The Terror of Blue John Gap — A Geological and Literary Study
'The Terror of Blue John Gap' — A Geological and Literary Study is an article written by Dana Martin Batory and William A. S. Sarjeant published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 5, 1994).
This interdisciplinary scholarly study analyses The Terror of Blue John Gap through geological, palaeontological, and literary evidence, identifying the real Derbyshire locations, mining history, and scientific influences underlying Arthur Conan Doyle's story. It evaluates the plausibility of the fictional monster and reconstructs the intellectual and experiential sources that shaped Conan Doyle's imaginative creation.
'The Terror of Blue John Gap' — A Geological and Literary Study
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short science fiction story 'The Terror of Blue John Gap' is a good example both of Conan Doyle's extraordinary use of past experiences as a source of inspiration and of his expertise in creating high-quality tales out of casual reading and research. In his book Explorers of the Infinite (1963), Sam Moskowitz wrote:
- This little-known story shares with 'The Horror of the Heights' the distinction of being Doyle's finest short science fiction.
The story was written for The Strand Magazine and published in September 1910. It appeared in book form a year later, as the final component of the collection The Last Galley. Since that time, it has been republished in several anthologies of Conan Doyle's stories. Even so, the story remains relatively unfamiliar to modern readers and will thus be quoted at length as a basis for our commentary.
The story's central character, as so often in Conan Doyle's writings, is a doctor-but one already dead before the tale begins. The story concerns the late Dr James Hardcastle 'who died of phthisis on February 4th, 1908'. Among his papers a curious document was found:
- A Short Account of the Circumstances which occurred near Miss Allerton's Farm in North-West Derbyshire in the Spring of Last Year.
The Setting
Being in ill health, Hardcastle had decided to convalesce on the farm of the Misses Allerton in the windy Peak District of the southern Pennines. He was indeed soon benefiting from good food (milk and mutton), fresh air and exercise. The landscape was, and remains, picturesque and lonely; Hardcastle described it thus:
- The farm consists of grazing land lying at the bottom of an irregular valley. On each side are the fantastic limestone hills, formed of rock so soft that you can break it away with your hands.
The farm of the Allertons lay close to the village of Castleton, 'at fourteen hundred and twenty feet above sea level'.
Castleton lies at the head of the Hope Valley, whose northern side is formed by the coarse sandstones and shales of the Millstone Grit Series of Upper Carboniferous, while its southern side is formed by reef limestones of the older Carboniferous Limestone Series. Dr Hardcastle's statement that the limestone was soft enough to be broken by hand is remarkable; on the contrary, it is extremely hard, except when very deeply weathered.
Later in his account of his adventures, when he was entering the shaft of the mine he called Blue John Gap, Dr Hardcastle reported that:
- It went down at an acute angle for some fifty feet, the floor being covered with broken stone. Thence there extended a long straight passage cut in the solid rock. I am no geologist, but the lining of this corridor was certainly of some harder material than limestone, for there were points where I could actually see the tool marks which the old miners had left in their excavation, as fresh as if they had been done yesterday.
It is conceivable that this passage did cut through another type of rock. Within the Carboniferous Limestones of north Derbyshire are lava flows and sills of what the miners called toadstones-volcanic rocks of basaltic to doleritic composition, normally in the form of horizontal sheets (sills) injected between sedimentary layers during volcanic activity. [They were termed 'toadstones' (German Todesstein, 'dead stone') because they do not normally contain workable ores, the swelling of some of their constituent minerals having blocked the upward passage of the mineralising solutions]. However, they are black in colour, weathering to a greenish-brown and, if Dr Hardcastle noted any colour change in the rocks about him, he did not mention it. Nor did the type of rock need to have changed; one of the authors of this article has frequently seen the fresh-looking pick-marks of the 'old men' — the ancient miners — on the limestone walls of Derbyshire mine levels.
There are shaley layers in the Carboniferous Limestone that might be broken by hand; Dr Hardcastle might have chanced upon one such outcrop and been misled thereby. However, the limestone itself is indeed hard, as any person who seeks to hammer, or even to chisel, it soon learns. One wonders if Conan Doyle was confusing it in memory with the Chalk, so much more familiar to him after all those years in southern England.
