The Parish Magazine No. 14
The Parish Magazine No. 14 is the newsletter of the The Arthur Conan Doyle Society published in september 1996.
The Parish Magazine No. 14
THE PARISH MAGAZINE is The Arthur Conan Doyle Society's twice-yearly collection of news, views, reviews, and all that is interesting in the world of Arthur Conan Doyle. It is the outlet for responses to and discussion of articles which appeared in the previous year's ACD - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society, and members' comments are welcomed.
ISSN 1350-2190
THE PARISH MAGAZINE
is edited by
Christopher Roden & Barbara Roden
© 1996: The Arthur Conan Doyle Society
All individual copyrights retained by the authors.
No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission of the editors.
The views expressed in articles in The Parish Magazine are those of the respective contributors and not necessarily those of the editors.
All editorial correspondence should be sent to: The Arthur Conan Doyle Society, Ashcroft, 2 Abbottsford Drive, Penyffordd, Chester CH4 0JG Tel: 01244 545210
Printed by Kall Kwik Printing, Watergate Street, Chester, U.K.
THE PARISH MAGAZINE
ISSUE NUMBER FOURTEEN: SEPTEMBER 1996
Editorial
Has It All Been So Wrong?
Since the Society was formed in 1989, it has operated on a very informal basis. Because two of us have been available to perform the duties of secretary, treasurer, membership secretary, and editor, we have done just that, and our impression has been that to all intents and purposes things have worked out fine. The situation is not necessarily one which we have totally enjoyed, and there have been requests made for help on past occasions (indeed, help has been forthcoming, particularly with assessing hotels for the Toronto convention, compiling the Journal index, etc.), but no response has ever been received to indicate that someone had a burning desire to take on things like membership administration, or committee work generally.
Operating the Society in this way has had its advantages as well as its disadvantages. The disadvantage, from our point of view, is that the full burden of administration falls on us. However, the worldwide geographical spread of the membership adds complications to the formation and maintenance of a committee which is fully representative of the viewpoint of members in all countries and, as no practical difficulties have been encountered, we have seen no reason to change the set-up, and have been content to operate under the present arrangement. The main advantage has been that when decisions have had to be made they have not become bogged down in committee, and this has enabled us to press ahead quickly with projects like the joint facsimile of 'The Dying Detective', which was produced in tandem with Westminster Libraries, new editions of works like Western Wanderings and 'A Regimental Scandal', the siting of a commemorative green plaque at 2 Upper Wimpole Street, and the first printing of 'The Blood-Stone Tragedy'. We have regarded all of this as important work, and have been able to press on unhindered by an over-complicated decision-making process.
We have been able to press on, too, with making our Society's journal a highly respected publication, which is now subscribed to by leading university libraries. Our aim has been to lay down a body of work which would exist as a research tool for future generations, and to obtain for ACD the academic recognition which many have for long felt his work deserved. That remains our aim and from the feedback we receive it would seem that we are achieving some success in that direction. We have always felt The Parish Magazine to be the place for lighter material and news and general notes, and have attempted to present that magazine in as light a manner as we felt appropriate for a literary society. There is little point in working for academic recognition on the one hand, while presenting a subject in a frivolous or light-hearted manner on the other.
Recently, however, there has been some very strong criticism of the way in which the Society is structured, and of the Journal's format. That criticism blames the Society's structure for the fact that the membership is not larger than it is; it suggests that the Society is not presented in the correct manner because it does not have a formal committee which could plan promotion and thereby increase membership; it says that the material published in the Journal is not sufficiently lightweight, that the academic tone of the Journal acts as a deterrent to new members, and that the Journal in its present format is too big; it says that we only have to look at the membership figures of societies which do have committees to see where this Society is going wrong; it says that the Society is not sufficiently high profile because it lacks a high-profile President and that, in consequence, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is not promoted as he deserves to be promoted; it says that membership of the Society is not good value for money. It says, effectively, that we are doing just about everything wrong.
Naturally, we take any criticism seriously, but critcism such as this is unprecedented and means that we really have to assess, or reassess, the future of the Society — in essence, we have to ask whether we wish to carry on any longer doing what, until now, has been a labour of love. We agree that a more formal structure might be desirable — if only to relieve us of some of the administration-but have to point out that an informal consultative process has always existed within the Society and that this process has become more formalised over the past year or so. We do not agree, or believe, that the lack of a more formal structure is necessarily the reason why the Society maintains its membership at a figure no higher than 300. Nor do we believe that the Society's Journal should be debased by making it a more light-hearted publication.
There is, we believe, a perfectly straightforward reason why our membership has levelled out at 300, as against, say, up to 1,000 for the longer-established Sherlock Holmes societies, and that reason, quite simply, is Sherlock Holmes. Like it, or like it not, Sherlock Holmes is the reason why the vast majority of people shows any interest in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Of course it is true that ACD wrote many other valuable works, but we have to maintain that without the success which he created for himself by writing the Sherlock Holmes adventures, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would almost certainly today be regarded as just another prolific Victorian/Edwardian story-teller. What popularity his historical novels have today, good as they are, is due entirely to Sherlock Holmes and the fact that Holmes enthusiasts have discovered for themselves some of the other things that Conan Doyle wrote. Without Sherlock Holmes, the Brigadier Gerard stories, had they been written at all, would almost certainly be regarded as little more than a historical novelty, and The Lost World would share a fate similar to H. Rider Haggard's Alan Quartermain novels: revived occasionally, read perhaps less often.
We know, and care, that Conan Doyle wrote other things, we know and care that Conan Doyle led an interesting and exciting life, we know of, and are interested in, the time and money that Conan Doyle expended promoting his belief in Spiritualism;, we know and respect the work he carried out in his various social campaigns, we are interested in the contribution he made to recording the history of the Great War, we applaud his action in serving as a Doctor in the Boer War, we admire his selfless determination in all things. We also know that some three hundred other people share all or some of the interest that we have in Conan Doyle.
But we also know that a great many people do not. We know, for example, that no one was sufficiently interested in ACD himself, in the fifty-nine years which elapsed between his death in 1930 and the founding of the Society in 1989, to found a Society which functions on the basis that this one does. We know, too, that if we were to turn The Arthur Conan Doyle Society into a Sherlock Holmes Society, our numbers would increase dramatically — but we are not about to do something that would simply be a prostitution of the principles under which the Society was founded.
What we are doing is seeking the views of our members by asking them to complete a detailed questionnaire, and we ask all members to express their views on the Society by completing and returning this questionnaire as soon as possible. There are no trick questions, but there are no easy options either. When we ask whether you feel that the Society should be governed by a committee, we also ask whether you are prepared to serve on a committee: it simply is not enough to say that something should be done in a certain way unless you are prepared to make a positive contribution. And remember, running a society is something of a chore for most of the time. Folding flyers, packing envelopes, and licking stamps is not the most glamorous job in the world. Remember, too, that joining a committee may involve you in travelling long distances for meetings-and that the Society is not in a position to fund your expenses.
Our critics may be correct: we may be doing everything wrong. The feedback that we do receive would suggest that is not the case, but no doubt things could be changed and improved in certain instances. Please take this opportunity to tell us what you would like to see changed and how you would like to be involved-or to confirm that you are happy with things the way that they are. Frankly, burdening the society with a committee and the additional administration that would entail is not what the society needs.
The criticism of the Society's not being value for money is one to which I would like to pay particular attention, for I have always felt that it offered excellent value for money. However, the concept of 'value for money' is somewhat difficult to define, isn't it? It means different things to different people and, at the end of the day, is really nothing more than a perception. Put into real terms, a British member who joined the ACD Society in 1989, and who has paid an annual subscription ever since, would actually have spent less than he or she would spend on a single year's television licence. Again in British terms, seven years' membership is less than the cost of a room for one night in a Central London hotel. In return that member would have received 9 copies of ACD and 14 copies of The Parish Magazine, and would, we hope, feel that they were part of an organisation doing its best to provide new material and information on a subject in which they were interested. Value for money? We'd like to think so-but do tell us if we're wrong.
Here's a breakdown of how each £1 of subscription income is allocated:
| Journal and associated costs | 30.04% |
| Parish Magazine and associated costs | 22.84% |
| Postage | 33.65% |
| Stationery, telephone, general admin | 6.02% |
| Contingency | 7.45% |
| 100.00% |
It should be fairly obvious from those figures that we are unable to salt away a huge fortune into Swiss bank accounts-and in any case that is unnecessary. Our objective has been to ensure that the Society should break even in any given year. With the help of a modest income from publications that objective has been achieved. It should be noted, however, that no charge has ever been levied for the work we do and that, on occasion, it has been necessary to subsidize the Society in the short-term. Even costing time modestly, our own estimate of time given freely over a seven-year period is well in excess of £30,000-if we can regard the ACD Society as value for money in that light, we hope you may perhaps be able to do likewise. Put another way, were the Society required to meet that cost, the annual subscription would be exactly double the present figure.
