Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born on May 22nd 1859 in Edinburgh Scotland the
Doyles were a prosperous Irish Catholic family
Charles Altamont Doyle Arthur's father a chronic alcoholic was a moderately
successful artist who apart from fathering a brilliant son never
accomplished anything of note at the age of 22 Charles had married Mary fully a
vivacious and well-educated young woman of seventeen married oil had a passion
for books and was a master storyteller her son Arthur wrote of his mother's
gift of sinking her voice to a horror-stricken whisper when she reached
the culminating point of a story there was little money in the family and even
less harmony on account of his father's excesses and erratic behavior Arthur's
touching description of his mother's beneficial influences also poignant Lee
described in his autobiography in my early childhood as far as I can remember
anything at all the vivid stories she would tell me stand out so clearly that
they obscure real facts of my life after Arthur reached his ninth birthday the
wealthy members of the Doyle family offered to pay for his studies he was in
tears all the way to England where he spent seven years in a Jesuit boarding
school Arthur loathed the bigotry surrounding his studies and rebelled at
corporal punishment which was prevalent and incredibly brutal in most English
schools of the tea Pok during those grueling years offers only moments of
happiness were when he wrote to his mother a regular habit that lasted for
the rest of her life and also when he practiced sports mainly cricket at which
he was very good it was during these difficult years at boarding school that
Arthur realized he also had a talent for storytelling he was often found
surrounded by a bevy of totally enraptured younger students listening to
the amazing stories he would make up to amuse them by 1876 graduating at the age
of 17 Arthur Doyle as was called before adding his middle name
Conan to his surname was a surprisingly normal young man with his innate sense
of humor and his sportsmanship having ruled out any feelings of self-pity
Arthur was ready and willing to face the world years later he wrote perhaps it
was good for me that the times were hard for I was wild full blooded and a trifle
reckless but the situation called for energy and applications so that one was
bound to try to meet it my mother had been so splendid that I could not fail
her it has been said that Arthur's first task went back from school was to
co-sign the committal papers of his father who by then was seriously
demented one can get a fairly good idea of the dramatic circumstances which
surrounded the confinement of his father to a lunatic asylum in a story Arthur
Conan Doyle wrote in 1880 called the surgeon of gassed FL family tradition
would have dictated the pursuit of an artistic career yet Arthur decided to
follow a medical one this decision was influenced by dr. Brian Charles Waller a
young lodger his mother had taken in to make ends meet dr. Waller had trained at
the University of Edinburgh and that is where Arthur was sent to carry out his
medical studies the young medical student met a number of future authors
who were also attending the University including James Barrie and Robert Louis
Stevenson however the man who most impressed and influenced him was without
a doubt one of his teachers dr. Joseph Bell the good doctor was a master at
observation logic deduction and diagnosis all these qualities were later
to be found in the persona of the celebrated detective Sherlock Holmes a
couple of years into his studies Arthur decided to try his pen at writing a
short story the result entitled the mystery of successive Ally was very
evocative of the works of Edgar Allen Poe and Bret Hart his favorite authors
at the time it was accepted in an Edinburgh magazine called chambers
journal which had published Thomas Hardy's first work that same year Conan
Doyle's second story the American tale was
published in London society making him write much later it was in this year
that I first learned that shillings might be earned in other ways than by
filling files Arthur Conan Doyle's was 20 years old and in his third year of
medical studies when a chance for adventure knocked on his door he was
offered the post of ship's surgeon on the hope a whaling boat about to leave
for the Arctic Circle the hope first stopped near the shores of Greenland
where the troop proceeded to hunt for seals the young medical student was
appalled by the brutality of the exercise but apart from that he greatly
enjoyed the camaraderie on board the ship and the subsequent whale hunt
fascinated him I went on board the Whaler a big straggling youth he said I
came off a powerful well grown man the Arctic had awakened the soul of a born
wanderer he concluded many years later this adventure found its way into his
first story about the sea a chilling tale called captain of the Polestar
without much enthusiasm Conan Doyle returned to his studies in the autumn of
1880 a year later he obtained his Bachelor of Medicine and master of
surgery degree on this occasion he drew a humorous sketch of himself receiving
his diploma with the caption licensed to kill dr. Arthur Conan Doyle's first
gainful employment after his graduation was as a medical officer on the steamer
Moomba a battered old vessel navigating between Liverpool and the west coast of
Africa unfortunately he did not find Africa to be as seductive as the Arctic
so he gave up that position as soon as the boat landed back in England then
came a short but quite dramatic stint with an unscrupulous doctor in Plymouth
of which Conan Doyle gave a vivid account of 40 years later in the stock
Munro letters after that debacle and on the verge of bankruptcy Conan Doyle left