The location of the Misses Allerton's farm is also somewhat puzzling. Two principal valleys extend into the limestone on the Hope Valley's southern flank-Pin Dale to the south-east of Castleton and the Winnats Pass to the west (see Figure 1). The former can be excluded from consideration; it is too narrow to contain significant grazing land, too far from the 'blue john' caverns and does not attain an altitude of even 1100 feet (335 metres). No, the Winnats is the valley in question; it is crooked enough to be called 'irregular' and has limestone on both sides. Even more significantly, the hill called Treak Cliff-the only place where the mineral called 'blue john' is to be found-forms its northern flank.
However, to be at a height of 1420 feet (433 metres) above sea level, the farm had to be above the Winnats proper. Winnats Head Farm (National Grid Reference SK 130829) is too close to the head of the Winnats and well below that altitude. Oxlow House (SK 116825) is at about the right position, but situated somewhat below the 1400-foot (427 metres) contour. Rowtor Farm (SK 122821) is at about the right height, but is situated somewhat south of the Winnats, so that Dr Hardcastle would have had to turn left at the top of the pass and walk along a farm track for about half-a-mile (0.8 km) to reach it. Nevertheless, Rowtor Farm must be considered his most likely temporary residence.
'Blue John'
Concerning the mineral 'blue john', Dr Hardcastle wrote:
- I had never heard of Blue John when I came to these parts. It is the name given to a peculiar mineral of a beautiful purple shade, which is only found at one or two places in the world. It is so rare that an ordinary vase of Blue John would be valued at a great price. The Romans, with that extraordinary instinct of theirs, discovered that it was to be found in this valley, and sank a horizontal shaft deep into the mountain side.
Since Dr Hardcastle was neither a geologist nor a mining historian, it might be expected that his passage would contain inaccuracies; and so it does. 'Blue john' is a form of fluorspar (CaF2-also called fluorite). Purple fluorspar is a common enough mineral, found elsewhere in Derbyshire and in several other parts of Britain; however, 'blue john' is unique, in Britain at least, not because of its purple colour-though the purple may indeed be particularly deep and rich in hue-but because it is closely banded with white. The proportions of the purple and white bands vary considerably, adding to its attractions and making the mineral especially suitable for jewellery, or other ornamental, purposes.
The Romans certainly did either work, or supervise the working of, mines in the vicinity of Castleton and it has indeed been claimed that they worked 'blue john', perhaps earliest by Adam (1843, pp.393-394), who noted that vases, cups and uncut blocks of a mineral resembling 'blue john' had been found during excavations at Pompeii and Rome. However, as Trevor Ford pointed out in his definitive study of the mineral (1955, p.50), these have been identified with the vasae murrinae described by Pliny the Elder, who stated unequivocally that the material for them came from Parthia and Carmania, nowadays situated in southern Iran (see also Loewental and Harden, 1949). The exact source, not yet located precisely, quite probably constitutes the only other place in the World where fluorspar of 'blue john' type has been found.
The Mine
As Trevor Ford's careful map shows (Figure 2), all the workings in which 'blue john' occurs are in Treak Cliff, a rounded-triangular hill bounded to the south by the Winnats Pass and to the north by the outcrop of the overlying Edale Shales of the Millstone Grit Series (Late Carboniferous: Namurian). At the apex of this triangle (SK 134836) is the great Odin Mine, worked originally either for, or by, the Romans but for lead, not for 'blue john'. This is still open to be visited and thus cannot be Blue John Gap itself. Nevertheless, it accords very well with Dr Hardcastle's description:
- The opening of their mine has been called Blue John Gap, a clean-cut arch in the rock, the mouth all overgrown with bushes. It is a goodly passage which the Roman miners have cut, and it intersects some of the great water-worn caves, so that if you enter Blue John Gap you would do well to mark your steps and to have a good store of candles, or you may never make your way back to the daylight again.
