Through the Magic Door Again: Toronto 1994 Revisited
'Through the Magic Door' Again: Toronto 1994 Revisited is an article written by Barbara Roden published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 5, 1994).
This illustrated retrospective revisits the Arthur Conan Doyle Society's 1994 Toronto Convention, reprinting goodwill messages, toasts, speeches, and photographs associated with the event. It serves as a documentary record celebrating the participants, the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library collection, and the Society's international scholarly community.
'Through the Magic Door' Again: Toronto 1994 Revisited
Society members examining some of the treasures of the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library's Arthur Conan Doyle Collection on the Friday afternoon of the Convention weekend.
From left to right: Georgina Doyle, Ann Kittle, Fred Kittle, and Michael Doyle — deep in conversation during one of the session breaks.
Dr. I.I. Mayba, Garth Hazlett, and Bruce Aikin — preparing for Saturday evening's Dinner.
A FULL ACCOUNT OF THE EVENTS of 'Through the Magic Door', the Society's 1994 Convention in Toronto, appeared in Number Eleven of The Parish Magazine (August 1994). I tried to give some flavour of the event by describing the activities of the weekend, the papers that were presented, and some of the people who took part and helped to make it such a success.
If you could not be in Toronto, but were intrigued by the topics of some of the papers, you can now judge the content for yourselves: four of them are reprinted in the section which follows (two further papers that were read in Toronto could not be printed in this issue, and we hope to publish them in 1995). Also included are the three toasts which were given during the Saturday night dinner (although the word toast does not do justice to their contents), the after-dinner address, and the various goodwill messages from people who could not be at the Convention. (The message from Julian Symons is reprinted in his obituary elsewhere in this issue).
Finally, the photographs in the following pages were taken during the event, which should help members to put a few names and faces together. Sorting through the photographs while we were deciding which ones to use brought back many happy memories of a highly informative, entertaining, and enjoyable weekend. Thanks once more to all those who attended and who helped out over the course of three very busy, but ultimately satisfying, days. Plans for the next Convention are still being discussed, but we hope to see you all there!
Goodwill Messages
From Dame Jean Conan Doyle:
It's a funny old business being the offspring of a famous person. Full of pluses and minuses. One minus is that you may lose a part if not all of your own identity. Another is that, having so many enquiries and visitors in connection with your parent, there comes a stage in life when you cannot keep pace with it all and have to pull up the drawbridge. I must confess that over the years it has been with dismay that I've received requests to meet strangers, mostly Sherlockians. So time consuming! But-in all honesty-with very few exceptions, I've ended up thankful to have met such charming and interesting people. I have also felt a great deal of sympathy for some of the unfortunate spouses who are bored stiff with Sherlock and would far rather be in Harrods than in Baker Street! So it is with sadness that now I feel I can only in exceptional circumstances make new friends visiting London. It seems so rude of me, but is really sad.
How I would love to be in Canada where we had such a sublime family holiday in 1923. My father said it would give his children memories to cherish all their lives. How right he was! How I envy you all your visit to the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection in the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library. Cameron Hollyer sent me a catalogue of the Collection in 1978. It was very impressive and must be even more so now.
What an interesting weekend lies ahead. I felt such joy when just over five years ago Christopher wrote to tell me that he was founding an Arthur Conan Doyle Society. Since then I have never ceased to be impressed by the material in ACD and The Parish Magazine. Many of you here today have, I'm sure, contributed to the success of these and other publications. It's splendid that so many of you have travelled, some a long way, to be here. I am so glad that two of my cousins are here to represent the family. Also Jon Lellenberg, whom you all know as a distinguished American Sherlockian, but who is also my representative in the States. I know many of you who are taking a prominent part in the Convention. I've not seen a nominal roll, but I know that Al, Michael, Mark and Catherine will be there and send them my greetings. It is a pity that many who would like to be here cannot for reasons of ill-health or commitments.
I am often asked what my father would have felt about the great interest currently shown in him and in Sherlock Holmes. The obvious answer is 'pleasure and surprise' but also, I always think to myself, sadness because he would so like to have been remembered by his other writings and also by creating far greater interest in Spiritualism than has been the case. I know that Christopher hoped that in addition to that authority on the Cottingley Fairies, Joe Cooper, some prominent Spiritualist would join the Society and contribute to the Journals. My father would have been sad that this has not happened.
I never make public statements about my personal beliefs because I am a very single-minded person and it is such a complex subject that one would have to devote all one's time to it as my father did. I find it is all I can do to get through the commitments of this world. However, I would hate people to think that my silence has the significance of, say, that Dog in the Night. I do believe in an after-life and that sometimes it is possible for the departed to communicate with the living. When my father died, ninety per cent of the messages purporting to come from him did not convey the slightest proof of his identity. On the other hand, my mother and brothers and I all received individual messages which convinced us they were from my father. Sometimes it is said that he left a code with my mother. This is not true.
Well, that is enough of that. It would have been such a joy to hear you sparking off one another gems of scholarship, knowledge and theory concerning my father on this very special weekend. May it be a weekend which leads to new friendships. Christopher and Barbara should feel the glow of achievement that their concept of this Convention is now a reality.