for Portsmouth to open his first practice he rented a house but was only
able to furnish the two rooms his patients would see the rest of their
house was almost bare and his practice was off to a rocky start but he was
compassionate and hard working so that by the end of the third
year his practice started to earn him a comfortable income during the next years
the young men divided his time between trying to be a good doctor and
struggling to become a recognized author in August of 1885 he married a young
woman called louisa hawkins the sister of one of his patients he described her
in his memoirs as having been gentle and amiable in March 1886 Conan Doyle
started writing the novel which catapulted him to fame at first it was
named a tangled skein and the two main characters were called Sheridan hope and
Ormond sacker two years later this novel was published in Beaton's Christmas
annual under the title a Study in Scarlet which introduced us to the
immortal Sherlock Holmes and dr. Watson Conan Doyle much preferred his next
novel Myka Clarke which though well received is by now almost forgotten this
marked the start of a serious dichotomy in the author's life there was sherlock
holmes who very quickly became world famous in stories its author considered
at best commercial and there were a number of serious historical novels
poems and plays for which Conan Doyle expected to be recognized as a serious
author during that time he also wrote a very strange and confusing tale about
the afterlife of three vengeful Buddhist monks called the mystery of gloom ba
this story illustrates the start of Conan Doyle's fascination with the
paranormal and spiritualism surprisingly at that time Conan Doyle was better
known as a writer in the United States of America than in England in August of
1889 Joseph marshal start managing editor of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine
in Philadelphia came to London to organize a British edition of his
magazine he invited Conan Doyle for dinner in London at the elegant Langham
Hotel which was to be mentioned later in a number of Holmesian adventures and he
also asked Oscar Wilde who by then was already quite well-known
Oscar Wilde appeared to be a languorous Stanley whereas Conan Doyle in spite of
his best suit looked somewhat like a walrus in Sunday clothes yet Oscar and
Arthur got along famously it was indeed a golden evening for me
Conan Doyle wrote of this meeting as a result of this literary soiree
Lippincott's commissioned the young doctor to write a short novel which was
published in England and the u.s. in February of 1890 this story the sign of
four was instrumental in establishing Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle
once and for all in the annals of literature to write the sign of four
Conan Doyle had to set aside for a time the white company a historical novel he
always said was the work he had most enjoyed writing this is not surprising
for the main characters had the same traits of decency and honor which guided
the author through his life thirty years later he told a journalist I was young
and full of the first joy of life and action and I think I got some of it into
my pages when I wrote the last line I remember that I cried well I'll never
beat that and through the ink pen at the opposite wall
in spite of his literary success a flourishing medical practice and a
harmonious family life enhanced by the birth his daughter Mary Conan Doyle was
Restless he decided the time had come to leave Portsmouth and go to Vienna where
he wanted to specialise in ophthalmology a foreign language turned that trip into
somewhat of a fiasco and after a visit to Paris Conan Doyle hurried back to
London followed by the gentle Louisa Conan Doyle opened a practice in elegant
Upper Wimpole Street where if you read his autobiography not a single patient
ever crossed his door this inactivity gave him a lot of time
to think and as a result he made the most profitable decision of his life
that of writing a series of short stories featuring the same characters by
then Conan Doyle was represented by a P watt whose duty was to relieve him of
hateful bargaining hence it was what who made the deal with The Strand Magazine
to publish the Sherlock Holmes stories the image of Holmes was created by the
illustrator Sidney Paget who took his handsome brother Walter as a model for
the great detective this collaboration lasted for many decades and was
instrumental in making the author the magazine and the artist world-famous in
May of 1891 while writing some of the early Sherlock Holmes short stories
Conan Doyle was struck by a virulent attack of influenza which left him
between life and death for several days when his health improved he came to
realize how foolish he had been trying to combine a medical career with a
literary one with a wild rush of joy he decided to abandon his medical career he
added I remember in my delight taking the handkerchief which lay upon the
coverlet in my enfeebled hand and tossing it up to the ceiling in my
exaltation I should at last be my own master
in 1892 louisa gave birth to a son they named kingsley which the proud father
called the chief event of their life a year later in spite of everyone's
entreaties the amazingly prolific but very impulsive author decided to get rid
of Sherlock Holmes during a trip to Switzerland he found the spot where his
hero was to come to his end in the final problem published in December 1893
Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunged to their deaths at the
Reichenbach Falls as a result 20,000 readers cancelled their subscriptions to
The Strand Magazine now freed from his medical career and from a fictional