There are three other mines on Treak Cliff, all of which remain accessible, but none is nearly so ancient as Odin-indeed, none of them appears to have been worked earlier than the eighteenth century. Two are now show caverns-the former Waterhole Pipe, now called Blue John Mine or Cavern, on Treak Cliff's north-western flank (SK 133834) and the former Cliffside Mine, now called Treak Cliff Cavern, on its north-eastern flank (SK 136833). The third mine in which 'blue john' was formerly worked, Old Tor Mine, lies high on the northern face of the Winnats Pass (SK 133828) and is much smaller and less impressive. A fourth, Speedwell Mine (now Cavern), has its entrance at the extreme eastern corner of Treak Cliff (SK 139827), its workings extending away southward; since this mine was never a source for 'blue john', it is not a contender.
Dr Hardcastle noted that:
- All this country is hollow. Could you strike it with some gigantic hammer it would boom like a drum, or possibly cave in altogether and expose some huge subterranean sea. A great sea there must surely be, for on all sides the streams run into the mountain itself, never to reappear. There are gaps everywhere amid the rocks, and when you pass through them you find yourself in great caverns, which wind down into the bowels of the earth.
Indeed, all these mines penetrated into systems of natural caverns, formed at times when the water table was higher than it is nowadays; the caves are presently mostly dry. None corresponds exactly with Dr Hardcastle's description of the cavern's position, since what he called 'the shaft' leading into it must have been very high on Treak Cliff. From that position, during the 'melancholy vigil' preceding his culminating adventure, Dr Hardcastle reported that:
- All down the winding valley I could see the scattered lights of the farm houses, and the church clock of Chapel-le-Dale tolling the hours came faintly to my ears.
He must have been looking eastward toward Castleton village, in the winding Hope Valley. Chapel-le-Dale, properly Chapel en le Frith, lies westward but is not approached by any valley visible from Treak Cliff. Moreover, it is almost seven miles (11 km) away. Even Castleton church is a mile away and its church bells would only be heard on Treak Cliff in very favourable atmospheric conditions. The night must have been very silent, and the church chimes must have been loud indeed, to come even faintly to Dr Hardcastle's ears!
The Monster of the Mine
Dr James Hardcastle first approached Blue John Gap on 17 April 1907. While the doctor was standing at its mouth, he was approached by Armitage, a young neighbour of the Allertons and 'a man of some education and character'. Armitage expressed surprise at Hardcastle's presence at the mouth of Blue John Gap.
- 'Well, doctor, you're not afraid, anyhow.'
- 'Afraid!' I answered. 'Afraid of what?'
- 'Of it,' explained Armitage, 'of the Terror that lives in the Blue John Cave.'
Armitage told the doctor of local legends reporting that, from time to time, sheep had disappeared from surrounding pastures, carried away bodily. Once a pool of blood had been discovered, and some tufts of wool. On another occasion, a gap had been forced through a wall and the wallstones thrown about. The nights preceding such incidents were always very dark, cloudy ones with no moon. Armitage told Hardcastle
- ... that he had actually heard the Creature-indeed, that anyone could hear it who remained long enough at the gap. It was a distant roaring of an immense volume.
Armitage left Hardcastle standing at the entrance, pondering his words and conceiving perfectly natural explanations. Suddenly, however,
- ... from the depth of the tunnel beside me, there issued a most extraordinary sound. How shall I describe it? First of all, it seemed to be a great distance away, far down in the bowels of the earth. Secondly, in spite of this suggestion of distance, it was very loud. Lastly, it was not a boom, nor a crash, such as one would associate with falling water or tumbling rock, but it was a high whine, tremulous and vibrating, almost like the whinnying of a horse.
The strange sound caused Hardcastle to determine to explore the passage. During the following three days, he made several expeditions into Blue John Gap, but heard no more sounds. However, he noticed that
- ... those bushes at the entrance of the cave do present an appearance as if some heavy creature had forced its way through them
- I observed this morning (20 April] that among the numerous tufts of sheep's wool which lay among the bushes near the cavern there was one which was smeared with blood. ... [F]or a moment I found myself shrinking back in horror from the old Roman arch. A fetid breath seemed to ooze from the black depths into which I peered. Could it indeed be possible that some nameless thing, some dreadful presence was lurking down yonder?
Two days later, on 22 April, Hardcastle decided to find out once and for all what creature might lurk within Blue John Gap. Deep inside its maze of tunnels he discovered on the floor
- ... a huge mark-an ill-defined blotch, deep, broad, and irregular, as if a great boulder had fallen upon it. No loose stone lay near, however, nor was there anything to account for the impression. It was far too large to be caused by any possible animal, and besides, there was only the one, and the patch of mud was of such a size that no reasonable stride could have covered it.
