Speaks of His Pen
Speaks of His Pen is an article published in The Chicago Tribune on 27 october 1894.
Report of the lecture "Readings and Reminiscences" given by Arthur Conan Doyle on 26 october 1894 at the Central Music Hall (Chicago, USA).
Report
SPEAKS OF HIS PEN.
A. CONAN DOYLE DELIVERS A LECTURE ABOUT HIMBELF.
Popular Novelist Appears in Central Music Hall and Delights a Large Audience with Reminiscences of His Works — Humorous References to Early Attempts to Make Literary Fame — Sherlock Holmes and His Wonderful Ability as an Detective.
It was a large and naturally an intellectual audience that gathered in Central Music Hall last night to hear A. Conan Doyle talk about his own writings. It was not such an audience as one would see at a theater ; it was more like the Sunday evening assemblage in a fashionable church, and when the lecturer made a good point it expressed its approval by decorous applause.
The title of Dr. Doyle's lecture was "Readings and Reminiscences, Specially Prepared for the American Tour." He dwelt on his boyhood and his early attempts at literature, when the manuscript came back with discouraging persistency, and when he drifted into a line of writing that he had since had no reason to feel proud of. His talk held the attention of the audience, more by reason of the interest aroused by frequent allusions to personal incidents and to characters in his books, with whom all present were familiar, than by any attempt at dramatic effect or elocution.
Dr. Doyle was introduced by H. N. Higinbotham. He began his lecture by saying it was naturally repugnant to a man to stand upon a public platform and talk to people about his own work. It made one feel, he said, how insignificant he and his works were. The situation, however, had its compensation, for if he read the works of a friend and read them badly, he did that friend an injury, whereas in reading his own works he could only injure himself.
When He Met Thackeray.
His impressions of literature were in the misty recollections of childhood, when at his father's house in Glasgow he met a great man. This man was gigantic, from the view of "2-foot nothing," and the boy was particularly fascinated by the distortion of the visitor's nose. This visitor was Wiliam Makepeace Thackeray, and Dr. Doyle was proud to remember he had once sat upon his knee. The lecturer said he believed he owed to his mother the love of a well told story that had always remained with him. If he only had the faculty which his mother had of telling long stories, dealing them out in short portions every night and keeping up the interest until the next installment, he should never want for readers.
Dr. Doyle told a humorous story about his first literary effort. He started a book at the mature age of 6 years. It was written on foolscap paper in a bold round hand, four words to the line. In it were a man and a tiger. They were separate at first, but in the course of the story became blended and then he didn't know how to get on. The book, like the man, was permanently ingulfed in the tiger.
As a boy he was an omniverous reader, and he told how a library official made a new rule for his special case, providing no one should change books more than three times a day. Once he had a money box so full he could hardly slip a knife blade into it. This accumulation of wealth was a source of both pleasure and anxiety to him. He did not know what to do with it.
The Problem Solved.
Fortunately his parents solved the problem for him. One morning he found the money box empty and a whole, bright new thirty volume edition of the Waverley novels facing him. While at that time he doubted the wisdom of this purchase, when he had neither a football nor a bow and arrow, and in his mind placed Walter Scott between English grammar and codliver oil in the list of his antipathies, he believed the whole course of his thoughts was altered by those books. They interested him in the past and laid the foundation for his future work. In the eight years of his public school life it was his habit to have his Euclid on his desk and Washington Irving or some other congenial author on his knee, and it gave him a squint yet to think how he managed to appear to be looking at one thing while he was, in fact, looking at another. His real education was going on under the desk.
When, at 17, he visited London, the first thing he did was to go and stand by the tomb of Macaulay, who had stimulated in his mind that interest in the past which had been awakened by Scott.
Dr. Doyle next spoke of his early writings, of short stories sent to prominent journals, and, to his surprise, accepted, and of ten years' work for English magazines as an anonymous writer, in no one year of which did he make $250 by his pen. At the end of ten years he was as unknown to the reading public as when he began.
Tells of Sherlock Holmes.
About this time a man appeared in his life who had been a great friend to him, and whom he feared he had not treated with sufficient consideration. He referred to Mr. Sherlock Holmes of Baker street. Dr. Doyle told how he had conceived the idea that a detective story could be built on scientific and literary lines and how he had carried out that plan. Edgar Allan Poe had first showed the possibility of making such a story extremely sensational and yet having it literature. He read two selections from the Holmes stories and said he had often been amused by friends expecting him to tell all about folks by looking at waistcoat buttons. He had been deluged with letters from all parts of the world sent by people who wanted him to clear up mysteries and had been roundly scolded for killing Sherlock Holmes.
In conclusion Dr. Doyle told how he had other views than writing detective stories. The bent of his mind was towards historical romance. He related the difficulty he had in finding a publisher for "Micah Clarke," and how it finally fell into the hands of Andrew Lang, who recommended it to a publisher. Since that time there had been a door open to him in the temple of literature if he could only find something worthy to bring in. The lecturer spoke of his other works and ended by reading the conclusion of that grim story, "The Lord of Chateau Noir."
