading women characters in a less favourable light? Is there in his writing an underlying obsession with the image of a woman as a femme fatale and of women who display fickle affections? It may be, of course, that the portrayals are for no other reason than dramatic, even melodramatic, effect; for no other purpose than the telling of a good tale: in which case they are no more stereotyped or unsympathetic than their male parallels in Conan Doyle's stories.
But it is time to consider the evidence against that possibility-evidence displayed in the domestic novels, and the recently discovered 'The Blood-Stone Tragedy' (1885), which forms a convenient bridge between the portrayals of feminists and femmes fatales.
'The Blood-Stone Tragedy' is an overtly melodramatic tale, even allowing for the real-life Druidic activities of Dr Price, the references to which form the prelude to the story of the 'tragedy' that gradually unfolds.
Central to the plot of the story, Miss Madison is neither an outright feminist nor a femme fatale, but she is clearly a strong-willed and independently-minded young woman who, for the purposes of the story, has since become permanently broken in spirit because of a personal tragedy involving Druidism. Ten years after the event it would appear that she is entirely dependent on the over-zealous protection of her husband lest she 'have an attack of acute mania on hearing an allusion to it'.
If there be any underlying moral, one senses that Conan Doyle did not entirely approve of such a wild and impulsive female spirit as that which he allowed to Miss Madison in this story: she almost appears to be a forerunner of the young women who were later to become suffragettes, demanding the right to vote. It is almost required that she must receive dark poetic justice and permanent punishment for her forward and reckless behaviour.
How does Conan Doyle achieve this? How does he change a high-spirited, vibrant and adventurous young female into a somnolent, passive wife whose spirit is forever broken by her encounter with the deranged pseudo-Druid, Ap-Griffiths, in reality a 'well-known man of science and archacologist"?
It is necessary for her to first escape the symbolic paternalistic bonds of the predominantly male holiday party of which she is a part. Then, ironically, once free of her male protectors, and having become lost in the Welsh mountains, it is necessary for her to fall into actual imprisonment and physical bondage at the hands of the 'Druid' in his lair within a hidden ravine: a hidden, wooded ravine in which is located the blood-stone on which she will be sacrificed at the middle hour of the night'.
There is a sense of unseemly, voyeuristic eroticism about her plight. A bright and spirited young woman has become a bound and helpless sacrificial victim — a vulnerable female entirely at the mercy of a pagan maniac. Once more the archetypical male fantasy can be fulfilled-for her husband was the very one who rescued her, this headstrong maiden in distress, from bondage and almost certain death, and for this he received her submissive gratitude.
- Her head was pillowed upon my breast, and the first word that passed her dear lips was my name.
The story is, therefore, a typical paternalistic Victorian melodrama, in which a woman must either 'recognise her place' and suppress her true self, or pay the price for her folly and spiritedness. But there is no intention of passing heavy judgement on the young Conan Doyle at this juncture. 'The Blood-Stone Tragedy' was, after all, an early short story: a ripping yarn quickly written for publication in an ephemeral journal in 1885; a tale to be read as a passing diversion and, as quickly, forgotten. Miss Madison remains, nevertheless, an interesting Doylean creation.
In Conan Doyle's early science fiction novel The Doings of Raffles Haw (1892), Laura McIntyre lives in genteel poverty with her would-be artist brother Robert and their bitter, bankrupt father, in the quiet country district of Tamfield, some fourteen miles from Birmingham. She has been engaged for some years to a struggling Royal Naval Lieutenant, Hector Spurling, who, on his return from his latest tour of duty, intends to marry her in the spring and live in very nice rooms at Southsea for £2 a week'.
Raffles Haw, the mysterious millionaire, then arrives on the scene, and Robert is the first to meet him. Haw has constructed a magnificent, vast, stone mansion with a great tower at one corner and a hundred windows. A little distance from it is a smaller structure with a tall chimney rising from it, from which roll out long plumes of smoke. Haw invites Robert to see inside the New Hall. This 'House of Wonders' is the earthbound equivalent of a Vernian tour inside Nemo's great submarine Nautilus-rich in art treasures, fine furniture, and a museum of priceless artifacts and numerous scientific devices. The house has a room where, at the pull of a handle, the occupants can move from clime to clime, and sit before a South American forest or an Egyptian vista.
In turn Robert invites Raffles Haw to call at his home, but in the meantime recounts details of his visit to Laura and her father. Avarice forms immediately in the envious mind of McIntyre senior, and Laura drinks up her brother's words. Haw duly calls and Robert is amazed to hear Laura talk of how a good deal of her time is taken up in caring for the poor people of the parish. Haw is duly impressed, but it is the first time that Robert has heard of his sister being engaged in such missions of mercy.
Robert develops his friendship with Raffles Haw and learns that he is a rich man of conscience as he discusses the various Utopian and philanthropic schemes he wants to implement to help his fellow man-all sadly laced with a pervading sense of doom as he feels that his well-intentioned plans will be misunderstood.
Then, taking Robert entirely into his trust, he takes him into the building next to the New Hall. The source of his wealth is revealed: he is an alchemist and can transmute base metals into gold. His wealth is limitless. He is a billionaire.
Laura, too, has become a frequent visitor to the New Hall, following the granting of an earlier whim of hers to see a live tiger when Raffles Haw had arranged for one (caged) to be sent, and returned, by special express from Liverpool. She is privileged to play with the thousand costly toys he has collected, and enjoy the other luxuries and comforts of the house. Raffles Haw, in short, has fallen in love with her. Deviously, she plays the part she knows he wants her to play with talk of almshouses, free libraries, charities, and improvements: his selfless help-mate-a fellow philanthropist too.
But other thoughts, other motivations, are taking place in Laura's mind. 'Dimmer and dimmer grew the vision of the distant sailor face, clearer and clearer the image of the vast palace, of the queenly power, of the diamonds, the gold, the ambitious future.'
Purposefully she walks over to her desk and, taking a sheet of paper and an envelope, addresses a letter to Lieutenant Spurling, H.M.S. Active, Gibraltar: a cunning letter which terminates their engagement so that he does not imperil his future for her sake.
There is almost a setback to her wily plans when her covetous father, turned mad with greed, breaks into the laboratory and attempts to steal some gold. For the sake of Laura, Raffles Haw does not press charges, but Robert arranges for the old man to be certified. The following morning a distressed Raffles Haw, having lost some more faith in human nature, calls on Laura, the woman he believes is beyond taint-one who is good, pure, and true; the woman who would love him as well were he a poor clerk struggling for his livelihood; the only woman he has ever loved who is free from greed and interest'. Laura is engaged in affirming all of this, and her love for him, when she receives the shock of her life. Her face, blanched and rigid, is turned to the front door, and she gasps but one word: 'Hector!'