Hardcastle examined the 'track' with disquiet, but
- ... soon recovered my nerve... when I reflected how absurd it was to associate so huge and shapeless a mark with the track of any known animal. Even an elephant could not have produced it.
Overcoming his fears, he continued onward. Still deeper in the cavern, Hardcastle was forced to ford a subterranean stream some twenty feet (six metres) across. The stone on which he was stepping tilted and flipped him into the ice-cold water. Out went his candle.
After staggering to his feet, Dr Hardcastle discovered that his matches were soaked and could not be struck. After a brief, vain attempt to grope his way out, the doctor sat down on a boulder to consider his situation. The task of finding his way 'back in absolute darkness through that limestone labyrinth was clearly an impossible one'. There was only one hope, and that was that the matches might dry. He decided sensibly to sit quietly where he was, attempting to dry his matches with body heat. While doing so, he dozed off.
Hours later he was suddenly awakened by a vague sound.
- It was a tread-yes, surely it was the tread of some living creature. But what a tread it was! It gave one the impression of enormous weight carried upon sponge-like feet, which gave forth a muffled but car-filling sound... There was some creature there, and surely by the speed of its advance, it was one which could see in the dark.
Somehow Hardcastle managed to elude detection by the unseen beast. When the sound of its passing faded away deeper within the cave, he struck a match, lit his candle and beat a hasty retreat.
- As I did so I passed the patch of mud on which I had seen the huge imprint. Now I stood astonished before it, for there were three similar imprints upon its surface, enormous in size, irregular in outline, of a depth which indicated the ponderous weight which had left them.
Hardcastle reached the outside in so great a panic that he suffered a physical breakdown from which it took him some days to recover. After his recovery, Hardcastle resolved to solve the mystery. He walked down into Castleton, where he purchased a large acetylene lantern and a double-barrelled sporting rifle with 'heavy game cartridges that would bring down a rhinoceros'.
- I think of the old-world legends of dragons and other monsters. Were they, perhaps, not such fairy-tales as we have thought? Can it be that there is some fact which underlies them, and am I, of all mortals, the one who is chosen to expose it?
The time came for his dangerous expedition. The nights had been cloudy and moonless and, just as legend said, sheep had begun disappearing. What was more, Armitage was also missing, presumed to have fled from debtors. Dr Hardcastle wondered whether that was so:
- Is it not much more likely that the recent tragedy of the sheep has caused him to take some steps which may have ended in his own destruction? He may, for example, have lain in wait for the creature and been carried off by it into the recesses of the mountain. What an inconceivable fate for a civilised Englishman of the twentieth century! And yet I feel that it is possible and even probable.
Finally, on Friday 3 May-again a dark, cloudy night-Hardcastle set out on his investigation, this time taking the precaution of leaving a note on his bedroom table to declare his destination. Perching among the rocks close to the Gap, the doctor waited patiently with loaded rifle. Shortly after midnight things came to a head.
- And then suddenly I heard it! From far away down the tunnel came those muffled steps, so fast and yet so ponderous. I heard also the rattle of stones as they gave way under the giant tread... I heard the crashing of the bushes round the entrance, and then dimly through the darkness I was conscious of the loom of some enormous shape, some monstrous inchoate creature, passing swiftly and very silently out from the tunnel ... I lay motionless and breathless, whilst the great dark mass whisked by me and was swallowed up in the night.
Just as suddenly the creature returned. Shaking off a momentary paralysis, Hardcastle let go with one barrel of his rifle.
- In the blaze of the gun I caught a glimpse of a great shaggy mass, something with rough and bristling hair of a withered grey colour, fading away to white in its lower parts, the huge body supported upon short thick curving legs.
Uncovering his lantern, Hardcastle chased the monster down the tunnel.
- As I ran, I saw the great beast lurching along before me, its huge bulk filling up the whole space from wall to wall. Its hair looked like coarse faded oakum, and hung down in long, dense masses which swayed as it moved. It was like an enormous unclipped sheep in its fleece, but in size it was far larger than the largest elephant, and its breadth seemed to be nearly as great as its height.