From Pierre Nordon:
'There is a tide in the affairs of men': the choice of Toronto for this celebration may have something to do with this.
A French heritage connects the city, initially named Fort Rouillé, the Doyles, emigrated from Pont D'Ouilly in the twelfth century, and Holmes, indebted to the Vernets for his artistic temperament.
Oddly enough, an exact century parallells the origins of Arthur Conan Doyle with those of Toronto. Fort Rouillé emerged in 1749, and Charles Doyle in Edinburgh in 1849. Fort Rouillé ceased to exist as such in 1793, and 1893 was the year of Charles's death-not to mention the Reichenbach tragedy. Last but not least, let us observe that 1894 saw the author of the recently published The Refugees cross the Atlantic and lecture to North American audiences.
Most appropriate, then, seems the choice of 1994 to hold in Toronto the first North American Convention of the Arthur Conan Doyle Society. Certis rebus certa signa praecurrerent: the conjunction of history and geography augurs well of its success!
From Edward Hardwicke:
Keep up the good work!
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is one of our greatest writers, and the father of all detective fiction.
From Richard Lancelyn Green:
I have many good friends in Canada and North America who have shared my enthusiasm for the works of Conan Doyle, and I also have happy memories of the Metropolitan Toronto Public Library where I have spent many fascinating and productive hours. The special collection-which owes so much to its great curator, Cameron Hollyer-can now boast an unpublished play derived from the first Sherlock Holmes story and many of the important letters from Conan Doyle to the editor of the Strand Magazine, as well as hundreds of rare and unusual editions. The city is therefore the ideal place for a conference, and the choice would have delighted Conan Doyle. In Through the Magic Door he wondered if the British Empire might not one day follow the example of Rome and move its capital. 'The Anglo-Celtic power, he said, 'might find its centre some day not in London but in Chicago or Toronto.' Toronto has for long been a centre of Doylean studies, and for the next few days it will be the centre. I regret that I cannot be there, but I wish you all success and many hours of joy'.
From The Sherlock Holmes Society of London:
Greetings from The President and Officers of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London to you and all your colleagues and our best wishes for a successful conference.
From Malcolm Payne, The Conan Doyle (Crowborough) Establishment:
Both Barbara and Christopher Roden have kindly offered to carry our message to the Toronto Convention. We feel this is in the true and altruistic spirit Sir Arthur himself often displayed, and of which he would have approved.
We are extremely lucky to dwell in this beautiful area of Sussex in which Sir Arthur spent almost one third of his life. That his work lives on in all the various stories, histories, poems, belles lettres, etc, that he knew instinctively just how to hold his readers, on every aspect of the lives of which he wrote, both real and fictional, is quite apparent, and one reason for his writing being so alive today.
We send our greetings and good wishes for a successful and fulfilling convention. Our thanks to both Barbara and Christopher for all the hard work in arranging the convention. We feel Sir Arthur would concur, and perhaps be rather surprised, but very pleased, that such a move should be made in commemoration of his life and works.
From Owen Dudley Edwards:
My dear fellow-Conanists:
It has to be 'fellow-Conanists', I think. It cannot be 'fellow Sherlockians', since I belong to what is doubtless a minority in believing that Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character, while 'fellow-Doyleans' would seem to me to savour of a tea-table gentility. If 'fellow-Conanists' seems to be theological, put it down to my Jesuitical subliminal propaganda for the religious faith in which Arthur Conan Doyle was born: no Roman Catholic can ever be wholly unmoved at the thought of the convent to whose nuns at their mealtimes The Refugees was read as a work of suitably edifying piety by a worthy parish priest, Canon Doyle. It is what Macaulay would term an inspiriting reflection that the novel by our Master-spirit most directly concerned with what is now Canada, should have been taken as the product of a parish, when you are so happily gathered there under the inspired leadership of the editors of ACD and The Parish Magazine.
My regret at my inability to be with you, all the greater because of several former visits to Canada, must necessarily be one-sided. It is my misfortune: but those of you whom I do not know will be happily familiar with my face as surreptitiously employed by Oxford University Press as decoration for the jacket of The Sign of the Four so ably edited by Christopher Roden: to recall the hallowed words, it is a bearded, hairy face, with wild cruel eyes and an expression of concentrated malevolence'. The malevolence is more expressly concentrated by its disappointment at not meeting you.
But I congratulate you all most heartily on your own presence and on those of your organisers and speakers. It is a particular pleasure to notice the presence of Georgina Doyle, widow of the late Brigadier John Doyle to whom my own debt for aid in research is beyond calculation, while she herself has been of the greatest assistance and inspiration in the revisal of The Oxford Sherlock Holmes for its forthcoming appearance in the World's Classics: and so have several others present, to whom my deep thanks.
But the happiest of all auguries for the success of your conventicle, however far it strays from the example of Conanical audience set by the convent, is the presence of Arthur Conan Doyle himself, quite apart from that which may be there in the principles of the religious faith in which he died: Christopher and Barbara Roden have brought him to your gathering through their elegant and masterly edition of his Western Wanderings, in whose pages a view of Canadian historical source-material comes before you with an incomparable guide highly reminiscent of his best vein in Through the Magic Door.
FLOREAT ARTURUS CANADIENSIS!
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