There is no question that an increased membership would help the situation: the increased funds would mean that we could afford to produce the long-promised Journal index. At the moment we cannot do that.
On the matter of the Society's profile, the question of the Society's President has been raised. Members will know that our first President was the late Julian Symons. Julian was a wonderful source of inspiration and support, and did everything that could reasonably be asked of him-more on occasion-despite failing health and many other commitments. Since Julian's death, the position has remained vacant-not because there have been no invitations, but because none of the people approached has, for various reasons, felt able to accept the invitation. Realistically, the rôle of President need not be an onerous one. The Society needs a figurehead who is interested in the subject of our work-sufficiently interested, one might hope, to help with the promotion of the Society, but sufficiently realistic not to expect any great glory from the position. Sadly, although suitable candidates have been identified, we are still without an acceptance. Suggestions would be welcomed.
Our own Society and its membership level has been compared to other societies, and it is, we feel, relevant to comment. It is particularly relevant to note that other societies mentioned (e.g., The Dickens Fellowship, The Chesterton Society, The Edgar Wallace Society, The Brontë Society) have, in some cases, existed for fifty years or more. In some cases, the societies are well-established in their own premises, where entrance fees and merchandise generates a handsome income. Such income can be used in part to employ staff at all levels-staff who are there to cope with the routine administration. Those societies operate on a fully commercial basis: their format and structure demands that they do so. In the case of Dickens and the Brontës, the societies study established (or accepted) literary figures, and have the benefit of being based out of former homes of the subjects of their study. The only time anything connected with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle remotely approaches the appeal (for the majority of people) of either the Dickens or the Brontes is when Sherlock Holmes forms the central point of study. Conan Doyle always has been a victim of the success of Sherlock Holmes, and there is no reason to believe that the Society devoted to him will ever suffer a different fate. We have to face facts, however unpalatable they may be to some: to a large number of people, however he is presented, Conan Doyle is an insufficiently interesting character or writer when Sherlock Holmes is removed from the equation, or when Sherlock Holmes is not the reason for the study.
To us Conan Doyle is more than just another Victorian/Edwardian writer, but others simply are not sufficiently interested in him to want to join a Society which studies him. Dickens and the Brontès are entirely different cases: there we are considering long-established and accepted literary figures who are removed from their own creations there is no Fagin Society, no Scrooge Society, no Pip Society, no Heathcliff Society, no Jane Eyre Society-Dickens and the Brontës are studied and revered for their place in English literary history. Put quite bluntly, Conan Doyle is not. There is no former home which can be visited by great numbers; there is no museum; his manuscripts are widely scattered; what archival material there is remains unavailable to scholars.
The case of Conan Doyle and the Society dedicated to him has become quite something of a three-pipe problem. Can we realistically expect more people to join us in our interest, or should we be satisfied with what we have? Is it not the case that, through the vast interest which is shown in one of his literary creations, Conan Doyle is already regarded as highly and studied just as much, and possibly more, than those authors whose societies have become the yardstick by which we are now judged and criticized?
Please complete the questionnaire and give us your views.
Christopher Roden
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Notes and News
The Conan Doyle Archives
A great deal of excitement has been aroused by recent press reports that the Conan Doyle archives, for so long the subject of legal wrangling and family dispute, are to be released. Actually, that wasn't what the press reports said. Closer reading of the reports involved clarifies the situation. The Daily Telegraph (19 August) reported, 'Dame Jean Conan Doyle, the last surviving child of the creator of Sherlock Holmes, is 'eagerly awaiting' the release of her father's papers.' The Daily Mail noted on the same day, 'This week, Conan Doyle's daughter hopes the intrigue will be finally ended. The author's daughter, 83-year-old Dame Jean Conan Doyle, will approach the bank in a bid to get her father's effects released.'
All of that is not quite the same as the matter being settled. Dame Jean told me that in effect, 'things are the same as they were six months ago'. The problem now seems to be getting the Swiss Trustees to perform the final actions required to enable the papers to be released-and we all know how long it takes the legal wheels to grind on occasion.
The history of the archive, as reported by the Daily Mail, is a tale almost worthy of a television mini-series:
- When Conan Doyle died in 1930, [the residue of] his estate passed to his widow and their three children, Denis, Adrian and Jean.
- Lady Conan Doyle and Denis were co-trustees. By 1955 both were dead. The central figure for the next 40 years of deadlock was Denis's widow, Nina Harwood, who inherited his interest in the author's estate.
- Mrs Harwood was a Russian socialite, born Nina Mdivani, who called herself Princess. She was one of the 'Marrying Mdivanis' whose extravagances, marriages and divorces scandalised the social world in the Twenties and Thirties.
- After Denis died, she kept a permanent suite at the Ritz and gave her next husband a plum coloured Rolls-Royce.
- Mrs Harwood became entangled in a bitter dispute with Jean and Adrian over who was entitled to the estate.
- Adrian was a trustee. In 1958 Mrs Harwood had a firm of Geneva bankers, Fides Union Fiduciaire-now Credit Suisse Fides Trust-appointed as second trustee.
- That, says Dame Jean, was when the legal nightmare began. When Adrian died in 1970, the bank was left as sole trustee. The perenially cash-strapped Mrs Harwood decided to raise some money by asking the bank to sell the British copyrights on Sir Arthur's books.
- The Swiss at first refused but Mrs Harwood took legal action.
- 'Over the years Mrs Harwood picked so many quarrels with so many people,' said Dame Jean, who controls her father's U.S. copyrights and owns a quarter share in the copyright on his unpublished work. 'I didn't agree that the copyrights should be sold. Nor did Adrian's widow. But as a beneficiary who needed the money she was able to force the sale.'
- The copyrights were sold to an offshore company, Baskerville Investments, which went broke. A company called Northolme now owns the British rights.
- 'Adrian's widow, Anna, and I were so upset that they should go out of the family,' Dame Jean added. 'Especially me. I was so close to my father.'
- Of the remaining Conan Doyle estate-including the papers and the proceeds from the sale — who owned what became even more obscure. Mrs Harwood died in 1987, leaving her share to a nephew in the U.S. He died intestate in 1990, leaving four beneficiaries — Dame Jean and her three cousins. Their individual lawyers have now agreed on a settlement. Now it is up to the Swiss.
- 'There are boxes full of information, including my father's letters and a lot of documents of domestic interest,' said Dame Jean, who suffers from Parkinson's disease. 'The letters between him and my mother were burned at my mother's request when he died, but there are letters from him to his mother. This legal hoo-ha has been horrifying. It's like something out of Dickens and no one benefits except the lawyers.'
Prospective researchers and biographers should not raise their hopes too much yet awhile. Dame Jean told me that, in the first instance, the family will want to make a thorough examination of the archives. This is likely to mean a period of up to two years following the release of the archives before anything is made available to researchers.
Conan Doyle Copyright in the U.K.
Following a European Union Directive [93/98/EEC] in October 1993, Copyright throughout the European Union was harmonised at 70 years following an author's death. The effects of the Directive came fully into force in Britain on 1 January 1996, with the result that copyright in Conan Doyle's works was revived in European Union Member States until 31 December 2000.
The Directive was little more than a piece of mindless bureaucracy, brought about by a European Court ruling in the so-called 'Phil Collins case': the pop-singer had taken action over his not being able to obtain the same term of copyright for his work in different countries throughout the European Community. Little thought seems to have been given to practical implementation of the new law, with the result that the only people who are likely to see any real benefit from it are the copyright lawyers. One foresees a situation where, in the case of Conan Doyle, argument will still be raging well into the next century-by which time his work will be back in the Public Domain.
The new legislation has certainly done nothing to clarify who exactly owns the rights to what. My understanding of the sale of rights in the 1970s is that the sale was based on works listed in A Bibliographical Catalogue of the Writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, M.D., LL.D., 1879-1928 — no doubt someone will correct me if I am wrong. But how, for example, could the rights for A Study in Scarlet be sold, when it is well-known that ACD sold the copyright outright to Ward, Lock & Co. for £25 in 1886? Some of ACD's letters would seem to indicate that copyrights to other stories were also being offered and sold at the time of their being written.