Upon reaching a great central chamber, the creature turned upon Hardcastle.
- He had reared up on his hind legs as a bear would do, and stood above me, enormous, menacing-such a creature as no nightmare had ever brought to my imagination... there was something bear-like-if one could conceive a bear which was ten-fold the bulk of any bear seen upon earth-in his whole pose and attitude, in his great crooked forelegs, with their ivory-white claws, in his rugged skin, and in his red gaping mouth, fringed with monstrous fangs [Front cover]. Only in one point did he differ from the bear, or from any other creature which walks the earth, and even at that supreme moment a shudder of horror passed over me as I observed that the eyes which glistened in the glow of my lantern were huge, projecting white bulbs, white and sightless. For a moment his great paws swung over my head. The next he fell to the earth and I remember no more.
Two days later, Hardcastle awakened at the Allerton farm with a badly fractured left arm and two ribs. His note had been found and a search party of farmers had tracked him down. There was no sign of the creature. Showing typical commonsense, the farmers had solved the problem. Observed Hardcastle:
- Never again through that ill-omened tunnel shall any strange shape flit out into the world of men. The educated and the scientific ... may smile at my narrative, but the poorer folk of the countryside had never a doubt as to its truth. On the day after recovering consciousness they assembled in their hundreds round the Blue John Gap. As the Castleton Courier said:
- 'It was useless for our correspondent, or for any of the adventurous gentlemen who had come from Matlock, Buxton and other parts, to offer to descend, to explore the cave to the end, and finally to test the extraordinary narrative of Mr James Hardcastle. The country people had taken the matter into their own hand, and from an early hour of the morning they had worked hard on stopping up the entrance of the tunnel. There is a sharp slope where the shaft begins, and great boulders, rolled along by many willing hands, were thrust down it until the Gap was absolutely sealed.'
The Nature of the Beast
Hardcastle ended his narrative by giving his own theory as to the beast's origin:
- My view is-and it was formed, as is shown by my diary, before my personal adventure-that in this part of England there is a vast subterranean lake or sea, which is fed by the great number of streams which pass down through the limestone. Where there is a large collection of water there must also be some evaporation, mists, or rain, and a possibility of vegetation. This in turn suggests that there may be animal life, arising, as the vegetable life would also do, from those seeds and types which had been introduced at an early period of the world's history, when communication with the outer air was more easy. This place had then developed a fauna and flora of its own, including such monsters as the one which I had seen, which may well have been the old cave-bear, enormously enlarged and modified by its new environment. For countless aeons the internal and external creation had kept apart, growing steadily away from each other. Then there had come some rift in the depths of the mountain which had enabled one creature to wander up and, by means of the Roman tunnel, to reach the open air. Like all subterranean life, it had lost the power of sight, but this had no doubt been compensated for by nature in other directions. Certainly it had some means of finding its way about, and of hunting down the sheep upon the hillside. As to its choice of dark nights, it is part of my theory that light was painful to those great white eyeballs, and that it was only a pitch-black world which it could tolerate. Perhaps, indeed, it was the glare of my lantern which saved my life at that awful moment when we were face to face. So I read the riddle.
In England there were, in Quaternary times, many kinds of carnivores. Of these, the most familiar are the cave-bear (Ursus spelaeus); the cave-hyaena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea); the cave-lion (Felis spelaea), a hunting cat larger than the Bengal tiger; and the so-called 'sabre-toothed tiger', more properly the dirk-tooth (Megantereon megantereon), which had flat, curved upper canines extending down as tusks several inches below its gums.
The richest source of bones of these mammals have been caverns. One of the most striking peculiarities of these cavern deposits is that they often consist of a heterogeneous mixture of different species and sizes. The remains of large carnivores, especially the cave-bear and cave-hyaena, are usually most abundant, these caves being the dens to which they dragged their prey in order to devour them. Among these prey animals, the most remarkable were the mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), the woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitata), the hippopotamus, the great Irish Elk (Megaloceros giganteus), the horse and the aurochs. All the bones, including those of smaller herbivores and even some small carnivores, bear the marks of teeth, proving that they had been gnawed.
