Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle

by Daniel Stashower

  “Every detective story writer makes mistakes,” wrote Raymond Chandler, “and none will ever know as much as he should. Conan Doyle made mistakes which completely invalidated some of his stories, but he was a pioneer, and Sherlock Holmes is mostly an attitude and a few dozen lines of unforgettable dialogue.”

  Chandler’s assessment, however cavalier, strikes at an essential truth. Sherlock Holmes can be read over and over again for the sheer joy of Conan Doyle’s writing. It is not that we have forgotten who killed Sir Charles Baskerville or who stole the Bruce-Partington Plans. We return to Baker Street to watch a genius at work. Once heard, the call is never forgotten: The singular worm unknown to science. Wilson the notorious canary trainer. The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. “Come, Watson, come. The game’s afoot.”

  But in the rush to lionize Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle has been nudged aside. Too often Conan Doyle is dismissed as a figure who happened to be present when Holmes sprang into being—or, as some Sherlockians would have it, the “literary agent” who helped Dr. Watson’s writings find their way into print. This would have been a great sadness to Conan Doyle. Though he played down his own achievement with Holmes, he understood that he had taken a little-known genre and pulled it into the light.

  Conan Doyle is often portrayed as “the man who hated Sherlock Holmes,” but this is only partially true. At times he sickened of his famous creation—as evidenced by the early attempt to kill him off—but in his final years he was able to strike a conciliatory note: “I have not in actual practice found that these lighter sketches have prevented me from exploring and finding my limitations in such varied branches of literature as history, poetry, historical novels, psychic research, and the drama. Had Holmes never existed I could not have done more, though he may perhaps have stood a little in the way of the recognition of my more serious literary work.”

  Perhaps. Though some would argue that these “lighter sketches” were the work of an innovative genius, breaking new ground and lighting the way for future generations of writers, while the more “serious” work remains hopelessly tethered to the past. Even so, Sherlock Holmes constitutes only a small part of Conan Doyle’s total body of work, and if his admirers could be lured away from the bright lights of Baker Street for a few moments, they would find an interesting and rewarding writer waiting in the shadows. Conan Doyle gave the world a great deal of pleasure. He deserves, at least for a moment, to be taken on his own terms.

  “I have had a life which, for variety and romance, could, I think, hardly be exceeded,” he once wrote. “I have known what it was to be a poor man and I have known what it was to be fairly affluent. I have sampled every kind of human experience. I have known many of the most remarkable men of my time. I have had a long literary career after a medical training which gave me the M.D. of Edinburgh. I have tried my hand at very many sports, including boxing, cricket, billiards, motoring, football, aeronautics and skiing, having been the first to introduce the latter for long journeys into Switzerland. I have travelled as Doctor to a whaler for seven months in the Arctic and afterward in the West Coast of Africa. I have seen something of three wars, the Sudanese, the South African and the German. My life has been dotted with adventures of all kinds. Finally I have been constrained to devote my latter years to telling the world the final result of thirty-six years’ study of the occult, and in endeavouring to make it realize the overwhelming importance of the question. In this mission I have already travelled more than 50,000 miles and addressed 300,000 people, besides writing seven books on the subject. Such is the life I have led.”

  And such is the story that follows.

  1

  The Empty Chair

  I have learned never to ridicule any man’s opinion, however strange it may seem.

  —ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, “THE CAPTAIN OF THE POLE-STAR”

  As many as six thousand people crowded into London’s Royal Albert Hall that night, while hundreds more were turned away at the doors. Inside the great hall, men in evening dress and ladies in long gowns found their seats and whispered excitedly to one another. They had come to see and hear Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, perhaps the most beloved author of his generation, and he was expected to deliver startling news.

  In most respects, the gathering was no different from the hundreds of lectures Conan Doyle had given in such places as Paris, New York, Melbourne, and Capetown. On this particular night, however, the sense of anticipation was especially intense. The reason was simple: Conan Doyle had died five days earlier at his home in Crowborough.