The Daily Mail (23 August 1996) offered a further insight into who is now claiming copyright of the literary estate of ACD:
- Credited with having master-minded the acquittal of her lover Claus von Bulow in his 1985 retrial for the attempted murder of his heiress wife Sunny, Hungarian-born Andrea Reynolds is now reviving ownership in the EU of the copyright of the literary estate of Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Andrea... is the daughter of Lady Duncan, who was the sole owner of the literary estate, bought from The Royal Bank of Scotland, until 1990 when she passed on 40 per cent. Andrea... tells me... 'Every generation takes up with Sherlock Holmes and although the income has its ups and downs, it is very regular. I have appointed Harbottle and Lewis to guide me in legal matters and Aitken & Stone as agents for the revived copyright.'
From information I have received, this report may be totally misleading. Watch this space for periodic updates. And naturally, we shall be glad to hear from anyone who is able to clarify the situation further.
Popular Fiction on Film
In conjunction with Oxford University Press-seemingly as promotion for the Oxford Popular Fiction series-London's National Film Theatre is staging From Fiction to Film: The Original Blockbusters between 1 October and 3 November. On Monday 7 October, beginning at 2.30 (Theatre 2), there is an opportunity to see the 1925 and 1960 versions of The Lost World. Tickets are £7.75 and may be booked by telephone from 23 September onwards. (The Box office telephone number is 0171-928-3232, and it is contactable from 11.30 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. daily.
Crowborough Statue
The Conan Doyle (Crowborough) Establishment has announced plans for a life-sized bronze statue of ACD:
- Crowborough Town Council is to incorporate a life-sized bronze statue of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the new Town Centre design of a site known as Cloke's Corner, a paved and landscaped area right in the town centre. The best-known and most reputable sculptors will be asked to submit drawings. This site is ideal, graced with flowers, and blossoming trees and shrubs, and backed by a coloured depiction of the town crest. It has seats, a marvellous prospect of the town, and the surrounding views are a patchwork of Sussex scenery so much admired by Sir Arthur.
- Funds will be raised by donation and sponsorship; sponsors and donors will have their names recorded, and on public display, in the Town Hall. For details of donation apply to David Harris, Town Clerk, The Town Hall, Broadway, Crowborough, East Sussex (Tel: 01892 652907).
A Westminster Abbey site for Conan Doyle?
The Society has begun discussions with the Dean of Westminster Abbey with a view to the placing of a commemorative tablet in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. The project is likely to take some time to bring to fruition, but initially we are asked to provide the names of up to half-a-dozen distinguished literary figures who would advise on whether they feel memorialization is appropriate. We should be pleased to hear from anyone who feels that they can help in this respect.
Conan Doyle in Hindhead
The Hilltop Writers is a new book by W.R. Trotter which looks at the influx of 'some of the most eminent and influential figures of the late-Victorian intellectual world' into one particular corner of south-west Surrey. Conan Doyle was among these, and Trotter's book includes useful information for this disappointingly neglected period of Conan Doyle's life. Published by The Book Guild Ltd. (ISBN: 1-85776-108-1), price £15.00, The Hilltop Writers will be reviewed in the 1996 issue of ACD.
Piltdown Rides Again
From The Times, 23 May 1996:
- Tell-tale initials on an old canvas-travelling trunk found under the roof of the Natural History Museum could finally have solved the riddle of Piltdown Man, the most notorious scientific fraud of the century. A collection of carved and stained old bones inside the trunk is said to prove beyond doubt the identity of the perpetrator of the hoax.
- Brian Gardiner, Professor of Palaeontology at King's College, London, today names him as Martin Alistair Campbell Hinton, a former curator of zoology at the Natural History Museum in London, who died in 1961....
- ... The trunk was discovered by maintenance contractors clearing the loft-space in the south-west tower of the museum in the 1970s.... Professor Gardiner's findings are reported in today's issue of Nature.
The whole Piltdown saga, including ACD's purported involvement, is re-opened and re-assessed by John E. Walsh in Unraveling Piltdown (Random House, ISBN: 0-679-44444-0). The advance proof we have seen did not have the opportunity to assess Gardiner's findings, but I understand that there will be an appendix discussing the new information when the book is published (provisionally in late September). Unravelling Piltdown will be reviewed in ACD.
'The Winning Shot'
Conan Doyle's short story, which first appeared in Bow Bells on 11 July 1883, has been reissued as a large-format, card-covered booklet by Philip Weller's Sherlock Publications. Weller has used the full Bow Bells text, added a useful introduction, and has managed to find over three hundred things in the story which require annotation. Regrettably, we don't have postage-inclusive details to hand, but enquiries should be made to Philip Weller at 6 Bramham Moor, Hill Head, Fareham, Hampshire PO14 3RU. Alternatively, the booklet is listed in the latest catalogue from Rupert Books at £10 (plus postage). Rupert Books' advertisement appears elsewhere in this issue.
ACD's handwriting - an electronic assessment
Those with Internet access may be interested in checking out http://www.hy.com/HandY/author.html, where a short extract of ACD's handwriting is assessed on the Between the Lines homepage.
The analysis, prepared by Eureka Media Inc., notes the following:
- The writing is upright, with no slant in either direction, a sign of will power. The well formed script follows the base line perfectly and is relatively small in size, both signs of self-discipline.
- And there is a contrast here. Although the writing is very connected, reflecting the workings of a logical mind, the 't' bars barely cross the stems, which shows impatience....
Could you write a Sherlock Holmes story?
Mike Ashley, who is editing The Mammoth Book of Sherlock Holmes, is appealing for contributions. Here is a brief outline of the book:
- What this anthology will do is present a life of Sherlock Holmes. The book will contain a continuing narrative which records the exploits of Holmes, identifying the original stories by Conan Doyle in their correct sequence (subject to dispute!), but not reprinting them, and then will fill in the gaps between the cases by presenting the hitherto unrecorded cases of Sherlock Holmes.
- The anthology will run to over 180,000 words, and will thus be the biggest collection of non-Conan Doyle Holmes stories ever published; will include both new stories and ones reprinted from hitherto obscure sources available previously only to dedicated Holmes collectors and researchers. I hope to make the blend of new and reprint approximately 40:60, so I am looking for about 70,000 words of new stories.
- These stories must be true to the original canon. That is they must betray no effects or influences of the post-Holmesian world. First and foremost they must be excellent detective cases of only the kind that Holmes would tackle. There must be no overt sex, or explicit language or gratuitous violence. They must not include science fiction, fantasy, or the supernatural (unless it can be rationalised). Ideally, the stories should fall into the peak of Holmes's career, 1881-1903.
- Stories should ideally be between 3,000 and 8,000 words. I'm after taut, tight cases revealed and explored in the usual Doyle manner, professionally handled, developed and written, and as close to the originals as one can get. I want the reader of this anthology to genuinely believe they are encountering lost stories.
Deadlines are tight. Mike needs stories by early December 1996. Contact him at 4 Thistlebank, Walderslade, Chatham, Kent MES 8AD, for further details. He's contactable by fax (01634-308417), or by e-mail, [email protected], if you're in a hurry.
'Conan Doyle's Revenge'
Michael Homer sends details of a short article entitled 'Conan Doyle's Revenge' which appeared in Skeptical Briefs (The Newsletter of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) in December 1995, which discusses how ACD fooled the Society of American Magicians in 1922 when he presented his film of dinosaurs from The Lost World, which was then in the production stages.
The Parish Magazine Post-Bag
In which members are invited to write with queries, or to express their views on items which have appeared in previous publications.
Stephen Volk (Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire) writes:
I have been reading about Thomas Edison's trying to invent a machine for contacting the 'Spirit World'. This happened in the early 1920s. It was reported in an article in American Magazine (Oct. 1920) and subsequent articles in 1921 and 1922. (Of course, there has been much speculation and rumour about the whole subject.)
However, coincidentally, I also read in John Dickson Carr's biography of Conan Doyle, that Doyle undertook a lecture tour of America in 1922 and 1923, extolling the virtues of Spiritualism.
It set me thinking: is it conceivable, given that Doyle may have heard about Edison's experiments, or that Edison might have been interested to hear what ACD had to say, that the two great men met?
Perhaps, if you feel fit, you might put this inquiry in the pages of The Parish Magazine, in case any members may have come across any link between the two men. I'd be more than intrigued to find out more!
Garth A. Willey (Gruyere, Victoria, Australia) writes:
I must take exception to the phraseology used by Owen Dudley Edwards on page 57 of ACD:6: 'He [ ACD ] probably went to his grave without realising...'
He did not go to his grave, his mortal remains did. He, the personality known as Arthur Conan Doyle, passed into a state of being, understood by Spiritualists as the spirit world-a realm of many planes difficult to describe in terms of our earthly comprehension; but, nevertheless, a realm which ACD did describe in his carly communications from 'the other side' (documented by Ivan Cooke, the husband of ACD's medium for that series of communications, Grace Cooke) in what was first put together and published under the title Thy Kingdom Come (later restructured and published as The Return of Arthur Conan Doyle and more recently updated as Arthur Conan Doyle's Book of Beyond).