Dr Hardcastle's conclusion that the 'Terror' was a cave-bear was, in the context of his time, reasonable enough. The bones of the cave-bears had already been found abundantly in certain caverns of central Europe and Asia; Dr Hardcastle (and Conan Doyle!) had surely read of these discoveries. From the Gaylenreuth Cave, Franconia, Germany, the remains of eight hundred cave-bears had been obtained. In a Polish cave (circa 1884), Römer found the remains of at least one thousand. Their osteological remains-and the scratch-marks on cave walls, showing how high the cave-bears could stand and stretch at will-indicated that these bears must have exceeded the present-day grizzly bear in size. Even without unnatural growth to yet larger size, such a creature would have been a formidable beast for Dr Hardcastle to tangle with.
However, it is unlikely that Dr Hardcastle's deduction was correct. The reason? Its footprints. Footprints of bears are very human-like in appearance, with five distinct digits and long soles; the claws are not usually imprinted. The footprints of cave-bears, found in the Drachenhohle near Mixnitz in Austria (Bachofen-Echt, 1931) confirm that their feet closely resembled those of living bears. The 'deep, broad and irregular' imprints that Dr Hardcastle saw in the cave mud could not have been made by any bear. Moreover, bears are not habitual carnivores; rather, they are omnivores, as likely to seek other food as to kill sheep (and, possibly, young Mr Armitage).
We would suggest instead quite a different affinity for the 'Terror'. The great scimitar cat (Homotherium sainzelli) is a relative of the dirk-tooth, but larger in size and without such long upper canines. Björn Kurtén (1968, p. 786) describes their definition thus:
- The sabre-tooths are shorter, more curved and much flatter; they are thin, twin-edged scimitars with razor-sharp, crenulated edges. The lower canines are not much reduced in size and the homotheres often bit in the normal way, as proved by the presence of wear facets on the canines. The cheek teeth are highly modified to form thin, sharp-edged blades.
- The strong curvature of the tusks indicates that the homotheres did not make a deep stab into the body of their prey but used the canines for slashing and slicing. In contrast with the smilodonts [the true sabre-tooths], the head is elongated with long jaws and the skeleton is more rangy; the front limbs were high and the lower are particularly long. But like the smilodonts, the homotheres had a short tail.
Typical feloid footprints show four ovate digital impressions, surrounding the rounded-triangular imprint of the front part of sole or heel; the claws, being retractile, are not impressed. In the scimitar cats, the forelimbs are longer than the hindlimbs (see Figure 3); the impressions of the forefeet would be typically feloid, but the hind-foot impressions might well show a rather longer sole. Whichever feet were impressed into that patch of cave mud, the prints might well seem 'ill-defined broad and irregular' to Dr Hardcastle, who was neither hunter nor naturalist.
Unlike bears, the scimitar cats were habitual carnivores, perfectly capable of killing sheep or humans! Moreover, like the 'Terror' and unlike other feloids, they could readily rear up onto those shorter, strong hind limbs, as a defensive posture or as a means for attacking large prey such as mammoths. The cries of bears do not include the 'high whine, tremulous and vibrating' heard by Dr Hardcastle; as to the noises made by scimitar cats, we can only guess!
Like the other large predators, the scimitar cats found refuge in caves from the rigours of the Pleistocene ice ages. They were certainly present in Derbyshire: their remains having been found in cave deposits at Doveholes. All in all, we consider it likely that the 'Terror' was not a cave-bear (pace Dr Hardcastle), but a greater scimitar cat that had survived--and grown much larger-in that strange underground world beneath the Derbyshire hills.
The Writer and the Concept
Early in the summer of 1878, the young Conan Doyle tried to help his family during his vacation by going out as a dispenser and medical apprentice to a doctor in the poorer quarters of Sheffield. The results were not good. He was so inexperienced that, after only three weeks, he and Dr Richardson parted company, perhaps merely because Conan Doyle was too youthful to suit his patients. 'These Sheffielders,' he grumbled in his autobiography, 'would rather be poisoned by a man with a beard than be saved by a man without one.'