  Even so, expectations remained high. Conan Doyle’s death, according to the beliefs he himself passionately espoused, would not necessarily prohibit his appearance on the lecture platform that evening. At the time of his passing on July 8, 1930, Conan Doyle had long been established as the world’s best-known and most outspoken proponent of spiritualism, the belief that the dead communicate with the living through an earthly conduit, or medium. For fourteen years Conan Doyle had devoted the better part of his time, energy, and resources to this cause, which he often described as “the most important thing in the world.” For those who found comfort and meaning in his beliefs, he was “the Saint Paul of spiritualism.” For those who did not, he was a sad and deluded old man who had squandered his greatness. The Albert Hall memorial, many believed, would settle the issue once and for all.

  Sir Arthur’s widow, Lady Jean Conan Doyle, entered the hall accompanied by her sons, Denis and Adrian, her daughter, Jean, and her stepdaughter, Mary. Denis and Adrian wore evening dress and carried top hats. Lady Conan Doyle, in keeping with the beliefs she shared with her husband, had chosen a dress of gray lace rather than traditional mourning garb, to signify that Sir Arthur’s “translation” to the other side was not an occasion for sorrow. “I know perfectly well that I am going to have conversations with my father,” Adrian Conan Doyle had told the press at his father’s funeral. “We shall miss his footsteps and his physical presence, but that is all. Otherwise he might have only gone to Australia.”

  At the edge of the lecture platform, a row of chairs was set out for the family. A square of cardboard held one of them in reserve. It read: “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.” Lady Conan Doyle sat to the left of her husband’s chair, just as she had for twenty-three years at nearly all of the many lectures, meetings, and other assemblies to which her husband lent his name and influence. This gathering, she had confided to a friend, would be the last public demonstration she would ever attend with her husband.

  Conan Doyle’s chair would have been the only empty seat in the house. Some accounts estimated the size of the crowd at ten thousand, though this would have seriously strained the hall’s capacity. Extra seats had been set up to accommodate some of the overflow.

  As the audience settled, Mr. George Craze of the Marylebone Spiritualist Association stepped to the microphone to open the proceedings. He offered a few words of welcome, then read out a written statement from Lady Conan Doyle. “I want in my children’s, and my own and my beloved husband’s name, to thank you all from my heart for the love for him which brought you here tonight,” her message stated. However, she continued, she wished to correct an erroneous impression that Sir Arthur’s materialized form was expected to appear in the empty chair. “At every meeting all over the world I have sat at my beloved husband’s side, and at this great meeting, where people have come with respect and love in their hearts to do him honour, his chair is placed, as I know that in psychic presence he will be close to me, although our earthly eyes cannot see beyond the earth’s vibration. Only those with the God-given extra sight, called clairvoyance, will be able to see the dear form in our midst.”

  Ernest Hunt, a spiritualist colleague of Conan Doyle’s, added a forceful elaboration. Pointing to the vacant chair, Hunt warned that it would be “a very trifling thing if any people here with hectic imagination were to persuade themselves imaginatively that they could see Sir Arthur’s form there. Nor would it be to me of surprisi
ng worth that some gifted clairvoyant could see the form. But it would be a great thing for you to see in the vacant chair a symbol of God’s call to you to qualify for being Doyle’s successors.”

  These words, however heartfelt, did little to quell the mood of charged expectancy. Since the first reports of Conan Doyle’s death there had been a wave of heated speculation about his possible return. “Widow Indicates Hope of Message,” declared a front-page headline in the New York Times. “Return of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Spirit Awaited by Widow and Sons,” reported the New York American. London’s Daily Herald gave details of a secret code word Conan Doyle had left with his wife, to prove the veracity of any spirit contact.