Hector Spurling, who never went to Gibraltar and who has not received her letter, sweeps her up in his arms and pirouettes round with her, and, before a stunned and numbed Raffles Haw, confirms his engagement and forthcoming marriage to Laura. Haw totters, a stricken man, utters a hoarse cry, and flies out through the open door. Hector, his suspicions aroused, asks for an explanation.
- '... I love Raffles Haw, and I was to have been his wife. And now it is all gone. Oh, Hector, I hate you, and I shall always hate you as long as I live, for you have stepped between me and the only good fortune that ever came to me. Leave me alone, and I hope that you will never cross our threshold again.'
- 'Is that your last word, Laura?'
- 'The last that I shall ever speak to you.'
- 'Then, good-bye. I shall see the Dad, and go straight back to Plymouth.' He waited an instant, in hopes of an answer, and then walked sadly from the room.
But the tragedy is not yet over. Raffles Haw is discovered dead the very next morning, the great laboratory and its machinery destroyed, and what was gold nothing more than fluffy grey ash. The alchemical secrets of transmutation to gold have died with him.
And what of the McIntyre family? Old McIntyre is left raving in the County Lunatic Asylum. Robert, his attempts at art forgotten, spends his small income upon chemical and electrical apparatus, vainly seeking for the hidden link that will transmute base metals into gold. And Laura? She keeps house for Robert, a 'silent and brooding woman, still queenly and beautiful, but of a bitter, dissatisfied mind. Of late, however, she has devoted herself to charity, and has been of so much help to Mr Spurling's new curate that it is thought that he may be tempted to secure her assistance for ever'. Conan Doyle offers a chance for redemption in this novel and, at its conclusion, we are left to ponder on how the Curate and Laura will fare.
The Napoleonic novel The Great Shadow (1892) introduces us to Edie Calder, whose fickleness will prove tragic to her cousin Jock Calder, his best friend Jim Horscroft, and the Frenchman Bonaventure de Lissac.
Jock first meets Cousin Edie in 1807 when he is twelve years old and the eleven-year-old girl comes to stay at West Inch, a house so much in the border country that one half of Jock's bed is in England and the other in Scotland. Jock, the narrator, says that he took no great stock of girls at that time and that they had little in common, except that he had a liking for the tall tales she told him. She, however, was fond of him and was forgiving of his boyish rudeness to her. His best friend, Jim Horscroft, away at the time of her visit, is highly amused that Jock cannot even tell him if Edie was pretty.
Six years pass before Edie comes once more into Jock's life. She is to live at West Inch, her father having died. Jock describes their meeting once again:
- She was dark, much darker than is common among our border lassies, and yet with such a faint blush of pink breathing through her dainty colour, like the deeper flush at the heart of a sulphur rose. Her lips were red, and kindly, and firm; and even then, at the first glance, I saw that light of mischief and mockery that danced away at the back of her great dark eyes. She took me then and there as though I had been her heritage, put out her hand and plucked me.
But it is soon evident that, despite Jock being smitten with her, the feeling is not mutual; she prefers the old rough 'Jack' to the gentle and softly-spoken youth he has become.
News is received of the war with Napoleon and Jock begins to contemplate whether he should go soldiering. He uses the situation as a test of his manhood with Edie, as to whether she would have him stay or go.
- 'Well then, Jack, will you stay, if I am-if I am kind to you?'
Passionately, hotly, he embraces her and kisses and kisses her and, as she fails to resist, Jock interprets this as a sign of betrothal, although she laughs when he speaks of marriage. For ten weeks they spend much time together and, despite an uneasy relationship, Jock still dreams of matrimony.
But then Jim Horscroft arrives on the scene, taking leave from his studies to be a doctor. On seeing Edie, Jim is ashen-faced when Jock announces that they are to be married. Edie, however, has been instantly attracted to Jim, and they are soon openly having assignations together. The two friends argue and fall out, and it is left to Edie to speak her true feelings:
- 'Come, Edie! which is it to be?' he asked.
- 'Naughty boys to fall out like this!' she cried. Cousin Jack, you know how fond I am of you.'
- 'Oh, then go to him!' said Horscroft.
- 'But I love nobody but Jim. There is nobody that I love like Jim.'
Nobody, that is, until a shipwrecked Frenchman is washed up on the beach near West Inch. More secret assignations take place before it is the turn of Jim to be the rejected suitor. Further humiliation follows when it is discovered that Bonaventure de Lissac is a Colonel and an aide-de-camp to Napoleon himself, the Great Shadow of the novel, and that he has secretly married Edie and fled with her to France, so that he may fight once more with Napoleon.
So it is that Jock and Jim decide to join the 71st Highland Light Infantry and to meet their fate on the field of Waterloo, Jim anxious for revenge and for a chance to kill de Lissac.
That great and bloody battle duly takes place. Jock and Jim become separated in the fray, Jock receiving a scar to his face from a French bullet. After the battle he discovers Jim, killed by two French bayonets, and, lying an arm's length from him, de Lissac. Jim had succeeded in mortally wounding de Lissac before he was cut down. De Lissac gives Jock his dying request:
- '... Well, well, Edie was worth it all! You will be in Paris in less than a month, Jock, and you will see her. You will find her at No. 11 of the Ruc Miromesnil, which is near to the Madelaine. Break it very gently to her, Jock, for you cannot think how she loved me. Tell her that all I have are in the two black trunks, and that Antoine has the keys. You will not forget?'
- 'I will remember."
Dutifully, the last surviving man of the trio who loved Edie calls on her in the Rue Miromesnil and, after some pleasantries, the death of de Lissac is broached:
- ... As Edie sat down again, I saw that she was all in black, and so I knew that she had heard of de Lissac's death.
- 'I am glad to see that you know all,' said I, for I am a clumsy hand at breaking things. He said that you were to keep whatever was in the boxes, and that Antoine had the keys."
- 'Thank you, Jock, thank you,' said she. 'It was like your kindness to bring the message. I heard of it nearly a week ago. I was mad for the time-quite mad. I shall wear mourning all my days, although you can see what a fright it makes me look. Ah! I shall never get over it. I shall take the veil and die in a convent."
- 'If you please, madame,' said a maid, looking in, 'the Count de Beton wishes to see you."
- 'My dear Jock,' said Edie, jumping up, 'this is very important. I am sorry to cut our chat short, but I am sure that you will come to see me again, will you not, when I am less desolate? And would you mind going out by the side door instead of the main one? Thank you, you dear old Jock; you were always such a good boy, and did exactly what you were told.'
That was the last Jock ever saw of Cousin Edie. She never asked after Jim. Two months later Jock heard that she had married the Count de Beton, and that she died in child-bed a year or two later.