How could Conan Doyle have occupied what spare time he managed to get? First of all, by going to see Sheffield's museums. The city contained a municipal museum of geology, natural history and archaeology; in addition, a smaller museum containing a fine collection of rocks and minerals, put together as an educational project by the writer John Ruskin, could be visited in one of the parks. Conan Doyle was not the sort to ignore such opportunities and it is highly unlikely that he failed to visit these collections.
Moreover, Sheffield was only a few miles from Castleton and its well-known caves. Though roads were still bad, the journey could be made easily and cheaply by taking a day-return ticket on the Midland Railway, on the Hope Valley line to Hope. Castleton is only a couple of miles up-valley from Hope and was, in all likelihood, connected with Hope station by diligence or horse-bus. Three caves Peak Cavern (close to the centre of Castleton), Blue John Cavern and Speedwell Mine and Cavern — were all available for visits: in 1901, the cost would have been a mere two shillings, with bengal lights and guides available at need. Conan Doyle might well have occupied a pleasant weekend day in such fashion. Whether he did so, we do not know; but it seems likely enough.
The first bone cave systematically explored in England was at Oreston near Plymouth, Devonshire, in 1816. Conan Doyle practised medicine with Dr George Budd at Plymouth from early 1882 until June of the same year. During these months he must surely have visited the city's museum, which featured local and natural history, and seen the bones from Oreston.
Kent's Hole, near Torquay, Devonshire, was another locality readily accessible to Conan Doyle during his time in Plymouth. Known earlier as a source of bones, it had been studied scientifically by the Rev. John McEnery. Between 1825 and 1841 the cave furnished him with the first flint implements discovered in intimate association with bones of extinct animals. He realised they proved man's existence in Devonshire while these animals were alive, but the idea was too outrageous to be accepted by fellow scholars. Indeed, this pioneer in the field died (in 1841) before the immense importance of his discovery was admitted.
The Natural History Society Museum at Babbacombe Road in Torquay, founded in 1845, contained a well-arranged collection of the bones found in Kent's Hole and other caves in South Devonshire, together with local archaeological material, plants, minerals and fossils. The limestone cavern itself is still a local attraction for tourists, less interesting for its extent or stalagmites than for the extraordinary quantity of bones and flint implements still to be found there. Torquay was only a little over 20 miles (32 km) from Plymouth, home of Budd's practice.
In 1909, Conan Doyle became interested in paleontology by personal contact. That year, after moving to a new home in Crowborough, Sussex, he noticed fossilised imprints in a nearby ironstone quarry. He was excited enough to inform the authorities of this discovery.... I have another expert of the British Museum coming on Monday,' he wrote to his mother that year, 'to advise me about the fossils we get from the quarry opposite, Huge lizard tracks.'
The vertebrate paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward duly came to Crowborough and examined the tracks, but no scientific account of them was ever published. Undeterred, in 1911 Conan Doyle had casts made of the tracks, installing them in his house. Visiting Conan Doyle in 1912, A. St John Adcock noted that:
- ... on the floor of the billiard room, stand two huge fossil feet of the prehistoric Iguanodon, and on the table above them is the flint head of an arrow that has survived from the Stone Age.
It was the discovery of these relics which, as we have reported in an earlier article (Batory and Sarjeant, 1989), led to the writing of The Lost World (1912). Indeed, one might even see the skeleton of that novel in 'The Terror of Blue John Gap'.
However, this particular story surely had different origins. As Conan Doyle told Adcock:
- I have been an omnivorous and rapid reader all my life, with a fairly retentive memory for general facts, though not a very good one for accurate detail. This has given me a fair sized quarry out of which to get my stones.
What subjects interested him as a reader? As Adrian Conan Doyle reminisced:
- Sir Max Pemberton, in his article 'Knight-eloquent of Justice', recalls that it was ever the bizarre and the daring that drew Conan Doyle.
Indeed, Conan Doyle was a romantic, enamoured of the strangeness in fiction and life; moreover, he had been obsessed with the preternatural since childhood. During his student days at Edinburgh University (1877-1881) Conan Doyle read extensively, poring over works on Spiritualism, mysticism and metaphysics, even studying the lore of vampires and werewolves.
Conan Doyle also made a point of keeping pace with new developments and discoveries in the sciences. As a child, his son Adrian remembered strolling across moonlit moors while his father held 'forth in the most fascinating manner on the Weald strata...
