Arthur Conan Doyle - Conversations with Arthur Conan Doyle: In His Own Words

Conversations with
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Simon Parke

Conversations with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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Religion & Spirituality

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Preface

The conversation presented here is imagined; but Doyles words are not. All of Sir Arthurs words included here are his own, taken from his extensive writings and correspondence.

The only alteration to his original words has been the occasional addition of a link word to help the flow.

But such small and rare additions never alter either his mood or meaning. After all, to discover the man and his meaning is the reason for this adventure; so these are his passions, and his words, with one exception. He didnt say Elementary, my dear Simon!

Though it would not have been out of character.

Introduction

These interviews were conducted over a period of three days, after Sir Arthur kindly agreed to reflect with me on his energetic and varied life.

We meet at Windlesham, his house in Crowborough, Sussex; some way from his Edinburgh birth place. We talk mainly in his bedroom, to which his angina now confines him. But sometimes were in the garden, where his love of the outdoor life is clear to see. His spirit still adventures, even if his body groans. At 71 years of age, he remains a big man, with a kindly face, which one publisher likened to that of a walrus. I can see what he meant.

In many ways, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a Boys Own figure, full of derring-do. He has written historical novels; short stories of horror and the supernatural; been a fine cricketer (he once took the wicket of the great W. G. Grace) and played football, rugby and golf. He has campaigned for underdogs like George Edalji and the victims of brutal conditions in the Congo Free State; introduced skis to Switzerland and had the strange idea of a channel tunnel linking England and France. He has known friendship with both Harry Houdini and Oscar Wilde; had breakfast with Lloyd George; been a ships doctor in the arctic, a war reporter in South Africa and is a popular knight of the realm. He has toured the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa and Europe. Most notably of all, he created Sherlock Holmes perhaps the worlds most famous detective.

Yet as we meet, Sir Arthur is a man under siege because for the last quarter of his life, alongside the above, he has become the worlds most famous proponent of spiritualism; also known as contacting the dead. It has bought ridicule from literary, scientific and religious figures; and been an embarrassment for many who preferred Holmes dry humanist logic, to such apparent gullibility.

Only last January, the writer H. G. Wells launched a savage attack on Doyle in the Sunday Express , in response to his book Pheneas Speaks. In this book, Doyle published the recorded messages of a spirit-figure called Pheneas, as expressed through the mediumship of his second wife, Jean. In the introduction, Doyle had written: We would beg the most orthodox reader to bear in mind that God is still in touch with mankind; and that there is as much reason that he should send messages and instructions to a suffering and distracted world as ever there was in days of old.

I have with me the press cuttings of Wells response. He calls Pheneas a platitudinous bore who had been promising wonderful changes for the world since 1922, but with no apparent fulfilment. He writes: This Pheneas, I venture to think, is an imposter wrought of self-deception; as pathetic as a rag doll which some lonely child has made for its own comfort. We are told of floods of spiritual light! Wonderful prophecies are spoken of but where are they?

The row over Pheneas has been typical of the disputes that have surrounded Doyle in recent years; disputes which have left him an isolated figure. Not that he bends with the wind in any way at all, for Doyle is a stubborn man. When he was but twenty, on his first night on board an arctic whaler, he knocked down the ships steward in a boxing match; and 50 years on, he is still up for the fight.

Who would have thought that the creator of Sherlock Holmes would end his days in this way? Hero or embarrassment? Visionary or lunatic? There is so much to talk about, as I sit down for conversations with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

One

A man under fire

SP: I suppose like many people, Sir Arthur, Im wondering why the creator of Sherlock Holmes threw it all away to become an evangelist for the spiritualist movement, which to be honest, has a slightly dubious reputation.

ACD: People call me credulous but they dont know what the evidence is. I say any man who had the evidence I had, and didnt believe it, would be a lunatic.

SP : But you have become like a missionary for this cause. Is it worth it?

ACD: This movement, so long the subject of sneers and ridicule, is absolutely the most important development in the whole history of the human race.

SP: Really? Thats some claim.

ACD: So important that, if we could conceive one single man discovering and publishing it, he would rank before Christopher Columbus as a discoverer of new worlds, before Paul as a teacher of new religious truths, and before Isaac Newton as a student of the laws of the Universe

SP: So this is a new type of knowledge?

ACD: Psychic science, though still in its infancy, has already reached a point where we can dissect many of those occurrences which were regarded as inexplicable in past ages; and can classify and even explain them so far as any ultimate explanation of anything is possible.

SP: You call it a science. But what has it achieved in that domain?

ACD: So long as gravity, electricity, magnetism and so many other great natural forces are inexplicable one must not ask too much of the youngest though it is also the oldest of the sciences. But the progress made has been surprising; and the more surprising since it has been done by a limited circle of students whose results have hardly reached the world at large, and have been greeted with incredulous contempt rather than with the appreciation they deserve.

SP: But doesnt this take us back to the dubious reputation of the movement; dubious because of the many instances when mediums have been revealed as cheats and charlatans?

ACD: As to the personality of mediums, they have seemed to me to be very average specimens of the community, neither markedly better nor markedly worse.

But spiritualism is no more to be judged by venal public mediums than Christianity is to be condemned because in every church there are a certain number of hypocrites and time-servers.

SP: Fair point.

ACD: Yes, the movement has been disfigured by many grievous incidents, which may explain but does not excuse the perverse opposition which it encounters in so many quarters.

SP: So tell me: beyond the fakes and frauds, why are the attacks on you so savage? What exactly is being threatened?

ACD: This opposition is largely based upon the absolute materialism of the age, which will not admit that there can exist at the present moment, such conditions as might be accepted in the far past. When these religious people are actually brought in contact with that life beyond the grave which they profess to believe in they wince, recoil and declare it impossible!