Conan Doyle exacted a grim revenge on Edie for the lives of the three besotted men that she ruined-three men, only one of whom survived to tell the tale of The Great Shadow.
We can perhaps actually give thanks to the third 'fickle' woman: Gladys Hungerton in the 1912 masterpiece The Lost World. The narrator of the adventure, the Irish reporter Ed Malone of the Daily Gazette, begins his tale by informing the reader that he has been to propose to Gladys Hungerton, who is 'full of every womanly quality'. He continues:
- ... Some judged her to be cold and hard, but such a thought was treason. That delicately-bronzed skin, almost Oriental in its colouring, that raven hair, the large liquid eyes, the full but exquisite lips-all the stigmata of passion were there.
She, however, forestalls the proposal and Malone is informed of the root of the reason for her rejection: she wishes to marry a man of great deeds and strange experiences' for 'there are heroisms all round us waiting to be done-if I marry, I do want to marry a famous man. Some day perhaps, when you have won your place in the world, we shall talk it over again'.
Stung by this rejection, yet also aware of the promise of her love if he will but prove himself, Malone decides on 'a settled determination that very night, if possible, to find the quest which should be worthy of my Gladys'. He does not have long to prove himself, for it is a brave man indeed who can withstand the mad, bull-like assault, both physically and verbally, of Professor Challenger!
However, survive it he does, and in the course of The Lost World we find Malone taking part, and playing his part, in one of the great adventure stories of our time. In the company of Challenger, Professor Summerlee, and Lord John Roxton, Malone experiences the thrills of a journey to a lost plateau where dinosaurs, pterodactyls, lake monsters, Indians, and ape-men are encountered, and where Malone brushes with death. And if all of this was not enough, on his return to London he assists Challenger in unleashing a pterodactyl before a packed meeting at the Queen's Hall from where it escapes into the metropolis itself.
The returning, and now famous, hero calls once more on Gladys, from whom he has heard nothing since his return:
- 'Gladys!' I cried, 'Gladys!'
- She looked up with amazement in her face. She was altered in some subtle way. The expression of her eyes, the hard upward stare. the set of her lips, was new to me. She drew back her hands.
- 'What do you mean?' she said.
- 'Gladys!' I cried. 'What is the matter? You are my Gladys, are you not-little Gladys Hungerton?'
- 'No,' said she, I am Gladys Potts. Let me introduce you to my husband."
- How absurd life is! I found myself mechanically bowing and shaking hands with a little ginger-haired man who was coiled up in the deep arm-chair which had once been sacred to my own use. We bobbed and grinned in front of each other...
- ... Well, just one question.' I cried. "What are you? What is your profession?"
- I am a solicitor's clerk,' said he. Second man at Johnson and Merivale's. 41 Chancery Lane.
- 'Good-night said 1, and vanished, like all disconsolate and broken-hearted heroes into the darkness, with grief and rage and laughter all simmering within me like a boiling pot.
But never mind. Malone is destined for better things, for in the otherwise unsatisfactory The Land of Mist (1926) he marries Enid Challenger, the daughter of the great Professor himself. Looking back as he writes the words of The Lost World Malone has time to reflect on Gladys Hungerton:
- ... Did I not always see some hard fibre in her nature? did I not, even at the time when I was proud to obey her behest, feel that it was surely a poor love which could drive a lover to his death or the danger of it? Did I not, in my truest thoughts, always recurring and always dismissed, see past the beauty of the face, and, peering into the soul, discern the twin shadows of selfishness and of fickleness glooming at the back of it? ...
One of the many delights of The Lost World is that it is a stirring adventure story laced with generous quantities of good-natured Doylean humour. So both the hero and the fickle female emerge no worse for this experience Malone will have more adventures with Challenger and company (though none will be quite as bracing as this one) and presumably Gladys is content enough with her solicitor's clerk.
Professor Ainslie Grey in 'A Physiologist's Wife' (1894) is one of those Victorian intellectuals, a physiologist and zoologist, whose cerebral thought processes have convinced him that as the female cerebrum averages two ounces less in weight than its male counterpart, the male intellect is superior. He lives in a 'serene and rarefied atmosphere of scientific calm, high above the petty emotions which affect humbler minds'. And where love is concerned? 'Protoplasm may prove to be the physical basis of love as well as life'.
One morning, he informs his sister Ada that he has slept badly-a little cerebral congestion. Ada is surprised, and the professor, too, admits, 'I should have been surprised myself if I had been told that I was so sensitive to vascular influences. For, after all, all disturbances are vascular if you probe them deep enough.' To add to his sister's surprise he continues, 'I am thinking of getting married.' His bride is to be a young Australian widow, Mrs O'James.
Although his sister expresses some reservations, the Professor reminds her of her own hopes of matrimony with Dr James M'Murdo O'Brien, who has been away in Australia for five years, and is also the Professor's first and most distinguished pupil.
When he visits Mrs O'James later the same day, he asks:
- 'Have you thought at all of the matter upon which I spoke to you last night?'
- She said nothing, but walked by his side with her eyes averted and her face aslant.
- 'I would not hurry you unduly,' he continued. 'I know that it is a matter which can scarcely be decided off-hand. In my own case, it cost me some thought before I ventured to make the suggestion. I am not an emotional man, but I am conscious in your presence of the great evolutionary instinct which makes either sex the complement of the other.'
- 'You believe in love, then?' she asked, with a twinkling, upward glance. ...
After further deep intellectual and earnest discussion Mrs O'James accepts his analytical proposal of marriage. Shortly afterwards, O'Brien calls and confides a sad tale to the Professor. Five years before, in Australia, he had married Miss Jinny Thurston — a most unhappy match. She was the best of women, but was open to flattery and was untrue to him. She fled to Auckland with a man she had known before their marriage, but both were drowned in a brig.
The Professor tells O'Brien he is himself to be married and O'Brien congratulates him, leaving then for Edinburgh from where he will return in two months' time to see Ada once more.
True to his word, O'Brien returns from Edinburgh and discovers that the Professor has quietly married Mrs O'James. O'Brien asks if he might be introduced to her, a request with which the Professor gladly concurs, inviting him to come to the morning-room to meet his wife.
- They walked across the linoleum-paved hall. The Professor opened the door of the room, and walked in, followed by his friend. Mrs Grey was sitting in a basket-chair by the window, light and fairy-like in a loose-flowing, pink morning-gown. Seeing a visitor, she rose and swept towards them. The Professor heard a dull thud behind him. O'Brien had fallen back into a chair, with his hand pressed tight to his side.
- 'Jinny!' he gasped-'Jinny!'
- Mrs Grey stopped dead in her advance, and stared at him with a face from which every expression had been struck out, save one of astonishment and horror. Then with a sharp intaking of the breath she reeled, and would have fallen had the Professor not thrown his long, nervous arm round her.