character that oppressed him and overshadowed what he considered his
finer work Conan Doyle immersed himself into even more intensive activity this
frenzied life may explain why the former physician didn't notice the serious
deterioration of his wife's health by the time he finally became aware of how
sick she was Louisa was diagnosed with tuberculosis although she was given only
a few months to live her husband ministrations kept her alive
well into the new century writing incessantly looking after Louisa no
longer a wife but a patient and then losing his father deeply troubled Conan
Doyle it may well have been his resulting depression which caused him to
become more and more fascinated by life beyond the veil he had long been
attracted to spiritualism but when he joined the Society for psychical
research it was considered to be a public declaration of his interest and
belief in the account as Sherlock Holmes said to Watson work is the best antidote
to sorrow Conan Doyle accepted to go to the United States to give a series of
lectures
he sailed for New York in September of 1894 with his younger brother Ennis he
was booked to give talks in more than 30 cities but tours a huge success
judging by an article in The Ladies Home Journal few foreign writers who have
visited this country have made more friends than a Conan Doyle his
personality is a peculiarly attractive one to Americans because it is so
thoroughly wholesome the author returned to England in time for Christmas as well
as for the publication in The Strand Magazine of the first of the Brigadier
Girard stories which was an instant hit with the readers a trip with Louise of
during the winter of 1896 to Egypt where he hoped the warm climate would do her
good produced another of his novels the tragedy of the Carrasco it is believed
that Conan Doyle a man with the highest moral standards remained celibate during
the rest of Louise's life that didn't prevent him from falling deeply in love
with Jean Leckie the first time he saw her in March of 1897 aged 24 she was a
strikingly beautiful woman with dark blond hair and bright green eyes her
many accomplishments were quite unusual for those times she was an intellectual
a good sports woman as well as a trained mezzo-soprano
what further attracted Conan Doyle was that her family claimed to be related to
the Scottish hero Robert Roy during that same period Conan Doyle
wrote a play about Sherlock Holmes it was not to give him new life but to
shore up his bank account the very successful American actor William
Gillette having read the script asked for permission to revise it Conan Doyle
agreed and when the actor asked permission to alter the Holmes persona
he replied you may marry him murder him or do anything you like to him by the
time Gillette's revisions were sent back there was little left of Conan Doyle's
original script the author's laconic comment to Juliet was it's good to see
the old chap again after a triumphant tour in the United States the play
opened in London at the Lyceum Theatre in the fall of 1901
the British crit expanded but as it often happens Vox Populi prevailed and
the play was a huge success when the Boer War started Conan Doyle
declared to his horrified family that he was going to volunteer having written
about many battles without the opportunity to test his skills as a
soldier he felt this would be his last opportunity to do so not surprisingly
being somewhat overweight at the age of 40 he was deemed unfit to enlist without
losing an instant he volunteered as a medical doctor and sailed to Africa in
February of 1980 millets Conan Doyle had to wage a fierce battle against microbes
during the few months he spent in Africa he saw more soldiers and medical staff
died of typhoid fever than of war wounds the great Boer War a 500 page Chronicle
published in October of nineteen hundred was a masterpiece of military
scholarship it was not only a report of the war but also in astute and
well-informed commentary about some of the organisational shortcomings of the
British forces at the time exhausted and disappointed Conan Doyle opted for yet
another change of direction when he returned to England he threw himself
headfirst into politics by running for a seat in central Edinburgh which he
described as being the premier radical stronghold of Scotland having been
raised by Jesuits he was unfairly accused of being a Catholic bigoted to
his credit he lost the election by only a narrow margin he then returned to
London and continued writing the inspiration for his next novel came from
a prolonged stay in the Devonshire malls which included a visit to Dartmoor
Prison but first it was based mainly on local folklore about an inhospitable
manner an escaped convict and a huge black sepulchral hound as the novel
progressed he came to realise that his story lacked a hero he is quoted as
having said why should I invent such a character when I already have him in the
form of Sherlock Holmes however rather than resurrecting the detective the
author wrote the story as if it was a obviously untold adventure to the
delight of thousands of frustrated fans the The Strand Magazine published the
first episode of The Hound of the Baskervilles in August of 1901 a year
later King Edward the seventh knighted Conan Doyle for services rendered to the
crown during the Boer War gossip has it that the king was such an avid Sherlock
Holmes fan that he had put the author's name on his honours list to encourage
him to write new stories be that as it may his majesty and several hundred
thousand of his subjects must have been very pleased when in 1903 the Strand
Magazine started serializing the return of Sherlock Holmes writing looking after
Louisa seeing Jean Leckie as discreetly as
