Sir Arthur in Belfast
Sir Arthur in Belfast is an article written by J. Victor Hamilton published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 3, 1992).
This article recounts Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's May 1925 visit to Belfast, detailing his Rotary Club address on literature and his two major lectures at the Ulster Hall promoting Spiritualism and "Proofs of Immortality." It situates the visit within post–Great War Ulster, highlighting both his literary reflections and his passionate advocacy of psychic belief.
Sir Arthur in Belfast
The inhabitants of North-East Ireland have a certain reputation for insularity; and who shall say that it is undeserved? So perhaps a very new member from that part of the world may be forgiven for bringing to light an unexpected Ulster link.
On the back page of the Belfast Telegraph (an evening paper), dated Tuesday, 12 May 1925, there appears a photograph with the following caption:
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who is at present on a visit to Belfast in connection with the Association of Spiritualists, photographed at the Midland Railway, Belfast.
That is all the Belfast Telegraph has to say about the visit. But in one of the morning papers, the Belfast News-Letter of 13, 14 and 15 May, there are quite lengthy reports of speeches made by Sir Arthur.
In the News-Letter of 13 May there is an account of a talk given by the distinguished visitor (whom the reporter usually refers to as 'Sir Conan') at the Belfast Rotary Club's luncheon of the previous day. This took place in Ye Olde Castle Restaurant in Central Belfast. We do not have much information as to those who attended the luncheon. But we do know that they included Lady Doyle, The Rt Hon J. M. Andrews, who was then Minister of Labour and later became Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, and Dr R. W. (later Sir Richard) Livingstone, Vice-Chancellor of the Queen's University of Belfast.
Sir Arthur was received with loud applause and the singing of 'He's a jolly good fellow'. His remarks at this, and the other functions dealt with below, reach us through a haze of journalese, but I shall try to summarise them as best I can.
He began with a pleasingly light-hearted reference to the lectures on Spiritualism which he was to give later that week. He said he was glad to have the opportunity of meeting some of the leading citizens of Belfast on a platform that was less contentious than that which he would occupy on the next two days. The talk was on the theme of literature in general. Literature, he said, was a central market place for all humanity. He only occupied a humble stall. If the British Empire should disappear, there had been reared in British literature a monument which would certainly outlast the Pyramids.
He was told that he himself took to literature at the early age of six years, when he wrote and illustrated a book in which there were two characters, a tiger and a man. A painful incident occurred, as a result of which only the tiger survived.
In typically self-effacing vein, Sir Arthur spoke of the great literary figures who were flourishing in his own early days: George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells. Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling (that brilliant Anglo-Indian). James Barrie ('a shy young Scotsman'), Joseph Conrad (the greatest of our sea writers'), and Sir Oliver Lodge ('the real inventor of wireless telegraphy').
He took the view that it was easier in the 1920s than previously for a literary aspirant to find some sort of opening. This he attributed to the fact that in the course of the last thirty years the number of magazines had multiplied tenfold. A magazine. he said, was usually the humble door through which one approached the temple. Then again, thirty years ago, work in the better-class magazines was largely anonymous: he himself worked for nearly ten years before people realised that he existed. He did not think that during that time he made more than £20 to £40 from literature in any one year.
Again his modesty comes shining through. He tells how one magazine editor sent. him a picture and asked for a story to correspond. 'It was a pretty bad picture, and I think the story did correspond.' He paid a glowing tribute to James Payn, editor of the Cornhill Magazine as 'the most helpful friend I had in the early days of my career. He spoke also of his great admiration for George Meredith.
So far I have tried to give a fairly concise summary of Sir Arthur's remarks to the Rotary Club. But I think it is worth quoting rather more extensively from what he had to say about his most famous creation:
- I always dislike being forced into a groove, and that is, perhaps, why I cut Holmes off, fully intending that the separation would be permanent. But the public were so kind over the matter, and I received so many letters, some of them pathetic and some indignant, that I had to resuscitate him. As far as my modest banking account goes, Sherlock Holmes has been a valuable asset, but the literature I have tried to put into such books as The White Company and Rodney Stone has been a little obscured by the rather facile success which one can obtain by working with such simple and primitive machinery as a private detective provides.
