Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle

by Daniel Stashower

  Others at the gathering were quick to take offense on Conan Doyle’s behalf. Former Governor Al Smith suggested that the mayor might wish to consult Conan Doyle’s spirits to gain an understanding of a current municipal issue, as “nobody on earth can explain it to him.” William Prendergast, the public service commissioner, chided the mayor for his boorishness. “I have always been an admirer of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” he declared. “Hospitality is due to this distinguished Britisher, even if here on a misguided mission.”

  Misguided or not, Conan Doyle delivered his first lecture at Carnegie Hall on April 12. Newspaper advertisements offered tickets that ranged in price from fifty cents to $3.50. The value in shekels was not indicated. The first night’s audience numbered in the thousands and included many women who wore a gold star—indicating the loss of a son in the war. Conan Doyle’s calm, reassuring voice filled the darkened hall as lantern slides of spirit phenomena flashed on a screen behind him. The sight of ectoplasm oozing from the mouth of the medium Eva Carrière was too much for the sensitive New York audience—hysterical screams and sobbing drowned out portions of the lecture, and fainting women had to be helped to the lobby. Those who were still conscious at the end were much moved by Conan Doyle’s account of his own psychic encounters, especially those involving his mother. “I swear by all that’s holy on earth,” he declared, “I looked into her eyes.”

  At one point, it appeared as if the evening might feature its own demonstration of a spirit presence. A strange, shrill whistle could be heard as a late-arriving elderly gentleman was helped into his seat, much to the puzzlement of the gathering. “Persons on the stage said they heard this noise and wondered whether it was some manifestation of a spirit somewhere in the audience,” reported the New York Times. “After three or four successive whistles, those seated around the newcomer saw that it was merely a note from a purely material plane.” It seems the gentleman in question had a faulty hearing aid.

  Apart from this interruption, Conan Doyle deemed the evening a success, although he had been nearly overwhelmed by the sweltering heat inside the hall, and mobbed by autograph hunters afterward. “I endeavoured to be patient and courteous,” he wrote afterward, “but I admit that it was a strain.”

  In Our American Adventure, his subsequent chronicle of the tour, Conan Doyle declared that the press coverage of this first lecture had been “all that could be wished for by those who desired that this great subject should be ventilated in a fair and even sympathetic manner.” In support of this, he quoted an account in the New York Times:

  The audience, which numbered 3,500 people, evidently saw a manifestation of the coming of a newer and finer religion that would clear out most of the weeds in the old religions and show the human race what God has written down in His eternal law.

  If true, this certainly would have been all that he might have wished, but what the article actually said was:

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle told about 3,500 persons that he saw manifestation of the coming of a new and finer religion which would “clear out most of the weeds in the old religions” and show the human race “what God has written down as His eternal law.”

  All too often in these later years, Conan Doyle showed himself willing to play fast and loose with the facts. In ascribing his own views to the audience, and his own quotations to the writer of the article, Conan Doyle gave the impression that the coverage had been surpassingly favorable, when in fact it was merely tolerant. As with so many aspects of the spiritualist movement, his desire had gotten the better of him.

  Even he could not have put a positive spin on a New York Times editorial entitled “Such a Man on Such a Mission!” It read in part: “[I]t is simply pathetic that a man like Sir Arthur—a man to whom in other years the English-reading world was indebted for no small amount of real pleasure—should now be devoting himself to the exploitation of such ‘spiritualism’ as this.… The emotions he excites by the description of visits from the audible and visible dead will be rather that of pity.” A later article was even less kind: “With each of the interviews he gives, it becomes harder to be patient with him.”