ACD would have corrected ODE, perhaps angrily, that the right phraseology should have been simply, 'He probably died without realising, or 'He probably passed over without realising...and I say 'perhaps angrily' echoing ODE's words on page 55:
- 'His biographers — a markedly unsatisfactory body whose speed with opinion is generally in inverse proportion to their relevant research-have translated his cold but fair-minded verdict on his schooling in Memories and Adventures into a hyperbole he would have denounced with anger' (italics mine)
Whether or not he generally got angry in response to such matters whilst he was on this earth plane, I defer to ODE's judgment, but I venture to suggest he would take a more ambivalent attitude in his present state of being.
Quoting pertinent words from ACD himself in the transcription of the Movietone Interview presented earlier in the volume (page 24):
- 'I suppose I've sat with more mediums, good and bad and indifferent, than perhaps any living being: anyhow a larger variety because I've travelled so much all over the world, and wherever I've gone, either in Australia, America, or South Africa, the best that there was to be had in that direction was put at my disposal. Therefore when people come along and contradict me, who have had no experience at all, read little, and perhaps never been to a séance, you can imagine that I don't take their opposition very seriously.'
Reverting back to page 57, ODE comments:
- the theological impact of Stonyhurst on Conan Doyle was very deep, and if he rejected its formal Catholic manifestation it made him a staunch opponent of materialism all his life. In the course of that life he would write many words on the concept of a human soul, on the existence of a Divine plan, and on the moral requisites of human relations, of which any Jesuit teacher could be justly proud.
ODE admirably uses the word 'materialism' here in its philosophical sense, i.e., as opposed to 'spiritualism', and not to do with the concept of material wealth. But then, half-a-dozen lines later, ODE's first quoted reference consigns the personality known as Arthur Conan Doyle to the grave. Do I take it then, that for all ACD's investigations and contributions to the matter, ODE is still a materialist? This, of course, is his right; but I for one find it difficult to comprehend how members of the ACD Society can have such obvious respect for ACD's capacities, yet still reject outright his fundamental conclusions. Or was it just an unfortunate usage of the phrase?
From one who is convinced ACD lives on.
After the recent criticism, which is discussed in the Editorial, the following made rather pleasant reading and confirms that there are those who do see some worth in our work:
From Philip Swiggum (Hopkins, Minnesota):
Enclosed is my check for subscription renewal. I enjoyed reading Volume 6 of the Journal and compliment you on sustaining a high standard of readable and worthwhile material. In particular, the various reviews of the latest ACD biography were interesting in that each reviewer approached the subject from a somewhat different angle. Perhaps we could have more of this in the future?
The Society and Journal keep pushing the frontiers of ACD scholarship, which is similar to the groundbreaking Sherlockian work of the early BSI. So many current Sherlockian efforts seem to be repeating earlier work and lack the freshness of the ACD Journal.
I'm probably the least knowledgeable Doylean in your entire membership, but did have the good fortune of purchasing the 24 volume Crowborough Edition recently. It all boiled down to either making some major car repairs or to buying the set of books. After agonizing over the dilemma for several days, a decision was rendered against the car. The Society's literary output should dovetail nicely with my Crowborough set.
And, finally, from Michael Doyle (Kaleden, B.C., Canada):
Re: ACD, Volume 6
What a super feast you have again provided us! This [issue] is one of the best ever and goes a long way to achieving our Society's objectives, particularly to bring ACD's life and works to a wider audience. The articles were all so good that each and every one of them required reading at least twice, and many of them more than that.... I found Owen Dudley Edwards's appreciation of Julian Symons very moving and interesting. You indeed made a wise choice when you invited him to be the first President of the ACD Society.... another superb journal. I congratulate you both warmly on it and am astonished at the high quality you continue to maintain. You have added another large brick to the edifice of knowledge about ACD's work and life.
The Parish Magazine Question Corner
Society member Matt Demakos (Chatham, NJ, U.S.A.) has had his thinking cap on and has provided the following set of stimulating questions. We invite all members to consider the points raised, and to write in with various suggestions (or answers) for publication in the next issue.
- 1. Did Arthur Conan Doyle consider his last name to be a compound surname? Did he expect it to be listed under the letter 'C', and was it? (Another example of an unhyphenated surname is the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. In all my musical indexes, British and American, he is listed under 'V'.)
- 2. Would a Victorian reader consider The Parasite, which does not even use the word 'vampire', a vampire story? When were vampires thought of as 'controllers', as in Conan Doyle's story, and not blood-sucking demons, as they are today?
- 3. Are writers jumping to conclusions when they state that Conan Doyle's manuscript of his play Sherlock Holmes was lost in a hotel fire? It is known that Gillette's re-written draft was burned in a hotel fire, but do we know if he specifically stated that Conan Doyle's draft was lost in this fire as well? Do we know ACD's original title?
- 4. How many non-Holmes and non-Challenger stories by Conan Doyle have been filmed for screen or television? Where may Conan Doyle be found as a character in such productions?
- 5. Is the statement 'Arthur Conan Doyle introduced skiing to Switzerland' over-simplifying the fact, and misleading? If yes, what would be a more accurate statement?
- 6. What evidence do we have that the Wilde and Conan Doyle dinner date was 30 August?
- Humorous tailpiece: Why did the Surgeon of Gaster fall?
Members are invited to submit their own set of brain-teasers. We hope to make Question Corner a feature of future issues.
The Gap on the Second Shelf (III)
R. Dixon Smith
VII. The Doings of Raffles Haw.
London, Paris, and Melbourne: Cassell, 1892. Dark blue cloth, titled gilt. First U.S. edition: New York: Lovell, Coryell, 1892. Tan paper covers, titled brown. Light blue textured cloth, titled dark green.
At the end of 1890, just before he left for Vienna to study ophthalmology, Conan Doyle agreed to write a short novel for Alfred Harmsworth's penny paper, Answers. The book he produced was a science-fiction novel, The Doings of Raffles Haw, written in Vienna in little more than a fortnight, from 6 January, the day after his arrival in the Austrian capital, to 23 January 1891. Its sale paid for the trip. A parable on the evils of riches, the story tells of an alchemist, Raffles Haw, who has learned how to transform base metals into gold; his efforts to help his fellow man soon corrupt the community his newly found wealth has been designed to help.
The story was serialised in Answers from 12 December 1891 to 27 February 1892. Cassell published it in book form on 5 March 1892, in an edition of 2,001 copies. By December 1895 it had gone through several impressions, the fifth of which was a Colonial issue. The U.S. edition was published in 1892 by Lovell, Coryell in both paper and cloth.
As Arthur Bartlett Maurice argued in the July 1914 Bookman,
- Entirely too much has been written about Conan Doyle as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the most widely known character in all fiction, and entirely too little about him as the author of Rodney Stone, The White Company, The Adventures of Gerard, The Refugees, Uncle Bernac and The Great Shadow, not to mention the very delightful book of essays, Through the Magic Door. As a matter of fact we wonder how many persons there are, considering themselves familiar with his works, who will be just a little bit puzzled by some of these titles. How many of them will recall readily Beyond the City, or The Doings of Raffles Haw? Yet it is in these comparatively neglected books, and not in the Sherlock Holmes stories, that Conan Doyle's best work has been done.
First editions and early reprints of The Doings of Raffles Haw are expensive, and, as there were comparatively few of them, the novel has not been particularly easy to find. In recent years, however, two reprints have appeared, from Gaslight Publications in 1981 and from Greenhill Books in 1987.
VIII. The Great Shadow
Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith/London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1892. Arrowsmith's Christmas Annual. White paper covers, titled red and black. Second impression: Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith/London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1892. Dark brown fine-ribbed cloth, titled black and gilt. Orange paper covers, titled dark blue and red. First U.S. edition: New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893. Grey cloth, titled bright red.
Written between April and June 1892, The Great Shadow, Conan Doyle's first Napoleonic novel, was commissioned by Arrowsmith, who had rejected A Study in Scarlet six years earlier. Another short novel, it was distinguished chiefly by its vivid description of the Battle of Waterloo. The Great Shadow appeared, on 31 October 1891, in Arrowsmith's Christmas Annual. The story's title, as Pierre Nordon observed in 1964, was doubly suggestive, for Conan Doyle would return to the period many times thereafter. Following the publication of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by George Newnes on 14 October 1892, Arrowsmith released The Great Shadow as a book in November, in both cloth and paper.