- 'Try this sofa,' said he.
- She sank back among the cushions with the same white, cold, dead look upon her face. The Professor stood with his back to the empty fireplace and glanced from the one to the other.
- 'So, O'Brien,' he said at last, you have already made the acquaintance of my wife!"
- 'Your wife.' cried his friend hoarsely. She is no wife of yours.
- God help me, she is my wife.'
The Professor stands rigidly while hasty explanations between James and Jinny pass over his head. Jinny had intended to return. Her lover, De Horta, went down with the brig. Too ashamed to face James she fled to England under a new name, knowing he would believe her drowned.
- '... When the Professor asked me——'
- She stopped and gave a gasp for breath.
- 'You are faint,' said the Professor — keep the head low; it aids the cerebral circulation.' He flattened down the cushion. 'I am sorry to leave you, O'Brien; but I have my class duties to look to. Possibly I may find you here when I return.'
He is correct. After returning from his lecture, delivered in his usual austere manner, the two of them are still in earnest discourse, professing their undying love for each other. Apologising for having interrupted them, the Professor considers it best that they go back to Australia together and 'let what has passed be blotted out of your lives'. 'What can I do or say?' wails his wife:
- 'How could I have forseen this? I thought my old life was dead. But it has come back again, with all its hopes and its desires. What can I say to you Ainslie? I have brought shame and disgrace upon a worthy man. I have blasted your life. How you must hate and loathe me! I wish to God that I had never been born!'
- 'I neither hate nor loathe you, Jeanette,' said the Professor quietly. 'You are wrong in regretting your birth, for you have a worthy mission before you in aiding the life-work of a man who has shown himself capable of the highest order of scientific research. I cannot with justice blame you personally for what has occurred. How far the individual monad is to be held responsible for hereditary and engrained tendencies, is a question upon which science has not yet said her last word."
There is little scandal about the incident. The Professor merely takes to working harder and harder, despite being warned that it will be detrimental to his health. Progressively he becomes more and more ill, until there is no hope for his recovery. But no name can be given to the malady from which he suffers. There is only noted an increasing bodily weakness which leaves the mind unclouded.
- And so one grey morning his co-operative society dissolved. Very quietly and softly he sank into his eternal sleep. His two physicians felt some slight embarrassment when called upon to fill in his certificate.
- 'It is difficult to give it a name,' said one.
- 'Very,' said the other.
- 'If he were not such an unemotional man, I should have said that he had died from some sudden nervous shock-from, in fact, what the vulgar would call a broken heart.'
'A Physiologist's Wife' can, of course, be considered simply as an old-fashioned piece of Victorian melodrama. Our sympathies may not be with Jinny, but at least the Professor is philosophical enough about the situation, even if he does die of a broken heart.
Perhaps, in the end, the worst thing that the confused Jinny is guilty of is infidelity to her husband, O'Brien, who considered her 'the best of women', and her desertion of him, which required that he endured five years of misery through believing her dead. Paradoxically, although the Professor eventually dies of a broken heart, Jinny did at least succeed in awakening the emotions of love, and loss, deep within his cold, analytical cerebrum.
Conan Doyle was adept at writing dark and terrifying tales of cold-blooded murder, acts of violence, torture, and cruelty, sometimes of the most sadistic kind. One of the most chilling of this genre-even though a murder does not take place is 'The Case of Lady Sannox' (1894).
It is evident from the outset of the story, which is told retrospectively, that the eponymous Lady Sannox was notorious', 'had a liking for new experiences', and was 'gracious to most men who wooed her'. The relationship that forms the basis of the tale is between the celebrated operating surgeon Douglas Stone and Lady Sannox: an open and scandalous affair very well known both among the fashionable circles of which she was a brilliant member, and the scientific bodies which numbered him among their most illustrious confrères.
In the background is the shadowy Lord Sannox, the cuckold: a quiet, silent, neutral-tinted man, with thin lips and heavy eyelids, home-loving and much given to gardening, happier with a spud and a watering can among his orchids and chrysanthemums'. Once fond of acting, he had seen Miss Marion Dawson on the stage, and had offered her his hand, his title, and the third of a county. But since his marriage this early hobby had become distasteful to him.
One wet and windy winter's night, Douglas Stone is preparing for his latest assignation with Lady Sannox when he is visited by a visibly distressed Turk who, aware of his prowess with the knife, wishes him to perform an emergency operation on his wife who has, in a faint, cut her lower lip upon a poisoned Eastern dagger, one of the artifacts in which he trades as a curiosity dealer. The poison will kill her unless the infected area of the lip is surgically removed and cut away.
Stone is reluctant to be late for his meeting with Lady Sannox, but such reluctance is swiftly dispelled when one hundred pounds is poured in front of him by the Turk. They travel by cab through dark London streets until they alight by a double line of mean-looking houses with the rain falling relentlessly. They proceed to a house with a blotched and discoloured door. Once inside, an elderly woman leads them up dust-covered, cobwebbed stairs and passages until they enter an exotically furnished room, lit by a single small lamp.
On a couch in a corner is a woman dressed in the Turkish fashion, with yashmak and veil. The lower part of her face is exposed, and Stone sees a cut zig-zagging along the border of the under lip. Stone is once more reluctant, but the Turk, wanting to save the life of his wife, implores him to make the necessary cut, for, as Stone himself had said earlier, 'it is better to lose a lip than a life'.
The Turk affirms that the mouth will not be a pretty one to kiss' and the pain of the incision should not be too great as she is in a deep sleep, having been heavily drugged with opium.
The terrible 'operation' is swiftly carried out: a broad V-shaped piece of flesh is cut from the wounded lip. And in that instant of irreversible mutilation the dreadful truth is revealed. The horribly disfigured woman screams; the veil is torn from her face. It is Lady Sannox. The greatest acting performance of Lord Sannox is also over as he removes his Turk's hair and beard.
- 'It was really very necessary for Marion, this operation,' said he, 'not physically, but morally, you know, morally.'
- 'You see you have kept your appointment after all...'
Here then is a femme fatale who not only brings difficulties or disasters to men, but is made to suffer them herself. Lord Sannox, unable to bear further humiliation because of this latest and most public affair, exacts the most terrible revenge on his wife. She, who is clearly so irresistibly attractive to men, is mutilated-and mutilated by the hand of her lover. In turn, Douglas Stone loses his mind, and his great brain is about as valuable as a cap full of porridge.
Did Lady Sannox deserve this terrible fate? The liberal and humane answer is that no woman, no human being for that matter, should have to suffer such sadism, whatever the crime. But sexual jealousy to this day leads to the most dreadful acts of violence and revenge, and Lady Sannox had clearly driven her husband to the limits of his endurance with her public dalliances.