  On April 15, three days after Conan Doyle’s first lecture at Carnegie Hall, New York awoke to a different type of headline: “Wife Seeks Death to be a Spirit Guide—Newark Woman Kills Baby, Then Drinks Poison So She May Help Husband From Beyond.” The woman in question, Maude Fancher, had been a devoted adherent of spiritualism. Troubled by financial worries and a kidney ailment, she had decided to end her life so as to hasten the happy journey into the afterlife. Before swallowing the poison, she first administered a fatal dose to her two-year-old son, Cecil. In her suicide note, she explained that she did not want to “leave him here to be raised by someone else.” From the other world, she continued, she expected to be in a better position to help her husband in his troubles. “I will guide you from this day on,” she wrote, “and my love will always be right with you.”

  The New York Times lost no time in connecting the tragedy to Conan Doyle’s crusade. “Conan Doyle Defends Doctrines,” declared a subhead on the front page. “The incident shows the great danger of the present want of knowledge concerning spiritual matters,” he was quoted as saying. “We know from information from the beyond that suicide is a desperate and very grave offense, that the hand of Providence can not be forced and that the effect of a suicide is to separate the spirit of the offender from those whom he or she loves while they expiate the offense on the other side. If this poor woman had been better instructed she would never have ventured on such a deed.”

  It was hardly a compassionate statement, and his critics demanded a further explication. Two days later, a Times editorial headed “She Could Quote Sir Arthur” reviewed the unhappy situation. “It is decidedly embarrassing, though rather unfairly so, for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that the woman over in Newark who poisoned herself and her baby should have written out in explanation of what she did an elaborate statement of her beliefs and hopes,” the article stated. “Sir Arthur’s defense from such accusations as may be made against him as a result of this pitiful occurrence will have to be that thousands of people have studied his views and have not thought of killing themselves or others.”

  Actually, the paper could have offered a better defense by reviewing its own coverage of the tour. An article in its April 11 edition—three days before Maude Fancher poisoned herself and her child—made Conan Doyle’s views absolutely clear. The headline read: “Suicide Not an End of Ills, Says Doyle.”

  As in Australia, Conan Doyle took every opportunity to show his family the sights. In all, he gave seven lectures at Carnegie Hall, which left ample time for museums, a carriage ride in Central Park, and an aerial view of the city from the top of the Woolworth Building. Like many other visitors to the city, Conan Doyle had difficulties with taxicabs. After one ride, he realized he had forgotten his belongings in the backseat. Pedestrians on Fifth Avenue were elbowed aside as the sixty-three-year-old author sprinted past, waving his arms in a vain attempt to flag down the driver. When the cab turned onto a side street, Conan Doyle took a flying leap onto the running board, apparently causing some distress to the driver, who mistook the energetic approach for a robbery.

  In addition to New York, the tour included stops in Boston, New Haven, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, and Atlantic City. Conan Doyle arranged for a special stop in Toledo, Ohio, so that he could visit the medium Ada Besinnet, who had greatly impressed him on four separate occasions in London.

  The medium made the detour worthwhile, producing a message purporting to be from his son Kingsley. The communication informed Conan Doyle that “Oscar and Uncle Willie” were following his tour with great interest. This was a reference to Willie Hornung and his son—“of whose existence,” Conan Doyle insisted, “or relation to my boy the medium had no possible means of knowing.” To Conan Doyle, this seemed to be in the “highest degree evidential.”

  As it happens, Conan Doyle often professed amazement w
hen a medium referred to his departed loved ones by the names used within the immediate family—such as Kingsley, Innes, Oscar, or Willie. His son, he pointed out, was actually named Alleyne, and Hornung’s real name was Ernest. Kingsley and Willie were the more familiar names used within the family circle, a fact that would not have been readily apparent to an outsider. The phenomenon becomes less impressive when it is realized that Conan Doyle often used the family names in print—especially in the psychic press. That he continued to express astonishment at each recurrence is perhaps more an indication of his trusting nature—and his need to believe—than of the genuine character of the phenomenon.

  In any case, Conan Doyle left Toledo well satisfied with Miss Besinnet’s results. “It was one of the most remarkable experiences that I have ever had,” he told the Toledo News-Bee. “She should be guarded and looked after very carefully, for she is very valuable.”