Acclaim came from Andrew Lang in Quarterly Review (July 1904): 'There is no better account of Waterloo, from the private soldier's point of view, than that given in his brief novel, 'The Great Shadow'.... Conan Doyle regarded it as highly. Writing twenty years later in Memories and Adventures, he said: 'During this Norwood interval, I was certainly working hard, for besides The Refugees I wrote The Great Shadow, a booklet which I should put near the front of my work for merit....'
The first edition of The Great Shadow is neither inexpensive nor easy to come by. But as Arrowsmith continued to reissue the book for years, reprints are easily obtained, and other publishers reprinted it as well. The cheap edition put out in 1912 by T. Nelson & Sons, for instance, is an attractive little book, especially when it has its dust wrapper, and many Doylean collections include sets of the Conan Doyle titles issued by Nelson. More recently Greenhill Books reprinted it in 1987.
IX. The Refugees: A Tale of Two Continents
London: Longmans, Green, 1893. 3 vols. Light green cloth, titled dark green. First U.S. edition: New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893. Light blue fine-grain cloth, titled red.
In Memories and Adventures, Conan Doyle had this to say about The Refugees:
- I had long been attracted by the epoch of Louis XIV and by those Huguenots who were the French equivalents of our Puritans. I had a good knowledge of the memoirs of that date, and many notes already prepared, so that it did not take me long to write The Refugees. It has stood the acid test of time very well, so I may say that it was a success. Soon after its appearance it was translated into French, and my mother... had the joy when she visited Fontainebleau to hear the official guide tell the drove of tourists that if they really wanted to know about the Court of the great monarch, they would find the clearest and most accurate account in an Englishman's book, The Refugees.
Conan Doyle's third major historical novel, The Refugees tells of the Huguenots who fled Louis XIV's France for North America following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The book was written between December 1891 and February 1892. As Conan Doyle told the New York Book Buyer in June 1892:
- I take a New Englander, a Puritan, as one type of the seventeenth century, and a New Yorker, the woodman, as another, and I precipitate these two into the court of Louis XIV, and mix them up in the European history of that time very much as Scott threw Quentin Durward, the young Scotchman, into the French court. I have taken a lot of pains to make these two types exact studies. Then I shift the scene back to America. It will be something new in the way of an American historical novel. You see it will be the story of the two continents.
His work had been interrupted by the triumph of Sherlock Holmes, for The Strand Magazine offered a contract for six new adventures. Eager to complete The Refugees, the disgruntled author began to envision the death of his detective. Once he had finished him off, he was free to complete his novel, following which he went on to write The Great Shadow. The Refugees initially appeared as a serial in Harper's New Monthly Magazine from January to June 1893, with twenty-five illustrations by T. de Thulstrup, and then appeared from Longmans, Green in book form in three volumes-the triple-decker-on 17 May 1893, with a print run of 1,000 copies. The Harper U.S. edition, published the following month, included the de Thulstrup artwork. The second edition, published in one volume, was deferred to allow the triple-decker full dissemination by the circulating libraries; 4,000 copies of the single-volume edition were released in August. Longmans, Green also issued a Colonial edition, and Bernhard Tauchnitz of Leipzig published a Continental edition in two volumes.
Laurence Hutton began his review of The Refugees in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (July 1893) by stating that
- Three or four years ago, when Micah Clarke appeared, quite unheralded, the work of an unknown man, it was discovered that we possessed a new novelist with that rarest of endowments, the historical imagination. Now Dr. Conan Doyle has performed another deed of derring-do, for, in The Refugees, he has invited comparison with his own admirable work in the same kind. It is high praise to say that the result justifies his courage. The new tale is a brilliant and fascinating story.
- One does not easily recall a more vivid picture of the court of Louis the Great, with its splendor, its misery, its meanness, its dignity, its culture, its ignorance, its intrigues, and bigotry, and scepticism, and piety, and indecency.
- If he breathes the atmosphere of courts, he knows the Paris of the citizen not less familiarly, and rural France, and the slow ocean voyage of 1685, and French and English colonial America, in Canada and the wild border settlements of New York. There is such a breathless whirl and rush of events in this book that at first one does not see what pains are spent upon the figures.
David Christie Murray echoed these sentiments in the Canadian Magazine (October 1897):
- To estimate Dr. Doyle's position as a writer one has to meet him in 'The Refugees,' in 'The White Company,' and in 'Rodney Stone.' In each of these there is evident a sound and painstaking method of research, as well as a power of dramatic invention; and in combination with these is a style of unaffected manliness, simplicity, and strength....
The triple-decker first edition of The Refugees is difficult to find, even harder to locate in collectible condition, and formidably expensive. The first single-volume edition, however, is far less expensive. But as the novel has been kept in print by a number of publishers for over a century, such alternatives-from the 1911 cheap edition of T. Nelson & Sons to John Murray's 1931 Conan Doyle Uniform Edition (especially desirable if they possess their dust wrappers) might well fill that gap nicely.
X. The Great Shadow and Beyond the City
Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith/London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1893. Orange cloth, titled black, light blue, and gilt.
On 1 June 1891 Conan Doyle signed a contract with Good Words for a short novel to be published in their special Christmas issue, Good Cheer. The story, Beyond the City, was written very quickly and sent off on 8 July. An idyll of suburban London, it reflected the author's life at 12 Tennison Road, Norwood. It featured an outrageously humorous feminist protagonist, and was indeed Conan Doyle's most humorous book. It was accompanied in Good Cheer by a title and nine illustrations by Paul Hardy.
Arrowsmith, who had published The Great Shadow as their Christmas Annual, bought the book rights to Beyond the City, and released both novels in August 1893 in an omnibus volume entitled The Great Shadow and Beyond the City. James Greig provided nine illustrations for the former, and Paul Hardy the title and nine drawings for the latter. It was reprinted eight times during the next twenty years, and Bernhard Tauchnitz also published a Continental edition in Leipzig in September 1893. Beyond the City was not released separately until the Everett edition appeared in 1912, followed by the George Newnes reprint in 1913.
Beyond the City never attracted the readership it deserved, for it proved to be one of the most delightful little books Conan Doyle ever wrote. Its first edition, The Great Shadow and Beyond the City, is as strikingly handsome as it is expensive. Reprints, however, are both affordable and common, for Beyond the City was widely pirated in the United States. The Everett and Newnes editions are more than adequate, while the 1982 reprint from Gaslight Publications is a most acceptable substitute.
Where There's a Will
Frank Darlington
Sherlock Holmes, in 'The Adventure of the Speckled Band', after having worked up what was probably a four-boiled-egg-appetite during his poker-bending stand-off with Dr Grimesby Roylott, announced to his comrade-cum-chronicler, 'And now, Watson, we shall order breakfast, and afterwards I shall walk down to Doctor's Commons, where I hope to get some data which may help us in this matter.' Always the knowledgeable researcher, the Master would soon learn the provisions of the last will and testament of the deceased wife of Dr Grimesby Roylott. That data did prove a significant help in the case.
Though marriage licenses, divorces and wills were originally kept in a building known as Doctor's Commons near St Paul's Cathedral, the archives were transferred in 1874 to Somerset House. One may gather, from the wording in an 1889 London Badeker, that the name was transferred along with the archives, for it speaks of Somerset House containing amongst many other records ... Doctor's Commons Will Office transferred hither from Doctor's Commons, Bennet's Hill in 1874'. Though some commentators have been quick to accuse Watson guilty of yet another careless imprecision for having used the old name for the archives, it should be possible to conclude from this London guidebook that he was not technically incorrect.
Badeker also notes that visitors are allowed to make use of copies of wills in this repository under the folowing liberal conditions: 'For showing wills of a later date [than 1700] a charge of 1s. is made. No extracts may be made from these later wills, but official copies may be procured at 8d. per folio page.'
It should be easy to test the process to find out if there have been any changes in the procedure since that Friday morning on 6 April 1883, when Holmes set out on his data gathering trek. A logical time to undertake such a task came during my recent Holmesian pilrimage to the home of Holmes. My first stop in London was in an area of mind-boggling richness when one considers the quantity and quality of Sherlockian sites a magic circle within a half-mile radius whose centre was the locus of the original Charing Cross [the place from which all distances are measured]: a circle which, I had reckoned, encompassed a god's plenty of over sixty sites of canonical interest. As I progressed eastward from Trafalgar Square, I passed the Charing Cross Station/Hotel, then Simpson's, and after taking a detour to walk past the sadly deteriorated facade of the old Lyceum Theatre, I then re-crossed The Strand to approach that palatial pile, Somerset House, and once there I soon found my way to the appropriate office.