possible playing golf driving fast cars floating in the sky in hot-air balloons
flying in early archaic and rather frightening airplanes spending time on
muscle development as bodybuilding used to be called kept Conan Doyle active but
not really contented his lingering deep desire for public service made him go
for a second attempt at politics in the spring of 1906 he lost the election once
more after Louisa died in his arms on the fourth of July 1906 Conan Doyle
slipped into a debilitating state of depression lasting many months he
extricated himself from his misery by trying to help someone in a worse
condition than he was playing Sherlock Holmes he got in touch with Scotland
Yard to point out a case of miscarriage of justice it involved a young man
called george edalji who had been convicted of having slashed a number of
horses and cows Conan Doyle had observed that ad algie's eyesight was so poor it
was proof the convict couldn't possibly have done the awful deed several years
later this remarkable man who couldn't
tolerate injustice was captivated by yet another criminal cause say libera the
case of Oscar slater which he wrote in 1912 gives a detailed summary of that
affair finally after nine years of clandestine courtship Conan Doyle and
Jean Leckie got married very publicly front of 250 guests on September 18th
1907 with his two children with Louisa they all moved to a new home called
windle's ham in Sussex he would spend the rest of his life living in the
lovely house while keeping a small flat in London Arthur Conan Doyle was so
happy to share many of his wife's activities that his literary output
slowed down considerably after his marriage during the next year's he tried
his hand at a number of plays one based on Brigadier Gerard the other on the
tragedy of the carrasco neither of them did well not one to give up
he wrote a third play about boxing he named the House of temple II that one
closed after three months to make up for his considerable financial losses Conan
Doyle set out to write a forth play but this time with Sherlock Holmes at first
he called it the stoner case but later reverted to calling it the speckled band
which was well known and had been so successful one of the difficulties of
the production was the casting of the snake the author insisted upon a live
reptile whereas the actors and the crew begged for an artificial one Conan Doyle
won but later wrote admitting his mistake
the Python neither hung down like a pudgy yellow bell rope or else when his
tail was pinched endeavoured to squirm back and get level with the stage
carpenter who pinched him which was not in the script happily the play got rave
reviews and made the author a lot of money after the success of the speckled
band Conan Doyle chose to retire from stage work not because it doesn't
interest me but because it interests me too much he said the birth of his two
sons Denis in 1909 and that of Adrian in 1910 also contributed to keep the author
from concentrating on fiction a last child their daughter Jean was born in
1912 a couple of years went by before the author's next creation the
delightfully outrageous professor Challenger whose own wife called a
perfectly impossible person his new hero was quite the opposite of Shirl
combs nevertheless the lost world was an immediate success it involved the
professor in a delightfully humorous adventure with a number of other highly
personable characters stranded in a mysterious region of South America
discovering prehistoric fauna and flora in those days the term science fiction
had not been coined so when Conan Doyle wrote this story in his mind it was a
boy's book another four novels about professor challenger's adventures
followed the lost world this series stands out as a masterpiece of the genre
authors have had no qualms to borrow from the valley of fear the second
full-length Sherlock Holmes novel was serialized in the Strand Magazine in
early 1914 but Conan Doyle's readers were not quite satisfied for Sherlock
Holmes was absent during a great part of the novel in May 1914 Sir Arthur and
lady Conan Doyle sailed for New York a city the author found unfavorably
changed since his first visit 20 years earlier Canada where they spent a short
time the couple found in chanting they returned home a month later probably
because for a long time Conan Doyle had been convinced of a coming war with
Germany he had sent articles to newspapers about organizing military
readiness many years before World War one broke out in 1913 he wrote to the
fortnightly review expressing his views about new untested warfare these new
factors are the submarine and the airship he foresaw the possibility of a
blockade by enemy submersible ships long before anyone in the British Navy did
the only solution he added would be to build a channel tunnel but this
intelligent man's warnings were judged to be Jules Verne fantasies by most
naval experts as soon as the war broke out Conan Doyle and 55 offered to enlist
again he was denied his wish once more but set out to organize a civilian
battalion of over a hundred volunteers when the Navy lost more than a thousand
lives in a single day his brilliant mind never
arrest Conan Doyle made suggestions to the War Office to provide inflatable
rubber belts and inflatable lifeboats he also spoke of body armor to protect
soldiers on the front most government officials found him irritating at best
one of the exceptions was Winston Churchill who wrote to thank him for his
ideas while writing a book which was to be called the British campaign in France
and Flanders the author was given permission to visit the British and
French fronts in 1916 a while later the Australian High Command invited him to
observe their position on the river Somme witnessing the Battle of st.