A possible influence on Conan Doyle might have been an excellent shorty story published in the October 1899 issue of McClure's Magazine. Impoverished Englishman Henry Tukeman, the pseudonymous author of this tale, and his Indian companion Paul, following directions given by an old tribesman, reached an isolated high mountain valley deep in the Alaskan wilderness. They gained entrance through a natural cave paved with mammoth bones. At the other end was the home of the last surviving mammoth. After great hardship and danger, the two killed the mammoth, skinned him and eventually sold the preserved remains to a millionaire American, who lodged them in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.
Entitled 'The Killing of the Mammoth', the story, to the amusement of the editors, was taken by many readers not as fiction, but as a genuine contribution to natural history. Immediately after its appearance, the authorities at the Smithsonian Institute were beset by inquiries for more information and by requests to settle wagers as to whether it was a true story or not. Yet the contribution was printed purely as fiction, with no idea of misleading the public, and was entitled 'a story' in the table of contents.
Tukeman (if that was truly the author's name) might very well have sparked Conan Doyle's thinking along such lines, since both were contributors to the same periodical during the same period. Besides having at least one story published in McClure's Magazine ('The Leather Funnel', 1900), Conan Doyle had played an important part in the magazine's history. In September 1894, while in New York, Conan Doyle met S.S. McClure at the Aldine Club. McClure had previously acquired the American rights to several Sherlock Holmes stories and The White Company. The business problems connected with starting his new magazine had exhausted his capital and he could not pay his English authors.
Conan Doyle told him there was no need to worry and decided to invest in the magazine on the spot. After lunch the two walked over to McClure's office where Conan Doyle wrote out a cheque for $5,000, to McClure's great pleasure. As he wrote in his autobiography, this was:
- ... exactly the sum we were owing to English authors. When that cheque was written, it put new life into the office staff. Everyone in the office felt a new vigor and a new hope.
Nine years later, in 1903, McClure was instrumental in persuading Conan Doyle to resurrect Holmes. Now financially secure, he offered Conan Doyle $5,000 for six new Holmes stories and, with his request, expressed his thanks for Conan Doyle's generosity in lending him the same sum seven years earlier. Surely Conan Doyle was familiar with Tukeman's story and must have appreciated its humorous aftermath.
In his consideration of 'Explorers of the Infinite', Sam Moskowitz identified another potential source for Conan Doyle's idea:
- ... the theory as to the creature's origin postulates the existence of giant caverns inside the earth, where bizarre conditions have given rise to plants and animals that ought never to see the light of day. While the theoretical concept stems from Verne's A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, we begin to find Doyle's adding a new dimension to an old idea, and plotting and writing in a manner distinctly his own.
These are only a partial list of the probable ingredients. It cannot be emphasised too strongly that Conan Doyle was a voluminous reader on all subjects, with a fantastic memory for details. Like any writer he wove together incidents from other stories and from real life to make his narrative. In fact, he had a flair amounting to genius for adapting. Any or all of the above sources could have served as a subliminal influence on his plot.
Conan Doyle had an exorbitant lust for adventure that brought him both fame and infamy. It stayed with him from boyhood to death. When he discovered he was dying, he wrote:
- I have had many adventures. The greatest and most glorious of all awaits me now.
Indeed, Conan Doyle had a habit of building his works upon real foundations. He was a romantic writer whose omnivorous reading, dreams and psychic studies supplied him with the brick and mortar with which he built up his literary structures.
Whatever the sources, the result is memorable. Conan Doyle's prehistoric fantasy contains scenes as unearthly and ephemeral as misty moonlight. There is always the fear of something lying in wait, ready to pounce. He knew there are few who have not felt the presence of the terror of the dark. Conan Doyle's works express themselves at a deeply personal level. Surely there were a whole variety of colourful threads in hand when he wove this chilling story.
Acknowledgements
The authors are indebted to H.M. Ordnance Survey for permission to reproduce Figure 1 from a section of the Peak District Tourist Map (1975); to Dr Trevor D. Ford for permission to reproduce Figure 2 and for critically reading our draft manuscript; and to Mrs Linda Dietz for her aid in production of the manuscripts.
References
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- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