  Conan Doyle’s regard for Miss Besinnet owed much to the fact that in London the previous year she had been the first to produce a visible manifestation of his mother. “At the end of a very wonderful sitting came my mother’s face,” he told a lecture audience in Toledo. “My wife and I could count the very wrinkles in her face and the gray hairs at the temples during the five or six seconds or more that the face was visible.”

  The following year, a lengthy article would appear in the magazine Scientific American that described the manner in which some mediums made use of paraffin masks in the séance room. These masks, which were sometimes dipped in phosphorus for a ghostly appearance, could be waved high over the heads of sitters on a long pole, or poked through the curtains of a medium’s cabinet to give the impression of a disembodied face hovering in the darkness. When properly molded, these masks could have a striking effect upon a suggestible mind.

  It is not possible to know whether Ada Besinnet resorted to parlor tricks of this type. Where his mother was concerned, however, Conan Doyle’s impressions may not have been wholly objective. A subsequent séance in New York, which featured another encounter with the spirit of the Ma’am, brought him no end of misery. Dr. Leonard J. Hartman, a trustee of the First Spiritualist Church of New York, invited Conan Doyle to a séance conducted by William R. Thompson and his wife, Eva. Mrs. Thompson was thought to be a “materializing medium,” with a “sensitive nature attuned to the finer harmonies of our etherealized dead.” This sensitivity was thought to enable her to “bring those dead back to us, in materialized form, and even make them speak.” All this was to take place while Mrs. Thompson herself remained hidden away in a cabinet, evidently deep in a trance.

  In order to create a suitable atmosphere, the Thompsons insisted that each of the sitters adhere to a strict set of rules. They were told to sing hymns “industriously” throughout the proceedings. In addition, the lights were to remain extinguished, as even the slightest illumination might kill or otherwise injure the medium. Also, the sitters were warned against staring directly at the materialized spirits. “It’s very bad form,” they were told. Lastly, the spirits were to be given plenty of “elbow room.”

  When all present had agreed to these restrictions, Mrs. Thompson withdrew into a curtained enclosure and the room was plunged into darkness. After much singing of hymns, a ghostly form—barely visible in the darkness—emerged from the cabinet. Conan Doyle was said to be “overcome with emotion” as he recognized the spirit of his mother. According to Dr. Hartman, he reverently asked if he might be allowed to touch his mother’s hand. After some consultation with Mr. Thompson, the spirit form offered the back of its hand. In some versions of the tale, Conan Doyle raised the hand to his lips. In others, he was so moved that he watered it with his tears. After a time, the figure withdrew into the cabinet.

  When the séance concluded, according to Dr. Hartman, Conan Doyle declared himself greatly moved. “The chance to touch my mother’s hand,” he said, “and feel the substance there; the chance to see her force, was very precious to me.”

  Three days later, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson were arrested for fraud in a highly publicized police sting. A pair of undercover officers arranged a second séance in Dr. Hartman’s home, and wrestled the spirit presence to the ground when it emerged from the cabinet. The spirit proved to be Mrs. Thompson in a set of iridescent robes. It seems the lusty singing of hymns was meant to cover any awkward noise associated with the costume change.

  The New York papers raked Conan Doyle over the coals. A magazine called the American Weekly published a lengthy exposé entitled “How the Mediums ‘Brought Back’ Sir Conan Doyle’s Dead ‘Mother.’” It featured photographs of Mrs. Thompson and the robes she wore to impersonate spirits, along with an illustration of a reverent Conan Doyle bending to kiss the apparition’s hand. “When I think now,” wrote Dr. Hartman, “how the feeling of that son for that little old mother long dead was played upon by those charlatans I feel indignant clear through.”

