Review:Conan Doyle and the Spirits/Philip K. Wilson
This review of the book "Conan Doyle and the Spirits", by Kelvin I. Jones was written by Philip K. Wilson and published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 1, No. 2) in march 1990.
Review
- Conan Doyle and the Spirits
- The spiritualist career of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- by Kelvin I. Jones
- Aquarian Press, 1989; 256 pp.; £8.99 (paper)
Reviewed by Philip K. Wilson
Contributing to the body of works concentrating on a specific aspect of the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, such as medical influences (A. E. Rodin & J. D. Key) or his Portsmouth days (G. S. Stavert), Kelvin Jones has recently provided Conan Doyle and the Spirits: The Spiritualist career of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In ten chapters, Jones details chronologically the ways in which Spiritualism expanded from a casual interest of Conan Doyle into the passion which engulfed his life.
Before Jones' work, Conan Doyle biographers and aficionados have shown minimal interest in their subject's spiritualist ventures. The spiritualist John Lamond, the sceptic Trevor Hall, and the more impartial Jeffrey Meilke are the only forerunners who have based their descriptive accounts upon select spiritualist activities and writings of Conan Doyle. Indeed, Conan Doyle's largest and most faithful audience, the Sherlockians or Holmesians, have typically shunned the spiritualist pursuits, while many critics seemingly forgave Conan Doyle for being, to use Jones' adjectives, either naive or gullible. Thus, Conan Doyle and the Spirits presents the first serious attempt to describe the integration of Conan Doyle and his religion.
Spiritualism encompasses a vastly complicated set of beliefs which to some represent a philosophy, to others a religion, and to others still, a science. Recent works on the history of Spiritualism have described how political, institutional and sexual components, together with such issues as evolutionary theory and "The Great War" were integrally related to the Spiritualist movement in Britain. Therefore, the task of defining the role played by perhaps the most influential figure who propagated Spiritualist beliefs in early twentieth century England is, likewise, complex. To provide such a comprehensive work, however, was not Jones' goal. Rather, Jones, although he neglects to inform readers of his intents by means of an introduction, looks at Conan Doyle's life in ten separate phases. Beginning with "An Unusual Childhood", be follows Conan Doyle as "A Student of Psychic Phenomena", later discussing "A Spiritual Breakthrough" and concluding with "The Final Phase". Although it is only of academic importance as to whether Jones' artificial segmentation of Conan Doyle's life was the most accurate way to represent his subject's career, Jones compromised a coherency in his text by intermingling at least three different writing styles: the narrative, the historical, and general literary criticism.
Jones' use of narrative, the least subtle of the three styles, is also the weakest in that too much space is devoted to recounting material taken from earlier biographical accounts. Indeed, little new information is revealed in Jones' spinning of Conan Doyle's life tale, and I question the need to repeat so many aforetold bits and pieces of his subject's life which were seemingly not, to Jones, relevant to Conan Doyle's "spiritualist career". Three themes did, however, re-surface several times throughout the early chapters of this work: Conan Doyle's rejection of his Catholic upbringing; the ways in which Conan Doyle's reactions against his father, Charles Doyle, influenced his life and writings; and hints of Conan Doyle's psychosexual frustrations or disturbances.
For example, Jones noted that Spiritualism provided Conan Doyle the "humanistic mysticism" (p.25) and a "theistic system" of belief (p.119), both of which were appealing contrasts to his Jesuit upbringing. Jones also ascribed Conan Doyle's "conviction to not ally himself with any of the religious dogmas offered by Catholic and Protestant faiths' to his anguish over his father's "deluded state" (p.32). Furthermore, Jones noted that Conan Doyle showed a renewed interest in the "possibility of life after death" during the month following his father's death in 1893 (pp.79-80).
Although Jones reiterated these themes, his attempts to explain them as rationalisations of, or motivations towards, Conan Doyle's adherence to spiritualist beliefs are quite weak. Moreover, this reader remains unconvinced that Jones has explained how such matters directly altered the path of Conan Doyle's spiritualist career. Until efforts are attempted towards explaining such motivations, authors are confined to repeating earlier descriptive accounts of Conan Doyle's life.