Quentin made Conan Doyle say he would never be able to forget the horrors of
the tangle of mutilated horses their necks rising and sinking lying amidst
the blood circuit remains of fallen soldiers in late 1914 the author made up
for the lackluster reception of his second Sherlock Holmes novel with the
publication of his last bow in this tale Sherlock Holmes infiltrates and
vanquishes a German spy ring a timely war propaganda story
two years later Conan Doyle's acute sense of justice was awakened again and
made him rise to the defense of Sir Roger Casement an Irish diplomat accused
of being the foul list traitor who ever drew breath Conan Doyle had known and
liked the diplomat several years before as the man had alerted him to awful
injustice committed against the Congolese the author had even based the
character of lord john roxton in the lost world on casement now the traitor
was found guilty of having tried to get Germany's support for the Irish
independence movement Conan Doyle almost succeeded in sparing the convicted man's
life on grounds of insanity had it not been for the discovery of casements
diary it chronicled in detail his homosexuality which at the time was also
a criminal offence Conan Doyle's feelings about homosexuality were more
liberal than the norm which may have been the reason why he later was not
elevated to sit in the House of Lords the total of the war was cruel on Conan
Doyle he lost his son his brother his two brothers-in-law and
his two nephews after the death of his son and the horrors of World War one
Conan Doyle progressively became attracted to spiritualism and the
account while researching the topic of fairies he came across some pictures
belonging to a family in Cottingley rural yorkshire these images seemed to
show several diminutive fairies dancing in the presence of two teenage girls the
pictures seemed not to have been tampered with Conan Doyle championed the
photos and eventually included them in his 1922 book the coming of fairies he
was compulsive in his new passion for the occult and pursued it with the same
dogged energy he had shown in all his endeavors when he was younger as a
result the press mocked him and the clergy disapproved of him but nothing
deterred him his wife reputed to be such a level-headed woman came to share his
beliefs and developed the talent of trance writing after 1918 because of his
deepening involvement into the occult Conan Doyle wrote very little fiction
writing arduously about spiritualism instead their subsequent trips to
America Australia and to Africa accompanied by their three children were
also on psychic Crusades as years went by having spent over a quarter of a
million pounds in the pursuit of his esoteric dreams Conan Doyle was faced
with the necessity to earn money in 1926 professor challenger and his colorful
friends appeared again in the land of mists a novel of psychic adventures
followed by the disintegration machine and when the world screamed two years
later his last 12 stories about the exploits of the immortal detective were
compiled in the casebook of Sherlock Holmes in the autumn of 1929 in spite of
having been diagnosed with angina pectoris Conan Doyle went off for his
last psychic to a Holland Denmark Sweden and Norway he was in such pain by the
time he returned that he had to be carried ashore bedridden from that time
on he managed to have one last quixotic adventure on a cold
spring day in 1930 he rose from his bed and unseen went into the garden when he
was found he was lying on the ground one hand clutching his heart the other
holding a single white snowdrop Arthur Conan Doyle died on Monday July 7th 1930
words before departing for the greatest and most glorious adventure of all were
addressed to his wife he whispered you are wonderful
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