  If Lady Conan Doyle clung to the hope of a message, however, she believed that such communication could only come through a “spirit sensitive.” The notion that her husband’s materialized form would suddenly pop into view arose from a series of ambiguous statements made by Conan Doyle’s spiritualist colleagues. “I should imagine that he would be quite capable of demonstrating already,” declared one of the organizers of the Albert Hall event. “He was quite prepared for his passing.”

  After five days of such statements, the attempt to inject a note of moderation had come too late. Throughout the hall eyes were kept trained on the empty chair beside Lady Conan Doyle, hoping for some telltale indication of an otherworldly presence.

  For a time, the evening proceeded like any other memorial service. Friends and colleagues rose to pay tribute, hymns were sung, and passages of Scripture were read. A telegram from the prominent physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, who shared Conan Doyle’s spiritualist beliefs, praised the author’s unwavering dedication: “Our great-hearted champion will soon be continuing his campaign on the other side with added wisdom and knowledge,” adding, “Sursum corda!”—lift up your hearts.

  After nearly an hour, the more conventional portion of the service drew to a close. George Craze returned to the microphone and asked the audience to stand for two minutes of silent reflection. “The completeness of the silence,” wrote one journalist, “was unforgettable.”

  As the congregants took their seats, Craze stepped forward once again. “This evening,” he began, “we are going to make a very daring experiment with the courage implanted in us by our late leader. We have with us a spirit sensitive who is going to try to give impressions from this platform. One reason why we hesitate to do it in such a colossal meeting as this is that it is a terrific strain on the sensitive. In an assembly of ten thousand people a tremendous force is centered upon the medium. Tonight, Mrs. Roberts will try to describe some particular friends, but it will be the first time this has been attempted in such a tremendous gathering. You can help with your vibrations as you sing the next hymn, ‘Open My Eyes.’”

  Mrs. Estelle Roberts stepped to the front of the platform as the last notes of the hymn faded. A slimly built, fluttery woman with dark hair and large brown eyes, Mrs. Roberts stood at the microphone for several moments wringing her hands. Her anxious, dithery appearance belied a canny flair for the dramatic. She had been a favorite medium of Conan Doyle’s before his departure for the spirit plane, and he had remarked more than once on her “mesmerizing presence.”

  In one sense, George Craze had been correct to call the evening a daring experiment. Mrs. Roberts had been called upon to make contact with departed souls—Conan Doyle’s among them. In so doing, she would also attempt to make believers out of skeptics. Though spiritualism was by no means uncommon in 1930, it was generally practiced in the darkened confines of the séance room. There, under conditions set by the medium, one might expect to see tambourines floating in the air, or ghostly messages appearing on chalk slates, or any number of other discarnate effects taken to signify spirit contact. Under the bright lights of the Albert Hall, there would be no floating tambourines. Instead, Mrs. Roberts would be expected to stand before the microphone and pluck spirit messages out of the ether, apparently at random, and deliver them to individuals in the crowd. Any evidence of otherworldly phenomena, then, would show itself solely in the force of her spoken testimony.

  The mesmerizing presence that had so impressed Conan Doyle was not immediately apparent. For some time, Mrs. Roberts did nothing more than rock back and forth on her heels, and soon the sounds of coughing and restless movement could be heard from the audience. At this, she appeared to gather her resolve. Shielding her eyes like a sailor on lookout, Mrs. Roberts swept her eyes over the gallery, tiers, and boxes. Her attention fixed not on the faces of the expectant crowd, but on the empty space above their heads. “There are vast numbers of spirits here with us,” she announced. “They are pushing me like anything.”

  With that, she launched into a long unbroken monologue, apparently describing a series of spirits whom only she could see. “All around was a great concourse of spirit people anxious to communicate with their friends,” she would later write. “For half an hour, by means of clairvoyance, I relayed their messages to individuals among the mass of people in the hall.”