Dr R. W. Livingstone, in a felicitous speech of thanks to Sir Arthur, said that their guest was typical of the resourcefulness, the many-sidedness, the modest perseverance and the stubborn persistence of the British race.
Before dealing in more detail with Sir Arthur's public lectures on Spiritualism, I should like to make a couple of general points. These lectures were given in the Ulster Hall, Bedford Street. Belfast, which was the largest place of its kind in the city. World War I was less than seven years ended. The massive mortality among the young men of Ulster, especially at the Battle of the Somme, would no doubt have greatly stimulated the local inhabitants to take an interest in Spiritualism.
The Belfast News-Letter of 14 May 1925 contains a lengthy account of the lecture of the previous evening, entitled 'The New Revelation'.
Sir Arthur said he first took up Spiritualism in 1886 and had never since ceased to read about and investigate it. The last nine years of his life were devoted almost entirely to psychic study. When he left university, he was an agnostic. After he started in practice, his best patient asked him to attend a seance. He went to it, frankly stating that he had no belief. But his attention was arrested and at last, after years of reading, he came to the conclusion that it was impossible to set down as insane the men who had studied and written on the subject.
Where were all the young men who went forth to the Great War and disappeared? Were they for ever dissipated, or were they still individualities? Cleric and scientific man could not answer, but he thought he could find the answer.
There came to live with him and his wife in 1915, a lady who had a singular power of automatic writing. (This would have been Lily Loder-Symonds). Her three brothers and his wife's brother, all of whom were killed in the early stages of the war, came back and told them, through her, of military matters utterly beyond the knowledge of any lady.
He then went on to discuss the properties of ectoplasm (which the reporter, with an excessive fondness for his native Doric, calls 'actoplasm'). He spoke also of the etheric body, i.e., the new, spiritual body which the spirit assumes after death. If an old person died the etheric body presented no change at first, but it then underwent a process of rejuvenescence on the other side.
The second and final lecture, delivered on the evening of 14 May, is reported in the News-Letter of the following day. It was entitled 'Proofs of Immortality'.
Sir Arthur dealt first with a question from someone in the audience: 'Is there such a place as hell?' (Not, perhaps, an unnatural question to pose in a city where street preachers abound.) It is interesting to note that Sir Arthur, in his reply to the question, rejects the concept of a permanent place of punishment, but seems to hold something reminiscent of the doctrine of purgatory: 'Those who do evil in this life will have to enter chastening circles for a time.'
He then dealt in rather more detail with the function and nature of ectoplasm: how it emanated from mediums and became an animate form. He explained that it had been chemically analysed and that it was found to consist largely of the constituents of the human body.
He showed a number of slides, including one of a small house where, in 1848, there took place occurrences which gave rise to the spiritualist movement. A pedlar had been murdered in the house and, some years later, a family named Fox went to live there. Two girls in the family were mediumistic and received from the pedlar's spirit an account of how he had been murdered. Much later, in 1904, the pedlar's skeleton and his tin box were found beneath the foundations of the house.
Sir Arthur also referred to experiments made by Sir William Crookes, the distinguished chemist and physicist, in the field of psychical research, and produced a number of 'spirit photographs', including one of Abraham Lincoln.
It is a pity that we do not have a more detailed account of those who were present at the talks given by Sir Arthur during his visit. But it will be safe to assume that the audience in the Ulster Hall would have included the Reverend D. Frazer-Hurst, one of the leading Presbyterian Ministers in Belfast, who was also deeply interested in Spiritualism. Frazer-Hurst's evening subject in Elmwood Church, Belfast, on the following Sunday was 'Spiritualism and the Christian Faith' (Belfast News-Letter, Saturday, 16 May 1925).
There is another link here which may be of interest: during World War I, Frazer-Hurst had collaborated closely with Sir Arthur's brother-in-law. E. W. Hornung, when they were both working for the YMCA in France.
It is, as we are fond of saying in Ulster, a small world.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