  Perhaps, although it is difficult to regard Hartman as the injured party, as the police operation took place in his home, and the American Weekly article—which descended into low comedy at Conan Doyle’s expense—appeared over his name. Conan Doyle vigorously defended himself, saying that he had not been fooled, but did not wish to offend his host by expressing his doubts openly. “Both my wife and I,” he wrote in Our American Adventure, “were of the opinion that the proceedings were very suspicious and we came away deeply dissatisfied, for there were no test conditions and no way of checking such manifestations as we saw.”

  The incident would haunt Conan Doyle for the rest of his life. “I do not think that any punishment could be too severe for rogues of this kind,” he remarked. “The rotten twigs must come off.”

  Possibly he should have grown suspicious at the moment he entered Dr. Hartman’s parlor, as his host had invited an extra guest to fill out the séance circle. She was apparently a charming young woman, but her name would surely have put Sherlock Holmes on his guard.

  It was Alice Moriarty.

  27

  The Ectoplasmic Man

  His final device of offering five thousand pounds if the spirits of the dead would place the three first horses in the coming derby, and his demonstration that ectoplasm was in truth the froth of bottle porter artfully concealed by the medium, are newspaper stunts which are within the recollection of the reader.

  —ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, THE LAND OF MIST

  “Who was the greatest medium-baiter of modern times?” Conan Doyle once asked. “Undoubtedly Houdini. Who was the greatest physical medium of modern times? There are some who would be inclined to give the same answer.”

  Harry Houdini, the “justly-celebrated self-liberator,” first crossed Conan Doyle’s path in March 1920. Houdini, in the midst of a tour of Britain, learned of Conan Doyle’s interest in the Davenport Brothers, the American stage mediums of the previous century. The Davenports’ act—and its exposure—had featured prominently in Houdini’s book The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, a copy of which he forwarded to Conan Doyle.

  Conan Doyle wrote at once to thank Houdini for the book, but allowed as how he did not really believe that the Davenports had been exposed as frauds. “Every famous medium is said to have ‘confessed,’” he wrote. “It is an old trick of the opposition’s.” He added a significant postscript: “Some of our people think that you have yourself some psychic power, but I feel it is art and practice.”

  Already, the battle lines had been drawn.

  At first blush, it is difficult to imagine two men less alike than Harry Houdini, the brash American showman, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the genial spiritualist. When they met, Houdini had already cultivated a reputation as the world’s most outspoken anti-spiritualist crusader, which he came to regard as the most important work of his life. Houdini had been drawn into the spiritualist arena by a genuine desire to contact the spirit of his beloved mother, but with his knowledge of stagecraft he easily saw through the deceptions of the typical séance room. By rights, this should have made him the natura
l enemy of Conan Doyle, who had come to resent what he called the “Conjurer’s Complex” of such magicians as P. T. Selbit and John Nevil Maskelyne, who insisted on explaining away psychic phenomena in terms of simple magic tricks.

  Even physically, the two men presented a study in contrasts. Houdini, whom the press invariably described as “somewhat undersized,” had angular features, blue eyes that often betrayed anger and impatience, and thick, black curly hair. Conan Doyle, in spite of his earlier course of muscular development, had grown somewhat portly in his advancing years. His hair had thinned and deep lines showed in his face, but the photographs of his later years usually find him beaming with the contentment of his happy home life. Side by side, Conan Doyle and Houdini looked uncannily like the Walrus and the Carpenter from Alice in Wonderland.

  Below the surface there were compelling similarities. Both had drifted away from a strong religious background. As children, both had weak, absent fathers, and later compensated for the privations of childhood by showering wealth on their strong-willed mothers. A famous piece of Houdini lore has him returning from an early success with gold coins concealed in his clothing—“Shake me, Mama! I’m magic!” he is supposed to have said. The young Conan Doyle had done much the same thing on his return from the Arctic.

  After corresponding through the early months of 1920, the two men arranged to meet in April when the Conan Doyles traveled to Portsmouth to watch Houdini escape from packing crates and a straitjacket. Later that month, Houdini lunched at Windlesham and performed magic tricks for the children. On both occasions, the conversations were dominated by talk of spiritualism.