In his coverage of Conan Doyle's spiritualist career, Jones does place his subject into historical context, at least superficially. For example, he takes note of the ways in which Conan Doyle's spiritualist beliefs were aligned with spiritualist concerns created by "The Great War", and alternatively, how his beliefs became increasingly contrasted to the shifting patterns of psychical research. In this historical representation, Jones' largest problem is not the inaccuracy in names and dates, although such inaccuracies are quite large in number, but rather in the way he misrepresents particular individuals and situations by using incomplete descriptions or, at times, by making blatant conjectures. For instance, Jones compares England's Harry Price with his "American counterpart, Harry Houdini" (p.171). Granted, they were both skilled magicians who also investigated psychic claims, but Price ultimately converted into a "believer" — a comparison from which Houdini would certainly wish to escape. Likewise, in his description of the Scientific American committee to investigate fraudulent psychic claims, Jones described Hereward Carrington as a "magician", (p.188) which would be like describing Conan Doyle as a physician, and ignoring other aspects of his multi-faceted life. In other passages, Jones' conclusions appear completely conjectural, such as his claim, on page 36, that Conan Doyle's "ability to communicate effectively with vast numbers (of people) at spiritualist venues up and down the country must have depended to a great extent" on his early experiences in the industrial community of Birmingham. In this, as in many passages, the idea is there, but the conclusions drawn are not as well supported as they could have been.
Finally, Jones frequently relied upon Conan Doyle's fictional writings as representative of his actual beliefs. For example, he uses a passage from The Captain of the Polestar (1883) to "reveal... the extent to which Conan Doyle had already immersed himself into the subject of spiritualism" by that time (p.41). Perhaps so, but not to the same extent that diary accounts, persona] letters, and particularly passages from Conan Doyle's spiritualist writings would "reveal". Later, (p.69) Jones uses Heatherstone's remarks in The Mystery of Cloomber as evidence that "a spiritualistic philosophy held a very strong attraction for Conan Doyle at this time" (1888). Again such claims are much too strongly stated considering the sources cited. Had Jones supported his arguments with Conan Doyle's autobiographical or non-fictional accounts, his work would have been more convincing. I do not mean to completely discount that fiction can contain nuggets of the author's personality or psyche, but I would suggest that writers provide further documentation as evidence to these claims. Additionally, in extracting psychological information from non-autobiographical writing, Jones could have more closely followed the writings of existing psychobiographies of figures such as Newton, Freud or, more specifically, the fiction writers contemporaneous with Conan Doyle. Although this relatively new analytical style of writing has met much criticism, I believe such works' would have provided Jones with models upon which to base a more sound approach.
At the conclusion of his text, Jones provided his readers with a helpful chronology of his subject and a bibliography listing 47 Conan Doyle writings and 63 works related more generally to either Conan Doyle or spiritualism. Although his listings include the majority of writings, I would strongly remind readers of the relevant sections of A Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle by Green and Gibson should they desire a more comprehensive listing of Conan Doyle's spiritualist writings. As to Jones' list of general spiritualist writings, I would add three works: Ruth Brandon: The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. (New York: Alfred Knopf; 1983); Janet Oppenheim: The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1985); and Alex Owen: The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. (London: Virago Press; 1989).
Despite the shortcomings noted, many of which could have been corrected by more thorough editing, Kelvin Jones' Conan Doyle and the Spirits is the first major work to broadly address "The spiritualist career of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle". As other non-Sherlockian contributions of Conan Doyle become more thoroughly investigated, particularly by members of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society, Jones' efforts represent not only an excellent introduction, but a suitable reference for readers approaching Conan Doyle's spiritualist literature. Moreover, Jones has secured himself as an accomplished author whose work will always stand as the reference with (or against) which all future endeavours on this topic will be compared. In this way, Kelvin Jones serves as an inspiration for other writers to tackle further unexplored aspects or careers in the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