To all those who, at the height of this most public of affairs, had wondered whether Lord Sannox was absolutely devoid of sense, or miserably weak in spirit, or whether he condoned his lady's ways, or was a mere blind, doting fool, here was the terrible answer. A Poe-like act of retribution.
The world may experience 'quite a little thrill of interest' for a time when it observes a free spirit like Lady Sannox, but in the end it may not condone her actions. It is, however, as unlikely to condone the treatment meted out to the femme fatale in this chilling tale, even were she to take the veil so that the world would see her no more.
It is, however, just possible that the world might condone the fate that meets the next femme fatale, Miss Ena Garnier, in the 1916 story 'The Prisoner's Defence'. The story opens with a certain Captain John Fowler standing in the dock, accused of her murder: a crime of passion with jealousy seeming to be the motive.
For personal reasons he has chosen to remain silent from the time of his trial in the police court, two months before, until his present appearance at the Assizes. This silence, with no counsel speaking in his defence, has only served to affirm his guilt. Now he is ready to speak in his own defence.
He explains that he was a captain of the Second Breconshire Battalion, seconded as adjutant to the First Scottish Scouts, and stationed at Radchurch, Essex, at the outbreak of the war with Germany. His quarters were with Mr Murreyfield, the local squire, and it was there that he first met Miss Ena Garnier.
From the description that follows, she certainly has all the classic charms and desirability of the femme fatale, but with the additional and unusual accomplishment of being a skilled motor-cyclist.
- ... Let me only say that I cannot believe that Nature ever put into female form a more exquisite combination of beauty and intelligence. She was twenty-five years of age, blonde and tall, with a peculiar delicacy of features and of expression. I have read of people falling in love at first sight, and had always looked upon it as an expression of the novelist. And yet from the moment that I saw Ena Garnier life held for me but the one ambition-that she should be mine. ... you must realize that I was in the grip of a frantic elementary passion which made, for the time, the world and all that was in it seem a small thing if I could but gain the love of this one girl.
It transpires that Miss Garnier had come from Montpellier in the South of France as an unpaying guest to teach French to the three Murreyfield children. Fond of the English and of England, the outbreak of war had quickened her feelings into passionate attachment, for the ruling emotion of her soul was her hatred of the Germans. ... Her voice vibrated with passion when she spoke of the infamies of Belgium, and more than once I have seen her kissing my sword and my revolver because she hoped they would be used upon the enemy. With such feelings in her heart it can be imagined that my wooing was not a difficult one. I should have been glad to marry her at once, but to this she would not consent.
On the contrary, she was apt to play with his feelings. Sometimes she was tender, sometimes aloof and even harsh. This only made the besotted Captain 'more her slave than ever' and increasingly jealous, as it soon became apparent 'she knew many officers at Chelmsford and Colchester' and she was wont to disappear for hours on her motor-cycle.
Fowler became especially angry when he discovered a photograph of a man called 'H. Vardin', whom she claimed never to have known in her life, even though the photograph was on display on her table. A violent quarrel took place over this which Mrs Murreyfield broke up, severely admonishing Captain Fowler for his behaviour.
Then, one fateful day, returning from his new appointment to a junior but very responsible post at the War Office in London, Fowler was met at the railway station by Miss Garnier. On the drive back to Radchurch he committed a major indiscretion, telling 'the woman' an enormously important secret, which might affect the fate of the war and the lives of many thousands of men'.
Miss Garnier feigned despair at the agonies suffered by France and Belgium at the hands of the Germans. 'Do tell me that there is hope!' she implored, adding, And yet it is foolish of me to ask, for, of course, you are only a subordinate at the War Office, and how should you know what is in the mind of your chiefs?' Fowler allayed her fears, boldly answering. 'Well, as it happens, I know a good deal. Don't fret, for we shall certainly get a move on soon.... Well, perhaps it won't even be a week.'
Reading from his statement, Fowler continued:
- '"And tell me," she went on, in her coaxing voice, "tell me just one thing, Jack. Just one, and I will trouble you no more. Is it our brave French soldiers who advance? Or is it your splendid Tommies? With whom will the honour lie?"
- '"With both."
- '"Glorious!" she cried. "I see it all. The attack will be at the point where the French and British lines join. Together they will rush forward in one glorious advance."
- '"No," I said. "They will not be together."
- '"But I understood you to say-of course, women know nothing of such matters, but I understood you to say that it would be a joint advance."
- '"Well, if the French advanced, we will say, at Verdun, and the British advanced at Ypres, even if they were hundreds of miles apart it would still be a joint advance."
- '"Ah, I see." she cried, clapping her hands with delight. "They would advance at both ends of the line, so that the Boches would not know which way to send their reserves."
- '"That is exactly the idea-a real advance at Verdun, and an enormous feint at Ypres."
- 'Then suddenly a chill of doubt seized me. I can remember how I sprang back from her and looked hard into her face. "I've told you too much!" I cried. "Can I trust you? I have been mad to say so much." 'She was bitterly hurt by my words. That I should for a moment doubt her was more than she could bear. "I would cut my tongue out, Jack, before I would tell any human being one word of what you have said." So earnest was she that my fears died away. I felt that I could trust her utterly ...'
He had taken his leave of her at Radchurch, but had returned two hours later and was surprised to be informed that she was preparing to go out again on her motor-cycle. He decided he would wait for her in her little study. His statement continues:
- 'There was a small table in the window of this room at which she used to write. I had seated myself beside this when my eyes fell upon a name written in her large, bold handwriting. It was a reversed impression upon the blotting-paper which she had used, but there could be no difficulty in reading it. The name was Hubert Vardin...
In great anger he quickly found the offending letter, freshly written to Cher Monsieur Vardin', and scanning its contents was horrified to see the words 'Verdun' and 'Ypres'. Reading the entire letter he found it contained all the military secrets he had earlier divulged to Miss Garnier. together with other sensitive information. It was signed 'SOPHIA HEFFNER'.
Miss Ena Garnier was both a German and a spy!
Miss Garnier then appeared and tried to snatch the letter. A fierce struggle took place but, with the assistance of Mr Murreyfield, the woman was soon locked in her bedroom, her flashing eyes and tearing fingers as fierce as a wild cat at bay.
Armed with a revolver, Captain Foster had then run the two miles to Pedley for aid, a policeman and a military escort being obtained. Foster had decided to return in advance of them. Foster continues his statement:
- 'It was evening now and the light was such that one could not see more than twenty or thirty yards ahead. I had proceeded only a very short way from the point of junction when I heard, coming towards me, the roar of a motor-cycle being ridden at a furious pace ... It was she — the woman whom I had loved. She was hatless, her hair streaming in the wind, her face glimmering white in the twilight, flying through the night like one of the Valkyries of her native land.