Other than a quite modest increase in the nominal fees for viewing and copying, the protocol would appear to be much the same as it was in Holmes's day. When I asked at the desk if I might view the will of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I was directed to a large collection of bound registers arranged first by year, and then alphabetically by the name of the testator. Not finding his name in the books for 1930, I surmised that it was possible that his will was registered in the year following his death. When the surmise proved correct, I took the pertinent 1931 book to the desk and was directed to go to the cashier's office and return with a chitty noting that I had paid the requisite 25p for viewing. On my return a request form was despatched via a dumbwaiter to a below-ground repository and I was told to expect a wait of about twenty minutes.
My wait was a pleasant one, for I was fascinated by the staff member who collected the folio-sized volumes as they came up on the dumbwaiter. He would then announce to those of us waiting, with a plangently stentorian resonance, the name of the testator whose will he was delivering. What style! What élan! A would-be Professor Higgins applying the science of speech might have easily deduced his background, possibly within two miles! His East End patois gave assurance that he had been born within the sound of Bow bells, but it was his delivery that was singularly impressive! He had the assurance and the authoritative imperatives of a drill sergeant on parade. I was anxious to hear him boom out, 'DOYLE, A. C.!'
It didn't happen. When he noted that my wait seemed a bit over the twenty minute norm, he came over to talk to me, and I was pleased to find myself enjoying a gab-feast with a like-minded Doylean devotee. Yes, he was one of that fine breed prepared to talk at length about Sherlock Holmes and the other works of A. C. Doyle. What a great chin-wag we were having until the will arrived. Of course, he did not need to shout out the Doyle name, for he knew that it was for me. Pity.
I realized, after a cursory scanning of the five-page holograph, that I would need my own copy so that I might read it at leisure. A photocopy, at 25p per page, would cost an additional £1, so I went back to the cashier, paid the balance, and left an envelope, self-addressed in care of my hosts in Wales. A week later my copy of the will was delivered OHMS (On Her Majesty's Service) by the Royal Mail-and I could claim my research to be no less than a smashing success.
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'Did You Observe the Colour?'
Dana Richards
'... you have erred in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing.' — 'The Copper Beeches'
It is surprising that the first major Sherlockian film in colour was not released until 1959. The so-called 'Hammer Hound' indeed consciously played up the use of colour to emphasize the horrific aspects of the story, advertising it as a gothic thriller. ('It's ten times the terror in Technicolor'.) However, for many people the canon is best viewed in black and white; perhaps because their images of the Victorian era are through period photographs. It is possible that some of the popularity of the Granada/Brett series derives from the fact that the sets, costumes, and cinematography often present a chiaroscuro image, relieved by splashes of colour. One is reminded of hand-tinted engravings.
Which is correct, so to speak? When you turn to the canon you find a pervasive use of black and white images. On the other hand, Conan Doyle relied extensively on the use of colours. These two routes are discussed below. After doing quizzes that involved questions about colours we found ourselves keeping a careful eye out; we soon discovered a wonderful array of colours.
- Lady Brackenstall was no ordinary person. Seldom have I seen so graceful a figure, so womanly a presence, and so beautiful a face. She was a blonde, golden-haired, blue-eyed, and would, no doubt, have had the perfect complexion which goes with such colouring had not her recent experience left her drawn and haggard. Her sufferings were physical as well as mental, for over one eye rose a hideous, plum-coloured swelling, which her maid, a tall, austere woman, was bathing assiduously with vinegar and water.... She was enveloped in a loose dressing-gown of blue and silver, but a black sequin-covered dinner-dress was hung upon the couch beside her. ('The Abbey Grange')
After finding many such passages we turned to the computer and the whole spectrum used in the canon was explored.
Conan Doyle, as many have observed, was a wonderfully evocative storyteller, who used great economy in his writing. Without a doubt, the use of colour is an effective tool to quickly add depth to a scene. He rarely used it gratuitously, as if setting the stage in a script. Instead, typically, the uses are so natural that one has to be careful to notice them at all. At other times the use of colour is quite conscious: 'At last the violet rim of the German Ocean appeared over the green edge of the Norfolk coast.' ('The Dancing Men') (Such a passage might have appeared in the overtly colourful writings of G.K. Chesterton; similarly, 'the sun was sinking low and the west was blazing with scarlet and gold' (The Hound of the Baskervilles))
Some of the obvious uses of colour have been observed by many commentators. Colour figures in the titles of eleven stories ('Black Peter', 'The Blanched Soldier', 'The Blue Carbuncle', 'The Copper Beeches', 'The Five Orange Pips', 'The Golden Pince-Nez', 'The Red Circle', 'The Red-Headed League', 'Silver Blaze', A Study in Scarlet and 'The Yellow Face'). Colours are often used to describe eyes (with a preference for blue, black, and grey eyes) (Baker Street Miscellanea, Winter 1992, pp. 11-13) and moustaches (golden, raven black, ginger, red, yellow, brown, grayish); and, of course, the changing colour of Holmes's dressing-gown: purple, mouse, and blue. However, the more artistic uses of colour are overlooked, such as in this passage: 'Holmes pointed down the long tract of road which wound, a reddish yellow band, between the brown of the heath and the budding green of the woods.'
Below we inventory the colours used in the canon, giving for each the number of times it appeared and a representative use of it. The count is meant to discount the use of colour-words in other contexts. No doubt other colours are used, be we suffer from a literary form of colour-blindness. Creating such a list is idiosyncratic: 'emerald' was omitted since it was not used as a colour, but 'ruby' was.
- amber (1) 'the carpet was of amber and black' (The Sign of the Four)
- bay (1) 'a powerful bay horse swept out' ('Silver Blaze')
- beige (2) The dress was a sombre grayish beige' (The Sign of the Four)
- black (287) 'the black ingratitude of it all' ('The Retired Colourman')
- blond (6) The manager, a big blond German' ('The Six Napoleons')
- blue (78) 'There is no bird in the steel-blue heaven' (A Study in Scarlet)
- brick (1) 'Every shade of colour they were... brick' ('The Red-Headed League')
- bronze (4) 'all gold and bronze with the fading ferns' ('Thor Bridge')
- brown (77) 'You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut' (A Study in Scarlet)
- brunette (2) 'she was darker than any brunette whom I have seen' (The Hound of the Baskervilles)
- chestnut (3) 'her long chestnut hair floating out behind her' (A Study in Scarlet)
- chocolate (2) 'I emerged with a little chocolate and silver volume' ('The Lion's Mane')
- cinnamon (1) 'Newton's The Negro. Red cap. Cinnamon jacket. ('Silver Blaze')
- claret (1) '[a] jacket, claret-coloured, with a black velvet collar' ('Charles Augustus Milverton')
- clay (2) 'where he lay with a clay-coloured face' ('The Stockbroker's Clerk')
- coffee (1) 'rather darker than coffee colour' ('A Case of Identity')
- copper (3) 'under the shadow of the copper beeches' ('The Copper Beeches')
- cream (1) 'written with a J pen on royal cream paper' ('The Greek Interpreter')
- crimson (11) 'his head encircled by a ghastly crimson halo' ('The Red Circle')
- dove (1) 'dove-coloured silk with ostrich-feather trimming' ('Silver Blaze')
- dun (7) 'eyes which were weary of the duns and drabs... of London' ('The Solitary Cyclist')
- dusky (1) 'his face turned a dusky hue, and he fell backward' (The Sign of the Four)
- ebony (1) 'outlined as black as an ebony statue' (The Hound of the Baskervilles)
- flame (2) '[it] was lined with flame-coloured silk' ('A Scandal in Bohemia')
- flaxen (8) 'A highly coloured young woman with flaxen hair' ('Shoscombe Old Place')
- flesh (2) 'imbedded in soft, flesh-coloured velvet' ('The Beryl Coronet')
- ginger (1) 'the constable, a big, ginger-moustached man' ('The Lion's Mane')
- gold (27) 'the beard-golden at the fringes and white near the lips' ('The Devil's Foot')
- gray (143) 'a dark man with grey-tinted glasses' ('The Retired Colourman')
- green (55) 'this green and gold monster' ('Charles Augustus Milverton')
- hazel (3) 'an angry gleam in her hazel eyes' (The Hound of the Baskervilles)
- ivory (1) 'could not bring one tinge of colour to those ivory cheeks' ('The Illustrious Client')
- lead (1) 'like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea' ('The Naval Treaty')
- lemon (1) 'Every shade of colour they were... lemon' ('The Red-Headed League')
- liver (2) the long, low Jacobean house of dingy, liver-coloured brick' (The Valley of Fear)
- mahogany (2) 'the contents assumed a dull mahogany colour' (A Study in Scarlet)
- mouse (2) [the] lounging figure in the mouse-coloured dressing-gown' ('The Bruce-Partington Plans')
- mud (1) 'looking like the reflection of the mud-coloured streets' (A Study in Scarlet)
- neutral (2) 'Stapleton was neutral-tinted, with light hair and grey eyes' (The Hound of the Baskervilles)
- olive (3) 'a short, stout man whose olive face and coal black hair' ('The Greek Interpreter')
- orange (3) 'A shock of orange hair, a pale face' ('The Man with the Twisted Lip')
- pink (14) 'framed in the pink radiance of a tinted electric light' ('The Dying Detective')
- plum (1) 'over one eye rose a hideous, plum-coloured swelling' ('The Abbey Grange')
- purple (9) 'black hair, and a coloured purple stole round his neck' (The Valley of Fear)
- red (128) A red square of light had sprung out of the darkness' ('The Priory School')
- roan (1) 'mounted on a powerful roan horse' (A Study in Scarlet)
- rosy (2) 'What a rosy-cheeked young rascal!' (The Sign of the Four)
- ruby (1) 'save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red' ('The Blue Carbuncle')
- ruddy (6) 'a man, with ruddy cheeks and fluffy white side-whiskers' ('Black Peter')
- russet (2) 'over huge russet and olive slopes' (The Hound of the Baskervilles)
- sandy (5) A pale, taper-faced man with sandy whiskers' ('The Resident Patient')
- scarlet (5) 'white diaphanous material, with a little touch of scarlet' (The Sign of the Four)
- silver (14) 'the body, black and clear against the silvered stone' (The Hound of the Baskervilles)
- slate (4) 'she had a slate-coloured, broad-brimmed straw hat' ('A Case of Identity')
- straw (1) 'Every shade of colour they were-straw' ('The Red-Headed League')
- tan (4) 'a squat, lop-cared, white-and-tan dog' ('The Missing Three-Quarter')
- violet (5) 'Her violet eyes shining... a pink flush upon her checks' ('The Boscombe Valley Mystery')
- wax (1) a wax-coloured model of my friend' ('The Empty House')
- white (211) 'I saw her white face grow whiter yet' ('The Dancing Men')
- yellow (86) 'dark, shapeless blurs through the heavy yellow wreaths' ('The Copper Beeches')
Clearly Holmes was accurate when he said to Watson, 'you have a quick eye for colour' ('A Case of Identity'). Holmes himself was a keen observer of colours. Recall that when he was getting information from Victor Hatherley, he implored, 'Did you observe the colour?'