  In fact, she did more than relay messages. She described the features of the departed spirits, along with their characteristics, their method of speech, and even their clothes. The audience sat in rapt attention as she related tales of whole families reunited in the spirit world, then pointed out their loved ones in the crowd. “There was something uncanny,” one journalist noted, “in the sight of ten thousand people sitting in the Albert Hall, half afraid, yet half hoping that they might be singled out.”

  “There is a gentleman over there with hardly any hair,” said Mrs. Roberts, pointing to a man in the gallery. “Yes, there! That’s right. I see standing there in front of you, a spirit form of a young soldier.” She peered into the lights, as if for a better view.

  “He looks to be about twenty-four. In khaki uniform. Upright. Well-built. Mouth droops a little at the corners. He passed suddenly.” Mrs. Roberts angled her head, as though listening to a soft voice.

  “He gives me 1916 as the year of passing. He distinctly calls you ‘Uncle.’ ‘Uncle Fred.’”

  The man in the gallery stiffened, and nodded that the details were correct.

  “He speaks of a brother Charles,” she continued. “Is that correct? He wants to know if you have Aunty Lillian with you. Do you understand?”

  From his seat, the man nodded more vigorously.

  “The boy tells me that there is a little anxiety going on, and wants me to tell you he is helping you. He—” Abruptly, as if pushed by unseen hands, Mrs. Roberts broke off her discourse and took a few lurching steps across the stage. She turned to an empty space on the platform behind her. “All right,” she said, as though addressing a large and unruly knot of people. “All right.”

  She turned back to the audience and pointed to a woman seated in one of the boxes. “There is a gentleman here, John Martin. He says he is looking for his daughter Jane. Correct?”

  The woman in the box confirmed that her name was Jane, and that her late father’s name had been John Martin. Mrs. Roberts continued. “He has got her mother, Mary Martin, with him. Little Willie is with them. Also your sister Mary. Your sister-in-law Elizabeth is with him. You understand?” Mrs. Roberts opened her mouth to continue, then pitched forward as though shoved by invisible hands. “All right!” she said, glaring at the empty space behind her. “Just a minute!” She turned to the front of the platform, gathered herself, and carried on.

  Then as now, opinions differed sharply as to whether such revelations were produced by psychic means or by more earthbound contrivances such as audience confederates and careful vetting of potential contacts. The crowd at the Albert Hall consisted mostly of those sympathetic to spiritualist phenomena, and at least one of those who received a message was himself a practicing medium. To a large extent, it seems fair to say, Mrs. Roberts was preaching to the converted.

  But the audience also held a fair number of nonbelievers who had come only to pay tribute to Conan Doyle. “It was either an amazing proof
of communication with the dead,” said one skeptic, “or it was the most cold-blooded and cruel fraud.” A reporter from the Saturday Review was more blunt: “I should like to have heard Sherlock Holmes examining the medium at the Albert Hall last Sunday, for the methods that were employed were hardly reminiscent of Baker Street. Indeed, far from satisfying Holmes, I doubt if the evidence would even have been good enough for Watson.”

  After half an hour or so, the nonbelievers could no longer suppress their irritation. From various parts of the hall, some forty or fifty people rose from their seats and headed for the exits. From the platform, Mrs. Roberts registered her distress: “I can’t go on with all these people walking out,” she announced. A blast of organ music rang out to cover the confusion, and for a few moments it appeared the memorial might come to a premature end.

  At that moment, however, just as the meeting threatened to disband in an atmosphere of disarray, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made his appearance. “He is here!” Mrs. Roberts shouted. “He is here!” The skeptics stopped in their tracks. All eyes locked on the empty chair.

  Later, Mrs. Roberts would claim that Conan Doyle had been on the platform all along: “I saw him first during the two minutes’ silence,” she would recall. “Then when I was giving my messages I saw him again. He was wearing evening dress. He walked across the platform and sat in the empty chair. He was behind me, encouraging me while I was doing my work. I recognized once more that fine, clear voice of his, which could not be mistaken.”