In that instant he realised that she had to be stopped:
- 'The victory of the Allies and the lives of thousands of our soldiers were at stake. Next instant I had pulled out the loaded revolver and fired two shots after the vanishing figure, already only a dark blur in the dusk. I heard a scream, the crashing of the breaking cycle, and all was still.
- 'I need not tell you more, gentlemen. You know the rest. When I ran forward I found her lying in the ditch. Both of my bullets had struck her. One of them had penetrated her brain. . . . the police and soldiers arrived to arrest her. By the irony of fate it was me whom they arrested instead.
He had not dared to state publicly the reason for killing her, as the Allied offensive had still to take place. "But," he continued, "now it is over — gloriously over — and so my lips are unsealed at last. ... These are the facts, gentlemen. I leave my future in your hands. ..."'
Conan Doyle made full use of his copious knowledge of the war in France and Flanders as the background for this taut and well-constructed little tale. Miss Garnier is surely based on the famous Mata Hari, the Dutch courtesan, dancer, and 'probable' spy, Gertrud Margarete Zelle, who was shot by the French in 1917. She was believed to have been a double agent in the pay of both France and Germany.
With Miss Garnier/Sophie Heffner there can be no doubt, however, that she was a genuine German spy. successfully using her feminine wiles to obtain vital information-until the discovery of her incriminating letter by the duped Captain Fowler.
Ultimately, this Doylean femme fatale is the one with whom the reader may have the least sympathy, even though Captain Fowler must shoulder some of the responsibility for his serious indiscretions, his being blinded by love for a remarkable and intelligent woman notwithstanding.
The two female characters that close this study must surely rate as two of Conan Doyle's darkest creations. The first for consideration is Miss Warrender, the Anglo-Indian governess in 'Uncle Jeremy's Household' (1887) which, for reasons that will become apparent, astonishingly appeared within the pages of the sober Boys Own Paper. The story is interesting, too, for two other ingredients-it has a Holmesian aura and is the first story to reveal Conan Doyle's seeming fascination with mysterious 'Oriental' cults, assassins, and revenge.
The Mystery of Cloomber (1888) featured Ram Singh and his two Buddhist companions of the higher school', who exacted revenge on Major General Heatherstone for his killing of Ghoolab Shah, their holy man, in India in 1841. This was followed in 1890 by the Holmes classic The Sign of the Four, featuring the notorious Tonga, a deadly Andaman islander from the Bay of Bengal. Conan Doyle further explored the occult Indian theme in 'The Brown Hand' (1899).
'Uncle Jeremy's Household' is narrated in the first person by Hugh Lawrence, who is living in lodgings in Baker Street 'working hard for the final examination which should make him a qualified medical man'. It is April 1862 and he receives a letter from his friend, John H. Thurston, who is suffering from ennui. Lawrence is invited to stay with Thurston at Dunkelthwaite in the Yorkshire Fells. Thurston describes the household thus:
- First and foremost, of course, comes my poor Uncle Jeremy, garrulous and imbecile, shuffling about in his list slippers, and composing, as is his wont, innumerable bad verses. I think I told you when last we met of that trait in his character. It has attained such a pitch that he has an amanuensis, whose sole duty it is to copy down and preserve these effusions. This fellow, whose name is Copperthorne, has become as necessary to the old man as his foolscap or as the 'Universal Rhyming Dictionary... Then we have the two children of my Uncle Samuel, who were adopted by Jeremy-there were three of them, but one has gone the way of all flesh-and their governess, a stylish-looking brunette with Indian blood in her veins.. so you see we have quite a little world of our own in this out-of-the-way corner. For all that, my dear Hugh. I long for a familiar face and for a congenial companion. I am deep in chemistry myself, so I won't interrupt your studies. Write by return to your isolated friend,
- JOHN H. THURSTON
Two days later a further letter arrives. and Thurston again attempts to entice Lawrence to come by giving him a fuller description of the governess:
- By the way, I think I mentioned the brunettish governess to you. I might throw her out as bait to you if you retain your taste for ethnological studies. She is the child of an Indian chieftain, whose wife was an Englishwoman. He was killed in the mutiny, fighting against us, and, his estates being seized by Government, his daughter. then fifteen, was left almost destitute. Some charitable German merchant in Calcutta adopted her. it seems, and brought her over to Europe with him together with his own daughter. The latter died, and then Miss Warrender-as we call her, after her mother-answered uncle's advertisement; and here she is. Now, my dear boy, stand not upon the order of your coming, but come at once.
Reluctantly, Lawrence agrees to join Thurston in Yorkshire, and is duly met by him in his dog-cart at the little wayside station of Ingleton, following a long, cold and miserable railway journey from London. Dunkelthwaite is situated in a bleak and foreboding landscape, the great whitewashed house being reached by an avenue of trees marked by a 'patriarchal oak which towered high above the others'.
Lawrence first meets Uncle Jeremy, a delightful, eccentric, little red-faced man, with a wheezy, cracked voice, and thin, spindly shanks supported by a pair of enormous slippers. Copperthorne, his amanuensis, is clearly sinister tall, thin, and with cold, clammy hands and a crackling laugh
Miss Warrender, Lawrence observes, is a very dark young lady with black hair and eyes, and that she has two charges, a boy and a girl. Later, when Lawrence is alone with Thurston, he is told that the youngest child, little Ethel, 'had a fit or something in the shrubbery a couple of months ago. They found her lying dead there in the evening. It had been a great blow to the old man, and Miss Warrender had been very much cut up about it.
Of Miss Warrender, he discovers that her father was Achmet Genghis Khan, a semi-independent chieftain somewhere in the Central Provinces-a bit of a heathen fanatic, despite his Christian wife. Eventually the 'Government came down heavily on him'.
Lawrence is a good and analytical observer, and in the meetings with Miss Warrender that follow he discerns a 'feline grace about her every movement', and that under this veneer of culture there was a great deal of the savage in her': descriptions which follow his having heard her play a strange barbaric march on the piano and having seen her attempt to kill a rabbit whilst out on a walk with him, an act which he described as 'an outbreak of the old predatory instinct of the savage. He observes, too, that there is a marked coldness by Miss Warrender for Copperthorne, yet several nocturnal conclaves' take place between them, in which heated discussions take place out of earshot. It is also evident that Copperthorne exercises power over both the eccentric Uncle Jeremy and Miss Warrender, who is obviously afraid of him. He is, the story says, like 'some great bat fluttering over his victim. Lawrence has this to say of Thurston and himself:
- John Thurston was never a very observant man, and I believe that before I had been three days under his uncle's roof I knew more of what was going on there than he did. My friend was ardently devoted to chemistry, and spent his days happily among his test-tubes and solutions. perfectly contented so long as he had a congenial companion at hand to whom he could communicate his results. For myself, I have always had a weakness for the study and analysis of human character, and I found much that was interesting in the microcosm in which I lived. Indeed, I became so absorbed in my observations that I fear my studies suffered to a considerable extent ... It is proverbially easy to fall in love in a country house, but my nature has never been a sentimental one, and my judgment was not warped by any such feeling towards Miss Warrender. On the contrary. I set myself to study her as an entomologist might a specimen, critically, but without bias. With this object I used to arrange my studies in such a way as to be free at the times when she took the children out for exercise, so that we had many walks together, and I gained a deeper insight into her character than I should otherwise have done...