In addition to the above uses of colours there are many other places in the canon where colours can be found, from the Green Dragon Inn to yellow-backed novels to Black Peter. Perhaps the most famous example is the bouquet of violets: Violet Westbury ('The Bruce-Partington Plans'), Violet Hunter ('The Copper Beeches'), Violet de Merville ('The Illustrious Client'), and Violet Smith ('The Solitary Cyclist). It is easy to dismiss these as ordinary vocabulary and common names that could not be avoided. However, we suggest that the pattern is above the chance level, supporting the thesis that these are part of the author's ability to subtly, but effectively, enliven the stories. We leave it to experts in textual analysis to settle this conjecture. In the Appendix we list such occurrences.
Conan Doyle himself, when discussing photography, was strongly in favour of colour over black and white. 'Oh! the dismal grays and whites! Are we never to have the yellow of the sand and the green of the grass and the blue of the ocean transferred to our plates?' (Essays on Photography, Secker and Warburg, 1982, p. 34.)
An examination of the numbers above shows that the predominant colours used are black (287), white (211), and grey (143). To some extent, this may reflect the fact that Victorian England was not a colourful realm. However, Conan Doyle was clearly aware that these colours painted a sombre and stark scene, which is essential in a mystery story.
The use of achromatic colours is most accentuated in The Hound of the Baskervilles. As Martin Gardner once pointed out, L.F. Baum repeatedly used the word 'gray' in the first chapter of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to effectively sharpen the transition to the colourful land of Oz (and with great insight the 1939 MGM version used Technicolor to exploit this transition 'over the rainbow'). In the Hound we see the same thing in reverse as Sir Henry's party approaches Baskerville Hall:
- Over the green squares of the fields and the low curve of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in a dream.... We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We looked back on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad tangle of the woodlands. The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders.
The picture of the moor is unremittingly bleak. The Hall itself is a dark Gothic setting:
- The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of rafters... the dining-room which opened out of the hall was a place of shadow and gloom.. .. Black beams shot across above our heads, with a smoke-darkened ceiling beyond them. With rows of flaring torches to light it up, and the colour and rude hilarity of an old-time banquet, it might have softened;
The most achromatic imagery in the Hound occurred on the moor at night:
- The moon was low upon the right, and the jagged pinnacle of a granite tor stood up against the lower curve of its silver disc. There, outlined as black as an ebony statue on that shining background, I saw the figure of a man upon the tor.... Before us lay the dark bulk of the house, its serrated roof and bristling chimneys hard outlined against the silver-spangled sky.... So as the fog-bank flowed onwards we fell back before it until we were half a mile from the house, and still that dense white sea, with the moon silvering its upper edge, swept slowly and inexorably on.
This set the scene for the climax which was heightened by a splash of red, with its 'enormous coal-black hound' and fire bursting from its mouth, smouldering eyes and the flickering flame outlining its muzzle.
What can we conclude? Perhaps the balance that the Granada series has used is closest to the canon. We should see bright colours across a black and white background; and flowered countrysides with blue skies and green swards contrasted against hansoms passing between dun-coloured buildings into the night.
Appendix
Here are some incomplete lists of examples of colour-words in the canon. Of course, many of these were used without the colour itself in mind. A few such examples appeared in a short article, 'The Colourful Canon', by Robert Brodie in Plugs and Dottles, June 1993.
Places — Goldini's, Pondicherry, Bar of Gold, Whitehall, Black Swan Hotel, Redruth, Black Sea, Black Tor, Blackheath, Gray's Inn Road, Blue Anchor, Green Dragon, Greenwich, White Eagle, Blackwall, White Hart Tavern, Yellowstone River, Plumstead.
Names — John Clay, Silver Blaze, Pinkerton, Gold King, Blondin, the four Violets, Black Steve, Black Peter, Duke of Greyminster, Black Jack of Ballarat, Jim Browner, Hon. Philip Green, Lady Eva Blackwell, Earl of Blackwater, Black Gorgiano, Sam Brown, Silas Brown, Abel White, Blackfeet, Red King, White Mason, Black Jack McGinty, Josiah Dunn.
Things — amber, port, lime-cream, Pink 'Un, quicksilver, aqua tofana, cherrywood, yellow-backed novel, colour-sergeant, blackboard, yellow fever, blackmail, blackguard, Light Blues, Red Circle, pair of grays, Red-headed league, black-letter edition, oranges, greengrocer, greensward, emerald, blackthorn, greenhouse, brown study, tan (sawdust), blue ribbon, colourman, water-colour.
Notes from a Lumber-Room
Catherine Cooke
A couple of weeks before I put finger to keyboard to write this, the British papers were indulging in one of their periodic bouts of Sherlockian coverage, spurred on this time by the exhibition on Holmes currently running at the Bibliothèque des Littératures Policières in Paris. The exhibition is mounted by the City of Paris with the aid of the incredibly active and imaginative French Sherlock Holmes Society, Les Quincailliers de la Franco-Midland (The Franco-Midland Hardware Company). The Society has been in existence some three-and-a-half years and has already attempted to persuade the French Government to hand over Holmes's Légion d'Honneur (sadly with no success), searched the Gare du Nord left luggage office for Holmes and Watson's luggage (no longer to be found) and persuaded the Parisian authorities to rename the rue des Boulangers, Baker Street (which they did). The Society publishes an irregular newsletter in the format of a Victorian newspaper, the Ironmongers Daily Echo, 'published daily when it's published'.
You might be wondering why such an obviously Sherlockian Society is worth writing about in a Doylean context. A few weeks ago a group of French school children from Noyon visited London with their teacher to talk to some Sherlockians and see what they could of Holmes's London. They were all junior members of Les Quincailliers, and here we get to the point. Their teacher, Jean-Marie Lelong, recently published an article on Conan Doyle as a Freemason. Since this appeared in the Ironmongers Daily Echo, and in French, it struck me that it might have received rather a small circulation among Doyleans. It therefore seemed worth having a brief look at it here.
Lelong's interest was sparked by the 1993 Post Office stamps honouring Sherlock Holmes, one of which was sent to him by a friend. He asked another friend to pick up the rest for him when next in London. This friend brought him two first day covers, one of which bore the wording:
- Installation of
- The Provincial Grand Master
- For Suffolk
- R. W. Bro. R. J. R. Tile.....