There is, therefore. something distinctly Holmesian in Lawrence's reasoning faculties, and his romantic disinterest in Miss Warrender is surely worthy of comparison with the great detective. Indeed, he is clearly irritated and annoyed by Thurston's frequent innuendoes when his friend suggests that such a romantic attachment exists with the governess. Thurston, if a Watson prototype at all, is regrettably of the Nigel Bruce variety, bumbling and absent minded, and seemingly oblivious of any of the tensions at Dunkelthwaite.
Thurston, however, is suddenly called to London and the stage is set for a series of macabre events and revelations which will directly involve Hugh Lawrence.
On the very afternoon of the day that Thurston departs, Lawrence accompanies Miss Warrender and the two children to a nearby village. There is quite a commotion in the settlement, as an exotic Oriental wanderer has arrived and excited the curiosity of the villagers. Miss Warrender promptly takes charge of the situation and converses with the Indian in his native dialect. The effect is astonishing. He immediately abases himself before her and she seems to issue commands to him. Miss Warrender asks Lawrence to keep silence on the matter, adding, ominously, that she will have no difficulty with the children on that score.
Some nights later, at about ten o'clock, Lawrence remembers that he has left a book he was studying within a certain arbour in the shrubbery. The denouement nears as, while in the very act of retrieving the volume, he finds himself unintentionally eavesdropping on a conversation between Copperthorne and the governess.
Her dreadful history is at last revealed, for Copperthorne is blackmailing her: he had witnessed her strangling the little Ethel in the shrubbery with her ritual handkerchief — a roomal. She is a Princess of the Thugs, a leading member of the murderous Indian Thuggees, a cult of cold-blooded assassins. It is soon evident that she had also strangled the unfortunate small daughter of the charitable German merchant.
What Copperthorne requires in return for his silence is that Miss Warrender, or the Princess Achmet Genghis, should strangle the eccentric Uncle Jeremy, so that he may inherit all of Uncle Jeremy's wealth before the old man changes his will in favour of young Thurston.
The dark deed is to be carried out the following night, after which Miss Warrender may flee where she will, leaving the impression that Uncle Jeremy had 'passed away in his sleep'
Very reluctantly the governess agrees, but asks that Copperthorne meet her first under the great oak at the head of the avenue to the house. The meeting is to take place on the the following night at midnight, because there may be sonic last instructions she requires. Copperthorne agrees.
Lawrence, horror-stricken, feels that no-one would believe what he had overheard, and decides that he must act alone The following might, he slips through the avenue of trees as the appointed hour nears, taking great care to conceal his presence. He finds Copperthorne waiting under the great oak The villain is impatient, for there is no sign of Miss Warrender. Lawrence describes what happened next:
- I was still lying in my hiding-place, congratulating myself inwardly at having gained a point from which I could hear all without risk of discovery, when my eye lit suddenly upon something which made my heart rise to my mouth and almost caused me to utter an ejaculation which would have betrayed my presence.
- I have said that Copperthorne was standing immediately under one of the great branches of the oak-tree. Beneath this all was plunged in the deepest shadow, but the upper part of the branch itself was silvered over by the light of the moon. As I gazed I became conscious that down this luminous branch something was crawling a flickering, inchoate something, almost indistinguishable from the branch itself, and yet slowly and steadily writhing its way down it. My eyes, as I looked, became more accustomed to the light, and then this indefinite something took form and substance. It was a human being a man-the Indian whom I had seen in the village. With his arms and legs twined round the great limb, he was shuffling his way down as silently and almost as rapidly as one of his native snakes.
- Before I had time to conjecture the meaning of his presence he was directly over the spot where the secretary stood, his bronzed body showing out hard and clear against the disc of the moon behind him. I saw him take something from round his waist, hesitate for a moment, as though judging his distance, and then spring downwards, crashing through the intervening foliage. There was a heavy thud, as of two bodies falling together, and then there rose on the night air a noise as of some one gargling his throat, followed by a succession of croaking sounds, the remembrance of which will haunt me to my dying day.
- ... It transpired afterwards that Miss Warrender had caught the 7.20 London train, and was safe in the metropolis before any search could be made for her. As to the messenger of death whom she had left behind to keep her appointment with Copperthorne under the old oak-tree, he was never either heard of or seen again....
- ... Thus even the county police have never known the full story of that strange tragedy, and they certainly never shall, unless, indeed, the eyes of some of them should chance to fall upon this narrative...
What is to be made of Miss Warrender, a governess who is coldly capable of murdering the little girls supposedly in her trust and care, in order to satisfy the blood-lust and need for human sacrifice of her evil cult?
The only mitigating circumstances are that she may have been unwillingly drawn into the cult 'by accident or design', for it is most unusual for a woman to be initiated into the mysteries of Thuggee'. But then, by virtue of her noble blood, she was able to rise rapidly through the grades to the rank of Bhuttotee, or strangler.
An aberration on the part of Conan Doyle, or, at the very least, a strange and terrible use for this particular, and ultimately tragic, female character? And could there have been a less suitable or more shocking tale to be published for the consumption of young boys in that conservative bastion. The Boys Own Paper?
Before drawing any final conclusions on these evil or scheming females, we must study a woman who is one of Conan Doyle's most bizarre and macabre female creations: the doomed but deadly Inez Ramirez. She is endowed with the power of death over a man who was, perhaps, Conan Doyle's most repellant and evil villain: Captain John Sharkey, one of the most blood-thirsty cut-throats ever to sail the Spanish Main.
In 'The Blighting of Sharkey' (1911). Sharkey and his crew are waiting for new prey in their deceptively-named black barque of death, the Happy Delivery. The crew are near-mutinous with impatience when the ship's lad announces that a great craft is close aboard them.
The unsuspecting prize is a full-rigged ship, the Portobello, under Captain Harvey, bound from London to Kingston in Jamaica. The defenceless merchantman is in the hands of the pirates within minutes, the night watch despatched, and the hapless passengers and crew all secured as prisoners.
Under the cold, heartless smile of Sharkey, each one is hamstrung and thrown over the side. Man and woman alike, not one is spared.
Captain Harvey is reserved until last, but before dying he tells Sharkey that the greatest treaure of all has been missed: a fair maid, Inez Ramirez, of fine Spanish blood. She is confined in a special cabin aft at the request of her parents, whom Sharkey has just sent to a watery grave.
She is soon found behind a barred door. 'a young woman in the very prime and fullness of her youth, crouching in a corner, her unkempt hair hanging to the ground, her dark eyes glaring with fear, her lovely form straining away in horror from this inrush of savage blood-stained men' She is transferred to the Happy Delivery and the Portobello is sunk.
That night, Sharkey is joined in his cabin by his quartermaster and his surgeon for a drunken carouse. Sharkey yells for the woman prisoner to be brought in for their amusement and pleasure.
- ... Inez Ramirez had now realised it all--the death of her father and mother, and her own position in the hands of their murderers. Yet calmness had come with the knowledge, and there was no sign of terror in her proud, dark face as she was led into the cabin, but rather a strange, firm set of the mouth and an exultant gleam of the eyes, like one who sees great hopes in the future. She smiled at the pirate captain as he rose and seized her by the waist....
- ... Sitting on Sharkey's knee, her arm encircled his neck, and her hand toyed with his hair, his ear, his cheek. 'Curse me, if she is not a lass of metal!' he cried, as he pressed her to him and kissed her unresisting lips. ...
- 'Look at her hand, Captain Sharkey! [the surgeon] cried. 'For the Lord's sake, look at her hand!'
- Sharkey stared down at the hand which had fondled him. It was of a strange dead pallor, with a yellow shiny web betwixt the fingers. All over it was a white fluffy dust, like the flour of a new-baked loaf. It lay thick on Sharkey's neck and check...
- 'A leper!' he cried. She has us all, curse her!'
So does Inez Ramirez exact her revenge on Captain Sharkey. Word of what has happened spreads like wildfire through the ship. Sharkey is over-powered by the crew and set adrift in a boat, but is granted one companion-the girl!
- With all the spirit of Spain in her rotting body she flashed triumphant glances at her captors.
- 'Perros! Perros Ingleses! Lepero, Lepero!' she cried in exultation as they thrust her over into the boat....
The final outcome of this tale is revealed in the ship's log of H.M. 50-gun ship Hecate on 26 January 1721. The reader should seek out this extract to discover the final fate of Sharkey and the singular Inez Ramirez.
The final question is: was there any malice or forethought on the part of Conan Doyle in portraying a number of his leading female characters in an unfavourable light? I began this article by stating that I had previously formed the opinion', and in summing up I want to reconsider that opinion and take a number of mitigating circumstances into account.
Is there a sense of double standard in the contrast between Conan Doyle's attitudes towards the women in his domestic novels and those in the others under consideration? Why are there so many apparent stereotypes of women with either shallow, unthinking, or predatory characters?
Although it is known that Conan Doyle had little tolerance or sympathy with women's movements such as the suffragettes, he was equally no misogynist. This is an important consideration, particularly when reviewing the sadistic treatment of Lady Sannox. But Conan Doyle does not write in a consciously malicious manner about his bad or weak-willed characters — they are seemingly based on flesh and blood men or women, and Conan Doyle had acutely observed and analysed their mores and motivations. In any event, women's suffrage did not become active in Britain until 1906, by which time most of the narratives under consideration had already been written; and his most controversial comments regarding the movement, although misinterpreted by a hostile New York press, were not made until as late as 1914 when he visited America.
Before leaving the question of misogyny, one only has to read the accounts, both personal, as recounted by Conan Doyle in the fictional 'The Stark Munro Letters' (1895) and his autobiography Memories and Adventures, and those of his biographers, of his obvious love and respect for his mother, his devotion to both of his wives, and his active support for the reform of the Divorce Law in favour of women-and to observe his own high moral codes-to know that there can be no basis for such an accusation.
One must also temper any criticism of the macabre fate of some of his women characters, by recalling Conan Doyle's medical background and the often distressing, if not horrific, cases he had to deal with as a young doctor. It was by recalling these nightmarish real life experiences that Conan Doyle could embrace them in his fictional works. This is reflected in the number of his characters that have a medical background, or are actually surgeons. There is evidence, in his own hand, of real life situations he encountered which, in actuality, were more disturbing than when placed into a fictional account.
One very good example of this is his short account in the story 'A Medical Document' (1894) of a late night visit by the surgeon Hargrave' (i.e. Conan Doyle):
- 'I was frightened once,' says the surgeon. It was when I was doing dispensary work. One night I had a call from some very poor people, and gathered from the few words they said that their child was ill. When I entered the room I saw a small cradle in the corner. Raising the lamp I walked over and putting back the curtains I looked down at the baby. I tell you it was sheer Providence that I didn't drop that lamp and set the whole place alight. The head on the pillow turned, and I saw a face looking up at me which seemed to have more malignancy and wickedness than ever I had dreamed of in a nightmare. It was the flush of red over the cheek-bones, and the brooding eyes full of loathing of me, and of everything else, that impressed me. I'll never forget my start as, instead of the chubby face of an infant, my eyes fell upon this creature. I took the mother into the next room. "What is it?" I asked. "A girl of sixteen," said she, and then throwing up her arms, "Oh, pray God she may be taken!" The poor thing, though she spent her life in this little cradle, had great, long, thin limbs which she curled up under her. I lost sight of the case and don't know what became of it, but I'll never forget the look in her eyes.
Thirty years later. a similarly-worded true life encounter is related in the chapter 'My Start at Southsea' in Memories and Adventures, the unfortunate stricken girl being nineteen rather than sixteen, so having suffered a full three years longer than in the fictional account.
Such true life clinical observation of the sadly grotesque, therefore, fuelled certain aspects of his imaginative writing. What may seem implausible, or perhaps unacceptably horrific, in his fiction is based, however, on a real life encounter.
Stretch that imagination further to include what a cruel or deranged or sexually jealous or cuckolded husband might do to a promiscuous wife, et voilà-a gruesome fate for the loose-living Lady Sannox. There was plenty of factual and grisly evidence available, too, in the age of the possibly 'surgical' murders and mutilation of women committed by the notorious Jack the Ripper, all of which were salaciously reported to the Victorian public. Equally, there was a Victorian penchant for the melodramatic morality tale and the administration of harsh justice or retribution for the fallen or guilty parties, be they male or female.
My case is concluded, and the verdict can be delivered: Conan Doyle was not guilty of deliberately portraying women in an unfavourable light. What he had was the gifted storyteller's ability to tell a great tale or moral and help us to observe, with him, all the rich facets of the human character, male and female, together with all its strengths and weaknesses.
Conan Doyle was surely one of the greatest observers of all aspects of the human condition of his, or any other, epoch. And we, who are privileged to read his works today, are the richer for it.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