- At The Corn Exchange, Ipswich, Tuesday 26th October 1993
The decoration surrounding this wording included dividers, set square, altar and candles: Freemasonry.
Why Freemasonry, Lelong wondered; what had that to do with Holmes? He re-read the Sherlock Holmes stories for any possible mention of it and resolved to contact the English Grand Lodge for assistance. He also read up on Freemasonry itself. In the Canon, Lelong identified four characters who were directly linked to Freemasonry.
- 1) John Hector McFarlane
- 2) Jabez Wilson
- 3) Barker, Holmes's 'hated rival on the Surrey shore'
- 4) Enoch Drebber
Freemasonry in its modern form appeared in England in the 17th century, with the Grand Lodge of London being founded in 1717 and that of England as a whole in 1813. The first Lodge was founded in Edinburgh in 1599, where of course Conan Doyle himself had been born. That Lodge promoted the values of protestantism, independence, solidarity and patriotism. Today, Lelong points out, Freemasonry is still far more important in England than in France, with some 750,000 masons in England against 60,000 in France. It is institutionalised in England, with the sovereign being by right the head of the United Grand Lodge. In particular, Masonry is very important in the judiciary and the police force, where some 60% of commissioners are Masons. Lelong quotes a case from Conan Doyle's own life, where a man accused of the murder of and theft from his landlady in 1912 stood in the dock at the Old Bailey and swore his innocence before the Grand Architect of the Universe, much to the discomfiture of the judge, himself a Mason. Lelong does not name the case.
At this point, Lelong turns his attention to Conan Doyle himself and reproduces his record of Freemasonry:
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Phoenix Lodge No 257, Portsmouth
- Initiated: 26th January 1887
- Passed: 23rd February 1887
- Raised: 23rd March 1887
- Occupation: M. D.
- Address: Bush Villa Edan [sic] Grove, Southsea
- His sponsors were: Proposer: W. Bro. W. D. King (later Sir William King), deputy lieutenant of Hampshire
- Seconder: W. Bro. J. Brickwood (later Sir John Brickwood), a prominent City Brewer.
He resigned from membership in 1889, rejoined in 1902 and finally resigned in 1911. He did not progress beyond Master Mason and there is no record of his joining any other English Lodges, although he became an honourable member of St. Mary's Chapel, No 1, Edinburgh, under the Grand Lodge of Scotland.
Lelong points out one interesting thing: Conan Doyle became a Freemason the same year as he published A Study in Scarlet.
Lelong then discusses another document he has obtained a copy of, p. 20 of The Masonic Illustrated of October 1901, dedicated to Brother Dr Conan Doyle. Here Conan Doyle and his family are introduced and his life and work to date briefly discussed. His work in South Africa is particularly highlighted and it is for this that he was given honorary membership of the Edinburgh Lodge. In his speech of thanks, Conan Doyle stressed the values of Freemasonry and their place on the battlefield. Indeed, it seems that prisoners on both sides in South Africa who were found to be Masons received preferential treatment!
Finally, Lelong obtained a document after a long and tortuous enquiry from the Library and Museum of the United Grand Lodge of England, Freemason's Hall in Great Queen Street, London. It confirmed all he had discovered about Conan Doyle.
Summing up, Lelong assesses the new light his discoveries throw on Conan Doyle, on his life-long quest for justice and for righting corruption and on his writings about Sherlock Holmes. He asks his fellow Quincailliers, was Holmes a Freemason? Was Watson?
It is worth noting that one of the moving lights of the Quincailliers, Thierry Saint-Johanis [1], adds a footnote to Lelong's article. While agreeing that Conan Doyle's Freemasonry is little, if at all, known among Sherlockians, some references do exist. Alphonse Cerza in 'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Freemason' (The Royal Arch Mason Magazine, 13, no. 12, pp. 379-380) stated Conan Doyle joined the Portsmouth Lodge in 1893. A letter in the following issue by C. T. Wallace pointed out that The Sign of the Four also showed elements of Freemasonry. Saint-Johanis [1] discusses the discrepancy in the dates, quoting The Parish Magazine's recent account of the plaque to Conan Doyle at the Portsmouth Lodge, where the date of 1887 is given, which surely corroborates Lelong's findings. Also noted are articles by Robert T. Runciman ('Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and Freemasonry', Transactions of Quator Coronati Lodge 104, pp. 178-187 and Company Bond No. 2 from the British Franco-Midland Hardware Company, also entitled Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and Freemasonry) and Te Deum Laudanam by Christopher Morley.
Saint-Johanis [1] goes on to discuss Holmes and Watson as Masons and the film Murder by Decree, while Jérome Rousse-Lacordaire looks at Masons and Mormons, which are outside the scope of these Notes.
The first point made in the article is that in none of the biographies of Conan Doyle is his Freemasonry discussed or even mentioned. Actually, Lelong is mistaken here, though the omission does not invalidate his own work on the subject. Geoffrey Stavert discusses Conan Doyle's Freemasonry in his 1987 book A Study in Southsea He adds the address of Lodge 257 in Portsmouth, 110 High Street, one of no less than sixteen Lodges in Portsmouth. Stavert also says that Conan Doyle rejoined 'some fifteen years afterwards when he was living at Hindhead'. 1889 plus 15 would bring us to 1904; Lelong gives a date of 1902, so perhaps we should interpret Stavert as 1887 plus 15, which would agree with Lelong, who is, after all, quoting a masonic source. Stavert also refers to the honorary membership of the Edinburgh Lodge, giving, as does Lelong, the date as 1901.
Stavert speculates too. Why did Conan Doyle take up Freemasonry? Due to its charitable activities, to fill a gap in the religious side of his life, or to widen his circle of friends? Stavert points out that Conan Doyle never wrote anything serious about Freemasonry, nor mentioned it in Memories and Adventures. He also touches on the various references in the Sherlock Holmes stories.
Michael W. Homer makes an interesting point in this context in his article 'The Absence of Holmes: the continuation of the Mormon subplot in Angels of Darkness' (ACD, IV, 1993, pp. 63-64). Conan Doyle's initiation into the Phoenix Lodge was some eight months after he had finished writing A Study in Scarlet, but he may have consulted Masonic sources about Mormonism while writing. Homer draws attention to the fact that Mormons were excluded from becoming Freemasons from 1883: To most Freemasons, Mormonism was a type of spurious or clandestine Freemasonry.' This view, he points out, was reflected in many of the Masonic encyclopaedias of the period. We might therefore speculate that if Conan Doyle did undertake research of this nature, he may have been attracted to Freemasonry in theory and determined to try it. As Stavert concludes, he seems to have been rather disappointed with it in practice.
This seems to be the extent of our knowledge of Conan Doyle's involvement in Freemasonry. It is now for others to pursue the subject.
The Parish Magazine Reviews
by Barbara Roden
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE VICTORIAN SERVANT
by Pamela Horn
Alan Sutton, 1995; vi + 250pp; £9.99; ISBN 0-7509-0978-1
- Read Review, by Barbara Roden
WILLIS O'BRIEN: SPECIAL EFFECTS GENIUS
by Steve Archer
McFarland and Company Inc., 1993; 226pp; US$28.50/£28.50; ISBN 0-89950-833-2
- Read Review, by Barbara Roden
IS HEATHCLIFF A MURDERER? Puzzles in 19th-Century Fiction
by John Sutherland
Oxford University Press, 1996; x + 258pp; £3.99; ISBN: 0-19-282516-X
- Read Review, by Barbara Roden
SHERLOCK HOLMES: Classic Themes From 221B Baker Street
1996; Varèse Sarabande VSD-5692
- Read Review, by Barbara Roden
Lasting Impressions
The City
Toronto, Ontario: A city like no other. Safe, clean and accessible. A vibrant multicultural mecca with countless unique attractions — including the Metropolitan Toronto Library's Arthur Conan Doyle Collection.
The Venue
The Arts and Letters Club in historic St. George's Hall, situated in the heart of the city, steps away from excellent public transit and a variety of affordable accommodation.
Your Hosts
The Bootmakers of Toronto, for 25 years the senior Canadian Sherlockian society. When in Canada, Sir Henry Baskerville buys footwear made exclusively by The Bootmakers of Toronto.
The Program
Presentations and entertainments by Canadian and international Sherlockians, with many opportunities to meet with old friends and make new ones in a comfortable, informal atmosphere.
To join our growing mailing list, write:
- Lasting Impressions,
- 30 Elm Avenue, #210,
- Toronto, Ontario
- Canada M4W 1N5
Registration and program information will be available by Autumn 1996
Lasting Impressions
A Weekend Symposium to celebrate
Sherlock Holmes
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
and
The Silver Anniversary
of
The Bootmakers of Toronto
June 26-29, 1997
Arts & Letters Club
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
